In 1988, Martin Margiela and Jenny Meirens – the co-founder of his eponymous ‘Maison’ – painted their entire studio white, all the way down to the furniture, some of which was also draped in white cotton. It was largely a financial decision, a way to introduce cohesion to the mish-mash of vintage furnishings they had purchased in markets and second-hand stores. Mannequins were also painted white, and the pair enjoyed how eventually the various objects would patina through time – the paint scuffed or peeled away, revealing traces of what they once were.

It would lead to ‘bianchetto’ (‘whitewashing’), a technique that saw pieces from the house’s collections hand-painted white, ‘designed to naturally crack and fade over time, gradually revealing visible signs of use’. One of Margiela’s foundational codes – along with anonymity, deconstruction and the Tabi shoe – it is perhaps best known for adorning the last, a boot version of traditional Japanese split-toe tabi footwear. Indeed, ‘bianchetto’ was first introduced in 1989, adorning an early version of the Tabi boot.

Paint it white: Rimowa x Maison Margiela

Now, ‘bianchetto’ is central to a new collaboration between Maison Margiela – currently helmed by Belgian designer Glenn Martens – and German luggage house Rimowa, seeing the latter’s signature ridged ‘Classic Cabin’ suitcase daubed with white paint. The technique is also applied to a version of Maison Margiela’s 5AC XL bag, here recrafted with grooves in cleverly sculpted leather, echoing those found on Rimowa suitcases, which were originally inspired by airplane fuselages.

The collaboration, say the two brands, is built on the idea of the ‘lived in’ – something which both Rimowa and Maison Margiela incorporate in their work. Rimowa, despite the technical perfection of its luggage when it comes off the production line, has long embraced the way that its signature aluminium cases – which come in an ever-growing array of hues – dent and scuff with wear, seeing such marks as mementos of travel (the brand has also encouraged the adornment of their suitcases with stickers and tags). Maison Margiela uses the ‘bianchetto’ technique for this same reason, while its garments often feature torn-away layers to reveal the construction and linings beneath.

As such, the new take on the Classic Cabin suitcase also features a white interior with visible stitches and interlocked edges, making it appear ‘inside out’. Its traditional logo plaque is also finished with four white stitches, a nod to Maison Margiela’s signature branding, whereby the subtle stitches are used in lieu of traditional logos or monograms. The 5AC XL bag, which is constructed to appear as if the interior lining is being pulled out from the bag’s ‘opening’, features removable leather loops that allow it to be slipped over Classic Cabin’s telescopic handles.

A playful accompanying campaign film, conceived by Dexter Lander, sees the luggage set appear in a traditional Haussmannian apartment in Paris, the home city of Maison Margiela. A sprinkler of white paint gradually coats the luggage set and apartment, leaving behind an imprint of the bag and suitcase’s signature silhouettes on the apartment’s walls.

Watch the film below.

Rimowa x Maison Margiela is available 19 November 2026 from selected Rimowa and Maison Margiela stores

Rocco, the smart appliance brand, is no stranger to putting a fresh spin on a mini fridge. Last year, the company partnered with Katz’s Deli on a bright orange drinks fridge, and in 2026 we saw it team up with Gohar World to create a mirror-black option with accompanying champagne coupes. Now, Rocco has taken its classic mini fridge and made it even more mini.

Discover Rocco's Mini Mini fridge

The ‘Mini Mini’ is a dinky drinks fridge and a shrunken version of the brand’s classic. It is designed to fit in smaller spaces, at home and to hand on a nightstand or a desk. Rocco also suggests placing it in the bathroom to keep face masks and skincare cool.

The Mini Mini can fit up to 12 drink cans and delivers the same refrigeration quality as the original design. Rocco’s founders, Alyse Borkan and Sam Naparstek, also made sure it was quiet enough for any room, achieved with oversized fans that move more air at lower speeds to avoid extra noise.

The new arrival comes in four colours – Green, Graphite, Cream, and a new Stainless Steel – and cools to five degrees Celsius.

‘Most countertop fridges look like something you’d settle for. They’re bulky and not particularly nice-looking, but hey, at least you have a small fridge where you need it,’ says co-founder Alyse Borkan. ‘Then you live with it for a few days and find out they’re loud and barely get cold. We knew we could do better. So we took everything we love about our original fridge and made it much, much smaller.’

The Mini Mini Fridge, $295, available at roccofridge.com.

‘Milo’ is a portable light designed by Max Gunawan for Lumio. Powered by a 5,000mAh Li-Po battery that gives over 30 hours of use (at the lowest brightness setting), the little desk or table lamp is inspired by the form of mushrooms and can be bought with a variety of different shades, or ‘hats’.

Both lamp and shade are made from high-gloss lacquer-coated aluminium, with the latter snapping on and off as required. Three shapes, Cone, Mushroom and Flat, are available, each offered in six different colours, just like the light itself: red, blue, green, pink, white and black.

‘The idea for “Milo” started with my fascination with mushrooms and their playful, organic shapes,’ says Gunawan. ‘But beyond the silhouette, I wanted to capture that same sense of play in how we actually interact with light.’

‘Milo’ departs from convention in several ways, not least in the way you turn the light on. Rather than have a regular switch, the stem serves as both on/off mechanism and dimmer switch; the higher the hat is raised, the brighter the light becomes.

All of the interchangeable hats are able to swivel through 360-degrees in order to direct the light wherever you want it, while the base contains a hidden magnet to allow the ultra-portable lamp to switch between desk light and wall sconce. The light temperature can also be altered depending on your mood.

Charging is via USB-C and should take around five hours, while the light itself comes from an integrated 4.5W LED bulb. ‘“Milo” is simple: a playful, interactive light designed to follow you throughout your space,’ Gunawan says of the new model. ‘Most portable lamps frustrate me because you can only use them one way,’ he adds. ‘They are static objects that just sit on a desk. We live in dynamic spaces, shifting constantly from work to rest, and I believe the objects we own should adapt right alongside us.’

‘Milo’ table light, £169, Milo Hat shades, £27 each, HelloLumio.com, @HelloLumio

The first time Hannah Martin went to a concert, she was in utero. It was to see the Rolling Stones, and it sparked a lifelong love of rock, punk and everything in between.

Long known for channelling a rebellious spirit into her high-end jewellery and personal style, it was fate, perhaps, that brought her together with the ultimate Queen of Noise, Joan Jett, back in 2021. The pair met by chance, while both staying at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Los Angeles. With rock-star stylist Maryam Malakpour in common, their first encounter was one for the books.

‘Maryam had a meeting with Joan and asked if she could take some jewellery over,’ recalls Martin. ‘I was just working in my room and got this call from Maryam going: “Um, could you come over here and pierce Joan’s ear?”’ Martin mentally flicked through her Rolodex of Los Angeles piercers, but decided to take up the mantle herself. ‘It was the ultimate rock ’n’ roll icebreaker.’

Five years on, Martin and Jett’s friendship has endured, and now the duo have collaborated on a 14-piece collection of punk-inspired jewellery, celebrating 45 years of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ seminal album ‘I Love Rock ’n’ Roll’.

With Jett as her muse, Martin set to work on creating a collection that spoke to the musician’s legacy while avoiding cliché.

‘I think Joan’s pretty fed up of people doing "safety-pin things", so one of the first conversations we had was: this cannot be a cliché,' explains Martin. 'It can’t just be recreating Joan’s style; it needs to be a creative project in itself. And that’s what I do with my work in general. I don’t want to just make rock-and-roll jewellery – there are plenty of people doing that. I like to assess the iconography and symbolism in a look, and then consider how you can have a nod to that and bring elegance and luxury, without losing the element.’

‘The biggest thing was that everything had to feel authentic,’ echoes Jett. ‘Nothing too over the top or that felt like a costume. I wanted things I’d actually wear, that felt comfortable.’

Martin points to the eclectic references pinned to the moodboard behind her. ‘We’ve got a really cool picture of Joan, and then we’ve got some Brâncuși, and it all needed to mix.’

At the core of the collection is a pacifier necklace inspired by one Jett wore in the 1980s. Martin’s interpretation transforms the original into a sculptural stack of Brâncuși-inspired orbs, suspended from leather and silver-link lanyards that can be worn around the neck or wrapped around the wrist.

‘The original pacifier necklace was eaten by my dog, so I’m happy to have it back, but in a completely different way,’ Jett reveals. ‘I love that those influences are still part of my style all these years later.’

The Blackhearts, Jett’s band of more than four decades, provide another point of inspiration. Martin combines two of her signature teardrop motifs to create a heart with attitude, punctuated by spiky, reverse-set black diamonds. The safety pin, one of punk’s most enduring symbols, is distilled into an elongated, curving line of silver. Meanwhile, the humble concert badge becomes a precious enamel pin, hand-painted with the words ‘Bad Reputation’, in a nod to one of Jett’s greatest hits.

The collection makes a compelling case for grown-up punk, with pieces that feel equally at home alongside high jewellery as a leather jacket.

‘For me, punk’s an attitude. It’s more than a musical movement,' says Martin. 'There are political beliefs linked to it, but it’s also a DIY feeling of, “Let’s fucking do this. Let’s experience life. Make it happen.”'

That spirit, she argues, can manifest in all sorts of ways, some subtle, some more overt. Many of Martin’s most devoted clients are what she affectionately calls her ‘Mayfair Ladies’: women who might not immediately be associated with punk, but who are still drawn to her work.

‘The feedback I get all the time is about how it makes people feel. People use the word "powerful" or "empowered", or say there’s a sensuality to it. It wakes something up that feels good. There are a lot of pieces that have got a little element of being rebellious, but they also work with your Cartier and everything else.’

For Jett, the idea is equally fluid. ‘To me, rebellion has always been about being yourself and not letting other people tell you what you can or can’t do,’ she adds. ‘When I was starting out, there were plenty of people who didn’t think girls belonged in rock ’n’ roll. I wasn’t interested in following anybody else’s rules. I just wanted to play the music I loved and wear what felt right to me. I don’t think that’s really changed.’

And for Martin, working with Jett has also offered a lesson in creative integrity. As a woman who has spent more than five decades fronting a rock band in a male-dominated industry, Jett has maintained an unmistakable sense of self.

‘The thing that comes through strongest is the authenticity she’s managed to hold on to throughout her entire career,’ says Martin. ‘To still come through to this stage in her career and her life and not seem jaded by it, and to still have the same authenticity – that’s so refreshing. Just being really honest and transparent, good at what you do, and sticking with the beliefs that you have, through whatever she’s had to put up with over all of these 45 years. That’s the thing I take away from the Godmother of Punk.’

The collection comprises 14 transformable necklaces and earrings, rings and cuffs, belts and pins, with prices ranging from £300 to £20,280. It is available now at Maxfield LA, DSMNY and HannahMartinLondon.com.

French legacy maison Van Cleef & Arpels moved to premises on Place Vendôme in 1906, a decade after its founding. The Paris square soon became a pulse point of the French luxury industries, home to jewellery workshops and haute couture dressmaking salons. It’s the latter that in 1934 gave shape to Van Cleef & Arpels’ ‘Ludo’ bracelet.

Constructed from a wide, strap-like band, a buckle-shaped clasp and loops, there is a sensual element to the design. Its principal inspiration, however, is a belt. Since its inception, the ‘Ludo’ has become an emblematic piece of jewellery for Van Cleef & Arpels and has seen many precious iterations, including bracelets that conceal a watch dial.

Realised in a flexible briquette mesh cast from yellow, white, or rose gold – set with sapphires, emeralds or rubies, respectively – a trio of new high-jewellery ‘Ludo’ bracelets offer a contemporary take on a landmark jewel.

This article appears in Wallpaper’s December 2026 Entertaining Issue is available from 5 November, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

In the state of São Paulo, this eco-residence cuts gently through the landscape with its soothing curves. Its owners were after a home that was designed with sustainability and self-sufficiency at the forefront. They called upon Mareines Arquitetura, a studio based in Rio de Janeiro, known for its organic and considerate designs.

Tour Passive House, a new eco-residence in Brazil

Titled Passive House, the residence is defined by its ‘wave-like’ roof and a discrete volume placed on top. Equally distinctive is the curving exposed-brick structure that nods downward in one specific spot. This gesture was implemented to create a striking visual effect while also serving as a rainwater collector.

‘The design was inspired by the concept of constant change,’ explain Ivo Mareines and Matthieu Van Beneden, founders of the firm. ‘The waves represent movement, while the unexpected volume on top symbolises a rupture – a contrast, a modernist intervention that anchors the entire project.’

Finding the right materials to achieve the curvature without compromising the clean aesthetic was the team's biggest challenge. ‘Choosing solid brick, made from the site’s own soil, was a real discovery in terms of both sustainability and aesthetics. The next challenge was balancing the complex geometry of the structure with the engineering requirements, ensuring that the fluid design remained both functional and beautiful,’ say the architects.

The land was originally an open field. The architects sought a partnership with the landscaping company Vistara Paisagismo to restore the forest and help botanical spaces flourish. This harmony with nature is at the residence's core.

The architects created a triangular yard surrounded by walls and plants of many different species. From here, various passages trail into the house's entrance. ‘It’s a reinterpretation of cloisters, common in monasteries. We wanted this to be an area of tranquillity, contemplation, and meditation,’ says Mareines.

The materiality is raw and honest. Nearly all the masonry consists of exposed brick, paired with wood and glass. Each material was selected or combined with others to ensure thermal comfort independently of mechanical means.

The house is split into two sections, with the ground floor being entirely open plan. ‘The main atrium is my favourite area,’ says Mareines. ‘The way natural light plays across the curves changes throughout the day, making the building feel alive’

The guest bedrooms are also found here. Frames with sliding doors and glass increase the fluidity of the space, with an effortless connection to the outside pool area. The second floor hosts the primary bedroom, an office space and a bathroom.

The founders conclude, ‘We want visitors to feel a sense of awe and curiosity, as well as a deep connection to the space as they move through it. Walking through this house evokes the calm and spirit of the paths that once surrounded the cloister gardens of ancient monasteries.’

mareinesarquitetura.com.br

Forget festive songs on the radio and mince pies on the shelves, we know Christmas is coming when Studio Voltaire announces the return of its festive pop-up.

This year, No.9 Cork Street will play host to House of Voltaire’s annual shop (27 November – 19 December 2026), uniting over 150 artworks, limited-edition prints, clothes, homeware and accessories, making it the ultimate gift stop for anyone with even a passing interest in art and culture.

Expect cheeky T-shirts from Tom of Finland and cashmere blankets by Rose Wylie, prints by Rachel Jones and 2025 Turner Prize winner Nnena Kalu and lithographs by Chantal Joffe. A sequined leopard-print bag by Ashish is particularly covetable, as are Ella Kruglyanskaya’s merino wool scarves, while a Beryl Cook rug and a Sarah Lucas Tit Brick towel are great homeware options.

Personally, we have our eye on the artist-designed T-shirts from Jeremy Deller, Mark Leckey, France-Lise McGurn and Dean Sameshima. After stocking fillers? Tom of Finland Christmas baubles, Jake Grewal embroidered socks and artist tea towels are priced from £7.

Since its opening in 2010, House of Voltaire has created a quirky, art-infused style of shopping that pays homage to Keith Haring’s Pop Shop and the Bloomsbury Group’s Omega Workshops. It’s a registered charity and all proceeds from the pop-up, supported this year by Bicester Village, go towards its artistic and community programme.

All works will be available in-store at House of Voltaire at No. 9 Cork Street, from 27 November – 19 December 2026, Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 6pm and via houseofvoltaire.org

‘If we’re serious about low-carbon and regenerative construction, we need much more testing and experimentation,’ says Justin McGuirk, director of the Future Observatory, a research programme of the Design Museum, London. With construction supply chains heavily reliant on fossil fuels and extractive processes, developing viable low-carbon alternatives has never been more urgent.

In response, the Future Observatory, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), has awarded £280,000 to four design studios that are creating environmental innovations. Selected from nearly 140 applicants, Searo Labs, Local Works Studio, WeCanMake and South Yorkshire Ecofit will each receive £70,000 to develop their proposals.

The Design Museum's new Prototype Grants explained

‘We felt that £70,000 would enable recipients to develop a proof of concept and take their research towards commercialisation,’ says McGuirk.

Cambridge-based Searo Labs will use its funding to create SearoSoft, a biodegradable, seaweed-based earplug. Founded in 2022 by Royal College of Art graduates Ayça Dündar and Francis Field, the studio develops alternatives to plastic, including foams, films and adhesives.

Described as the world’s first seaweed-based single-use earplug, SearoSoft offers an alternative to the estimated 40 billion disposable earplugs discarded every year. ‘It contains no petrochemicals, every ingredient is food-grade, and it biodegrades in soil and water within 30 days,’ says co-founder Francis Field.

‘The grant gives us nine focused months to take SearoSoft from a working prototype to a product ready for the world’, says Dündar.

Taking a different approach to material innovation, Sussex-based Local Works Studio will develop Ferment, an insulation material made from fermented plant by-products. The project aims to repurpose agricultural waste, transforming it into a resource for sustainable building retrofits.

Local Works Studio’s proposed Harvest-to-House system will enable farmers to produce fermented insulation using existing machinery, skills and infrastructure, establishing a local supply chain for sustainable construction materials. ‘Without the grant, research trials would be too much of a departure from the norm and a financial risk to take – for farmers, the construction industry, or our practice,’ says director Loretta Bosence.

In Bristol, community land trust and regenerative design studio WeCanMake will investigate a homegrown timber construction system for low-rise apartment buildings. Based in the Knowle West estate, the project will produce a timber kit-of-parts prototype, including innovative approaches to materials for shared walls.

‘The prototype grant will enable us to test some important things that would not have been possible otherwise. For example, investigating and prototyping a 100 per cent biomaterial party wall for use in apartment blocks,’ says director Melissa Mean.

Meanwhile, South Yorkshire Ecofit will work with environmental service company Phyona and design practice Studio Bio to investigate insulation made from biomass generated through phytomining. This process involves growing plants on contaminated former industrial land to extract pollutants from the soil, helping to regenerate the land while producing biomass that can be repurposed as a sustainable construction material.

‘We are particularly excited by the possibility of turning materials arising from land remediation into a useful resource,’ says founding director Jonathan Hind.

The social enterprise aims to transform this biomass into carbon-sequestering insulation while establishing a local supply chain for warmer, more sustainable homes.

‘The grant will allow us to expand our work beyond how buildings are improved and begin investigating where the materials we use come from and what wider environmental role they can play.’

By supporting projects at the prototype stage, the Future Observatory aims to bridge the gap between experimental research and practical application. ‘Funding research in practice is critical because construction is slow to change and bound up in established supply chains,’ says McGuirk.

Together, the four initiatives demonstrate how rethinking construction and design materials and supply chains can challenge established practices and help lay the foundations for a lower-carbon, more regenerative built environment.

designmuseum.org

'I have always been fascinated by midcentury homes in California, particularly the houses found in Palm Springs and Los Angeles,' says Belgian interior architect and furniture designer Bieke Casteleyn. When she went to create her family home in Belgium, she knew she wanted to take cues from California midcentury modernism, yet adapt it to fit the cooler climate and darker months of Belgium.

Step inside this Belgian countryside home

Located in the polders in Belgium, a flat and low-lying countryside area, the residence is a 'winterised interpretation of California modernism'. Casteleyn drew from elements of the genre in both the architecture and interiors of the home, which is set on a single level, with warm wood and abundant natural light. Tweaks were made to fit the Belgian context, with exteriors in stone sourced by Casteleyn and her husband, chosen in a grey-green to better flow with the landscape. The flat roof is covered in grass, letting the home further blend with the green surroundings. For the interiors, the warm tones meet touches of cooler materials, such as stainless steel, in a nod to the local climate.

Casteleyn launched her first furniture collection in 2015, featuring natural curves, tactile materials, and a sense of playful boldness. Her own home carries these same sensibilities, yet is also driven by her love of midcentury modernism.

She began the project in 2018, working on the initial plans with architect Simone de Burbure, before developing it further with a site coordinator, an external architecture office, and a member of her own team. Casteleyn designed the interiors herself, creating a home that’s open, inviting, and connected to the nature around it.

The main living areas are separated from the private wing of the home by a sweeping 36m corridor, with glass walls for immersion in the surrounding landscape. Curtains were added for privacy, in addition to a wooden claustra (or architectural screen) that runs along the exterior in an elongated oval pattern. This oval shape recurs throughout the home, from the door handles to the kitchen cabinetry, acting as a 'visual signature’ of the property.

Casteleyn deliberately balanced the home’s open-plan areas and expansive views with a sense of warmth. 'Houses with extensive glazing and long sightlines can sometimes feel exposed or impersonal,' she says. 'By contrast, homes with smaller corners and enclosed spaces tend to feel naturally more inviting. I wanted to find a balance between the two: a home filled with light and long views that would still provide warmth, privacy, and a sense of shelter.' Rich woods and natural materials, organic curves, and tactile textures are signatures of Casteleyn’s designs, and these feature heavily within the interiors.

Over the years of designing the project, Casteleyn and her husband had collected a range of furniture and art, and they used the pieces to define the home. 'Instead of having the interior and then choosing which pieces fit, I chose to do the opposite: design the house around the furniture,' she explains. Collectible design pieces are interspersed with antiques from Casteleyn’s family, alongside select designs of her own.

In the living room, for example, a sofa designed by Minotti, chosen in collaboration with RR Interieur, sits alongside a coffee table prototype by Bieke Casteleyn, in high-gloss ivory lacquer and afromosia wood, and vintage Artifort armchairs. In the dining room, an inherited table, whose legs Casteleyn upholstered in burgundy, sits underneath a tiered midcentury chandelier sourced from Morentz Gallery.

Around the home, thoughtful features were added to deepen the indoor-outdoor connection. On one terrace, a circular opening in the roof makes space for a tree to grow through it. Elsewhere, stairs lead to a small deck over a pond, with seating for watching the birds and taking in the bucolic landscape.

biekecasteleyn.com

What if home audio didn’t have to comprise of conventional speaker systems? That’s the premise behind the newly launched Knit Sound Company, set up by Joel Sietsema in collaboration with the interior designer Nate Berkus, a company that ‘challenges the notion that home audio needs to be hidden away’.

Knit’s debut product is the Knit Form, a slender, organic Dolby Atmos-enabled soundbar that’s shaped quite unlike the boxy black rectangles people have become used to slotting beneath their TV screen. Sietsema, a former product leader at Denon and Marantz’s parent company, set up Knit Sound after realising that his interior designer wife had no desire to put speakers on show. ‘Knit was born from the idea that great sound shouldn't come at the expense of a beautifully designed space.

‘I’ve spent 20 years building speakers designed to win on a store shelf. I’d bring new concepts home, and my wife, an interior designer by trade, wanted every one of them hidden. Form is what happens when you design for the home first. It should look like furniture, sound incredible, and be easily integrated into the technology you’ve already welcomed in your space,’ Sietsema says.

Aside from the minimalist silhouette, which reduces the soundbar to the barest possible form, there was the question of delivering enough audio power to make such a device worthwhile. The finished product has dual built-in subwoofers to avoid the need for a subwoofer box, along with a central array of drivers for voice and dialogue, with full 5.1.2 Dolby Atmos capabilities. Knit supplies an app for tailoring sound to match your surroundings and connectivity is via USB and control also works with any TV remote.

To emphasise the ‘designed to be seen’ approach, Sietsema and Berkus have worked with a European textile mill to develop a special performance textile that gives the soundbar a distinctive character and texture, along with five colourways, Cloud White, Slate Black, Pebble, Sandstone, and Ember. A separately available wall-mount can also be supplied.

The softer design approach extends to the absence of a front-facing logo, and an organic form factor that takes a step back from home audio’s more overt and in-your-face brands. According to Berkus, a high-profile interior designer with a three-decade career, Knit Form is ‘the first speaker I’ve been genuinely excited to use in my projects and my own home. It looks beautiful, sounds great, and doesn't ask you to compromise on either.’

Knit Form, $999, available from KnitSound.com, @LoveKnit

Made from steel, white gold or platinum, white-metal watches make the case for simplicity of design. Framed here by photographer Clover Green – as featured in our December 2026 issue – are some we’ve taken a particular shine to this season.

White metal timepieces by Omega and Richard Mille come with timeless lines and little superfluous detailing. The latter’s RM 07-01 sees a white-gold tonneau-shaped case clash artfully with its black rubber strap. Omega’s Seamaster Diver 300m James Bond, meanwhile, comes with a steel case and matching bracelet, and is the watchmaker’s latest nod to the British spy franchise.

Also in steel: the Aquaracer Professional 100 by TAG Heuer and the Iced Sea Automatic Date 0 Oxygen by Montblanc. A new model by IWC Schaffhausen, the Big Pilot’s Watch Perpetual Calendar ProSet Le Petit Prince, has a deep-blue-gradient sunray dial, paired with a steel crown.

Patek Philippe’s Twenty-4 has become a design classic since it was debuted in 1999. A design classic, too is the Oyster Perpetual 36 watch by Rolex, here photographed in Oystersteel.

For a new Santos de Cartier watch, the French maison details steel with warm yellow gold. And then, there is titanium: a lightweight silver-grey transition metal that has been used by Breguet to create the new Marine Chronograph 5527.

Creative direction: C+H. Models: Andy B, Ché M, Rabia M and Tino at Hired Hands Models. Manicure: Rebecca Orme using Fyle. Digi tech: Hanna Kobialka. Photography assistant: Matt Bramston. Production assistant: Indy Davy. Fashion assistant: Ilaria Guerra. Retouching: C+H

This article appears in Wallpaper’s December 2026 Entertaining Issue is available from 5 November, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Julie Curtiss is great at making us reconsider the ordinary. The Paris-born, New York-based artist has an eye for that crossover between the familiar and the faintly ridiculous – scenes so known to us that we forget their absurdity. Except Curtiss doesn’t.

‘The ordinary is where the extraordinary takes place. Within routine or boredom, I’m always looking for that moment when a glitch occurs,’ she says. ‘In French, we have the expression sauter du coq à l’âne – literally, to jump from the rooster to the donkey – which means going off on a tangent. I think that’s very close to how my mind works. I love those moments when I’m walking around and suddenly have to take a second look because my brain has misconstrued a scene or a fleeting moment. Ideally, that’s the feeling I’m trying to capture in my paintings.’

Curtiss’ highly stylised, figurative scenes combine this quotidian with a surreal feeling that makes them almost dreamlike. We recognise the two friends catching up over a cigarette, their heads swathed in the bandages we assume makes them post-facelift. Elsewhere, dirty laundry in a washing machine drum becomes vaguely erotic thanks to a close crop and suggestive foot placement. A tight framing of a tarot reading lends a knowing humour.

‘For me, humour is a way into something more philosophical,’ Curtiss adds. ‘There’s a reason comedians can be great philosophers, or why the king’s fool is sometimes the only person allowed to tell the truth. Humour is almost a byproduct of exposing the paradoxes within a situation. I love it when things keep flipping back and forth, when you can see both the thesis and the antithesis. To me, it’s not that everything and its opposite are equally true, but rather that every truth contains a little bit of its opposite.’

Adding to these juxtapositions is that fact we can see ourselves in Curtiss’ paintings, an aspect gently encouraged by the general omission of her characters’ faces. ‘As my style became more illustrative, I started having misgivings about how to paint faces. Should I paint them realistically, or make them more cartoonish, with round eyes and linear mouths? Or should they be more like caricatures? I never felt comfortable taking the illustrative approach all the way. I felt it would diminish what I was trying to say.’ Curtiss’ characters are so specific as to feel intimate to us, but in their blankness they are anonymous. ‘They need to feel oddly intimate and distant at once,’ she says.

Ultimately, Curtiss isn’t looking for direct answers in her work, but is more interested in spaces of ambiguity and an uncanny recontextualisation. ‘I’d like viewers to leave the show, go about their lives, and suddenly come across something in the street that makes them think, Oh, that reminds me of this painter. I like the idea that they might begin to experience things in everyday life with a slight bend or kink. I really love it when people start sending me pictures of things they’ve seen and thought, That’s a Julie Curtiss painting!’

Julie Curtiss, 'Unreal,' from 10 November – 1 9 December at Gagosian New York

A sound artist, designer, and electronic musician, Yuri Suzuki was born in Tokyo but has been creating his wonderful, thought-provoking, and fantastical work from London since moving here in 2005. Now, his newest show, 'Yuri Suzuki: Onomatopia,' co-curated by writer, curator and Wallpaper* contributor Vicky Richardson, has just opened in an Islington gallery and is just as fun and mesmerising as you might expect.

Suzuki's work is on show at Osh Gallery, the exhibition space within Pentagram's London headquarters at The Old Sorting House – the artist was a partner at Pentagram between 2018 and 2024. He often works with sound to create or define space, and this display is an evolution of this take, too.

Step inside 'Yuri Suzuki: Onomatopia' in London

'Onomatopia', specifically, taps into ongoing research by Suzuki on large sites of display and leisure, such as amusement parks, world fairs and expos. The exploration spans notions of sound and landscape, and how they can combine into structure – and in the case of this show, movement too.

There is a roller-coaster, a Ferris wheel, dodgems, a helter-skelter and a sonic carousel – all colourful and set in motion, inviting the visitor in. Every attraction has its own soundtrack.

'Sound can be a powerful tool for good and bad, but it is often overlooked in a world that is dominated by visual culture. My Onomatopian dioramas use the forms that create sound to build a landscape of escape, from where we can look back at reality and consider how we want the world to be,' says Suzuki.

Suzuki used as inspiration real-life theme parks, such as the Disney attractions, as well as World Expos.

The new show is the conceptual continuation of Suzuki’s 2025 exhibit at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition under the curation of Ryan Gander, titled Coaster of Sounds (Onomatopoeia Series).

'Yuri Suzuki: Onomatopia' runs 10 November 2026 – Thursday 7 January 2027 at Osh Gallery, The Old Sorting House, 46 Essex Road, London N1 8LN

yurisuzuki.com

Since its founding in 2020, the Elie Khouri Art Foundation (EKAF) hasn't had a permanent home – that is, until now. Elie Khouri, a Lebanese-French art collector and founder of his eponymous foundation, has commissioned architect Sumayya Vally, principal of the architecture and research studio Counterspace, to design the contemporary art foundation’s future home.

Discover Sumayya Vally's first project in the UAE

The project, which is set to open in 2028, will see a repurposed villa become a hub for contemporary art exhibitions, education, and public programming in Jumeirah 1. 'Art belongs in everyday life, not apart from it,' says Khouri. 'My foundation will be a home for contemporary art, open to everyone.'

The existing villa and surrounding grounds will be renovated into a series of galleries, educational spaces, pavilions and a garden, while also introducing hospitality and outdoor spaces. The architect looked to the intertwining streets of Beirut and the courtyards of Gulf houses for inspiration – those are territories where the inside and outside collide.

The architectural vision is to move away from seeing the project as a conventional museum building and instead look at its relationship with the site's context, creating an open and accessible place to enjoy art.

The South African architect has worked on numerous projects so far. She was the youngest architect commissioned to design London’s Serpentine Pavilion in 2021; she has directed the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah; and she serves as ‘Architect-in-Residence’ at Ibraaz in London.

Khouri was drawn to Vally's practice, which sits between architecture and artistic research, something that EKAF also celebrates.

‘I think of buildings as having many lives,’ says Vally. ‘At EKAF, we begin with a house that has already held a world within it. Its doors, cornices, balustrades, and particular ways of receiving people and separating rooms contain the traces of another life.

'I am interested in what happens when we take these intimate geometries and give them a new public scale: when the architecture of a room becomes the architecture of a city-facing façade, and the memory of a house becomes the beginnings of an institution. I hope that artists, designers, researchers and makers from the region will bring other imaginations into the work, and that the institution will continue to acquire forms and meanings we cannot yet anticipate.’

counterspace-studio.com

In an increasingly popular market, relative newcomer Mount Med Resort is a wellness retreat with a difference. Buried high in the Wildschönau valley, in Tyrol, it has been curating its own concept of ‘wellness’ since it opened its doors at the end of 2024.

Wallpaper* checks into Mount Med Resort

This Austrian retreat is unique in that your experience is truly what you make it. Here for a fully holistic experience? The programme is packed. After more medical, aesthetic treatments? External specialists are here for plastic, aesthetic, and reconstructive surgery, and every aspect of your recovery is carefully tended to. Nothing works in isolation here, and every area is fully integrated and tailored to you. Mount Med is guided by five pillars, which work in tandem, depending on what you want and need – diagnostics, treatments, oxygen, nutrition and personal guidance.

What to expect

What this means practically is a tailored treatment even before your arrival, where you can choose what you wish your focus to be, from a range of options including weight management, a preventive programme for a vitality boost, aesthetic procedures for age reserve or support for greater mobility. There is help and practical action on hand if you are keen to reach a sustainable weight, alleviate discomfort or fix your focus. Physicians can guide you through a medical framework, if that is right for you, while non-invasive treatments and an emphasis on regaining strength and mobility lean into a more holistic approach.

Helping you decide exactly what you need is a full range of diagnostic tests upon arrival. Bloods, oxygen levels and metabolic testing provide an understanding of your health that informs all areas of your treatment and stay. Your personal health concierge works alongside your physician to coordinate your experience, from nutrition to movement, therapies and diagnostics.

What is the atmosphere?

Not to say that there is anything medical about the atmosphere here. The building itself is a striking blend of history and cutting-edge technology. Formerly a monastic barn dating from 1275, the resort respects and pays homage to its heritage, incorporating ancient architecture into the new development, which encompasses ten interconnected buildings. It is a new direction led by the brothers at the heart of Mount Med Resort, Stephan Papp and Dr Alexander Papp, the latter leading the resort’s medical philosophy.

What are the stand-out treatments?

The team are warm and friendly, and their advice and support will elevate your experience into something very special. Flexibility is key – you are at the heart of the programme, and it evolves with you. During my stay, the team encouraged me to embrace an eclectic menu of treatments centred around holistic methodologies and peace, from neuroscience, which offers a moment of calm and aims to reprogramme your relationship with sleep – sorely needed – to cryotherapy. I hadn’t realised until I immersed myself in a freezing cold chamber for three minutes, said to reduce inflammation and promote better sleep, how much I needed the energy boost. It was so good I went back the next day, and will be seeking something similar in London. Lymphatic massage, too, leaves you feeling refreshed; personal training, revitalised.

What is the food like?

Arguably the biggest highlight is the food – meals are creative, thoughtfully considered and of a Michelin-starred standard (indeed, there is also the award-winning restaurant Aurea on site). You eat often, with three full meals a day, and two snacks. Nutrition is carefully tailored to ensure maximum support to your metabolism, and to reduce inflammation. More surprisingly, dishes are delicious, and inventive – this is nutritionally perfect food, but it doesn’t feel like flavour or experience is being compromised.

What else is on offer?

Alongside your tailored programme, downtime is very special. I hiked in the Wildschönau valley and through the pine forest, quiet except for the church bells. I swam in the indoor pool and the heated outdoor one and tried the mineral and forest steam rooms, the bio mountain-herb sauna with salt stones and Dragon Fire sauna in the 3,500 sq m spa. The support continues when you get back to reality, with a nutritional plan and digital check-ins on offer – but even without that, this is an experience that will stay with you for a long time.

mountmedresort.com

There are few greater joys than a freshly polished leather shoe, an essential when it comes to a winter season of decadent dressing. For A/W 2026, glossy, patent and high-shine footwear appeared across the menswear collections, from the introduction of lustrous caviar leather at Church’s (a material as luxurious as the name suggests) to the elongated footwear at Saint Laurent, which saw Anthony Vaccarello reimagine traditional men’s shoes, from monk-straps to slippers, in glossy patent leather (continuing the wipe-clean mood, some were worn with black latex socks). Elsewhere, the Italian designer Brunello Cucinelli – a master of easy elegance and an expert in the men’s wardrobe – introduced these ‘glossed’ loafers, a minimal, round-toed style in highly polished leather designed to complement any evening-time attire.

They fit within a wider mood of dressing up which ran through the Autumn/Winter season, from Jonathan Anderson’s ‘aristo-youths’ at Dior Men (the designer imagined his partygoers dashing through the streets of Paris in riffs on the evening suit and tuxedo), to Prada’s reclamation of the cufflink – a largely abandoned accessory that recalls a bygone era of menswear. ‘We questioned: what should remain, from the past – and what can you build, from what you learn?’ said co-creative directors Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons.

Here, we select eight of the best high-shine men’s shoes befitting a season of dressing up.

A version of this article appears in the December 2026 issue of Wallpaper*, available from 5 November in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +.

A sprawling casino-hotel complex is worlds away from New York’s SoHo. No matter: The Corner Store’s new Las Vegas outpost has all the allure and sophistication of its Big Apple original – just dialed up a notch for Sin City.

Rockwell Group has successfully adapted the DNA of the original instant-hit destination that opened in 2024. Firm partner Shawn Sullivan and his team took a sensory-rich approach to nostalgia-tinged luxury, building on a handful of previous collaborations with Catch Hospitality Group, including The Eighty Six, Or'esh, and Cafe Charmant in New York.

The Corner Store Las Vegas, with its dark burl wood paneling and small-for-Vegas 180-seat capacity, deftly balances the theatrical and the intimate. This next iteration of The Corner Store is intended and bound to draw bold-faced-name clientele like its predecessor as another clubby retreat in a wildly different context that presents a fresh homage to an old school style of social dining. Here’s what to expect.

Wallpaper* dines at The Corner Store Las Vegas

The mood: Old School New York meets the Orient Express

A series of gently-illuminated, wood-framed vitrines outfitted with velvet curtains and punctuated by Art Deco-inspired sconces hints at what lies behind The Corner Store Las Vegas' exterior. Rockwell Group’s flair for the dramatic and glamorous transitions to the interior’s multiple contiguous rooms, starting in the vestibule.

Turning right leads into the main bar, wider than its two-year-old Manhattan predecessor, and sets the stage for sophisticated Vegas revelry. Chequerboard marble floors, antique mirrored surfaces with tile-surround detail, more lavish wood paneling, niche banquettes and glass lighting create a universally flattering setting. This room also showcases an acoustic ceiling installation, featuring tan-hued panels framed with wood mouldings, that conquers what can be a bête noire for hospitality designers. In the martini bar and bar dining area, more glam fixtures and ambient cove lighting illuminate the restaurant’s collection of vintage photography documenting celebrity revelry, with vignettes from New York in the ‘80s appearing frequently.

If you can’t secure a ticket for the Orient Express, consider lingering in The Corner Store’s main dining room or private dining rooms instead. A pair of wide, generously sized, back-to-back curved wood-frame banquettes anchors the former, and other built-in seating features striped upholstery over carpeting that adds visual layers while stopping short of maximalism. Green velvet ceiling panels are another practically undetectable acoustical trick that doesn’t detract from the handsome custom armchairs upholstered in leather and cut velvet.

All the world is a stage, and The Corner Store is especially a stage for the social media age, so more arches with curtains hint at see-and-be-seen impulses and reflect Rockwell Group’s set design expertise. Meanwhile, the firm is well-versed in accommodating the glitterati’s respectful privacy, too. (There’s a separate entrance to the private dining room that lets certain customers bypass the publicly visible spaces entirely.)

The food: Playfully deluxe American classics

The well-edited menu is a snapshot of what chef/partner Michael Vignola describes as 'our ode to New York. It’s classic food done well.' Vignola and executive chef Daniel Bernardo put their spin on upscale comfort foods, ratcheting up sentimental favourites without reinventing the wheel while having some decadent fun in the process.

Petite lobster rolls, eaten in one or two bites depending on your ambition, come topped with caviar (of course). The fancy version of childhood-favourite pizza rolls is handmade and filled with five cheeses, and the French dip is assembled from thinly sliced, heavily marbled Westholme Australian wagyu beef. Spinach and artichoke dip, served with fresh tortilla chips and relatively virtuous celery and carrot sticks, is a natural accompaniment to easy, lively conversation. These noshes form an appropriately casual yet elevated foundation for The Corner Store's martini-focused cocktail program, an irreverent nod to tradition. Savoury-forward signatures like Oli's Dirty, with caviar-stuffed olives, and the Sour Cream & Onion, capped with a whisper of froth from the green onion-infused, fat-washed Condesa gin, might prompt Dorothy Parker to raise an eyebrow with an admixture of skepticism and admiration.

Much like the interconnected, lavishly appointed rooms, where the lighting and views of fellow diners are calibrated just so, dinner unfolds in a sequence that builds on each component. (The Corner Store Vegas follows the model of the New York original and is an evening-only affair.) Lighter warm-up bites come in the form of seasonal crudos, in this case hamachi layered with compressed watermelon and bathed in ponzu. All but the dairy-averse are then wise to share another Corner Store staple, the Caesar salad that comes studded with everything-bagel croutons and cream cheese-filled croquettes, blanketed with a generous sprinkling of freshly grated Parmesan.

Hearty mains and a robust steak roster are what you hope for when immersed in this aesthetic milieu. A centre-cut prime New York strip comes sliced and coated in a mild au poivre sauce with just enough bite, alongside platonic-ideal crispy fries. Other steak cuts span the spectrum from filet mignon to the primal wagyu tomahawk, all specified with their sourcing credentials. (Additional larger beef items are in the works as Las Vegas-exclusive offerings, including custom cuts from Taylor Sheridan's 6666 Ranch.) Grilled branzino over a bed of wilted spinach and tomatoes, whole Dover sole, and salmon satisfy pescatarians, and a plant-based chicken parm ensures vegetarians don't feel relegated to starters and sides (not that there's anything wrong with that here).

The culinary team's sweets prove the utter ridiculousness of the phrase 'save room for dessert.' This is a course you absolutely should and will enjoy, regardless of what's come before. Case in point: the soft-serve sundae with coconut, Valrhona chocolate fudge drizzle, shortbread crumble and caramel components that riff on Girl Scout Samoas cookies, which, if we're being honest, always fall short of expectations. (That said, here's a PSA to buy cookies to support your hardworking local troop) The high fat content of the coconut ice cream base lets it hold up as your eating pace slows, which happens when the best imaginable version of fast-food-inspired apple hand pies appears. Slices of a compressed pineapple palate cleanser make the rounds just in time for a last espresso martini.

The Corner Store is located at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, 3708 S. Las Vegas Blvd., Las Vegas, Nevada

Powerhouse Parramatta sits on the banks of the Parramatta River, in Western Sydney, framed by the glass towers of the city’s fast-growing second CBD. The building was designed by Paris-based Moreau Kusunoki and local architect Genton, with Arup engineers. It is a second venue for the nearly 150-year-old museum of applied arts and sciences, 30 minutes by train from its central Sydney origins.

Its two rectangular forms are strikingly wrapped in a lattice exoskeleton that expresses monumentality while offering a relatable human scale. It is a defining feature that sets Powerhouse Parramatta apart from its neighbours – it is also a key architectural response to a brief that called for a new type of museum.

Step inside the new Powerhouse Parramatta in Sydney

Placing the structure on the outside leaves the interiors free of columns, so large-span galleries can host very different kinds of programme. The lattice exoskeleton also expressly puts the effort of defying gravity on show. This is especially palpable in the elongated V forms that reach 18 metres from the ground to the first platform.

They support one of the largest galleries in Australia and a dramatic entrance and undercroft between the two building forms. With the exoskeleton’s 1,300 unique human-scale components, it feels like an apt expression of a museum whose roots lie in science and technology.

The building’s spatial layout is legible from the outside. Large black-box spaces are stacked across floors, marked by the lattice’s horizontal members. Facing the river, double-height circulation and unprogrammed, flexible space run the length of both buildings. These neutral spaces come alive with the play of shadows cast by the lattice exoskeleton. After dark, the exoskeleton is artfully backlit, adding an appealing glowing presence on the city edge.

In comparison to the open expanses of the public spaces throughout the building, the rooftop terrace with spectacular views across the city and a productive garden with enticing aromas offers a pleasingly intimate experience. Out of public view, there are dormitories hosting overnight stays for school children and residential studios for international scholars and creatives. Interior fit-outs have been realised by leading Australian designers and include new furniture commissions, as a key aspect of a museum committed to supporting design and industry.

The large exhibition spaces allow for inventive installations but inevitably require major builds. Investment has been made in the opening exhibitions, and the results are impressive. The standout is ‘Task Eternal’, which focuses on flight in the vast 18m-high gallery. Open Architecture has worked in partnership with the curatorial team to develop an exhibition that provides a spatial journey from the intimate to the epic, where visitors encounter drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, a giant F1 rocket engine, a zero-emission electric aircraft, space suits and film costumes, and a James Turrell installation reached by ascending a tower.

The ubiquitous typology of the shopping centre is explored in ‘The Mall’ through an array of materials, objects and installations staged within a two-storey structure with distinct thematic and spatial zones. A design and curatorial partnership with OMA/AMO brings together the likes of US architect Victor Gruen’s archive with Western Sydney material and community memorabilia, highlighting the role Australia played in the global model. Both these long-running shows include new local and international commissions that offer valuable critical perspectives.

Sensory immersion and reflection underpin other shows. ‘The Turning’ by Es Devlin includes poetic films and a mirror maze, invoking humanity, connection and ecology. In a First Nations-led installation, ‘Overflow’, a tidal terrain occupies an upper gallery with city views, allowing a poignant and welcome connection between content and context. The film commission is best experienced with shoes off, wading in the water, taking in the stories of care for saltwater and freshwater ecosystems by seven community organisations.

The programming pushes new bounds, and the building, with its expressive structural framework, rational planning and muted material palette, works as a refined infrastructure for it. It wants to be taken on by community and visitors, and over time, tested, allowed to get messy and occupied in unexpected ways.

moreaukusunoki.com

genton.global

powerhouse.com.au

Activating the Qatari capital once again, the second edition of Design Doha returns with an expanded event that gathers the regional design scene, with over 20 exhibitions and more than 300 multidisciplinary designers and studios participating.

Located in the historic neighbourhood of Fereej Al Asmakh – a set of about 60 heritage houses, courtyards and shaded passageways that are now being restored and repurposed for cultural use – the biennial event (until 31 January 2027) will showcase its headline show 'Arab Design Now' and several satellite shows and installations around this hub (read our interview with two participating designers, Ola Znad and Aya Moug).

One of the most anticipated programmes is the Public Design Commissions, presenting five winning spatial installations designed for public use, all drawing on regional approaches to water, materials, craft, climate and the built environment.

Curated by Javier Peña Ibáñez, the installations are all research-based explorations to how regional design and craft heritage can be transformed for our modern challenges and needs, from ancient irrigation techniques to sustainable vernacular craft.

Wallpaper* chats with each of the winning designers to unpack their installations.

‘Salsabil’ by Meriem Chabani

Created by award-winning Algerian architect and urbanist Meriem Chabani, ‘Salsabil’ draws on Qatar’s heritage of water cooling through ceramic craftsmanship, combining passive cooling techniques with contemporary urban misting.

Formed from dozens of ceramic spheres that function as architectural bricks, the installation acts as an urban shelter that aims to create cooler, more pedestrian friendly public spaces – a rising concern in the Middle East as climate change pushes record temperatures higher every year. Chabani’s installation asks how architecture can help.

'The project takes inspiration from the traditional salsabil, a water feature found in courtyards and gardens across the Arab world,' Chabani says. 'By allowing water to flow over a textured surface, these devices used evaporation to cool the surrounding air, creating places of comfort and gathering. They were not simply decorative objects, but part of a sophisticated understanding of climate, architecture and hospitality.

'I wanted to revisit this ancestral knowledge, not as a nostalgic reference, but as a source of intelligence for addressing contemporary urban challenges,' she adds. 'With “Salsabil”, we translated this principle into a contemporary, modular structure that combines shade and fine mist to create pockets of climatic relief in Doha.'

Ceramic craft has a long history in the region, both as a practical material and as tool used to adapt to Qatari’s changeable desert coastal climate. The deep royal-blue ceramic spheres – developed in collaboration with Doha-based brick maker SACO – form their own geometric architectural language, and can be reassembled according to need.

The water misting adds a touch of contemporary technology, transforming the otherwise static architectural structure into an active climate-regulating device.

'I am interested in this relationship between material, technology and inherited knowledge. Rather than introducing an entirely new technological solution, I wanted to explore how existing principles, materials and crafts can be reinterpreted to address the environmental conditions of today,' Chabani says.

'At the heart of “Salsabil” is a simple thought: if we can't plant trees, perhaps we can make clouds. In a city where planting and maintaining trees is not always possible, I wanted to explore how we could create small microclimates and offer an alternative form of urban comfort.'

‘Cooling Pots’ by Haitam Daoudi and Oscar Cruz / +.atelier

The result of a collaboration between architects Haitam Daoudi and Oscar Cruz under +.atelier, ‘Cooling Pots’ similarly focuses on heritage craft. Looking at how earthenware vessels traditionally were used across the region to store and cool water, their installation adapts those principles into a large passive-cooling project, creating a localized oasis in the heart of the city.

Taking the form of a suspended canopy of porous terracotta pots of varying diameters and heights, the installation filters sunlight, generates layers of shade, and cools the surrounding atmosphere through evaporative cooling.

'The pots rest on a lightweight, modular steel structure that allows them to be suspended at different heights, creating a dense canopy with varying degrees of transparency and shade. Rugs cover the ground, providing a comfortable surface for gathering and rest while reducing heat radiated from the paving,' the duo share. 'It also evokes the compact spatial qualities of traditional Arab urbanism, where narrow passages and closely spaced buildings create shaded, protected environments.

'We envision the installation as a climatic landscape that offers a temporary space for gathering, rest and shared experience within the city,' they add. 'Its spatial organization follows three interconnected modules: the Forest, a dense perimeter of terracotta pots that provides shade, privacy and atmospheric enclosure; the Walkway, which guides visitors through the installation; and the Chamber, an intimate central space for pause, conversation and rest.'

Beyond its climatic function, the project explores architecture as an act of hospitality and a means of collective appropriation of public space. As a temporary intervention, its value lies in the experience it offers and the possibilities it suggests for creating shared, inhabitable spaces through minimal and adaptive strategies.

‘Shoreline’ by Platau | Platform for Architecture and Urbanism

Tracing Doha’s former coastline, reshaped by decades of land reclamation, Lebanese architecture studio Platau creates a playful urban shelter that invites visitors to rest and reflect on Doha’s natural heritage and their roots in maritime life.

Rising from a bed of sand, the studio has constructed a leisure area that doubles as a playground, made from modular wooden elements, timber columns, sail-like canopies and maritime ropes, reminiscent of traditional dhow fishing boats.

'Over the last century, the shoreline of Doha has been remade drastically, being pushed further into the Gulf through land reclamation, transforming the nature of the shore from a productive space where dhow making, pearling, fishing and trading was the centre of the economy,' Platau co-founder Sandra Frem says. 'There’s also the relation of leisure activities on shores and beaches, so we tried to combine both elements, both through materiality – the sand, the wood – and the topography that evokes playfulness and the versatile perception of the shore.'

The installation also reinterprets the structure and look of dhow vessels through a contemporary lens, with mast-like pillars and beams connected by rows of thick maritime ropes, which form a shady canopy that echoes sails.

'We took a look at different typologies of dhows. This is a dying craft, and it’s no longer part of living economy related fishing and trading,' she adds. 'We looked through the different museum collections in Doha, to really understand the different types of dhows and used teak wood, which was historically shipped from Africa, to build these boats.'

‘Falajscape’ by Studio By Three’s Eugenio Fernandez and Victor Nouman

Inspired by the falaj, the ancient gravity-fed irrigation system used for centuries across the Arabian Peninsula, ‘Falajscape’ by Dubai-based Studio By Three’s Eugenio Fernandez and Victor Nouman uses age-old technology to bring water to a public space.

Crafted from steel channels and paddles, the sculptural water features uses the same gravitational force to move the water through the installation. Rocks strung onto the upper channels act as counterweights that swing when filled or emptied with water.

'We wanted to transform this knowledge through a contemporary expression and outdoor installation, built on the same ancient principles,' Fernandez says. 'We built a vertical piece, but it was mainly to show that these irrigation systems can still be used in a modern urban context, in roundabouts, or plazas, to create micro oases in the city.

'The sound and passive cooling of the water creates a refreshing moment for people, but also provides water for birds and vegetation, which fills the empty spaces of the city,' he adds. 'It’s a closed system, so the water is constantly recirculating, and anything that does splash will water the wild plants in the plaza.'

The installation is soothing to watch and listen to, perfectly displaying now heritage techniques can be seamlessly applied to contemporary design and function. As the pieces are modular, the ensemble can be customized to work for spaces of all dimensions.

‘Palm Construct’ by Abdalla Almulla

Transforming date palm into a building material, Emirati architect Abdalla Almulla reshapes rigid palm elements into fluid forms, drawing on traditional palm weaving.

‘Palm Construct’ seeks to open new architectural possibilities for one of the region’s most familiar natural resources, looking to its past use in vernacular architecture to create new spatial experiences.

From traditional khoos weaving of palm fibre to using blocks of the wood itself, Almulla presents a sheltered pavilion made entirely from palm material

'The palm is at the heart of the installation, both as a material and as a source of inspiration. Rather than focusing solely on its visual characteristics, we were interested in understanding its construction techniques, structural possibilities, and versatility,' Almulla says.

'By exploring different ways of working with the palm, the installation demonstrates how a familiar material can be reinterpreted through contemporary design while maintaining a connection to its cultural origins.

'Through its form and spatial arrangement, the installation encourages visitors to engage with the structure and reflect on the relationship between traditional craftsmanship and contemporary public spaces,' he adds. 'Ultimately, we hope it creates a dialogue between the past and the present, demonstrating how local knowledge can continue to shape the spaces we inhabit.'

Antara, the commercial destination in Mexico City's Colonia Granada, draws more than 12 million visitors a year. However, after several decades of carrying the title of the first open-air retail hub in the heart of the Miguel Hidalgo neighbourhood (an area also known as Nuevo Polanco), it was time to raise the cultural bar for the community, too. The plan? To offer improved everyday living through ‘cultural placemaking’ and the infusion of art, where retail, hospitality, residential, and commercial tenants can thrive.

The next chapter for Antara

Built on a former industrial site for developer SOMA by third-generation architecture and design firm Sordo Madaleno, Antara is now conceptually evolving into a place where fine art can be found in unconventional places. The development's next chapter will hold a shopping plaza with brands from Assouline to Brunello Cucinelli and Zimmermann, along with Alo, Farm Rio and Zadig & Voltaire. New dining options range from international and stateside favourites Nobu, Milos, Mastros, and Carbone, to a Rosewood Mexico City hotel and corporate offices for Google’s Latam HQ and Sony Music. All are coming in the first quarter of 2027.

‘It's just a completely different approach to retail,’ says SOMA vice-president Javier Sordo Madaleno de Haro. ‘I think that today it's not enough to just make a nice architectural place and bring in good brands. I think the experience gets to be elevated to a different level.’

Working with SOMA and local art foundation Arte Abierto, Javier is leading the way at his family-run studio, which has been achieving groundbreaking results in the city for over 80 years. Founded by Javier’s grandfather, Juan Sordo Madaleno, who was an architect and pioneer of Mexican modernist architecture, Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos was established in 1937, influenced by Bauhaus and Le Corbusier. The firm specialises in hotels, residential, and commercial buildings.

‘One of the interesting things is that my grandfather,’ says Javier, ‘back in the day, was also very intrigued about collaborating with artists, like Mathias Goeritz and Chucho Reyes.’

Carrying on his grandfather’s legacy by leading the practice, Javier is also the founder of Arte Abierto, a non-profit foundation devoted to creating opportunities for people to enjoy contemporary art exhibitions. These are often unexpectedly found in public forums and various real estate developments in collaboration with SOMA.

‘I like the idea of giving a platform to artists, so they can create not just a large installation, but also something that's architecturally related,’ he says. ‘I've always been in love with art, but through this foundation, the collaboration with artists was extremely difficult at the beginning, because artists like the cultural part, but are usually very distant from the commercial side.’

Javier and his team developed a completely different approach to artists than, say, a museum would have about ten years ago. ‘We just give a blank canvas to the artists, a budget, and then they can just reshape it in any way they want. We started with these urban sculptures that were open to the public – not just the cultural public.'

'It should also be for kids and people who encounter it in different ways. And that was the mission behind it: I want people to go shop in a store, eat at the restaurant, find a cultural space, and interact with it. And I want the people who visit the cultural place to also have some amenities, have some fun and enjoy having lunch there. So, it's a mix of things.’

To that end, German conceptual and installation artist Carsten Höller’s Mexico City ‘Slides’ is an ambitious series of four slides of different lengths and locations. They twist and turn, and all spill out into the Antara courtyard below. Höller's work merges scientific experimentation with immersive, participatory environments – and is known for works such as Test Site at Tate Modern, The Slide at the ArcelorMittal Orbit and winter 2025’s pink carousel in St Moritz. For this project, the stainless steel slides were manufactured in Germany with transparent polycarbonate upper portions so you can look out and also see other people sliding at the same time.

‘This thing with these slides is that it takes people from very different places, metaphorically speaking, and backgrounds, from status to income, takes them all to the same place,’ says Höller.

The longest slide is from the Rosewood Hotel's rooftop, by the pool. Another slide starts at the Google headquarters. The third one starts from one of the family-style restaurants, and the final one is at the art centre. ‘There's almost like a knot in the middle, where all the slides are kind of intertwined, so it's a great equaliser,’ he adds.

‘Political artwork, it's like a slide effect. It's what life is really about. It's not about what you represent, necessarily, but the fact of being alive. So, if you're a child, you just see a slide; if you're an architect, you see it maybe as a way to bring people from one place to another in a safe and energy-efficient way without escalators and stairs. But there's a sculpture with people inside, and that is a high level of diversity. On the other hand, it comes back to the essential: we are the same.’

In addition to the permanent slides, the site and Arte Abierto will offer rotating art installations on an annual basis. For the first collaboration, Copenhagen-based artists Superflex rose to the occasion to create several pieces that are in stark contrast to the linear architectural surroundings.

Comprised of three artists, Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, Superflex continually explores the expanding idea of art and its social, political and ecological implications.

Pink has been an overriding colour theme in the group’s work for the past ten years – including the 2019 site-specific building installation, Dive-In, at Desert X in the Coachella Valley, California, and an underwater Super Reef off Denmark. For this work, what looks like a giant wad of bubble gum (they even handed out a cheeky container holding Goma de Mascar Sabor Tutti Frutti at the opening event for each guest to chew) is a large temporary architectural installation called Romeo.

This is somewhat of a full-circle moment for Superflex, which had one of its first Mexico City shows at Fundación Jumex next door to Museo Soumaya, which can be seen just across the street from Romeo. At night, the curved steel structure casts a purple-blue glow on the upper-level installation, which can also be viewed from the street.

Collectively, what drew them to the project was the challenging location – in a mall on a rooftop – and that a new, unexpected audience could experience their work. According to Fenger, ‘Hyper-commercial architecture is all around this area, and everything is about straight lines and control, so we wanted to create something that looked quite different. We thought it would be interesting to work with a piece of architecture that is not formulated by humans, but formulated by other forces.’

In this case, that was gravity and clay. ‘[A piece of clay] all of a sudden dropped to the floor,’ recalls Neilsen. ‘We picked it up and thought, this is perfect. So that was the shape – there are no fingerprints. It looks from out of this world like an alien. In a way, it celebrates chance. And maybe we are not in control as much as we think. This mirrors a little bit how we think of ourselves in the world as the sort of animal on top of everything. And this architecture that we're proposing here is celebrating the opposite.’

Inside the pink cube, the artists take a ‘fly on the wall’ approach to another level with 164 hand-painted black-green, small cast flies with silver-hued wings forming two straight lines from wall to wall, and facing off each other with beady red eyes.

‘Inside Romeo, there's another logic,’ says Fenger. ‘So, the outer lodging is just kind of loss of control, and inside, there's control. It's not normal that flies line up like that. The flies are always landing on us, like an animal that likes humans. Maybe it's just a rare moment in the universe, the way they are sitting, or they are maybe plotting against us.’

The third phase of the installation is a simple sign outside the pink pavilion: ‘Now What.’ It can be a question, or can be a call for action, or maybe it's just a state of mind. Neilsen adds, ‘Because we live in a time where things are sort of moving fast, and maybe, in some state of crisis. Where are we now, and what is the moment? It’s also the sense of our relation to our surroundings, and the other creatures on the planet. Here in the work, the animals are sort of behaving in a way that is a little human-like, but the architecture is behaving in the opposite way, and what is this new way of being in the world?'

As for SOMA and Sordo Madaleno, this‘cultural placemaking’ is about the evolution of retail and mixed-use developments around the world, always through architecture. They started working with this approach about ten years ago. ‘We position cities to achieve their greatest potential, thoughtfully integrating society, nature, and the built environment.’

As for the slides connected to the corporate offices, hotel, restaurants and retail, Javier feels it all boils down to engagement. ‘It's just changing the dynamics of how people perceive the shopping or the F&B experience. I want people to be surprised and to interact with it and move through the building in a different way. If you finish lunch and you want to go down the slides with your kids, you can. It's all about creating experiences, and I think this is one of the best examples that we've done as a collaboration between an artist and an architect, just blending together the same vision. We have 500 collaborators (across all the projects) all interacting for the same purpose.’

Javier and his team also created Ánima Village in San José del Cabo, which is an open-air retail and art destination next to the new Soho House in Mexico. There is a residential component in the same development as the Park Hyatt residences and a Four Seasons (the latter was independently designed).

As for the future of SOMA's collaborations with Sordo Madaleno, after the recent Soho House opening in Mexico City, the team has nine big developments in Mexico rolling out in the next year. Among them are the tallest tower in Mexico City, a world-famous bank, and more retail spaces, including at an Aman and a Mandarin Oriental.

In other expansion news, Sordo Madaleno recently opened its first studio outside Mexico, in King's Cross, London, and will continue to develop projects in the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa. ‘I think by having the office in King's Cross, we have this new place where we can open up new frontiers, and really export what we've been working on in the past 85 years with Fernando, my brother, who’s a very talented architect, now in charge of the UK office, and also my other brother Jose, who is a very talented financier,’ says Javier. ‘We work close together, collaborating – always searching for the same vision.'

This includes the belief that: ‘The most valuable square metre in a property is […] the space that you give to the city – not the one that you lease,’ according to Javier. In short, maybe it’s a park and not more stores, but making an interaction with people and giving back. ‘Our biggest asset is those spaces. That has been our philosophy.’

sordomadaleno.com

soma.group

BYD assembled the world’s media in Abu Dhabi to make a one-stop-shop play at capturing every facet of the luxury automotive experience – speed, ruggedness and sybaritic splendour. Hoping to knock Range Rover, Rolls Royce and Bugatti down in one fell swoop, BYD – and sub-brands Denza and Yangwang – debuted a new competitor in the superluxury sector, claimed a world speed record and demonstrated its off-road supremacy in a territory that really knows its 4x4s.

Not so much a rumble in the jungle, but an upset in the desert, was spread thinly across a four-day event, which, it transpired, was about three days more than it really needed to get the message across.

The first announcement to be made was the recent record-breaking run by the Yangwang U9 Xtreme, conducted on Abu Dhabi’s own E11 highway (closed for the purpose) just a few days earlier. With a one-way maximum speed of 503.17 km/h (312.65 mph), the U9 Xtreme can now claim to be the fastest production hypercar and fastest electric car on the market.

In deference to the Emirate’s rulers, who rather liked the fact that the record was broken in their backyard, the news was broken in the baking surroundings of a car park just outside the UAE Presidential Palace. Stella Li, BYD’s executive vice president, said a few words and a certificate was presented by a lady from Guinness World Records (an organisation clinging onto relevance and credibility by its fingertips) and we all sweated under black Denza-branded brollies as heat exhaustion trumped technical innovation.

The record-breaking U9 Xtreme roasted gently alongside us, with driver Marc Bassen standing gamely by. Even the influencer coterie, adept at stitching silk purses from sow’s ears, struggled to find something engaging to direct their DJIs at.

The U9 Xtreme’s record was crudely malleted into the global media pipeline, where everyone wants a snappy soundbite accompanied by personalised imagery to create their ten-second hot take: a colossal technical achievement was reduced to a piece of disposable clickbait.

This car is pretty much dedicated to driving very, very fast in a straight line, with special aero and unique tyres capable of withstanding the forces at play. At best, it's simply another trophy for a car collection (as well as a nicely framed Guinness certificate for BYD’s engineering department). With 3,000hp on tap, the Xtreme model is around ten times more expensive than the ‘standard’ U9, around 20 million yuan (c £2.2m). Just thirty will be made.

A celebration of speed beneath the Burj Khalifa

That evening, the assembled media made the lengthy coach journey to Dubai to attend another event, a ‘Celebration of Speed’ that might just as well refer to BYD’s approach to business as the car itself. BYD’s vast suite of products, which also includes two more sub-brands, Fangchengbao and Linghui, have all the depth and lore of a complex IP, arranged into three ‘series’ of models, Dynasty, Ocean and e Series. In the UK, the Ocean series will be the most familiar through aquatically monikered models like the Dolphin, Seal and Sealion 7, along with the Atto 2 and Atto 3, and Ti7.

Across Europe as a whole, there’s also the Atto 1, Han, Tang and Shark, with a mix of pure electric powertrains and hybrid ones – usually designated by the suffix DM-i. In China, the options proliferate, including the tiny Seagull (also known as the Dolphin Mini and the Dolphin Surf, depending on the market), well over a million of which have been sold since its introduction in 2023.

Whether it’s compact city cars, taxicabs, minivans, SUVs, pick-up trucks, saloon cars, or light trucks, BYD builds it. The business’ rapid expansion parallels China’s rise to economic and technological domination. Started as a battery company in 1995 by Wang Chuanfu, BYD Company shifted to lithium-ion battery production in 1997.

Five years later, it became the first Chinese company to become a Tier 1 supplier for Motorola and Nokia, both then at the summit of the mobile industry. Before the decade was out, BYD was manufacturing handsets for both companies; today it's the second-largest electronics manufacturer in the industry, an OEM that supplies Apple, Samsung and Huawei, among many others.

The company’s venture into the auto industry had an inauspicious start. In 2003, the company acquired Xi'an Qinchuan Automobile, a venerable auto maker by Chinese standards with origins in military equipment manufacturing back in the 1950s. BYD’s shareholders didn’t approve and the company’s stock swiftly halved.

But the company persisted, launching its first plug-in hybrid model (the world’s first PHEV), the F3DM, in 2008. Its first pure EV, the BYD E6, rolled out the following year. Today, BYD is the world’s fifth largest auto maker, with over 1 million employees, 10 per cent of which are engineers.

In 2025, the company sold 18.7m ‘new energy vehicles’ around the world (the Chinese designation for EVs and PHEVs). That figure obviously excludes the US, the world’s second largest car market, where BYD, like its fellow Chinese manufacturers, are persona non grata. This is lucky for the American auto industry, frankly, for BYD's army of engineers could probably whip up something that outperforms and undercuts the Ford F150 over a long weekend and still have time to make a couple of minivans on the side.

To the unfamiliar outsider, this combination of speed, intent and scale feels unstoppable; as the events in Abu Dhabi demonstrated, BYD is not slowing down. The Denza brand was introduced in 2010, originally as a collaboration with Mercedes-Benz. The name, derived from the word for ‘power’, has refined and distilled its line-up into premium, sporting machines, including the Z9 GT fastback and forthcoming Z sports car. The brand was launched in Europe in 2025 and landed Daniel Craig as brand ambassador earlier this year.

Yangwang is younger still. Introduced in 2023, it is BYD’s first truly premium brand. With a relatively austere line-up of just four models – the U7 sedan, U8 SUV, U9 supercar and now the Altior – Yangwang’s focus is on luxury, craft and, above all, heritage.

Beneath the Burj Khalifa’s cyclic lightshow, Stella Li took to the stage to announce the record yet again, ahead of the U9 Xtreme rolling down a catwalk amid a sea of raised smartphones. Some 3,700 friends of the brand and media from 50 countries were there to worship at the altar of speed, image, flashing lights and cheesy techno. After a performance by popular Lebanese singer Nancy Ajram and a custom light show on the world’s tallest building, we melt back into the night to find our return coach.

From celebrating speed to launching a new luxury era

The following night, Yangwang’s event team were kept busy by a third gathering, this time for the global debut of the Altior, held at Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace hotel. By this point the media contingent was starting to feel a little bit more like a rent-a-crowd than a group of trusted reporters, flown out to provide a sea of faces and a backdrop of polite applause, plus the all-important parade of glowing screens that dutifully captured and hash-tagged the proceedings (#u9xtreme, #yangwang, #thepursuitbeyond, etc, etc, etc).

Stella Li is one of the most powerful automotive executives on the planet, with an almost personality-cult-like following in her home country. She returned to the stage, this time to extol the virtues of Yangwang’s flagship, a statuesque all-electric limousine with a creation story calculated to knock the fulsome heritage of European manufacturers for six. Although Rolls-Royce's Phantom and Ghost are obvious antecedents here, Yangwang’s design team, led by former VW Group maestro Wolfgang Egger, have found a way to strike back.

An oft-used analogy from the heyday of traditional British luxury automotive design was that cars like Bentley and Rolls-Royce were akin to 'gentlemen's clubs', rolling representations of the burnished leather armchairs, polished wood panelling and deep pile carpets of the very best of Pall Mall.

Yangwang has gone one further, describing its new Altior limousine as a 'palace on wheels', drawing explicit comparisons between the forms, craft and ambience of the Altior and the traditional residences of the country’s ancient rulers. Why hark back a couple of centuries when you can draw on tradition and imagery that dates back millennia?

As Li says, 'a palace is built for power, for ceremony, for history. Tonight I want to show you a palace that moves. A Yangwang!' The name itself means to ‘look up’, with a logo derived from the Chinese character for ‘lightning’ or, appropriately, ‘electricity’.

Another traditional character that runs throughout the visual identity of Yangwang is the ‘ding’, an ancient form of vessel or cauldron that not only serves as a receptacle for food but for storage and ritual offering. The ding character, 鼎, is referenced in the light graphic of both the U8 SUV and the Altior. According to Li, the ding has stood for 'unity, stability, and peace for 4,000 years’.

Having played its heritage trump card, Li doubled down on the unique Chinese craft and design elements that have found their way into the flagship, from the Suzhou embroidery originally found in the Imperial court (when 'years of work went into a single garment’) to the front grille, which incorporates 137 jewellery stones, each cut with 51 facets.

Real gold is used in the badge. Yangwang’s designers trialled no fewer than 150 leather suppliers around the world to find the right hides, while the 39-speaker stereo system includes four personally tuned speakers in each headrest, designed so that adjoining passengers can’t hear messages and notifications.

Cars like this are all about superlatives of manufacture, effort, componentry and features. There’s a fragrance dispenser on board ('a palace speaks to every sense') and what Li called the 'one-button paradise', a feature that enables all the personal settings to whirr into place when you get into the car. ‘It is a car that can take care of you,' she said. Another function, one-button privacy, will shut off the interior from the outside world. ‘Power is not being seen everywhere – power is being able to close your palace and be in peace in the middle of the city,' Li adds.

Certain elements – the coach doors, the doorhandles, the two-tone paintwork, the vertical front end, even the dashboard with its integral artwork gallery and prominent analogue clock – come straight from existing luxury playbooks. However, there’s no denying that the palace on wheels metaphor is a smart one, even an apt one. According to BYD chief designer Wolfgang Egger, the Altior exerts a 'Royal attitude' of vertical elements with 'a laid-back silhouette, a posture of timeless authority'.

Allegedly starting with 'a white sheet of paper, thanks to Stella', Egger explains how the car's identity comes from this ceremonial vessel – we extracted the symbolic core of the ding and used it in design. This is not decoration, it is heritage… thousands of years of aesthetic heritage rendered in the details.’ The interior was partly inspired by the symmetry of Chinese architecture, ‘turning every journey into a private retreat’.

Technically, we wouldn’t bet against BYD’s engineers being able to surpass the legendary ride quality of the Altior’s rivals. Amy Hu, general manager of Yangwang, sets out some of the Altior’s abilities, from its four-wheel-drive and suspension system, to the car’s emergency flotation capability (just like the U8 SUV).

The car can also do ‘tank turns’ on the spot, as well as ‘crab walk’ sideways into parking spaces, while the electrical architecture is compatible with BYD’s lightning-fast Flash Charger system. There was no word on performance figures or battery size, but a range of 1,000km-plus (miles) was quoted.

Wolfgang Egger talks Altior with Wallpaper*

Wolfgang Egger has been with BYD for exactly ten years. The silver-haired German designer now oversees a creative team of around 1,200 people, the majority of whom are based in the company’s main studio in Shenzhen. Satellite operations in Shanghai, Los Angeles and Milan supplement BYD’s vast creative output. ‘One of my motivations for coming to BYD was not to continue existing traditions but the chance to build new brands from scratch,’ he tells Wallpaper*. ‘There were mountains of opportunity from the very beginning. Ten years ago, we were just 80 people.’

Questionned as to whether the relatively conservative appearance of the Altior is a repudiation of the inherent flexibility of an EV platform, Egger clarifies the car’s role. ‘I think for super luxury, [design] cannot be too futuristic – it needs a classic touch and a balance and an attitude in the proportions,’ he says, ‘[a car like this] can’t have a sporty nose – it needs verticality.’

Inside, it’s a similar story. The Altior ‘is a real story of Chinese culture’, Egger continues. ‘There are thousands of years of history here – it’s extremely beautiful from the stitching to the ginkgo leaf logo. This car contains symbols of beauty, of luck, of attitudes to life.’ Acknowledging that the majority of owners will be taking a back seat to a chauffeur, Egger describes the Altior as having a ‘feeling of expanded space’.

As for the limited-edition launch model, the designer stresses how important it has been to draw on local tradition and symbolism. ‘You cannot do such design in a casual way. We’ve been researching Chinese culture and diving deep for many years,’ he says. ‘We have the opportunity to do this right and bring art and beauty into the car, from porcelain to the stitching patterns. Our vision is to bring a vision of Chinese culture and philosophy into the car for our customers in China and internationally.’

Out come the models and the fireworks and the bombastic light and music once again ('round of applause everyone!'), while drones whirr overhead as content is captured. Despite the glaringly obvious parallels with other manufacturers, BYD has succeeded in bringing a full-size hyper-luxury electric limousine to market before Rolls or Bentley or anyone else for that matter.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and the unkindest thing you could say about the Altior is that it looks like an AI blend of the Phantom, Ghost and maybe a Bentley or two (or even a GTA mash-up?).

Manufacturers based in Goodwood and Crewe sometimes seem to take a similar approach to litigation as the British Royal Family – ignore it and hope it goes away – but it's not hard to imagine that both companies currently have frantic ongoing WhatsApp groups of lawyers, designers and senior management. On the other hand, they might feel it’s worth taking a leaf from JLR’s playbook and look for some legal redress. We doubt it, however.

Off the beaten track

The final day was given over to yet another coach trip, this time out to an off-roading camp off the E20 highway, east of Abu Dhabi. From spots like this, which pepper the region’s deserts, recreational 4x4 driving, treks, and competitions take place, partly explaining the dominance of the high-powered SUV in the region (Toyota’s enduring Land Cruiser continues to be consider the top dog amongst local participants).

Inauspiciously, the activities on offer were rather curtailed in scope; a short drag race, an even shorter donut session, plus a 15-minute convoy up and down some nearby shallow dunes with an experienced Emirati at the wheel. The Denza B8 seemed to perform with aplomb – and very much to the driver’s satisfaction. It’s just a shame that we can’t give you our own driving impressions.

Occasional visitors to Abu Dhabi probably experience the city afresh each time around, such is the speed and dynamism of its commitment to change and renewal. Construction is everywhere. A few hundred metres across the bay from the Emirates Palace, the empty spit of land that hosted the U9 Xtreme's dusty certificate ceremony was already being scoured by earthmovers, while dump trucks unloaded a large mound of construction aggregate. Cranes are everywhere. Gehry’s posthumous mega-project, the Guggenheim, opens in just a few weeks, and scarcely any section of the inner city and coastal frontage isn’t delineated by the marks of roads and developments to come.

This is a part of the world where supercars can end up like discarded dishes at an expensive buffet, crowding the luxury auto dealerships strung out along Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road. Novelty is everything and the next best thing is always better than last week’s model.

The Altior is designed to arrest this strand of attention deficiency, if only for a moment. By summoning up four millennia of cultural history, BYD hopes to transcend one of the primary criticisms of Chinese brands, that they have no heritage. In the same way, the U9 Xtreme effectively ends the pursuit of meaningless performance metrics.

The scope and scale of BYD’s events for Yangwang and Denza might not have served up exactly what the media wanted or is used to getting. Nevertheless, Abu Dhabi was an undeniably apt location given the speed at which this company is moving.

BYD.com / Denza.com / YangwangAuto.com

Leica is updating its Cine Play 1 projector, bringing in a new version of this 4K favourite. This is the Cine Play 1 Plus, which gives the internal and optics and overhaul for better brightness, definition and overall quality.

The key takeaway is the improvement in brightness and contrast, increasing the Cine Play 1 Plus’s ability to create a cinema-equivalent experience in practically any space, day or night (providing it is of course large enough). Leica is making a great play for using its projectors to transform anywhere and everything into a screening room or gaming space, from yacht sails to ceilings and gardens.

Like its predecessor, the Cine Play 1 Plus is relatively compact, a neat piece of industrial design that contains the technical elements within a metal framework, along with a geometrically precise mounting system and superior detailing. The Leica Floor Stand 1 is available separately. The red Leica logo sits on top, while the lens itself – a Summicron zoom lens pumping out imagery via a Triple RGB laser technology and Leica’s own Image Optimization technology – is given pride of place on the minimal front panel, just like a camera.

A multi-functional remote provides direct access to the key streaming services (or at least those who have decided to team up with Leica). The size of image runs from 65” (a very large television) up to 300” (a colossal screen), all rendered in 4K resolution with a higher contrast than ever before, i.e. white areas of the screen are 2,000 times brighter than the darkest spot.

Leica probably wins out on overall image quality, given their expertise with lens design, but it’s worth noting that this figure isn’t particularly class leading – the XGIMI Titan Noir Ultra Max has a 12,000:1 native contrast ratio, hence its name.

However, where the Leica Cine Play 1 Plus really does score highly is in the device’s relative portability and superb flexibility. Standard features like automatic image alignment and focus adjustment make it simple to move from place to place, while the onboard OS goes way further than the four shortcut keys on the remote, with over 400 pre-installed apps.

It’ll hook up to your phone, tablet and laptop and the integrated sound has Dolby Digital but can of course be supplemented via extra speakers or a home cinema audio system.

Leica Cine Play 1 Plus, £2,550 / €2,995, Leica-Camera.com, @Leica_Camera

In 1838, just over a decade after Nicéphore Niépce captured the first surviving photograph (View from the Window at Le Gras, dated to around 1826/1827), Louis Daguerre pointed his camera at the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. The exposure lasted a few minutes, and nothing that moved left a mark on the image. Carriages, passersby, the whole traffic of the city, vanished. Only two figures stayed still long enough to remain: one man with his foot raised, and another shining his shoes. Often described as the first instance of people being photographed, they stand alone in an empty city.

In 2026, France marks the bicentenary of the invention of photography, and the 29th edition of Paris Photo returns to the Grand Palais from 12 to 15 November, with 246 exhibitors from 38 countries. After 200 years, photography seems to be pulling in two directions at once: towards images no camera ever took, and back to its origins of silver, paper and chemistry that Daguerre and his contemporaries worked with. Visitors to the fair this year can see both forms, sometimes in the same room.

Welcome to the Grand Palais

Inside the Grand Palais, a 36m retrospective wall of Thomas Ruff's work lines the entrance. Conceived as an 'open book', it moves through more than 40 years, from analogue images to digital simulations. Ruff joins Florian Ebner, head of the photography department at the Centre Pompidou, for a talk on his practice on Thursday 12 November at 2pm.

Further into the exhibition, the bicentenary is at its most literal. Hans P Kraus Jr brings works by Daguerre and Talbot, alongside Anna Atkins, whose cyanotypes of British algae, bound into volumes from 1843, are often recognised as the first photobook, a year before Talbot's The Pencil of Nature.

Elles x Paris Photo

She's also a reminder of how selectively the history of photography has been told, and a good way into the ‘Elles x Paris Photo’ path, curated this year by Aldeide Delgado, founder of the Women Photographers International Archive. Since the ‘Elles’ path launched in 2018, the share of women artists at the fair has nearly doubled, from 20 to 38 per cent. Delgado’s selection, ‘An Oceanic Beginning’, takes the ocean as a starting point for retelling photography's history without a fixed centre

Among the selected works is Ous de granota (2025), Alba Yruela’s photograph of frogspawn suspended in murky water, each egg a dark pupil staring back. Yruela makes her Paris Photo debut with Barcelona gallery Chiquita Room in the ‘Emergence’ sector. Elle Pérez, who has a solo presentation at Public Relations, is also among the artists chosen by Delgado. Pérez works across photography, collage and film, and on Friday 13 November sits down with writer and curator Gem Fletcher for a conversation co-presented by Aperture and Fletcher's podcast, The Messy Truth. Its title poses a question: what is the work of photography today?

Digital

The ‘Digital’ sector offers one answer. Its new curator, Marco De Mutiis of Fotomuseum Winterthur, argues that we no longer 'see' through optics alone, but through layers of Photoshop, social media aesthetics, facial recognition and memes. He also contributes an essay to ECAL's ‘Soft Photography’, a research project led by the late Milo Keller, the school's head of photography, and this year the fair's educational programme. The project turns that idea towards emotion: images built to anger, soothe, or simply keep us scrolling, from rage-bait to ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response). Rather than asking whether an AI-generated image looks real, it asks what it's designed to make us feel. De Mutiis discusses the project with the artist Charlie Engman on Thursday 12 November at 5pm.

Books

Friday 13 November belongs to books. At 3pm, the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards are announced at the fair, and at 6pm, Palm* Studios launches Molly Matalon’s Lil Big Beach Book, a first look at a larger archive of beach pictures by the California-based photographer. But for many, the book’s real home this week is on the water. At Port de Solférino on the Seine, the photobook fair Polycopies opens on the Concorde-Atlantique boat, from 1pm on Wednesday 11 November. Polycopies has grown from around 35 publishers when founded in 2014 to nearly 100 publishers and booksellers, spread across the boat and the quay beside it.

Among the tables this year is Ciao Press, the Swiss imprint Nicolas Polli founded at the end of 2017, which he describes as a 'publishing playground'. Often photographer, designer and publisher on the same title, Polli last showed here in 2022, before a few years on the wider fair circuit. He's back with a launch in collaboration with Éditions Images Vevey, Dominique Teufen's Rays of Light – Reflected Realities, in which a reflective silver surface turns fragments of urban landscapes into something more painterly, with no digital manipulation. In an age of AI, it makes a quiet case for what light can still do on its own. Polli’s advice is to arrive as soon as the doors open. His Polycopies picks include publishers Skinnerboox, Yogurt Editions, Fraglich Publishing and Deadbeat Club. The last, based in Los Angeles, also makes its Paris Photo debut this year, with work by Daniel Dorsa, Cole Barash and Taylor Galloway, among others.

Around the city

Beyond the fairs, the bicentenary extends across the city. Now in its seventh edition, Photo Days brings together exhibitions across Paris throughout November. In the Studio at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Nanténé Traoré's ‘pays des merveilles’, the artist's first museum solo show, is made from pictures shot in Brittany on expired film from the 1990s. At the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, ‘Nicaragua, Histoire, Mémoire’ follows Susan Meiselas's photographs of the 1978-79 revolution long after she took them, onto T-shirts, stamps, matchboxes and murals, used sometimes to celebrate the revolution and sometimes to contest it. And at the Bibliothèque nationale de France's François-Mitterrand site, ‘Photographies japonaises’ draws on one of the first Western collections of postwar Japanese photography, begun in the late 1960s: around 250 prints and 50 rare books, including a section devoted to Japanese photographers looking at Paris.

Much of the week happens after hours, at openings, launches, and in bookshops across the city, and the first night is usually the busiest. On Thursday 12 November at 6pm, ECAL opens ‘Soft Photography’ at Espace Commines, a show that runs for just two days. Among the student works, Min Dai's Rate My Cake renders a mouth in glossy orange, sweetness pushed until it starts to repel. From 7pm, Francesca Allen launches ‘Hair’ at Cahier Central, her second volume on the significance of long hair. The first, shot in Lithuania at a contest for the world's longest hair, was shown at Paris Photo last year with Chloé Arts. This time, she follows 26 women who gathered in Las Vegas to compete for the first Miss Rapunzel title, photographing them away from the stage, their hair spilling across hotel beds and through the casinos. Later, the night moves to La Montgolfière in the tenth arrondissement, where Dans le Bain opens its first show, ‘Wild Ember Orchestra’, co-created with the independent imprint Pomegranate Press: a transatlantic exchange between American and French artists, Myles Loftin and Sarah Balhadère among them, open until 11pm.

Voices

By Sunday 15 November, after four days of looking, it's worth thinking back to the image taken on the Boulevard du Temple in 1838. The two figures are visible only because they stood still; everything else in the street moved too fast for the plate. Now that problem has almost reversed. Images are made faster than anyone can look at them, and this year's ‘Voices’ sector, curated by Zasha Colah and Francesco Zanot, takes disappearance as its theme. They look at photographs made to fade or destroy themselves, and AI images that look like photographs but no longer record anything. Across the week, the idea raised in Daguerre’s image keeps returning: what a photograph holds on to, and what it lets go.

Paris Photo runs 12-15 November 2026 at the Grand Palais

We are fast approaching the season to be merry, and Sketch, the Mayfair restaurant, is preparing for the festivities by launching its new cocktail book. The publication is an anticipatory nod to the restaurant’s 25th anniversary in 2027.

The Glade Cocktail Book

Sketch is known for its history of bold design, from its dining spaces to its pod loos. The Glade is the building’s forest-themed bar and has often undergone transformations and artistic interventions, whether reimagined as the Hundred Acre Wood to celebrate 100 years of Winnie-the-Pooh, or used to host a Jane Austen-inspired floral display.

Now, the cocktails that define the dining area are now charted in The Glade Cocktail Book. Striving to be more than a recipe book (although it’s that too), it explains the journey and philosophy behind cocktail creations. In total, it features 106 cocktails, from classics to reinterpretations and alcohol-free suggestions.

The monograph is divided into themes: Roots, Alchemy, and Essence. At the front of the book, readers will find drinks in their traditional form before flipping forward to the bar’s signature concoctions. With illustrations decorating each page, the book also offers advice on presentation, from garnishing to glassware, noting that every detail matters when crafting delicious moments.

The book is authored by Sketch founder and restaurateur Mourad Mazouz, who reflects on the establishment’s 25 years: ‘I never imagined writing a book. As someone who is dyslexic, it felt impossible. But Sketch has always been about proving that impossible things can become reality. This book isn’t simply a catalogue of cocktails; it’s the story of 25 years of creativity, distilled into a journey of ideas, experimentation and imagination. I hope it inspires people to create their own stories, celebrate both successes and failures, and most importantly, enjoy the process.’

sketch.london

Shake things up with Sketch’s breakfast martinis

Roots

50ml Gin D’Azur Mediterranean gin
1 barspoon fine-cut orange marmalade
15ml triple sec
15ml freshly squeezed lemon juice

Glass: Coupette Ice: None Garnish: Orange peel, or none

Pour the gin into a mixing glass and stir in the marmalade until fully dissolved. Fill a shaker with ice and add the marmalade-gin mixture and the remaining ingredients. Shake vigorously, then fine-strain into a coupette glass. Garnish with an orange coin or peel, or serve ungarnished.

Essence (alcohol-free)

50ml Tanqueray Alcohol-free 0.0 gin
1 barspoon fine-cut bitter
orange marmalade
15ml Lyre’s Italian Orange
15ml freshly squeezed lemon juice

Glass: Martini Ice: None Garnish: Orange coin or peel, or none

Pour the alcohol-free gin into a mixing glass and stir in the marmalade until fully dissolved. Fill a shaker with ice and add the marmalade-gin mixture and the remaining ingredients. Shake vigorously, then fine-strain into a Martini glass. Garnish with an orange coin or peel, or serve ungarnished.

Tory Burch’s ‘Bunny Knot’ bag began with the discovery of a quilted chair in the American designer’s Caribbean estate on the island of Antigua, formerly owned by the American philanthropist, horticulturist and art collector, Rachel Lambert ‘Bunny’ Mellon.

Where traditional quilted upholstery is indented by tufting buttons, here, the indentations are marked by a series of criss-crossing knots – a subtle detail that Burch says epitomises Bunny Mellon’s ‘perfectly imperfect’ approach to design, and famous design maxim that ‘nothing should be noticed’.

Tory Burch’s ‘Bunny Knot’ bag looks to Bunny Mellon for inspiration

On the bag itself, which first appeared as part of the designer’s A/W 2026 show – a musing on the archetypes of a woman’s wardrobe – the quilting is reimagined in leather, and the knot in metal. Ladylike in style, it is completed with a simple shoulder strap and Tory Burch’s signature double-T clasp, partially concealed by the flap construction.

‘[It is] a meditation on what endures – classics shaped by history and utility, made personal through our own stories and experience,’ she said of the eclectic collection, which also featured embroidered cardigans, Shetland wool sweaters, and references to her father’s clothing.

It was Mellon who would prove the collection’s patron saint, though, with Burch revisiting the figure, having penned the foreword to the 2022 book Bunny Mellon Style. ‘The mix reflects how women dress now: by instinct, not rules,’ she said. ‘No one exemplified this quite like Bunny Mellon.’

A version of this article appears in the December 2026 issue of Wallpaper*, available from 5 November in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +.

toryburch.com

Chinese ultra-luxury is having a moment. Mindful of the buying power, cultural sensitivities and tastes of a new generation of wealthy Chinese family and elite corporate buyers, London-based design studio PriestmanGoode has created a private jet concept to explore new facets of aviation design.

Ways of Seeing / 观 Guān is the name of this new cabin concept, one that has grown organically out of local research and needs, instead of just being ‘a generic template with local dressing applied’. Shown here in renders based on the Boeing 737’s narrow-bodied long-range jet platform, the studio reckons the design language could also be adopted for a locally made jet such as the Comac C919.

One of the principal shifts is the idea of an aircraft that goes beyond a mere business tool to represent a shared family environment, ‘a space where three generations; grandparents, parents, children, can travel and spend time together’. The layout includes a private retreat space at the rear of the cabin, complete with a bedroom, en-suite bathroom and study area. The last can also be used as an office or even a meditation suite or wellbeing space, alongside a second bedroom.

The main space is a shared lounge and dining area, with a multifunctional table for dining, gaming or just socialising, alongside a woven metal screen. ‘We didn’t want to design a Chinese-inflected version of an existing template,’ says Ben Rowan, creative director at PriestmanGoode. ‘We wanted to start from an honest, well-researched picture of how a specific person actually lives and travels and let the cabin follow from that. It’s why the input from our cultural consultant sits at the centre of the brief rather than layered on at the end, and why we didn’t default to a house style: the design has to be driven by the people it’s for.’

It was this work with a cultural consultant, along with crafted collaborations, that determined the way the limited space aboard would be used, especially in the way it rejects the ‘single principal’s use’ strategy that results in so many jet interiors resembling boardrooms or mancaves in the sky.

As PriestmanGoode notes, the consultant’s ‘insight pointed to a clear shift towards multi-generational travel among Chinese entrepreneurs and their families, with a personal style blending natural cues and a contemporary aesthetic of clean, understated lines and natural materials’.

Throughout the cabin, technology has been designed to keep out of sight; screens and speakers are hidden unless required. Craft is used to highlight key areas of the design, soften the lines and bring in human warmth and interest. Tai Ping was responsible for the bedroom carpet, a bespoke design that uses traditional geometric motifs from Chinese culture, while the shared areas feature an organic patterned carpet by Andre Fu.

The lacquer artwork onboard was supplied by The Gallery by SOIL in Hong Kong. It includes works by National Master of Crafts Erke Gan, featuring a marbled ‘rhinoceros hide’ texture on the table surfaces, alongside some of his standalone vases. In the bedroom, you can find lacquer artwork by Shi Yuguang. Jade-toned stone veneer is found in the bathroom alongside patterned fabric in the bedroom.

‘These collaborations … are proof that the cultural authenticity PriestmanGoode set out to achieve rests on genuine craft authority, not surface styling,’ the designers note. ‘Our research found that this business traveller seeks to combine business and family time… Modularity runs through the cabin: the dining table becomes a place for family games and tea, the study transforms into a workspace, and the sofa converts for rest, allowing both cabin, and family within it, to move fluidly between both purposes over the course of a shared journey.’

PriestmanGoode.com, @PriestmanGoode

Polestar’s new show car, the Formula 2030 concept, isn’t just a taste of stylistic things to come from the Sweden-based brand, but a wheeled manifesto for the next generation of Polestar design. Back at the start of 2025, former Audi exterior designer Philipp Römers took the reigns as Head of Polestar Design, following on from Maximilian Missoni.

‘I had spent some time thinking about my plans for Polestar, a strategy,’ Römers tells us, explaining how the Polestar 4 SUV model was his first priority. ‘The work on the concept started back in February,’ he explains, ‘once we had sorted out our overall strategy, technology roadmap and product plans, including the confirmation of the new generation Polestar 2 and the forthcoming Polestar 7.'

The Polestar Formula 2030 offers a departure from the company’s aesthetic orthodoxy in several ways. Clearly not a direct equivalent of the 2 or the 7 (which will be a much smaller car), Formula 2030 is also distinctly different from the Polestar 3 and 4 SUV and the 4 and 5 models.

It stands in a niche all of its own, a four-door, low slung sporting estate, more akin to the Volvo P1800 estate or even the Saab 9-X Air Concept from 2008. Most importantly, it’s not an SUV, nor does it have any crossover elements.

From the coach rear doors to the clamshell boot, the visor-like windshield, wraparound glasshouse and redefined light signatures, the Formula 2030 sets out a new and distinct aesthetic for the brand. Certain elements are carried forward – it’s by no means a reset – but the overall feel is more lithe, dynamic and technical than the first tranche of models. As Römers says, the show car represents ‘the essence of the brand – it’s the physical expression of our corporate strategy and really guides us to the future.’

That future has to include more sales. ‘We’re focusing now on volume cars to make Polestar more accessible,’ says Römers, ‘the 5 and the 3 are really niche cars but we also need to go into volume segments. But if you were to do a sports car in the electric world, a practical, compact one would really make sense.’

Although the designer reckons Polestar could build such a machine, especially given the scope offered by access to parent company Geely’s technology, it clearly isn’t a priority right now. Nevertheless, Polestar has historically only built concept cars that hew incredibly closely to their production successors; Polestars 1 and 2 both started life as Volvo concept cars.

That doesn’t appear to be the case anymore. Crucially, the new generation Polestar 2 had already been signed off before this concept was started and while Römers admits that certain elements of the 2 and 7 are previewed here, especially the front and rear forms as well as the interior, a like-for-like production car is not yet on the cards, at least not before the decade’s end.

The interior marks another move away from current Polestar thinking. ‘This concept highlights that we are a performance brand,’ says Römers, ‘we want to become more driver focused. At the same time, we also wanted to rebalance our screen set up by enlarging the driver’s display and creating quick access to functions – buttons do the job best. We came up with the idea of a seamless blend of digital and analogue.’

While the driver gets a curved 20-inch HyperDIM, or Driver Information Monitor, directly behind the yoke-like wheel, the Formula 2030’s centre console cascades through the middle of the car, with a gradated graphic effect. It contains a pop-up screen and a physical drive selector culminating in eight Teenage Engineering-style buttons and dials set on a flush panelled backdrop. The idea is that these physical controls are user configurable. ‘We wanted to bring our current customisable screen gadgets to the physical world,’ the designer explains.

There are other stories contained the Formula 2030, not least Polestar’s ongoing role as a guiding light in the quest for auto industry accountability and sustainability. The use of low-emission galvanised steel for structural parts – left exposed in the concept – is just one example of how the company is doing the legwork to make vital materials and processes far more efficient in the future. ‘It’s not just about the car,’ Römers reiterates, ‘but the whole strategy.’

Polestar.com, @PolestarCars

From a booth in the back of Found Oyster’s new dining room, Adam Weisblatt and Holly Fox are admiring the view. The pair started the buzzy East Hollywood raw bar in a tiny shopfront on Fountain Avenue in 2019, and it has proved such a runaway success that they’ve recently been able to expand into this space next door. 'When we opened this new room, and I was looking at Found Oyster from a perspective I physically had never been able to see it from before, it was wildly emotional,' says Fox, sunlight glinting off her gold hooped earrings. 'It was like an out-of-body experience.'

Found Oyster is a masterclass in doing a lot with a little. Weisblatt and Fox took an empty, narrow shell and transformed it with checkered tiles, custom-built oyster stands and a glittering disco ball into an intimate, 26-seat hideaway set around a bustling wooden bar where multi-talented bartenders move between mixing drinks and shucking oysters. Starting small made sense for their first restaurant opening. 'There were lots of reasons for that,' explains Weisblatt, his tattooed arm reaching for his Goombay Smash, a rum punch made with apricot liqueur. 'One being that we didn’t think we could raise the money to build a big restaurant! But also in a smaller space, I truly believe it’s easier to create the sort of energy we wanted.'

That energy now fills a room that’s doubled in size, and Weisblatt and Fox’s ambitions have grown too. Over plates of Sicilian crudo, fried calamari and squid stuffed with tuna ’nduja, they explain how they started Last Word Hospitality as a consultancy five years prior to opening Found Oyster.

In the years since, they’ve applied what they learned here to build a miniature empire of unique restaurants across Los Angeles, including Portuguese tapas spot Barra Santos in Cypress Park, another raw bar Queen’s in Highland Park, Malaysian-inspired hotspot Rasarumah in Historic Filipinotown and, most recently, classic martinis-and-cheeseburger bistro Hermon’s in Montecito Heights. They’ve also teamed with Pioneertown Motel owners Matt and Mike French for two openings out near Joshua Tree: the Old West saloon Red Dog and the Rat Pack-approved jetset lounge The Copper Room in Yucca Valley. A third desert project, a revamp of Rancho Mirage’s historic Lord Fletcher Inn, is set to open this spring.

What’s noticeable about spending time at any of these establishments is just how distinct they all feel. While they may share a relaxed conviviality, they each have a personality and character all their own. They’re also straightforward and timeless in their design. 'We hate the word ‘concept’,' says Weisblatt. 'We don’t have concepts. We find people, and we build restaurants that you've kind of heard of before. This is a bistro. This is a pub. This is an oyster bar. Then we put human personality into it rather than it being an act.'

Both Weisblatt and Fox are restaurant obsessives, and their passion for creating and curating the sorts of spaces that lead to memorable nights is infectious. They each worked their way up through the restaurant world, and Weisblatt recently published a warts-and-all memoir, For The Love of Restaurants, about opening Found Oyster that also functions as a how-to guide for anyone dreaming of going from working in a restaurant to owning one. 'It’s aimed at someone waiting tables or bartending,' he explains, 'If that’s all the education you have, it explains what you’re going to need to open your own place.'

In design terms, Last Word’s philosophy is to create restaurants that feel as if they’ve stood the test of time. Sometimes there’s real history to draw on: at The Copper Room, a storied bar with a panoramic view over the Yucca Valley airstrip was returned to its former glory. Other times, as at Hermon’s, a caramel-tiled bar and classic leather booths helped create a sense of time-worn elegance even in a space that hadn’t previously been a restaurant. 'One thing Holly and I always knew we wanted to do from a design standpoint is to make places that feel old,' says Weisblatt. 'To do that, you can’t be trendy. Whatever is new won't stay new for long. Whatever is timeless will stay timeless.'

Along with their classic designs, Last Word’s restaurants are also united by intimacy. Found Oyster may have put its patrons in close quarters out of sheer necessity, but that sense of proximity also helped create the atmosphere that made it a hit. They’ve replicated that even as the size of their blueprints have grown. 'Hermon’s is the biggest of our restaurants, square-footage-wise, so we asked ourselves: how do you shrink it?' explains Fox. 'The answer is to keep people closer together! I love architects so much, but every time they put in walkways or tables that are oversized, or banquettes that are larger than they need to be because they look good on the paper plan, I inevitably slash everything. That’s the secret sauce.'

When it comes to food, they say the magic ingredients are sourcing, and staffing. Produce comes from independent suppliers and small farmers, while chefs like Ari Kolender here at Found Oyster and Rasarumah’s Johnny Lee have been given ownership stakes and encouraged to experiment – within reason. 'We don't want to restrict their creativity whatsoever, but we are very considerate of how much things cost,' says Weisblatt. 'There’s a certain check that once we go above… we don’t want to be in that business. There’s an unfortunate reality where, when restaurants get above a certain price point, formality is expected. We don’t want to feed people that way, and I don’t want to eat that way!'

There have been missteps and growing pains along the way. In 2021, at the same time they were working on The Copper Room, Barra Santos, and Queen's Raw Bar, they started Shins Pizza in Cypress Park. That closed at the start of 2025. 'If there's anything we learned from that, it's that we should stick to what we're good at,' laughs Weisblatt. 'We're not quick service people. That's not our speciality. Raising prices in cents was very new to us. Usually, if we need to go up a buck or two, we can go up a buck or two. But with slices of pizza, suddenly you realise that a slice of cheese going from $3.50 to $4 is a big deal.' The experience led them to refocus. 'Over time, we've learned that what we're good at is creating independent, full-service restaurants that people want to hang out at,' he says.

Last Word are still plotting further expansions, but don’t expect to see a chain of Found Oyster spots popping up anytime soon. Their mission is to resist the homogenisation of the high street, one raw bar, one saloon and one bistro at a time. 'When you go to a community with lots of independent restaurants, it feels unique,' says Weisblatt, ordering another round of Goombay Smashes. 'People will drive there or travel there from all over. When you lose that, it's a truck stop or a mall. Imagine how fun it would be to drive from LA to San Francisco and instead of seeing your 38th McDonald's, seeing independent diners. That’s still the best version, I think, of America we have. When you go to a place, and it feels like that place.'

That’s the trick Last Word have pulled off so successfully, and repeatedly. Whether you’re slurping an oyster here at Found, digging into a cheeseburger at Hermon’s or knocking back a margarita while gazing over the airstrip at The Copper Room, when you’re at one of their restaurants you really couldn’t be anywhere else.

Book your table

Mexico is home to some of the most exciting modern and contemporary residential architecture in the world today. A new generation of architects is shaping a distinctive design language that reveres and reinterprets the forms, motifs, geometries and siting principles first employed by the Mesoamerican cultures that came before them.

By examining the architecture of Aztec, Maya, Olmec, Zapotec and other Mesoamerican peoples – from their construction of monumental pyramids to their innate understanding of how light and shadow can influence movement through a space – today’s architects are crafting innovative, atmospheric and deeply personal private residences for their clients.

For Su Wu, a writer and curator who has called Mexico City home for the past 12 years, the re-emergence of these ancient ideas is akin to a ‘renaissance’, she tells Wallpaper*. Her new book, Mesoamerican Modern (Phaidon, 2026), includes 16 exemplary residential projects that provide tangible evidence of this movement. ‘These ideas are not some part of dusty prehistory, but they're alive, and they have relevance,’ says Wu.

While Mesoamerican architectural forms and motifs have previously appeared in large-scale cultural projects, such as Mexico City’s Museo Tamayo and Museo Nacional de Antropología, their appearance in private homes is a relatively recent phenomenon. ‘That feels to me like a shift,’ says Wu, who was drawn to the residential sector for precisely this reason. ‘It's not a nation-building effort, but a deeply personal effort based around what people are willing to live with, and a reflection of an expanded sense of what we consider beautiful and valuable.’

While researching and writing the book, ‘there were a few very surprising principles that came up over and over,’ Wu says. To demonstrate these recurring themes, Wu reflects on five projects featured in the 305-page, photographically-illustrated volume, each representing a specific manifestation of Mesoamerican Modern.

Su Wu on Mesoamerican modernism

Casa 720 by Fernanda Canales

'Casa 720 is a beautiful example of geometric precision in Mesoamerican architecture, and also of the idea of the patio, or open space, as a central feature of the Mesoamerican home. Canales also spoke so beautifully of ‘giving space back above’ and considering the top of the house to be the sky, rather than the roof, with activated rooftops.'

Casa Bernal by Marcos Ruiz and Emmanuel Picault

'Many architects spoke of the importance of siting to Mesoamerican homes: the relationship of the house and its orientation to cosmological and natural elements, and of deriving meaning from specific topography. Examples in the book include a home built over two seasonal waterfalls, and this one, built in the shadow of the Peña de Bernal monolith in Querétaro, where every view, window orientation and roof slant was determined by its relationship to the mountain.'

Casa Nancarrow by Juan O’Gorman

'This house is by one of the patron saints of this book (the other being Agustín Hernández). Juan O’Gorman was known as the progenitor of functionalist architecture in Mexico, but this home, which he built for the avant-garde composer Conlon Nancarrow, shows his earliest turn away from what he called ‘square rooms with square windows’, towards the mosaic style he later applied to Museo Anahuacalli and the central library at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).'

'For me, it also shows another type of reverse syncretism: instead of colonial structures being built on top of Mesoamerican sites and using their stones as quarry, Mesoamerican motifs are applied to modernist or colonial structures.'

Casa Reyes Fernández by Pedro Reyes and Carla Fernández

'There’s perhaps no clearer expression of the idea that the past is still vividly part of the present in the distinct architecture and design of the Americas. This manifests not only in the material palette, the volumes of spaces and the deliberate application of the handmade, but also in how Pedro and Carla spoke of the space and advocated for the ideas of Mesoamerica as a source for the avant-garde and radical. Pedro describes "counterfactual scenarios where you can imagine how this place would have evolved without the colonial influence’ – ‘how they would have become, and what that would have led to."'

Tlalocan by Gerardo ‘Geraz Ato’ García and Marino García

'Hand-carved over more than 12 years by artist and construction worker Geraz Ato, this space in the shadow of the archaeological site of Teotihuacan offers both erudition through specific iconography and the capacity for ongoing interpretation. A large bas-relief overlooking the central patio features scenes of migration from present-day Oaxaca to the site in the Valley of Mexico, suggesting the complexity of Mesoamerican cities, with their ethnic enclaves, apartment complexes and gridded streets. The mural also features an image of Tlaloc, the rain god (the original sculpture now sits outside the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City). But Geraz’s version shows the deity still in an unfinished state, flanked by carvers – his own predecessors! – returning a sense of authorship to anonymous artefacts.'

'We need more spaces in Lagos. I get asked why I am not opening a gallery in another country, [and that's because] I am passionate about developing Lagos,' shares Caline Chagoury-Moudaber, the founder of Casa Mouda, a multi-site creative studio with a bold mandate of exhibiting, amplifying, and producing contemporary African design.

Step inside Casa Mouda, Lagos

Consisting of AiMe Gallery, located in a historic architectural landmark, the Eko Hotel and AiMe Concept, a mixed purpose site that will act as a community hub, laboratory of ideas and go-to location for outdoor interventions on the Eko Atlantic Marina, Casa Mouda is the consolidation of a question Chagoury Moudaber first posed to herself in 2018. 'I live in my little bubble where I just do the work, but I kept on thinking, what did designers need?'

Chagoury-Moudaber is best known for Art Twenty One, the pioneering contemporary art gallery she founded in 2013 that held seminal shows for artists as varied as Olu Amoda, Yusuff Aina and Tejumola Adenuga. But this is not to say that Casa Mouda is an exercise in pivoting.

'I grew up with a mother who is a lover of art and design, but particularly design. I have been around it my whole life so it was a very natural segue,' she explains. As an integral part of the African design community both as collector and connector, many of the industry’s most noted practitioners are not only part of the Casa Mouda community and the inaugural exhibit, but also, have over the years become personal friends to her

AiMe Concept’s interior was a collaboration with designer Nifemi Marcus-Bello and Gemma Sfeir. Moroccan multi-disciplinary designer Hajar Daide not only contributes furniture pieces to the inaugural exhibit, but is also the mastermind behind the branding, and architectural design of AiMe Gallery was led by Papa Omotayo of MOE+AA. 'I think the world has moved on from individuality and "me myself and I energy", but I feel community is very important. When people ask anybody I know who lives here in Lagos ‘why?’, the answer is always the community.'

With her inaugural exhibit, Chagoury-Moudaber has chosen to centre both the potentiality and actuality of Lagos. 'My Mum said, not everyone knows what to do with an art piece or design piece,' she shares. It was a passing comment that informed the numerous tableaux one encounters in the space. 'I created spaces where people could come in and just say for example, I want this whole scene for my house.'

Democratizing how people understand design not only helps from a commercial perspective but it widens the potential pool of participants and future champions. KoFi, the coffee shop concept in both spaces, is another way that Chagoury-Moudaber injects a necessary and disruptive jolt for widening the locus of engagement. The walls are covered in sand, a nod to the coastal location, and a soundscape created in collaboration with sound artist and composer Malloy James situates visitors squarely in Africa’s largest metropolis where cultures, people and stories collide to shape something new.

In titling the exhibit ‘The Design Institute’, Chagoury-Moudaber celebrates and alludes to how she is tackling an important aspect in the industry’s story-so-far; the challenge of producing on the continent and the necessity to support and celebrate craft and material storytelling.

Speaking of Ivorian designer and sculptor Jean Servais Somian, she says: 'he had knocked on doors for 20 years asking for any factory to let him come.' Solutions driven Chagoury-Moudaber partnered with UFL, a furniture factory owned by her husband Antoine Moudaber to address this.

It was a game changer for Somian and other designers including African-American Germane Barnes, whose credenza and wardrobe/armoire were made of local wood Iroko. Completing the design lineup for the inaugural show are sculptural lighting objects by Marie-Paule Tano, shelving by Paris based, African Diaspora design collective Hall Haus, Bubu Ogisi’s glass objects that double up as wearable art, Ghanaian Baba Tree’s famed basketry and artworks from People of the Sun and Midegbeyanevesho Ojisua. The exhibit is intentionally open-ended, with pieces scheduled to be viewed in rotation or swapped in and out, allowing objects and ideas to be experienced and understood from a myriad of vantage points.

Chagoury-Moudaber is rightly excited by Casa Mouda’s future. Intentionally inclusive and with an inaugural show that has representation at its heart, she is keen for this space to reflect contemporary Africa via the lens of design, accurately. 'I’ve only ever been with all kinds of people from different cultures. It has allowed me to learn but also ask questions.'

Casa Mouda aims to answer some of them. How Africa is neither monolith or static. How migration flows, its amorphous and latterly static borders, and finally, its creatives' relationships to materials, the environment and one another have allowed for a crucible of creativity like no other on the planet. And perhaps most pertinent of all, how custodianship is an ongoing, collective activity.

Keep up to date with Casa Mouda via Instagram.

‘Hublot is known for collaborating with artists,’ says Leonard Iheagwam, a visual artist, designer and skateboarder who was born in Lagos and works from London, and also goes by the sobriquet Soldier. ‘They have done Jeff Koons, Murakami, Daniel Arsham… the best of the best.’

Issued as a limited edition of 50 models, the launch of the 42mm Hublot Big Bang Soldier All Black today means that Iheagwam has been added to the Swiss watchmaker’s fold of artistic collaborators. ‘My career is not early on but I am quite young and it's quite new, and they took that chance with me,’ he says.

Soldier and Hublot first joined forces in 2024, then in the form of an exhibition of the artist’s work at the watchmaker’s London boutique during Frieze. A bond was forged, and resulted in the two year making of the Big Bang Soldier All Black.

The timepiece’s shape and volume remains true to the Big Bang model Hublot first issued in 2005. Here, the case and bezel have been made from black ceramic that is either polished to a glossy black or has been microblasted, to achieve a playful blend of matt and high-shine elements.

Soldier’s motifs have been added through Pad printing, an offset gravure printing technique used to transfer a two-dimensional image onto textured, three-dimensional surfaces.

In all black, the watch comes with ablack fabric straps and two optional rubber straps. The latter two are lined in red and in green, colours that to Soldier represent present and past, respectively. ‘You don’t want to simply decorate something that already has its own language and history,’ says the artist of putting his stamp on Hublot’s much-quoted design. ‘You want to understand it, respect what already exists, and then find a way of introducing another story into it.’

hublot.com

In 1953, Christian Dior opened his first in-store boutique in Harrods, the start of a relationship between his eponymous Parisian house and the West London department store. Monsieur Dior, a fervent Anglophile who gained renown by dressing British society figures – most memorably, Princess Margaret, a devoted client – would later host proto-runway shows in the store’s Fashion Theatre (opening in 1953, the ‘theatre’ would go on to host presentations from other international couturiers, part of an attempt to reignite the British fashion industry post-World War II).

The relationship between Dior and Harrods has continued over the next seven decades, with the brand’s clothing, cosmetics and fragrances continuously stocked at the department store. Dior has also hosted larger-scale takeovers: in 2013, an 20,000 sq ft display titled ‘Dior at Harrods’ recreated the house’s 30 Avenue Montaigne headquarters on the fourth floor alongside historic dresses, an ephemeral Café Dior and miniature British landmarks hung with Dior accessories, while in 2022, it staged an ambitious gingerbread-themed pop-up which spread across the store, including all 44 of Harrods’ famous Brompton Road windows (Wallpaper* took a look behind-the-scenes at the spectacular).

Inside Dior’s new festive pop-up in Harrods

And, as the first days of November herald the arrival of the festive season (the past week has already seen the release of a slew of holiday campaigns, collections and Christmas light illuminations), Dior reveals a new ephemeral space inside the department store, themed around its recently released festive film, Christian Dior’s Night in Colour, created by the lauded French director Sylvain Chomet (he is best-known for The Triplets of Belleville, released in 2003, which was nominated for two Academy Awards). A series of the Brompton Road windows also draws inspiration from the 2D animated short.

Starring Louis Garrel, Robert Pattinson, Josh O’Connor and Rihanna, the film unfolds on a ‘snowy winter’s night’ in 1949, when Christian Dior is tasked with making a last-minute dress for Marlene Dietrich (he is helped to make it happen by O’Connor’s anthropomorphic Medallion Chair, a series of magical bees and Rihanna’s ‘Lucky Star’). Despite wide acclaim, the film initially faced criticism for an alleged use of AI, though Chomet later asserted to Variety that no generative AI was used for the campaign, something confirmed by producer Aton Soumache. ‘The reality is that this film took seven months to make and it was entirely drawn by artists,’ he said (Jonathan Anderson, the house’s creative director, also reposted the article).

The space continues to channel the film’s magical spirit: guarded by a pair of life-sized nutcrackers and lined across its facade with twinkling lights and cartoon motifs from the film, the interior features wooden moulding, Versailles parquet flooring and moiré fabric upholstery evoking the traditional interiors of 30 Avenue Montaigne, Dior’s historic headquarters. Another inspiration was the intimate feel of Colifichets, the first Dior boutique in 30 Avenue Montaigne which initially sold curiosities and keepsakes, but would later sell Dior dresses, fragrances, gloves and more.

Colifichets was directed by Monsieur Dior’s friend, Carmen Colle. ‘At first it offered a choice of trinkets, such as jewels, flowers, and scarves, but it was not long until more ambitious projects were undertaken,’ he said of the miniature boutique.

The Harrods pop-up will largely centre on Anderson’s Cruise 2027 collection, shown in May at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Wallpaper* called it ‘a Hollywood epic’ that paid ode to cinema’s ‘escapist allure’, inspired by Monsieur Dior’s longtime links with the film industry and its leading ladies, including Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly. ‘Christian Dior understood how important the idea of “the dream” was for people after the war, as a form of escapism,’ said Anderson. ‘He explored this in couture, his Surrealist friends were obsessed with dreams and, of course, Hollywood is “The Dream Factory”. It was all part of the same cross-cultural shift.’

Elsewhere, a new collection of ready-to-wear, accessories and homeware draws on Christian Dior’s Night in Colour, with motifs on knitwear and Lady Dior handbags inspired by Bobby, Monsieur Dior’s dog, as well as 30 Avenue Montaigne’s iconic facade. Bag charms also feature various festive figures, from nutcrackers to gingerbread men, while baubles are decorated with Chomet’s illustrations. For those who seek a more personalised touch, these ornaments can be engraved with initials or messages, while a calligraphy service allows you to pen the ultimate Christmas card.

Dior’s new Harrods space is open now until December 27, 2026.

dior.com

Houses by Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler and other masters of Los Angeles modernism line the steep streets of the Silver Lake district, though many are well concealed. Now, an unsung gem has come up for sale: a residence that John Lautner designed in 1955 for artist Joseph Baldwin and his wife, Rosemary. She survived him and lived there for 71 years until her death earlier this year. They changed nothing, so the Baldwin Residence is a time capsule, down to the space-age stove; modest in scale but packed with invention.

Explore Baldwin Residence by John Lautner, now on the market

Lautner is best known for the monumental houses of his later years, including the Chemosphere, Silvertop and the Elrod House in Palm Springs. These concrete palaces overshadow his early work in wood and brick, though they share the humanity that the architect brought to all his homes.

In an interview a year before his death in 1994, Lautner insisted that architecture 'has to be something that improves human life, with some spirit, some feeling, some real ideas contributing to human welfare; joyful; with light, air, free spaces; things that are alive, that are art.'

The Baldwin Residence embodies all those qualities. It is perched on a downslope, and you enter at the junction of a bedroom wing that hugs the hillside and the wedge-shaped living room that is cantilevered out from two concrete piers. The kitchen, dining area and the three bedrooms are tiny by contemporary standards, but high ceilings combined with the play of light make up for that limitation.

The house is a frugal masterpiece of inventive detail and expressive materials. Joists project out over a narrow sculpture garden to form a pergola. Sunlight filters through trees, highlighting the redwood and earth-toned stucco walls. The playful geometry of the interior parallels that of Schindler, and there’s even an echo of Frank Lloyd Wright in the triangular wall openings. Look up in the smaller bathroom, and the ceiling seems to be in motion.

Terrazzo floors give way to parquet, and Douglas fir wood is employed for built-in furniture, panelling, and to shade lighting. The expansive, glass-walled living room is bathed in northern light and doubles as an artist’s studio. It opens onto a wood deck and a panoramic view of the San Fernando Valley and San Gabriel Mountains. It’s anchored by a brick chimney and animated by a subtly folded ceiling. The void beneath may be built out, as Escher GuneWardena Architecture have done in their restoration of Lautner’s own 1939 house, a block north.

The Rosemary and Joseph Baldwin Residence, John Lautner (1955) is presented by Louis Magnano and the Modern California House at $2,099,999.

It’s a Torqued Ellipse! It’s a Torqued Spiral! It’s…the Oval Office?! Just days after former President Barack Obama likened the Trump-era White House to a Cheesecake Factory opened by Saddam Hussein, the people have spoken, the political tide has turned, and the Oval Office has been stripped of its ersatz ormolu and transformed into a serene volume of Cor-Ten steel. Starting today, you can step inside.

This Oval Office, all 36 handsomely weathered tonnes of it, is the work of Elmgreen & Dragset, fresh from rectifying another presidential design blunder with the installation of their meticulously crafted, cyan-bottomed pool in the Hirshhorn Museum’s revitalized sculpture garden. From Washington, DC, the Danish-Norwegian artist duo headed to Manhattan to put the finishing touches on ‘TRANSITION,’ an impeccably timed new exhibition at Pace Gallery that evolves the 'Powerless Structures' series of finely calibrated reconfigurations they began in 1997.

‘We discovered that the Oval Office is actually not very big, even though it’s torturing your social feed every morning and puts you in a very bad mood,’ said Elmgreen at a preview of the show. ‘So, we thought, why don’t we turn that entity into a sculpture? Why don’t we try to take away its power symbols, all its decorations, all its authoritarian structure, and see what it becomes if it’s pure volume?’

The Richard-Serra-meets-the-West-Wing result is at once monumental and enveloping, austere and cozy. Fabricated in north German steel country by Serra’s metal-formers of choice, the two-part structure is just shy of actual size and aerated by lattices of would-be windowpanes and a door – all placed to match those of the actual Oval Office.

Passing into the bracketed void, the artists provided further orientation. ‘You’re walking through the Resolute desk,’ noted Dragset, while Elmgreen pointed out a pair of imaginary couches and the space where the press would scrum. ‘It fills up very easily,’ he said. ‘Journalists are aligned along this wall.’

The choice of Cor-Ten steel not only connects the installation with the formal language of Minimalism (most notably Serra, with a side of Gordon Matta-Clark’s decisive cuts and apertures) but also imbues it with vitality – a robust and earthy contrast with what Obama described as ‘supergluing gold medallions to the mantel.’

‘We can’t take credit for the incredible surface,’ said Dragset, eyeing the variegated russet tones blooming on the curved walls. ‘It was transported by sea in an open crate, and exposure to the elements created this painterly quality. It’s a surface of constant transformation.’

The rugged, traversable oval sculpture is paired with an adjoining room of six large wall-mounted circular works. This is the Balcony Series, in which Elmgreen & Dragset have altered photographs of assorted heads of state waving from on high. ‘The balcony is another architectural power centre, supporting and elevating the head of state who is standing above people’s heads and waving down,’ said Elmgreen. ‘Images of royals and presidents are cut out of the image. The important part for us is the balcony – it’s the guilty architecture.’

Silkscreened in black and white onto stainless steel plates polished to a fine gleam, familiar figures are disappeared into mirrored silhouettes, reflecting onto the floor as human shadows. Eye-level placement means that the viewer encounters his or her own visage where the missing leader’s should be.

Is it a despot? A beloved monarch? A slick alum of Sciences Po? The identities and locations are not disclosed, but the Buckingham Palace scene is unmistakable, and architectural detectives will delight in mining the other balconies for clues. Those delicate decorative accents that carry the fizz of Danish Rococo suggest Margrethe II, who Elmgreen recalls waving a little flag for in 1972, when she was proclaimed queen (on the balcony of a different Copenhagen palace). Over at the Casa Rosada (disguised in greyscale), the legacy of Evita is carried on by the distinctively coiffed present-day president of Argentina, Javier Milei.

In one work that gets a wall to itself, the silhouette of former First Lady of the United States Nancy Reagan is joined on the White House balcony by a figure in an Easter bunny costume. Where some will see whimsy, others, including Elmgreen & Dragset, discern a figure synonymous with her deadly silence during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.

Yet as the last several days have demonstrated, change – transitional, transformational, even triumphant – is possible. ‘These works are the ultimate in adaptability. Due to their mirror-polished surface, they will change according to where they hang,’ said Elmgreen. ‘They will suck in the surroundings and tell a different story. Think of it, this one, reflecting a blue sky, you would suddenly turn it into a Magritte!’

‘TRANSITION’ is on view at Pace Gallery until 16 January 2027

Part of the Micasa furniture campus in São Paulo, Casual Store is conceived as both a functioning exhibition space and a beautifully designed spatial object in its own right. The new showroom for the well-known design and product destination in Brazil was created by Studio mk27, the architecture studio founded by Marcio Kogan – also behind a number of other Micasa buildings, such as the retail space Volume C, completed in 2022.

Discover Casual Store by Studio mk27

Casual Store is located in Micasa's complex in the Brazilian metropolis' Jardim neighbourhood. The architecture team applied its signature warm, invitingly minimalist approach to craft a seemingly simple volume – three orthogonal floors, neatly stacked on top of each other, wrapped in glazing and featuring elegant shading on the inside to protect from the hot sun.

Kogan (a long-term Wallpaper* presence, who guest-edited our October 2024 edition and shared with us his top 50 films of all time) worked on the architecture with colleague Samanta Cafardo. Interiors were created by Diana Radomysler and Pedro Ribeiro.

The practice's well-established cinematic approach is ever-present in Casual Store. The double skin of glass and slim white shading fins creates a dynamism and a sense of movement as visitors journey through the space. And while the volume might at first appear opaque from a distance, upon approach, peeks inside allow glimpses that tantalise the guest and beckon them in.

This play of transparency and light draws one in, but once indoors, the atmosphere changes to a serene, cocooning environment clad in light, neutral colours (mostly white) and clean surfaces. This is Studio mk27's contemporary interpretation of the 'white cube' of a gallery, the architects explain, putting the displayed furniture and products front and centre.

This seemingly simple geometry is not arbitrary, the team hastens to add. It serves functionality and supports the store's daily shows and other activities.

They say: 'A single geometric order governs the entire project: the Cartesian plan unfolds into the floor pattern, the orthogonal ceiling grid, the freestanding central volume, and the modulation of the façade. Across different scales, these elements become reflections of the same architectural gesture, lending the space a sense of coherence without compromising its flexibility.'

Everything is connected by a central core, a freestanding volume at the centre of the floor plan, which hosts circulation and any auxiliary spaces needed for the showroom’s smooth operation. Around this element, everything can move and adapt according to each display's needs.

This gives Casual Store more of a light, pavilion-like feel rather than that of a heavier, fixed structure. Here, exhibitions, events and other commercial functions can seamlessly merge, blurring the lines between retail and theatre.

mk27.com

To those who know, Italian lighting designer Angelo Lelii is an icon, but his name may not be as widely familiar as those of his 20th-century peers – from Achille Castiglioni to Gae Aulenti. But Lelii, who founded the lighting company Arredoluce in the 1940s, exerted a significant influence on modernist lighting design that endures to this day, and his pieces are as sought-after as ever.

Angelo Lelii and Arredoluce

Born in Ancona, Italy, around 1911-1915 (sources dispute the date), he studied at ISIA (Superior Institute of Industrial Art) at the University of Decorative Arts in Monza, on the outskirts of Milan. Fascinated by lighting and in pursuit of design with clean lines, utilising new technologies, Lelii began to create lamps in 1943 in the basement of his home in Monza. In 1946, he advertised his lighting designs in the pages of Domus magazine, a move that would catalyse the formation of his brand Arredoluce the following year.

At the eighth Triennale di Milano in 1947, the international art and design exhibition, Lelii exhibited a geometric and minimalist floor lamp. The metal design featured shaded lights on three adjustable arms held aloft; as if an angular Alexander Calder mobile had turned into a lighting object. The work made such an impact at the exhibition that it came to be known simply as the ‘Triennale’ floor lamp, and remains perhaps Lelii’s best-known design.

The 1950s were a particularly fertile post-war period for Italian design, and as Arredoluce grew in standing, the company started to collaborate with leading talents of the day, including Franco Albini, Achille Castiglioni, Gio Ponti, Nanda Vigo and Ettore Sottsass.

The designs from Lelii and his collaborators became known for functional and technical innovations, including adjustable articulated arms (as with the ‘Triennale’ floor lamp), counterweights, pivoting heads, concealed wiring, seamless welds and compact transformers. All this enabled the lights to respond to the diverse and shifting needs of contemporary domestic and office interiors.

Visually, the sleek and elegant designs – pared-back yet sculptural, practical yet gently playful – helped define the modern Italian aesthetic. The lights were carefully crafted rather than mass-produced, and harnessed – among other materials – opaline glass, brass and aluminium.

Lighting combined with art and engineering

Lelii has been praised for taking an approach to lighting that synthesised art, engineering and atmosphere. His other key designs include the ‘Stella’ ceiling light (1950s) – a constellation of softly glowing spheres suspended from brass arms that has been reinterpreted and echoed by many designers since – and the surprising ‘Cobra’ table lamp (1964), a futuristic design based on the image of a cobra swallowing its prey whole.

Following Lelii’s death in 1979, Arredoluce dissolved – though it was later revived under lighting brand Auralis. Lelii’s designs remain highly collectable, exhibited and sold by galleries including Nilufar, Carpenters, Antiqua and Side Gallery.

Key works by Angelo Lelii

Jan Jakub Tesař of Prague-based Stempel & Tesar architekti, has completed a house in the city for his own family. The Minimal Maximum House is very much a crafted, self-directed project for Tesař, who joined the practice with his former teacher Ján Stempel in 2008.

Describing the house as ‘a personal manifesto in which more than two decades of designing residential architecture for others is condensed into a single, highly concentrated response,’ the new house sits on a tightly constrained and challenging spot in the city.

‘Every centimetre became a deliberate decision, resulting in a ‘minimal maximum’ – a house without corridors,’ says Tesař. The key feature is the three-storey central dining space that forms the core of the house. Over four metres tall, it connects to the various levels via a winding steel staircase and a series of half landings.

The site itself had been vacant for many years, located on a slope between two apartment buildings and villas, home to some ancient garages. Measuring 240 sq m, it also sits close to a railway track and contains a protected mature cherry tree, all factors that have dissuaded commercial developers from having a go.

For an architect, looking for a site for his own family, it presented an opportunity. ‘The plot shaped it, ambition motivated it, and responsibility refined it,’ Tesař says, ‘I built the house for us, for the whole family, but it reflects my ego. An ego shaped by twenty-five years of learning from the experienced and by building homes for others.’

By building high on a tight 70 sq m floor plan, Tesař and his team have created a three-bedroom house with a distinct vertical character that has around 100 sq m of accommodation. Light rights for neighbouring properties guided the shape and setback of the new house, with a frontage along the existing street line and its own garden to the rear.

The use of offset floor levels makes the most of the available space, with a sunken living area set into the hillside on the lower ground floor, stepping down from the entrance level. As one progresses up the house, this arrangement replaces a conventional hallway and corridors, with the staircase serving as the circulation and the 4.2m high dining room serving as lightwell and focal point.

The concrete structure required for the partially subterranean levels are left exposed and built-in furniture is used extensively to maximise the sense of space and the purity of the wall planes. Detail is everything. A single walnut tree provided the richly grained wood found throughout the kitchen, living room and doors, while in bedrooms have a more pared back, neutral finish.

This simplicity and minimalism is also carried through to the façade, which is clad throughout with vertically ribbed white profiled aluminium sheeting. In the dining room, a large sliding glass window opens up the space to the garden in the warm summer months.

Environmental performance has been carefully considered, with triple-glazed windows, high levels of insulation and underfloor heating powered by an air-to-water heat pump. The garden is irrigated by collected rainwater and a modest photovoltaic array on the roof deals with day-to-day energy needs.

As Tesar notes, the house is a unique creation, shaped by necessity and the demands of the site, but also highly crafted and individual in its detailing, right down to the custom front door handle, with ‘precise and functional geometry [that] also serves as an artistic statement.’

Stempel-Tesar.com, @Stempel_Tesar

For art royalty Iwan and Manuela Wirth – who founded art gallery Hauser & Wirth in 1992 alongside Ursula Hauser – food is a rich and important part of a life defined by a shared cultural conversation. Now, a cookbook which originally began as a birthday gift to Iwan from Manuela, inspires a project which unites over 200 recipes, the cornerstone of their life together.

Manuela invited an artistic network of artists, curators, extended family, museum directors and collectors to contribute recipes to the book, and received an enthusiastic response – from Don McCullin’s mushroom risotto, Louise Bourgeois’ cucumber salad and Cindy Sherman’s garlic and bread soup, to William Kentridge’s pear and cardamom margarita and family recipes from Annie Leibovitz and Lorna Simpson.

From practical recipes to hearty breakfasts, to conceptual takes and cocktails, it’s all here. Get a head start with these recipes from Cindy Sherman, Frank Bowling and Lorna Simpson.

Cindy Sherman’s Portuguese garlic and bread soup

I had this in a restaurant somewhere in Portugal around 1998 and tried to replicate when I came home because of how simple and basic it seemed and was absolutely delicious.

Make a paste of a clove of garlic by mashing it with a little salt.

Spread it on some good, crunchy stale bread and put in a bowl.

Put a poached egg on top and cover with hot chicken broth.

Sprinkle with cilantro.

Eat.

Frank Bowling’s Oxtail Stew in Beer with Cook Up Rice

I must have learned about oxtail stew and cook up rice from my mother when I was growing up in British Guyana and while I can’t say that this is a faithful Guyanese recipe, having oxtail in the slow cookpot and rice in a cast iron skillet was an ever-present accompaniment to my life in the studio in London and New York.

It’s this simple: I’d get some chopped-up oxtail from Brixon Market and put it into the slow cookpot with whatever vegetablesI had to hand– maybe carrot, onions, maybe okra or bitter melon and Scotch Bonnet peppers together with most of a bottle of London Pride bitter beer. Then leave it to cook over night until the oxtail fell off the bone. I’d serve the oxtail stew with basmati rice, first steamed gently in a small pan then fried in heavy cast-iron skillet with back bacon and cabbage cut up very small.

Frank Bowling’s Champagne Cocktail

While I always like a tot of Lagavulin, for my daily tipple in recent years, I’ve settled for a champagne cocktail which goes like this:

Two thirds of a glass of champagne

A tot of decent brandy

A good splash of Perrier water

A dash ofAngostura Bitters

Six slices of aloe vera as a bitter garnish

Lorna Simpson’s Jambalaya

1/2 c. rice

1 slice ham

2 onions

1 Tbsp. butter or shortening

2 sprigs parsley

2 tsp. cloves

1/2 Tbsp. chili powder salt, pepper and cayenne pepper according to taste

1 lb. fresh pork

1 dozen pork sausages (links)

2 cloves garlic

2 bay leaves

1 tsp. thyme

3 c. beef broth or hot water-beef broth is tastier than hot water

Cut pork very fine, lean and fat into pieces about an inch square. Chop onions very fine. Mince the garlic and herbs. Put tablespoon of butter in saucepan; add onions and pork, let them brown slowly. Stir frequently, and let them continue to brown slightly, then add the ham chopped very fine, and the garlic-then add the herbs, thyme, bay leaves, parsley and cloves. Let this all brown about 5 minutes longer, then add the pork sausages cut apas and cook another 5 minutes. Then add the 3 quarts of broth or water. Let cook for 10 minutes and when it comes to a boil add the washed rice. Then add to this 1/2 tablespoon chili pepper, salt and cayenne. Let it boil 1 1/2 hours longer, adding small amount of boiling water, if necessary or until rice is tender.

Please serve this dish hot!

A Cookbook for Ivan by Hauser & Wirth

Building with wood has always been part of White Arkitekter's DNA – and it is a topic increasingly on many architects' minds lately, too. In the search for sustainable architecture that can mitigate the risks brought on by climate change and other challenges of our times, creatives around the world have been looking at alternatives to the conventional building methods. So far, the latter have resulted in the construction industry's infamous reported 37% to 40% of global carbon emissions.

The road is not an easy one, as architecture studios navigate fashions, market forces, perceptions and regulations (which can all differ across territories) in the hunt for options. In this context, timber, one might argue, is not a new material at all. It has been in the design canon of the Nordic nations (and beyond) for centuries, and it's also a renewable resource when managed correctly. White Arktekter has been at the forefront of a global movement to spotlight timber as a go-to, no-brainer solution for contemporary architecture. We met with the practice's new CEO to hear about its exciting applications within White's growing portfolio.

Oskar Norelius of White Arkitekter on Wood City and more

2027 will mark 20 years at White Arkitekter for Oskar Norelius. The Swedish architect started at the studio as an intern and is now its youngest-ever CEO. The 550-strong firm, with bases in Sweden and the UK, handles work in a variety of territories, including Europe and Canada, and has carved a unique niche in timber building. This is not through small, experimental, one-off projects. It's about taking wood architecture and scaling it up – applying its construction techniques to high-rises, large-scale buildings, and even an entire city, as Wood City, an ongoing scheme in south Stockholm, proves. The long-term project is now entering its third year on site.

We caught up with Norelius to find out more about White, Wood City, and why building with timber is worth it.

Interview with Oskar Norelius

Wallpaper*: You have been with White Arkitekter for 20 years and are now CEO - congratulations!

Oskar Norelius: White, as a studio, is very non-hierarchical. Even as an intern, you get into a project, and you are in the room with the people making the decisions about the project. You learn a lot, and I think this is one of the reasons why many people in the industry in Sweden have worked at some point at White.

W*: How do you describe what the studio does? What is your strength?

ON: The thread that goes through all our projects is not going to be whether it's minimalist or maximalist or organic or parametric; that can vary depending on the planning situation, the project, the location, and the collaborators. The common thread is our approach and our process, which has long been people and sustainability.

W*: Tell me about Wood City. What an amazing case study to work on; there's nothing else like it.

ON: Wood City is a large development on the outskirts of Stockholm, in Sickla. And It's not just a showcase made to be published and talked about globally. It's the development of a place, a real project happening. It is unique and quite ahead of its time but also it is based on very rational decisions. It can be a challenge to imagine the new possibilities of timber at that scale, but once you put everything together, it makes sense. The site spans 250,000 square meters, and its development plan spans 15 years.

W*: What stage is the project in now?

ON: We are currently finishing the first block, and as soon as we have tenants, we will move on to the next, and then the next. Because of the long time scale, there will be some natural variation because what we're designing today is best practice for 2026; and what will be designed in 2032 will likely be different.

W*: How fast are things changing with timber construction?

ON: If you look at the number of buildings made with conventional construction techniques, it's huge. So the experience and the knowledge are very wide, and the building construction skills too – everything is aligned to produce more of those buildings. This has been built into the vision [of Wood City]. The successive buildout means that buildings will be designed at different times, as timber construction evolves. It's been five years since we delivered our Sara Cultural Centre [an award-winning, 20-storey cultural venue in Sweden's Skellefteå and one of the world's tallest timber buildings], which is a very tall and big building, and we learned there that it's not always a linear path towards 'better'. You have to keep working and evolving.

W*: Is Wood City a different beast to the Sara Cultural Centre?

ON: Wood City is not very tall, so we don't have those kinds of structural issues. But Sara was a very complex project, and in that, actually, it was our proof of concept in many ways. The most interesting part is how far you can push the vision, because working with this material gives so much, and I think a lot of people don't really realise the benefits you can get.

W*: What are some of the challenges?

ON: You can't just hire people coming in and telling you exactly how it's going to work. You need collaboration because you can't copy something that was done three years ago; the industry is evolving. You need to work with innovation. That means everyone needs to be open. And that's also the essence of what you asked earlier about our approach; if you start with openness and sustainability as your main direction, you get more freedom of design. We want to far exceed the ambitions for sustainability.

W*: And what of wood building's longevity; do timber structures age in a different way?

ON: They do, but the way that mass timber buildings are made today, it's not the wood that's going to limit the lifespan of the building. It's about adaptability, as at some point, people may not want to use them any more. A lot of the work on the structure has to be done at the same time as the programming to make sure that we can get columns in good locations that also allow very flexible use.

W*: Do you find the resistance to using timber is from the buyers, or is it actually the developers and construction?

ON: I think it's more within the industry than with the end user. I've never met anyone who said, I'd rather not have a timber building. The issue is often industry risk aversion.

W*: What kind of timber are you using, and where does it come from?

ON: This often varies depending on the project. The first element at Wood City is a combination of CLT (Cross-laminated timber) and Glulam (glued laminated timber). There are plenty of local resources in Sweden. In fact, there's an overcapacity right now in the country. Finding the timber is not the issue.

W*: What else is on your plate right now?

ON: We recently won a new development in Amsterdam – a smaller Wood City, if you will. This is going to be 500 homes in 20 buildings that are all made from mass timber, but also with biomaterials. So, there's a lot of experimentation. It's not in construction yet, but it might finish before Wood City.

W*: And in terms of completions?

ON: We just finalised a sports centre in Stockholm called Ulvsunda. It's a former brewery that we've transformed into the largest sports centre in the city.

W*: Beyond wood, are you looking into any other materials that you want to or have experimented with?

ON: Once you switch from conventional construction to timber, you open the door to all of the biobased materials that work really well with timber – for example, hemp, clay and lime chalk plaster.

W*: Where does nature, in the form of greenery and landscape, come into your designs?

ON: I think we have probably 100 landscape architects in the company, so it's a very big part of what we do. We have the technical knowledge, so how can we bring as much of it as possible into our designs? In Sweden, for example, we did this central plaza in Stockholm, Södermalmstorg, a very technical project with water management between the lake and the sea. The whole plaza is a bridge, and we planted these roofs, so it's a plaza, but it's actually a roof with a lot of greenery. You can get a lot of trees, a lot of green in a project like that. It's definitely something we're pushing.

whitearkitekter.com

A leopard commands attention through stillness. Its presence lies in its poise, controlled movements and the suggestion of power. This is what we’re told is the inspiration behind new Chinese brand Lepas, which has drawn on all these qualities for the Aura, its very first concept car. The Aura is designed to translate the animal’s muscular tension into a design that shapes and previews the company’s future range.

Presented at Global Elegance Night during the inaugural Lepas Global Elegant Lifestyle Week in Wuhu, China, Aura develops the company’s ‘Leopard Aesthetics’ approach. Its long wheelbase, short overhangs and wide stance establish the proportions, while shoulder lines evoke the tension beneath a leopard’s skin.

‘Leopard Aesthetics has always been about character. We have never put a leopard on a car. Instead, we capture its spirit through design’ states chief designer at Lepas, Ivan Dulanovic. Alongside the animal references, Aura retains the porcelain-inspired surfacing seen on the Lepas L8 SUV. Glossy volumes and flowing lines reference Chinese craft traditions, while air channels follow the body’s contours, integrating aerodynamic function into the overall composition.

‘Porcelain is our bridge between origin and ambition,’ notes Dulanovic. ‘It is a material recognised worldwide for its graciousness, and it belongs, authentically, to Chinese craft heritage.’ The most significant change appears at the front. A single black surface brings together areas previously defined by a rounded grille and separate side intakes. Paired with the Leopard-Eye lighting, this cleaner arrangement is intended to establish a consistent family identity.

‘What Aura adds is composure’ states Dulanovic. ‘Every element of the language is now distilled to its clearest form.’ This new concept car also explores personalisation through technology. A digital canvas at the front can display imagery, lighting and animations, while an elliptical rear display offers scope for individual taillight signatures. Changeable surfaces could reflect owners’ preferences while the silhouette and lighting identity remain recognisable.

‘What Aura explores is a shift we believe is coming: the face and rear of the car becoming canvases rather than fixed fixtures’ says Dulanovic. Colour provides another avenue for expression. Aura’s three proposed finishes draw on landscapes across three continents, each associated with a different time of the day.

‘Dawn Pearl takes its soft pink tone from sunrise in Tahiti. Bacalar Blue references the turquoise waters of Mexico’s Bacalar Lagoon at midday, while Provence Twilight draws on the blue-violet hues of lavender fields at dusk’ explains Dulanovic. Together, the finishes extend the concept car’s emphasis on nature, showing how colour and changing light can influence the character of the same form.

For Lepas, Aura sets out a design direction for its future vehicles. Its new front-end composition, evolving light signature and porcelain-inspired surfaces suggest a distinctive brand identity, pairing restrained forms with opportunities for customers to express themselves through colour, graphics and light.

The success of the Chinese brand’s first concept car will depend on how convincingly these ideas translate into production. The challenge now is to capture the leopard’s presence in a way that feels unmistakably Lepas, composed at rest, alive with possibility and recognisable before it begins to move.

LepasInternational.com, LepasAuto.co.uk, @Lepas.International

In Martin Amis’ satirical paean to 80s excess, Money, his antihero John Self drives a large, self-regarding, and overbearing purple car. Its name? The Fiasco, ‘a vintage-style coupe with oodles of dash and heft and twang.’ Along the way, Self encounters various other car brands – Farragos, Tomahawks, Boomerangs and Autocrats.

They’re exactly the kind of names that would tickle the creatives at Rockstar Games, who have long populated their Grand Theft Auto series with a variety of outlandish – but not entirely improbably named – vehicles for players to steal, race, collect and cruise around a vast game world.

GTA 6 is no different. So much so, that Rockstar has allowed the virtual to spill over into the real world, with six fully driveable versions of their digital counterparts seeded on the streets of Miami, Florida, as the ultimate stealthy promo for the game (due out November 2019).

In GTA, vehicles are similar but not lawsuit-adjacent to real-world cars, satirical take-offs of the kind of machines favoured by those on adjacent, outside, above and beyond the law. The unlicensable kind, in other words.

For example, there’s the low-slung elegance of the Grotti Cheetah, a dead-ringer for the 80s-era Ferrari Testarossa (as driven by James ‘Sonny’ Crockett in Michael Mann’s Miami Vice, one of the foundational jumping off points for GTA’s sojourns in the city). Or you could choose the Invetero Coquette, a car with more than a passing resemblance to the current generation Corvette.

For a more vernacular feel, there’s the Albany Manana, seen here running the kind of Hi-Riser wheel set-up favoured by the area’s custom culture and based in part on the eighth-generation Cadillac Eldorado (1967 to 1970) – the purest, boxiest era of American car design.

It’s joined by another ‘Albany’ model, the Buccaneer, a mash-up of the 70s Buick Riviera and the seventh-generation Ford Fairlane, albeit with tiny wheels and a menacing grille, both inspired by custom buildings.

Then there’s the Pegassi Tempesta, shown here in Police logo. It’s a clear derivation of the Lamborghini Huracán, particularly the version supplied for use by the Italian police force. Finally, there’s a hypercar, the Progen Emerus, Rockstar’s take on the limited-edition 2018 McLaren Senna.

To bring these cars into the real world, Rockstar Games teamed up with West Coast Customs in Los Angeles to bend, shape and spray a series of real cars to resemble their fictional counterparts.

We’re willing to bet that real examples of the Ferrari, Corvette, Lamborghini and 70s American metal lie beneath these machines; maybe Rockstar’s budget even ran to modifying one of the 500 highly collectable Sennas ever built.

West Coast Customs went to work with metal fabrication and CNC machining, transforming all the cars inside and out so match the virtual models in ever way. In game, Miami’s fictional stand-in, Leonida, will have its own array of custom shops where you’ll be able to carry out similar modifications, choosing paint, trim and accessories.

It’s worth noting too that two of the architectural locations seen here, the currently threatened Miami Marine Stadium, designed by Hilario Candela in 1963, and Herzog & de Meuron's 1111 Lincoln Road parking garage, look like they’ll also turn up in the finished game as locations to visit.

Grand Theft Auto VI is available on 19 November 2026 for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, Pre-order now.

Sierra Leone's Freetown Memorial, a monument to First World War fallen soldiers created by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1931, has been refreshed. Oshinówò Studio is the architect behind the project, which features an extension to the original structure in the shape of a prism in structural glass, boldly illuminated in a nod of respect and honour to the local Carrier Corps.

Explore the new Freetown Memorial by Oshinówò Studio

Oshinówò Studio's founder, Tosin Oshinówò, worked with the commissioner, the Commonwealth War Grave Commission (CWGC), on integrating the geometric structure and its mesmerising lighting design with the etching of the names of more than 900 fallen Sierra Leone Carrier Corps members – individually commemorated within the memorial for the first time.

This type of project was a first for Oshinowo too, who was attracted to take part in the competition by the challenge of a new typology, as much as by its importance. 'It has been an absolute privilege to design this monument. That said, I have always been drawn to new challenges, and it was precisely the unfamiliarity of this commission that attracted me. At the time, I was also exploring the relationship between public space and memory as part of an academic enquiry, and I became increasingly aware of these spaces' cultural and historical significance. I brought that curiosity and personal interest into the project, allowing it to inform my approach to the design,' she said.

The structure reaches 8.4m in height, its four glass 'fins' (weighing a total of 4,000 kg) emitting a colourful glow that culminates in a pillar of light projecting upwards and visible from a 5km radius across Freetown. This was the result of the design team's ambition for their scheme to expand its impact and conceptually resonate beyond its physical space.

'Through our engagement with the site and its context, we recognised that the monument, located within the forecourt of the Ministry of Finance, now sits within a controlled-access area. We wanted to create a memorial that could transcend the limitations of its physical location and extend its presence into the wider city. Light became a natural medium through which to achieve this,' Oshinowo explains.

'While the monument serves as a memorial to the fallen, we also saw an opportunity to create a broader space for collective remembrance, acknowledging some of the other tragedies that have shaped Sierra Leone's history. The beam of light will be illuminated on significant days throughout the year, allowing the memorial to extend beyond its immediate commemorative purpose. In doing so, it becomes a contemporary monument that speaks to the people of Sierra Leone today while carrying its message of remembrance and hope to future generations.'

Oshinówò worked with an expert international team to realise this technically complex and important commission. Engineers, glass designers, laser consultants and construction partners from Nigeria, the Netherlands, Spain, Sierra Leone and the UK worked on the project. Meanwhile, stonemasons and bronze specialists worked on the existing memorial, restoring it to its former glory to accompany the new elements' public reveal this weekend.

This didn't come without its challenges, Oshinowo recalls: 'Conceptually, the project came together quite naturally; the real challenge lay in its technical delivery. It has been an incredibly rewarding experience, but one that presented a number of significant technical and logistical challenges.

'Our first obstacle was that Sir Edward Lutyens’ existing structure had not been designed to carry the additional weight of the new monument. We therefore developed a reinforcement strategy, which I have fondly called a root canal, to accommodate the new structure without compromising or damaging the existing masonry.'

An epitaph from poets Nii Ayikwei Parkes and Julianknxx, written in Krio and English, and inscribed on the pavilion, reads: 'From today you will be carried, you are borne, now and ever.'

'This memorial is part of one of the most significant projects we have undertaken since the Second World War. It is about righting a historic wrong and renewing a promise we made a century ago: that everybody who died for the Commonwealth in the First World War, no matter where, no matter how, no matter who they were, would be commemorated equally,' says Claire Horton CBE, director general at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

'We were looking for a response that was ambitious yet accurate, one that would allow us, for the first time, to honour by name the servicemen of the Sierra Leone Carrier Corps. We wanted to commission a memorial that would transform historical research and knowledge into meaningful action, helping people in Sierra Leone and around the world to have a fuller, international understanding of the global scale of the World Wars and the diverse individuals whose service helped shape our shared history.'

oshinowostudio.com

Earlier this year, we saw a series of modernist birdhouses that nod to Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier. It was the work of Chirp, a father-daughter design workshop that has redefined small-scale architecture. Now, the duo are back with a series of bird feeders inspired by artists including Yayoi Kusama and Mark Rothko.

The studio is based in Weymouth, Massachusetts, where co-founders Nima Yadollahpour and his daughter Mina wanted to bring elegant form and function to a smaller scale, and create design-conscious homes for the discerning contemporary bird. Now, the new collection of bird feeders extends this same curiosity into the world of art.

Discover the collection of bird feeders inspired by artists

‘After working with architecture as the starting point for our birdhouses, art felt like a natural place to explore next,’ shares Nima Yadollahpour. ‘I’ve always been interested in the relationship between art and architecture, and the bird feeder gave us a completely different kind of object to work with.’

He explains that with the feeders, they could think about colour, geometry, repetition, mass, positive and negative space, and then ask how those ideas could become something functional for birds.

‘What was also really interesting to me was the idea that the birds themselves could become a dynamic part of the piece,' adds Yadollahpour. 'Unlike a static object, the feeder is constantly changing as different birds arrive, perch, feed, and move through it. Their colour, movement, and behaviour bring the composition to life in a way we could never completely control or design in advance. In that sense, the birds become part of the art itself.’

Each bird feeder's design borrows themes from the artist's oeuvre: there are nods to Piet Mondrian’ intersecting planes, Yayoi Kusama’s circular reliefs and repetition, and Alexander Calder’s layered forms, while a modular system of cubes and open frames forms the Sol LeWitt-inspired bird feeder. The collection also includes feeders inspired by Mark Rothko, Lee Bontecou, Louise Nevelson, and Joan Miró.

‘We were looking for artists with very distinct visual languages that could be translated into three-dimensional objects without simply copying a particular work,’ Yadollahpour told Wallpaper*. 'Some, like Mondrian and LeWitt, offered very clear ideas about geometry and structure. Calder allowed us to explore positive and negative space. Kusama led us toward repetition and pattern, while Rothko was more about proportion, depth, and restraint. Bontecou, Nevelson, and Miró each opened up very different possibilities in terms of form, texture, and composition. The goal was for every feeder to feel completely different from the next, while still belonging to the same collection.’

The duo explain that although they begin with a particular aspect of an artist’s work, the feeder still has to work for birds. They made sure it holds seed, provides places to land and feed, withstands the weather, and is practical to maintain. ’Of course, seeing birds actually use them is incredibly satisfying.’

With a collection of architectural birdhouses, and now artist-inspired birdfeeders, Chirp sees this as an ever-evolving project. ‘Right now we think of the feeders as falling into a Profile Series and a Relief Series, and we’re hoping to introduce a Mobile Series in the near future. There are still a lot of artists and ideas we’d love to explore.’

Discover the full collection of bird feeders at chirpbirdhouses.com

‘The problem with normal fixed-wing aircraft is that they need a long runway to get into the air. And it’s very hard to place that runway anywhere near where people want to go,’ says Diana Siegel, vice president of commercial programmes at Electra.

That’s a Virginia-based company, established in 2019, that reckons it has a solution: it has revisited a technology first proposed in the 1950s to create an aircraft with what it calls ‘Ultra Short’ capabilities, which means it can take off or land within around 60 metres. That opens up many more places where it might operate from, with minimal infrastructure required.

Electra’s two-seater demonstration aircraft, the EL2 Goldfinch, recently landed and took off from a floating helicopter barge off Lower Manhattan in a demonstration of its capabilities. Looking a bit like a typical fixed-wing aircraft, the Goldfinch actually has an awful lot of propellers, eight in all. But it uses these to achieve what’s known as blown lift: put simply, quickly pushing a large sheet of air over the upper surface of a wing, makes the wing perform as though it’s physically much bigger than it actually it, so creating a lot of lift.

This allows the aircraft to get into the air with a relatively short run – an idea explored in 1950s and 60s military aircraft like the Lockheed’s F-104 Starfighter, to compensate for its tiny wings, or the Blackburn Buccaneer, to allow for aircraft carrier-based operations. Blown lift also allows for a very low approach speed, enabling landings over a much shorter distance than a conventional aeroplane.

‘The effect has long been well understood but traditional engine technology just couldn’t [generally] be utilised,’ says Siegel. ‘Imagine trying to place eight turbines or piston engines along a wing – it would be too heavy, too slow’. What has made a functional blown-lift aircraft possible has been the use of a hybrid propulsion system: compact and lightweight electric motors to generate the lift and, critically, evenly distribute it the length of the wing.

For cruising, a nose-mounted, sustainable aviation fuel-burning turbogenerator powers the propellers directly to allow for optimum speed, while simultaneously recharging the batteries. This means that charging facilities aren’t required at landing sites.

Electra, which recently selected a 96-acre site in Ohio for its production facility, plans to start test-flying its EL9, an aircraft capable of carrying nine passengers, late next year. Siegel says the idea is scalable still further, though she concedes that, while it’s technically possible, by the time you’re talking about getting 100 or more people into a plane it starts to make more logistical sense to use the established airport system.

But why not just take a helicopter? For one, their passenger capacity is limited – at least with current models. But they’re also extremely loud – making them disruptive to more urban environments – and, relative to a fixed-wing aircraft, require much more energy and maintenance. The cheaper-per-seat option of a blown-wing aircraft has, argues Siegel, a huge positive knock-on effect for operating costs, so both increasing the possible variety of use cases and making flying more accessible to more people.

Since the technology also disrupts the hub-and-spoke model that’s long been the standard for commercial airline travel, Electra reckons there are a lot of people who would take up the option to fly point to point in this way. ‘We think it can transform the how we travel over distances that are too long to drive, but too short to make it worth going to an airport,’ says Siegel. ‘We’re not just talking about saving an hour on a driving trip here, but perhaps four hours. You’re not wasting all that time getting to and through an airport’.

Electra’s own analysis reckons that 35m passenger trips occur by car over distances of 50 to 500 miles every day in the US, with 80% of trips between 50 and 265 flying miles lacking a practical air option. It has identified over 6000 routes with at least 1000 travellers per day. And while the company sees its initial growth market as the US – where long drives are the norm – the company believes its concept should also work in any market where there’s a problem between two points: perhaps where there’s typically heavy congestion.

Siegel suggests time could be saved on a journey from London to Oxford, for example, or – with tourism in mind – from London to the Scottish Highlands. She sees a possibility for what she calls a ‘push a button, get a flight’ VIP service in the longer term, although initially Electra’s launch partners are looking to establish scheduled services.

There remains perhaps one final hurdle, Siegel acknowledges, and that’s passenger perception. She says Electra could have pushed the technology further and ended up with an aircraft that looks more radically different but chose to aim for what is more of an evolutionary step on from what passengers are already used to.

And as for how it feels to fly Ultra Short? ‘From the passenger point of view it feels remarkably unremarkable,’ she laughs. ‘It’s rather like riding an elevator. You feel a lot of power beneath you and then you’re just up and away very quickly’.

Electra.Aero, @Electra.Aero

It used to mean that forgoing booze at party meant settling for a sad glass of sparkling water or juice. This is exactly why Constance Jablonski and Maggie Frerejean-Taittinger, founded the premium non-alcoholic wine brand French Bloom.

‘In 2019, I was pregnant with my twins,' Frerejean-Taittinger says. 'I realized for the first time what it could feel like to be a little bit excluded from the culinary moment at a restaurant, but also social events with my friends or colleagues.'

So she teamed up with Jablonski, a top model and her friend since 2008, to change things. Together, the pair realised there was no premium version of a non-alcoholic drink that wasn't riddled with sugar. After a year of 70 different tests and recipes, the duo launched French Bloom in 2021. Since then, the collection of sparkling non-alcoholic wines has been incredibly well received worldwide (including in France, a tough wine clientele to please), and LVMH is now a minority shareholder.

French Bloom now includes four sparkling wine cuvées: Le Blanc, Le Rosé, L’Extra Brut, and La Cuvée Vintage 2023. To ring in the brand's fifth birthday, French Bloom recently threw a party on Belmond’s dreamy Celia carriage, a British Pullman carriage designed by Baz Luhrmann and costume designer Catherine Martin. To mark the occasion, we checked in with Jablonski and Frerejean-Taittinger to hear how they throw the perfect party where everyone, regardless of sobriety, can raise a glass.

How we Host with French Bloom

Wallpaper*: Are you a relaxed host and pull it all together at the last minute, or is there careful planning?

Constance Jablonski: I really wish I was a relaxed host, but I can't lie, I like planning everything. I'm such a perfectionist. I want everyone to have a good time, and it doesn't mean necessarily to have something super fancy, but I like to plan ahead.

Maggie Frerejean-Taittinger: I'm like you, Constance. I'm not relaxed. The more you do before, the more relaxed you are when the guests arrive. I love planning the menu, the table, the flowers. But once the guests arrive, I want people to feel like I'm completely relaxed. So, the best evenings, in my opinion, are the ones that people don't notice how much preparation went into it.

W*: Can you cook?

CJ: I'm a terrible cook. I never cook. I'm not the kind of person who can open the fridge and make some magic with like four or five ingredients.

MFT: But Constance, I've been to some great dinner parties at your house.

CJ: I order everything in! The great thing in Paris, and I'm sure in every big city now, is that you have so many great things available in épiceries and little restaurants.

MFT: I do like to cook. I think being in Paris definitely raised the bar. I like to cook for family and friends. But I'm also equally happy to delegate a course or two. Knowing when not to cook is also a hosting skill.

W*: What was the first dish you perfected to feed a group of friends or family?

MFT: A proper roasted chicken, which is very key to Sunday lunch with family and friends here in Paris. It's simple, it's generous, it's almost impossible not to love. And then adding roasted potatoes, a nice green salad, a great bottle of wine.

CJ: I do that every Sunday with my family, too. I go to the rôtisserie downstairs because they have such a great one, and I pick the potato and the chicken, and make a green salad myself.

Drinks on arrival – what’s on offer?

CJ: I always have alcohol for my friends I know they love to drink, and I have French Bloom for my friends I know they will never drink. It's nice to give people the option. I think it's the whole idea also behind French Bloom, making sure everyone has something that they like.

MFT: Fully agree. I've always been a sparkling girl. My husband's a Champagne maker; now we have French Bloom. I love sparkling for arrival, but as Constance says, our customers are flexi-drinkers; we are, flexi-drinkers. It's been interesting because I just moved to the US to build the market. I see that there's a big difference. In France, people start with French Bloom and save the wine for dinner because wine is culture and it's for food. In the US, I'm seeing the opposite. I'm seeing a lot of people accepting something alcoholic, and then switching to French Bloom to moderate responsible drinking without stepping down quality.

Go on and tempt us – what’s your go-to menu, from starters to afters, whether homemade or bought in?

MFT: When people arrive, maybe some crudités, very French, like some radish and butter, as we stay around the couch with our drinks. And then, when we sit at the table, I want to go straight for the main course. Not only does it help my dishwasher, because, again, apartments aren’t so big, but I'm tired of the different courses. I'd do a roast chicken or simply prepared fish, maybe with seasonal vegetables and potatoes, and a green salad. I’d probably skip the cheese course and then have a beautiful dessert, maybe something chocolate; dessert's not negotiable.

CJ: I'm a big fan of Greek food, so I feel like it's always like a little tomato salad or so, just something light and easy, like stuffed vine leaves, artichokes in olive oil. For the main course, I love fish; my go-to is a papillote: you place the fish in paper, add the spices, then tons of vegetables, and everything cooks together. I'll never forget about my cheese. And for dessert, I just pull out a nice box of chocolates.

What’s on your dinner party playlist?

MFT: It's important to have music that's not taking over the conversation until maybe later in the night when things can get a little bit louder. I love a mix of Olivia Dean, Anderson. Paak, a little bit of beat from Ayra Starr, Cleo Sol. I think that type of music would set the mood and bring a little energy.

Who’s your dream dinner party guest?

MFT: Stanley Tucci. I was just reading an article about him. I feel like I'd have somebody who genuinely loves food, wine, and conversation, as Stanley would definitely be the last person at the table. Stanley can mix with anybody; he would be an incredible dinner party guest. I would love to invite him to my home soon.

CJ: For myself, I would love to have a stand-up comedian. I love Haroun, who is a really great French comedian, or Caroline Vigneaux and Panayotis; he's hilarious. Comedians are great conversationalists, and they break the ice around political subjects, which can be a little delicate. We need that more than ever, right?

Dish the dirt: what should a host never do?

CJ: Talk politics.

MFT: It's so hard for me, because I studied political science. In the US, we're approaching the midterms; it's so extreme on all sides. It's very challenging. Now I'm in Paris; we know what's happening here. However, I believe a host should never spend the evening in the kitchen.

What should a guest never do?

CJ: Talk politics!

MFT: What if they arrive with an unexpected plus one? Or if people come and then spend the evening on their phones? It doesn't happen that much, but dinner is an invitation to be present.

What’s the secret to a successful evening?

CJ: A good mix of people, a good crowd that, you know, gets along, gets to know each other. I think the group is really what makes the evening.

MFT: I love it when I walk away from a party feeling so full. The word I would use is generosity. When you have generous food, generous pours, people opening beautiful bottles, and generous conversation. The best dinner parties aren't the most elaborate. They're the ones where you feel so comfortable that nobody wants to leave, and you really feel welcomed. It doesn't have to be caviar and Krug.