Welcome back to another mid-week roundup, amid a slew of technology and architecture news.

Here’s what you need to know to carry you through to Friday:

Zaha Hadid Architects partners with Hyperloop Italia

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) is working with Hyperloop Italia to design the next generation of high-speed transportation in Italy.

“We are looking forward to collaborating with Hyperloop Italia,” said ZHA principal Patrik Schumacher in a press release, “marrying transformative architecture, engineering and urban planning with the most efficient and sustainable transport network to significantly improve accessibility, connectivity, and well-being in our cities. We share Hyperloop Italia’s multidisciplinary approach which combines innovations in design and operational technologies with advances in ecologically sound materials and construction practices; enabling us to deliver future-resilient projects that are spatially inventive, structurally efficient and environmentally sustainable.”

While nothing has been built yet, Hyperloop Italia is currently conducting a feasibility study of building a route between Milan and the Malpensa Airport.

A queer art hub is opening in London’s forthcoming Design District

As London’s Greenwich Design District nears completion, more information is trickling out about the tenants that will soon move in. That includes a new crowdfunded arts space to showcase work from LGBTQ+ creators in a David Kohn Architects-designed building. The space will include a library and residency studios, but organizers are also hoping it will become a center for members of the LGBTQ+ community to gather and feel safe at amid a surge of hate crimes in Britain.

H/t to The Art Newspaper

New York City could consolidate all of its smart city technology under one agency

A new bill could unite all of the disparate smart city technologies currently implemented in New York City under a single agency. Currently awaiting a vote before the New York City Council, the bill would streamline technology deployment by giving authority of everything from smart streetlamps to the meters used in sanitation to a single department.

H/t to Smart Cities Dive

Renderings of a post-rezoning Gowanus place towers at the water’s edge

Landscape architecture firm SCAPE has revealed new renderings of what Gowanus could look like post-rezoning, as the controversial process to densify the canal-side Brooklyn neighborhood continues. The images, reportedly commissioned by Gowanus Forward, a group of pro-rezoning developers, show new towers that wouldn’t look out of place in Downtown Brooklyn fronting a clean Gowanus Canal rife with kayakers (meanwhile, in reality, the cleanup barges dredging up toxic waste from the canal keep sinking).

H/t to Urbanize New York

James Corner Field Operations confirmed as master planner for Baltimore’s Middle Branch waterfront

James Corner Field Operations has been confirmed as the new master planner for Baltimore’s Middle Branch waterfront.

Baltimore’s spending board approved an agreement today that names Field Operations as the head of a large team of consultants charged with creating a master plan to guide development along 11 miles of shoreline framing the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River in South Baltimore.

Field Operations replaces West 8, the Rotterdam-based firm that won an international competition in 2019 to lead the project. West 8 resigned last July after a photo circulated showing three white children of a former employee attending a holiday party in its offices in blackface.

The commission calls for creating a “Waterfront Vision and Implementation Plan” to improve the shoreline and strengthen connections between the Middle Branch and the communities close to it. The project’s scope includes designing parks, trails, bridges and other amenities and infrastructure improvements that will enhance the area for residents and visitors and create a more attractive setting for future development.

A 127-year-old building is being relocated in Chicago

The 127-year-old Vautravers Building in Chicago is gearing up for a big move. In August, the three-story apartment building will slowly slide 30 feet west to make way for a new elevated bypass for the Brown Line. Owned by the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), the building will be preserved while many of its neighbors were demolished for the project; it’s expected to cost $1.75 million to move and restore the building, the same price the agency paid for it in 2016.

H/t to the Chicago Tribune