So here it is, the Jaguar Type 01, the car that begins Jaguar's new electric era. Many years in the making - and that's just the PR campaign, the Type 01 needs to take the storied brand into uncharted waters, more upmarket and luxurious than any model that's gone before it, but also defiantly and irreversibly electric.

Through a staggered series of unveils and reveals that found themselves on an unwitting collision course with the wretched culture wars, the Type 01 arrives in a slightly different - and hopefully more mature - than that which greeted the original Concept 00.

Electrification is still an outlier in this sector, but hardly an effected eccentricity. The whingeing contingent that was never going to get with the programme haven't gone away, of course, but they are a little quieter. Even the Ferrari Luce, which stole more than its fair share of negative thunder when revealed back in May, is starting to grow on people, and the addition of the Bentley Torcal to the high-end EV club has helped even more.

Type 01 is a fastback, four-door, four-seat electric saloon. Scale is very much central to its character. At 5,235mm long, Type 01 is knocking on the door of cars like the Bentley Flying Spur, Rolls-Royce Ghost and even the Cadillac Celestiq, but none can match the Type 01’s dramatically low 1,403mm height, something that’s more akin to a sports coupe (the Luce is over 14cm taller).

The underlying electric powertrain and battery (new 850-volt architecture with 118kWh of usable battery) isn’t to put to use to re-shape the interior accommodation (as per Jaguar’s only other dedicated EV, the long discontinued I-Pace) but instead sacrificed on the altar of proportion and drama.

It’s an EV with a very long bonnet and extended rear overhang, forms that help the aero but which also draw a clear line back to the proportions and lines of past Jaguars. Like the Polestars 4 and 5, Type 01 does away with the rear window, replacing it with a camera and screen.

The inclusion of massive 23” wheels as standard (same as the Luce, although it also has truck-like 24” wheels at the rear) helps shrink the Type 01’s silhouette but there’s no escaping the fundamental conclusion; big is better and biggest is best, at least where luxury conveyances are concerned.

Detail design is exquisite, from the new Jaguar monogram to the use of aluminium and brass-effect finishes, Woolblend DuoWeave textiles from Kvadrat, and lightweight NeoGrain material from Ultrafabrics.

From a design point of view there is a lot to admire here, especially the commitment to a minimalist aesthetic that at times tips over into brutalism; the crisp folds of the rear three-quarters as it meets the shoulder line, the near-vertical treatment of the area behind the rear wheel arches and the slatted ‘frames’ that define the front and rear elevations.

Inside it’s a similar approach, with a single 24” OLED instrument panel and a compact 7” touch screen in the centre console. But is it all a step too far in terms of brand image?

Arguably Jaguar’s absence from the fold over the past two years has raised the stakes but also kindled some additional fondness for the brand – everyone wants this car to do well. In pure statistical terms, the Type 01 is competitive, with a projected EPA range of up to 400 miles (450 miles on the WLTP scale), which should translate into 300+ miles at the kind of high-speed cruising it looks suited to.

With up to 1,030PS on tap, the Type 01 should hit 62mph in 3.2 seconds, although a more useful (if illegal) metric is its ability to whisk from 62mph to 112mph in just 4.0 seconds.

There’s obviously lots more to say about the Jaguar Type 01 and when we drive the car we’ll dig down into more detail. However, as a scene-stealing flagship for a company that wanted a full creative re-boot, Type 01 can’t be faulted. Now it just has to deliver the driving experience to match.

Jaguar Type 01, more details at Jaguar.com, @Jaguar

These two Croatian houses represent the concise architectural approaches of the two partners of Zagreb firm Njirić+ arhitekti. Founding partner Hrvoje Njirić set up the studio in 2001 and was subsequently joined by Iskra Filipović. Both have recently completed their own residences, with each one set on a very different site and therefore representing the firm’s varied typological and theoretical approach.

Double-Villa Bukovac: a Croatian house that redraws suburban rules

Hrvoje Njirić’s Double-Villa Bukovac was shortlisted for this year’s EU Mies Awards. Described by the architects as a ‘dialogue with Zagreb’s Urban Master Plan,’ it is in fact more of a critique.

Deliberately shaped to diverge from the many rules and regulations set out in the city’s General Urban Development Plan of the City of Zagreb, Njirić calls the house a ‘vision of reimagining the green foothills of Zagreb for a lower-density residential typology.' In summary, the architects state that they favour 'smaller volumes, lower structures, a gentler footprint and larger plots with a minimum area of 1200 sqm.’

In a way, this is an argument for preserving the city’s suburban character, using idiosyncratic and decidedly non-suburban forms, to provide something of a ‘case study that proposes a new form of urban decency for the city.’ The house actually contains two attached dwellings, deliberately undercutting the allowable maximum built space (600 sqm for a 1,200 sqm lot) in favour of a total of 180 sqm.

The Double-Villa Bukovac also goes out, rather than up, with a linear plan designed for multigenerational living arrangement consisting of a single structure spanning two adjacent lots. The public-facing street façade on the northwest is close to the road, maximizing the amount of available open space behind the houses.

In public, the houses present an austere façade of perforated brick, whilst the private rear to the southeast is glazed, open and shared, with views towards the city.

Double-Villa Bukovac embodies myriad architectural influences, old and new, from Palladio (who inspired the two components’ ‘disciplined symmetry’) to the Eames House and Studio. Even Thomas Jefferson’s work at the University of Virginia gets a nod for influencing ‘the relationship to the terrain and the classical rhythm of the façades,’ while a slightly more contemporary source was the American Case Study House programme.

All of these and more can be detected in the twin mirrored structured, with materiality that becomes lighter further up the structure, a love of unconventional materials (those bricks, the use of cable tray mesh on the façade, billowing ribbons of curtains) and a subterranean garage that also serves as a private art gallery and ‘party venue’. The orientation of the glazed façade minimizes winter energy demands, while passive shading comes into play in the summer.

Zagreb House Extension: A vertically extended city house

In contrast, Iskra Filipović’s residence at 140 Petrova Street reuses an original structure and adds a layer of new accommodation. A rejoinder to Zagreb’s current wave of redevelopments, Petrova 140 ‘was conceived as a way of creating additional living space while retaining and working with as much of the existing structure as possible.’

The prominent site sits on traditionally residential street that has been substantially redeveloped in recent years. By adding a new, distinct volume with twin sawtooth roofs, the architects have opted to preserve the area’s original character, along with its mature trees, as a way of supplementing and not erasing an established identity.

For that reason, contrast and contradiction are brought into play. The metal-clad addition is clearly distinct from the building below, yet in scale and use it remains consistently domestic – ‘different architectural languages sharing the same address,’ according to the studio.

The new addition is made of lightweight prefabricated steel structure to avoid adding any additional stress on the original building. It was also cheaper and quicker to build, qualities that the architects have decided to emphasise and not conceal.

Inside, there’s a welcome uplift to the character of the room thanks to the high-pitched ceilings, while new openings were aligned to predefined views and light paths to ensure daylight reached into the heart of the apartment.

Just as the Double-Villa Bukovac challenges the accepted way of building new houses in the suburban context, Petrova 140 is a riposte to unthinking redevelopment. Construction cost and cultural memory are both given equal play, adding another layer to the changing life of the city.

Njiric.com

Lexus are going out on a limb with the new ES. An elegant fastback saloon, it harks back to the brand’s heyday as a purveyor new era luxury for consumers sickened by the fiscal excess required to bring lightly optioned German cars up to true luxury level.

Instead of demanding customers tick all the boxes, with a corresponding increase in price, Lexus provided practically everything as standard, making cars like the LS and GS a smart alternative. Aggressive over-engineering also helped the newcomer’s case, and the soon the combination of Japanese reliability, crafted comfort and extensive onboard technology swept the board.

Then Lexus went big on SUVs and crossovers, from small to large, helping popularise the genre at the upper end of the market and using sister company Toyota’s copious experience with hybrids to revolutionise another market sector. These days, hybrid SUVs and crossovers dominate the Lexus line-up. Saloon cars don’t get much of a look-in; in fact, saloon sales are down right across every sector.

So why the ES? Sharing underpinnings with Toyota’s Camry and Crown (two models that aren’t available in the UK), it has a similar silhouette and the same basic proportions. The original ES joined the Lexus line-up back in 1989; this is the eighth iteration and the first to be all-electric.

In the US, the Toyota Camry starts at around $29,000 (or roughly £22K). The ES comes with a much punchier £59,000 starting price. How can these differences be accounted for? Japanese craft and hospitality have always been integral to the Lexus marketing message, while the company offers an enduring case study of how to create a brand that responds to market research.

Way back in 1983, the so-called ‘Circle F’ project was initiated by Toyota, keen to break into a North American luxury market that was then dominated by European manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

Over the next few years, 60 designers, 2,300 technicians and 1,400 engineers blew through $1bn and made no less than 97 prototypes on their way to creating the acclaimed 1989 Lexus LS460. In the decades that followed, other Japanese and South Korean carmakers followed a similar playbook, spinning luxury divisions off from volume brands (Nissan’s Infiniti, Honda’s Acura and Hyundai’s Genesis).

This approach is now in its final evolutionary form, as the big Chinese conglomerates – Geely, SAIC, Chery and Xioami, etc. – are seeding new brands to the wind like an array of bubble machines, with some popping faster than others.

For Lexus, this new front of extremely accomplished competition has led to a doubling down on the role of craft and heritage, along with the elevation of Japanese manufacturing and craft culture as a point of culturally identifiable difference. Words like Omotenashi (the Japanese spirit of hospitality), Takumi (the work of a master craftsperson) and Kaizen (continual improvement, as per Toyota’s legendary factory-running skills) have become part of the Lexus word cloud.

There’s nothing different here to the way that a company like Rolls-Royce, Bentley or even Jaguar sell themselves as arbiters of British style, taste and values; what seems to matter most to all these manufacturers, Lexus included, is ‘brand salience’ – the ‘unaided awareness of a brand.’

One of the most important learnings from Lexus’s intensive start-up process was the importance of customer service, whether in the salesroom or dealership. It’s a value that persists to the present day, accounting for the impressive levels of loyalty the brand commands.

With all that said, the ES is still a bit of an outlier. Might it tempt buyers of the UX and RZ models out of their SUVs and back into saloons? Although the ES is relatively conservative, it’s also discretely distinguished, inside and out. Its SUV siblings might be more distinctive but, if truth be told, they were also rather awkward and ungainly looking. It didn’t take Lexus long to lose the classical simplicity of the original LS460 (its lines paid undeniable homage to Bruno Sacco-era Mercedes). Once lost, this design ethos hasn’t ever really been rediscovered.

The ES is a small glimmer of light for those of us who like their luxury to be cool, calm and collected. At 5m long it’s a big car, but it never looks overbearing. The front end features sharp-edged lighting signatures and vertical air intakes but loses the yawning maw of earlier cars; this being an EV, it doesn’t need a spindle-inspired radiator and it’s all the better for it.

A prominent side strake adds a sense of dynamism, as does the rising coachline, whilst at the rear the steeply raked rear screen terminates in a neat tail bisected by a horizontal light bar.

The test cars were offered in a sober but not unpleasant colour palette, including Sonic Copper and Sonic Titanium (shown here), and while the 21” wheels look more dramatic, pragmatists should note that opting for 19” wheels gives you 28 miles of additional range.

Inside, the specification is suitably impressive. The bamboo door trim pairs very well with the black and white leather specifications (available as both synthetic and real versions). Creating using a combination of 3D printed elements with bamboo inserts, it is different, elegant and tactile, with a backlight function that accentuates the geometric patterns.

The company has continued its long-running audio partnership with Mark Levinson, offering a 17-speaker upgrade to the standard 10-speaker set-up. An enhanced reclining rear-seat package is also in the works, with heat, ventilation and massage functions.

The dashboard combines a scattering of physical switches (some of which are invisible until illuminated) with a 14” multimedia screen and 12.3” steering wheel display. It’s not all elegant and practical; the interior lighting can be set to pulse in time with the music, for example.

All these little detail improvements add up to a cohesive whole; a redesigned HMI with fast graphics and Google Maps. There’s plenty of storage around and under the centre console, while the spacious rear seat makes the most of the car’s 5m length and the fastback rear lifts to reveal a 517-litre boot.

From a drivetrain point of view, the ES comes equipped with a mid-sized 77kWH battery, good for 361 miles of WLTP-rated range, which means at least 300 miles in regular use. Power output is equivalent to 224hp and 62mph comes up in 8 seconds – slow by EV standards. Sprint times are largely irrelevant in the real world, but mid-range acceleration is smooth and unfussed, adding to an overall sense of calm accomplishment.

Lexus design in general is on the up. Recent motor show reveals have included concepts with real flair, running the gamut from six-wheeled MPV to micromobility and supercar. Some of these might even make production. The new ES is conservative in comparison, but it might just herald the start of a new era of bold – and beautiful – Lexus design.

Lexus ES, from £59,341, Takumi Edition from £72,545, Lexus.co.uk

To most, the pop artist Roy Lichtenstein will forever be associated with Ben-Day dot patterns, comic strip subjects, and whaams, blams, and pows. But Lichtenstein, who created more than 5,000 artworks in his lifetime, loved to experiment in other mediums, including printmaking, sculpture, film – and, as an auction at Sotheby’s proves, furniture.

Back in the late 1960s, Lichtenstein designed a brass and glass coffee table, one of which is part of an online sale happening now at the global auction house. The sale, which coincides with a blockbuster Lichtenstein retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art opening this week, sheds light on this rare part of the artist’s practice – and also offers collectors the opportunity to seriously level up their living room.

‘Roy really dabbled in everything, and so this auction as a whole really demonstrates his versatility as an artist, his boundary-breaking approach to art making,’ says Keith Lebel, an assistant vice president in Sotheby’s contemporary art department. ‘This table represents an unusual foray into furniture design for him.’

The table is an extension of the Lichtenstein’s ‘Modern’ series, a vibrant body of work created in the 1960s that moved away from comic strip subjects in favour of geometric Art Deco motifs. Like the Modern paintings, the table features energetic shapes, as with its rounded, D-shaped legs and horizontal bands.

While experts don’t know precisely why the artist designed the table, they do know that it was made in an edition of three. Lichtenstein kept it for himself and his wife Dorothy to furnish their home in Southampton, New York. ‘This is an object that they lived with,’ Lebel explains. ‘He thought of it as a sculpture, but it was not this precious item not to be touched. It was certainly used.’

The other tables have equally legendary provenance: one went to legendary gallerist Leo Castelli, who swapped a Dan Flavin artwork for it. Meanwhile, the third went to artist Donald Judd in exchange for a sculpture (it’s since wound up in a private collection). ‘The only people who have ever owned these are just remarkable figures,’ Lebel says.

The Modern table as it’s known is part of two sales drawn from Roy and Dorothy Lichtenstein’s personal collection, one live in New York and one online-only. While the 21-lot live auction features works that will likely fetch in excess of $1 million, the online sale has markedly more accessible works, including the coffee table, which is estimated to fetch between $50,000 and $70,000.

‘I hope that collectors, both seasoned and new, will recognize this work as a really unique opportunity to acquire a work by Lichtenstein that is at once instantly recognizable and unusual,’ Lebel says. ‘It has that sort of old New York Art Deco glam that continues to be really appealing.’

Pow, even.

Selections from Reflections on Pop: Works from the Collection of Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein are now on view at Sotheby's Breuer headquarters. 945 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10021, USA

Matthieu Blazy’s vision for Chanel has concerned acts of transformation – and not simply of the house itself, which is currently undergoing a renaissance, one year into his tenure (according to Bloomberg, there has been a 16 per cent rise in sales in the first half of 2026, down to the fervid response to Blazy’s collections). This much was evident stepping into the Grand Palais showspace yesterday evening, where the Belgian designer’s previous creations for Chanel were ubiquitous among guests, not least the red, white and blue tweed jacket which featured as part of his New York Métiers d’art 2026 show, perhaps the most-worn garment of the evening.

But Blazy is also concerned with the transformative power of clothing; how a woman might dress for the ‘multiple selves’ she might inhabit over a given day, or lifetime. Last season, he evoked the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly to describe a collection which was designed capture the innate contradictions of the house. ‘Chanel is function, Chanel is fiction. Chanel is sensible, Chanel is seductive. Chanel is day, Chanel is night,’ said Blazy at the time, ending the show with a rainbow-like parade of models emerging from the figurative chrysalis in glimmering tweed and chainmail tailoring, their hair pastel-coloured or coated with a metallic sheen.

‘It represents the freedom to choose between the caterpillar and the butterfly whenever you want,’ he said at the time. ‘I wish to create a canvas for women to be unapologetically who they are and who they want to be.’

This season, under an enormous flock of glowing birds which had been erected over the Grand Palais runway, Blazy looked towards the personal style transformation of house founder Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel over her lifetime – from her beginnings in pioneering jersey to create her liberated, un-corseted line to the richer expressions of glamour which would define her later life. ‘[A] layered history of selves within a layered history of the clothing she wore,’ described Blazy, who chose to begin and end the show with Gabrielle Chanel’s own 2.55 quilted handbag, retrieved from the house’s Patrimoine archives and carried by model Dyanira Hurbuscher, who opened and closed the show.

As such, the collection drew on facets of Gabrielle Chanel’s own life and style: ‘in the collection, the young Gabrielle becomes the various Chanel women she will be,’ read the collection notes. So there were nods to the jersey underwear which would begin her fashion journey, peeking out from the opening looks; deconstructed Edwardian corsets, referencing those which she once wore and abandoned; and the tweed tailoring for which she would become best-known. Through it all, a feeling of a life in construction: jackets appeared stripped of their outer layer to reveal ‘boning’ beneath, or were left raw along their edges. Blazy called them ‘the ghostly remnants of fashion lives past’.

But through evoking Gabrielle Chanel’s story, Blazy was seeking to capture more universal experience: that of constructing an identity through the clothes we wear, one which changes as we move through our lives, but often bears traces of our past selves. ‘Throughout their lives, women become multiple selves, different faces of the same coin. It’s like a game of exquisite corpse, where one identity leads to another,’ he said. ‘[This collection is] about the women within a woman.’

Of this collection of metaphors – continuing into the show’s soundtrack, which saw Nicole Kidman read passages from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a tale of personal metamorphosis across time and place – the one which Blazy settled on was the bird taking flight. ‘This is not a historical collection; it’s a collection about Gabrielle Chanel’s layered stories,’ he said. ‘Ultimately, Chanel took off, and each step she took led to her being free, like a bird.’

Stay tuned to wallpaper.com for more from Paris Fashion Week S/S 2027.

For over 12 years, legendary make-up artist Peter Philips has overseen every aspect of beauty at Dior, from the design of its bestselling beauty products to the creative direction of its campaigns and, six times a year, the make-up for its runway shows. The brand’s latest collection, its S/S 2027 show, was a study in lightness, with Dior creative director Jonathan Anderson using delicate, dynamic fabrics and silhouettes to explore how garments transform when they interact with air.

To create a complementary make-up look for these designs, Philips started, as always, by having a conversation with Anderson. ‘It is a kind of open [conversation],’ he says. ‘And then I work with the hairdresser, manicurist and me to propose some looks, show it on models and then decide.’

For this collection, ‘Jonathan wanted a natural look with a surprise element, something subtle,’ explains Philips. So, we went for two variations of eyeliner in silver. One look was a skinny silver metallic eyeliner and the other was a chunky silver glitter eyeliner wing.’

To create the look, Philips placed a premium on creating healthy-looking skin on each of the models, prepping them with the Dior Capture skincare routine and adding Dior Forever Skin Veil primer. For face, Philips used the Dior Forever Skin Glow Foundation, in which he blended a hint of blush using the Dior Backstage Rosy Glow stick in Rosewood, Toffee or Berry, depending on the skin tone.

He then gently powdered the T-zone with the new Dior Forever On Set Powder, and added a bit of Dior Backstage Glassy Glow Stick in Glossy Jelly on the high points of the face. Finally, eyebrows were naturally groomed and lips given a hydrated plumpness with the Dior Addict Lip Maximiser in 001 Pink. On top of this clean, healthy look, Philips added one of the two silver eye makeup styles.

As always with a runway show, the biggest challenge is time. ‘We have to come up with a look literally just before the actual show, so that’s always exciting. On the day of the show, the look is briefed to my team, so they can execute the look or looks and customise it according to the model’s face shape and skin tone,’ Philips says. ‘Making sure that the designer is happy is the goal, and when that’s the case, that’s where I get the most enjoyment from.’

For Philips, the runway is also a time for him to think differently than he does the rest of the year. ‘When we create a look for the show, it is to complete or complement the vision of the designer. In my role as creative and image director for Dior Makeup, I have to consider a broader approach too,’ he says.

‘I create products not only for women who are passionate about fashion. Not every woman wants to be in the latest fashion, but every woman wants to be beautiful. So, from that perspective I can say that the Dior woman is a multi-faceted one, she’s confident and knows that she’s worthy of the best. She can go for a simple, natural look or for a full game, she owns her beauty.’

Victoria Beckham’s beauty signatures are instantly recognisable: slicked-back hair and, above all, that smoky eye. But after decades in the public eye, it isn’t always the look she feels most comfortable in.

‘A smoky eye is my comfort zone,’ she says. ‘But there are moments that call for lipstick instead. A dinner party, an evening out, any moment where I want to feel pulled together without doing very much at all. The lipstick does that work for me.’

A lipstick that does the work of making you feel confident without much effort was the guiding principle behind Victoria Beckham Beauty’s latest beauty launch, the Rouge Victoria lipstick.

Closely developed, like all VB Beauty products, by Beckham herself, Rouge Victoria is a range of six highly-pigmented reds with a demi-matte finish designed to last over an entire night. Although only six shades, the collection is designed to with an option that suits various skin tones and aesthetic styles from Coquelicot, a warm poppy shade, to House Red, a classic neutral pure red; Héritage, warm brick red tone; Velours, an earthy mahogany; Pinot, a classic crimson; Minuit, a deep wine.

Beckham, whose work in beauty has always been inspired by fine art (including her recent collaboration with Phoebe Collings-James), says, ‘The discipline of the artistic practice, the precision of artists, carried into how I chose these colours. Every one of the six reds exists for a reason. That’s the perfect edit to me, not six reds, the six reds.’

Beckham, whose work in beauty has always been inspired by fine art (including her recent collaboration with Phoebe Collings-James) ‘the discipline of it, the precision’ of artists ‘carried into how I chose these colours. Every one of the six reds exists for a reason.'

When asked which shade is her own, Beckham says House Red is her go-to and the most personal shade in the collection. ’It reminds me of a glass of Burgundy,’ she says exuberantly. ‘I keep the rest of my makeup very clean and simple so the lipstick does the talking, and I pair it with my Lip Definer. It lasts me all day or night.’

Beyond its colours, the lipsticks are formulated with a plant-derived biodegradable gel, that acts a microplastic-free alternative to ingredients that traditionally give lipsticks an easy glide and long-lasting stay on the lips. They also contain pomegranate extract to soften the lips and help prevent premature ageing.

For Beckham, who is known for never releasing a product until she deems it perfect, the lipstick earned its place in the VB Beauty family because it ‘gives bold colour without sacrificing comfort, and that balance took time.’

Shop the collection at victoriabeckhambeauty.com

In October, London’s Gallery Fumi welcomes 'Companions’, an exhibition of friendly-looking wooden furniture designed by Lukas Wegwerth and Corinna Dehn. The pair, who first met while studying at the University of the Arts in Berlin, have conceived a family of furniture clad in shingles inspired both by animal scales, wings and feathers, and by the vernacular architecture of Wegwerth’s home region in central Germany.

Part of their ongoing ‘Armadillo’ series, the six new works include two cabinets, a sideboard, a birdhouse, a dining table and a stand-alone screen. All feature the collection’s signature shingles, but with new experimentations in tone, density, and pattern. The wooden elements are sourced locally, often recycled, and processed in the designers’ own sawmill, while the colours come from natural pigments and ebonisation as well as traditional oil paints.

Working together, Wegwerth and Dehn apply the shingles to wooden structures, pushing each other in directions neither would arrive at alone, to always surprising results. Here, they tell us more about ‘Armadillo’, their partnership and their collaboration with Gallery Fumi.

Wegwerth and Dehn on their creative practice

Wallpaper*: When did you start collaborating with Gallery Fumi?

Lukas Wegwerth, Corinna Dehn: About 13 years ago. It started with ‘Crystallizations’, a series of broken ceramics that are ‘repaired’ through growing crystals in the cracks of the broken vases. Working together with Fumi has given us the opportunity to explore this process further over many years.

W*: Gallery Fumi focuses on designers and artists who blend traditional craftsmanship and innovative technologies. Are there any other creatives in the Fumi family who you find particularly inspiring?

LW, CD: We are fans of the organic, playful and architectural works of [Athens-based design studio] Voukenas Petrides. We collaborated on the very first ‘Armadillo’ furniture with them. While they came up with a shape, we developed the material strategy for the piece: it was cladded with shingles that we repurposed from the façade of our barn that we were renovating at the time. And we’ve always been fascinated by [ceramicist] Johannes Nagel’s processes and artistic works; we also worked together on the ‘Crystallizations’ series with objects he made.

And of course, Max Lamb’s distinctive way of crafting and constructing across materials and techniques continues to inspire us. We love Jochen Holz’s playful and sophisticated glass works and Saelia Aparicio’s very free spirited furniture and objects, among others.

W*: How did you two start working together?

LW: I trained as a cabinet maker before studying design and started my studio organically while I was still studying. Wood as a material and the forests I grew up surrounded by always shaped my design works.

CD: I studied fashion design and worked in the fashion industry for many years. As senior designer for Y-3, I worked in close collaboration with Yohji Yamamoto’s design team, contributing to the menswear and accessories collections. Since then I have started exploring different ways of working in the design field, among other things facilitating design workshops in Berlin’s youth prisons.

After many years of helping each other out and collaborating on smaller and bigger scale projects, we started working together more closely.

W*: ‘Armadillo’ is based on the wooden shingle, and in particular, the rounded shingles are used in buildings in Germany’s Vogelsberg region, where you have a studio. Can you tell us more about these buildings, and what they are used for?

CD: The Vogelsberg region is a widely forested volcanic region in the midst of Germany. The abundance of beech and oak wood and the local stone shaped the rural architecture. Most houses are grounded on a volcanic rock foundation and constructed as timber frameworks. The wooden shingles act as a protective layer; they wear off over the course of many decades while the actual framework is protected from the weather. The exact application and shape of the shingles’ ‘nose’ differs almost from one village to the other and from craftsperson to craftsperson, but the basic principle is always the same. Shingles had been used in all types of buildings from barns to mansions, from raw to ornamented and painted.

We are mainly inspired by the most simple ones. Time and weather let these facades become silvery and vivid. The rain shadow of each shingle is also a potential home for a range of wild bees – so the entirety of the facades does not only look like an insect wing seen under a microscope, they actually become inhabited by wild bees.

LW: I grew up in the region, in a farmhouse clad in beech shingles. I did not pay much attention to it as shingles were so normal for me, but thinking back, I feel really related to this material culture and the natural, gentle and ever-changing appearance of those buildings.

The traditional shingles of vernacular architecture are very regular, while your designs come in all shapes and sizes – why is that?

CD: Shingles are an architectural feature – that application to furniture needed some interpretation to make things work and to recreate the emotion we are inspired by. It might be true that in buildings the application is more regular, but weather and time and the use of a non-standardised shingle also reduce the feel of order over time.

But if we look at the other inspiration of our project, the animal skins, we see much more variety in size and direction of organisation around the body. A complex shape asks for more complexity and diversity of the shapes and sizes of shingles.

We were interested in combining these two realms – the vernacular building culture and the universal principle of scales in animal skins. Straight surfaces can be covered with rather large shingles, while curves need to be covered with much slimmer shingles in a wide range of shapes.

W*: This organic look, similar to scales and feathers, is reflected in the collection’s – and the exhibition’s – name. Do you see the various pieces as little creatures?

LW, CD: Yes, there is definitely a lively quality to the pieces. There is a dialogue between elements and shapes. The appearance differs from one piece to the other, sometimes the architectural references become stronger, in others the animalistic perception is more obvious. We think that a part of the animated perception is inherent to the material. Even a straight but weathered facade feels more animated with wooden shingles applied to it – so it seems to be coming from the shingle itself and is not only a result of their individual forms.

Additionally, we search for shapes that shingles can cover – it is actually not a material without limits. Certain shapes just do not go well with shingles, so we also follow the material logic on our search for shapes.

W*: What type of wood do you use for this, and where do you source the wood from? I believe you have your own sawmill in the Vogelsberg?

LW, CD: Sourcing is varied: repurposed beech shingles from our renovation site, oak beams from the repair of the timber framework, old handmade shingles we found stocked on the attic of our barn, leftover larch shingles from an architectural project that we worked on for the Crespo Foundation, an art foundation based in Frankfurt.

Making use of the sawmill is a part of the sourcing strategy for this project. It allows us to work super locally and process local wood. Vogelsberg’s vernacular buildings are defined by the local, natural materials: oak, beech, basalt stone for example.

The basalt also plays a role in our project. As in the buildings it serves to build out strong and durable details such as table tops in our case. We for example source the basalt stone from collection points to which farmers bring them when they become obstacles in their acres. This material dialogue that is very specific to the region is reflected in many pieces of the ‘Armadillo’ series.

W*: How do you work together to create these pieces? Corinna, you first work on the shingles and you shape and colour them yourself?

CD: The shingles are cut, shaped and coloured individually by hand. For some of the pieces the shingles are stained – I apply the stain in a way that creates colour gradients where different colours will blend into each other. Some pieces of the series are painted with linseed oil colours. We used these sometimes in a more transparent, light way where they are a nuance or hue of colour. Other times they are used in a way that they really cover the wood completely and highlight the texture of the different shingles.

We also investigated coloration techniques like ebonizing. This is a process using natural ingredients such as tannin, rust and lime which results in dark shades ranging from blacks and dark greens to dark browns.

W*: Lukas, you are in charge of creating the structures that will then be clad in the shingles. Where do you find the inspiration for the shapes?

LW: We develop the shapes together. Parts of the shapes are pre-planned, while many details develop over time and through experimentation. Covering the pieces with shingles requires starting at the bottom and growing the layer of shingles slowly moving from the ground up.

During the process of renovating my grandmother’s farm house, we visited a lot of farm house museums and looked at books about agricultural and vernacular architecture, traditional beehives and wooden toys. These were really strong sources of inspiration for us. We were looking for shapes that reflect the friendly and gentle attitude that we felt the shingle facades had – also something that is animate just as the facade itself is vivid and lively, seemingly but also in actuality by serving as a home for wild bees.

W*: Where are the pieces actually built? And how long would you say it takes to create one from start to finish?

LW, CD: Some were built in the Berlin studio, some were built in Vogelsberg studio. We decided to split the work following the seasonal advantages of working in the countryside. Colouring the shingles with the tannin, rust and lime required quite some space: it was perfect to use the garden and work outside. Whereas other pieces and steps of the process require different tools and machines, so working in the Berlin studio is then perfect.

A big challenge while working on the ‘Armadillo’ pieces is the slowness of the process. While it is really enjoyable to see the pieces grow and experience them becoming more and more animated, it takes a lot of time. A large piece like a cabinet will take 10 to 12 weeks from start to finish including the woodwork, the preparation of the shingles, the application and finalisation of all the details.

W: Do you have a favourite piece in the latest series?

LW: My favourite is a three-legged side table with a basalt stone top. I really love the material dialogue between the wood and stone. The shape of the structure and the variety of the different colourations of the shingles – I just feel very drawn to it.

CD: I love the high cabinet. I like its colours and the variety of the shingles – some have very beautiful gradients and others have very nice textures, so it really looks a bit like fur or feathers. A very gentle, friendly monster.

‘Companions’ by Lukas Wegwerth & Corinna Dehn, from 3 October – 28 November 2026, at Gallery Fumi, 2–3 Hay Hill, London, galleryfumi.com

Some of the pieces will also be part of Gallery Fumi's PAD participation, 13 - 18 October, 2026, Berkeley Square, Mayfair

Coinciding with this year’s Frieze Art Fair and PAD London is the Mount Street Neighbourhood Arts Festival, which is back again this year. From 12 -17 October, the festival unites visual art, fashion, food and culture across Mayfair.

Last year, across the area’s prestigious addresses, including Mount Street, South Audley Street and Carlos Place, we saw a theme of art and books. For 2026, the festival leans into photography, featuring British photographer Miles Aldridge.

Aldridge is best known for his portrait series ‘15 Minutes of Fame ’, which will feature during the festival. 62 South Audley Street will be transformed into his working studio. Inspired by his 2024 TIME Icon of the Year shoot with Elton John, the interactive installation will invite visitors to sit against his orange backdrop for a 15-minute portrait. Each sitting results in a unique Polaroid.

‘I never know who will walk into my studio, but over the course of 15 minutes together, we create spontaneous, improvised portraits whose originality never ceases to amaze me’, says Miles Aldridge. ‘Everyone embraces the impromptu nature of the project, acting out an iconic version of themselves, and as with the best images from the history of photography, how they actually come into being is a mystery. Now, after taking my portable studio to Art Basel Miami Beach, Frieze LA and the Venice Biennale, it is a joy to be bringing it to my home city for Frieze and PAD.’

The exhibition is accompanied by a new multidisciplinary performance, ‘The Fabric of Us’ at Grosvenor Chapel, by actor and writer Omari Douglas. Taking place on 13 October, it will feature dance, spoken word, music, painting and clothing, overall exploring the theme of creating and shedding identity.

The festival will also have an Art Pub Quiz at The Audley Public House, and Hauser & Wirth Publishers will bring their Pop-Up to 62 South Audley Street, spotlighting its latest releases alongside a selection of limited signed copies. Throughout the week, there will be numerous talks and presentations, including creative studio A Vibe Called Tech, which will host a series of breakfast conversations exploring the art of rituals, with residents including Hauser & Wirth Publishers Book Shop, Lyndsey Ingram, FoundRae and APPARATUS.

Today, Farm Shop, The Row, The Connaught, Dr. Barbara Sturm, Scott’s, Simone Rocha, The Audley Public House and Jessica McCormack are among the Mount Street partners. The festival brings together such a wide roster of creatives, combining culture and community at this celebrated address.

Villa Pieds Dans L'Eau is a waterside property on the small Corsican island of Cavallo, located in the Strait of Bonifacio. Designed by the architect Savin Couëlle (1929 – 2020), it was constructed over a four-year period in the 1970s, as Corsica and Sardinia became favoured Mediterranean destinations for France and Italy’s smart set.

Tour Savin Couëlle’s organic villa, Villa Pieds Dans L'Eau

Couëlle was the son of architect Jacques Couëlle, who also built in the region, most notably the Cala di Volpe hotel in Sardinia, familiar to cinema fans of the era as a location in the 1977 Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me. Cavallo also found favour as a cinematic backdrop. It was the location for Marco Ferreri’s 1972 melodrama Liza, starring Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni.

On Cavallo, Couëlle had to contend with strict building codes, that included a 4.5m restriction on height and naturalistic planting that screened new buildings from the sea. Taking the landscape as his cue, Couëlle integrated the villa directly into the coastline, incorporating granite outcrops into the design, carving steps directly into the rock and creating a naturalistic series of curved roofs and cave-like openings to frame the sea view.

For sale through Lionard Luxury Real Estate, the villa sprawls for 700 sqm along the sea front, set within a private coastal park of 4,700sqm. All that space has been designed for sharing, with a total of no less than 12 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms, as well as additional staff accommodation, an independent guest house and dock. There’s also a private white sandy beach, offering the direct sea access that gives the house its name.

In keeping with Cavallo’s rules, the house is almost completely invisible from the sea, with monumental masonry carefully spliced between the existing granite rocks. Arranged across multiple level changes, with existing and new planting arranged naturalistically across the site, it offers the new owner an organic and immersive place in nature.

The main living area is dominated by a large chunk of granite, into which the house’s central staircase has been painstakingly carved, as well as a sculptural fireplace. Rough white lime plaster rendered walls twist and turn as they sprout from the tiled floors and rocky surfaces, framing views within and without the space. All windows are bespoke, shaped according to Couëlle’s principles of organic architecture.

The accommodation includes a number of self-contained suites as well as a fully equipped professional kitchen. Shaded sun decks and covered verandas are scattered around the complex, with ever-present sea views and an unrivalled sense of privacy and seclusion.

Pieds Dans L'eau Villa, Cavallo Island, Corsica, €18m through Lionard Luxury Real Estate, Lionard.com

Our Place’s Wonder Oven launched in 2024, and for small-space kitchen users, it's a heavenly product. With 6-in-1 functions, from toasting to air-frying, it is designed not to be put away. Its design, in fact, is so cute that it is often mistaken for a toy. Now, the mini oven just got an older sibling, the Wonder Oven Pro.

Our Place, which is known for its multi-functional kitchen appliances, launches the 8-in-1 air fryer oven that still sticks to the sweet design codes and comes in three colourways: blue salt, char, and cream. Its larger size still balances playfulness, yet its practicality is even more enhanced due to its extra cooking space.

‘People weren’t saving their Wonder Oven for special occasions. They were using it for everyday dinners and asking us to make room for more,’ explains Our Place founder Shiza Shahid. ‘That request shaped the Pro: larger capacity, plus new functions to proof dough and dehydrate fruit. We also added stainless steel and cream options so it feels at home in more kitchens. And we kept listening on materials: the interior and food-contact accessories are made without PFAS ( widely known as "forever chemicals”).’

The Pro, which preheats 60% faster than a traditional oven, is family-sized, designed with 30-litre capacity – perfect for a Sunday lunch chicken, with room for Yorkshire puddings too. However, by scaling up the Wonder Oven, the challenge was also balancing more room without creating an appliance that takes over the counter.

Shahid explains, ‘We kept refining the proportions as the oven grew. I wanted it to look beautiful left out in the kitchen, with the same attention to materials we bring to our non-toxic cookware. Our goal was to make the best non-toxic air fryer without compromising on design. The digital controls give you greater precision over time and temperature. And the visual timer lets me get on with dinner, then glance over and know exactly how long is left.’

The eight cooking modes are similar to the original: air fry, bake, roast, toast, grill, and reheat, with additional options to proof or dehydrate. ‘I’ve been air-frying samosas until they’re crisp, baking chicken tikka with charred peppers, and toasting naan to go with it. On Sundays, I can roast a whole chicken with potatoes and carrots alongside it. The three rack positions let me get different parts of dinner going at once, which feels like a small miracle when everyone’s hungry,’ says the founder.

An often-overlooked function is the steam infusion: a perfect way to warm up leftovers without drying them out. Launching alongside the Wonder Oven Pro are two non-toxic accessory collections: the Baker’s Kit and the Chef’s Kit. 'We’ve always believed that the things you use every day can be both beautiful and incredibly useful', concludes Shahid. And to that we agree – the simple joy of mundane cooking has been reheated and ready to go.

It is available now for £295 at fromourplace.co.uk and Selfridges, Harrods, Fenwick, and more retail partners.

In 1972, designer Peter Opsvik created the Tripp Trapp, a child’s chair designed to evolve and change over the years. The chair, with its signature angled profile, was simplicity itself, endlessly reconfigurable with slots to raise and lower the height of the seat and footrest, along with provision for a safety bar for smaller children.

The chair was manufactured by Stokke, founded in Ålesund, Norway, in 1932. Today the company makes all manner of child and baby accessories, from the timeless Tripp Trapp through to prams, foldable baths, baby bouncers and toys.

The MoMA collaboration taps into the museum’s close connection with contemporary design – and its all-important retail arm – by bolstering the Tripp Trapp story with a new version that adds colour, collectability and an element of abstract, artistic charm. Stokke and MoMA logos are included alongside Opsvik's signature, while the red, pink, orange and blue seating and footrest can be mixed and matched.

‘At MoMA Design Store, we believe in products that seamlessly unite exceptional design with everyday life. Inspired by MoMA's colour palette, this chair pays tribute to a landmark children's product in MoMA's collection, celebrating its enduring legacy while bringing a new expression of this beloved icon to families today,’ says MoMA’s Chief Retail Officer, Jesse Goldstine, ‘It's a collaboration that reflects our shared belief that good design is for everyday living.’

Wallpaper* spoke to Tor Opsvik, Managing Director of the design company Peter Opsvik AS, and son of Peter Opsvik, along with Stokke’s VP Innovation, Martha Jørgenvåg, about this enduring product and the new collaboration.

Wallpaper*: When did it first become apparent that the Tripp Trapp design was on its way to becoming an icon? Was it instantly acknowledged from the start, or did its reputation take time to grow?

Tor Opsvik: There was no single moment when it became apparent that Tripp Trapp was on its way to becoming an icon. However, in 1973, Peter demonstrated the chair on a television programme. Afterwards, the station's switchboard was flooded with calls from parents wanting to know where they could buy it.

From that moment, sales began to grow. Within ten years of its launch, more Tripp Trapp chairs were being sold annually than there were children being born in Norway and the chair was well on its way to becoming an international success.

Its distinctive silhouette and visual expression quickly attracted attention, and its place in everyday family life helped generation after generation develop a lasting connection to the chair. It was bringing children of all ages up to the family table.

Over time, it became clear that Tripp Trapp was more than a product. As the design gained recognition and its distinctive silhouette became embedded in generations of families, the chair earned recognition as a true design classic. Its ability to remain relevant decade after decade, without significant alteration, reflects the enduring strength and timeless character of its original design.

I truly believe timeless designs are often out of step with prevailing trends when they are introduced. They do not fit comfortably into what already exists. Instead, they present a new visual and creative perspective, gradually reshape their category and ultimately outlive the trends that once made them seem unusual.

Tripp Trapp is a good example of this: a highly original design whose distinctive visual identity has remained relevant for more than 50 years. Today, it is a widely recognised piece of applied art, with museum representation that serves as a reflection of such recognition.

W*: Have there been any major changes in the way the chair is manufactured or even designed over the years? Or has it remained very consistent?

Martha Jørgenvåg: Innovation is not always measured by how much a product changes. Sometimes it is measured by how little it needs to change. Tripp Trapp is a good example of this. The chair's iconic design has remained largely unchanged since its introduction in 1972, which speaks to the enduring strength of the original vision. Rather than constantly reinventing the product, the focus has been on preserving the qualities that have resonated with generations of families.

W*: Have there been other design and colour collaborations and experiments before?

TO: Not like this one. For us, it is important to preserve the integrity of an icon whose strength lies in the clarity of its design. This partnership feels both unique and exciting. The Tripp Trapp MoMA edition succeeds in celebrating and honouring the visual identity and enduring design significance, while adding a fresh perspective through reversible seat and footplates. Families can bring their own personality to this classic design and make it part of their home in their own way.

W*: How did the MoMA collaboration come about?

MJ: Tripp Trapp has earned recognition over more than five decades as an enduring design classic. Its inclusion in museum collections, including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, reflects the iconic status the chair has achieved through generations of families and its lasting relevance in design.

In 2012, Tripp Trapp was featured in MoMA's exhibition Century of the Child: Growing by Design 1900-2000, which explored influential examples of design created for children throughout the twentieth century. Building on this shared appreciation for design, the MoMA team approached us last year with the idea of creating a limited-edition Tripp Trapp to celebrate this unique legacy.

Working closely together, MoMA and our own teams explored how MoMA's signature colour palette could be incorporated while preserving Peter Opsvik's original design. Inspired by the creativity and individuality associated with childhood, the resulting colour combinations bring distinct character and playful expression to the iconic chair, remaining true to the timeless design that families have recognized for generations.

Tripp Trapp Chair MoMA Edition by Stokke

Store.MoMA.org, @MoMAdesignstore, Stokke.com, @StokkeBaby

Rimowa’s ‘Groove’ and ‘Essential’ suitcases are a functional yet beautiful travel statement for any jetsetter. Now, travellers can add to their collection, as the German premium luggage brand has launched two new colourways: Umber and Ultramarine.

Rimowa, which is best known for its classic hardshell suitcases in anodised aluminium, leaned into natural-coloured pigments for the new seasonal hues, in celebration of earthy colours. The new colours contrast yet complement each other, and make a welcomed editon alongside the shade Ink Blue, which was added to the Original collection earlier this year

Umber is often used in the first layer of painting, and is derived from the Latin word ‘Umbra’, meaning shadow. This shade injects a warm tone across the collection. Ultramarine is a nod to the vibrant blue shade used by artists during the Renaissance. The velvety shade is captivating in its boldness.

The Essential range features the new shades throughout the suitcase, from the zipper to the handle and logo badge. The colours are also applied to the Groove range, from its Cross-Body Bag and Zipped Pouch to the new Groove Mini Shopping Bag, which is a compact version of the original.

The new seasonal colours were launched with a campaign starring English actor Joe Alwyn. The short video features a story of a young artist in his new studio, taking ownership of the space and creating a world of his own. The colours inspire his creative process.

The new colours are available to buy now, with prices starting at 770€, and will be available worldwide in stores and online at RIMOWA.com.

Across three timber-swathed storeys, this family house in Belgium takes the classic domestic archetype and subverts it through a rigorous, stripped back geometry. Inspired by the classic parlour game of constructing pitched-roof houses from a pack of cards, the structure has steeply raked roofs that fold seamlessly into detail-free façades, with meticulously aligned slim timber cladding creating uniformity and simplicity.

The house itself was built on existing foundations in a neighbourhood where zoning restrictions constrained the volume and height of the building. Vantieghem Talebi, the practice responsible for the new design, created a form that evoked historic beach houses in the neighbourhood, maximising the available envelope on the original foundations with a cruciform shaped structure that informed the position and height of the structural bays.

The project makes extensive use of prefabricated CLT (cross laminated timber) panels, which were assembled on site in a matter of days. Each of the house’s four bays houses a room with a ceiling that reaches up into the eaves. Described by the architects as ‘pitched chapels’, the interiors feature timber cladding on the walls and timber flooring throughout, while the living areas on the floor below have white walls and timber flooring.

In the basement level, there is poured concrete and rendered walls, creating a distinct progression as one ascends through the house. The façade and roof use the same chemically seasoned Douglas-fir battens, all pre-made to avoid screws or nails from intruding on the simple aesthetic, with concealed gutters and drainage also preserving the house’s lines.

Thanks to the structural panel construction, the 265 sqm interior is free of columns and other visible structural elements. The suspended main staircase, which appears to float just about the floor level, hangs from the timber first floor. Window openings are free of glazing bars whilst other minimal touches include the glass banister that surrounds the stair to the lower floor. The surrounding landscape was restored, while concrete incisions create slots for access and parking.

Based in Venice Beach, California and Basel, Switzerland, Vantieghem Talebi consists of Paul Vantieghem and Raha Talebi. Vantieghem previously worked with Stéphane Beel Architects and Herzog & de Meuron, where he was involved with the Tate Modern Extension in London. Talebi also worked with H&deM, on projects like Hong Kong’s M+ Museum and Powerhouse Arts in New York, as well as at FOA in London.

VantieghemTalebi.com, @vantieghem_talebi

Miu Miu might have shifted its show forward by two days – the Italian house usually presents on the final Tuesday of Paris Fashion Week – but its S/S 2027 show this afternoon (4 October 2026) continued a longstanding tradition of drafting famous faces to walk the Palais d’Iéna runway, following previous cameos from the likes of Gillian Anderson, Troye Sivan and Willem Dafoe.

For S/S 2027, the show featured well-known faces with connections to the world of dance, starting with Jamie Bell, whose break-out role in Billy Elliot (2000), saw him play an aspiring dancer growing up in County Durham amidst the hardships of the miner’s strikes of the 1980s. Hortense de Gromard, actress and Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris-trained ballerina appeared, as did Ella Bleu Travolta, daughter of Saturday Night Fever (1977) star and triple-threat John Travolta.

The pour le sport mood was emphasised by the runway itself – a purple floor painted with thick white lines in the style of a sports-court, with bleacher seating – and by the collection, which included garments such as rash vests, details like shoe-lacing used as fastenings, as well as the fifth edition of Miu Miu’s collaboration with New Balance, this time in the form of a reconstruction of the RC150 racing sneaker.

‘The concept of mixing elements of sports with sophistication is something that has always influenced my work,’ said Miuccia Prada. ‘But I have never been so precise, or taken it so far.’

Styled in unexpected combinations alongside embellished bras, silk bow tops, cocktail dresses, denim and unfussy leather, Mrs Prada was considering pieces ‘that comprise normal everyday dress today … laid alongside one another in intentional and nonconformist dialogues, exploring a form of friction and tension.’ There was also a collaboration with Wrangler, which saw cross-lacing details appear on American denim brand’s signature slim-legged ‘cowboy-cut’ jeans.

Other cast members included British actors Noah Jupe and Olivia Colman, models Gigi Hadid and Liu Wen, American multimedia artist Bunny Rogers, actress and singer Chandler Kinney, and Miu Miu fragrance ambassador Emma Corrin, who previously closed the brand’s A/W 2023 show.

Desert Dreaming is the perfect book to chase those autumn blues away, as part of the world, at least, is heading fast towards colder weather and shorter days. Authored by writer and regular Wallpaper* contributor Jessica Ritz, this new title for publisher Gibbs Smith zooms into the desert architecture of North America and the often-minimalist styles of living, and building, in arid landscapes.

Explore the homes in 'Desert Dreaming'

The new book, full title Desert Dreaming: Design in the Southwest and Beyond, offers a thorough look into residential architecture in the challenging, hot climates and barren landscapes of the US deserts. Tracking the country's four corresponding key territories - the Chihuahuan, Mojave, Sonoran and Great Basin regions - the book spans from homes in the popular style of desert modernism to the equally appealing vernaculars in adobe and earth-building techniques.

The book is a fascinating journey across time and territory, discussing challenges and opportunities the desert environment brings - and how architects and builders' ingenious solutions not only overcame them, but produced results that fascinate and command our attention to this day.

'Desert dwellers are a unique bunch. Indigenous populations, settlers, subsequent native-born denizens, transplants, and seekers - who run the gamut from exploitatively opportunistic to earnestly enlightened - are made of hardy stuff. Tough realities can quickly dispel any romanticized ideals. It takes a certain constitution to be lured by the punishing realities of parched ecosystems where what sustains all life forms is extra precious,' writes Ritz in the book's introductory essay.

Featured projects include striking schemes by architects that often grace our pages too - from Wallpaper* Best Use of Material 2026 winners DUST and their New Mexico house Sombra de Santa Fe, to the origami shapes of OPA's Shapeshifter House in Nevada and an elegantly austere Arizona home by architecture studio A-I-R.

'Nature is the best designer,' Ritz concludes in her opening essay. 'Even the most confident architects concede this basic point and extract its lessons. Compelling tensions arise when human beings make their mark on a tabula rasa that comes with significant constraints.'

'From millennia-old adobe building traditions to sleek, innovative modernism and recent experiments that land somewhere in between the poles on this spectrum, desert-based design best evolves in tandem with people and places - whether at high or low elevation, in a coastal or rain shadow area. And, much like the residents themselves, its buildings and interiors are startlingly diverse.'

'Desert Dreaming: Design in the Southwest and Beyond', Jessica Ritz, Gibbs Smith, $50

simonandschuster.com

An art deco envelope has been transformed into a minimalist London workspace, courtesy of architecture practice SODA (Studio of Design & Architecture). The scheme, titled Elsley House and located in a 1920s building on Great Titchfield Street in London's West End, was designed not only to create a functional, 21st-century office for the client, Great Portland Estates (GPE), but also to produce an interior that exudes the warmth of the 'family hearth', the architects explain.

Explore Elsley House, a new London workspace by SODA

This idea of introducing the 'hearth' as the conceptual core of the design is not arbitrary – nor simply adhering to modern trends that bring a sense of hospitality into the London workspace. The building is named after Thomas Elsley, a local metalwork fabricator from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His craftsmanship and tiles often adorn fireplaces – inspiring the building's connection to the 'hearth'.

Today's equivalent, here, becomes the office tea point, which SODA places at the centre of its design. Around it, an elegant, solid-surface kitchen and communal seating arranged around blue-stained timber tables form the space's social heart. Soft bolster cushions juxtaposed with hard-edged frames complete the composition.

This London workspace is, as a result of this approach, conceived as a contemporary, pared-down interior featuring calming colours and a natural material palette. Crittall banding is matched by bespoke furnishings and details, from storage and shelving to rugs – making working here a thoroughly tailored experience.

'Everything was centred around the notion of the hearth, a primaeval concept predating building, where people gathered for warmth and protection and where storytelling and conversation evolved. Thomas Elsley provided the historical grounding for us; his understanding of a room and the need for a focal point to draw people in. Working with GPE, we had a real opportunity to translate these ideas into a contemporary workplace and to do it in a way that is rooted in the history of this building and the wider context of the area,' says Evelyn Sung, architect at SODA.

A basement gym, complete with a yoga room wrapped in a warm Maharam curtain in orangey-peach colour, and an outdoor courtyard featuring patterned tiles, soft furnishings and lots of planting, ensure wellness is also central in this modern office project – with the art deco geometry of the building's façade echoed in the patterns across surfaces throughout.

sodastudio.co.uk

A new West London extension is a contemporary showcase of how to make the most of a boutique footprint and modest budget. Ealing Return, a new residential design by specialist experts Kitchen Bee and Brown Urbanism, a Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2024 alumnus, is situated in West Ealing. The team – Brown has award-winning work such as Triangle House under his belt – worked in harmony to craft a rear addition to an existing period property in order to expand the family home's kitchen and dining area towards the garden.

Explore a west London extension with Ealing Return

The ground floor project also included the full refurbishment of the terraced house to provide an open-plan lounge, kitchen and dining space for the users – a family of three. The new-build element replaced a pre-existing lean-to rear extension that had become unfit for purpose, allowing only space for a galley kitchen layout with poor light.

Brown and Kitchen Bee's Mioko Fujisaki recall: 'The client appointed Kitchen Bee Design Ltd to consider options for improving the kitchen layout. It became clear that a replacement ground floor extension would unlock the ground floor layout – at which point Kitchen Bee invited their collaborator architect Brown Urbanism to work with the client to consider how to arrange a new extension to provide the additional requirements.'

The aim? 'More light and openness across the ground floor; better flow from the front to the back of the house; additional utility space for a washing machine and dryer; a larger, more efficient kitchen; the addition of a ground-floor guest WC; a built-in seating area and dining room; more space to spend time with friends and family; lots of storage yet feeling spacious,' explains the team.

Kitchen manufacturer Armony Cucine took on the build.

'Our approach was to provide great light, volume and storage without sterility. We wanted to create an opportunity for a subtle and distinctive character internally,' says Brown.

'We considered around 7-8 iterative options which tested the idea of various walk-in utility rooms that would divide the ground floor plan into distinct segments - the chosen option favoured the double route approach which carefully divides the lounge and kitchen/dining spaces via two mirrored arched openings that allow light and views from the front to the back of the house, maximising the sense of volume whilst retaining a sense of enclosure to the cosier living space.'

He continues: 'Mioko and Lucy from Kitchen Bee provided all the required utility room functions within a bank of tall units within the kitchen itself. We designed the pitched side infill section with exposed painted rafters spanning below the roof lights, creating a continuous rhythm along the ceiling whilst subtly dappling the direct sunlight.'

brownurbanism.com

kitchenbeedesign.com

A gazetteer of contemporary videogame architecture, a walk through the arcades of yesteryear and the story of how a humble 8-bit computer helped change the computing landscape of a whole country are the subjects of these three new books.

Videogame Architecture

Back in 2024, Thames & Hudson published the Videogame Atlas, one of the first monographs to explore the new digital realms of gaming in a more in-depth, scholarly fashion. Now the company is publishing Videogame Architecture, a new tome from the same team that wants to do the same for the genre’s more fantastical cities and structures.

Arranged as a series of chapters covering some of the key video game releases of the past two decades, including Bioshock, Half-Life 2 and Disco Elysium and many more. To the initiated, these are games characterised by their environments – towering future cities, run-down dystopias or cyberpunk visions.

Videogame Architecture traces the origins and reference material used for all these titles and more, exploring the ways in which architectural form and detail is used to build atmosphere and place, as well as a sense of solidity and realism.

Videogame Architecture: Building Virtual Spaces, Luke Caspar Pearson, Sandra Youkhana, $65, Thames & Hudson, ThamesandHudsonUSA.com, @ThamesandHudson

The Arcade 1971–1999

Subtitled The Stories Behind Classic Coin-Ops, Told by Their Creators, Paul Drury’s new monograph delves into the industry’s rich history and even richer mythology, back when arcade games could still be the creation of a single person not a vast team, and art direction relied on graph paper and felt tip pens.

Published by Bitmap Books, which has made itself a key player in the niche world of video game history and art, The Arcade looks at the first three decades of digital game design, starting with the realm of the arcade and finishing up with the home computer, covering 120 titles in all. With over 400 pages of imagery, interviews and insights, it’s a dive back into a world when pixels could still be trusted.

The Arcade 1971-1999, Paul Drury, £34.99 / $48.00 / €41.95, Bitmap Books, BitmapBooks.com, @BitmapBooks

The Rubber-Keyed Wonder

Another exercise in 8-bit nostalgia, The Rubber-Keyed Wonder tells the story of one very specific early home computer, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Currently in the planning stage and seeking nostalgia-filled gamers to help Kickstart the project, the plan is for this 200+ page history of Sir Clive Sinclair’s influential machine to appear next year in time for its 45th anniversary.

The computer itself birthed a thriving scene of gaming and programming, with aficionados still creating content for it right up to the present day. Sold around the world, illegally cloned behind the Iron Curtain, and many people’s first encounter with any kind of computer, the Spectrum was a cultural phenomenon. It’s even being re-booted as the ZX Spectrum Next.

The Rubber-Keyed Wonder: The Sinclair ZX Spectrum Story Official Companion Book, support at Kickstarter.com, Golden-Slumbers.co.uk

During their tenure at Loewe so far, the American designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez have favoured minimal, gallery-like runway sets enlivened by moments of colour and play.

Their debut, in October of last year, featured Ellsworth Kelly’s 1989 abstract masterpiece Yellow Panel with Red Curve in its entranceway (‘in [the painting] lies an optimism and spirit that we deeply identify with,’ the pair said at the time), while for their A/W 2026 show in January, a series of plushie animals sat around the yellow-floored showspace like impromptu guests. These included octopi, dogs and clams, each a work by German contemporary artist Cosima von Bonin.

This morning in Paris (2 October 2026), McCollough and Hernandez will show their latest collection within a showspace conceived by London- and Berlin-based architectural practice Casper Mueller Kneer. The runway set, which sits inside a specially constructed white box in the grounds of the medieval fortress and former royal palace Château de Vincennes, comprises a double-height circular ‘arena’ around which models will circulate and guests will sit.

The set marks the first major architectural project from the house under McCollough and Hernandez, who drafted Casper Mueller Kneer to create a ‘three-dimensional space’ somewhere between ‘an arena, a theatre and a gallery’. Entered on two levels, the minimal, all-white design features a circular outer wall, an upper gallery and a scaffold-like construction, as well as circles of cuboid seating on the central ‘stage’.

Inspirations include the Anatomical Theatre in Padua, the Globe in London, and La Scala Opera House in Milan, as well as Detroit’s gasometer. ‘It evokes spectator sports, ritual dramas, and performance, centring the unique energy of a shared, lived human experience,’ describes the house.

Central to the design was the idea of ‘intensity and proximity’, say the architects, who conceived the ‘arena’ in such a way that it could bring the most guests together in a ‘relatively contained’ space. Its design, with models circulating the arena’s two floors, also allows attendees to view McCollough and Hernandez’s collection up close.

‘We’re trying to create a space that has a definite three-dimensional quality. Both in terms of the design, but also in terms of the viewing experience,’ say the architects. ‘You’re very close to one another. You’re very close to the collection.’

‘We wanted to build a show space that explored the unique energy of a stadium, arena, or theatre,’ add McCollough and Hernandez. ‘The anticipation, the focus, the shared emotion – that electric charge in the air that everyone can feel. There’s something so real and immediate in those spaces, a sense of presence and proximity that felt very right for this collection.’

Stay tuned to wallpaper.com for more from Paris Fashion Week S/S 2027.

It is, concedes Francis Lapp, founder of Gdańsk-based Sunreef Yachts, a very James Bond kind of boat. Sunreef, better known as a maker of twin-hulled sailing yachts, has teamed up with Brabus to create a special edition of its 55-foot Ultima 55 boat, filtered through the German coachbuilder’s extreme automotive lens.

The result – the first collaboration between the two brands, with others under discussion – is very sleek, very black, with a carbon fibre exterior that’s part exposed just like a supercar. It’s a suitably gadget-laden vessel too, with platforms that extend out of the side of the boat while it’s at rest, enhancing its beam by two metres to create a beach club area, and a hidden gangway that also extends automatically at the touch of a button.

Inside there’s more of the same: an extendable and retractable carbon fibre table; sun loungers that convert into settees; a 43-inch TV that rises out of a countertop and floors accented in aluminium with illuminated Brabus logos.

‘We wanted to collaborate with a brand that has a very specific design approach and implement that right across the boat,’ says Lapp, ‘The appeal comes from the resulting look but also the engineering.’

The engineer and entrepreneur founded Sunreef in 2022 as a catamaran specialist, with shipyards in Gdańsk and the UAE, where the Ultima 55 is built. One has been sold to date with two more sales on the cards. ‘The Brabus look also fits well with what is a particularly fast boat,’ Lapp continues.

Indeed, the Brabus Ultima 55 is capable of 40 knots – unusually fast for a boat of this size - in part due to Sunreef’s advanced foiling system which lifts the vessel higher out of the water to reduce hydrodynamic drag, provide a smoother, quieter ride and improve stability. ‘It means the boat is more stable at speed, and speed is a large part of the appeal,’ Lapp continues.

Power comes from twin 725hp, six-cylinder marine engines that have modified by Brabus, renowned for their ability to upgrade and enhance high-end cars, particularly those from Mercedes-Benz.

Stability is also a key reason why clients might choose a catamaran over a mono-hulled boat, since it allows for something closer to a ‘house on the sea,’ as Lapp describes it. ‘People who want to spend a lot of time at sea want their vessel to be especially steady’.

The Brabus Ultima 55 will, it’s hoped, also extend both brands’ reach. For Brabus, it’s a gateway into the as-yet-untapped high-performance multihull category, following the smaller Shadow line that it co-developed with Axopar Boats and revealed earlier this year. For Sunreef, the venture takes the shipyard into the heart of yachting’s more luxury-forward, brand-conscious market.

‘Sunreef is known among its customers for its sustainability, those who love a sailing vessel with hybrid or electric engines,’ says Lapp. ‘But the Brabus boat is aimed at a different customer who is perhaps more passionate about cars and a certain kind of style’.

Sunreef-Yachts-Ultimate.com, @SunreefYachts, Brabus.com

The late American architect Rick Mather (1937-2013) called London home for many decades. This new monograph about his life and work charts his path towards designing some of the UK’s most significant cultural projects, although since his death his profile has remained determinedly more low-key than many of his surviving contemporaries.

Born in Portland, Mather came to the UK in 1963, working first at the firm of Lyons Israel Ellis. One of the more successful exponents of Brutalism, LIE had an impressive roster of alumni, including James Stirling, James Gowan, Alan Colquhoun, John Miller; Neave Brown and Richard MacCormac, all of whom, like Mather, went on to set up era-defining modernist-infused practices.

Mather’s own firm was started in 1973, after a hitherto little-known spell toiling in Southwark's architecture department, back in the days when councils had such a thing in house. He also worked for the Architectural Association in Bedford Square, becoming close with the organisation’s radical and influential coterie of young architects. Early projects included bookshops, homes and refurbishment works to the AA itself, along with unpublished schemes for Heaven nightclub in Charing Cross.

Mather’s commitment to modernist aesthetics was rarely tempered, but his projects were never oversized and grandiose. Instead, he worked on a succession of discretely luxurious private houses, including his own reworked Georgian townhouse in Camden with its spectacular roof garden (a lifelong passion) and the multiple award-winning Priory in Hampstead, a grand modern dwelling in the spirit of the area’s 1930s modernist villas.

In some respects, Mather’s white-walled ascetism seemed to align perfectly with the vogue for minimalism that permeated the retail and residential heart of upscale 80s and 90s London. His love of Le Corbusier’s sculptural idiosyncrasies was always in play, as were experiments in structural glass, but it was the careful and bravura fusion of the old and the new that gave his studio its most significant commissions.

Three major London works – the glass courtyards in the Wallace Collection and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and the new quadrangle at Dulwich Picture Gallery – were all completed between 1999 and 2000, cementing a well-deserved reputation for sympathetic but dynamic updates.

Other major projects include the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne, the updated Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and Now and Zen, a cultish Covent Garden restaurant with a ‘dragon’ waterfall made from a cascade of glass bowls – somewhere that would have been perfectly at home in the Instagram era.

Written by the experienced architectural journalist and critic Kester Rattenbury, Rick Mather: The Complete Works is richly illustrated – Mather loved architectural draughtsmanship - and also evokes the spirit and atmosphere of 80s and 90s UK architecture culture.

Rick Mather: The Complete Works, Kester Rattenbury, Lund Humphries, £60, LundHumphries.com, RickMather.com

Spanish-Equatoguinean ceramicist Bisila Noha has been named the recipient of the Tacchini Prize, an award from the Italian furniture brand in partnership with Fondazione Officine Saffi, a non-profit dedicated to contemporary ceramics. The newly established prize celebrates the intersection of contemporary artistic research and design culture, focusing on materials as a field of research and expression.

With the prize comes an exhibition dedicated to Noha at Casa Tacchini, the brand’s apartment-turned-showroom in Milan. The show, ‘A Tactile Story’ (on until 13 November 2026), presents Noha’s sculptural, expressive ceramics among a selection of Tacchini furniture. Vessels that appear cracked and disintegrating hang from a rope attached to the ceiling; four-legged sculptures stand in an illuminated corner; a giant pot with gradated colours sits in the window.

Bisila Noha and the culture of ceramics

Born in Spain in 1988 and based in London, Noha’s star has been rising since she turned away from a career in advertising towards exploring pottery in 2016. ‘I just fell in love with it,’ she tells Wallpaper*. Since then, she has enjoyed multiple international residencies and solo exhibitions, and her work has been acquired by the V&A Museum, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and several other cultural institutions.

She is currently an artist-in-residence at the Sarabande Foundation in London, and has work on show at the Venice Biennale and Princeton University Art Museum. In March 2026, she staged a solo show with Thrown Contemporary at OmVed Gardens in London, ‘Ile Ọkàn (House of the Soul)’.

Noha’s approach to ceramics is underpinned by deep historical and cultural research, which she has pursued at residencies in Nigeria and Senegal, in particular. ‘I thought, if I want to be fluent in clay, I need to go to the places where people have been doing this for generation after generation,’ she says, adding that she is ‘really interested’ in the history of women’s labour in relation to pottery. For Noha, the craft of ceramics is about much more than simply making beautiful objects, and is deeply connected to notions of community and feminism.

Past projects include ‘Baney Clay’, in which Noha used clay sourced from her father’s village in Equatorial Guinea, mixing it with other ingredients such as porcelain to make vessels that explored her dual identity as Spanish and Equatoguinean. ‘I wanted to develop this body of work looking at my own heritage’, she explains. The pots take on different appearances, hues and textures depending on the clay mixes chosen for each work.

‘Searching for Kouame Kakahá’ involved tracking down a potter in Ivory Coast whose work from the 1960s had inspired Noha’s own practice, as a way to counter the traditional erasure and devaluing of female potters. The vessels and sculptures Noha made in the process feature gestural scratches, openings and holes; ‘It’s the idea of unearthing myself,’ says Noha.

The exhibition ‘Ile Ọkàn (House of the Soul)’ brought together four years of work, reflecting on West African culture, ritual practices and communal making. As well as clay vessels, some of which seemed to break open and unfurl, there were stools and bronze sculptures.

‘I’ve always loved stools,’ Noha says. Those she made are small and very low to the ground, reflective of the type Noha has seen used by many women in kitchens and pottery studios, to stay close to work on the floor. Making the stools combined throwing, sculpting, hand building, and joinery; while Noha approached it through a sculptural lens, she ensured the stools were also functional. Noha, who uses some of the stools she made in her own home, is considering the possibility of getting them manufactured one day.

Her exploration of bronze began in 2022, and was pursued at a residency in Benin City, where Noha discovered the importance of wax, and clay, in enabling bronze sculptures. The work she made there reflected on Benin’s rich history of lost-wax bronze casting, in which wax models encased in moulds melt away to be replaced by molten metal. Noha saw the method as a metaphor for the hidden labour of women, particularly women of colour, in society. Her new project, ‘The Lost Bronze’ – which is due to be exhibited at the 1-54 art fair in London this October – expands upon this work, exhibiting a series of vessels in unfired clay and wax.

Noha’s Sarabande residency will conclude in November, as will her Casa Tacchini show, prompting a new chapter. She plans to move to a new studio in Dalston, east London, and has an upcoming project with the Museum of Romanticism in Madrid. What drives her forward, she says, is the exploration of history, and place, through the act of making.

Casa Tacchini hosts 'A Tactile Story by Bisila Noha', on view until 13 November 2026

Casa Tacchini
Largo Treves 5,
20121 Milan

We’ve assembled seven new options for over-ear headphones, ranging from the latest releases and updates from familiar names to a high-fashion collaboration and a fresh flagship from a fast-rising cult favourite.

Nothing Headphone (1) Pro

First up, the new Headphone (1) Pro from Nothing. Taking the resolutely rectangular form of the acclaimed Headphone (1) and Headphone (a) and giving the internals and carry case a glow up, the Headphone (1) Pro is the company’s new flagship audio device.

Featuring no less than three drivers for hi-res audio listening over wired and wireless connections, the Headphone (1) Pro comes in black and white (perhaps to bolster its serious audiophile image over the more playful pastels of its cheaper siblings). The noise cancelling system is driving by no less than ten microphones and works with a silicone baffle on the earpads for complete sonic isolation.

The Headphone (1) Pro also features Dynamic Spatial Audio with head-tracking and has pro audio features like ‘Flat EQ’, designed to create a completely neutral sound profile for mixing audio. Made from machined aluminium, the headphones come with a hardshell case.

Headphone (1) Pro, £349, Nothing.Tech, @Nothing

Thom Browne x Bose

Designer Thom Browne has teamed up with Bose for create a limited-edition set of Bose Quietcomfort Ultra headphones. Taking Browne’s ultra-distinctive fashion uniform as the baseline – a grey flannel wool suit with a distinctive four bar branding and Bemberg lining, the QC Ultra headphones are given their own rich materiality.

Cashmere covers the headband and removable ear cushions, while the four branding is used on the exterior of the earcups, with the signature white, red, white, blue and white stripe on the inside. This pattern is also inside the cashmere carry case. The headphones feature wired and wireless connectivity and Bose’s pioneering noise cancelling technology.

Bose x Thom Browne QuietComfort Ultra Headphones, £760, Bose.co.uk, @Bose

Sony WH-1000XM4C

The latest upgrade to Sony’s headphone portfolio is the WH-1000XM4C, a pair of lightweight, all-purpose wireless ANC headphones that are available in Platinum Silver, Lavender and Black.

Weighing in at just 253g, the Sony headphones also have 27 hours of listening time and added equalisation functions through the Sony Connect app.

Sony WH-1000XM4C, £219, Sony.co.uk

Technics EAH-A1000

The new flagship model from Technics are the EAH-A1000 headphones. Launched late last month, the new over-ear wireless headphones include a new 40mm driver and the company’s latest generation noise cancellation system. The larger driver, which incorporates a carbon fibre diaphragm, adds scale and power without distortion, using a layer of magnetic fluid to suppress unwanted vibrations.

A new visual language incorporates metal construction in the support arms and top panels, with Technics’ signature circular machining patterns left visible. They’re available in Black and Platinum Greige, a newly announced colourway that Technics clearly feels it can elevate it from its bland connotations. There’s nothing greige about the sound, which includes high-res audio, up to 45 hours of playback and multipoint connectivity across three devices.

Technics EAH-A1000, price tbc, available soon from Technics.com

FiiO FT15 planar headphones

FiiO’s new FT15 wired headphones uses planar technology, which feature a thin flexible film diaphragm to create large planar drivers. Thinner film technology is paired with a richer materiality, with natural black walnut earcups and bundled high-quality audio cables.

The headband is formed from carbon fibre, keeping the weight down as much as possible for long listening sessions.

FiiO FT15, £499, FiiO.com, @FiiOofficial

Audio-Technica ATH-AL5NC

The new ATH-AL5NC headphones are Audio-Technica’s first ever wireless open-back headphones, with a distinctive mesh back design that lets the audio source breathe and creates a more open, richer sound field.

Best suited to home applications like music, cinema and gaming, the ATH-AL5NC offer wired and wireless listening options. The latter brings with it an impressive 75-hour battery life.

Audio-Technica ATH-AL5NC, £219, Audio-Technica.com, @AudioTechnicaEMEA

Philips Fidelio L5

The new Fidelio L5 from Philips offer an affordable and distinctive pair of over-ear wireless headphones for hose looking for no-nonsense simplicity. Sixty hours of battery life, high-res audio and Bluetooth 6.0 are combined into a handsome package with folding arms for convenience.

The new ANC system includes a leakage detection mode that can tell when the seal between your ears and earcups isn’t quite perfectly aligned and adapts the filter to match. Controls are touch sensitive, not physical, which some will love and others not, while Philips also highlights the use of recycled plastic and cardboard in the device and its packaging.

Philips Fidelio L5, £179.99, Philips.co.uk, @Philips.Sound

Aston Martin doubles down on its luxury credentials with two new announcements, one automotive and one architectural. The latter is the unveiling of Q London, a bespoke space on Mayfair’s Berkeley Square that’ll serve as both flagship showroom, destination event space, and a first point of contact for new owners and those looking to embark on their own unique commissions via Aston Martin’s Q service.

The new space is located on the east side of the historic city square, completing a run of premium brand showrooms in the area, and takes up the ground and basement of a 587 sq m unit. Inside, there’s space for up to four cars, as well as specification suites, informal and formal seating areas and a boardroom (which doubles as a private dining space). The new space follows the template set by Q New York on Park Avenue.

Q London’s opening was accompanied by the world debut of the new DBX GT, the latest variant of Aston Martin’s (rather venerable) sporting SUV. As the suffix suggests, the GT variant majors on comfort and luxury, rather than the more outright performance-focus of its sister model, the DBX S. The grace, rather than the pace, if you will.

Subtle changes to exterior styling dial down the outright aggression of the more lairy versions, while there’s then an added focus on interior craft and comfort. The latter is also given a fillip by revisions to the chassis, making the big DBX more pliable over rougher road surfaces.

The twin-turbo V8 is hardly lacking in power – it has 727PS – but with a power delivery that’s tuned to be slightly less aggressive than the DBX S. A sprint to 60mph can be achieved in 3.1 seconds and the GT will top out at 193mph. The exhaust note has been tuned to be more discreet in standard driving modes, with a more sonorous/aggravating soundtrack available in Sport and Sport+ modes.

Aston spotters will be able to distinguish the GT straight away by a new ‘double vaned’ grill, which emphasises the width of the car even more. A similar two-piece treatment is given to the side strake detail, which now incorporates one polished and one satin element. Body colour paint extends all the way to the lower sills and rear diffusers, while there are also elegant new 22-inch wheels with a satin titanium finish.

Other new trim details include monotone, duotone and tritone options, with textured finishes like quilting and perforations. New seat designs – plusher and more curvaceous – along with an ‘individual’ rear seat layout that keeps the car’s five-seater capability but emphasises three distinct places through colour, trim and form.

All this is set beneath a standard panoramic glass roof. The overall message is that this is not a carbon fibre-swathed track monster, but rather a more refined and relaxing iteration of an accomplished performance car.

Aston Martin DBX GT, price tbc, AstonMartin.com, @AstonMartin

The warm glow of Louis Poulsen’s three-shade PH lamp system, first designed in 1925 by lifelong collaborator Poul Henningsen, has come to epitomise Danish design. So it’s no surprise that every year, the historic lighting brand celebrates this incredible legacy with a limited-edition reissue of one of its classic designs.

Launched in 2014 to mark the 120th anniversary of Henningsen’s birth, the highly collectable reissues have included untreated copper lamps and amber-coloured pendants. This year, it’s the turn of an unusual, music-inflected piece: the ‘PH 1/1 Piano’ table lamp. Its swirling stem, inspired by the flag of musical notes and the twirl of treble clefs, manages to steal the limelight from the famous tiered glass pendant.

‘The original 1931 design of the “PH Piano” lamp has been respectfully scaled down and refined to offer greater versatility for contemporary living, functioning not just as a piano lamp but as a table lamp as well,’ says Monique Faber, chief design officer at Louis Poulsen. The lamp, which has not been manufactured since the late 1930s, will be available to purchase only until December 2026.

An architect, designer, and critic who often signed his essays with his initials (the hallmark of the limited-edition pieces, these letters proudly appear in gold at the base of the lamp), Henningsen was also a talented composer, songwriter and jazz aficionado. In the early 1930s, he turned his attention to music, creating this distinctive lamp as well as the PH Grand Piano, whose transparent acrylic lid reveals the instrument’s strings.

Offering a precise adjustment of the lighting direction, the ‘PH Piano’ lamp’s flexible curved stem is punctuated by a round, notehead-shaped element that functions as a counterweight to ensure stability while the user is playing. The frame is crafted in aged brass with fine hairlines, carefully lacquered to preserve the patina, and is paired with a dark brown fabric cord.

As for the lamp’s three-shade set (the ‘PH 1/1’, the smallest set in the PH system), it is made from four-layered, mouth-blown opal glass in a distinctive dusty terracotta hue. ‘Each shade is finished with a glossy exterior, while the inner surface is sand-blasted to a matte white finish. This combination of layers and finishes produces a beautifully soft, diffused light, ensuring exceptional visual comfort in any setting,’ say the Louis Poulsen team.

The earthy-coloured glass adds to the organic expression of the heritage design. Like every piece in the PH collection, the ‘Piano’ lamp also offers a glare-free, soft light that feels as natural as daylight and as warm as candlelight.

This is due to the PH system’s way of distributing light in gentle layers, a method inspired by the logarithmic spiral, a natural curve also found in seashells and plants. The top shade takes care of the brightest light, the middle shade redirects and softens it, and the bottom shade shields the eyes from glare.

The ‘PH 1/1 Piano’ table lamp limited edition 2026 will be available exclusively at selected stores and at louispoulsen.com from 1 October to 31 December 2026.

Belgium’s Ghent Design Museum, the biggest of its kind in the country, has reopened after a revamp led by British architects Carmody Groarke alongside local architects Atama. The extensive project has been one of expansion, consolidation, as well as heritage restoration by specialist studio Re-st, with a new circulatory loop carved through the museum’s existing historic buildings and the route completed with a new low-carbon entrance wing.

Explore the new Ghent Design Museum

The site of the new wing had lain derelict for years, hosting the museum toilets inside a huge toilet-roll sculpture – a tongue-in-cheek act of protest representing the space’s wasted potential. Today, that potential has been fulfilled with a different kind of waste: a building built with bricks made from Ghent’s municipal construction rubbish.

These lime-cured bricks, developed specially by Carmody Groarke and BC Materials with a grant from Circular Flanders, hold a third of the embodied carbon of a standard clay-fired Belgian brick. And, they’re just the start of a material journey that captures the museum’s ambition to show, as well as tell, how design can change the world.

The new wing is Belgium’s tallest public timber-structured building at five storeys, and after stepping through the 3D-printed recycled aluminium entrance gate designed by Unfold, you’ll discover design contributions from more than 30 local designers. These include modular furniture, toilets clad in bio-materials, an upcycled curtain by Chevalier-Masson, and a column of the museum’s own medieval, 18th-century, and 1990s demolition waste by Grond Studio.

When the site was excavated for the new lower ground level, the remains of a 12th-century house constructed from the timber of a boat were discovered. It turned out to be Ghent’s oldest-ever found residential structure. Architect Andy Groarke, co-founding director of Carmody Groarke, describes it as a ‘metaphor’ for the whole museum’s design approach that honours the ‘humility of deep time and resourcefulness'.

He describes the architecture as a ‘postmodern counterfactual archaeological project’ – a museum rising from debris, history and the city itself, creating a ‘hyper-local vernacular’, where past material is reconfigured into the present. Museum architecture of the early 21st century has often been presented as a ‘frictionless object’ he says, which denies the ‘enjoyment and struggle of process’, and ‘the human qualities of improvisation and resourcefulness’.

Groarke delights in the idea of it becoming almost ‘deauthorised’ over time, gaining layers of character. 'The building isn’t an endpoint. It's a scaffold for young Belgian designers, who are going to continually hack, redesign, interpret, misinterpret, use and misuse this building. We see the architecture as a sort of infrastructure to enable things to happen and a test site for trial and error.'

The design approach responded to the vision of Katrien Laporte, museum director since 2013, to create a place of investigation, research and innovation, with an environmentally conscious mission. She recruited a panel of 40 elected local citizens with the intention of discovering what people really needed from a design museum today, to improve accessibility and civic relevance.

What became clear was that, as well as displaying as much as possible from the collection of approximately 24,000 objects, the design museum of today is a place that can evolve with its audience and become a space for open-ended congregation: one ‘where you're not forced to perform or consume and you can just be’, says Groarke.

In the new wing, functions are mainly social. There’s a spacious foyer for informal encounters and a new café with a courtyard garden designed by Bureau Bas Smets. The all-important new lift core for disabled access and timber staircase lead to the ‘Co-Lab’ or ‘Collective laboratory’ for experimental workshops and further up to the high-ceilinged ‘Loft’, another gathering place with its huge window to the city.

In an ‘overmediated’ society where we’re often distanced from experience by technology, for Groarke, today’s design museum is a ‘touchpoint for the physical world and the social world’, where ‘people can come together to make sense of their time and place’. Both anchored in the layers of the historic city and ready to set sail into the rest of the century, Ghent Design Museum is a new vessel, laboratory and ‘third space’ for the city.

carmodygroarke.com

designmuseumgent.be

atama.website

re-st.be

This evening (30 September), as Paris Fashion Week continues in the city where the British designer made his name – first with his eponymous label, then as creative director of Givenchy, Dior and Maison Margiela – John Galliano has revealed his much-anticipated collaboration with Spanish fashion behemoth Zara, Re{form}.

Arriving in stores 1 October – the date on which the collection was expected to be revealed – the surprise announcement marks Galliano’s return to fashion after leaving Maison Margiela in December 2024 following a ten-year tenure. It also comes in the wake of the cancellation of a retrospective of his work, ‘John Galliano: Horizons’, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Its opening would have coincided with the annual Met Gala, the biggest night of the fashion calendar, which takes place each year on the first Monday of May.

Re{form} Zara by John Galliano: Vol. 1 

Galliano withdrew from the exhibition after controversy surrounding his past anti-semitic remarks in 2011, for which he was charged with a hate crime in France, and lost his job as creative director of Dior. After entering rehab, he apologised to Jewish leaders and returned to fashion with his role at Maison Margiela in 2014. ‘I do not want the debate surrounding me to place the Met in a difficult position or to distract from the remarkable work of the Costume Institute,’ he said in a statement. ‘I also recognise and respect that an exhibition honouring my work would be painful for some.’

The collection, captured in a Steven Meisel-shot campaign, sees Galliano return to the theatrical signatures that made him one of the most celebrated designers of recent times. His shows for Dior in particular, which unfolded amid dramatic show sets and mined history for inspiration, are embedded in fashion lore, while his closing Artisanal show for Maison Margiela, held under the full moon, saw him conjure a troupe of doll-like figures on the misted banks of the River Seine (at the time, we said they recalled ‘at once Fragonard’s shepherdesses and the seedy nighttime denizens of Brassaï’s Paris en Nuit’, their faces rendered like gleaming porcelain by make-up artist Pat McGrath).

With this first collection – part of an ongoing two-year partnership with the brand – Galliano says he is drawing on ‘memories of Zara’, reworking past pieces through acts of ‘cutting, dismantling and reassembling’ (as such, it recalls his work at Maison Margiela, where he was inspired by house founder Martin Margiela’s deconstructionist principles). ‘Re{form} is an act of revolution, reconstruction and renewal... the couturier’s exchange with the archives of the fashion purveyor,’ say the collection notes.

Several of Galliano’s hallmarks feature: among them dresses cut on the bias (the pattern-cutting technique that remains most associated with the designer, particularly during his time at Dior); trompe l’oeil layering with garments deconstructed to reveal linings or underwear beneath; a rich array of fabrics (‘chiffon voilant, georgette, point d’esprit, charmeuse, tulle and net’); and references to historical costume, from Napoleonic naval coats and opera gloves to ceremonial millinery created alongside Stephen Jones, a longtime collaborator.

Indeed, influences for the collection include Les Incroyables and Les Merveilleuses, ‘the defiant dandies and divas of post-Revolutionary France’. The former was the title of his 1984 Central Saint Martins graduate show, which would propel him to overnight fame; the latter a perennial reference throughout his career, inspiring collections at his eponymous label, Givenchy and Maison Margiela.

Elsewhere, he has divided the collection into various ‘techniques’: Re{form}ing (the idea that every garment references the Zara archive), The Flix (a sheer coat that can be layered over other coats in the collection), The Shi/ft (a means of transforming one garment into another) and Deep Pockets (the use of expansive pockets designed to shape the way the wearer inhabits a garment), among others.

The collection will be on view as an installation in a hôtel particulier in the Marais during Paris Fashion Week, which is accessible by appointment via zara.com. Meanwhile, the collection itself will be available to shop globally from 1 October at zara.com and stores worldwide.

Opening this week at the Design Museum (and on view until 4 April 2027), 'Es Devlin: Other Worlds' is the multidisciplinary artist and designer's first European retrospective, featuring a close-up view of her practice over the past 30 years.

Having spent much of the past year working alongside Devlin and her team on her Guest Editor contribution to October Wallpaper* (look out for the special-edition concertina cover, available from the museum shop as well as from WallpaperSTORE*), the exhibition felt like a continuation of our conversations, and gave us further insight into a creative universe that feels both incredibly personal and touching upon universal, larger-than-life themes.

The exhibition, taking over the museum's ground-floor gallery, features a reproduction of Devlin's London studio, excerpts from her sketchbooks, an overview of her most celebrated installation, and an experiential, 2,000-book library, covering recurring themes of her career and offering an insight into her creative process.

Intimate and sprawling, 'Es Devlin: Other Worlds' combines moments of calm exploration of some of the more personal elements of her practice, and the grand, immersive creative moments some of the public might be familiar with. Devlin herself guides us through the space: her voice welcomes visitors as a video plays in her ‘studio’ (a faithful reproduction of her London workspace, complete with maquettes, books, and tools).

As the doors open scenographically onto the exhibition itself, visitors walk into a mirrored room with Devlin's Come Home Again, an illuminated composition debuted at Tate Modern in 2022 and featuring her drawings of 240 species, from mammals to insects, fish and birds, all found in London.

From there, the room leads to the ‘30-year desk’, a concept that Devlin has devised for the exhibition and which showcases her career at a glance. Featuring 5,000 objects from her personal archive, the curved structure includes 30 revolving models, maquettes, hundreds of sketches, and is accompanied by two wall installations dubbed The 50-Year Archive (parts I and II), including sketchbooks, drawings and paintings that have supported a life in creativity.

Walking across a bright red tunnel (a near-fluorescent shade that recurs in Devlin's practice, most recently gracing the slipcase to her Concise Atlas), visitors find themselves in yet another immersive, impactful space. On a mirrored platform sits Devlin's Infinite Library, featuring a colour-coded collection of kinetic sculptures featuring over 2,000 books that have informed her practice and worldview.

This path, from studio to practice to library, is not casual, but the exact journey that Devlin intends to offers to visitors. 'The reason I've laid the show out this way, is that when I came here, I noticed there's a lot of young people, designers, practitioners, coming through the space,' Devlin told Wallpaper*. 'People of all ages, perhaps looking for clues as to what they might want to do, how they might want to shape, or begin, their own practice. So I've offered every trace that led me along the way, because I thought it might be helpful for others to just be able to see, step by step, how a practice can evolve over 30 years.'

‘Es Devlin: Other Worlds’ is on view until 4 April 2027

The Design Museum
224-238 Kensington High St, London W8 6AG

There’s no question we’re living in an uncertain time as artificial intelligence, climate change and political upheaval threaten life around the globe. The world’s heritage sites – the buildings, landscapes and landmarks that define our shared cultural history – are not immune to these shifts. A new report from a global preservation authority, though, demonstrates that the biggest threat to these significant places comes down to something far more pragmatic: money.

Today (30 September 2026), the World Monuments Fund (WMF) released a study showing that government austerity leads the list of hazards threatening global heritage sites. In fact, 86 per cent of candidates for its 2027 WMF World Monuments Watch designation cited lack of funding and resources as the top reason the location was at risk.

‘This year’s nominations show that the pressures on heritage are intensifying while the resources to protect it are not keeping pace,’ said WMF president Bénédicte de Montlaur.

It isn’t just lack of government funding that’s squeezing stewards of global sites, the study found. An analysis of the 372 nominees also cited local economic constraints and rising construction costs as stressors. More than a dozen large heritage projects in France, for instance, required $2.3 billion in public funding, a cost that’s projected to double in years ahead. In the UK, funding from local municipalities to fund heritage projects have fallen nearly 47 per cent since 2009.

The outlook is even more grim for under-resourced regions, including in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where less than $1 per capita is invested in protecting historically significant places. The United States, meanwhile, has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in its federal budget devoted to the arts, the humanities and national parks.

While economic constraints led the list of 14 primary challenges the WMF identified, the report found that climate hazards, as well as lack of access to expertise were next on the list. Severe winds have damaged the Unesco World Heritage Site Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove in Nigeria, for instance, while increasing storms have put pressure on Fingal's Cave, a stunning basalt cave in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland.

While the results of the report are concerning, the WMF hopes that it will help both local and global preservation groups strategise on how to best support local efforts. ‘These findings are a call to action, and they will help guide where our work is needed most,’ de Montlaur said.

As light and temperatures rapidly dip in the Scottish capital, a great gasp of culinary sunshine has alighted on Edinburgh’s New Town in the shape of Yotam Ottolenghi’s new restaurant on George Street. More than complex pickles and dips, the big O’s arrival heralds a vote of confidence in the capital’s food credentials: ‘I couldn't be happier to be opening in Edinburgh,’ the chef divulges. ‘The city has been on our list for a long time: it's one of the best food scenes in the UK, with growers, producers and fishermen right on the doorstep.’

Edinburgh’s opening is also a homecoming of sorts for a Scot who has been central to Ottolenghi’s food story: ‘What makes this opening particularly special is Neil Campbell, our very own executive chef,’ Ottolenghi continues. ‘Neil grew up on the Isle of Skye and built much of his career in Scottish kitchens. He has spent the last decade helping shape the Ottolenghi way. Only he could have pulled off a menu that feels unmistakably Ottolenghi but with a uniquely Scottish twist.’

We’re not talking deep-fried Mars bars, for which any lazy (non-Scottish) food journo reaches when writing about Scottish fare. No. ‘This is the food and landscape that shaped me as a chef,’ Campbell says. ‘It's a privilege to celebrate the ingredients I've always loved through the flavours and cooking style I've spent the last decade developing with the Ottolenghi team.’

And the team has gone hard in celebration of Scottish suppliers: from Welch’s fishmongers to Ochil langoustines, vegetables from The Free Company and Phantassie to dairy from Katy Rodgers and Graham’s, chocolate from the Chocolate Tree in East Lothian, and mushrooms from Rhyze. Pastries will come from Company Bakery in Musselburgh and Ottolenghi has worked with Woven Whisky in Leith to blend the restaurant’s very own ‘water of life’. Even the aprons are made by local menswear designer Kestin.

The breakfast-to-dinner dining room has been designed by Alex Meitlis, a long-time collaborator of Ottolenghi. It’s clearly a meeting of minds and values. Meitlis describes ‘generosity and warmth’ as the definitive factors behind the food and design outlook. ‘I've been designing the Ottolenghi restaurants and delis for over 20 years, and the thing that has never changed is that the design is the canvas for the food – for sharing and gathering together,’ Meitlis says. ‘So the interiors have to feel lived-in and inviting rather than precious. George Street gives you wonderful Georgian bones: proportion, symmetry, natural light, and the instinct was to honour that rather than override it.

‘In [the] Edinburgh [restaurant], the central bar sits at the heart of the room, which is very deliberate: it's the gravitational centre, the place the energy radiates from,’ Meitlis continues. ‘The textures and materials lean into wood and warmth, and every element of furniture and textiles was designed bespoke for the space. For private celebrations, we created a garret-style bar seating up to 30, full of hand-painted shapes. It’s a room that invites you to feast and be loud.’ This will be music to the ears of a local Edinburgh New Town audience who enjoy braying over brunch.

Artists and fellow Ottolenghi collaborators Gilles & Cecilie developed a concept for the restaurant to unite the local context with Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean heartland, titled: ‘We Share the Same Sea’. ‘It came from a simple, hopeful thought: the sea that touches Scotland is the same sea that touches the shores of the southern Mediterranean, where so much of Ottolenghi's cooking comes from,’ the couple say. ‘For a restaurant bringing those two worlds together on a northern coast, that felt like exactly the right thread to follow: flavours and people carried across the same water, arriving somewhere new and becoming part of it. It is always expandingly creative to work with the Ottolenghi team, Yotam and Alex.’

Ottolenghi Edinburgh is an effervescent and uplifting environment that sits in contrast to the more Nordic-infused interiors that have become de rigueur in the capital’s foodie establishments. We welcome this burst of texture and colour. It feels healthy, sociable and exuberant, rather than earnest or tweezered. ‘There's a generosity of spirit here that feels completely in keeping with what this restaurant is about,’ Gilles & Cecilie explain. ‘Inside you’ll find paintings that are abstractions of reflections we collected in conversations with people connected to the location.’

A gloriously hearty and heart-filled generosity runs through all aspects of the new Ottolenghi project, which the man himself modestly credits as being of its place, rather than imported: ‘I love the way Scottish hospitality is really warm, without any fuss.’ We’ll take it, said the Scots. Alongside a lifetime’s supply of banana bread with tahini and honeycomb, thank you very much.

Ottolenghi Edinburgh opens on 2 October 2026, 92 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 3DF

When is a private jet not a private jet, but not a commercial flight either? Wade Black thinks he has the answer. He’s the serial airline-industry entrepreneur who has co-founded a new business by the name of Magnifica Air, which aims to tap both those private jet travellers who want to save some money, and those first-class flyers who want to step up to something more luxurious still. When we last checked in, the airline had just revealed its spacious interiors and amenities, while a campaign to recruit pilots starts in Spring 2027.

The idea is simple. Magnifica Air will operate new Airbus Corporate Jets – seven by the end of next year, with a planned 25 in all within five years – from private, purpose-built terminals in the US, where dedicated lounges will provide a ‘white glove’ service that means the check in/security process can happen as late as 30 minutes prior to travel.

Each aircraft will carry a maximum of 54 passengers – though Magnifica Air says as few as 40 remains profitable – so there’s plenty of space, though there will be a minimum of two private suites on board as well. On flights of more than three hours, all seats will be lay-flat ones.

‘The idea is to bring the world of private aviation to the scale that these kinds of [large] aircraft can offer,’ explains Wade, who has also served on the boards of Flexjet and the specialist medical airline Seven Bar Aviation. ‘If you look at current marketing data, everything points to a demand for more premium travel. People are demanding positive experiences and want something better than the inefficiency and anxiety of [typical airline travel], even in first class.’

He calls what Magnifica Air offers ‘private class’, with tickets at between 1.5 and two times the average first-class price, depending on route demand. Each of its aircraft has been outfitted, at a cost of around $20m per aircraft, to correct all of the things that people find bothersome about more standard airline travel, from overhead baggage compartments (there are none) to cramped toilets – on Magnifica Air’s aircraft, the facilities are, says Black, comparable to a ‘high-end residential bathroom’.

The food service, he promises, will be of a very high standard, while Magnifica Air will also be the first airline to offer a new $2m air purification system – reducing the chances of boarding a flight fit and leaving it with some kind of bug.

‘For most people [the incentive to fly with Magnifica Air] will be about stepping up,’ says Black, though not for all: he notes that, despite their public image, many private jets do not offer high interior or service standards, despite their advantages in providing point-to-point travel.

‘People are more service-minded now and are willing to pay for it,’ he adds. ‘The problem for the main carriers is that they are inherently hooked into a hub-and-spoke network [when an airline routes most of its flights though a central main airport to connect passengers travelling to smaller regional ones], so there’s not a lot they can do about the airport experience.’ And he adds that while they may want to devote more space to non-coach/economy seat classes, the cost and logistics of refitting aircraft are prohibitive.

Although Magnifica Air is launching in the US – its inaugural route is between Miami and New York, with other departures set to connect Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas and Houston, with seasonal routes to include the Caribbean and major cultural/sporting events – the company aims, in time, to partner with established carriers for long-haul international flights. ‘I can see the same model working elsewhere [around the world] too,’ Black adds.

MagnificaAir.com, @Magnifica.Air

Liberated by the machine or trapped by technology? That’s the dichotomy at the heart of a new show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, ‘Home of the Future, 1925 - 1985: Designing Domestic Utopias’, a panoply of visions of the future of labour-saving devices and the push-button era that always seemed to be just around the corner.

The exhibition is accompanied by this handsome volume from DelMonico Books, edited by Wendy Kaplan, who heads up the museum’s Decorative Arts and Design department. It’s a fertile subject for research, not just because those promises don’t seem to have gone away, but also because the vividly rendered future visions conjured up during the era in question have gone on to be so influential, even if the technologies they promised never turned out quite right.

Look inside House of the Future

Modern society always seems on the cusp of a domestic tech revolution, and while the consumer family of 1950 would be shocked and awed by the voice-activated home of today, we’re still waiting for our robot butlers, flying cars, and – perhaps most importantly of all – the endless hours of leisure, personal growth and social interaction promised by liberating technology.

The book, also titled Home of the Future 1925 - 1985: Designing Domestic Utopias, brings together the exhibits, imagery and analysis in a tome designed by Lorraine Wild and Xiaoqing Wang of Green Dragon Office. It’s a cornucopia of future-facing innovations and retro-futuristic optimism, some of which has come to pass (the robotic cleaner) and some of which remains mired in the marshes of impracticality (the flying car).

Whether it was high flying fantasies about a new life in space or simply a family house that was a true machine for living in, advertisers, manufacturers, futurists, optimists and even toymakers all got in on the act. The future was coming, and coming fast.

The benefit of hindsight lends an air of tragic kitsch to much of this material, but these were simpler times when technology’s curative potential wasn’t yet diverted or tainted. Loosely covering the six decades between 1925 and 1985, Home of the Future is a fine accompaniment to a show full of treasures, elevated from domestic banality by faith, wonder and optimism.

As the mood turned, first via newly minted criticisms of rampant consumption and then via the nascent ecological movement, the shiny visions of the future were retrofitted to suit a more sustainable, attainable target.

The first three sections of the book look to the sunlit uplands, while the fourth and final part, The Counterculture and the computer, assesses what happened after the clouds rolled in and more conscious and considered ways of living were explored.

The shape of the home and the objects within it generate debates that’ll run for ever. Future generations will no doubt look back at the first quarter of the 21st century and see similar patterns – explosions of hope followed by misdirection, confusion and despair.

Perhaps we’re ripe for a countercultural pushback against the ubiquitous digital ‘domestic utopia’ we’ve all found ourselves inadvertently trapped in; Home of the Future is a good place to start exploring.

The book, Home of the Future 1925-1985: Designing Domestic Utopias, edited by Wendy Kaplan, DelMonico Books, $79.95, DelMonicoBooks.com, artbook.com,

The exhibition runs from 27 September 2026 to 14 March 2027 at LACMA's Resnick Pavilion, LACMA.org

British water filtration company Hello Klean has made it its mission to 'build beauty solutions for your water'. Founded in 2019 as a personal response to the changing experience of washing, its first product was a shower filtration device providing 'hair, body and scalp care designed to reduce the everyday impact of hard water and chlorine'.

'We tend to look for answers among the things we already know to question,' says Karlee Zhang, the brand's co-founder. 'When our hair or skin changes, we reconsider our products, our habits, ourselves. Hello Klean began by asking what we were overlooking in the conditions around us, including water.'

Hello Klean introduces the Skin Filter

'We think of a beauty routine as something personal, yet part of it is pre-determined by the building and the city we live in,' she adds. 'That connection drew me to water and led to a design question: what could we change at the point where that water meets the person using it?'

With this in mind, the brand now launches the Skin Filter, focusing this time on the bathroom sink to offer multi-stage filtration enhanced with microbubble cleansing technology as well as intelligent water tracking.

The company's most advanced water filtration system yet, the Skin Filter combines three different filtration substances that come from its ongoing research into skincare and water. The Hello Klean Skin Filter includes the company's KleanShield Filtration for scale and metals (respectively, a slow-releasing, calcium-based scale inhibitor and a crystalline titanium-based medium) and Activated Carbon Fibre (reducing free chlorine). Together, this recipe helps reduce irritating build-up and minimise inflammation, and combats post-cleanse dryness and tightness.

The device has the sleek appearance that defines much of contemporary tech, designed to attach seamlessly to a single-lever bathroom tap, and is available in Black and Chrome. It is also equipped with HydroTrack technology for realwater-flow measuring and includes an integrated SmartRefill light to signal when it is time to replace the filter.

'Directness shapes our design language, the experience of using our products and how we work as a team,' concludes Zhang. 'A product’s purpose should be clear. Internally, we should be able to speak plainly about a problem and be adaptive to change.'

The Hello Klean Skin Filter is available from 1 October 2026 in Black and Chrome, RRP £135 (launch offer £108) when bought with a subscription

The invitation for Jonathan Anderson’s latest Dior show was a pair of ‘wenwan’ walnuts, encased in a grey box and embedded in velvet. The act of ‘wénwán’ – dating back to ancient China’s Han dynasty – is to rub the two walnuts together in circles in your hands for meditation or distraction, like worry stones or prayer beads. Do it for long enough, and they become smooth and polished, turning a deep plum red and ‘jade-like’ in texture (the process can take up to 50 years, which made the patinated wénwán walnuts highly covetable).

There is a clear metaphorical weight to Anderson’s choice of invitation – the idea that creating something beautiful takes time and patience. This not only applies to Dior as a house – after all, haute couture requires the ultimate acts of endurance, with gowns taking up to 100 hours to hand-stitch – but also perhaps to Anderson’s position as creative director. As tenures become increasingly short (look to Dario Vitale, who only lasted a single season at Versace, despite a critically lauded debut) and social media’s firestorm of opinion, that ‘some things take time’ felt like a necessary statement. ‘Coming across wénwán walnuts reminded me how we can find knowledge and preciousness in nature,’ he said.

Like last season, the show was staged in Paris’ historic Tuileries Gardens in a contemporary pagoda surrounding Le Bassin Octogonal, one of the park’s octagonal fountains. Last season, it was dotted with lily pads; this season, a more wistful mood was conjured with a cluster of camphor trees and dry ice, which gave the effect of fog hovering over a lake at dawn (the trees will be replanted in the gardens after the show). ‘Long before a tree spreads its branches to the sky, the nut holds the knowledge of its form,’ read the collection notes, a calligram of a walnut shell.

Indeed, this was a collection which saw Anderson finding the form of his Dior woman – a clear evolution of last season’s romantic silhouette (the millefeuilles of frills and ruffles returned here), and a counterpart to the Dior man he showed in June of this year (their shared wardrobe includes a metallic silver jean). Signatures are beginning to be forged, like his shrunken bar jacket (this time, it recalled a barn jacket with its contrasting collar); a use of plissé jacquard to create a more fluid tailoring line (plissé was used in his S/S 2026 couture collection, shown in June); alongside references to nature, whether in elongated petal-like earrings or painterly floral prints (nature was a perennial influence on house founder Christian Dior, who often returned to the flower in his collections).

Through it all, an eclectic, whimsical air that feels particularly Andersonian: a woven organza suit was left open to reveal a bra top beneath, and worn with asymmetric earrings and a silver handbag slung over the shoulder, while another look combined a pyjama shirt and delicate layered skirt, worn with Dior-chain branded heels – as if his protagonist for the season had dressed in haste. Elsewhere, there were floating organza bows; bouclé tweed left unfurling at its edges; metal evening bags shaped like swans; and shrunken cardigans in pastel-coloured cable knits, adorned with crystals.

Indeed, Anderson said that he wanted the collection to be one of ‘soft focus’, an apparition emerging from the fog. Part of this was down to the lightness of the garments: ‘What is tailoring is imagined as flou?’ was one question he asked himself, reimagining pinstripe and Prince of Wales check blazers in an organza-like fabric designed to appear as tailoring wool (flou is the term in haute couture to describe dresses made from fluid, lightweight fabrics, in opposition to the rigour and structure of tailoring). ‘Something that, as it walks, leaves a kind of residue behind,’ he described of the ethereal looks.

It is a vision of romantic femininity that is paying off for Anderson: the Christian Dior Group recorded revenue of €38.6 billion in the first half of 2026, with a growth of 3 per cent in the second quarter and the fashion and leather goods arm returning to revenue growth after a previous decline. On top of that, a starry collaboration with A24, launched during New York Fashion Week, is a reminder of Anderson’s unique knack for mining the cultural zeitgeist (he did so adeptly at Loewe, and looks to continue doing so at Dior).

But Anderson is not done experimenting yet: as he hones his vision for Dior, don’t expect him to settle into a groove (like the wénwán walnut, he is envisioning his transformation of the house in decades, not months). As he said after his first couture show in January, the role of a designer at a major house is to challenge expectation. ‘I think the idea of designing things is to make people want something they didn’t want. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt at Dior, it’s just about putting ideas out [there].’ Today, he reiterated this: ‘If you’ve already arrived, there’s nowhere to go.’

Stay tuned to wallpaper.com for more from Paris Fashion Week S/S 2027.

The newest product from Polaroid is the Mod, further refining and deepening the rebooted company’s relationship with instant analogue film and its long association with the creative classes.

Up until now, Polaroid’s modern era of cameras (like this summer’s Go Generation 3) has been pitched at the intersection of point-and-shoot convenience and love of tangible physical media. Mod retains the analogue form factor that has been part of the Polaroid ethos since the original 1972 SX-70 camera and which has been thoroughly revitalised under the brand’s new ownership.

More importantly, the Mod offers a freshly flexible approach to instant photography, adding to genre’s rich colours and inevitable unpredictability with four dedicated creative modes to dial in. These include Split Shot, which puts two separate exposures on one photo, a motion freeze function that uses the flash to fill in a crisp image atop a backdrop of motion as well as a double exposure function.

Finally, there’s a Light Painting mode, or as a photographer would say, a long exposure. Couple these functions with the immediacy of the Polaroid system and you have instant art; in the company’s own words, ‘spend the day creating shots that would take AI one minute’.

Polaroid’s original USP as the only way of achieving instant imagery hasn’t been relevant for decades, so the company is doubling down on its heritage and its unique ability to turn a moment in time into a single, tangible, physical object. A Polaroid is a precious thing, especially in what the company is quick to call ‘a world chasing speed and pixel-perfect results’.

‘Mod encourages photographers to slow down, experiment and embrace the curiosity, play and unpredictability that make analogue photography unique,’ the company says. Stine Bauer Dahlberg, chief product officer at Polaroid, describes Mod as having ‘creative experiences built into the physical design of the camera. That’s why the four shooting modes sit directly on the dial rather than behind menus or settings… A lot of the engineering work went into making each mode intuitive to use while still giving you room to play with the result. We wanted the camera itself to encourage you to try something different every time you pick it up.’

Polaroid Mod, available now from Polaroid.com, @Polaroid

On view at Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery until 10 November 2026, ‘Between Ruin and Root’ is the first solo exhibition of Joy Bonfield-Colombara (aka Joy BC). Comprising more than 20 pieces, the show introduces six new creations that Bonfield-Colombara created specifically for her debut with the London gallery. All sit somewhere between jewellery and sculpture. ‘My pieces oscillate between jewellery, sculpture and talisman,’ the Italian-British artist and goldsmith explains. ‘As humans, we like to categorise. But an artwork can be many things at once, a mycelium of emotion, material, and form. Whether it’s a composition, a dance, a ceramic, a film, or a painting. For me, it gets interesting when there is cross-pollination.’

Born and raised in London, Bonfield-Colombara is an alum of the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art. Working with master artisans in both Italy and Japan, she is trained in metal casting and rare techniques such as Japanese urushi lacquer, for which natural tree sap is applied to a variety of bases. ‘London, Glasgow, Tokyo, Kyoto, Umbria and Rome. These are the places, striations of craft and the cultures that have influenced my work the most,’ Bonfield-Colombara says when asked about her globetrotting education. ‘My practice is a love letter to materiality, storytelling and craft. Head, heart and hands working harmoniously in tandem.’

At Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery, pieces such as the 2025 ‘Precious Tear’ ring – a bust fragment in blackened silver with one gold-set old cut diamond for a tear drop – or a new recycled yellow gold torque necklace, named ‘Demeter (Parched Earth / Rain)’ after the Olympian goddess of agriculture, grain, and the harvest, draw from ancient Greece and Rome. ‘My grandfather described me as an old soul, and young at heart,’ says Bonfield-Colombara. ‘I see time as all interconnected – past, present and future – akin to the Andean Cosmovision, rather than Western linear timelines. Narratives that were explored in ancient civilisations are still completely relative now. The materials we have been drawn to continue to be seductive – especially gold, and bronze, which has been used in objects of ceremony, magic, celebration and venerating stories and beauty, across continents and epochs.’

A new build Puerto Escondido home, Casa Copycha on the sandy shores of West Mexico, is a private residence that takes its cues as much from modern needs and aesthetics, as it does from the region's vernacular - and in particular monasteries and Mexican haciendas. Designed by Querétaro- and Mexico City-based studio Anonimous, the house stands out for its sensitive yet eye-catching architecture, which takes in its context and invites its users to commune with the area's coastal environment.

Step inside Puerto Escondido home Casa Copycha

The Puerto Escondido home is located a stone's throw from the local airport, and is located in a chunk of land dedicated to residential use. As a result, the design was conceived to embrace the area's serene atmosphere and connection with the Mexican West Coast's omnipresent, rich nature.

Casa Copycha sought to satisfy its owners' desire for 'a more private life for rest and pause, and a profound interaction between the interior and exterior: leaving one space, walking through the portico, and encountering the vegetation, the sun, the air, and the summer rain,' the architects explain.

The home's central courtyard nods to local traditional building typologies but is not a gesture of nostalgia - this open space becomes key to not only the circulation within the home, connecting spaces and emphasising a flow between indoors and outdoors. It also helps navigate the terrain's topography. Designed to be slightly sunken, the house's open air core helps users effortlessly move from the entrance to the main family spaces beyond.

An exposed concrete base helps anchor the home to the ground, morphing into a gateway and a solid foundation for living. Further up, a Mexican palapa (a type of thatched roof made of dried palm leaves), 20m long and 12m wide, is made using a parota wood structure and local palm, nodding to local building techniques and crafts.

Inside, the main living spaces, alongside the outdoor decks and swimming pool, are orientated towards the sea. The sense of hearing was central to the design, the architects emphasise, as they wanted the users to be able to listen to the waves throughout daily life - a background natural soundscape to accompany the family's routines.

Bedrooms and private areas are placed on the upper level of this two-storey structure. Large openings still keep the residents at close contact with their environment at every turn.

What guided the architects in their concept? 'The strategies of opposites - between closing and opening, heaviness and lightness, movement and pause - create a profound connection with the place, its intense light, its heavy rains, and the powerful sound of the waves of this place on the Mexican Pacific,' they say.

anonimousmx.com

Paris Fashion Week marks the culmination of a month-long season of shows, with previous stops in New York, London and Milan. Though it is by far the most substantial – and arguably, most significant – of fashion month so far, comprising a sprawling nine-day-long schedule and a line-up which includes fashion’s household names, among them Dior, Chanel, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent (there are plenty more besides).

And, while this season’s edition might lack the surge of newness which has defined recent seasons – one year ago, there were eight major creative debuts during the week, including Matthieu Blazy at Chanel and Jonathan Anderson at Dior – the week will, as ever, define the S/S 2027 season across its currently 68 shows and 33 presentations. That said, there will still be a handful of debuts, including former Burberry designer Drew Henry at Courrèges and Kai Nesselrath at Carven, who previously headed up womenswear at Saint Laurent.

Elsewhere, expect the reveal of John Galliano’s collaboration with Zara, the return of Maison Margiela and a celebration of 30 years of Acne Studios, alongside shows from emerging and established designers alike. All will make way for a no-doubt glittering finale from Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton, who will provide this season’s final act on Tuesday evening.

Read below for all of Wallpaper’s moments to look out for at Milan Fashion Week S/S 2027.

Maison Margiela is back

Last season, Maison Margiela sat Paris Fashion Week out, choosing to show in Shanghai as part of a series of events which took place across China (these included exhibitions and immersive installations). For S/S 2027, it is back on the Paris schedule with a show late afternoon on Tuesday 9 September. It will also mark the first show from creative director Glenn Martens after the news that his S/S 2027 show for Diesel – held in Milan last week – will be his last as creative director (since his appointment at Maison Margiela, he has led both brands). This decision, he said, was to put his focus on Maison Margiela, which, alongside ready-to-wear, hosts annual ‘Artisanal’ shows – the house’s equivalent to haute couture.

Torishéju Dumi is our name to watch

Torishéju Dumi, who won the 2025 Savoir-Faire Award at the LVMH Prize, has been one of Wallpaper’s ones to watch for some time. Her expressive collections under her eponymous label Torishéju rework the contours of historical dress, influenced by her Brazilian-Nigerian upbringing and childhood spent within the Catholic church (she also draws parallels with the likes of Yohji Yamamoto, Hussein Chalayan and Rei Kawakubo in her intriguing approach to pattern cutting and form). ‘I have always been fascinated with the otherworldly. I’m always thinking: what else is out there?’ she told Wallpaper* when we profiled the London-based designer for our September Issue. This season, she will show off-schedule on Tuesday afternoon (29 September 2026) at Salle Wagram in Paris’ 17th arrondissement.

Paris’ landmark houses will all show on-schedule

No other city can rival the historic line-up of houses that populate the Paris Fashion Week schedule. This season is no exception, with Paris’ vaunted names – many of which are traditional haute couture houses – showing across the week. These include Chanel and Dior, arguably the city’s best-known houses, and both under relatively recent creative directors (both Matthieu Blazy and Jonathan Anderson, respectively, held their debut shows last September). As they enter their third ready-to-wear seasons, the focus will be on honing their vision for these two Parisian powerhouses (Dior will show 29 September; Chanel 5 October). The same applies to Givenchy and Celine (showing 3 October and 4 October), who are also under recently appointed creative directors Sarah Burton and Michael Rider. Elsewhere, expect shows from Louis Vuitton (6 October), Hermès (3 October) and Lanvin (2 October).

Zara will reveal its ‘creative partnership’ with John Galliano

Though his upcoming retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute may be cancelled, John Galliano will have his moment at Paris Fashion Week with the reveal of his collaboration with Zara on October 1 (the exact timing, 10am CET). Though there has been no word as yet whether there will be an official event – whether a show or party – it will mark the first in what is expected to be an ongoing collaboration between Zara and the designer, who was formerly at Maison Margiela. In fact, details remain largely under wraps across the board; when the partnership was announced this past March, all Zara confirmed was that this was a ‘creative collaboration’ which will see him rework the Zara’s archives, ‘deconstructing and reconfiguring them into new seasonal expressions and creations’. Watch this space.

Drew Henry will debut at Courrèges

Courrèges will mark its latest chapter on Wednesday morning (30 September) as new creative director Drew Henry begins his tenure at the house (he succeeds Nicolas Di Felice). His first creative director role, Henry comes to Courrèges from Burberry as senior design director under Daniel Lee, having begun his career at Phoebe Philo’s Celine (he later joined her at her eponymous label, and also worked as design director for ready-to-wear under Jonathan Anderson at JW Anderson). ‘André Courrèges believed in clothes that make sense for how people live. That matters to me. I have always been drawn to work that feels modern, useful and direct,’ he said in a statement when he was appointed earlier this year. ‘I am excited to shape a vision for the House that is optimistic, clear and grounded.’

Acne Studios will celebrate 30 years

In 1996, Acne Studios began with 100 pairs of jeans, recognisable for their red stitching, that creative director Jonny Johansson and his then-collaborators distributed to their friends and creative community in Stockholm, Sweden, where the brand continues to be based. Three decades on, Acne Studios – an evolution of its original name, Acne, which stood for Ambition to Create Novel Expressions – is now one of contemporary fashion’s best-known names, showing twice-yearly as part of Paris Fashion Week. And, while 30th celebrations have spanned the whole of 2026 – including a campaign celebrating its foundational denim collection, shot by Nan Goldin (above) – the brand’s S/S 2027 show will be followed by a dinner and afterparty marking the landmark year.

Louis Vuitton will provide the week’s finale

There are a few scheduling shifts this season, including Miu Miu moving from the final day of fashion week to Sunday afternoon (4 October). More notably, though, is Louis Vuitton’s return to being the final runway show of the season, with Nicolas Ghesquière presenting his latest womenswear collection for the house at 6.30pm on Tuesday 6 October. As yet, the show’s location is yet to be revealed, though with Tuesday lacking in other major-name brands (it will be joined on the schedule by the likes of Christopher Esber, Situationist and Litkovska), Louis Vuitton will no doubt command all of the day’s column inches.

At 53 metres, M/Y HEED falls just short of the informal megayacht category (generally considered to start at 60m+). Whilst it might not be afforded ultimate bragging rights on the berthside, HEED isn’t about overall scale but quality and uniqueness of the execution.

Built in Viareggio, with a hull shaped by Arrabito Naval Architect and an exterior by Alberto Mancini Yacht Design, HEED contains a remarkable interior scheme by Achille Salvagni Architetti, the London, New York, Palm Beach and Rome-based studio that works across all manner of high-end interiors, from furniture design to hotels and private residences. It was Salvagni who brought the project to Rossinavi, and the end result is a true collaboration.

Like all yachts in its class, HEED is a truly bespoke creation, a one-of-one build that involved a lengthy process between shipyard, designers and client. Externally, HEED presents with a sleek and elegant superstructure, with a vertical bow and long ribbons of glazing on the main deck and the upper deck, home to the main saloon and owner’s suite respectively.

The latter has views towards the bow, complete with a private terrace and lap pool. Throughout the interior, softly curved timber has been used to line the principal living spaces, emphasising and highlighting design elements like the circular portholes and floating timber stairs, as well as the screens, stowage and access doors.

The yacht is also fully furnished by Salvagni’s studio, with a rich selection of curvaceous shell- and pebble-like furniture and bespoke pieces, ranging from the owner’s bed with its curved headboard to unique lighting elements.

The materials used highlight contrast and craftsmanship, with unconventional joinery and alignments. Brushed, bleached wengé floors are paired with bleached teak walls, with insets of gloss polished dark eucalyptus. Marble and timber is used in the bathrooms, while throughout HEED there are distinctive metallic accents that combine copper, rose and deep red - amaranth - ‘flashes of intensity inspired by a Mediterranean sunset’.

In the dining room, an installation of polished seashells sprawls across the walls and ceiling, adding another layer of texture to the wood-lined space with its bespoke oval table. According to the studio, ‘doors, wardrobes and handles also avoid conventional profiles, swelling and curving as though shaped by water, pressure or wind.’

A fold-down starboard balcony opens up the dining experience to the sea. This flexible approach is also adopted at the beach club and pool, where two fold-down platforms extend the usable outdoor area and provide direct access to the sea. The yacht is equipped with an onboard battery system that serves as the power source when the yacht is at anchor, for a zero emission ‘hotel mode’.

Ahead of the main saloon is the yacht’s garage, with space for a tender and other water toys. Below this is the crew cabin with berths for eight (a separate captain’s cabin is located in the wheelhouse). A bulkhead separates this area from the main guest cabins, consisting of three en-suite VIP double cabins and one twin cabin.

In addition to the main saloon, which runs the full beam of the ship and offers views to the horizon in each direction, HEED is equipped with an Observation Deck. ‘This has been an extremely stimulating project, one that will truly leave its mark on the market,’ says Federico Rossi, Chief Operating Officer of Rossinavi, ‘With generous open spaces, a panoramic owner’s cabin and a large pool, it is a yacht designed to be lived on, where functionality leads without compromising on style.’

At 499GT, M/Y HEED weighs in under the 500 Gross Tonnage threshold, above which a number of additional international maritime regulations kick in, vastly increasing the requirements and rules for crew numbers as well as access to smaller marinas.

Alberto Mancini explains that ‘working within the 499 GT threshold allowed us to rethink proportion and space with greater freedom. Placing the owner’s suite forward on the upper deck creates a quieter, more intimate connection with the sea, while the metallic grey hull reveals the beauty of the yacht’s clean, sculpted surfaces through a delicate play of light and shadow throughout the day.’

Achille Salvagni Atelier describes the end result as a ‘private world shaped by water and wind: tactile, fluid and slightly mysterious, where the interior does not compete with the sea, but breathes with it.’

‘From the beginning, I was interested in creating a world suspended somewhere between the sea and the sky: an interior without rigidity, where architecture seems to lose its conventional boundaries and become something softer, more instinctive, almost alive,’ says Salvagni, ‘I wanted the interior of this yacht to feel as though it had not been designed, but rather shaped by the forces that surround it — by water, wind, light and time.’

Rossinavi.it, @Rossinavi, SalvagniArchitetti.net, @AchilleSalvagni

The future is not what it was, and ‘Home of the Future, 1925-1985: Designing Domestic Utopias’, a new exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), shows us what we have gained and lost. Advertisements, labour-saving gadgets, and models of model homes trace the rise and fall of America’s faith in material progress. Since then, visions have come to pass; science fiction has often turned into fact, yet the public mood is one of deep disquiet. A future of AI and climate change, for instance, could make for a terrifying prospect.

Step inside 'Home of the Future, 1925-1985: Designing Domestic Utopias'

Decorative arts are one of LACMA’s great strengths. Curator Wendy Kaplan and her associate Grace Converse have assembled an extraordinary array of objects and images to show how the US was transformed in those six decades and how the optimism of that era soured. The exhibition is divided into four sections that flow into each other and overlap.

In the first, 1925-1945: Health, Efficiency and Mechanization, speculative fantasies - from a self-cleaning house to flying cars - proliferate. Those were years in which electrification remade rural America, radio and telephones bound it together, and war generated new materials and technologies.

The second section, 1945-1965: Plastics, Push Buttons and Prefabrication, illustrates a consumer paradise for the middle class; a cornucopia of gadgetry, pastel décor and a two-tone sedan (or two) in every suburban garage. It was also the heyday of Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Henry Dreyfuss and many more brilliant designers, whose best work has a timeless appeal.

There’s a model of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House, an aluminium rotunda that might have gone into production at a former bomber plant in Wisconsin, except that the inventor was too busy tweaking the prototype and lost his chance. Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House comes across as a model of rigour and abstraction in contrast to Barbie’s Dream House and the all-plastic Monsanto House of the Future, which had a ten-year run at Disneyland.

In parallel to this showcase of high and low design is the third section, 1950-1970: The Cold Was Command Center, in which the home is visualised as a shelter from nuclear attack and other threats. In an age of anxiety, movies and television peddle fantasies of living in space or underwater, with architects and designers scrambling to keep up.

The concluding section, 1965-1985: the Counterculture and the Computer, takes us from The Whole Earth Catalogue and hippie communes to Apple’s first Mac and the wired age we now inhabit.

Complementing ‘Home of the Future’ is a pocket show, ‘The Kitchen and its Discontents’, focusing on two modern classics that LACMA has acquired. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s Frankfurt kitchen was a feature of progressive housing estates in Weimar Germany; and Le Corbusier called on Charlotte Perriand to design a modular kitchen for his Unité housing blocks in Marseilles and other European cities. Both eliminated drudgery for low-income tenants.

These two exhibitions, which run through March 14, 2027, fuse aesthetics and technology, social history and commerce, to explore a half-century of progress. Both appeal to the senses, as one covetable object, image, and furnishing follows another.

Only an artist as imaginative as Isamu Noguchi would have conceived the speaker for a 'radio nursemaid' as a helmet that Darth Vader would love to wear. And it took the inspired graphics of Lester Beall to convince conservative farmers that a government program of electrification would change their lives. Including these and more, the profusely illustrated catalogue for this exhibition (New York: Del Monico, $80) features 15 thematic essays and is likely to become an enduring work of reference.

'Home of the Future, 1925–1985: Designing Domestic Utopias', Sep 27, 2026 – Mar 14, 2027, Resnick Pavilion, LACMA, Los Angeles, USA

lacma.org

Where do you want AI to be? Out of sight, out of mind, baked into your phone, laptop or other smart device, or as a discrete, characterful physical object that you pop in a pocket, around your neck, on your face or in your ear? Leaving aside the fact that many people don’t want AI to be anywhere near them, it’s clear that the latter category is gaining some traction.

Welcome to the fast-expanding world of secondary AI devices, as if we didn’t have enough to worry about. These AI-enabled devices sit betwixt common categories like earbuds, voice recorders and smartphones and bill themselves as seamless agentic bridges that join the digital dots between our connected lifestyles.

These objects are designed to operate largely independently of a smartphone, offering help with recording, translating, note taking and agentic back and forth with other systems.

We’ve used and applauded the Plaud Note Pro, and struggled a little with InnAIO’s T9 AI Translator and the Buttons Clip AI earbuds, but these are discrete objects with a singular purpose – transcription and translation – that don’t have virtual tentacles reaching across all their devices.

Right now, it’s only AI adopters who have really embedded the technology into their workflow have taken these devices to heart. Fans of pocketable AIs like the newly updated Rabbit R1 need to well-versed in systems architecture, tips, tricks and general tech savviness.

Could a more consumer-focused device be on the way? The imminent arrival of OpenAI's much vaunted, LoveFrom-designed magic thingmajig certainly has the potential to upend things, whilst Meta is also attempting to get ahead of the game with the announcement of a physical pendant for its new Muse assistant.

There’s also the danger that all these devices are already redundant. After all, most of us carry a perfectly competent pocket computer with us at all times. Over the decades, smartphones have gobbled up every conceivable pocketable item and compressed their functionality into their form factor – camera, wallet, watch, alarm clock, Dictaphone, music player, TV, book, etc., etc. Do we really need another device to help us through the day?

Cheerleaders for discrete AI devices suggest they’ll help cut the cord of smartphone addiction and make us all more present and involved. Perhaps. First all they must push past the ick created by privacy-agnostic smart glasses and really prove their worth. Come with us into the world of AI smart devices, a smorgasbord of unfamiliar brand names, along with promised feats of technical wizardry and labour saving.

Comu Action Pro

First up, the Comulytic Comu Action Pro, an AI-powered recording and notetaking device that is looking to be in the same space as the Plaud Note Pro. Substantially cheaper, it comes with an added tier of operations that goes beyond the ‘simple’ transcription of meetings, calls and interviews, and digs deeper into your system to spark follow-up conversations and actions.

Both the Action Pro and its entry-level sibling, the Comu Note Pro, take the same credit-card form factor as the Plaud. Both are claimed to be fluent in 113 languages (with real time transcription and translation), with the Pro offering over 60 hours of recording time through its six-microphone array.

In practice, the Action Pro’s transcription abilities aren’t quite as polished as Plaud’s, but it’s the follow-up actions that could make all the difference. Capable of turning meetings into slideshows and annotated documents at the touch of a button, the Note Pro walks a fine line between AI executive assistant and busywork builder.

Comu Action Pro is available from Store.Comu.com and Amazon.co.uk

Muse from Meta and Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses

Where would a round-up of AI devices be without Meta? The totemic and highly divisive company offered a look at what’s coming next at this month’s Meta Connect 2026 event to bring more AI-powered Meta Glasses into the fray, along with a physical form for its new personal AI agent, Muse.

In addition to making Meta Ray-Ban Display more widely available – these are the glasses with an onboard screen viewable only to the wearer – Meta also announced the Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses. Cynics might say this is a clever pushback against the bad press afforded the camera-equipped, privacy invading Meta glasses, offering onboard access to Meta AI – via chat – and enhanced audio quality. Lighter, slimmer and with more colour options across two styles, Clubmaster and Burbank.

With all that said, Meta is still deeply committed to its regular smart glasses, launching generation 3 of the world’s bestselling AI glasses, Ray-Ban Meta, along with new styles for the regular Meta Glasses, effectively flooding the zone with stylistic options for frames, along with high profile collaborations with LISA and Kylie Jenner (her again). There was also the announcement of Meta’s new VR Glasses, due next year, but that’s more of an immersive entertainment device as much as a spatial computer.

Aside from all the eyewear, the key announcement was a physical format for the Muse AI assistant, Muse Charm. Resembling an adult Tamagotchi, replete with very un-adult animations, it’s a pocketable object that makes the act of chatting to Muse more tangible. Designed by the company’s in-house team led by former Apple man Alan Dye, Muse is US-only right now, and the Charm won’t be ready for a few more months, when you’ll also be able to use it via Meta Glasses.

Like many of the AI-enabled objects featured here, there’s a deceptive and tonally awkward disconnect between the power and scope of Muse and the kawaii-adjacent look and feel of the Charm. The animations look and feel very Pixar and Dreamworks adjacent, the buttery smooth CGI that has been utterly co-opted and hollowed out by generative AI.

Aesthetics aside, will we learn to love chatting openly with our new pocket friends? Meta seems happy to cop all the flack and push through ‘innovation’ with nary a thought about secondary consequences. You might have forgotten about the Metaverse, but Zuckerberg and co are still spending big to make AI happen and more.

Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, coming soon, £319, Meta.com
Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 3), from £409, Meta.com
AI.Meta.com/Muse

Rabbit R1 with OS3

The new OS3 from Rabbit is an ‘agentic operating system’, one that’s operating through prompts, either via typing, text messages or talking into the R1 handheld device. This pivot to a standalone OS could give the maligned but cultish R1 a second life.

Launched perhaps ahead of time, with too much focus on form rather than function, the R1 was originally dismissed as a halfway house without much purpose. With OS3, the R1 becomes a controller for the web workspace, a remote controller through which you can direct, stop, start and create ‘skills’.

On its own, the R1 (shaped by Teenage Engineering, no less) still functions as an AI voice recorder and notetaker, with an onboard camera, microphone and scroll wheel interface. Aimed at tech-savvy, vibe-coding developers who like the retro aesthetic and community-minded approach, the R1 is the original pocket companion for the AI curious.

Rabbit R1, $199, Rabbit.Tech, @rabbit

Violoop

Sitting somewhere between the Charm and the R1 is the forthcoming Violoop, currently undergoing a successful Kickstarter campaign. Resembling a levelled-up alarm clock, Violoop is a desktop AI companion that connects directly to your PC and introduces a seamless agentic workflow. In practice, that means having a context-aware digital assistant that prepares responses and information without waiting for a conventional prompt.

The makers describe it as a ‘second AI user’, one that transform an older computer into a smarter device without sharing data beyond the Violoop itself. However, like so many AI assistants, the predicted workflows – organising calendar invites, summarising meetings and executing actions – are very business orientated, targeted at a format and corporate structure that already feels out of date.

It’s hard to determine whether any take-up in such agentic AIs will hasten the demise of the culture of spreadsheets, meetings, KPIs and action points or simply cement it into place for generations to come.

Violoop.ai, Kickstarter.com

Elehear Beyond 2 Pro

Beyond 2 Pro from Elehear offers a much more succinct and straightforward use of AI power. These are what used to be called hearing aids, rebranded and massively enhanced for the AI generation. Using Elehear’s own sound-processing algorithm, the Beyond Pro 2 are designed to cut through background noise and pick-out and amplify conversations.

Working hand in hand with a team of licensed audiologists, Elehear’s technology is something many high-end earbuds will offer in the future – the ability to isolate certain sounds and tune out the background noise. The entire system is available over the counter and designed to be worn discretely behind the ear. In addition to boosting hearing abilities, they also offer audio playback and realtime translation.

Elehear Beyond 2 Pro, $799, Elehear.com

Viaim Rise

Another entry in the real-time AI translation genre, the new Rise earbuds from Viaim promise 78 language fluency in addition to being able to capture calls and conversations. The latter don’t just sit as recordings, but they can be turned into action points via the usual highfalutin promises attached to such devices. In the Rise’s case, this means direct access to key players like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.

There’s no denying the quality of the audio hardware (3D spatial audio, three microphones for voice and environmental capture, etc.), but your mileage is yet again predicated on existing workflows and whether or not you’re happy and willing to let a distant tech behemoth have access to your day-to-day thoughts, calendar and career aspirations.

Viaim Rise earbuds, available via Indiegogo.com, Viaim.ai

Relay Q

Another AI-native hardware project, this time in the form of a compact, sleek microphone-style device that is positioning itself as the ‘future of input’. Voice control is second nature to many of us, particularly in cars and when using the first wave of smart devices like Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant. All of these services are constantly evolving, but Relay’s new Q device is an ‘active input object’, not a disembodied ear hovering in the background waiting for a wake word.

Relay Q is designed to be ‘something you intentionally reach for at the moment a thought happens, much like reaching for a mouse or beginning to type,’ according to industrial designer Aaron Yan, founding Design Partner at Relay and former Nothing designer.

Intention and context are key, just like the Dictaphone of old, with a microphone array designed to capture whispers as well as meetings, with a detachable tip that can double up as a lapel mic. The software back-up is driven by Gemini and ultimately a subscription will be required to make the most of all its functions.

Relay Q, available in January 2027, Relay.tech, @Relay.Tech.HQ

Boya Notra Neo

An AI notetaker without the fuss, the new Boya Notra Neo follows the path of Plaud and Comu, cramming high-quality 360-degree microphones into a discrete and compact package. Capable of clipping magnetically to the back of your phone, the Notra Neo can record phone calls and via Bluetooth as well as over its ambient microphones and follows the familiar playbook of building up an archive of searchable transcripts, translation and queries.

Less serious-looking than its peers, it’s pitched at students and those who need everyday record-keeping, with the added caveat of being a prominent, neat device that can sit on a table and record without being unduly sneaky. There’s 64GB on onboard storage, four colours (Black, Silver, Cosmic Orange, and Purple) and the inevitable subscription scheme for power users.

Boya Notra Neo, £79.09, Store.Boyamic.com

Louise Trotter has made a habit of infusing her tenure at Bottega Veneta with art since her debut show for the house last year. Then, it was a showspace bedecked with jewel-toned Murano glass stools, hand-blown by Milan-based studio 6:AM – audience seating which looked more like ethereal sculptures. In April, she launched an ongoing series titled ‘Bottega Veneta for the Arts,’ in which the brand collaborates with contemporary artists and artisans, beginning with photographer Peter Fraser.

For S/S 2027, Trotter’s third ready-to-wear outing for the Italian house, she commissioned German visual and sound artist Florian Hecker to create a site-specific pre-show installation titled Scintillations 20 (2026). Taking place last night (26 September 2026) at Milan Fashion Week, the work comprises 20 loudspeakers, playing a distinct atmospheric, textural sound generated by Hecker, coming together to form a unique soundscape that permeated through the space.

Florian Hecker on his site-specific installation for Bottega Veneta S/S 2027

‘I enjoy working with spaces which have not been conceived for sound in the first place and also when sound is in dialogue with something outside itself,’ Hecker told Wallpaper* in an exclusive interview. ‘With the sonic, there are more spaces than just the built or architectural; there’s the acoustic space the piece inhabits, and also the mental space of how one is processing the sounds. This ambiguity is central to the piece; each loudspeaker is coupled with a stainless steel reflector that multiplies the notion of a visually seen sound source and of a perceived location of a sound in space that might not correspond.’

Hecker describes the soundscape as being ‘a bit like a cloud-like structure present in the room, weightless and enveloping, something closer to light diffusing through air than to music in the conventional sense.’ The audio was computer-generated, with processes taken from varying synthesis techniques across the decades. ‘Many of the sounds sit on the very edge between something that might be familiar and at once not, working with resynthesis methods that all come with their own characteristics and also instabilities,’ he said. ‘I was looking for something with a lightweight quality, of surface and grain and with a continuous dynamic.’

With the soundtrack of the runway show provided by British artist Mark Leckey, the work holds a particular significance for Hecker: ‘We had a joint 12-inch release a few years ago, and now this project together – which also meant working with ideas that were about mood and reference points, decades, maybe a certain nostalgia, into something built from synthesis, so no samples, no literal references, this was at the core of the collaboration.’ Of working alongside Trotter, Hecker remarked, ‘there was great trust from the beginning, which helps enormously when the sounds themselves often resist linguistic description.’

The work set the scene for a collection by Trotter inspired by the moment that spring turns into summer, whereby layers are shed, and you look for lightness in clothing. ‘A physical and mental de-robing,’ she described. ‘Summer as a proposition: to wear less, but feel more.’ To further capture this mood, a leather flower – handmade by the house’s leather atelier – had been laid on each seat, a series of resin-coated cardboard boxes by artist Illya Goldman Gubin. ‘The space evokes the bright airiness of summer and, with it, a renewed sense of possibility,’ says Trotter.

Stay tuned for more from Milan Fashion Week S/S 2027.

When it comes to interiors, Westwing has plenty to offer. As the year draws to a close, the brand’s take on the advent calendar turns the countdown to Christmas into a celebration of design, with a curation of surprises combining pieces from its own collection with an edit of finds from premium partner brands.

It comes in an oversized red-and-white house-shaped box elegantly illustrated by Kera Till, a Munich-based artist whose whimsical motifs have featured on previous collaborations with Westwing. Behind each of the 24 doors is a design-worthy surprise, spanning home decor, tableware and self-care essentials, to be enjoyed during the festive season and beyond.

What's inside the Westwing advent calendar

The collection brings together some of Westwing’s most coveted brands, including Aesop, Audo Copenhagen, Ferm Living, Vinga, DBKD, Philippi, Vondels, WMF, Archivist and Broste. Several pieces have been specially customised for the calendar and aren’t available for individual purchase, adding an exclusive touch to the experience.

Beautiful yet functional, objects have been chosen to inspire elegant spaces and elevate the everyday, reflecting Westwing’s focus on craftsmanship, considered design and timeless appeal. Without giving too much away, last year’s sold-out edition featured a scented candle by Meraki, place card holders by Georg Jensen, and a wood plaid from Westwing's Collection – alongside linen napkins, champagne coupes, Christmas stockings and other festive accessories.

This launch comes at an exciting moment for the company: following its online UK debut earlier this year, Westwing opened its first flagship store in Germany in September, marking another step in its growing presence in the world of home and lifestyle.

As the brand continues to expand its offering for design-conscious consumers across Europe, the calendar captures its vision for shaping trends and taste. Conceived to be gifted or enjoyed as a daily discovery, it is a considered way to round off the year in style.

From a distance, you might be forgiven for mistaking this São Paulo house for a leafy part of urban design. Yet upon approach, it becomes apparent that this is no park - but the lush exterior of a thoroughly contemporary family home in the heart of the Brazilian metropolis. Welcome to 111 House, a modernist-inspired property designed by Isay Weinfeld - a home further elevated by the Brazilian architect's close collaboration with his landscape counterpart, the specialist Rodrigo Oliveira.

The home, a family base for a couple of contemporary art collectors and their two children, was conceived as a space for displaying artworks but also an informal residence for meeting friends and experiencing daily life, 'in a simple and unpretentious way,' the architects explain.

Explore a São Paulo house by Isay Weinfeld with landscape by Rodrigo Oliveira

Weinfeld is a deft hand at crafting modern homes that nod to Brazilian modernism's defining principles – as the architect himself is part of a generation of his country's architects who picked up where leading modernists such as Oscar Niemeyer left off, taking the South American country's architecture to its contemporary chapter. Past projects include projects such as Geneses House, which won a Wallpaper* Design Award for Best Private House in 2014.

In this São Paulo house – titled 111 House – Weinfeld brought to the project another key proponent of Brazilian design – Oliveira, who adheres to a naturalistic garden perspective, inspired by Japanese garden methodology and the asymmetric beauty of nature itself. The landscape architect typically works towards 'spontaneous-looking gardens that blend seamlessly into the surroundings,’ he told us in an interview in 2025.

111 House matches an urban plot and 517 sq m of built space with a generous 280 sq m garden. Here, Weinfeld's expert language of clean lines, raw concrete and warm timber surfaces blends effortlessly with vegetation that overflows, smoothing edges, softening boundaries and creating a dynamic facade that will change with time and the seasons.

Planters have cleverly been incorporated into the facade's fabric, so that greenery and flowers take over not simply on the ground level or terraces, as is most conventional, but also vertically, moving upwards through the elevations on all sides of the building.

Oliveira's naturalistic philosophy for landscape design meant that he worked on consolidating plants that thrive in a variety of climatic conditions and better reflect the territory's current and future needs, where weather and nature are concerned.

The studio writes: 'Rather than resorting to a tropical forest of broad leaves and dense volumes, often associated with the Brazilian landscape, the house receives cold-climate species, small foliage, flowers and great botanical diversity. These are wind-resistant plants, easier to maintain and capable of ageing well, composing a delicate garden without losing presence.'

As the house unfolds across four levels, the property's footprint remains relatively small to allow for the garden around it to thrive. At the same time, overhangs, pergolas and the planting serve as brise-soleil to underline comfortable urban living for the residents year-round.

isayweinfeld.com

rodrigooliveirapaisagismo.com.br

Demna’s debut runway show for Gucci, held in February, took place amid a monolithic, marble-clad ‘museum’ inspired by the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and constructed from scratch in Milan’s Palazzo delle Scintille. Lined with recreations of Roman and Hellenistic statuary, Demna said he wanted to reassert the place that Gucci holds within Italian culture – as much a part of the country’s character as the masterworks inside the Uffizi (the gallery occupies the same piazza as Palazzo Gucci, the spiritual home of the brand, which was founded in the Tuscan city in 1921).

The realisation had come while viewing Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus – a work that Demna had encountered endlessly (it is one of the most replicated pieces of art in history), yet never viewed in real life. ‘Standing in front of it, I felt overwhelmed,’ he wrote. ‘The beauty in it was unconditional; it was absolute. When I left the museum and stepped into Piazza della Signoria, the first thing I saw was Palazzo Gucci. In that moment, I understood the place Gucci holds within Italian culture.’

This afternoon in Milan (25 September 2026), Demna held his second runway show for Gucci, staged in a simulacrum of a Gucci store meticulously constructed within the Allianz Mi-Co events space. It was designed to resemble Demna’s new ‘store concept’ for the house, which will begin with a renovated Paris store that opens in late October on Avenue Montaigne (further stores around the world will follow).

Within it, nods to ancient antiquity – stone frescoes, recreations of classical statues, sets of urns – recalled his debut’s showspace; elsewhere, planes of marble, velvet banquettes and high-pile carpets signalled Gucci’s association with luxury. The designer said he wanted it to have ‘monumental’ quality – a return to the days when the Gucci store was a true temple of desire (in the late 1970s, high-spending consumers at New York and Los Angeles stores were given a golden key to access the exclusive Gucci Galleria).

‘My first year at Gucci was dedicated to understanding and formulating what Gucci stands for,’ Demna wrote in a letter to guests. ‘The conclusion of my research is that Gucci stands for being rooted in the desire to belong to a more glamorous world, and in the audacity to remake that world in your own image.’

The show that followed saw models traverse the show space as if haughtily shopping for handbags or shoes (indeed, real product from recent collections hung around the ‘store’). ‘Gucci is about luxury that wants to be seen – it is about the tension between propriety and sensuality,’ he said. ‘The house begins with polished bourgeois respectability, but its most memorable periods introduce eccentricity, danger or sex appeal into that respectable world.’

As has become his signature – at both Gucci and Balenciaga, where he was creative director previously – the collection began with archetypes, among them ‘The Rebellious Aristocrat’, ‘The Snob’ and ‘The Eccentric’, which were here conjured by a cast which included Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Poppy Delevingne and Alex Consani. Bourgeois ‘fur’ coats and sinuous sparkling gowns met body-contouring riffs on equestrian attire, louche double-breasted tailoring and overcoats, as well as elements of prep: layered polos, tucked-in ties and sweaters worn over the shoulder all featured. Elsewhere, the horse bit became a recurring motif, whether miniature on the collar of a shirt or the pocket of a leather jacket, or supersized as a fastening on the back of a jacket or slung around the waist.

‘It kind of feels like it’s my first show for Gucci,’ he said backstage after the show, which he described as ‘broken bourgeoisie’ – a departure, he said, from his ‘comfort zone’. ‘I cannot base my whole vision on the 1990s – [on] snobby fashion glamour,’ he continued. ‘But you think about Gucci before fashion, before Tom [Ford], this is how it was, it was all about this claimed bourgeoisie. It’s quintessentially Gucci.’

Stay tuned to wallpaper.com for more from Milan Fashion Week S/S 2027.

Fondation Beyeler has just unveiled a new jewel in its crown; the art institution's leafy Basel campus now has a rare Peter Zumthor building – and more. The site has just soft-launched an expanded collection of spaces, including an entire, brand-new museum building, a dedicated event pavilion, a new office and art-handling facility, a design-led greenhouse and a listening salon. These new destinations were revealed this week and will be available to the public as a gradual preview for now, before a grand launch in January 2027, when they will be opened permanently and to their full capacity for all to enjoy.

Tour the reimagined Fondation Beyeler campus in Basel

The Fondation Beyeler, situated next to green fields in the corner of Switzerland that borders France and Germany, thus far contained an existing, handsome period structure dating back to the 18th century (which houses one of Basel's friendliest cafés) and the Beyeler Museum, designed by Renzo Piano and opened on site in 1997.

The foundation's rotating exhibitions draw from its impressive collection put together by Ernst and Hildy Beyeler, which includes works from Pablo Picasso to Claude Monet and beyond (over '400 classical, modern and contemporary art works', the website explains). They have so far been predominantly housed at the Piano building – but this is now joined by the trio of new structures, which aim to expand, 'physically and conceptually', the organisation's operations.

The star of the show among the new architectural additions is without doubt the Wyss Museum, a striking, monolithic building designed by Zumthor for art exhibitions drawing on the foundation's own and its regular collaborators' collections. The Swiss architect is known for his attention to detail, craft-based design, precise execution and clean, minimalist style – and this new cultural destination does not disappoint.

Spread across three flowing, open-plan levels, the building is made almost entirely out of a single material – Jura limestone. This appears in its rammed limestone walls, as terrazzo in floors, limestone wash on internal walls, and as slabs on benches. It took 11 builders two years to work on the limestone elements – a lot of it done by hand. Zumthor himself followed the construction closely, visiting the site to ensure the material's natural variation, as it was being rammed in place, felt balanced and appropriate to his vision.

The architect was keen to source all his materials locally – architectural bronze frames the generous openings (the architect likes horizontal light, so large side windows illuminate the galleries softly while allowing the eye to wander towards the verdant surrounds when taking a break from the art shows), and pear tree wood makes up the deliciously smooth handles.

In his Ammann Pavilion, situated at the campus' heart, just outside the Wyss Museum, Zumthor took a similarly local and tactile approach, but focusing on timber instead. Warm cherry wood lines floors and walls, pear tree appears on handles here too, and oak makes up the building's main structural frame.

This building is wrapped in glazing and furnished with pieces composed by Spanish studio Casa Muñoz, destined to be the campus' potentially most public-facing space. Its programme will be varied, spanning concerts, talks and even dinners and private functions, as it was designed to welcome the crowds throughout the day and for different events.

Opposite it and next to the Wyss Museum sits a new tower with glazed façades – the wooden-framed Erlen Torhaus, which hosts offices as well as art-handling logistics. The artworks will come in through this building before being taken to their exhibition spaces beyond. An underground connection between the tower and the Wyss Museum facilitates safe and secure movement of the precious pieces.

The period structures that form the street-facing side of the campus have also been updated with two new interiors – an India Madhavi-designed plant store and greenhouse, designed as a cold house for plants to survive as the climate warms up; and a listening lounge titled the 'Salon', where a collection of vinyl, picked for its sleeves by well- and lesser-known artists, is available to enjoy.

The latter space will have its own public programme, serving as a more intimate space for writing, debating and music sessions. The salon's soft interior, decorated with warm colours and soft furnishings, was created by Antonio Rossi.

The Beyeler also has further plans for its grounds, a formerly private park - now open to the public as a sculpture garden and open urban space. An entirely new garden section is coming up next year, and rotating art pieces, sparsely placed in a way that allows the visitor a sense of discovery, are in the works. New pieces by Louise Bourgeois, Pierre Huyghe, Rachel Whiteread and Fujiko Nakaya have been curated in place. Meanwhile, the garden addition, currently being crafted by Fischli/Weiss, will follow in spring.

Zumthor spoke warmly of his personal connection to the Fondation Beyeler site: 'I grew up in Oberwil, which is only five kilometres from Basel. Back then, it was still a world of its own. And now, with the expansion of the Fondation Beyeler, Iʼm back in the region, after so many years. This really means a lot to me. I know the landscape, the places and the paths. Bettingen lies on the hillside above Riehen; my first girlfriend lived there. We used to visit each other – it was a two-hour walk from Oberwil to Bettingen. Memories like that connect you to a place in a very personal way.

'I havenʼt yet designed a building in Basel myself. I never got an invitation to. So Iʼm all the more pleased that the expansion of Fondation Beyeler allows me to build in a place that means so much to Basel and the region.'

fondationbeyeler.ch

Did you think you knew the work of Geoffrey Bawa? Even if the answer is yes, a visit to the new show at the Vitra Design Museum is certain to offer new insights into the lauded Sri Lankan architect's work to most – as 'Geoffrey Bawa: Architecture for the Senses', now open till the end of February 2027, takes a deep dive into the creative's life and oeuvre. It is a territory that might feel far away to many of the institution's more local Swiss, French and German audience, but, as visitors will discover, it speaks to timeless qualities and an ever-relevant approach to design and architecture that resonates the world around.

Tour the new Geoffrey Bawa show at Vitra Design Museum

Born in 1919, Geoffrey Bawa was one of the most influential architects of the 20th century in his region and beyond, easily joining the ranks of the world's modernist architecture masters as he blended the movement's principles with the rich history and traditions of Sri Lanka, crafting his own version of what modern architecture should be.

Bawa was born to a family of mixed Asian and European heritage, and was a lawyer before training as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. He graduated in 1957 and set up his studio in his home country, working throughout his career on some 200 projects – some now built and still preserved, some since demolished and several remaining unbuilt.

The architect also designed his own homes – both his urban space in Colombo and a countryside base at the Lunuganga Estate in Bentota, whose sprawling gardens and structures are now run by the Teardrop hotel group – and several of the spaces within, including his private quarters, are now available to book and stay in, adding an extra dimension to what constitutes a visit to Bawa's houses for the architecturally savvy – or simply curious – traveller.

So far, so familiar – as perhaps his own homes are the most well-known Bawa projects and the architecture that most non-specialist audiences, particularly outside Asia, might associate with his portfolio. Yet, the Sri Lankan architect's legacy is so much more than that, and this is precisely what this exhibition has set out to showcase.

Vitra Design Museum director Mateo Kries told us at the opening: 'When you talk to people in Asia, Bawa is extremely well known. No matter whether it's in Japan, in China, or in India, Bawa is like a hero. I had seen the works. Rolf Fehlbaum, our museum founder, had travelled and seen them, and we both thought we should do something on him. Vitra is not producing Bawa furniture. He hasn't built outside of Sri Lanka and India and Southeast Asia.

'We think Bawa is just one architect who shows how the International Style or modernist architecture connected with local traditional, and even colonial influences, and of course Bawa is not the only one to do this; but Bawa is probably one of the most influential examples.

'We wanted this to be an intense, immersive show. It should convey something of that intensity of the places where Bawa built. When you go there, the colours are very intense. Nature is very present because it's [of a kind] that grows extremely fast. It takes over in no time.'

The show is organised in four rooms – the first one starts with the architect's personal homes, a highlight of his portfolio and an ongoing project for him until his death in 2003. He designed both the structures and the gardens. In fact, they illustrate extremely well how much Bawa valued landscape and how he regarded the terrain, the nature and wildlife on each of his sites as an integral part of his project.

The next room takes the visitor into the political and socioeconomic context of Sri Lanka at Bawa's time, showing how he experimented with materials and why, highlighting some of his works – perhaps lesser known than his residential designs, which also include the Ena de Silva house, recently relocated to Lunuganga – that have a more public and social aspect.

Among them is the St Thomas' Preparatory School (the architect here experimented with modernist construction and breeze-block ventilation, which eventually proved tricky in the country's hot and humid climate) and the majestic New Sri Lankan Parliament in Kotte.

Room three zooms into the fascinating blend of art and craft that Bawa brought into his works. Fabrics (such as those his client Ena de Silva produced), paintings, mosaics and more were integrated into the architect's buildings, not simply as ornaments or beautification techniques, but as integral building elements – a fabric that is not added to a ceiling, but indeed was the ceiling; or a mural or relief that formed part of the building's structure from the get-go, rather than being added later.

'He really saw architecture and art as intertwined, so we call this room 'Weaving art into architecture', and the focus is on those creative collaborations and how these work,' says Shayari de Silva of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust, who worked as a co-curator on the show, alongside exhibition curator Johan Deurell and Ikko Yokoyama of M+ (the exhibition is set to travel to M+ in Hong Kong after its time at Vitra). 'So when you see a batik panel above, it is literally a ceiling. It's not art on a ceiling.'

The final room explores the 'total picture' of Bawa's work, zooming out and looking at entire sites through aerials, drawings and the way Sri Lanka's lush nature interacted with and indeed was regularly and respectfully included in the architect's designs. There are lots of bits of information that will inspire and perhaps even surprise - exhibits include the Kandalama hotel, surely one of the world's first even green eco-hotel projects, planted roofs and everything.

The show brings together archive drawings, models, film and newly commissioned photography by Iwan Baan in an exhibition design sensitively put together by Lina Ghotmeh in a way that not only creates a warm, enveloping environment that takes the visitor one step closer to the Sri Lankan context of Bawa's life, but also feels in harmony with the Vitra Design Museum's own building, a Frank Gehry original from 1989.

The result is an immersive journey through the world of Geoffrey Bawa – and if you can't make it to Sri Lanka any time soon, this is definitely something worth experiencing.

'Geoffrey Bawa: Architecture for the Senses' is open from 26 September 2026 to 28 February 2027 at the Vitra Design Museum

design-museum.de

Royal Huisman has revealed its Project 410, described as the world’s largest sloop – a yacht with a single mast and two main sail. Measuring an impressive 85m (280ft), Project 410 is a sloop rigged sailing yacht, or megayacht, currently undergoing final completion at the company’s shipyard in Vollenhove, The Netherlands.

The company has revealed new renders showcasing the design, with exterior and naval architecture by Frers Design and interiors by Wetzels Brown, after a period of intense secrecy surrounding the superyacht’s construction.

From the outset, the intention was to create a ‘sailor’s yacht’, despite Project 410’s scale (Royal Huisman say it’ll be amongst the ten largest sailing yachts in the world). The balance of interior accommodation to the fluid, dynamic hull was carefully stewarded from the outset, allowing for generous living spaces that haven’t compromised Project 410’s ability to slice through the water.

The accommodation is arranged across two decks with a low-profile pilothouse set behind the mast, developed by Royal Huisman’s sister company Rondal, specialists in carbon fibre and aluminium rigging. According to Mani Frers of Frers Design, the yacht’s ‘pure deck lines form a single arrow shape from bow to stern, incorporating the glass pilothouse, while the raked mast and uniquely engineered boom reinforce the yacht’s dynamic profile.’

The hull has been formed with large windows, skylights and high ceilings across the main deck for an unprecedented feeling of space, as well as views to the horizon and up to the billowing sails. In addition to a double-height main entrance, there’s a large salon leading through to a veranda and beach club, while the private owner’s suite is set further towards the bow. There’s also substantial battery capacity on board – which can be charged while sailing – for a silent operation mode when needed.

‘For us, the interior is about creating an environment where people can relax, feel close to the sea and create memories,’ says Gillian Brown of Wetzels Brown, ‘The exterior, interior and experience of sailing have been developed as one continuous expression.’

Project 410 is due to be launched in November, after which the towering carbon fibre mast will be raised (‘stepped’), ahead of customer delivery next year.

RoyalHuisman.com, @RoyalHuisman / Frers.Design, @ManiFrers / WetzelsBrown.com, @WetzelsBrown

On show this weekend at Chelsea Industrial in New York, this installation by Brooklyn-based conceptual art collective MSCHF demonstrates Lexus’s ongoing commitment to art, the avant-garde and the importance of making an impact. Motomorphosis is making its debut during Armory Week and features two outlandishly altered production Lexus EVs, a Lexus RZ450e and a Lexus RX450h+.

Each model has been turned into a sculptural piece, Circle Car and Twisted Car, displayed alongside its original vehicle. The installation is a continuation of MSCHF’s exploration of the intersection between the digital and physical worlds, using techniques and aesthetics more commonly associated with 3D software, Photoshop and CGI and translating them into real-world forms.

Hence the surrealist nose-to-tail loop of the Circle Car, which looks like as if a regular Lexus RZ450e has been extruded along a circular path. It’s paired with Twisted Car, an almost nightmarish vision of the latest Lexus RX450h+ scrunched up like a wrung-out towel, with its signature fluted and twisted body forms given uncanny amplification.

These aren’t concept cars in the conventional sense, but ‘Form Cars’ – at least that’s how MSCHF describes them. ‘Where a car is concretely engineered to move, the works in Motormorphosis are sculpted to produce the idea of movement,’ the studio says. As well as computer-driven processes, the two sculptures also nod to Futurism, the century-old art Italian art movement that strove to convey dynamism through static form.

‘Most conversations about electrification focus on how a vehicle is powered. Motormorphosis asks a different question: what can electricity power in our imagination?’, says Lexus marketing’s senior manager Lisa McQueen, ‘working with MSCHF allowed us to take the automobile beyond its familiar form and explore movement, transformation and possibility in an entirely new way.’

Rather unnecessarily, the exhibition’s disclaimer notes that ‘the vehicles shown are special project vehicles modified with non-Lexus parts that may void warranty, negatively impact safety, and not be street legal.’

Motormorphosis is at Chelsea Industrial, 545 W. 28th St., New York, NY
Motormorphosis.com, @ChelseaIndustrial, MSCHF.com, @MSCHF, @LexusUSA