National Trust looks to halt construction, claiming Trump tore down historic East Wing without needed permission

Donald Trump is facing a federal lawsuit seeking to halt construction on his $300m White House ballroom, with historic preservationists accusing the president of violating multiple federal laws by tearing down part of the iconic building without required reviews or congressional approval.

The legal challenge, filed on Friday by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the US district court for the District of Columbia, represents the most significant attempt yet to stop Trump’s 90,000-sq-ft addition to the White House complex. The organization is seeking a temporary restraining order to freeze all construction activities until proper federal oversight procedures are completed.

The University of Leeds complex was a prototype for the Barbican – and the work done to it over time demonstrates how brutalist buildings can be humanised, writes Alan Radford

I read with interest about the refurbishment plans for the Barbican (Barbican revamp to give ‘bewildering’ arts centre a new lease of life, 5 December). I spent more than 30 years working on the prototype – the large complex of buildings that the architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon designed for the University of Leeds, constructed circa 1970.

All of the design features in the Barbican were there in the Leeds complex of offices, laboratories, library and so on, including all the problems. I always explained to visitors that I regarded the Chamberlin buildings primarily as a large-scale piece of brutalist sculpture rather than as a working environment.

The brutalist arts-and-towers complex, where even great explorers get lost, is showing its age. Let’s hope the 50th anniversary upgrade is better than the ‘pointillist stippling’ tried in the 1990s

The Barbican is aptly named. From the Old French barbacane, it historically means a fortified gateway forming the outer line of defence to a city or castle. London’s Barbican marks the site of a medieval structure that would have defended an important access point. Its architecture was designed to repel. Some might argue, as they stumble out of Barbican tube station and gaze upwards, not much has changed in the interim.

The use of the word “barbican” was in decline in this country until the opening in 1982 of the Barbican Arts Centre. Taking 20 years to build, it completed the modernist megastructure of the Barbican Estate, grafted on to a huge tract of land devastated by wartime bombing. The aim was to bring life back to the City through swish new housing, energised by the presence of culture. Nonetheless, the arts centre, the elusive minotaur at the heart of the concrete labyrinth, was always farcically difficult to locate. To this day, visitors are obliged to trundle along the Ariadne’s thread of the famous yellow line, inscribed in what seemed like an act of institutional desperation, across concrete hill and dale.

With its soaring ceilings, meandering pathways and mesh-like walls, Taichung Art Museum, designed by Sanaa, sweeps visitors from library to gallery to rooftop garden for rousing views

Walking through the brand new Taichung Art Museum in central Taiwan, directions are kind of an abstract concept. Designed by powerhouse Japanese architecture firm Sanaa, the complex is a collection of eight askew buildings, melding an art museum and municipal library, encased in silver mesh-like walls, with soaring ceilings and meandering pathways.

Past the lobby – a breezy open space that is neither inside nor out – the visitor wanders around paths and ramps, finding themselves in the library one minute and a world-class art exhibition the next. A door might suddenly step through to a skybridge over a rooftop garden, with sweeping views across Taichung’s Central Park, or into a cosy teenage reading room. Staircases float on the outside of buildings, floor levels are disparate, complementing a particular space’s purpose and vibe rather than having an overall consistency.

Architect who pioneered the idea of the collective workspace as a socially and economically supportive environment in London in the 1970s

Now a familiar part of modern working life, the collective workspace, whereby small firms share office space and communal facilities, was the brainchild of the architect David Rock, who has died aged 96. He established a pioneering working community at 5 Dryden Street in Covent Garden in 1972, at a time when London’s famous fruit and vegetable market was in decline, and the wider area was resisting ambitions to terraform it into the West End equivalent of the Barbican. Characterful old buildings were available and ripe for conversion and Rock, in his role as an enterprising architect-developer, spotted an opportunity.

At Dryden Street, a collective of more than 30 independent, design-related firms was billeted in a remodelled 19th-century warehouse, with fashionably exposed brick walls and timber roof trusses. Rock recognised that it was often small outfits that exuded the greatest energy, potential and creativity, and that a communal workspace could offer a different kind of socially and economically supportive environment. After Dryden Street came a similar initiative in Chiswick, west London, where a former Sanderson wallpaper factory was converted into the Barley Mow Centre, providing workspaces for craftspeople, designers and architects.

Cloud SLAs often fall short of enterprise needs. Learn how CISOs can assess, mitigate and manage SLA gaps using risk frameworks, compensating controls and multi-provider strategies.

The post How to Manage Cloud Provider Risk and SLA Gaps  appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Learn how SaaS platforms can automate local payroll tax compliance using identity data, real-time tax APIs, geolocation, and secure workflows for accuracy.

The post From User Identity to Payroll Accuracy: Automating Local Tax Compliance with SaaS Tools appeared first on Security Boulevard.

Learn how to transform your traditional SOC into an AI-powered security hub with multi-agent collaboration, contextual intelligence, and business risk–driven insights.

The post Bringing AI to the SOC is not Intended to Replace Humans  appeared first on Security Boulevard.

A deep dive into architecture, security, and practical implementation for developers who want to truly understand MCP

The post MCP for Technical Professionals: A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding and Implementing the Model Context Protocol appeared first on Security Boulevard.

AI’s mosaic effect turns harmless data into sensitive insight. Learn why traditional access control fails and how REBAC secures AI-driven environments.

The post The Mosaic Effect: Why AI Is Breaking Enterprise Access Control  appeared first on Security Boulevard.

As businesses grapple with the security challenges of protecting their data in the cloud, several security strategies have emerged to safeguard digital assets and ensure compliance. One such security strategy is called zero-trust security. Zero-trust architecture fosters the ‘never trust, always verify’ principle and emphasizes the need to authenticate users without trust. Contrary to traditional security approaches that leverage perimeter-based security, zero-trust architecture assumes that threats exist outside as well..

The post The Shift Toward Zero-Trust Architecture in Cloud Environments  appeared first on Security Boulevard.

As data volumes and alert fatigue overwhelm traditional SIEM systems, security leaders are rethinking their approach. Discover strategies to streamline your SIEM, reduce costs, and improve threat detection efficiency through smarter data ingestion, AI-driven analytics, and cloud-native security architectures.

The post Is it Time to Put Your SIEM on a Diet?  appeared first on Security Boulevard.