A historian explores how a little-known Illinois company, the Americana Corporation, helped shape the modern nursing home in postwar America. Her research shows how architecture was central to this shift, not just housing older adults but creating an entire system of care. By examining the physical and institutional design of Americana’s homes, she uncovers how midcentury ideals around aging, medicine and profit became embedded in the built environment – a legacy that continues to define long-term care today.

Renewable energy is today the cheapest source of electricity available. In order to meet the goals agreed under the Paris Agreement, the share of renewables must be expanded to 100 per cent by the 2030s. However, this expansion comes with an increase in land-use, leading to rising public opposition. How can citizens’ preferences inform the planning of energy systems? This question was addressed by a team of researchers from ETH Zurich, the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS) at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences. The researchers developed an approach that enables the evaluation of energy plans not only in terms of technical and economic aspects, but also citizen preferences.