Othmane Bengebara, an emerging architect and his studio in Morocco, joins the Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2026, our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Othmane Bengebara Studio

Othmane Bengebara Studio is a multidisciplinary architecture and design practice founded in 2020 by French-Moroccan professor and architect Othmane Bengebara. Bengebara studied at the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He has contributed to prestigious projects from royal residences to global Louis Vuitton flagship stores, under the direction of Peter Marino.

Othmane Bengebara Studio works across residential, cultural, hospitality and exhibition projects and moves fluidly between architecture, interiors and scenography. Whether designing a private residence, an exhibition or an infrastructural facility, the studio seeks to create spaces that are both emotionally resonant and inspired by everyday details. ‘I am motivated by the dialogue between art and architecture and by the discovery of new disciplines within each project,’ says Bengebara. ‘Architecture, for me, is a continuous search for beauty — a transversal exploration that moves across disciplines, cultures, and scales.’

Othmane Bengebara Studio has completed residential, cultural and exhibition projects across Morocco and internationally, including the scenography for the Uzbekistan Pavilion presented at the 2024 Venice Biennale. The Casablanca/Paris- based studio is currently planning a private aviation facility in Morocco for the 2030 FIFA World Cup and continues to expand its international practice.

What: House Ddaar

Completed between 2023 and 2024 in Essaouira, Morocco, House Ddaar is a minimalist villa that reflects the Studio's ability to evoke emotion through architecture. Set within a 25-acre agricultural site overlooking the surrounding countryside, the 300 sq m residence was conceived as both a private retreat and a place for gatherings. It allows for moments of introspection while remaining welcoming to guests.

The house is made up of sections of interconnected volumes, a sequence of living spaces, gallery-like rooms, bedrooms, a kitchen, dining area and bar – each one has a distinct atmosphere and maintains a close relationship with the external landscape. A natural, restrained palette allows the architecture to sit quietly within the setting. It uses passive ventilation, solar energy and water management systems, which contribute to a sustainable approach. Local artisans add interest throughout the project in the crafted doors, furniture and objects displayed in the property.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

OthmaneBengebara.com

Space starved lovers of intensive home workouts should consider the new OMNI X1 Pro from Innodigym, a self-described ‘smart gym machine’ that aims to put a raft of different workouts and fitness options into a relatively compact all-in-one package.

The new device has been shaped to replace a number of different workouts with a single piece of equipment, including free weights, benches, racks and cable machines. Up to 120kg of resistance is offered through digital control, with a 360-degree cable system running around a three-rail structure inside the foldable unit. When unfolded for use, the X1 Pro takes up just 10.4 square feet of space. When stored it’s smaller still, taking up just 1.3 square feet.

Innodigym are hoping the unit earns its smarts through the flexibility and variety of the workout modes, which are pitched at keen beginners and regular gym goers alike. The product, which was launched and funded via Kickstarter, goes beyond straightforward cardio workouts to imitate the feel and feedback of commercial equipment. The cable system allows the user to make natural movements regardless of whether they’re lunging, doing bench presses, squats, or pulldowns.

The beauty of the X1 Pro is that all this can happen in the same place on the same piece of kit. This functionality is assisted by an AI coach system that incorporates hundreds of guided exercises across the four training modes, Standard, Eccentric, Spring and Isokinetic. The large touch screen provides guidance and chronicles reps and weights.

Safety has also been taken into consideration, with a special quick release button on the smart handles taking the role of a spotter during heavy lifts, while the AI-driven guided workouts are also programmed to release resistance if a problem is detected.

The X1 Pro is also available with an optional Fitness Bench and Pull-up Assist System to create a complete home workout experience.

Innodigym OMNI X1 Pro, £2,449 / $3,299, Innodigym.com

‘Timeless luxury always begins with proportion, quality and craftsmanship,’ says Head of Interior Design at Mercedes-Benz, Hartmut Sinkwitz. Since its debut in 2019, the Mercedes-Maybach GLS has shown how these principles can be applied to SUVs. Its latest iteration refines this formula, combining meticulous craftsmanship with technical precision in a way that is unmistakably Maybach.

'The guiding idea behind the new Mercedes-Maybach GLS was to further elevate its character as a private sanctuary while strengthening its visual presence’, states Head of Exterior Design at Mercedes-Benz, Robert Lesnik. This ambition can be seen through the vehicle’s commanding silhouette, 23-inch forged wheels and newly designed headlights.

This sense of presence continues through the radiator grille, which is smartly framed by a luminous outline and complemented by carefully illuminated Maybach lettering. 'Our iconic radiator grille is inspired by our brand’s history and the desire to create an even stronger sense of distinction,' says Lesnik. Above it sits the iconic Mercedes-Benz logo, reinforcing the unmistakable German identity.

That same level of precision and care carries through to the arrival experience. As you open the doors of the new Mercedes-Maybach GLS, running boards deploy in under a second. This creates an immediate sense of occasion whenever you enter the vehicle. At night, a discreet LED strip highlights these elements, as the Maybach emblem is cleverly projected onto the ground.

‘Inside, every detail is designed around serenity and wellbeing’ explains Sinkwitz. In the cabin, the refined trim and ambient lighting create a tranquil environment. ‘Rather than creating visual spectacle, we use lighting to reinforce a calm and sophisticated atmosphere,’ states Sinkwitz.

The elegant MBUX Superscreen brings three displays together beneath a glass surface, extending digital information across the front row. ‘Our philosophy is that technology should enhance luxury, not dominate it,’ Sinktwitz says, ‘We also used Maybach-specific graphics to ensure that the digital experience feels elegant, calm and typically Maybach.'

An updated steering wheel, haptic controls and redesigned air vents add further polish to the interior. Customer feedback prompted the return of rocker switches and a precision volume roller. ‘The result is a more mature user interface that combines familiarity, precision and contemporary functionality in equal measure’, notes Sinkwitz.

The V8-powered vehicle boasts enhanced acoustic insulation, creating a quieter cabin than in previous models. Executive seats feature an advanced massage function that now extends to the calves, while the front seats are equipped with a newly developed vibration massage system integrated directly into the seat cushions. Together, these features create a calmer and more comfortable experience.

‘We took what customers already valued about the Maybach GLS and amplified it in a more contemporary and technologically advanced way,’ the designer explains. The Mercedes-Benz flagship model also offers extensive scope for personalisation through the MANUFAKTUR programme. New paint colours are complemented by exclusive leather interior packages, bespoke finishes and a range of meticulously crafted details, allowing each vehicle to take on a more individual character.

The new Mercedes-Maybach GLS is a luxury SUV defined by considered proportions, exquisite materials, and seamlessly integrated technology. Every element has been skilfully crafted to create an environment that feels effortlessly contemporary. An evolution of previous models, this new Maybach looks to the future without losing sight of what made it timeless.

Mercedes-Maybach GLS, from £179,995, Mercedes-Benz.co.uk, @MercedesMaybach

The American sunglasses brand Jacques Marie Mage is often deemed the ‘Rolls-Royce of eyewear’ for both its fastidious production – each pair is hand-made and polished in Japan or Italy, and constructed from the highest quality cellulose acetate – and relative scarcity, with styles often running in editions of less than 500 (like Rolls-Royce, they come with the price tag to match).

It is why, in lieu of the usual brand-on-brand collaborations, Jacques Marie Mage has instead largely united with notable cultural figures, from Patti Smith and Marianne Faithfull, to the acclaimed fashion designer Haider Ackermann. Or, indeed, their estates: such is the case with a longstanding collaboration with the late film director Stanley Kubrick, whose distinctive visual eye has inspired various Jacques Marie Mage styles since 2022.

Jacques Marie Mage is reissuing its Stanley Kubrick-inspired frames

These have included futuristic face-shielding frames reminiscent of those which appeared in Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, or those inspired by the 1980 horror The Shining, which were released earlier this year. The two-piece collection comprised the ‘Torrance’ sunglasses, a 70s-inspired rectangular silhouette, and the ‘Twins’ sunglasses, a more vivid butterfly shape which draws on the symbolism of ‘cinema’s most sinister siblings’. Both collections praised Kubrick’s ‘peculiar fusion of modernism and classicism, violence and absurdity,’ calling him ‘an auteur for the ages’.

This month, Jacques Marie Mage is revisiting the collaboration once again, reissuing two frames from 2022 that were inspired not by Kubrick’s movies but by the man himself. Available in new colourways, the two styles draw on two seminal decades in the director’s career: the 1940s and the 1980s. During the former, Kubrick began working in New York as a magazine photographer, before being drawn into the city’s arthouse cinema scene; during the latter, he released The Shining and Full Metal Jacket (1987).

As such, the ‘1948’ has a bookish, mid-century charm, directly referencing the eyewear worn by Kubrick while photographing figures like boxer Walter Cartier and entertainer Frank Sinatra for Look magazine in the late 1940s (he began at the publication aged 17 as a staff photographer). With rounded lenses and thick-rimmed frames, they feature sterling silver hardware and are crafted from 10mm curated acetate. Jacques Marie Mage describes them as ‘charming and cerebral’. They come in four colours: classic black, polished clear acetate, bottle green and red havana tortoishell.

The ‘1980’, meanwhile, is a sleeker aviator style, inspired by the sunglasses Kubrick wore while filming The Shining and Full Metal Jacket. Featuring metal titanium rims and bridge, they have a lightweight hand-feel and also come in four colourways: silver with black lenses, gold with blue lenses, champagne gold with brown lenses, and light gold with ‘darjeeling’ lenses. Available in limited-edition numbers, they are finished with ‘1980’ engraved on the arm.

‘[They] serve as a celebration of the life and creative output of one of the most brilliant, influential, and original filmmakers in cinematic history,’ say Jacques Marie Mage of the two styles. ‘Over the course of his career, [he] displayed a dynamic dedication to research and craft that shaped his films into timeless explorations of humour, hubris, horror, and hope. This unique collection of eyewear is an homage to the legacy of cinema’s obsessive genius, a sartorial tribute to the unflinching vision and aesthetic ingenuity that solidified him as an auteur for the ages.’

jacquesmariemage.com

Celebrity campaigns are a dime a dozen, but when Chanel Beauty takes on a new face it generates attention. That’s because the house’s reach and resonance are such that its campaigns often become familiar touchstones of their time. Case in point, chances are if you were around in the early 2000s, you remember the Baz Luhrmann-directed Chanel No 5 ad starring Nicole Kidman, or Keira Knightley running around Paris for Coco Mademoiselle.

Now, the brand has unveiled a fresh era for the house with a new fragrance Coco Mademoiselle: Crush Absolu, and a campaign film to match, starring singer Gracie Abrams and directed by Joe Wright, best known for directing Pride & Prejudice, Atonement and Anna Karenina.

Gracie Abrams stars in Chanel’s latest fragrance campaign

The film depicts Abrams running away from the paparazzi in Paris, only to find herself in a café where she quickly galvanises a crowd of everyday Parisians to join her in an uproarious dance routine (and plays a lot of pinball), all with the kind of exuberant glamour you expect, and want, from a perfume campaign.

The film’s euphoric, nighttime atmosphere echoes the aura of the fragrance itself, which opens with a bright grapefruit and lychee accord, before settling into richer notes of rose, jasmine and a particularly potent note of patchouli. As Chanel’s in-house perfumer, Olivier Polge, says, ‘it’s a scent that is full of character. Patchouli is elevated by ambery notes, accentuating the fragrance’s sensual, powerful nature.’

For Abrams, who has already achieved worldwide fame, being a part of the Chanel Beauty family is a landmark moment. ‘It’s unreal to be the new face of Coco Mademoiselle,’ she says. ‘I feel an immense sense of pride. I love that Coco is someone who leaves a mark everywhere she goes. Sometimes, I wish I could be more like her.’

chanel.com

Balancing boldness with restraint, the new ‘Dori’ collection by Doshi Levien for Hay reflects the dual approach of its creators, Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien. The pair, who founded their studio in London in 2000, is known for combining cultural richness with technical innovation, with Doshi’s delicate visual sensibility a perfect foil for Levien’s industrial precision.

Offering a subtle combination of texture and colour, the ‘Dori’ textile range is named after the Hindi word for ‘thread’ and includes a quilted bedspread, cushion and organic cotton cushion cover. With their contrast stitching in a grid pattern and reversible colour fields, they are a perfect match to Doshi Levien’s 2021 ‘Quilton’ sofa, a ‘quilted landscape system’ that was their debut design for Hay, as well as their ‘Rabari’ rug collection for Nanimarquina.

For Doshi, who grew up in Mumbai, it’s an opportunity to bring ‘a different textile culture into the Hay universe, rooted in Indian traditions of cotton, embroidery and everyday use.’ The inspiration for the collection actually came from a textile sample whose intricate reverse was noticed by Mette Hay, Hay’s co-founder and creative director of accessories, during a visit to Doshi Levien’s London studio.

‘It was a simple two-tone check pattern on a cotton fabric, in a kantha or kabira stitch, a running, hand-embroidered technique traditionally used for quilting fabrics in different parts of India including Gujarat, West Bengal and Rajasthan,’ says Doshi of the eye-catching sample fabric, which was actually made by her aunt’s workshop in Ahmedabad.

‘Set in the garden of a modernist house and employing over 60 master craftspeople, my aunt’s workshop also made the “Charpoy” daybed collection we designed for Moroso in 2008,’ she says. ‘I studied at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and spent considerable time in this incredible textile workshop that also made clothes for Issey Miyake and Hermès. It was in Ahmedabad that I developed a deep love for Indian textiles and techniques; and modern Indian architecture by B V Doshi, Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn.’

While traditional kantha embroidery is created by hand, the ‘Dori’ collection is made using industrial machine embroidery to make it more accessible. The bright contrast stitching in the shape of a grid adds texture but is also practical. ‘It’s not only decorative,’ says Doshi, ‘but also acts as a subtle guide, showing how to fold, place, and compose the bed. Even within industrial production, the piece carries a sense of craftsmanship – every detail reflects care, intelligence, and time.’

As you’d expect from a studio whose ‘Kinari’ collection for Galerie Kreo was named ‘Best Colour Study’ in the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2024, the collection’s colour palette is key to its appeal. Doshi Levien has its own colour lab with around 300-400 different hues, and yet still mixes additional colours for projects such as ‘Dori’, whose apparent simplicity is actually the result of two years of research.

The pieces are available in three reversible two-tone colourways – midnight blue, maroon, and green – inspired by a wide-ranging colour research spanning everything from miniature paintings from Jodhpur and glazed ceramic and lacquer samples, to Picasso’s 1932 La Lecture (Reading) and Malevich’s 1915 Suprematism; Self Portrait in Two Dimensions.

‘The idea was to allow people to change the identity of the piece simply by turning it over,’ says Doshi of the reversible design. ‘Each colourway is finely embroidered in two contrasting, bright threads. This gave us endless possibilities for colour explorations, not only for fabrics but also embroidery threads.’ The designers made more than 50 combinations to send as options to Hay.

‘We chose fabric colours that were dark saturated colours on one side with light colours on the reverse; the thread colours are deliberately bright and vibrant so they are fine but visible on both dark and light side,’ she says. ‘Quite a challenge to have four colours working together in each colour way!

‘Dori’ is all about pared-back and carefully thought-through details, such as the small label that carries an embroidered signature, adding a personal touch to the tactile pieces. Bringing warmth, colour, and presence to the room, the new collection is also a celebration of the ‘very important ritual of making a beautiful bed, and enjoying the process of doing something simple, well’.

Choices, choices. What if you don’t want to give up the convenience of smartphone but still want to do things a little differently? We flagged the existence of the Fairphone 6 in an earlier round-up of simple smartphones, but now we’ve had a chance to trial the uprated new Fairphone (Gen. 6+) to see if it lives up to its promises.

First impressions of the FP6+ are very favourable. The processor has been upgraded to the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 (as found in Nothing Phone (4a) and various models from OnePlus, Motorola and Xiaomi), while onboard memory is now a competitive 12GB.

The camera stays the same as the original 6 (a 50MP main camera with a Sony lens, a 32MP Samsung front camera and a 12MP ultra-wide camera), while the exterior is distinguished by a new Cobalt Blue finish, with matching accessories.

For most casual users, the most important part of a smartphone is the camera, and the FP6+ is accomplished but not exceptional. Comparing like-for-like images with a more dedicated camera-centric phone (the Leica Leitzphone powered by Xiaomi) and images are softer with slightly less definition and flatter colour – it’s a combination of lens quality and post-processing that gives the Xiaomi the edge, as it should given its price premium.

In the hand, the Fairphone feels more plasticky than the sleek metal devices we’ve become accustomed to. To its credit, Fairphone leans into this, partly because over 50% of the total weight of the phone are made from fair and recycled materials.

Organisations like the Fair Cobalt Alliance, co-founded by Fairphone, are striving to improve conditions in cobalt mines in the DRC, the kind of small-scale, low-wage and high-intensity working environment that has become essential to smartphone manufacturing yet is all but invisible to consumers.

If you’re keen to support such initiatives, you’re also probably more disposed to digging into devices when they start to go wrong. The FP6+ contains 12 different parts that can be repaired with nothing more than a screwdriver. That includes the battery, as well as a range of accessories, while Fairphone will also supply a list of swappable spare parts, from camera modules to the speaker and the screen (which comes in at €89.95).

As well as all this, the phone has support for a regular SIM and an eEIM, microSD card support and a new dedicated Fairphone Gallery app if you want to keep your images away from the big tech brands.

The bottom line is that this is a common or garden mid-range Android smartphone, a wise buy at a time when mid-range is king. As previously noted, the speed of chips and quality of screens, cameras and the overall Android experience has reached a point where most mid-range devices do all you could conceivably require of a phone.

The recent pivot towards folding flagships is one way of keeping phones in the premium space, as is the largely unnecessary addition of intensive AI-driven processing, interrogation and photography. Fairphone is about neither of these things, although it's more than capable of running Google's Gemini.

But how long should a smartphone last? Google promises seven years of OS updates for its Pixel range, a figure also matched by Samsung. Apple’s iPhone can max out at eight years of support. All these figures overlook the fact that battery life could well be severely impacted before these targets are reached, making the device economically unrepairable before its time.

Fairphone reckons the new phone should easily last through to 2033 and beyond, thanks to its repairability and promised software support. As a result, there is a great deal to admire in the Fairphone (Gen. 6+), as a small company punches above its weight while also foregrounding best practice in an industry not best known for its sustainable and ethical approach. The new model also marks the brand’s debut in the USA – a timely arrival, given the gathering support for the Right-to-Repair movement.

Later this year, the company will bring these qualities to its second set of earbuds, Fairbuds 2, continuing its mission of keeping pace with change without compromising its values.

Fairphone (Gen. 6+), £569 / $649, Fairphone.com, Amazon.co.uk

When Donald Judd purchased an abandoned military base outside Marfa, Texas in the late 1970s, the artist saw beyond the site’s scarred landscape and trash-strewn buildings; he saw a place where art, architecture and the land could exist in perfect balance.

Judd identified a pair of long sheds, originally used to house trucks and artillery, to transform into twin galleries that would house an ambitious site-specific work, 100 untitled works in mill aluminum, a meditative installation of gleaming aluminum boxes. Judd encountered a problem, though: the buildings leaked. When standard patches didn’t work, Judd, who also designed furniture and buildings, rectified the issue by capping the historic structures with a secondary arched roof made from corrugated steel.

Forty years on, Judd’s Chinati Foundation is one of the most important sites for 20th-century art in the US, a fact that helped transform the sleepy desert town into a global art mecca. But the artillery shed roofs still leaked.

‘In a massive Texas rainstorm, we will sometimes put out 100 buckets inside of the building,’ says Stephen Martin, the foundation’s director of preservation and planning.

What’s more, sand and dust from the surrounding Chihuahua desert would blow into the building through crevices; and temperatures inside could soar to 115 degrees Fahrenheit, sweltering heat that cooked staff, guests – and even the artworks (conservators discovered that the extreme temperature variances caused the aluminum sculptures to move off of their precise grid formation).

‘I don't want to use the word “crisis,” but when there are large weather events, we're very concerned,’ Martin adds.

Circumstances are about to change for the artillery sheds. Following a capital campaign, the Chinati Foundation has announced that it will be delicately restoring the two buildings to suit Judd’s artistic vision while preserving them for the future.

‘The approach has been first to really understand what are the real issues and concerns with the building,’ explains Caitlin Murray, the foundation’s executive director, ‘but [also] really understanding how we preserve the experience of this work according to Judd's intentions.’

Chinati has enlisted a team of experts to a team, including architect Troy Schaum, whose practice restored another foundation site, The John Chamberlin Building, four years ago.

‘There are two inhabitants that we're designing this space for,’ Schaum notes: the artworks and visitors, 20,000 of which visit the site every year. He underscores the delicacy of the gleaming boxes that make up 100 untitled works in mill aluminum: ‘The aluminum is a 3003 aluminum alloy that was specially-made for this artwork, and it has no finish on it, so it's very delicate and it's irreplaceable in its current state if it gets damaged,’ Schaum says.

His firm’s architectural approach will be similarly delicate: an invisible film will be added to some 10,000 sq ft of windows to block out UVA and UVB rays; the design team will positively pressurise the building to help circulate air and prevent dust and grit from entering the building envelope; and the team, with the expertise of engineering firm TYLin, will be incorporating a new roof structure to address the leaks, improve drainage and even harvest rainwater.

‘It’s like a heist movie or something – we like sneak in, make changes and we leave,’ Schaum says. ‘You're not going to find our fingerprints.’

Chinati is also using the opportunity to renew the land itself, whose ecosystems had been damaged after years of military use. Landscape experts Maggie Tsang and Jim Martinez will be analysing the site to restore the soil, bring back native plant species, redirect rainwater and thwart grassfires. The design team will also work to improve accessibility to the site by creating wider pathways and incorporating ramps.

The artworks will also receive TLC. For the first time, the installation will be relocated to make way for analysis and conservation helmed by Alfred Lippincott, who originally fabricated the works in the 1980s; the Getty Conservation Institute; and Bogna Skwara, Chinati’s head of conservation.

Preservation works will begin later this year; the team expects the project will take between two and three years to complete. But it will be worth the wait: ‘This is one of the most significant preservation projects for Chinati in a generation,’ says Murray. ‘It's an incredible honour to get to work on this work of art in a really holistic way.’

Studio Mehta, an emerging practice from Kenya, joins the Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2026, our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Studio Mehta

Following studies in San Diego and London, and work experience in the United Kingdom, Spain and Germany, architect Amar Mehta founded his namesake studio in his hometown of Nairobi in 2019. Working on everyday projects but always aiming for extraordinary results, the emerging studio takes inspiration from every project’s layers of ‘place, culture and climate,’ and of course ‘the individual who will ultimately inhabit the space,’ he adds.

'Our motivation comes from a simple belief – that architecture should respond honestly to place, people, and culture. We are driven by the idea of creating work that feels rooted in Kenya while pushing contemporary design forward through thoughtful detail, local materials, and collaborative thinking.'

'What keeps us going is the process itself: working closely with clients, artisans, and consultants to shape spaces that are not only beautiful, but deeply lived-in and meaningful. As a studio, we’re motivated by curiosity, by challenging conventional ways of building, and by the pursuit of architecture that balances ambition with responsibility – spaces that feel timeless, human, and quietly impactful.’

His residential work is informed by climate, culture, craft, and the realities of building in Kenya – while the architect strives to balance global influences with a hyper-local vocabulary of materials and features, and a site-specific approach that will eventually lead him to confidently build his own language.

What: Ua House

Ua House, Mehta’s own home, is set among rich foliage in the country’s precious Kilifi coastline. The architect was conscious of his construction’s carbon footprint, so he made a decision to mitigate as much of it as he could – using, for example, salvaged limestone blocks from pool excavations from nearby sites, abandoned quarry dust as the predominant binding agent, and more recycled materials sourced from the area.

The result is a 120 sqm home that blends traditional Omani and Swahili design heritage. All set in a single level, it involves a luxurious relationship with the outdoors through the presence of numerous outdoor areas – including courtyards of various sizes (the entrance sequence features a key one) and a pool terrace. His goal was to showcase through this design what can be achieved by clever decisions and a hyperlocal approach. It’s all about ‘accessible sustainability,’ he says.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

studiomehta.com

Merit Beauty is making its hospitality debut with The Ritz-Carlton, introducing beauty carts, in-room kits and a fragrance-paired martini at seven North American hotels. The collaboration will run throughout summer and early autumn at Ritz-Carlton properties in Toronto, Santa Barbara, Dallas, Washington DC, Naples, Los Angeles and New York, NoMad.

Beauty is now on The Ritz-Carlton’s room-service menu

Products are now appearing throughout the guest experience, from in-room dining to turndown and the bar. At selected hotels, Club Level guests will find a co-branded beauty cart stocked with complimentary Merit essentials: Great Skin Serum, a lightweight bi-phase formula that hydrates and brightens; Great Skin Double Cleanse, which removes make-up and gently exfoliates in one step; Clean Volume Mascara, offering buildable volume designed to last up to 16 hours; and the bestselling Flush Balm in Postmodern, a deep pink-brown shade. Merit Beauty educators will also visit selected properties to offer personalised product guidance.

The room-service menu provides another route into the collection. Guests can order beauty bundles housed in a custom canvas pouch, bringing Merit’s pared-back approach to getting ready into the bedroom. Come evening, co-branded chocolates and skincare samples may arrive at turndown, while participating bars will serve a ‘Minimalist Martini’ alongside a sample of the brand’s Retrospect fragrance.

A limited-edition travel kit combines the same four essentials in a co-branded pouch with an exclusive keychain, available in-room and online. ‘Merit creates products that are meant to live with you, especially when you’re on the go,’ says chief marketing officer Aila Morin. For the brand, hospitality felt like ‘a natural step.’

meritbeauty.com, ritzcarlton.com

‘To me, Comme des Garçons embodies the absolute freedom to dress however you want,’ says Octavius La Rosa, founder of the Melbourne-based Dot Comme, a dealer of rare Japanese fashion. Next month, La Rosa – one of the world's most prolific collectors of Comme des Garçons – will part with 265 rare pieces from the Dot Comme collection at a landmark auction in London (15 September 2026).

Held in association with London-based auction house Kerry Taylor Auctions, the sale marks an opportunity to purchase pieces which span the breadth of Rei Kawakubo’s career – from the early years of Comme des Garçons in Tokyo, Japan (she founded the avant-garde label in 1973), to those from seminal collections like ‘Body Meets Dress – Dress Meets Body’ (S/S 1997) and ‘Broken Bride’ (A/W 2005). There will also be an offering from Junya Watanabe, a protégé of Kawakubo whose eponymous label sits under the Comme des Garçons umbrella of brands.

‘I took a trip to Tokyo when I was 18 and fell in love with the pieces I found at the second-hand stores,’ says La Rosa, who has operated a Dot Comme store in Melbourne for 50 years, as well as a newer location in Saint-Germain, Paris (his full 4,000-piece collection will move to the French city this autumn). ‘I took a suitcase full home, and that was the start of my love affair with the brand. The aim was always to build a collection first, business second, and nothing has changed – I still spend 70 per cent of my waking hours thinking about Comme.’

Notable pieces in the sale include a black raincoat from the 1970s (‘it is rare to find pieces from Rei Kawakubo’s early collections in Japan’), a wool ensemble from her A/W 1981 ‘Pirates’ collection (part of the first collection she showed in Paris which marked the arrival of a radical new force in fashion), and an intricate trompe l’oeil dress from A/W 2005 ‘Broken Bride’, which represents a shift towards the ‘explosive’ silhouettes which would define Comme des Garçons ouevre in the 2010s and 2020s. A handful of menswear garments will also be available in the sale.

Kawakubo, who is now 83 years old, is one of contemporary fashion’s most influential forces, known for both her provocative runway collections – garments often operate more like sculpture, featuring bold protrusions of fabric and manipulated silhouettes – and concept retail spaces, including Dover Street Market, which she founded with husband Adrian Joffe in 2004 (it now has outposts in Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Beijing and Singapore). Her work has been featured in several exhibitions, including ‘Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garçons: Art of the In-Between’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2017, and the more recent ‘Westwood Kawakubo’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, in 2025.

‘What I’ve only ever been interested in is clothes that one has never seen before, that are completely new, and how and in what way they can be expressed,’ she said on the occasion of the former. ‘Is that called fashion? I don’t know the answer.’

Kerry Taylor Auctions Presents Dot Comme: The Auction takes place on 15 September 2026. The collection will be available to view on 11 September, 13 September and 14 September at Kerry Taylor Auctions, 249-253 Long Lane, London SE1 4PR.

kerrytaylorauctions.com

Hitotomori joins the Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2026 - welcome this young Japanese practice to our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Hitotomori

Hitotomori (a name with a dual meaning in Japanese: either ‘people and forest’ or ‘one light’) is a small Japanese studio founded in 2019 by Yoshiaki Nagasaka. The office is in Nara, at the edge of the Kasuga Primaeval Forest, in a renovated, 140-year-old multipurpose machiya building with a small shop/cafe (run by Nagasaka’s wife), a one-room hotel (run by the studio), and the architectural office of its small team of five people.

Having worked for a large general contractor for almost 30 years, Nagasaka longed for more freedom and ‘the opportunity to pursue more creative work in an environment where I could work closely with friends,’ he explains, describing his reasons for setting up his own practice. ‘This freedom is now the driving force behind my work,’ he continues.

Spanning a wide variety of residential, commercial, and hospitality projects, Nagasaka’s no-frills design approach and clever use of ordinary materials have attracted quite a following, keeping the small studio constantly busy with several projects running simultaneously.

Nagasaka’s main influences are the architecture of Alvar Aalto, the thinking of Louis Kahn (‘Structure is the giver of light’ and ‘Even a common, ordinary brick wants to be something more than it is’), and the work of his friend and fellow architect Taro Tsuruta of Tsuruta Architects in London.

What: House in Asuka

Completed in 2024, the House in Asuka is quintessentially Hitotomori. Designed in about five months and built in six, the compact 65 m² home sits on a corner site in a protected area of the small village of Asuka in Nara Prefecture. It is partly screened from the two roads by a simple wooden fence, above which only the tiled roof, required by local regulations, is visible. Simple concrete steps set in grey gravel lead up to a small landing and the front door.

Inside, the interior is kept simple, with cedar floorboards, lauan doors and bespoke furniture, painted walls, and Hitotomori’s original concrete tiles forming the kitchen splashback. To make the most of the modest 65 m² footprint, Nagasaka has added several small loft spaces, accessible by a staggered staircase in one location and a simple ladder in another. Lighting is provided by one of Nagasaka’s close collaborators, New Light Pottery, with its Mob 26 bracket light used throughout the space.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

hitotomori.net

Although lighting designer Nathan Orsman likens his role in interiors to that of a 'back-up dancer', he appreciates the opportunity to get involved with the design of a space from the beginning. 'We make architecture look incredible and help architects show their work in the best possible way,' he tells Wallpaper*. The founder of New York-based studio Orsman Design believes a 'great amount of success' comes out of a hands-on incorporation of lighting into an overall design vision. Therefore, it is not uncommon that he suggests placing a door further down the hallway for optimum natural light or moving a wall to hang art where it can best stand out at night time.

Orsman’s philosophy is rooted in his belief that 'light is about movement through a space'. The Australian-born designer’s recent Elle Mara Garage project in Sagaponack, New York, reflects this trust in illuminating interiors with both bold decisions and a fleeting tactility.

The true charm in lighting the private residence’s car garage and basketball court was the opportunity to orchestrate a feeling texturally different from interior designer Tony Ingrao’s white and creamy tones in the rest of the Hamptons house. The garage and the adjacent court, which are reached through a wine cellar, immediately pop with Orsman’s curation of sleek tones and cinematic lighting. 'We wanted to give this feeling of descending into a fully illuminated nightclubby set-up,' explains the designer, who does justice to his vision with resin-poured black walls and grey floors.

With his clients’ openness for something ‘completely unexpected [given] the rest of the house’, Orsman created a visceral sunken display room for seven cars, each crowned with a custom-stretched membrane light panel.

While these ceiling lights can be switched between cool and warm tones of white, a host of surface-mounted Ketra fixtures across the walls washes the dim interiors with painterly colours, ranging from a thick red to an energetic blue. This downlight system lets vehicles’ different finishes stand out with an elevated sculptural presence, whether a red Ferrari or a silver Benz. The ceiling lights yield a liquid, almost pond-like, illumination on the resin floor, as its surface dances between splashy hues of green and purple. 'We wanted to give the clients the ability to change the feeling of the space,' adds Orsman.

The basketball court, which is sunk even lower than the garage, expands this moody aura with sound-absorbing wall panelling in two shades of grey. The garage’s nocturnal atmosphere spills into the recreation area, where the hoop is illuminated with a dramatic series of ceiling fixtures. Pairs of disc-shaped lights that recall basketballs are held together with three stripes, similar to the boundary lines on a court’s floor. The bulletproof acrylic system, which is clipped into the ceiling with a magnetic receiver, is custom-produced by Italian company BlackLight.

The sleek project is one of many celebrated in Orsman’s upcoming Rizzoli book, Light: Illuminated Interiors and Architecture. The 320-page title tracks the designer’s trajectory of illuminating a wide span of homes across the United States, including those for Oprah Winfrey, Ina Garten, Stephen Colbert, Tommy Hilfiger, and Marc Jacobs, who penned the catalogue’s foreword.

The tome also documents Orsman’s trust in close collaborations with interior designers and architects, among them Wallpaper* US400 honoree Kelly Behun, Ashe Leandro, and Gil Schafer, to achieve nuanced touches of light. 'The powerful part in what we do is to pay attention to the negative space,' says Orsman. He adds: 'We have to be specific about what we are lighting up because sometimes less is more poignant.'

Light: Illuminated Interiors and Architecture comes out on September 29, 2026

The demand for unique automobiles continues to rise amongst the uber-wealthy. Aside from lavishly bespoke creations from the likes of Rolls-Royce, the most vivid expressions of automotive singularity come from the world of supercars and hypercars. With memories of this year’s Monterey Car Week fast fading, we’ve assembled five examples of contemporary hypercar unicorns that look set to resurface at future concours for decades to come.

Porsche Flachbau RS

First up is Porsche, who rarely venture into the realm of the unique car (perhaps realising that individual takes on their iconic design language are better served by others, such as the recent Singer x Louis Vuitton collaboration. Nevertheless, occasionally a special customer request is granted. This is the Flachbau RS, a blend of GT2 and GT3 components assembled as part of Porsche’s Sonderwunsch (‘special request’) programme.

The initiating object of veneration in this case is Porsche’s 1970s-era race cars, particularly the Flachbau (‘slantnose’) 935 GT racer. That informs the frontal treatment, which eschews the familiar Porsche lighting set-up in favour of a more streamlined, aerodynamic form, with an outrageous rear wing taken from the 911 GT3 R rennsport. The body shape was also guided by the iconic 935/78 race car known as Moby Dick, thanks to its whale-like tail.

Power comes from the 700bhp 911 GT2 RS engine and inside and out the car has been stripped back to the bare minimum. The customer specified the highest levels of performance, so the car underwent over a 1,000km on Germany’s Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit. A two-tone race-inspired paint job finishes off the fully road-legal machine.

Porsche.com, @Porsche

Ferrari HC25

Ferrari’s design studio has created two one-off Special Project cars in recent months, starting with HC25. Based on the F8 Spider, the mid-engined roadster that ended production in 2023 to be replaced by the 296, Ferrari’s design team under Flavio Manzoni created a purist, minimal machine defined by its strong graphic elements.

The car, which its public debut in the US this summer, adopts a form language that’s closer in spirit to the F80, especially in the way the dark graphic form swoops over the engine cover to terminate in front of the real wheel arches. This element, which contrasts with the Moonlight Grey bodywork, houses all the car’s thermal management functions, from air intakes to heat extracts.

These forms are carried through into the interior through yellow stitching patterns on the seats. HC25 also features unique five-spoke wheels, with Ferrari’s signature yellow used on the brake callipers and badges.

Ferrari.com, @Ferrari

Ferrari CZ26

The next car from Ferrari Special Projects is the CZ26, debuted at this year’s Monterey Car Week. Commissioned by an American client, the CZ26 is an evolution of Ferrari’s SF90 Stradale, with a more technical, precise design language. Dare we say it, but there are even hints of the Ferrari Luce in the re-shaped front end, the flanks and the relationship between sills and bodywork. Overall, the bodywork gives the glasshouse a more capsule-like appearance, sitting atop the bodywork – another nod to the Luce.

Manzoni and his team cite the influence of Italian industrial design from the 1970s, particularly in the use of spot contrasting colours, with Rosso Lampante red and yellow picking out callipers, badges and the leading edge of the air intakes above the rear wheel arch.

The Argento Veloce bodywork is paired with unique gloss black wheels, and the technical influence carries through to the interior where a special black fabric is used along bespoke carbon fibre trim elements. At its heart, the CZ26 is an ultra-high-performance hybridized supercar.

Ferrari.com, @Ferrari

Bugatti Destrier

At this point in time, pretty much everything Bugatti does is unique. The original hypercar manufacturer is currently turning its hand to creating singular pieces of automotive sculpture for a vociferous contingent of diehard collectors. The company’s most recent series of one-of-one cars is dubbed the Programme Solitaire, a sort of biannual collector's experience club for the 1%. The most recent machine to emerge from the programme is the Bugatti Destrier, another MCW debut.

Bugatti call the car a ‘pure sculpture of speed’. The Destrier is an evolution of the track-only Bugatti Bolide, only this time the stops have all been yanked out to give the hypercar a more elegant, luxurious road-going focus. Following the official client handover at Maison Bugatti on Pebble Beach, the car went on public display on the Concours’ Concept Lawn.

At just 1m tall, the Destrier is the lowest Bugatti ever made. It’s also massively wide, incorporating a two-seater cabin swathed in leather, nubuck and 3D-printed textiles. The Sapphire Celeste bodywork was inspired by the 1936 Type 57SC Atlantic, whilst the Destrier is built around the company’s signature W16 engine, an 8-litre behemoth that puts out 1,600PS and remains the marque’s USP and blinking lure for the car collector.

Bugatti.com, @Bugatti

McLaren McL 6GT

Admittedly not a one-off customer car but a concept, the McLaren McL 6GT was a surprise introduction at 2026 Monterey Car Week. Widely understood to preview the next generation of McLaren road cars, the McL 6GT marks a return to a more analogue approach for the company’s supercars.

The concept certainly breaks from past design language, owing more than a little to Bruce McLaren’s M6GT, a one-off road car created in the late 60s by the company’s founder and now considered to be the starting point of McLaren Automotive.

As well as re-working its visual language, the McL 6GT includes a manual gearbox, hydraulic steering, and tactile physical switchgear, all indications of the growing backlash against synthetic digital drivetrains and cockpits in luxury cars. The concept also shares its ancestor’s approach to lightweight design, only here the principal material is carbon fibre. A production version will arrive in 2028.

McLaren.com, @McLarenAuto

Christian Dior launched the original Miss Dior in 1947 alongside his famous ‘New Look’ collection as an olfactory homage to his beloved sister, Catherine, a French Resistance fighter who survived multiple concentration camps and, upon returning to France, dedicated her life to cultivating flowers. The 1947 perfume was an unconventional chypre-floral loaded with galbanum, gardenia, rose, leather, and patchouli. A bold, attention-catching scent that was somehow both soapy and animalistic, and defied – much like Catherine – the norms of the time.

The modern-day Miss Dior Eau de Parfum is a softer, more feminine interpretation of the original with notes of rose (a nod to Catherine’s love of her garden), tinged with vanilla and almond, and a delicate touch of wood. It has become an icon in its own right, a fact that made it all the more difficult for acclaimed French illustrator and art director Ugo Bienvenu to come up with a campaign concept for the scent that reflected its history while presenting viewers wth something novel.

‘We decided to focus on three key themes: inspiration (Catherine Dior, Christian’s sister, his childhood and Provence), creation (Christian Dior’s first fashion show and the first time the fragrance was unveiled), and continuity, the fragrance’s place in today’s world (a tribute to the various advertising campaigns),' says Bienvenu. 'We agreed on these ideas and developed a storyboard with Stephen Vuillemin and designs with Arthur Sevestre. We then set our animation team to work.’

The final creation is a joyful, technicolour celebration of the fragrance’s history, from its debut at Dior’s famous ‘New Look’ show in 1947, to its more contemporary iteration as a pink solution in a square, bow-topped bottle with the actress Natalie Portman as its spokeperson.

To develop the concept, Bienvenu and his team scoured ‘a huge amount of documentation covering the entire history of the fashion house and the fragrance’ that was given to them by Dior.

It is no surprise, then, that the film is steeped in historical brand references, some of which will be clear to those of the house, while others will only be spotted by the most devoted fans. It’s the first time the house has ever taken such an approach to the visuals for its fragrance. The finished product is not only playful but also points to Dior’s dedication to craft (the film’s backgrounds were created entirely by hand using gouache and acrylic paint) and commitment to push itself into modern and unexpected territories.

In the end, Bienvenu says, he tried to create a film that balanced the house’s history with a high-spirited vision. ‘We have tried to create a campaign that is dynamic, youthful, romantic and light-hearted too. Whilst highlighting that the fragrance is not new, it is deeply rooted in the history of the house and its creator. It features notes of time-honoured elegance.’

Watch the film below.

With its world-class concert halls and galleries, peaceful fountain court and large foyers wrapped in textured raw concrete walls, London’s Barbican is a haven for arts, architecture and design fans. Now they will be able to bring home a slice of the brutalist landmark’s aesthetics, thanks to a furniture collection by Made and the Barbican, available to buy now

Built in 1982 on the largest Second World War bomb site in the City of London, the Barbican was designed by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon as both a cultural and residential complex, and the new 23-piece collection finds inspiration not only in the estate’s public spaces – such as the concert hall and raised walkways – but also in some of its original apartments.

Explore the Made x Barbican furniture and lighting collection

The design team at Made, a homeware brand that aims to make high-end design accessible, worked closely with the Barbican, Europe’s largest multi-arts centre, sifting through its archives and researching the pioneering world of designer Miriam Howitt, who was tasked with creating five show homes for the development in the late 1960s.

Inspired by her travels to Scandinavia and bold Dutch interiors, Howitt’s work shaped the project’s direction, and resulted in a range of furniture, lighting, textiles and accessories infused with architectural references to the Barbican’s unique visual language of sculptural forms, modular layouts, grid structures and curved silhouettes.

‘The ambition was to create a complete product range that works both in isolation and together in an open living space,’ says Made’s in-house design team. ‘The final designs reimagine products, graphics and architectural details through a new lens, and into a cohesive product range that captures Barbican living: bold, considered and inherently social.’

The Barbican’s concrete architecture is softened by a recurring motif of semi-circles, often upside down, which appears throughout the complex, from the sills of the podium windows and the top-floor penthouse roofs, to fountains, stair towers, and the shape of the Frobisher Crescent apartment building at the centre of the estate.

In the new furniture collection, these signature curves can be found in the wooden side panels of the ‘Dual’ accent chairs, whose silhouette recalls the estate’s concrete pillars; the ‘Plinth’ coffee table, inspired by the sunken seating pods found next to the Barbican lake; or the ‘Curve’ lamp series, which echoes the Concert Hall’s tubular acoustic panels.

As well as the pick-hammered textured concrete (a massive undertaking that took nearly 17 years from the start of construction to completion), another key element of the Barbican is its heavy coffered ‘waffle’ ceilings – a concrete-saving structural grid that also creates a great pattern in the Barbican’s indoor and outdoor spaces. Their rounded square shape is mirrored by the ‘Coffer’ series of ceiling lights and wall lights.

Also available are two sofa designs, a dining table and chairs, and a wooden sideboard in stained ash. The warm colour palette found in the lights and soft furnishings, including moss greens and burgundy hues, is similar to the one Howitt used in her show apartments.

Accessories include a graphic cushion featuring the Barbican’s ‘boat edge’ balconies, as well as the ‘Brute’ retro deep-pile rug in ochre tones and white stripes. ‘In 1967, Howitt anchored the Barbican’s plain off-white flats with “show-stopping” patterned carpets,’ explains the Made design team. ‘By using bold colours to create visual weight, she ensured the spacious rooms felt grounded instead of empty.’

To celebrate the launch of the collection, Made will be creating a free immersive installation at the Barbican Centre in partnership with London Design Festival this September. Located at the Barbican Level G Hub Space, it will shine a light into the archives of the Barbican and the inspiration behind the collection.

Meanwhile, the Barbican is currently on the lookout for a designer to reimagine a bespoke range of up to 500 pieces of furniture across its public spaces, as part of a complete overhaul timed for its 50th anniversary. The competition is open to anyone, and proposals must be submitted online by the end of the month. Expectations are high – the original designer of the Barbican furniture was none other than Robin Day.

The ‘Made x Barbican’ collection, with prices starting from £32, is available at Made.com now , with selected items also available at the Barbican Shop.

Moyésoa, an emerging practice from Côte d'Ivoire, joins the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026, our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Moyésoa

Hailing from Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, Moyésoa is an architecture and design laboratory founded by William Tailly and Natacha Djédjé in 2024. The studio’s name translates from the Baoulé language as ‘House of Happiness’, and embodies an essence imbued into every aspect of its work and reflected in the founders’ belief that ‘architecture should strengthen the relationship between people, climate and place’.

Tailly leads on creative and architectural direction, with a particular focus on earth construction, lime finishes and reclaimed materials, while Djédjé brings a sensitivity to landscape, planting strategies and developing projects as a ‘coherent ecosystem rather than a standalone building’. Together, in their work, they seek to ‘reveal the beauty of local materials and forgotten construction knowledge while responding to contemporary ways of living’.

For Moyésoa, the construction site is much more than just a place to build on. Rather, it's a site for architects, designers, and local artisans to come together to research, experiment, and share site-specific knowledge that alchemises local materialities and craftsmanship into timeless spatial designs. The pair explain, ‘Every project is an opportunity to create spaces that feel calm, lasting and deeply connected to their environment.’

Moyéoa will be representing Côte d’Ivoire at the upcoming Pan-African Architecture Biennale, which launches in early September 2026, feeding into broader Pan-African conversations as to how African architecture can respond to contemporary design challenges.

What: Pavillon Essoa

Essoa Pavilion is an eco-lodge built on the edge of a lagoon, surrounded by 7,500 sq m of botanical garden, offering an ‘immersive residential experience’. Inspired by tropical vernacular architecture, the villa is designed around ecological and bioclimatic principles, combining self-sufficiency, modularity and contemporary design. Planted courtyards link the independent volumes of living areas, to create a porous, breathable and smooth circulation between inside and outside. Rammed-earth walls use ancient technology to regulate indoor temperatures by reducing heat fluctuations, while terracotta floors and kitchen counters combine durability and elegance.

Wooden screens, with removable Plexiglas panels allow for modularity between natural ventilation and thermal insulation. The villa is powered by solar panels, and even features a private well for water. Each piece of furniture, and even the tableware, has been custom-designed by Moyésoa, with Ivorian craftsmanship and design knowledge at the core.

On what sets them apart, the architects explain: ‘Instead of importing architectural languages, we reinterpret local construction traditions through modern spatial thinking, refined detailing and carefully crafted atmospheres.’ The Essoa Pavilion is just one embodiment of this design motivation.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

@moyesoa

Don’t give up on the compact disc just yet. The quiet revival of the 1980s’ greatest format hasn’t reached the media peaks of vinyl frenzy and probably won’t, thanks to the format’s inherent fragility. Chipped and cracked plastic jewel cases and potentially fatally scratched discs will never hold the aura of a crackly slab of second-hand vinyl and the scuffed majesty of a gatefold sleeve.

Nevertheless, second-hand CDs remain cheap and widely available, while most modern artists worth their salt still issue them, particularly via sites like Bandcamp. Treated well, a CD still offers music quality well in excess of all but the highest resolution streaming services. The format is also a window into the dying art of album curation, as well as a chance to experience music before the loudness wars and endless remasters.

CDs are a welcome time capsule, a singular point of focus in a world hell-bent on distraction. Here – adding to our previous pick of standard-sized CD players – are six contemporary compact CD players that’ll take you back to the dawn of the digital age.

Fosi Audio Merak

First up, the Merak from Fosi Audio. Although ultra-compact in the same vein as the best portable players of the past, the Merak is actually designed for desktop use. The free-moving transparent lid and prominent volume slider definitely aren’t designed for use on the go, quite apart from the lack of onboard battery.

The aluminium device has a slim OLED screen and draws power from USB-C, either a dedicated charger or via a laptop or PC. Output is via headphones, line output or optical and there’s a one-touch ripping function that translates a CD’s content to a USB thumb drive.

Fosi Audio Merak, $139.99, FosiAudio.com

Beams Hill

For a stripped-back budget option, consider the Hill player from cultish Japanese retailer Beams. Costing barely more than a modern box set, the Hill is a true portable player that gobbles AA batteries, abhors Bluetooth, has an old-school LCD display and measures little more than the disc contained within.

The semi-transparent lozenge-shape body comes in either orange or blue and Beams also throws in a pair of (very cheap) wired earbuds (with caveats about their sound quality). Unashamedly nostalgic but also potentially rather fragile, it’s the kind of device that could spread the CD love to younger generations.

Beams Records Hill Portable CD Player, ¥7,590, Beams.co.jp

FiiO DM15 R2R

Guangzhou-based FiiO has quietly become a key player in portable audio, from MP3 players to CD-dedicated models. Its most recent portable compact disc player is the DM15 R2R, which is rich in features with a stylish design. In addition to regular CD playback, the DM15 includes an onboard digital audio convertor and headphone amp for processing audio from a phone or laptop.

The battery life offers around seven hours of regular playback, wired and Bluetooth headphone support is offered and there’s also the ability to rip CDs (albeit to WAV format only) direct to a connected PC (although enthusiasts will know that software options are usually best for this kind of thing). Available in silver, red, black, and white, there’s also an optional case and shoulder strap.

FiiO DM15 R2R, £249 / $249 / €269.00, FiiO.eu, Amazon.co.uk

Shanling EC Play

Shanling is another Chinese manufacturer muscling in on the CD revival. The company’s newest compact is the EC Play, which joins the EC Zero T and a number of desktop players in its burgeoning range. Another feature-rich portable, this time with 12 hours of playback onboard, the EC Play is a chunky aluminium square available in Feather Green, Onyx Black and Moonlight Silver finishes.

In addition to playing back regular CDs, the EC Play also supports CD-R and CD-RW formats, with Bluetooth 6.0 wireless headphone out in addition to 3.5mm and 4.4mm headphone jacks. The player also has a high-quality SPDIF digital output for pairing with a hi-fi system.

Shanling EC Play, $199 / €220 / £209.99, AdvancedMp3players.co.uk, En.Shanling.com

xDuoo CDM-10

A quirky pairing of technologies old and new, xDuoo’s CDM-10 is intended as a desktop player. Although there’s a seven-hour battery on board, it weighs in at nearly a kilogram, thanks to the integration of tube amplification.

This adds another layer of warmth and character to the playback, although there’s also a digital audio convertor onboard as well. The CDM-10 offers a plethora of wired outputs (but no Bluetooth), with a black aluminium aesthetic that evokes the classic Sony Professional Walkman.

xDuoo CDM-10, $429, xDuoo.com and £429 at Amazon

YBA Design One

The YBA Design One offers SACD (Super Audio CD) compatibility, the higher quality yet largely overlooked successor to the original CD format. The French company, set up by engineer Yves Bernard André in 1981, is better known for its component systems.

Design One is the company's first foray into the portable sphere. The player follows the same rigorous aesthetic as YBA’s other products, with five-and-a-half hours of battery playback and two sockets for wired headphones.

YBA Design One, RRP €1,848, information and stockists at YBAhifi.com

What happens when Burgundy winemaking meets Japanese brewing traditions? Yukiguma is the answer: a sake that sparks a flavourful cross-cultural conversation, and brings a shot of design to hospitality.

Brewed at the foot of Mount Ikoma in the Osaka Province, Yukiguma was founded by winemaker Nathalie Perrodo. Her approach to wine is innovative, and the same applies to her new sake, which nods to the traditions of Japanese brewing techniques, and uses pure water sourced from the surrounding Ikoma mountains (which makes up around 80 per cent of the sake’s main body).

It was Perrodo’s background in French wine which drew her towards sake, as she tells Wallpaper*: ‘I grew up with a deep respect for terroir, craftsmanship and the idea that what we drink can express both a place and a culture. But what has always fascinated me even more than the drink itself is what happens around it. Some of my happiest memories are of family gathered around a table, where a bottle became the beginning of a conversation, a celebration, or simply a moment shared.

‘Sake had fascinated me for many years because I saw so many parallels with the world of fine wine, yet it remained a completely different discipline for me to explore. With my French-Asian heritage, there was also something deeply personal about bringing these two worlds together.’

Yukiguma is brewed at the Daimon Brewery, which was established in 1826. Located in the ancestral hunting grounds of a Japanese imperial family, the brewery focuses on small-scale production – ideal for Yukiguma’s small batch of only 5,000 bottles produced per year.

Master maker Yasutaka Daimon, oversees the operation. Perrodo and Daimon, both avid travellers with a shared openness to the world, found kinship rooted in their shared values and eye for craftsmanship. Perrodo reflects, ‘Meeting Daimon San in Osaka was the turning point. We shared the same respect for tradition, but also the desire to create something contemporary.’

Yukiguma means ‘snow bear’ and the drink is made with 100 per cent Yamada Nishiki rice from Hyōgo. However, it is the pure spring water from the Ikoma Mountains that adds a special touch. ‘Pure spring water is a rare yet traditional part of Yukiguma's identity. Today, only around 4 per cent of Japanese breweries use spring water, and Daimon Brewery is fortunate to have its own natural spring source in the Kansai region. The water has a neutral yet unique profile, providing a clean foundation that allows the brewery to focus on the fermentation rather than the water imposing a strong flavour of its own,’ explains Perrodo.

It is this neutrality that allows the sake to ferment slowly, as Perrodo continues to explain: ‘Rather than being defined simply as sweet or dry, it’s designed to have a balanced, food-friendly character that can be paired to taste and reflect the diverse culinary traditions of Osaka, Kyoto and Nara.’

As with wine, tasting sake sparks sensory descriptors. Summing up Yukiguma’s flavours, she says: ‘Persimmon describes the softer, ripe fruit quality: subtly honeyed, rounded and gently sweet rather than sharply acidic. Mangosteen captures a more delicate tropical character: floral, lightly creamy and sweet-tart. Lychee communicates the sake’s lifted perfume and fresh, aromatic quality.’

Yukiguma is created to surprise, to encourage discovery. Says Perrodo, ‘It is an opportunity not only to unite two cultures, but to create something that people would remember, not simply for how it tasted, but for the moments it accompanied.’

Yukiguma can be enjoyed neat, over ice, or in a variety of cocktails, including its signature Yuki Blossom:

Yuki Blossom
35ml Suntory Toki Whisky
35ml Yukiguma
10ml Peach liqueur
10ml Muyu Jasmine Verte
10ml Green Tea & Honey Mix
Stir and strain over a clear ice cube in a Metropolitan Rock

Yukiguma is available for purchase for £120 at marlo.wine.com

In a new Wallpaper* summer series, architect Carlo Ratti explores Italy through the ordinary objects that define daily life. Meet the lifeguard's uniform through the eyes of the design critic

Carlo Ratti on the lifeguard's uniform

For one hundred and fifty-five years, the 'Società Nazionale di Salvamento,' or National Lifesaving Society, has set the guidelines for Italy’s lifeguards. Let us examine them through the eyes of a design critic. First, Italian lifeguards are an essential safeguard. According to estimates, every summer they save tens of thousands of people from drowning: extraordinary numbers that transform what could be a tragic seasonal tally into infinite safe returns home.

But they are also a visual landmark. Let’s forget about Olympic neoprene suits signed by Giorgio Armani! The red tank top – often faded by sun and salt – is, from June to September, a visual anchor planted along Italy’s 8,000-km-long coastline. It is a true piece of living architecture that deserves a few lines of critical attention.

Let us begin with its origins. The International Life Saving Federation recommends yellow for the upper half of lifeguard uniforms and red for the trunks below. Australia and Britain have turned this guideline into a masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon standardisation: identical uniforms, defined materials, strict codes, an almost military aesthetic. From Sydney to St Ives, the lifeguard sports a walkie-talkie, a cap, technical sunglasses and zinc oxide on the nose.

Italy, by contrast, with the nonchalance of a country that treats international guidelines as suggestions rather than obligations, continues to dress its lifeguards in deep red, from the neck down to mid-thigh. It is the same red as Tinder, the world’s most downloaded dating app.

On the beach, salvation wears the colour of desire – as Baywatch also taught us. In a country that gave the world Valentino red and Ferrari red, the lifeguard’s tank top belongs to a similar chromatic dynasty, even when bleached by the sun.

The garment is equally defined by freedom. Apart from the identifying lettering, which must be clearly legible on both front and back, Italian regulations specify very little. The design is shaped precisely by this absence of rules.

The uniform thus becomes a blank canvas for individual vanity: low-cut tank tops, salt-faded T-shirts, vintage shorts and movie-star sunglasses. It is not a dogma, but a fashion statement – a uniform worn almost like a trophy which, between the 1970s and the 1980s, from the Riviera Romagnola to the beaches of Versilia, fuelled Italian erotic comedy and the dreams of Northern European tourists.

The lifeguard’s outfit reveals a fundamental tension in every human project: the balance between top-down codification and bottom-up freedom. These are precisely the mechanisms that Bernard Rudofsky placed at the centre of his celebrated twentieth-century studies on vernacular architecture, culminating in the iconic exhibition Architecture Without Architects at MoMA in New York (1964). Again and again, a delicate balance between rules and freedom produces the most fascinating and attractive designs.

So, despite modest pay, exhausting shifts and the inevitable sunburn (an occupational hazard, one might say!), for thousands of Italian eighteen-year-olds the lifeguard certification exam remains an essential rite of passage.

It is an opportunity to combine responsibility and vanity. And, through their uniform, to become the unexpected designers of Italy’s seaside landscape.

About 'Objectify' – a summer series from Italy by Carlo Ratti

Italy’s design canon has been told many times. The Bialetti moka pot, the Vespa, the Fiat 500, the Arco floor lamp: you know the list, and so does every airport bookshop and first-year design student. This column will discuss, poke, investigate, prod, ridicule and beatify the less glamorous Italian objects. They are the ones you ought to know, so that when you visit Italy, or spot apparitions of it on a friend’s social media, you can smugly point out: ‘Did you know the mosquito coil is a masterpiece of Italian design? The condom? The motorway toll transponder?’ Objects so ordinary that Italians walk past them, or handle them every day, without registering that someone, with a mellifluous surname, designed them.

Proust wrote a seven-volume novel because a small cake dipped in tea, the madeleine, unlocked an involuntary flood of memory. For followers of the Italian version of this column, published weekly in Il Sole 24 Ore, the nation’s favourite Sunday read, perhaps these objects will have a similar effect. For you, anglophone readers peering at this somewhere between Rummidge and Euforia, they offer something else: beach conversation topics, an eye trained on unexpected places, and perhaps a few new madeleines for when you visit the peninsula yourself. After all, objects are never just objects. As the great Milanese designer Achille Castiglioni of Arco-floor-lamp fame once declared: ‘objects should keep us company’. Especially during this scorching summer.

carlorattiassociati.com

Ricehouse, an emerging practice from Italy, joins the Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2026, our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Ricehouse

Founded in 2016 by Tiziana Monterisi and Alessio Colombo, Ricehouse is an Italian company working at the intersection of architecture, material R&D and circular economy. Monterisi is an architect with experience in bio-ecological architecture. Her long-term collaboration with the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto deepened her approach to the relationship between art, territory and social responsibility. Colombo is a geologist with a background in research and material innovation.

The team transforms by-products of the rice production supply chain, which include husk, straw and other agricultural residues, into natural building materials for healthier, lower-impact living environments. Their materials and products include thermal insulating plasters, lightweight screeds, and prefabricated panels. These solutions provide high-performance insulation that are breathable, durable, that naturally support thermal regulation and indoor air quality. At the end of their life cycle, they can be reused or returned to nature.

Ricehouse’s architectural approach is part of a wider biological and territorial system. ‘What motivates us is the possibility of giving new value to a resource that is considered a waste,’ they explain. ‘We work with materials often overlooked and transform them into building solutions with a strong environmental and cultural value.’

What: Casa LH

Casa LH is a single-story house that sits within natural parkland in Piedmont, Italy. The new-build property features materials sourced from the rice supply chain and is conceived according to the principles of green building. Rice waste is the material used as insulation between the prefabricated fir panel walls. Externally, bamboo decking was installed to reflect the existing surroundings and for its durability. Inside, all furnishings like the bed, table and sofa structure were constructed from oak.

A mechanical ventilation system provides for heating and cooling while the majority of the triple-glazed openings are located on the south elevation and feature a low-emissivity coating. The house has a garden roof that serves as an example of natural thermal regulation and filtration, it is a haven for biodiversity. Trees and plants such as the existing wisteria provide natural shading – this dies back in the winter to allow passive solar gain.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

ricehouse.it

Hye the Store, a boutique celebrating the best of South Korean and Asian craft and creativity, has just opened in Copenhagen’s Nordhavn. It’s a welcome addition to a revitalised northern harbourside district already home to design destinations including The Audo boutique hotel, Gubi and Kvadrat showrooms, BIG’s headquarters and JAJA Architects’ Park’n’Play – a red playground perched on the rooftop of a giant car park.

A serene space surrounded by contemporary buildings, Hye Store was opened last June in a red-brick warehouse by Hyeyoung Hwang, a former Seoul-based editor with a longstanding interest in South Korean and Japanese craft. The minimalist space brings together craft, design objects, apparel and accessories from all around Asia, with a focus on independent makers and small brands.

‘Living with Korean and Japanese objects has brought many small moments of pleasure to my own daily life, and I wanted to share that experience with others,’ says Hwang. ‘These are beautiful, functional pieces made by people who work quietly and with great dedication in their own workshops.’

Hye’s debut collection showcased the work of 15 South Korean artists and brands, such as Taesoo Kim’s traditional sabal bowls; Studio EAEA’s gently curved cherry wood cutting boards; CYS’ rounded stainless steel cutlery; as well as the hand-carved pieces of Korean woodworkers Kyungwon Hwang and Hongjun Park, whose creations perfectly reflect the boutique’s approach: ‘Their work has soft, organic forms, feels comfortable to use, and brings a calm, understated beauty to a space,’ says Hwang.

One of the objects that receives the most attention and questions in the shop at the moment is the ‘Mosi’ moon jar by Artbo Studio, founded by Los Angeles-based Korean artist Yejin Shin. The handmade textile art object is crafted from mosi, a traditional Korean ramie fabric, and can be displayed as a sculptural tabletop object or used as a small vase.

‘As a Korean, the moon jar shape is very familiar to me,’ says Hwang. ‘What I find especially interesting is seeing those people who may not know the history behind it, or who are encountering it for the first time, feel instinctively drawn to it. It shows how a traditional form can be reinterpreted in a contemporary context and still resonate across cultures.’

Hwang’s focus is clearly on beautiful, quiet objects from Asia that can find a natural place in European daily life: ‘When I select products from Korea and other parts of Asia, I always consider how naturally they might fit into homes and everyday life beyond Asia. Beauty is important, of course, but I am equally drawn to objects and products that are practical, tactile, and easy to live with.’

As well as crafts and homeware, the boutique presents apparel and accessories by brands such as Oy, and unique collaborations with Asian artisans. Hwang will also soon introduce Hye’s own original designs, made in South Korea; the first to launch this year will be placemats and coasters made from traditional mosi (ramie) and sambe (hemp) fabrics.

‘Alongside these product launches, I hope to continue creating experiences around the objects we introduce, through tea gatherings, dinners, and other events,’ she says. ‘I hope people discover not only the objects themselves, but also the rituals, atmosphere, and ways of living that surround them.’

Building long-lasting relationships with creatives is key: Hwang selects each piece after taking the time to speak with each maker, to learn about their process and the stories behind their creations. The selected objects might even help you see your home and daily routine differently, says Hwang: ‘We believe in the power of ordinary items to inspire your daily life, making every moment a little more meaningful.’

Århusgade 128H, Copenhagen

Sidell Pakravan have completed a family house refurbishment in a Berkeley Hills neighbourhood, taking an existing mid-century house and sympathetically upgrading it without compromising its essential qualities. House Vert arose out of a desire for more space, more than the traditionally low-slung largely single-storey mid-century archetype could provide. Originally built in 1963, the house was subject to strict site conditions that precluded any extensions due to the area’s zoning and waterway restrictions.

Sidell Pakravan, a firm founded by Sidell Pakravan and Kristen Sidell in 2014, were up to the challenge. The house is located in a creek, with a site that slopes steeply away from the road and provides verdant views out of every window, preserving all the existing trees.

By adding two new vertical elements to the floorplan, including the expansion and revision of the single upstairs room, the architects have brought light into the heart of the plan as well as expanded the available floorspace to a total of 2,000 square feet.

The existing structure was substantially altered and upgraded, with a new kitchen from Henrybuilt, as well a bespoke drainage, erosion and stormwater plan developed to ensure the newly updated house had no additional effects on the creek below the site.

The dark new exterior cladding uses traditional Sho Sugi ban treated timber, far more attuned to the deep greens and browns on the landscape, in place of the more generic varnished timber cladding of the original. Sharp edges and neat junctions emphasise the geometric structure and give the house a bolder presence.

In addition to the Henrybuilt kitchen, the interior has been lightened throughout, with a combination of white walls, timber floors and bespoke elements like the new walnut panelling in the entrance vestibule, above which the original lean-to porch has been replaced with a fourteen-foot volume equipped with high level roof lights.

The new principal suite is located in the second vertical volume, reached by a slender but sculptural staircase that leads into a bedroom, large walk-in closet and a bath set amongst the tree canopies. Located at the rear of the property, the main bed overlooks the creek in the backyard.

Two more bedrooms are located directly beneath it, along with a family bathroom. Henrybuilt was also responsible for the floating bench and console unit in the living room, while the custom mantel was supplied by Montana Timber Products.

‘The neighborhood in Berkeley where House Vert is located has a wide range of untouched and eclectic mid-century homes, many of which have not been touched since they were built,’ says Sidell Pakravan, ‘Our vision revolved around keeping the elements of the spirit of the original house while creating a better sense of cohesion. The refined interior contrasts with the wild landscape, which we kept intentionally untouched to integrate the updated home into its original context.’

SidellPakravan.com, @SidellPakravan

Kaviar Collaborative, an emerging practice from India, joins the Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2026, our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Kaviar Collaborative

Creative duo Kasturi Wagh and Vineet Hingorani combined the first two letters of their names, plus ‘architecture’, to arrive at their studio name ‘Kaviar’. The pair both studied architecture in Mumbai, then at New York’s Pratt Institute (class of 2020). Wagh, who was obsessed with Lego as a child, describes herself as ‘energetic and selectively extroverted’, whilst Hingorani is a detail-driven perfectionist and a cinephile.

Together, they share a future-focused outlook, attuned to designing for contemporary lifestyles and anticipating the needs of tomorrow. What grounds them is an interest in the phenomenology of space: how strong lines, smooth curves, natural textures or geometric voids can guide our sensory experiences. ‘Architecture is the manifestation of the five senses in a built form,’ they say.

From characterful Mumbai coffee shops and restaurants, to home interiors balancing personality and practicality, you won’t find them following formulas or trends. Each project tells a context-led story of people, place, culture and climate. In the end, Kaviar Collaborative’s enduring aim is to facilitate social connections through architecture, ones that become meaningful relationships – because for them, that’s ultimately what life is about, and it’s the most rewarding part of their own practice too.

What: House by the Lake

Near the scenic village of Kamshet, in the Maharashtra region of India, this lakeside holiday house has been imagined as a series of ‘viewing galleries’ that accentuate the daily serenity of the water. Secluded upon its own peninsula, the monolithic architecture forms a simple, floating frame, which subtly guides inhabitants towards the lake with its sloping roof. The architects describe it as ‘a vessel to view and re-unite with nature’.

Whilst sleek and contemporary, two stone-clad walls ground the house in the landscape, with local stone, exposed concrete and reclaimed wood bringing texture to the minimalist interiors. A statement staircase twists through a series of generous leisure spaces – for yoga, games, reading, dining and praying – with soaring ceiling heights and vast floor-to-ceiling window spans. With six en-suite bedrooms and a long outdoor pool, this house is a place for relaxing together and reconnecting with nature.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

@kaviar.collaborative

A rainbow of hues appears throughout Chromatic Architecture, a new book by artist-designer Adam Nathaniel Furman and journalist Kate Mazade that explores how colour can be wielded in the built environment to dazzling effect. The 200-page title begins by giving a concise introduction to colour and how it is 'one of the most elemental ways we apprehend the world around us,' profoundly impacting, through millennia, how we perceive structures visually and respond to them emotionally.

Browse 'Chromatic Architecture' - the colourful new book

Afterwards follow 34 diverse projects that Furman and Mazade think display a mastery of palette, from designer Dan Friedman’s experimental New York apartment with its pops of neon green to the 17th-century Shah Mosque in Iran that’s ornately adorned with over 1.5 million ceramic tiles in shades ranging from Persian blue to biscuit brown.

'The intention was to show how colour has been and can be used in wildly different socio-cultural, economic, religious, historical and urban contexts. It is infinitely flexible,' says Furman, whose own work is vividly polychromatic (an ombré-effect colonnade he created in Croydon, South London, is included in the book). 'The use of colour is something that is very dear to me, and that I feel rather viscerally to be a fundamental aspect of human pleasure.'

Projects in Chromatic Architecture are accompanied by rich imagery and expressive text that details how each building was conceived. Some of them are undeniably bold in appearance, such as Danish designer Verner Panton’s Varna restaurant in Aarhus – completed in 1971, the dining space embodies the period’s psychedelic groove, boasting swirling violet carpets and ceilings with concentric rings of crimson orbs.

However, there are also a number of 'gently persuasive' projects where colour is employed in a quieter but equally potent way; ideal for readers who may be hesitant about bringing vibrancy into their own design endeavours. Among them is a multi-purpose building in Thailand by Suphasidh Architects, its facade inlaid with striations of brown, burnt-orange, and dusty black earth sourced from different areas of the country. There’s also Studio Olafur Eliasson and architect Sebastian Behmann’s Fjordenhus office in Vejle, Denmark, covered in variegated bricks that subtly shift in tone as light conditions change throughout the day.

Altogether, the title offers not just a lesson in colour, but also in creative courage. 'What struck me about this book is how unabashedly the designers of every one of these case studies used colour,' concludes Mazade. 'They weren’t interested in architecture that shied away from view. The buildings say "this is who I am, and how I want to be remembered".'

ribabooks.com

The White House ballroom battle entered a new phase today. After a federal appeals court ruled last week that construction on the 90,000 sq ft expansion must stop, President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to allow the project to move ahead.

'This case involves an extraordinary and unlawful injunction that will halt the ongoing construction of the integrated military complex, including a totally secure ballroom space, at the East Wing of the White House, which is vitally required by national security,' US Solicitor General John Sauer argued in a filing with the high court.

The ballroom project has been a lightening rod for controversy since President Trump unveiled the concept a year ago, for both its design and its $400 million price tag, to be funded by private donations.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit that seeks to protect historically-significant sites across the US, brought suit against the plans in December 2025, arguing that the project required approval from Congress to move forward. Following months of legal back-and-forth, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit moved to block work on the project, upholding an earlier decision by a lower court.

‘Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence,’ the court wrote. ‘The President has no – and claims no – constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people.’

The Trump administration's petition with the Supreme Court, however – the nation's highest court – marks a significant escalation in the ongoing skirmish. The National Trust has until noon on 18 August to respond.

'Each court reviewing this case has ruled that construction of the Ballroom is unlawful,' the National Trust said in a statement. 'Each court has seriously and carefully considered the Administration’s asserted national security concerns. And each court has ruled that while underground bunker construction can continue, Ballroom construction must stop.'

The Trump administration, however, says it may be too late to halt the project. The Supreme Court filing noted that the building's superstructure is 65 percent complete, 'with millions of pounds of steel procured, tens of thousands of cubic yards of concrete poured and miles of conduit laid...Given those developments, the injunction promises chaos in service of nothing.'

Construction photos included in the filing show the extent of the work, which includes towering concrete shear walls. New renderings also depict what the complex will ultimately look like. The Neoclassical structure is designed by local firm Shalom Baranes Associates and will include a ballroom with gilded ornamental ceilings; a colonnaded exterior with 'magnificent Corinthian columns'; and decorative gold presidential seals on the facade.

The filing also touted the design's security features, which will include a droneport, a bunker five-storeys deep; and materials that are 'missile-resistant,' 'droneproof' and 'bullet, ballistic and blast-proof.'

In the dog-eat-dog world of hypercar one-upmanship, standing still is not an option. If you’re a luxury auto manufacturer worth its salt, however many ultra-limited-edition cars you make will never be enough to sate the collectors, speculators and extrovert owners who are always wanting a little bit more.

The trick is to maintain a level of demand through limited editions and the occasional one-off, ramp up the levels of customisation options so that no two cars could ever conceivably be the same, ensuring that design, desirability and investment potential are all neatly wrapped up within a single package.

Welcome to the Aston Martin Valen, the latest exercise in expansive automotive design from the Warwickshire-based luxury sports car manufacturer. Wallpaper* had a guided walkaround of the new car barely 24 hours before it left for the States where it is currently gracing the well-manicured lawns at Monterey Car Week for its global debut.

What can we say about the Valen that these images don’t immediately convey? Under that long, long bonnet is Aston Martin’s 5.2-litre twin-turbo V12 engine, now tweaked to deliver 850PS, making it not just the most powerful front-engined Aston Martin ever built, but the most powerful front-engined production car in the world.

Keen Aston watchers will detect the silhouette of the Aston Martin Vanquish beneath the dazzle-pattern style multi-hued carbon fibre paintwork, but the Valen’s combination of less weight and more power means a 0-60 mph time of 3.0 seconds dead and a top speed of 214 mph. The V12 gets a sonorous outlet thanks to a titanium quad exhaust system that gets prominent placement at the rear of the car. It’s said to be 50 per cent louder than the Vanquish, already no shrinking violet.

All this is the work of AM’s Q by Aston Martin service, working hand in hand with Special Vehicle Operations, a newly established division that takes the bespoke skills of Q and integrates them more closely with the company’s design team. SVO is headed up by MD Alex Long, who has been tasked with taking more risk and being more outré in its approach. The Valen follows on from previous specials, including the Aston Martin Valor from 2023, the Aston Martin Valiant and the one-off Aston Martin Victor from 2020, arguably the car that kick-started the current run of bespoke V12s.

According to Long, the Valen is ‘much more than coachwork. Our clients are very well versed in what’s under the hood across all supercars’. Nevertheless, the visual changes are also way more than cosmetic, with every single panel, light, brightwork and aero being unique to Valen. The aim, says Long, is to create a car that continues Aston Martin’s ‘long and illustrious line of special vehicles that can take their place at concours events for years to come’.

As the first special developed on the new Vanquish platform, Aston’s engineering team have dug deep to find more performance. Not only has the V12 been uprated, but the Valen is also newly revised hardware and software calibration to the steering, suspension and braking systems. ‘It’s about giving something really raw back to the customers,’ says Long, ‘every component and touch point of this car has been looked over.’

The weight saving comes not just from the carbon fibre bodywork, titanium exhaust, magnesium wheels and optional aluminium lightweight pack, but from a commitment to new manufacturing processes in the interior. This includes 3D-printed metal elements, especially in the centre console.

The Vanquish platform offered up a dream starting point for the design team, with perfect balance and proportions. ‘As this is a special project, we can truly push the design,’ Long says, pointing to a swathe of mood boards in the studio, festooned with words and catchphrases like ‘ruthless’, ‘anti-hero’, ‘ominous’ and ‘diamond in the rough’ that all presumably tap into the mindset of the 150 potential Valen owners.

Visually, the Valen majors on drama, from the ultra-slim headlights sitting above a crate-like carbon diffuser to the two upper and two lower tailpipes at the rear. In between, there’s a dynamic and dramatic flow of forms – enhanced here by the special Satin Andromeda Red paintwork – with the absence of a rear window allowing for a dramatic cascade down to the fixed spoiler. The treatment here is almost like a mid-engined car, although beneath that expanse of rear deck is a generous luggage compartment (fitted luggage is an optional extra, naturally).

‘Valen gave us the opportunity to explore and express more extreme emotions through a new form language and surface treatment,’ Aston Martin’s EVP and chief creative officer Marek Reichman acknowledges. ‘It’s a significant departure from what has gone before; sharply sculpted lines to reflect the aggressive dynamics, an attacking stance that emphasises the front-engine rear-drive layout and a bespoke interior design that creates a more sporting cockpit environment.’

The interior is where customers can get even wilder, with five different material splits, new upholstery quilting and stitching, the 3D-printed elements and anodised switchgear all coming together to create a whole that’s reminiscent of high-end technical sportswear or sporting equipment. ‘We pushed the character to be more experimental and extreme,’ admits Adam MacKerron, the interior team lead on the project.

Valen represents a strengthening of Aston Martin’s special vehicle strategy. The core cars will continue as before, but SVO machines are destined to a life shuttling between the auction block, the concours lawn and the air-conditioned garage, brand ambassadors that (hopefully) double up as rock-solid investments.

The name ‘Valen’ comes from the Latin valens – ‘strong’. Prospective customers are hoping for strong residuals to go with that bold look. Just 150 examples of the Valen will be built, with first customer deliveries scheduled for Q2 2027 and the rest of the run built out into mid-2028. The price? A seven-figure sum will be required.

Aston Martin Valen, price tbc, Configurator.AstonMartin.com, @AstonMartin

At five in the morning, in the mist that closes over 126 hectares of newly turned earth an hour from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, an old man in white linen trousers who evokes a visual straight out of Genesis stands among a dozen diggers, watching 20-metre trees lowered into holes. In the country's heartland, where iron ore mines devour the nearby mountains, this is extraction in reverse, regeneration at an industrial scale, at breakneck speed in the service of one man's dedication to beauty.

The white-haired man, revered by his workmates, is Bernardo Paz. He has done this before, on a plot of land ten minutes' walk away. His first tilt at heaven on earth became known to the world as Inhotim - one of the most extraordinary contemporary art parks in the Southern Hemisphere.

Museu Bernardo Paz - its creator's past, present and future

The sprawling 140-hectare open-air museum at Inhotim took him a quarter-century to build and converted him into Brazil's most improbable Medici. It no longer belongs to him. In 2022, he gave it all away: some 500 works in 23 galleries, the land, the whole painstakingly landscaped apparatus, signed over to new stewards.

Now, at 76, after selling his business interests for US$300m, he is doing it again, faster. He does not have another 20 years, he insists. On an adjacent area of land roughly the same size as his previous creation, he wants the first 20 gallery spaces finished before he checks out on a life spent shaping not one but two utopian landscapes.

'What I learned is that I'm going to die,' he says when asked what his inspired attempts to shape nature have taught him. The sentence hangs over everything the architects around him are trying to build.

There was no master planner this time, no deep conversations with his old friend Roberto Burle Marx. His 'Forest Museum' will carry his own name - Museu Bernardo Paz - and it has been shaped in his head, hand-in-hand with a dozen digger drivers. The first phase will include pavilions dedicated to Michael Heizer, Anna Maria Maiolino, Sonia Gomes, Pedro Moraleida, Sandra Gamarra and Laura Belém, alongside large-scale sculptures and environments by Frida Orupabo, Mario Garcia Torres, Torkwase Dyson and Giuseppe Penone.

He and his team have been planting since December 2024 - 15,000 trees, sourced from Mexico to Uruguay. Hiring someone to take charge of his vision was never a consideration. 'No, I didn't do that,' he says. 'I created all the areas where the pavilions would go, and the restaurant. But you don't see it. The "islands" are there, and they are galleries, areas where we could build.'

Shaping the Museu Bernardo Paz

The 'islands' keep shifting because plans keep evolving - and fast. Three weeks: that is how long Bernardo gave his niece, Maria Paz, to deliver the design for the museum's reception building, a structure that plays second fiddle to the bulbous baobabs - African by origin, shipped south from northern Brazil - that greet visitors to the Paz family's artistic Jurassic Park.

'We developed this design in three weeks,' she says. 'We had talked to structural engineers, we had renderings, we had the text, we had diagrams, we had plans and elevations. And yeah, he is in a big hurry, and he said we are taking too long.'

She is no longer surprised by her septuagenarian uncle's energy levels. Her partner at their joint firm PMCKM, Mark Mueckenheim, is in Germany; she is in San Francisco, ten time zones adrift; the studio works around the clock, much to Bernardo's liking.

This is the central tension of the whole enterprise, and each of the architects circling it - Paz, Sol Camacho of Raddar (she recently gave Pacaembu stadium in São Paulo a makeover) and Belo Horizonte-based architect Fernando Maculan - has had to make their own peace with it. How do you build beautiful things for a client with infinite will, finite time and no patience for the conventional? How do you design for a landscape that changes faster than the drawings can dry?

A race towards discovery

To Bernardo's delight, his daughter Sofia has become the translator between her father's ever-shifting master plan and the people trying to build it. As vice president of the new creative enterprise, she, a filmmaker, is not only helping him realise the dream but will be tasked with preserving it.

Work on the new museum began in earnest in June last year, and has been in development ever since. At the family house there is a giant map on which Paulo Miyada, the artistic director lured from Instituto Tomie Ohtake (the institution honouring Ruy Ohtake's mother, a painter), has plotted where every gallery goes. Then Bernardo decides overnight to do something entirely different, and the architects start ringing Sofia to ask whether they should start, stop, or start again. She says: 'We have to be fast, but we also have to be careful.'

A finite sense of how long Bernardo has left may be driving him on, but Sofia isn’t so sure: the doctors keep telling her father he is in perfect health. 'The man will kill us all before he dies,' she jokes. But the fear propels him forward. 'I know in his head he could close his eyes and envision it perfectly to the detail, and he just wants us to see that. So it's like we're fighting against even his better instinct - because he wants to make it fast, but he also wants to make it this vision of a beautiful, gracious and gorgeous land.'

The physical energy Paz has unleashed on the landscape is matched by its artistic potency. 'There is a creative abundance at Museu Bernardo Paz - a distinctive and radical sense of discovery - that will be astonishing in both scope and imaginative force,' says Allan Schwartzman, the museum's chief curatorial advisor and a co-founder of Inhotim. The intention, he adds, is 'to occupy the land and to move visitors through the land in ways that present a different kind of relationship of pavilions - visitors one day passing smoothly between the two institutions, into experiences that do not simply multiply what Inhotim already did.'

The material answer, for now, is an architectural response that gives him the speed he craves while smuggling in the care he has no time for - mapping the ground for water and load-bearing before projects arrive, so that drilling, such as that which delayed Inhotim's Yayoi Kusama pavilion by two years, never delays anything again. It is project management as diplomacy, learning from Inhotim's mistakes without ever saying so out loud.

The invisible building

Maria Paz's answer to the need for speed lies in the aesthetic: if the project's pace screams urgency, the architecture should whisper. Her Kusama pavilion at nearby Inhotim - built for one of the artist's Infinity Rooms, the sort of work that generates a queue around the block in New York - is really two very small rooms and a vast sheltered space for the queue to enjoy the wait. 'It was meant to be almost invisible,' she says, 'almost as if it's part of the garden.'

Like many of the buildings now being designed for Museu Bernardo Paz, it was a building shaped to be overtaken by nature - the right gesture for a place where the landscape is the fastest-moving thing on site.

The reception for Museu Bernardo Paz is envisioned to have more presence because it is the 'front door,' but the vernacular is the same: everything enclosed, compressed into a central core, all four sides thrown open, water ponds standing in for walls. 'It's not a building that's enclosed; it's not conditioned,' she says. 'It's just a shelter to house people for all these activities.' The lesson comes straight from Inhotim, where the reception is now too small; her answer is bigger and more open at once.

Plans keep evolving. The reception, originally to the left of the baobabs, moved to the right; other projects sit on ground that may or may not be flattened, to a level nobody can yet name. 'You have to deal with constantly also being able to adapt and change,' she says. 'Things here in California are so slow, and it's so difficult to do something a little more creative. And there you're constantly challenging your creativity.' It is, she concludes, 'a good challenge.'

The house in the town

If Maria's project is about deferring to the forest, Sol Camacho's is about bringing the forest into harmony with those who live beside it. The Mexican founder of Raddar (Research as Design, Design as Research) arrived at the project in October to a proposition that surprised her. 'They told me, what do you think if we start before even opening the museum,' she says. 'The first public gesture of the whole enterprise would not be a gallery at all. It would be a house - Casa Comun - in Brumadinho.'

The town is still striving to heal from a deep wound. In 2019, the collapse of a Vale tailings dam killed 270 people and buried the valley in mud (the Brumadinho Memorial opened last year as a space for collective mourning and remembrance); the town's first instinct, Sofia says, was to direct part of the backlash at Bernardo - a miner, therefore guilty by category, though the dam was never his. 'It left a scar in the community that is hard to talk about,' Camacho says.

Nor can the disaster's perverse afterlife be politely stepped around: compensation money that sedated the town as much as it healed it. Paz wants to create stronger links to the town going forward. What art can do against any of that is uncertain, which is exactly why Camacho began not with a line but with a conversation.

It is one of the lessons of the first 25 years at Inhotim, and it has emerged stronger in Sofia's generation. Inhotim invited the community in - free Sundays, jobs, education for workers' children - and it was not enough, because the traffic ran one way. 'We need to go to Brumadinho,' Camacho says. 'If we want to impact the everyday life of these people, we need to make an effort and go and meet them where they live.'

So the house - a modest thing, ten metres by ten - becomes Casa Comun: a community centre in an existing structure adapted rather than demolished, made beautiful without much being built. Camacho's team held round-tables with thirty or forty residents, collecting a Santa Claus list of wishes - a computer lab, a reading room, soccer games - and translating them into the harder question: what can art bring to your lives? The wager is that when an artist comes to live and work in the neighbourhood for two months, the barrier dissolves. 'Now we can talk in the same language,' she says. Even against a tragedy of that scale, she calls it 'a beautiful, even if a small, effort within the city to think that art can be a way of understanding.'

Casa Comun is due to begin operating in April 2027, the programme built up over a year or two before anything new is constructed. It is the antithesis of Bernardo's steel-frame velocity - research first, patience as a design principle - and Camacho notices the difference this particular project's effect has on the client. 'It feels like we can have a conversation, travel, talk, come back, think.' Then she catches herself. 'And suddenly Bernardo goes, "I want forty big trees coming here, I want them by next month".' The two clocks run at once. The institution is trying to hold both.

Maintaining focus

Ask how many buildings there will finally be, and the number keeps moving. Maria was told eight projects; Sofia has heard forty pavilions, plus a hotel awaiting investors, a small hamlet of beautiful homes, a wattle-and-daub cultural centre, an orchid facility and a seed bank. There's talk about connecting to a Quilombola community forty-five minutes away, a research institute and a library.

The art collection is already vast beyond reckoning. Bernardo has accumulated 3,000 works, some produced in secret by an army of sixty or seventy young Brazilian artists he pays and elevates. Michael Heizer's pavilion is due first off the conveyor belt. PMCKM is shaping a concrete temple for two monumental sculptures, Displaced Replaced Mass #3 and Negative Wall Sculpture #1, that will be the artist’s first permanent installation in Latin America. Works by Doris Salcedo, Otobong Nkanga and Laura Lima wait for a pavilion, and each pavilion waits for the ground to hold still.

'If you don't have focus, you don't reach the place you need or want to reach,' Paz says. 'That focus draws from your reasons to do anything, which for me is to change people's lives just a little bit. Very little, but that very little is enough.'

Back in the mist at five in the morning, Bernardo is not thinking about any of this. He is watching his team of twelve people and a dozen trucks plant a forest, feeling, for the first time in years, fully alive. 'What I'll draw from it,' he says, 'is the hatred of death.' The architects around him are building against that hatred - a shelter that vanishes into a hillside, a house that listens before it speaks, a forest planted at the speed a mountain was once destroyed.

pmckm.com

raddar.org

fernandomaculan.com

inhotim.org.br

Local Local, an emerging practice from Athens, Greece, joins the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026, our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Local Local

With projects in the UK and a main base in Greece, this young studio, founded in 2022 by architect Sofia Xanthakou, has its headquarters in Athens and has worked across residential and cultural projects. Aiming to interpret context and its sense of place and history, instead of blindly replicating an existing condition, the practice is adept at crafting works that effortlessly merge old and new, following a holistic approach that brings together outside and in, past and present.

Keeping away from transient trends, the architect prefers to use fluidity and intuition as her key tools in uncovering the right response for each project and condition – alongside a strong sense of visual impact. ‘Architecture, for me, is a rewarding, iterative journey rather than just an end product. It’s this feeling of continuous change and adaptiveness that I find motivating. Even outside of the profession, I like to be constantly evolving and growing as a person, there’s always more to learn,’ says Xanthakou.

‘I love the process of design, starting from an idea or rough sketch and seeing it come to life after lots of hard work, meticulous planning and design, and a good amount of trial and error. I’ve learnt not to view failure as a setback but as a necessary step in the evolution of my practice. Design isn’t a linear process, and I find that so fulfilling.’

What: Plaka House

A house in the ancient Athenian neighbourhood of Plaka is a fitting example of Xanthakou’s work. The renovation and reimagining of a neoclassic townhouse from the 1800s set on a narrow stone-paved alley draws out the area’s character and the original building’s features, bringing them into the 21st century.

Communal areas, bedrooms, guest and staff rooms, an office and a courtyard span across two levels. An almost entirely white, monochromatic palette across walls, ceilings, and joinery supports light travelling into all rooms, in what was previously a dark, enclosed interior. The ground level’s typical Athenian terrazzo flooring was uncovered and restored, while light grey solid oak was used on the upper floors’ bedrooms, underlining a warmer, more private space. A roof terrace at the very top, offering views of the Acropolis and the roofscape beyond, is a key centrepiece.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios – a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

localocal.org

The Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026 adds DeRoche Projects to its roster of exciting emerging architecture studios to know now. Meet the practice, based in Accra, Ghana, and explore one of its projects.

Who: DeRoche Projects

A key tenet of Glenn DeRoche’s practice is sustainability, which is centred on a proactive, highly mindful approach. He writes: ‘Sustainability isn’t approached as a checklist; it’s deeply embedded in our design process. Our projects don’t just minimise environmental impact, they actively foster ecological and social resilience through regenerative materials, passive design strategies, and resource-conscious construction methods.’

With this ethos at its heart, the Accra-based studio, founded in 2022, has slowly expanded its portfolio across almost all sectors – residential, cultural, and commercial. Civic, community-centred is a particular forte. The firm was widely recognised for its Backyard Community Club, a tennis training facility and community hub in Accra; dot.ateliers | Ogbojo, a residency for writers and curators in Accra; and Surf Ghana Collective in Busua (the last two created together with Juergen Strohmayer).

The studio is currently developing several residential schemes, both single- and multi-family housing, with the same experimental spirit and embrace of eco-friendly materials as in its more public-facing works.

What: Aburi Residence & Retreat

Conceived as a family of structures spread across the mountainous topography of Aburi, a short drive from Accra, this residential project is idyllically set within seven acres of forest overlooking the leafy Akwapim Ridge. The project negotiates its site’s steep level changes while remaining discreet and organically embedded into its natural surroundings. DeRoche explains: ‘The project understands the mountainside not as an obstacle to be overcome, but as a collaborator in the making of architecture.’

The result is a campus of six pavilions of varying sizes, connected through pathways across the landscape, designed to encourage interaction with nature. The design consists of a private residence, space for artists’ residencies, a wellness pavilion, a private gallery, a contemplative pavilion, a paddle court, an ancillary building, and a productive farm.

Large glazed expanses set on deeply recessed façades ensure both effortless visual and physical connections with the outdoors and shading to support thermal comfort indoors. Meanwhile, all primary materials, craft methods and labour have been sourced from within the country. For instance, the buildings are made using low-carbon concrete that incorporates locally produced pozzolanic ash as a replacement for cement.

Why: Architects’ Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

derocheprojects.com

Set to be built just outside of Lawrence, Kansas, this new tornado- and fire-resistant project is more than a typical private ‘home’; it is an Earthship residence. ‘Earthships’ were conceived from one man’s vision for the future of housing. Michael E Reynolds founded the unorthodox utopian Earthship community, first in Taos, New Mexico, in the early 1970s, 'intending to create homes that don’t use fossil fuels or generate waste,' Beatrice Galilee reported for Wallpaper* in 2024. Now the community has expanded to more than 60 off-grid, fully independent, self-sustaining homes in Taos and up to 3,000 across the world.

‘I call it soft development,’ Reynolds previously told Wallpaper*. ‘They have a soft look because they’re also logically encountering the phenomena of the Earth. At the same time, you’ve got your own power, your own water, and your own sewage. You’re secure in the future.'

Explore the new Earthship residence design

The new proposal is conceived as a 'tornado- and fire-resistant Refuge Earthship'. It will include two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Embedded in its design are four ferro-cement vaults, which are thin-shell structural roofing elements made from cement mortar applied over layers of fine steel wire mesh and rods. These have been engineered to withstand fire and extreme winds.

The new residence, designed by Reynolds, will be constructed using ‘garbage’, including up to 1,000 tyres to form the structural columns, 16,000 used aluminum cans, and 1,000 old cardboard boxes. These materials are being collected locally, and donations are gladly accepted.

Earthship Biotecture – the name of Reynolds’ organisation as well as this approach to off-grid architecture – follows six principles covering basic human needs: building with natural and repurposed materials; heating and cooling through thermal mass; using wind and solar energy to create electricity; harvesting and filtering rainwater to provide drinking and wash water; containing and treating its own wastewater without external contamination; and producing its own food in an integrated greenhouse.

Construction will begin on the new building in September, with a dedicated Earthship crew including 25 students from across the world.

Says Reynolds: ‘We are very excited for the construction of this fire- and tornado-resistant Earthship in Kansas. The current state of the world makes this type of building not only necessary but essential to an incredible amount of people in and outside the US. I probably should not say this, but I cannot wait for the building to go through an actual tornado.’

earthship.com

The original Chef restaurant in Almaty, Kazakhstan, has spent 11 years serving dishes from an 1881 recipe book. Its second address, Chef Medeu, carries that historical fixation into the foothills, close to the city’s celebrated high-altitude skating rink. Here, the 1881 date has become a design brief. Alexandra Tsipkun of Tsipkun Interiors has shaped the 112 sq m restaurant as a 19th-century country estate – domestic in scale, layered with collected objects and unmistakably Almaty in its details.

Wallpaper* dines at Chef Madeu, Almaty

The mood: snow leopards by the fire

The compact main room accommodates 32 guests across sofas, armchairs and tables of varying sizes. An eight-seat communal table stands at its centre and can be divided into independent groups, giving the floor plan several seating arrangements while preserving comfortable circulation. A chandelier, wall lights and illuminated shelving provide pools of warm light, supported by discreet technical fixtures directed towards tables and circulation.

The main event is a 2.6m ceramic fireplace created specifically for the restaurant. Conceived as an enlarged version of a traditional tiled stove, it was assembled from tiles formed and painted by hand by ceramic artist Svetlana Plotnikova. Snow leopards, apples, swallows, horses and poppies appear across its saturated blue, green and red surface, translating the landscape and symbols of Almaty into architecture.

Across the room, the custom bar combines metal, bevelled mirrors and an oak marquetry panel. Open shelving incorporates glassware, tableware and collected objects into the composition, while lime plaster marked with patina and craquelure sits alongside brushed timber, rough-sawn decorative beams and hand-painted window reveals.

The food: like 1881

The 1881 cookbook provides the historical thread; the menu itself ranges widely. The clearest regional notes appear in a game assortment of air-dried and lightly smoked roe deer, venison and saiga antelope; pelmeni filled with veal and horse meat; and horse rib marinated for 24 hours in spiced broth before being cooked for eight. Oxtail receives a contemporary treatment, cooked sous-vide, finished on the grill and glazed with an 18-hour veal jus.

Breakfast brings pancakes, gravlax, red caviar, whipped butter and scrambled eggs arranged on a silver tray with a glass of sparkling wine. Later in the day, the restaurant’s take on a ‘happy meal’ combines a truffle burger, potato boats, truffle sauce, sparkling wine and fresh truffle shaved over everything. Kazakh tea with milk and roasted millet, conifer tea made with spruce-cone preserve, and house infusions ranging from sea buckthorn to horseradish and garlic complete the picture.

Chef Medeu is located at 582/3 Kerey-Zhanibek Khandar Street, Almaty, Kazakhstan

Hot on the heels of the successful launch of the Rivian R2 – to almost universal acclaim – the all-electric American SUV maker has returned to the flagship R1 to give it some welcome updates for the 2027 model year.

The R1S now has the option of second-row captain's chairs, adding to the sense of space and luxury in a variety of different trims. Additional MY27 updates include new colour and wheel options for the R1T pick-up and the whole range gets a little bit simpler to understand, with three new trim levels, Premium, Performance and the flagship Quad, rather than emphasise the number of electric motors each uses (two, three and four, respectively).

There’s no change to the storming performance and impressive range capabilities of the R1 (the Quad model will hit 60mph in 2.5 seconds, whilst the Long Range R1T model has an official range of 420 miles), but the interior trim and exterior colours have all been overhauled to broaden the distance between the premium R2 and what is now evolving into a distinctly luxury vehicle.

Trim options include Slate Sky Signature, which combines grey leather with plaid and walnut, Black Mountain Signature, with ash wood accents and the very California-coded Ocean Coast Signature.

Opt for captain’s chairs and the cabin layout becomes six rather seven seats, with a centre pass-through for long item stowage. The new chairs also include individual folding armrests and integral cup-holders. They can also be folded to create a table space.

Rivian R1S, from $83,990, R1T from $79,990, Rivian.com, @RivianOfficial

Hot on the heels of recent residential projects in the UAE and Brazil, Pininfarina has announced its first foray into single-family houses with a new US project launched at Monterey Car Week 2026. The multi-faceted design agency, now led by CEO Paolo Dellachà, covers a huge spread of industrial and architectural design, so the new American venture is a natural next step.

Explore Pininfarina's first US foray

Dubbed the Collection Sei Design by Pininfarina and overseen by the company’s chief architectural officer Samuele Sordi, each of the six fully furnished estate designs is intended as a complete package, shaped, built, furnished and decorated by the Italian studio. All you have to do is bring the site – a plot of 20,000 sq ft minimum is required.

The project has come about via a partnership with luxury homebuilder Manny Angelo Varas and MV Group USA. Although each villa is unique, they each measure around 8,000 sq ft and have a shared aesthetic, particularly in the use of curved balconies, covered terraces, and sliding screens. The intention is clearly to ensnare the attention of those who obsess over the bespoke process, whether in a house, a car or a yacht.

The studio hopes that the famed Pininfarina script logo will be enough to carry interested buyers through to completion, with each property offered at a turnkey cost of $16,950,000 (excluding the price of the land, of course). The initial renders show the houses in a variety of locations, but it’s the Miami-adjacent plots that look the most convincing, with the curved balconies acting as a suitable foil for superyachts, not just supercars.

Dellachà tied the launch into the 60th anniversary of favourite Pininfarina design, the Alfa Romeo Duetto – also hugely popular in the USA. ‘We are proud to unveil this remarkable project as we celebrate the anniversary of the Duetto, one of Alfa Romeo's most iconic cars, a timeless symbol that has inspired generations of Americans,’ the CEO said. ‘Created with Manny Angelo Varas, Collection Sei Design by Pininfarina is driven by the same vision. Set in extraordinary locations, the six villas will embody the highest expression of elegance, combining timeless design with exceptional craftsmanship. Just as the Duetto became an icon of Italian style, this collection aspires to set a new benchmark for luxury living in the United States.’

Pininfarina’s Sordi describes the project as ‘not simply a luxury home, but a collectable residence – one that elevates the rituals of everyday life.’ As well as deploying familiar architectural tropes such as ‘dissolving the boundaries between architecture and landscape’, the six houses are sleek and modern without being especially avant-garde or progressive. For the right buyer, they’ll be just the ticket.

Pininfarina.it

In little under two decades, California-based specialist Singer Vehicle Design has become one of the pre-eminent suppliers of highly luxurious reimagined and re-engineered Porsche 911s. The company, founded by Rob Dickinson in 2009, creates bespoke machines to order, from meticulously detailed cars that evoke 1960s and 1970s classics through to outrageous performance machines like the Sorcerer.

Over time, the Singer project has extended into timepieces through the Singer Reimagined brand. This new project, revealed at the 2026 Monterey Car Week, is perhaps the most ambitious yet. Working hand in hand, Singer and luxury French house Louis Vuitton – a name forever associated with high-end travel – have conjured up a pair of unique cars and a universe of matching accessories.

First up is the Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer - Classic, the mainstay of the Singer fleet based on an original Type 964 coupé chassis. Resplendent in LV’s colours of saffron, cobalt blue and yellow, it is joined by a Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer – Classic Turbo, a cabriolet model developed with Nicolas Ghesquière, Louis Vuitton’s artistic director of women’s collections, finished in Calcaire Lutétien white. Trimmed in Cognac leather and wood, the two cars offer an outlandishly detailed dive into the design and crafting skills of each company.

It all started with a clock. According to Louis Vuitton watch director Jean Arnault, ‘this unique and remarkable adventure began with a request for a dashboard clock for a car reimagined by Singer. In addition to the design and production of this clock by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton workshops in Switzerland, it quickly became apparent to us that this collaboration with Singer could extend to the personalisation of every functional element of the vehicle, enhancing them through our expertise in leather craftsmanship and watchmaking.’

Dickinson concurred. From the initial request for a unique Tambour dashboard clock, the journey expanded into two cars and their associated accessories. LV wanted Singer to dive deep into its repertoire and responded in kind. ‘The specifications chosen by Louis Vuitton exposed us to techniques and methods developed over decades of experience,’ he says. ‘They trusted us with their esteemed brand, their traditions and their vision and it was a joy to bring our two worlds together.’

The clock remains at the heart of the project. This mechanical timepiece is fully detachable and can be converted into a desk clock. The inspiration was the Tambour watch, an evergreen 21st-century design. As Singer and LV note, ‘once integrated into the cockpit, it soon became clear that Louis Vuitton’s involvement could not be limited to this single timepiece’. From there, the entire instrument binnacle was reshaped, taking the classic five-dial array that has defined the 911 since its inception in 1963.

This alone took a year of work, as the graphical and sculptural face of the Tambour line was used to reinterpret the speedometer, rev counter and auxiliary gauges. The dashboard itself was finished in blue leather to match the cobalt hue backing on the new dials, while the bright orange lettering is a classic LV visual trope.

Mission creep continued, until the entire car was reshaped. Singer’s lead designer for the project was Octave Chany. ‘The aim was to create a true synthesis between Singer’s architectural and timeless language and the Louis Vuitton culture, characterised by refined materials, travel and expression of style,’ he explains. The end result is a co-branded project, a first for each company.

The Classic and the Classic Turbo models are true Californian pieces, both in terms of the colour palette and the chosen accessories. That’s most evident in the Classic’s unique roof rack, tailored to hold a Louis Vuitton trunk or the specially crafted surfboard that comes with the car. The board was handcrafted in Angers, France, with LV Monogram marquetry in blond oak and rich walnut.

There is even a pair of LV skis, handmade in the French Alps from wood, Titanal aluminium alloy and steel. The saffron in the 911 Classic’s bodywork is familiar to Louis Vuitton customers as a core component of the company’s packaging. It’s also the same shade used in the travel trunks the house created for Citroën back in 1924.

The interior of the Classic is naturally finished leather, in line with the leather accessories, details and trim used across Louis Vuitton’s luggage range. Here, the VVT leather is deployed across the entire cabin, a project executed by Singer’s experienced vehicle trim team using techniques also common to bag making, such as stitching and embossing. Plastic is nowhere to be found; instead, switchgear is almost exclusively made using hand-finished metal, anodised and electro-plated to achieve the right colour finish.

‘Projects of this scale and exclusivity allow for a level of attention to detail that is unusual in the automotive world,’ says Chany. ‘Every transition between materials, every metallic reflection, every knurled surface, every mechanical interaction and every graphic element has been meticulously considered, often at an almost microscopic level.’ Lift the rear engine cover and you’ll see how far the attention to detail has gone – even the fuel and oil caps utilise Louis Vuitton watch typography.

The Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer – Classic travel collection

The accompanying collection of accessories and clothing required the entire house’s involvement. ‘Every department at Louis Vuitton has contributed to this unprecedented cross-disciplinary endeavour, from trunk makers and leather goods artisans to the fashion and footwear teams, and even the watchmakers from La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton,’ says Jean Arnault.

These include a racing jacket, unique shoes, the LV Remix Derby, perforated driving gloves in cobalt blue and a helmet of carbon and glass fibre with calfskin leather trim. Even the cloche key holder and the car keys themselves are custom made.

The Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer – Classic Turbo

The collaboration’s Classic Turbo is a cabriolet with a nautical flair, thanks to the close involvement of Ghesquière. The white body, timber trim and leather upholstery are a deliberate nod to the classic era of motorboat design.

‘Automotive design is a passion that has always lived within me. My collaboration with Singer has been a chance to reconnect with this fascinating world – a magnificent opportunity to explore truly exceptional automobiles, says Ghesquière. Details include teak decking in the luggage compartment and gold accents throughout the car, with leather fastening straps on the hoods. On the cabriolet, the timepiece is given a new location in the centre console.

The project not only spanned LV’s collection of workshops and ateliers, but also Singer Vehicle Design’s two facilities. The Classic model was built at the company’s California location, while the Classic Turbo was crafted in Singer’s UK premises. ‘The project has provided us with new insights and fresh perspectives,’ says Arnault. ‘A fruitful collaboration that has also highlighted the synergy and enthusiasm across all departments of the house.’

As a functional work of art, each car is a peerless expression of both brand’s values. The Classic Turbo is a little more lairy, as turbo-charged Porsche cabriolets are apt to be, and both cars have an almost fetishistic attention to detail, with all those straps and fastenings and leather.

A capsule collection for the Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer

‘It was important to remain faithful to the idea of a functional and useful vehicle,’ says Singer’s Chany. ‘Beyond aesthetics, the car had to continue to express the emotional notion of travel, so deeply rooted in the DNA of Louis Vuitton, while preserving the purity, handling and technical integrity that define Singer.’

SingerVehicleDesign.com, @SingerVehicleDesign
LouisVuitton.com, @LouisVuitton

Heatherwick Studio has unveiled its new design Stateside, which sees the transformation of a forgotten civic space in Louisville, Kentucky. The open area, titled Belvedere, is located downtown, nestled between the city’s commercial centre and the Ohio River.

Off the back of opening London’s Olympia this July (2026), the UK architecture firm has been busy fine-tuning Belvedere’s details, aiming to create welcoming public spaces that will include spacious pavilion-style structures and vast amounts of planting.

Heatherwick Studio unveils plans for Belvedere civic space in Kentucky

Elevated above a main road, the site spans approximately four American football pitches. The new design transplants outdoor gathering into the city, inviting people to meet friends, host community events, and watch performances near the waterfront.

The defining feature of the proposal is the Firefly Pavilion. The striking structure is designed for everyday use throughout the year but also acts as a platform to host events.

Belvedere originally opened in 1973 and slowly weathered, eventually appearing disjointed from the city. The firm worked closely with the community to hear their insights, which informed the project's development. Construction of Belvedere is expected to begin this autumn, with a grand opening anticipated in 2030.

‘For more than 50 years, the Belvedere has been a stage for public life in Louisville. But over time it’s become barren and disconnected from the energy of the city around it. My studio’s design is about restoring the buzz and sense of connection of its early years by creating a greener, more welcoming urban heart, where everyday life can take place: from chance encounters and children's play to festivals, performances and community celebrations,’ says Thomas Heatherwick, founder and design director of Heatherwick Studio.

‘Our goal is for the newly reimagined Belvedere to reflect Louisville’s unique character, and bring people together again across generations, backgrounds and interests, and go on to become a place that local people proudly call their own.’

heatherwick.com

The newest residential project by Stylus Architects offers another take on the classic Victorian terraced house extension. The London-based architects, recently featured for their Green Lodge project in Roehampton, turned their hand to another south London site, this time in an awkwardly shaped back garden plot.

Discover this ingenious London house extension

The clients called for a larger, more inclusive kitchen space, one that integrated better with the rear garden and brought light deeper into the traditional long floorplan. As the architects note, the existing house posed a challenge, for ‘no wall meets another at 90 degrees’. Rather than straighten up the lines, Stylus delved deeper into the angles, using the tapering form of the floor plan to maximise the sense of space. A new faceted brick garden façade amplifies the irregularities.

‘Etta House isn't a project about unusual geometry,’ explains architect Matthew Withers. ‘Geometry was simply the tool. By listening carefully to the site, every design decision, from the overall plan to the smallest brick detail, became part of one coherent architectural idea. The design is sophisticated. But the experience is simple.’

In many respects, the project is a straightforward one, especially in London where the Victorian terrace has proved an adept and flexible staging ground on which to expand, extend and alter. What sets Etta House apart is the way the new addition feels like a cohesive whole, a natural extension of the original structure that also has the character of a standalone pavilion.

The wedge-shaped floor plan flares out towards the modest London garden and the architects have ensured that the alignments of walls, windows and rooflights follows the established lines. One of the stand-out features is the ribbon of rooflight above the kitchen counters, running the full length of the extension and terminating above the opening into the front reception rooms.

Brick is also used on the interior, with chalk grey bricks and lime pointing creating a softer light. They’re paired with off-white plaster walls, timber floors and ribbed wood joinery on the kitchen. Deep green cupboards provide a splash of natural colour.

At the rear, the garden façade is formed by two angled brick blades, one housing an inset bifold door that opens onto the decking and the other framing a tall glass window that aligns with the rooflight. The walls are set slightly apart by a brick or two, creating depth, shadow and a bold sense of form.

To ensure this geometric precision is maintained down to the millimetre, Stylus set out drawings for the rear brickwork, as well as commissioned bespoke bricks, so that the edges were crisp and not interrupted by joints. The absence of any 90-degree angles is keenly felt but used to the project’s advantage.

StylusArchitects.co.uk

As one of the auto industry’s longest-ever teaser campaigns finally draws to a close, Jaguar has eked out a few more column inches by releasing four images of the interior architecture of the upcoming Type 01.

These images are the first sight of the official production-ready interior, ahead of the car’s unveiling in New York in early October 2026. Closely hewing to the architectural language of the Type 00 Concept, the car will be a strict four-seater in this particular configuration, thanks to the retention of the central spine feature.

Whilst the concept dipped into materials like travertine, there’s no stone to be found, only a palette that ‘reflects the enduring beauty’ of the missing masonry, and a brass-inspired finish on the spine. It certainly makes for a strong statement, with a minimal approach that exudes 1990s-era residential and retail minimalism, think back to the heyday of Pawson and Silvestrin, with long, unbroken lines and large areas of massing.

According to Thomas Holden, chief interior designer at Jaguar, the Type 01’s interior is directly inspired by the exterior forms. ‘In contrast to the horizontal interior design norm, we emphasise its dramatic longitudinal nature through the central spine – an architectural statement that creates four individual spaces,’ Holden explains. ‘With authentic materials, technology on demand and reductive flowing surfaces, Type 01 presents unmistakable drama and theatre that will define the modern luxury automotive interior of the future.’

The instrumentation itself is yet to be revealed, although a wide-angle screen is visible behind the two-tone steering wheel. In the centre console, controls have been minimised with just a slender smartphone-sized touch screen providing the main interface. The rear-view mirror, also a digital display, is located at the base of the windscreen, rather than in the conventional spot.

A glass roof stretches the length of the cabin, with the console bisecting the front and rear seats; additional functions, such as concealed storage, are out of sight for now. The new Jaguar leaper logo – released right at the start of the whole process back in December 2024 – can be found on the door.

‘Jaguar Type 01 is the first production car to follow our new creative philosophy. Unmistakable from every angle, the interior is no different,’ says Jaguar’s MD Rawdon Glover. ‘With Type 01, we wanted every journey to be an occasion, from how it drives to how it looks and how it makes you feel. With a confidence-inspiring GT driving position, clean and sophisticated technology and dramatic styling, Type 01 has an interior like no other.’

A camouflaged version of the car was seen winter testing earlier this year, and a wrapped Type 01 also made its dynamic debut at the 2026 Goodwood Festival of Speed.

This week, the finished production model will be seen on American shores for the first time, albeit still swathed in disguise, at Monterey Car Week, alongside a celebration of Jaguars old and new at the Pebble Beach Concours.

Jaguar.com, @Jaguar

‘The main purpose of my work is to provoke people into using their imagination,’ Verner Panton once said. Among his many colourful and fun-filled creations is a series of animal-shaped, modular sculptures now being reissued by Swiss furniture company Vitra (maker of the ‘Panton’ chair since the 1960s), as part of celebrations marking the centenary of the great Danish designer and architect’s birth.

The series takes its cues from Panton’s ‘Pantonaef’ system, produced by Swiss toy manufacturer Naef in the 1970s, which comprised elements that could be clipped together to construct a variety of different structures. Although mostly designed for adults, this system may well have inspired the later craze for the Rubik Snake and its millions of plastic fidget-toy offspring.

In collaboration with Verner Panton Design, Vitra has developed the ‘Panton Cubes’, a re-edition of Panton’s design classics in kit form. It includes four animal sculptures: a duck, a flamingo, a cat and a giraffe. Each kit contains the elements needed to construct the respective animal figure, and, as Panton wished, whichever shapes and combinations our imagination can come up with – the possibilities are endless.

‘The “Panton Cubes” are a wonderful addition to Vitra’s Verner Panton collection and highlight a lesser-known aspect of his work,’ says Stine Liv Buur, design manager of Classics at Vitra. ‘They demonstrate his playful exploration of geometry, colour and reflection, while translating these ideas into sculptural objects that invite interaction and imagination.’

The modular system consists of square frames that are assembled to form cubes, which are then linked with clips and fitted with coloured or chrome panels to create patterns and volumes. Whereas the original versions came in a matte finish, the re-editions feature glossy surfaces in a chrome finish or duo-tone colour combination, all based on Panton’s original colour choice and developed in close collaboration with Verner Panton Design AG.

‘At Vitra, we believe that colour has the power to influence mood and shape the way we experience our surroundings – a conviction that Verner Panton championed throughout his career,’ says Buur. ‘With their mirrored and glossy surfaces, the “Panton Cubes” interact with light, colour and space in a way that feels as engaging and inspiring today as when Panton first conceived them.’

The ‘Panton Cubes’ will be launched at the London Design Festival (12-20 September 2026) at Tramshed, Vitra’s London showroom in Shoreditch. New pieces by Berlin-based Studio Œ, Erwan Bouroullec, Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, and Panter & Tourron will also be unveiled.

Archival versions of the 'Panton Cubes' are currently on display at ‘Verner Panton: Form, Colour, Space’ (until 9 May 2027), a comprehensive survey of Panton’s work at the Vitra Design Museum’s Schaudepot near Basel.

Premium MP3 players have been gradually creeping back into the mainstream courtesy of high-end, ultra-high-quality devices like the Astell & Kern PD20 and the FiiO M27. Even Sony, the original mobile music expert, has got back into the game with its premium-priced WM1AM2 hi-res Walkman.

But there’s also a groundswell of change at the entry level. For too long, cheap MP3 players meant taking a chance on an off-brand player with dubious quality, fidgety UI and a lifespan that could be measured in weeks, not years.

As new generations of music lovers discover the joys of personally curated collections and cutting the cord from streaming services (although not necessarily the cord to their headphones), smaller, nimbler music players that ape Apple’s original iPod and Nano are coming back into fashion.

We’ve assembled a selection of five new ultra-compact MP3 players that bring a sense of agency and accumulation back to music listening.

FiiO Echo Nano

Small, inexpensive but powerful, the Echo Nano from FiiO is an aluminium-made portable music player that supports lossless formats as well as the ubiquitous MP3. The angular body is made from CNC-machined aluminium-magnesium alloy, finished in a rainbow spectrum of pink, white, sky blue, green, purple and titanium silver.

Controls are via a tiny 0.91-inch OLED screen, with a multifunctional metal scroll wheel to scrub through tracks and playlists. As well as a traditional headphone socket the Echo Nano’s onboard digital audio converter can also be used to process sounds from a laptop. Weighing in at just 33.5 grams, the player offers up to seven hours of playback and supports microSD cards of up to 256GB.

FiiO Echo Nano, $49.99 / €55.99 / £54.99, FiiO.eu

FiiO JM21

For a more extensive feature set, FiiO also offers the JM21. Recently upgraded to include 64GB of onboard memory and a larger battery for up to 12.5 hours of playback, the JM21 has an Android-based UI, both 3.5mm and 4.4mm physical sockets and supports microSD cards up to 2TB in size, making it an ideal way of backing up a lifetime’s worth of music into a portable player.

FiiO JM21, £199 / €259.99, FiiO.eu

Shanling M0 Pura

Despite its tiny size – 35.8g – the fourth-generation version of Shanling’s M0 Pura player can support the current maximum 2TB microSD card (equivalent to 400 DVDs or around 3,000 CDs ripped at high-resolution quality, or around two years of high-quality MP3 files). The little Pura certainly owes a physical debt to the form factor of the original iPod Nano, with a 1.54-inch touch screen that takes up practically the whole surface of the player.

Available in black, vibrant orange or berry purple, it comes with both a headphone jack and Bluetooth connectivity and battery life is a projected nine hours plus. Adjustable playback speeds are also available for mainlining podcasts.

Shanling M0 Pura, Shanling.com, £95.59 at Amazon

Hidisz AP30 Music Boy

Currently Kickstarting, the AP30 Music Boy from Hidisz blends the scale of a Nano with the aesthetic of the early Game Boy. Support for up to 256GB microSD is paired with a playful interface on the 2-inch screen. It even includes a ‘block game’ (ie, Tetris) that’s accessed via the D-pad. Bluetooth connectivity is paired with both sizes of headphone jack, and the overall aesthetic is kawaii meets Minecraft.

Hidisz AP30 Music Boy, Hidizs.net, Kickstarter.com

Innioasis Y1

No prizes for guessing the source of visual inspiration between the Y1 from Innioasis. Available in no fewer than nine different colours, this iPod lookalike mimics the classic click-wheel format. As well as support for practically every audio format ever conceived, the Y1 can also play MP4 video, offering four hours of playback at 720p HD.

A built-in FM radio – with recording function – adds to the available options, and the Y1 will also serve as a portable image viewer and audiobook player. Bluetooth connectivity is available, although a pair of wired earbuds are supplied in the package. The Y1 comes in three storage sizes, 64GB, 128GB and 1TB.

Innioasis Y1, $65.99 for 64GB, Innioasis.com, £65.99 at Amazon

The Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2026 welcomes Diana Salvador, a young architect, and her studio in Ecuador are joining our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Diana Salvador

Quito-based architect Diana Salvador’s practice is driven by a desire for innovation and functionality – on various levels. ‘When I think of architecture, I think of tectonic and constructive efficiency in every possible sense. With each new project, I dedicate myself to rethinking the way I design and, consequently, the way I build. I focus on a workflow that provides certainty and absolute control over performance, time, utility, and expenditure. This data allows me to make strategic decisions rooted in a genuine concern for the impact a building generates,’ she explains.

‘This is not an isolated pursuit. My personal quest for maximum efficiency is deeply linked to a desire for self-reliance – not out of arrogance, but from a profound yearning to be able to build with my own two hands. The reality is that for women in this profession, survival is an active, daily endeavour. I have accepted [...] to forge my own way of conceptualising a project, resulting in a practice that is more human, intimate, and accessible.’

Within this context, she adopts sustainable architecture principles, often working with eco-friendly materials and low-impact construction solutions. Her efforts have won her the National Award in Minimal Architecture at the Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Quito (2020) and a finalist position at the UIA 2030 Awards in Paris (2022).

‘What truly matters in the end is coherence and professional responsibility. Minimising our ecological footprint within construction practices is perhaps the most genuine act of reverence toward nature and the future generations that will inhabit it,’ she explains. The landscape and a communion with nature are her biggest influences, the architect adds.

What: Casa Sula

Set in the subtropical foliage of the Santa Cruz island of the Galápagos, Casa Sula is one of Salvador’s key examples of respectful, sensitive building systems architecture. The house was prefabricated in Quito over two months. Its components were then transported by sea to their final site, where the house was fully assembled in just 25 days.

The home, a contemporary version of a triangle house, is a sleek composition made of some 2,000 custom-made wood, metal, aluminium, and glass pieces (while over 17,000 screws were needed to put the project together, the architecture team flags). Smart passive cooling techniques, such as a gap between two layers of the outer skin, which allows air to circulate, were employed throughout in order to support the structure’s bioclimatic behaviour.

Sula - which is named after a Galápagos Islands’ endemic bird species - is Salvador’s second exercise with prefabricated technology. Many more will follow, the architect emphasises: ‘What sets me apart is how I inhabit my role as an architect: delivering a housing solution without leaving a scar on the environment.’

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

@diana_manzana_salvador

One of the most fabled of all vintage Bentleys was the ‘Blue Train Car’, a Herculean battle between automobile and steam train initiated in 1930 by Bentley chairman Woolf Barnato, and his secretary, Dale Bourne, racing Le Train Bleu, the Calais-Mediterranée Express, on its return journey back to the channel coast. It’s an oft-told tale in Bentley circles, even though the actual Speed Six model that did the run was usurped for many decades by the better-looking and more appropriately dynamic Gurney Nutting coupé (a car that went on to inspire Bentley’s EXP 15 concept).

We’re re-hashing this story not to harp on about the past, but to make the case for the modern Bentley as an equivalent to transcontinental luxury train travel. Barnato and Bourne probably didn’t have the same creature comfort as the train passengers they raced, but you’d be hard pushed to find any modern train service that’s as plush as the interior of a contemporary Bentley. Throw in a surfeit of power, a super smart hybrid system and one of the best modern auto interiors on the market, and you have an unrivalled mode of transport for two (four, at a push).

The most recent variant of the Continental is this, the GT S. Superficially, the evergreen Continental appears to come in just two variants, a closed coupé and a cabriolet. In reality, the model is sliced and diced to indulge the whims of a demanding clientele. Choice is the watchword, individualism is the destination and complexity is key. There may only be one power train (a twin-turbo V8), but it's available in various shades of output and is wedded to a body and interior that offer up infinite variety of choice.

The GT S sits in the mid-range of the Continental line-up, above the ‘base’ model and the softer, more graceful and refined Azure model. Above the S is the performance focused GT Speed and above that the Mulliner version, which includes every conceivable extra before you even get to break out the colour charts.

As a result, the GT S is one more galaxy of possibilities to lure the modern Bentley buyer. On paper, it sits in the dead centre of the Venn diagram of the GT's ability - sport, luxury, touring, technology. It’s not the most powerful, nor the most luxurious, but in practice, these qualities have been refined and elevated over the years so that only the most self-conscious, spec-obsessed buyer will ever find their car wanting.

Chances are, however, that plenty of Bentley owners are just that, hence the depth and breadth of the option sheet and the nudge towards budget-busting options from Bentley’s Mulliner division. If all that wasn’t enough, a new Supersport variant will be along shortly, explicitly designed to temper those egos who don’t feel fulfilled by 671hp.

Our press car is resplendent in Spark Blue paintwork (a £19,425 Mulliner option), along with a pricey dose of carbon fibre trim pieces, a carbon fibre exhaust, and the essential rotating dashboard display – cheekily pitched as an essential design element yet still a £5,320 extra. In fact, by the time the checkboxes have been filled, this particular car comes in with £62,130 of optional extras against a list price of £212,500. Deep breath.

Having expended Orient Express-levels of outlay, are you getting an OE experience? Short of a butler or two, and the requirement to dress for dinner, we’d say yes. The GT S pulls like a train and has all the performance and refinement you’d ever need for long, long distance travel. It utters a throaty roar on cue but can glide in serene silence when more decorum is called for.

The twin-turbo V8 is backed up by a seamless hybrid system, adding 187bhp of power via a 25.9kWh battery. That’s more than enough for up to 50 miles of EV-only cruising, as well as the electric shove the battery adds to hard acceleration. Bentley’s system – found elsewhere in the VW Group – also allows you to divert kinetic energy back into the battery, either to charge it back up or to hold it at a predetermined level. Electric for cities, V8 for the open road – the perfect compromise.

All this adds weight to an already mighty car, a shade under 5m long and tipping the scales at 2,459 kg. It’s to Bentley’s credit that the GT has always felt rather more lithe than leaden, thanks to clever active roll control and a four-wheel drive system that parcels up the power and dispatches it to the right corner to achieve uncanny levels of handling and balance.

This particular example of the GT majors on a more contemporary approach to the interior, with a duo-tone cabin combining Gravity Grey and Klein Blue. It’s not exactly restrained – far, far more classical combinations can be achieved if wood, leather and chrome are your bag.

Switchgear, dash layout and user interface feel a few years off the pace, but very much in a good way given the industry’s recent over-reliance on screens. A Bentley is a tactile experience, regardless of the amount of technology paddling away beneath the smooth surface of the water.

Other criticisms? A bit more boot space wouldn’t go amiss for those LV trunks. For longer journeys, the rear seats are best suited to smaller-framed people who can pack light, even though it’s way more generous back there than in an Aston DB12 S. For two people, however, the Continental GT S makes every journey feel like the start of a precious minibreak, such is the sense of occasion, comfort and potential the car exudes.

Hybridisation has enabled Bentley to retain its heart and soul, amplifying and extending the power, sound and refinement of its cars. The Continental GT has stayed remarkably true to itself over many generations and technological evolutions. Can the company translate these qualities into the upcoming Torcal EV, now only weeks away from reveal?

Bentley Continental GT S, from £212,500, BentleyMotors.com, @BentleyMotors

The perennial problem of the urban space premium is given another solution via this new house from OGA. The Cottage Annexe is an infill project that makes canny use of a tough site in North London's Stroud Green Conservation Area. Bracketed by grand Victorian terraced houses, the site was previously occupied by a modest two-storey cottage and a scattering of one-storey outbuildings, considered all but undevelopable due to its location and scale.

Enter OGA, an architecture and interior design firm founded by Oliver Grimshaw. Based in Berlin, the studio works in the UK and on the continent, combining new build with renovations that span all periods of architectural history.

In Finsbury Park, the challenges were obvious. ‘The site had defeated previous attempts at development - a land-locked urban fragment with a contentious planning history and little obvious potential,’ the architects say, ‘The plot sat squeezed between established residential terraces, its awkward geometry and sensitive heritage context making it one of the more challenging infill sites in the area.’

OGA’s solution was to incorporate the bulk of the site into the built envelope, so the refurbished two-storey structure sits alongside a flowing, single storey living space interspersed with two new courtyards. In this way, the Victorian streetscape is barely impacted, whilst carefully interweaving the new structure along the boundary of existing back gardens.

From the street, the existing cottage now appears to be flanked by a robustly rebuilt garden wall; this is the new annexe, a single storey structure with a generous vestibule linked the old and the new alongside an open plan kitchen, dining and sitting area – here you’ll find the signature circular window looking back to the main courtyard. The new living space is flanked by courtyards north and south, with a guest bedroom/study tucked away behind the new boundary wall.

Privacy and space are the key objectives, with materials mirroring existing structures and helping conceal the mass and scope of the building within. The courtyards bring light into the south-facing site without encroaching or overlooking the surrounding houses. The refurbished cottage now contains a bedroom, bathroom and snug area on the ground floor and the primary suite upstairs.

As well as zinc clad walls, OGA have used London stock brick for its warmth, variety and harmony with its surroundings. The courtyards are minimal, with traditional cobblestones, moss and Japanese Acer to create a minimalist outdoor sanctuary. Inside, bespoke cabinetry, subtly changing levels and exposed ceiling beams create a mid-century feel in line with the client’s tastes.

‘For all its privacy, the house never feels closed off - light moves through it freely, and the gardens feel ever-present, a quality made all the more remarkable given the constraints of the site,’ say the architects. The new structure only serves to enhance the neighbourhood but also create a true private sanctuary that doesn’t impose on its surroundings.

OGArch.co.uk,

It’s been a characteristically busy few months for Nothing, with the launch of Phone (4a) and (4a) Pro, which were swiftly followed by the new Phone (4b). In terms of audio, the company has also seen unleashed the Ear (3a) series and the CMF Clip Pro.

All of this product has been overseen by Nothing’s London-based design team. Headed up by Nothing’s Global Design Director, Adam Bates, alongside a team that includes Lucy Birley, Associate Principal Design for Colour, Material and Finish (CMF, the industry term that gave its name to Nothing’s value line of tech) and Lead industrial designer Frank Lin.

Wallpaper* recently sat down with Birley and Lin at Nothing’s Kings Cross HQ to discuss the company’s current design strategy, and the influences, pressures and innovations that shape Nothing’s design language. Nothing’s studio often plays open house for launches and events.

Tucked away down a dead-end alley above the area’s thicket of rail lines, the non-descript building conceals a plethora of design and prototyping equipment, as well as a treasure trove of influential electronics from past and present.

One thing that stands out in recent launches is Nothing’s fresh approach to colour. This is Birley's purview. ‘My work is to expand the product palette,’ she says, ‘we’ve spent 18 months working on a more expressive palette that’s also softer and friendlier.’ It was only four years ago that Nothing arrived with a hard-edged, almost Cyberpunk styling approach, setting out its stall in a landscape of identikit Android phones.

‘It’s my job to think what the appropriate amount of colour is,’ Birley explains, and certainly the popping pink of the Ear (3a), which joins the yellow introduced in its predecessor, the Ear (a) earbuds, to start up a rainbow of potential.

These polychromatic stabs are not happening in a vacuum – they are carefully planned. ‘As designers, we want to undersell and over-deliver,’ says Frank Lin, ‘it’s so important to have a zoomed-out approach to colour, geometry and materiality.’

Colour therefore has to be chosen both for its harmonious presence in the product line-up, but also for its ability to be consistent in physical and digital form. ‘Most people experience a product for the first time digitally,’ Birley points out.

Nothing has always been about the details. The much-imitated transparent qualities of the early devices – prominent elements of which remain in the current line-up – were about ‘showing the level of care that we put into the product,’ says Lin, ‘there’s a saying in the studio about details – ‘God can see it’,’ he adds. The studio will 3D print over-scaled products to explore every nook and cranny of the design.

According to Lin, transparency ‘brings a level of rawness – you can directly see into a device, but you can also use it as a level of storytelling.’ He admits there’s a balance between honesty and abstraction in all Nothing’s products – those transparent backs don’t actually lay bare the inner workings of the phone but approximate them in a stylised way.

Once prototypes have been completed, there’s a period of reckoning. ‘We always sit with stuff for a long time in the team,’ says Lin, ‘everyone’s opinion is valid.’ Even a product as apparently simple as a pair of earbuds might go through 50 to 100 prototypes, which can then be laid out on tables for appraisal, sometimes alongside some of the sources of colour inspiration – a lipstick, a deck of cards.

Birley admits to being quite ‘magpie-like’ when it comes to seeing a colour in the wild and seizing it for future inspiration – ‘like a Prada mascara in Selfridges’. A huge library of colour samples has built up as a result. In practical terms, how a colour is applied is almost as important as the shade itself.

‘Surface finishes affects the perception of colour profoundly,’ she notes, as does lighting, materials and forms, not to mention different colour combinations. ‘People are often drawn to colours without realising it,’ she notes, explaining how the initial introduction of pink ‘caused some consternation’ in the company.

Tonal shifts are subtle yet distinct – the pink comes from taking Nothing’s established red and then turning down the saturation. The yellow used on Ear (a) versus Ear (3a) is different too, fresher and slightly less vibrant – the same new yellow finds its way onto the ear pads of the Headphone (a) as the original yellow made them look too much like ear defenders.

Then there’s the complexity of bringing colour to a tightly packaged, highly technical device. Are transparent parts painted? How can light leaks be mitigated? What happens with things like glue bubbles, ventilation, heat transfer, etc? Consistency between sprayed prototypes, 3D printed components and manufacturing prototypes must all be considered.

‘You can definitely overwhelm the consumer with choice,’ Birley concedes, before adding that ‘I used to work in fashion and I’m chronically online’ to justify how her immersion in the world of colour serves as a filter for the brand.

Past Nothing products have nodded towards the product design of the 70s and 80s, but with this new wave of colour there’s an acknowledgment of the more vibrant 90s and Noughties. Lin cites the colour work of movements as disparate as Memphis and the Bauhaus, as well as the optimism of the lime green era of Apple and its imitators.

‘Nothing stands for expression and going against the grain,’ Birley says, ‘consumers want to see a range of colours but might not always commit to it.’ Nevertheless, colour creates a bond, not just with the Nothing brand but with the products themselves, encouraging retention and longevity. ‘What do you want from your consumer technology?’, she asks rhetorically, ‘we’re lucky to work for a brand that is not particularly concerned with following trends.’

Hence the way last year’s Headphone (1) brought back physical controls instead of haptic, touch-sensitive ones. ‘Touch is great, but what is the context?’, Lin asks, ‘tactility is essential. Ultimately, freedom is what we love and what we want. We just hope the rest of the world agrees.’

Shop Nothing’s newest products

The Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2026 welcomes Hoyer Arkitektur, a young Danish practice joining our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Hoyer Arkitektur

Danish architect Thomas Høyer founded his namesake studio in 2022. With a headquarters in Ebeltoft on the Jutland peninsula, Høyer Arkitektur works on a variety of projects that explore architecture’s relationship with nature. ‘In an age marked by accelerating pace and digital overstimulation, the studio sees it as a central responsibility to restore our connection to the physical world - not as an act of protest, but of care; not out of nostalgia, but out of necessity,’ Høyer explains.

The architect’s philosophy revolves around feeling and slowing down, as he argues that silence, reflection and emotion can play an important role in daily life and should therefore be seriously considered in design - just as importantly as function tends to be. It is this detail and admiration for the everyday that sets his emerging practice apart.

Høyer explains: ‘We pursue a restrained beauty rather than the spectacular - stripping away the unnecessary to let light, tactility, craftsmanship, and material honesty carry the architecture. We treat the building site as a place of responsible dialogue with nature, and we see our practice not as a universal formula but as a language of relationships between people, materials, and landscapes — one we believe can grow in significance, not just in scale.’

What: Ebeltoft

The practice’s Ebeltoft project is a key representative of its overall approach, exemplifying how gentle architectural construction and a preference for organic materials can offer a result that is friendly to its natural surroundings. ‘Our biggest influence is the encounter between body and surroundings — the conviction that understanding arises not through thought and logic alone, but through lived, sensory experience of place,’ Høyer says, and this is evident in his design of this modest timber house.

Placed gently on a high plateau formed of ancient glacial meltwater valleys and hills during the last ice age, Ebeltoft is defined by its prominent roof with its deep overhangs. Created using a modular building system and organised internally as a series of communal areas, interconnected and without corridors, the house features a central atrium that connects users with the tree canopy and sky above. Meanwhile, a colonnade of timber columns wraps around it, forming a terrace across the entire house, making this residential project at once introverted and extroverted, adapting easily to its residents' needs.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

hoyerarkitektur.com

The Wallpaper* Architects Directory 2026 includes Various Associates, a young Chinese practice that now joins our annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Various Associates

From designing a skatepark in Qinhuangdao, to a beach club in Sanya, to fashion boutiques in Shanghai, and an Adidas flagship in Seoul – the work of Various Associates is indeed varied, spanning hotels, retail, residential, workspaces, galleries and urban spaces. The Shenzhen-based studio was co-founded by Qianyi Lin and Dongzi Yang in 2017 with a focus on cross-disciplinary and research-led design; the pair studied interiors and architecture, respectively, at the Royal College of Art in London.

This approach is driven by the duo’s ambition to activate original spatial experiences that are both holistic and transcending. In their work, the layers of a space – from branding, to product, to materiality and architecture – each commit to a guiding concept without hierarchy, resulting in an immersive vision. It’s a philosophy they describe as: ‘Working in the future for the present.’

To achieve this, the team has expanded beyond architects to include material engineers, artists, graphic and experience designers. This collaboration across disciplines elevates Various Associates into a ‘platform’ where ideas are central and conventions are always challenged. The mode of open-thinking and experimentation results in spaces where architecture, art and technology are blended and experiential potential is endless.

What: Gong's House

This curious house in the ancient village of Yongjia is built around the distinct social dynamics of a family reunion. Designed for the families of six siblings (30 people and counting), its challenge was to consolidate cross-generational needs and a rural-urban divide of lifestyles. To ensure separate activities can always be shared, spacious rooms are linked and layered with open connections. Games of mahjong between elderly Gong family members unfold alongside children’s playtime, supervised with ease by tea-sipping parents.

Ambient natural light and countryside views flow in through the abstract composition of windows that pepper the facade, echoing the ‘staggered orderliness’ of the vernacular houses of Jiangnan. Seeking to resolve the spirit of local rural construction and the efficiency of industrial urban methods, the architects developed a plant fibre brick that combines the intelligence of both, as well as being highly insulating and breathable, ideal for mitigating moisture during the rainy season.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

various-associates.com

Matthieu Blazy’s A/W 2026 show for Chanel drew on the natural world’s most dramatic story of transformation – that of the caterpillar and the butterfly. ‘Chanel is a paradox. Chanel is function, Chanel is fiction. Chanel is sensible, Chanel is seductive. Chanel is day, Chanel is night. It represents the freedom to choose between the caterpillar and the butterfly whenever you want,’ he said. ‘I wish to create a canvas for women to be unapologetically who they are and who they want to be.’

Indeed, the collection itself, which at the time we called a ‘fashion pick-and-mix’, moved between restraint and abandon, like its shimmering final act, where models emerged from the metaphorical chrysalis with metallic or mermaid-hued hair to the sounds of Lady Gaga’s Just Dance. It seemed to encapsulate the mood of the A/W 2026 season, one which mined fashion’s transformative power – from Prada, where models removed a layer each time they left the catwalk to reveal a whole new look, to the theatrical flair of Givenchy, Dior and Valentino. Or, indeed, the sultry glamour of Anthony Vaccarello’s Saint Laurent, where a reimagined version of Yves Saint Laurent’s ‘Le Smoking’ tuxedo seemed to have the power to change its wearer into someone else entirely.

It was in this spirit that photographers Antoine & Charlie and Wallpaper* fashion and creative director Jason Hughes approached our A/W 2026 September Style Issue cover shoot, which sees Australian model Aylah Peterson try on a series of personae in the A/W 2026 season’s most transformative looks. ‘We were really thinking about clothing’s power to forge a new identity; how a garment can entirely change the way that you feel, and act,’ says Hughes. ‘It required the incredible Aylah to be a real shape-shifter on set as she became a series of different versions of herself, with the help of our hair and make-up artists, Chris Sweeney and Megumi Matsuno.’

‘Another theme of the shoot was the idea of looking, or being looked at – and revelling in that feeling,’ he continues. ‘We shot the story at Landing Forty Two in the City of London, an event space on the 42nd floor of Leadenhall Building, here a stand-in for a corporate office block. Some of the images were treated to appear like Aylah was being caught on CCTV, while in others, she’s picked up the camera herself.

‘The clothing was chosen to be high impact throughout – silhouettes are dramatic, while a feeling of sensuality comes through in the textures, which include silk, lace and shearling.’

See more from the shoot below.

A version of this article appears in the September 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Model: Aylah at Premier Model Management. Casting: Suun Consulting. Hair: Chris Sweeney at One Represents using Sisley. Make-up: Megumi Matsuno at Of Substance using Chanel Summer’s Calling and No.1 de Chanel Body Serum-In-Mist. Manicure: Ella Vivii at The Only Agency. Digi tech: Olivia Estebanez. Photography assistants: Ugo Reyre, Tom Porter. Fashion assistants: Nathan Fox, Bonnie Bowley. Set assistant: Archie Thomson Production assistants: Danielle Quigley, Max Mazower. Retouching: SparkPost Studio

Film credits. Directors: Antoine & Charlie. Fashion: Jason Hughes. Director of Photography: Guillaume Périmony. Editor: Dmitry Khmelnitsky. Colour grade: Chrisrémy Berrefjord at TMLS.

Our fashion story was shot at Landing Forty Two in the City of London. Managed by event property firm Spaces & Stories, it sits within the RSHP-designed Leadenhall Building (affectionately known as The Cheesegrater), and exemplifies the quality and design flair found in Spaces & Stories’ curated collection of extraordinary venues, spacesstories.com.

In a new Wallpaper* summer series, architect Carlo Ratti explores Italy through the ordinary objects that define daily life. Meet the Autogrill Bridge, Italy’s ubiquitous motorway restaurant chain

Carlo Ratti on the Autogrill bridge

Here we are, in the middle of Italy's great summer exodus. Today we are driving along the ribbon of asphalt that links Milan to Naples, the Autostrada del Sole, “Highway of the Sun”. Through the shimmering afternoon heat, a vision appears ahead. What could it be? A truck that has strayed across the median? An oversized billboard? A giant frog about to leap, after plunging us into a Lilliputian world?

We accelerate, and a few hundred metres on, the mystery is solved… It is all three things at once: the Autogrill bridge (Autogrill is Italy’s ubiquitous motorway restaurant chain, so dominant that its brand name has become the generic word for a rest stop).

It straddles both carriageways with a shortcut that would be forbidden anywhere else on the motorway network. It is a branded landmark, complete with the inevitable Autogrill sign. And with its exposed structure, it resembles a nimble creature frozen in the instant before a jump.

Few people know that this innovative architectural type attracted some of post-war Italy's greatest architects and engineers, from Angelo Bianchetti to Pier Luigi Nervi.

In the 1960s, the motorway was one of the great stages on which modern Italy performed, and the bridge Autogrill became its suspended gallery. It connected not only the two sides of the road, but two Italies as well: north and south, outbound and homebound, families on the move during the summer migrations. At the time, Italy looked in awe at America's highways, yet instead of simply copying their model, it created something distinctly Italian: elegant, urban, and entirely its own.

One of Bianchetti's original drawings depicts the Montepulciano bridge Autogrill, now sadly demolished. Beneath a great asymmetrical T-shaped Corten-steel beam hangs the glazed bridge itself, visually lightened at one end by a dramatic cantilevered staircase. The carriageway below is so smooth it mirrors the sky. Along it glide improbable automobiles whose silhouettes recall Carlo Mollino's Bisiluro or Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion.

The real surprise, though, awaits upstairs. There, in the dining area, a sort of Newtonian inversion takes place. Looking through the windows that plunge directly over the traffic below, the building seems to rocket backwards at extraordinary speed while the cars remain perfectly still beneath it. 'It is impossible to step twice into the same river of sheet metal,' Heraclitus might have declared.

Even more impossible today, since the lack of long-term vision for Italy's motorways has led to the demolition of many of these remarkable structures. The iconic Montepulciano bridge Autogrill, mentioned earlier, was torn down in 2021. The one at Fiano Romano, just outside Rome, has stood closed for years and now risks the same fate. Many others simply deserve careful restoration to recover their original elegance.

Which is precisely why they deserve to be rediscovered. They could once again become what they once were: the manifesto of an optimistic country, confident enough to look to the future with lightness and imagination - and capable of creating elegance where one would least expect it, even above a ribbon of asphalt.

About 'Objectify' – a summer series from Italy by Carlo Ratti

Italy’s design canon has been told many times. The Bialetti moka pot, the Vespa, the Fiat 500, the Arco floor lamp: you know the list, and so does every airport bookshop and first-year design student. This column will discuss, poke, investigate, prod, ridicule and beatify the less glamorous Italian objects. They are the ones you ought to know, so that when you visit Italy, or spot apparitions of it on a friend’s social media, you can smugly point out: ‘Did you know the mosquito coil is a masterpiece of Italian design? The condom? The motorway toll transponder?’ Objects so ordinary that Italians walk past them, or handle them every day, without registering that someone, with a mellifluous surname, designed them.

Proust wrote a seven-volume novel because a small cake dipped in tea, the madeleine, unlocked an involuntary flood of memory. For followers of the Italian version of this column, published weekly in Il Sole 24 Ore, the nation’s favourite Sunday read, perhaps these objects will have a similar effect. For you, anglophone readers peering at this somewhere between Rummidge and Euforia, they offer something else: beach conversation topics, an eye trained on unexpected places, and perhaps a few new madeleines for when you visit the peninsula yourself. After all, objects are never just objects. As the great Milanese designer Achille Castiglioni of Arco-floor-lamp fame once declared: ‘objects should keep us company’. Especially during this scorching summer.

carlorattiassociati.com

It will not have escaped your notice that ‘proper’ cameras are back, whether they’re decade-old point-and-shoot devices enjoying fresh popularity (and boosted prices), simple, screen-less digital snappers designed to focus the mind on the moment, or high-end semi-pro models designed to lure people away from their smartphone and back to more considered ways of image making.

Then there’s this, which sits somewhere in between. Sony’s RX10 range originally debuted back in 2013 as the Cyber-shot DSC-RX10, when the name ‘cyber-shot’ was still considered an essential and intriguing gateway into the world of digital photography (the name dates back to the 1996 DSC-F1). This is the fifth iteration of a camera that only reached its fourth generation in 2017. Sony has clearly been sitting on the model whilst watching the cultural shift in camera ownership and wondering when to step in and improve it.

The RX10’s secret weapon has always been its Zeiss zoom lens. Since the RX10 III, the camera has come equipped with a 24-600mm equivalent stabilized zoom, a massive piece of kit that lunges out of the camera body and brings the far distance into your viewfinder. The V is no different, with improved autofocus and burst modes.

Nine years of processor evolution has also upped the V’s speed and ability to handle large files, recognise and track subjects in line with Sony’s flagship Alpha cameras, as well as a high-res digital viewfinder and a snappier touch screen rear interface. Everything is better, in fact, from the longer battery life to the ability to shoot 4K/120 video and much, much more.

The Sony RX10 V is by no means a pocketable travel camera, although its sheer flexibility could conceivably cut down on packing if you’re normally taking two or three separate lenses. All in all, it offers a credible alternative to a digital SLR, capable of everything from serious portraiture, pro sports and wildlife work, to multi-purpose vlogging and simple point-and-shoot functionality.

Sony RX10 V, £2,199, Sony.co.uk, @Sony.UnitedKingdom

There is a reason serious design fairs tend to avoid the word ‘community’ – it usually signals the absence of one. Jia Curated, the Bali-based annual gathering founded in 2022 by Budiman Ong, Rudi Winata and Yang Yang Hartono, is an exception. Built around the Indonesian principle of gotong royong – communal effort, the kind that once brought villages together at harvest – it has quietly become one of the region's most anticipated creative appointments. The 2026 edition relocates to Pengembak Beach in Sanur, where 15,000 square metres of coastline threaded with mangroves and pine trees frames this year's theme, Nature Weave.

Explore Jia Curated's 'Architecture in Scale' show

Among its returning programmes, 'Architecture in Scale' stands out. A maquette showcase curated by Charmaine Chan, Design Editor, Culture at the South China Morning Post, the exhibition gathers 25 models from practices across Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan – including Kengo Kuma + Associates, andramatin, Elora Hardy's IBUKU Studio and Cheng Tsung Feng – each selected on a single curatorial diktat: that biophilia is load-bearing, not decorative.

Chan’s personal pick for the show's defining work is revealing. Elok House, completed in Singapore in 2007 by Chang Architects, crams a three-dimensional landscape into a narrow terrace plot just off Orchard Road, with light wells running down both flanks, a retaining wall that doubles as a waterfall and trees growing through apertures in the floor.

‘A squirrel once wandered in carrying a mango seed, which eventually took root in a wall and grew a sapling,’ Chan says. A model may struggle to capture that particular detail, but its spatial logic, she argues, shows you exactly how that could happen.

‘You can't really see a building when you're standing inside or beside it,’ she says. ‘A model cannot lie in the same way. If a building needs to breathe through a certain void, or a roof needs to shed water towards a specific point, the model must show how.’ At a scale small enough to see the whole system at once, a building's relationship with its site becomes instantly, completely readable.

For a fair committed to positioning Indonesian and regional design beyond the anonymity of craftsmanship into something more fully its own, Architecture in Scale makes its argument without rhetoric, using twenty-five maquettes, each a quiet proof of concept.

'Jia CURATED 2026' runs 13–17 August at Pengembak Beach, Sanur, Bali

jiacurated.com