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

Step inside Puerto Escondido home Casa Copycha

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

anonimousmx.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

lacma.org

In a Wallpaper* summer series, architect Carlo Ratti explores Italy through the ordinary objects that define daily life. As autumn kicks in, he waves goodbye to the sunny season - for now

It was my first time writing a summer column. Fourteen Sundays, fourteen Italian objects, from the condom to the condominium. Each week, we took something ordinary, explored its genesis, and tried to figure out what it might contain as a general lesson about design and the way we live. All fourteen pieces are collected below. As summer now draws to an end, I wanted to share a few final thoughts.

Design is a great way to start a conversation. I followed the reposting of the pieces online and the vast number of comments they generated. They taught me that an object goes on living in the hands of those who use it and argue with it, and that we can learn from that argument. As in natural evolution, these feedback loops can improve design itself – and perhaps also us as designers.

Also, in the middle of the summer, I received a WhatsApp message out of the blue from a glitterati friend. 'Why are you writing?' he started, and then: 'What are you trying to achieve?' It made me reflect on the importance of writing in the world of design. After all, Le Corbusier left some 75 buildings and close to 50 books (it is not obvious to me which caused more damage…). After some thought, I came up with five answers.

One. I was born sufficiently north in Italy that I guess I could not escape the sirens of France - and especially the concept of the intellectuel engagé: the belief that intellectual work should have a social return, that ideas should circulate beyond academic or professional circles.

Two. But there is something more. As a student, I worked with Umberto Eco. One of his books that I particularly love is Opera aperta: the idea that, like nature, our ideas evolve through open-ended feedback loops and continuous transformation. I write about our projects not simply to explain them, but to start a conversation around them.

Three. And ideas, when made public, can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Through discussion, they can activate a coalition of interests around them. This has happened to me before: articles and interviews on urban issues have contributed to preserving or transforming buildings, places, and fragments of cities.

Four. Of course, there is also vanity. Having someone read your words is a small form of recognition, a caress from the crowd. But, like vanity itself, it can be productive: it forces us to reflect on what one could call our 'positioning.' What we are doing, why we are doing it, and ultimately who we are.

Five. Finally, perhaps this is about life itself. My great-aunt, Parisian by adoption and a poet by profession, used to say that only a few things really matter. Her question was: What did I do with my life? Answer: Un peu de conversation… That is what this summer has been. Thank you for the conversation.

'Objectify' - Carlo Ratti's 14 objects

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

isayweinfeld.com

rodrigooliveirapaisagismo.com.br

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

Tour the reimagined Fondation Beyeler campus in Basel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

fondationbeyeler.ch

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

Tour the new Geoffrey Bawa show at Vitra Design Museum

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

design-museum.de

This Swedish villa, on the country’s southern tip, is a soothing family home set within the coastal town of Höllviken, rich in vibrant Viking history. Designed by Johan Sundberg, architect and founder of his eponymous firm, the residence, titled Villa HDV, is a direct response to its context, boasting a hard-shell façade that, when peeled back, unveils a cosy core.

Step inside this Swedish villa with a cosy interior

The residence is defined by its inner courtyard, which houses a pool and is bordered by the living areas and a bedroom. However, the plot was deep and not especially large, which meant that finding enough room to create this sheltered space took careful planning.

Sundberg explains, ‘There was also the accumulated complexity of making the building work. It has many corners and a freeform upper floor, combining a timber frame with a concrete structure. A great deal of work went into the timber detailing of the roofs, eaves and pergolas, and into resolving the zinc details around the curved upper floor. It comes down to many small decisions and adjustments. This is a patient and sometimes tedious part of architecture, but I think it deserves attention: much of the quality of the finished house depends on work that you might never consciously notice.’

Using this as a foundation, the architect made sure that the residence was in constant dialogue with nature, while also balancing a sense of enclosure. The concept's core? A home as a secret retreat embraced by nature.

‘The plan has shifts in it that create more intimate places, and we worked with the gardens in the same way. I thought of the concrete exterior as a protective shell, almost like a tortoise, with a softer and more sensitive inside where the family spaces and gardens are,’ Sundberg tells Wallpaper*. ‘From early on, we also wanted the character to come from the materials themselves: concrete, natural stone and timber, with their different textures and the way they change over time.’

The interior of the residence feels like a relaxing exhale. Soft curves let the eye travel across the interior, inviting users to unwind with the residence's rhythm. Wooden walls and cabinetry envelop the kitchen, while a living room window – with a seating nook – frames the garden outside. The bedrooms’ soft geometries continue the building’s gentle aesthetic.

Sundberg notes that the client has already embraced bringing the outdoors in, integrating planting throughout, and the architect hopes that the building will one day be covered in vegetation.

‘There seems to be no limit to the feeling of home that can develop through that relationship. This has interested me since my first houses, but here the relationship with the garden is more developed, reaching into different spaces around the building,’ says Sundberg. ‘I’m particularly fond of the kitchen garden to the east, with its morning sun. Seeing the planting grow into the architecture, and the family continue that process, is perhaps the most satisfying part of the project.’

The overall feel of Villa HDV is one of relaxation, as Sundberg concludes: ‘The views, materials and movement between rooms should invite you to explore, while also giving you places where you simply want to sit and stay. For me, comfort and curiosity belong together in a house.’

johansundberg.com

It's an exciting time in London when a big player makes their debut – and the Park Hyatt Residences, sales of which launch today (23 September 2026), offer such a moment. The project, housed above the Park Hyatt Hotel, which opened in 2025 within a contemporary twin-high-rise development designed by KPF, includes 103 turnkey branded residences. This was a tantalising prospect when it was first announced, but now eager buyers can get the full experience by exploring the first series of show apartments, which throw open their doors to visitors this week.

Step inside the new Park Hyatt Residences show apartments

The first family of interiors comprises two residences composed by South African designer Christian Bense. Looking to craft homes that respond both to the prospective buyers' contemporary sensibilities and the location's amazing context (the property is set right by the River Thames in Nine Elms), the creative curated an immersive domestic experience conceived to soothe and intrigue.

The interiors on offer are situated high up on Level 26, allowing long views of the London skyline, as well as close-up aerials of the neighbourhood's highlights, such as Battersea Power Station, the US Embassy and the Thames' swirling waters. The available layouts come in two different scales – a three-bedroom and a one-bedroom residence – to provide options and ignite guests' imagination.

Featured products and art include a sisal rug by Peter Page; an etching by Juan Escudero; a bespoke wool and silk rug by Amy Kent; a vintage Danish oak cabinet from The Modern Warehouse; and a bespoke sculptural triangular entry table, co-created by Bense with Atelier 278.

Bense drew on midcentury references spanning the 1950s to the 1970s to create interiors that bring together modern style and lush comfort. It was important to create pockets of cosiness and not direct all views and seating set-ups towards the outdoors – the aim was for this interior to feel like a real home that is used not just for its vistas but also for its luxurious feel and, ultimately, daily life.

He says: 'Not designing for a particular client does provide a challenge when doing a show apartment, but I feel that if you try and cater to everyone as a solution, you risk catering to no one. So it is important that you still aim to provide a unique point of view, a voice and a personality when you design. One would hope that anyone can appreciate good design when they see it, regardless of whether the style is to their taste. Ensuring that you design with a personality in mind goes a long way to ensuring the design has soul.

'In these apartments, we wanted to evoke the sense of a well-travelled client, returning home. So we combined a worldly view on antiques and all-over style, but mixed that with the comforts and familiarity of home. [There are] soft fabrics, a personalised art collection, interesting antique finds, etc. Together, this creates not only a depth of character to the design, but a personality to the home which I feel could resonate with [most people].'

A development such as this will no doubt bring a new layer to its ever-evolving Vauxhall neighbourhood. The homes are brought to market by luxury property consultancy Knightcrest, backed by London developer and placemaker Valouran.

'What makes Park Hyatt London River Thames Residences distinctive is the combination of an exceptional sense of place with the level of personalised service that defines Park Hyatt. The panoramic Thames views and Christian Bense’s beautifully considered interiors are undoubtedly part of the appeal, but what really sets the branded residences apart is the ability to pair these elements with the ease and discretion of Park Hyatt hospitality,' says Henry Barrow, sales director at Knightcrest.

He continues: 'Residents have the rare opportunity to enjoy a private home in one of London’s most dynamic new neighbourhoods, while having the services and experiences of Park Hyatt woven seamlessly into everyday life – from dedicated staff and 24-hour concierge to preferential access to the hotel’s dining and its spa, pool and fitness facilities. For us, it is this combination of a highly individual home, an extraordinary London setting and genuinely personalised hospitality that makes the proposition so special.'

Indeed, apartment residents at Park Hyatt Residences will have access to the nearby hotel's wealth of amenities – such as its swimming pool and concierge services. More amenities include a Residents' Lounge within the building, on Level 19.

Meanwhile, Bense's creative interpretation of the residences' interiors will be just the first of several planned launches and special reveals to come. The developers are planning more show apartment interiors by a curated selection of designers to be spotlighted over the next six months. Watch this space.

riverthamesresidences.com

Buenos Aires modernism emerged in the mid-1930s to the early 1940s. It is a movement that grew in sync with a period of fast-paced, radical change in the South American city. From experiencing a golden age for tango, film and literature to the implementation of urban developments around car use that transformed it into a modern 20th-century metropolis, the Argentine capital quickly became one of the era's cultural powerhouses.

During this period, and inspired by the rise of modernism everywhere, architects began to reject the heavy ornamentation of European eclecticism and Beaux-Arts styles in favour of avant-garde design – and modernist architecture's clean lines and streamlined geometry.

A homegrown regional style began to develop, which combined elements of European rationalism, Bauhaus-inspired German aesthetics, and art deco. Reinforced concrete and industrial materials became popular during this period of rapid urban expansion when demand for construction soared. Early modernist exponents blended Le Corbusier's theories with their own approach and local idiosyncrasies to impressive effects. Buenos Aires modernism is a true gem of its genre as a result.

Explore Buenos Aires modernism

Buenos Aires architects worked on many private residences, but also experimented with collective living spaces that prioritised integration with their natural surroundings. Public and cultural spaces complete the mix of an era that led the way in innovative thinking. Here is a selection of projects that best represent this time.

Kavanagh by Luis Sanchez, Ernesto Lagos and Luis María De La Torre

When: 1934-36

A beacon of the golden era of Argentine prosperity and opulence, the building was commissioned by wealthy landowner and socialite Corina Kavanagh and was the tallest reinforced concrete building in South America on completion. Kitted out with all mod cons such as air conditioning and central heating, as well as impressive tiered garden terraces, it was designed with no expense spared. Kavanagh hired French designer Jean Michel Frank, who collaborated with local design firm Comte to custom-design several luxurious apartments as well as the main lobby. The result is considered one of his most emblematic works and is still 100 per cent preserved. Signature hallmarks include parchment-covered doors and walls, intricate straw marquetry and elegant minimal furniture.

Casa Bigatti-Forner by Alejo Martínez

When: 1937

The building was commissioned by Argentine artists Raquel Forner and her husband Alfredo Bigatti to house both their studios and residence under the same roof. The design comes with some interesting bespoke details. The couple's interconnecting studios over two levels allowed them to converse while working independently, with a double-height glass door that maximised both sunlight and functionality (Bigatti's monumental sculptures could thus easily move in and out of the house).

Ateliers para Artistas by Antonio Bonet, Abel Lopez Chas and Ricardo Vera Barros

When: 1938

Located on a bustling corner of Downtown, this building is a benchmark in Buenos Aires modernism. With its pleasing streamlined lines and curved facade with vertical electric parasols at the intersection, it was originally designed to accommodate four ground-floor commercial spaces, with the two floors above spanning seven ateliers and studios for artists and architects, each boasting double-height ceilings. Its characteristic industrial design includes glass bricks and a collective roof garden. The iconic butterfly chair (BKF) was first piloted in this project, which Bonet designed collaboratively with architects Kurchan and Hardoy as part of the Argentine Austral design group.

Edificio O'Higgins 2319 by Jorge Ferrari Hardoy and Juan Kurchan

When: 1941

In 1937, Hardoy and Kurchan did a year-long stint in Paris working as draftsmen with Le Corbusier in his Rue de Sèvres atelier. On their return, they worked on various projects, deeply influenced by the modernist master's tutelage. First came O'Higgins, built on a narrow plot of just 9.52m wide by 13.90m in length but maximised by its transformable design, allowing residents to reconfigure the layout of their apartments through moveable partitions and mobile cupboards. Innovative cooling systems include double brick walls, wooden window louvres, and cross-ventilation to temper the hot summers.

Eucaliptos / Edificio Virrey del Pino 2446 by Jorge Ferrari Hardoy and Juan Kurchan

When: 1941

This radical design incorporated two large pre-existing eucalyptus trees, promoting a dialogue between nature and architecture – a concept not tried before in Buenos Aires. Built at the rear of the plot and set back from the road, the building challenged the strict urban code of the time, which called for a uniform street facade. Sadly, the trees grew so tall that they prevented sunlight from reaching many of the units and eventually had to be cut down. All the apartments featured built-in storage, compact centralised waste chutes, modern refrigeration systems and shared communal areas such as a creche, library and in-house canteen to facilitate modern community living.

Casa en Calle La Pampa by Wladimiro Acosta

When: 1936-40

Set back from the street, this secluded private residence was the studio and personal residence of the Ukrainian-born, naturalised Argentine architect Wladimiro Acosta – designed and owned by himself. His groundbreaking Helios system, developed in 1932, is implemented to great effect here. The house incorporates a vertical slab that provides shade and protection from the blistering summer sun, while maximising sunlight in the winter months thanks to the house's positioning and openings. By scientifically adapting modern architecture to regional climates, Acosta shaped his design's geometry and orientation to work with nature. Inside, the layout is functional, featuring cross-ventilation, natural light and huge windows that look out over the verdant surroundings.

Automovil Club Argentino (ACA) - Central by Antonio Villar and associates

When: 1941-43

During what was a period of exponential growth in the automobile and petroleum industries and expansion of the city's road network, the ACA developed a prestigious and powerful reputation. The imposing, monumental style of its headquarters was meant to reflect this position, and it occupies an entire block in one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in the city to this day. Architect Antonio Vilar worked alongside a collaborative team of respected modernists, including Alejandro Bustillo and Jorge Bunge. The design fuses a symmetrical, marble-fronted rectangular prism that houses a museum and administrative and corporate areas, with a semi-cylindrical structure at the rear that includes a service station and parking.

Teatro Gran Rex by Alberto Prebisch and engineer Adolfo Moret

When: 1937

Built a year after Prebisch worked on the city's famous obelisk, this theatre's rationalist design employs the same modernist principles, defined by geometric lines, swathes of marble and minimal ornamentation; a conscious move away from the aesthetic of European palace-style theatres. Making the most of the widening of the newly inaugurated Corrientes Avenue, he created a large transparent glass facade to allow for a visual dialogue with the hustle and bustle of the street outside. Inside, the layout is functional, aided by the absence of obstructing columns; the impressive triple-height lobby and capacious auditorium seating over 3,200 people are reminiscent of New York's Radio City Music Hall.

Since its creation by architect and professor Lesley Lokko OBE in 2021, the African Futures Institute has been promoting a new model for education around teaching, research, and public events. Organised as a network of African changemakers, it mainly operates through partnerships and temporary spaces across Africa, as well as their flagship programme, Nomadic African Studio.

Explore the African Futures Institute headquarters

Now five years in, the institute has reimagined and transformed a former tile warehouse as its headquarters. Located in Osu, one of Accra’s most dynamic neighbourhoods, the new space will retain the character of the original warehouse while balancing environmental responsiveness and spatial flexibility. The construction was developed collaboratively by a team comprising Lokko, Patrick Gentilezza (Buro Ghana), Patti Anahory, Laurence Lord and Fred Swart, bringing together architectural direction, design development, construction expertise and fabrication.

Until now, the African Futures Institute (AFI) had mostly been defined by its itinerant character rather than as an organisation with a permanent home: this first institutional building lays a significant stone in the organisation’s history. Nothing too conventional, however, as the space has been conceived to embody AFI’s adaptative approach to architecture, with flexibility, openness, and experimentation at its heart. More than an architectural milestone, it is a piece of civic infrastructure, a platform where teaching, making, conversation, exhibition and performance could live under one roof.

‘We wanted a building that could hold many futures at once,’ says Lokko. ‘Not a monument to an institution, but a framework for activity – somewhere that can be a school in the morning, a studio in the afternoon and a public room at night. Architecture, for us, begins with the possibility of bringing people together.’

While providing a new physical home for AFI’s team and archives, the building will host educational programmes, lectures, exhibitions, film screenings, residencies, and public events in the Urban Room. A new space for collaboration, designed to weave itself into Accra’s culture and everyday life.

africanfuturesinstitute.com

Introducing the 2026 Oslo Architecture Triennale, Line Ramstad laments: ‘Too often nature comes last.' Her simple response as chief curator for the global event, which just opened its doors in the Norwegian capital, became its theme: ’What if nature came first?’ At Oslo’s Sofienberg church, which rises over the city’s diverse, lively Grünelokka neighbourhood, 32 international exhibitors have responded.

Dive into the 2026 Oslo Architecture Triennale

Since 1877, people climbing the small hill to the church have sought higher visions. The triennale now offers an updated one, which, as Ramstad outlines, is to ‘imagine our built environment on nature’s terms’. It couldn’t be more timely as we race towards climate tipping points. Buildings contribute almost 40 per cent of CO2 emissions, and the construction industry generates a third of all waste. Reuse rather than demolition, rethinking waste, natural materials and addressing wider effects on territory are architecture’s new front lines, and they all take centre stage in Oslo.

Filling the church’s nave, displays are mounted on wooden structures, built quickly and set to be dismantled for reuse just as fast. The first encounter is with a curious quilt-like band of square panels in red, tan and black hues. They come from the Upcycling Wool Ecology project of Harvard University’s Grinham Research Group, which addresses our annual two million tonnes of wool production, half of which is wasted.

From sheep farming to the making of keratin-rich construction panels from their wool, the project is explained by a fascinating but text-heavy presentation.

By contrast, no words accompany the acrylic paintings by artist Gitta Saetre, which vividly document the construction of Norway’s new Rv.555 Sotrasambandet highway.

Another artistic contribution, about territory, from Galena Sardemova and Paris Bezanis, shows three enchanting copper plates in mud-moulded pewter frames, etched with images of mud bathing in the Black Sea.

One of the many messages on advocacy group HouseEurope!’s single-sentence posters reminded us that ‘We (architects) are practising in a system that puts profit over people and planet’. Nevertheless, architects at the triennale present projects that take sustainability to radical levels, such as Danish architecture studio Pihlmann’s maximal reuse to transform Thoravej 29, a Copenhagen factory – ‘most of the buildings of the future are already standing’, they note.

Norway’s Architects Without Borders (AUG) show projects from across the planet in their ‘Building with What Exists’ display, complete with material samples, from biomaterials to reused oil pipes. Around the church exterior, waste reuse is demonstrated by projects such as Ask Holmen’s sculptural benches made from granite quarry offcuts.

Beside the church’s entrance, there is a small sauna house. This fresh wooden structure with colourful roofing surprisingly complements the soaring brick church and offers saunas to triennale visitors and locals. Inside, temperatures surpass 80°C, and the cold shower to follow is outside, shaded by trees. Open Sauna is run by sauna association Oslo Badstuforening, an associate of the triennale that has facilities around the city.

In Oslo’s polluted harbour waters beside one such facility, local practice Transborder Studio (which is also exhibiting its Ready Clay One proposal for a house built from the Oslo clay beneath it, with rammed-earth walls) has submerged a 9m x 9m wooden platform (a project titled Oslo Badebotaniske) to give biodiversity a new chance, and it’s already a thriving marine garden.

The triennale’s legacy will emerge as architecture takes the call to put nature first. That brings us to Paradigme, a handsome book edited by Nora Ulrikke Andersen and Ingrid Haga. Through the triennale, they issued an open call for projects from young Scandinavian architects. Thirty-six were selected, from the whimsical House for a Troll by Martin Hopland (trolls were big Norwegian folklore creatures long before the online variety) to Jens Hansen’s practical reuse of demolished concrete rubble, which retains compressive strength good for columns.

Ramstad says that ‘if the system is broken, fix it’. The triennale highlights the system’s problems and demonstrates solutions, but ultimately, the hope of building in balance with nature lies with young architects, like those that Paradigme spotlights.

oslotriennale.no, until 1 October 2026

Situated beyond the Art Gallery, above the Concert Hall, and framed by the sweeping curve of Frobisher Crescent, the Barbican’s semicircular Sculpture Court was conceived as a space where art and architecture could be experienced as part of everyday life. Over the years, the one-acre courtyard periodically opened to the public for seasonal installations and events, such as outdoor cinema screenings, but in more recent times, the brutalist architecture complex's deteriorating infrastructure and limited accessibility left it largely underused.

Reviving the Barbican’s Sculpture Court

Now, as part of the wider Barbican Renewal, a long-term conservation programme ensuring the restoration of the Centre’s most iconic spaces ahead of its 50^th anniversary, the brutalist courtyard is set to be revitalised as a fully accessible public space opening in 2030.

The City of London Corporation has approved the plans, with an initial £147k grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, the UK’s largest funder for heritage. The revival will be led by architects Allies and Morrison, working with engineers Buro Happold: proposed interventions include climate-resilient planting, improved lighting, upgraded infrastructure for events, accessible seating and paths, step-free access and clearer wayfinding. These changes will transform the Court into a welcoming space while safeguarding the heritage significance of its Grade II* listed landscape.

'The Sculpture Court is a much-loved part of the Barbican's remarkable heritage and one of London’s most distinctive Grade II* listed Brutalist landscapes,' said Stuart McLeod, Director of England, London & South at The National Lottery Heritage Fund. 'This project will not only safeguard its heritage for future generations but also establish a vibrant urban green space that will enrich the Barbican experience for visitors and the local community. We look forward to seeing the plans progress as the Barbican reimagines this important place for the next generation.'

While the Barbican is recognised globally as an architectural icon, collaboration with local communities is also central to the project. During a Co-Design Day, young people aged 16 to 25 were invited to contribute ideas for making the Sculpture Court more inclusive, exploring how the space could bring people together through culture and shared experience.

'Culture belongs to everyone, to our communities and to the next generation,' said Philippa Simpson, Chief Operating Officer at the Barbican Centre. 'These milestones represent further momentum in the Barbican Centre’s renaissance, securing the future of a cultural icon and global destination as we approach our 50th birthday, and making sure these special spaces continue to inspire people for generations to come.'

The Barbican will continue to welcome audiences while works take place, extending its programming beyond the Centre with a season of performances, exhibitions and events across London.

barbican.org.uk

If you follow the output of Blue Crow Media, the publisher of Brutalist Asia, there’s every chance that your bookshelves are starting to look suspiciously specialist. The London-based publishing house has carved a rock-solid niche in recent years as a chronicler of the global spread of brutalist architecture, selecting the very best bits of concrete and modernism for your aesthetic delectation.

Explore the delights of 'Brutalist Asia'

The latest tome to follow the trend is Brutalist Asia, put together by Bob Pang and Derek Lamberton and given a handsome design by regular collaborator Tuomi. Continuing the publisher’s current run of brutalist gazetteers (Paris, London and Berlin), the new book features 140 buildings across twenty-eight countries and over 300 pages.

Crucially, the book presents the origins and application of Asian Brutalism from a local point of view, rather than as a continuation of an imported style. The focus is on concrete architecture’s parallel evolution in response to local conditions and programmatic demands.

The book includes eight essays (by Christele Harrouk, Soroush Mohajery and Amirhosein Rad, Bhawna Dandona, Pinai Sirikiatikul, Caryn Paredes-Santillan, Bob Pang, Kyung Taek Lee and John Barr), all of which flesh out the regional context and role of the new architecture.

There are some Western pioneers here, naturally, including Paul Rudolph and the unavoidable Le Corbusier, but key local players are also featured front and centre. Architects like Balkrishna V. Doshi, Raj Rewal, Charles Correa, Kim Swoo Geun, and Leandro V. Locsin, as well as legions of little-known local practitioners, all bolster the evolution and impact of brutalist architecture across different cultures and political systems.

Environmental concerns, climatic challenges and concrete’s dynamic and shifting abilities are all given space. The result is a book that challenges preconceptions, highlights the overlooked and threatened and places Asian Brutalism in a new and more inclusive framework.

Sample spreads from 'Brutalist Asia'

Brutalist Asia, £45, Blue Crow Media, BlueCrowMedia.com

What could the future of our homes look like, in this ever-changing, ever-challenging world? This is the type of question this new small house was conceived to address. Titled Null, the structure sits in Jackson, California, on the West Coast's mainland. Designed by architect Hasfa Burt and her studio, hb+a Architects, the small but perfectly formed project is a prototype and a thought experiment towards achieving climate-resilient architecture – and it is also a comfortable, boutique, private home.

Step inside Null, a small house design for a sustainable future

The small house was designed to be the home of the manager of a larger piece of land in the area – a 9-acre site – where Null sits on a plot shared with another, existing, building. The architect and her team (which operates out of three bases - in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Castro Valley) worked with their client to craft a structure as part of Burt's Box Lab initiative, a 2018 action 'focused on resilience measures in a changing climate for vulnerable communities subject to more than one challenge,' she explains.

Beyond the design development of this residence as a real home, Burt was intrigued to explore the typology as a testbed for her sustainable architecture. 'The project is exploring residential design in a changing world as a response to man-made and natural elements. It isn't a cabin; instead, it shifts thinking about the future of single-family housing, following a just-enough philosophy in program, systems, materials and spaces. The site is located in a part of Northern California where median income is 70% lower than the rest of California,' she says.

'The area is also prone to wildfires and experiences significant temperature swings from summer to winter. It was important not to rely on any source of fossil fuels for any of the operations and to use the site in its existing character, welcoming the wildlife that frequents the reservoir and can be heard and seen running around.'

The building is made of structural steel, with carefully insulated walls and ceilings. Its drywall elements and exterior wood cladding have been upcycled, taken from the construction surplus of another ongoing project nearby. It was important to Burt to keep materials to a 'bare minimum', covering the scheme's needs but not 'drowning in excessive exterior and interior finishes as a design language.'

Meanwhile, the architect's low-carbon approach extends from the building's construction to its upkeep and operational needs, ensuring it functions seamlessly and safely while keeping things simple and focusing on what's required rather than adding unnecessary ornamentation.

Burt adds: '[What makes this project special is] exploring a paradigm shift in residential programming focused on the future of this project type using a systems-thinking approach. Everything for me starts with the program, and I find it quite exciting to take apart and reassemble a more efficient version of an existing problem.'

'The project utilised an existing flat pad and, in a machine-like approach, which I insist on as an honest expression, systems are left exposed to showcase the workings instead of hiding them. It is positive energy connected to onsite solar [power] and has been oriented to maximise the site elements. Rainwater is harvested in 2500-gallon cisterns, with excess running off to a reservoir; environmental strategies weren't an add-on or late-stage consideration but were integrated at ideation.'

This small house can now act as a prototype and an example, which can be replicated in different areas and terrains as needed.

hbaarchitects.com

Elevated above the banks of the Garonne River in Toulouse, a 1950s house by the architects Bernard Calley and Georges Alet could now be yours. Designed in 1953, the home, now listed for €1,450,000, is brimming with bold colours and modernist architecture curves and layers, which make it stand out in its sleepy suburban context.

Tour this French 1950s house for sale

Situated on stilts on a 615 sq m plot, the house stretches over three levels. It features two interlocking volumes. The first defines its brick façade, with a ship as its obvious inspiration. Two porthole windows add to the composition's maritime references, which continue inside, in the second floor's cabin doors, for example.

The second volume is crisp and white – a nod to the surrounding buildings of Toulouse, a city defined by its ‘O’-shaped layout. With its offset space-age roof, the structure displays influences of the International Style, as the movement pushed the avant-garde away from art deco and towards the familiar midcentury modernism found across France.

The building feels eclectic and intriguing. Across a gangplank-like walkway, the house opens into a spacious entrance that leads to a bright living area with a decorative fireplace. Some original details remain, including a fitted canary-yellow kitchen and an office that overlooks the Garonne River.

A grand marble staircase sits at the core of the house, taking visitors up to a library area and lounge. Also on this level are three bedrooms and a bathroom with a large dressing room.

Venturing away from the marble staircase, another – this time bright red and almost pop-art-inspired – one leads up to the remaining levels. Here, visitors will find a reading nook and two attic bedrooms with porthole openings and skylights.

A ground level that hosts an additional bedroom, a laundry room, and a double garage completes the residence. There is also a motorhome garage leading to a separate, private terrace.

It all comes together to form a striking 1950s house – a finely tuned example of French 20th-century architecture.

Fifties House by Bernard Calley and Georges Alet is exclusively listed for €1,450,000 by Architecture de Collection, a real estate agency specialising in the preservation and promotion of 20th and 21st century architecture. To find out more, visit architecturedecollection.fr.

In a Wallpaper* summer series, architect Carlo Ratti explores Italy through the ordinary objects that define daily life. Meet the Mutti tomato tin, a cooking classic in Italy and beyond

Carlo Ratti on the Mutti tomato tin

'La calle se llenó de tomates.' Or, 'The street filled with tomatoes.' Thus begins one of the Odes by the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. And so begins our own late-summer day, in the small town of Montechiarugolo – a community of 10,000 people some 20km from Parma, right in the heart of Italy’s Food Valley, the stretch of Emilia-Romagna behind your favourite Parmesan cheese, Parma ham and balsamic vinegar.

Here, the streets are indeed covered in red, as if Neruda’s poetry had become matter. We are at the headquarters of Mutti, a leading producer of premium tomato products. It is a place I know well, having worked on the company’s masterplan for several years.

In Montechiarugolo, summer itself is a concentrate. Everything has to happen within a few short weeks, during which the town becomes a magnet, drawing trucks loaded with red from across the region. They pour their tomatoes into vast water-filled tanks, where the transformation process begins: sorting, peeling, canning. What our grandmothers used to do in the countryside, multiplied to infinity by mechanical and human arms alike. And then, voilà: a gleaming red-and-gold tin.

The design of that tin is rather retro. The two gilded lions, the symbol of the company, set against an intense red background, guarding the gold medal that Mutti won at the International Industry and Agriculture Exhibition in Rome in 1911. The whole thing is embellished with a touch of white and graphics reminiscent of the mid-20th century. The abundance of gilding would probably not look out of place on one of the shelves of the White House, following the revamp promoted by its current occupant.

The tin, though, has something undeniably pop about it: Andy Warhol could have adopted it for an Italian variation of the Campbell’s Soup tin.

Then there is the tube. In 1951, when refrigerators were still a luxury, Ugo Mutti (1893–1980) had the ingenious idea of packaging tomato concentrate like toothpaste. He sealed it with a cap that doubled as a sewing thimble.

Mutti’s packaging, like other objects we have encountered this summer, tells us something more general. Think of Thorstein Veblen, the early-20th-century American sociologist who theorised the idea of conspicuous consumption. The things we surround ourselves with tell the story of who we are and what we value. So even a tin of tomatoes can become a statement. Design becomes a semiotic system, in which a container is also a sign.

Among these signs is summer itself. That tin will accompany us through the coming winter months. From next week, when this summer column will have closed its doors, and the annual 'sexual orgy of pulp and juices' – to borrow the Italian novelist Cesare Pavese’s definition – will be no more than a distant memory, the Mutti tin will keep summer alive. Summer in a can.

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

In Spain's Sotogrande enclave, where luxury villas abound, Villa Enso brings a subtly different proposition – a home with a design-led quality rooted in light, materiality and nature. The high-end property was designed by Cádiz-based Spanish studio ARK Architects and led by the practice's co-founder and creative director, Manuel Ruiz Moriche. Expansive spaces were designed to feel at one with the leafy outdoors in this pleasingly monolithic residence that feels at once solid and elevated.

The journey through the home was a key priority for the architects – as important as the material palette and volumetric composition. The spaces, indoor and outdoor, from living areas to courtyards, gardens, and terraces, were designed to seamlessly blend as movement flows from one space and function into the next. Open-plan areas and swathes of glazing ensure visual connections are ever-present, both internally and towards the green countryside beyond.

This is also where the power of natural light comes into crafting spaces and atmospheres. The architects explain: 'Natural light plays a central role in shaping the atmosphere of the house. Hidden courtyards introduce daylight and ventilation deep into the interior, creating changing reflections, shadows, and visual connections throughout the day. This constant interaction with light and vegetation gives each space a calm and dynamic character while reinforcing the connection with nature.'

The materials create a palette that nods to the country's natural resources and contemporary moods, crisp white plaster and Teruel Travertine marble (a sandblasted, open-pore finish that feels extra tactile and pleasing to the touch). The water element, which appears in a couple of ways, through swimming and reflecting pools throughout the property, adds a dynamism, reflecting the light and the surfaces around it.

The materials are often used continuously on floors, walls and ceilings. This gives the home its monolithic appearance and brings a seamless feel to its generous, 1,690.40 sq m interior.

ark-architects.com

A quiet icon of high-tech architecture, La Voile sits on a hillside site above Cap-Ferrat, one of the most desirable spots along France’s Mediterranean coast. Conveniently located between Monaco and Nice, without the sprawl and bustle of either, it’s also a landscape with a long history of avant-garde artistic and architectural associations. Just a short distance down the coast is Eileen Gray’s E-1027 villa, adjoining Le Corbusier’s Cabanon, and classic Belle Époque villas are interspersed with spectacular modernist outposts.

La Voile is one of the latter. Designed in the late 90s by Lord Norman Foster for his own use and constructed between 1999 and 2002, the new house began life as a modest 1950s structure that was expanded and upgraded on an ad-hoc basis as the peninsula grew in status and desirability.

Sited just a stone’s throw from the Four Seasons Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat, the plot is near the southernmost tip of the peninsula. It cascades down the hill to the rocky coastline, with unencumbered Mediterranean views.

Foster first became aware of the site in the 90s when he lived in the French village of Grasse. Having acquired the original house, Foster stripped it right back to its core, using the five-storey structure as a framework for a new construction of glass and steel that drinks in the sea views, whilst also extending the accommodation up, down and to the sides.

Strict planning rules prevented an all-new construction, so the project was a masterful exercise in renovation, all done by the book under the watchful eye of the exacting French planning authorities.

The main focal point of the house is the spectacular double-height living space, set behind a 7m-tall sloping wall of glass that in turn is shaded by giant steel brise-soleils. This glazed surface slides open to bring the outside in, with each pane weighing in at around 18 tonnes. The towering rear wall is adorned with a vast mudwork mural by the artist Richard Long, commissioned for the house and created in situ.

A living area on the lowest level is overlooked by a dining room on the mezzanine, flanked by staircases that lead to the upper levels, each with an internal balcony above the inner void. The house’s name, ‘the sail’, comes from the canvas sails held aloft by two large steel arches that rise up from the lowest level and rise up and over the upper floors to shade the house in the summer months.

Four bedrooms are housed in the lowermost level, while the swimming pool is at the uppermost level swimming pool, along with discrete parking, services and the main entrance. Opaque glass walls shield the property from the roadway, giving little indication that a seven-storey structure lies beyond.

After Lord and Lady Foster moved on a few years after completion, the house was sold to the late CEO of Marimekko, Kirsti Paakkanen, and the house is now being sold by her estate.

La Voile, Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, guide price €29.5m, Riviera.Savills.fr, @SavillsFrenchRiviera

The design story of this 310 sq m, duplex Medellín apartment began with an unusual existing condition: a vast void nearly six metres high, free of programme or spatial hierarchy. What might have been a limitation became the project’s conceptual core. For Danny Rozo - founding architect and creative director of OA+ - the real challenge was not filling the interior as such, but constructing meaningful architectural space within its emptiness.

Explore this Medellín apartment by OA+

The resulting design - titled Apartment SH - transforms this volume into a habitable experience by inserting a suspended second level: a large, wood-clad cube that houses the Medellín apartment's private areas and redefines the scale of the whole. This single gesture not only fits perfectly into the project's programme but also introduces a rich spatial sequence of contrasts, changing heights and transparencies.

Entry to the apartment is not upward but downward. The journey begins with a descent, a move that defies expectation and sets the tone for an unconventional architectural experience. Any suggestion of darkness or compression dissolves as a large door opens: light floods in immediately, and a generous vestibule gives way to a sculptural, curved metal staircase, painted white, which acts as the project’s first manifesto.

The first space to reveal itself is the open kitchen, conceived as a central object rather than a service area. From here, the eye moves uninterrupted towards the main living space, which quite literally floods the entire project with light. This is where the architecture asserts itself most powerfully: the six-metre-high void, the suspended timber-clad cube, the lattice that filters views, and a natural stone reflecting pool that introduces reflection, sound and an almost meditative dimension.

The project’s most striking element is undoubtedly the upper timber lattice, crafted in choibá wood. More than an enclosure, it functions as a permeable veil - a visual threshold that reveals without fully exposing, activating an almost scenographic reading of the space. 'It’s a screen that encapsulates the apartment’s private areas. It lets you see and not see. A private space that can be enjoyed without being closed off,' the architect says.

From the main living area - a tall, double-height space accompanied by the reflecting pool - the life of the apartment is perceived vertically. Bedrooms appear to float within the void, visually connected to the social areas below, reinforcing the idea of an open loft designed for a single occupant.

Natural wood, textured concrete, stone, stainless steel and glass exude permanence and tactility. They were selected not as a finish but as a sensory experience - for example, the warm wood balances out the rougher concrete surfaces. 'We were interested in honest materials - those that age, that can be felt, that hold value for what they are within a sensitive architecture,' Rozo notes.

This Medellín apartment does not propose a universal way of living, but a tailored, deeply personal one: transparent, coherent with its inhabitant's lifestyle, and free of unnecessary concessions. 'Spaces should reflect who you are, what drives you and what makes you happy,' the architect concludes.

In this sense, Apartment SH is not merely a residence, but a showcase of how architecture can support a way of life.

oamas.co

Designed by architect Alex Michaelis, this spectacular Cornwall beach house is on the market for the first time since completion. Originally designed as the architect’s own family retreat, Little Cottage is located above Praa Sands, a justifiably famed Cornish beach on the UK’s south coast.

Tour the Cornwall beach house now for sale

The house presents an unsullied view of the English Channel and the Atlantic beyond; it’s right there at the end of the garden, with the sandy beach itself just steps away. Arranged over two levels, with a separate self-contained bedroom shack tucked away behind the house, Little Cottage is not the ersatz rural dwelling implied by its name. Instead, 2,422 sq ft of accommodation is contained within a sculptural white box that owes more to Le Corbusian modernism and noughties minimalism than conventional seaside architecture.

The coastal façade is an exercise in asymmetric reductivist design. The ground floor is given over to a 50ft-long living room and kitchen, with central sliding glass doors that open it out onto the lawn. On the west side, the principal bedroom suite is tucked away behind a private sitting room, while the east wing houses the entrance, hallway, with the cylindrical stair tower leading off to the right, illuminated by a circular skylight.

Upstairs, there are three more en-suite bedrooms, all of which have views across the water. Curved walls create a sculptural upper level, with access to a balcony one end of the bedroom corridor. Detailing is minimal throughout, with white walls, floors and ceiling paired with frameless glazing to bring in as much light as possible. The material palette includes French-plastered walls and limestone, with Corian worktops in the kitchen, mosaic clad bathrooms and wide cedar floorboards throughout.

The ground floor also hosts a cloakroom and utility room, along with a wet room with direct outside access and special provision for drying and storing wetsuits. The stair leads up to a light-filled landing and corridor, while two of the three upstairs bedrooms occupied the curved ends of the first floor; all have free-standing baths while the bedrooms have Juliet balconies.

In addition to the separate Shack, which could also double up as a studio space, the property has a pair of sheds/surf stores and a number of parking spaces, as well as the rights to a mooring at nearby Porthleven Harbour. Michaelis, who founded Michaelis Boyd with Tim Boyd in 1996, has created a rare piece of uncompromising contemporary seaside architecture, a house that is as aesthetically rigorous as it is warm, inviting and functional.

Little Cottage is for sale through Lillicrap Chilcott for £2.5m, Tel: +44 1872 273473, LillicrapChillcot.com

Auroville is difficult to describe as a township. There are no obvious streets, few addresses, and for long stretches you navigate by beacons such as water towers, old banyan trees and directions from people you meet along the way. What you find, instead, is a collection of alternative buildings, communities and experiments spread through a forest.

Auroville and its secret appeal

I first came to Auroville in south-east India as a student, more than a decade ago, for a workshop at the Bamboo Centre. I remember the red, earthy pathways, the forest and the strange feeling that I had entered a place that was trying to operate by a different set of rules or, rather, making its own set of rules. That feeling has stayed with me.

What is Auroville?

The footprint of the settlement is quite small, but the density of ideas is huge. Most things seem to have a reason for being there. Earth construction, water recycling, bamboo structures and passive cooling have all been tested here, often at full scale and over many years. Some have become useful technologies. Others remain experiments. Auroville has always allowed both.

The numbers tell us that its population sits at around 3,500 people at most. It is located in the south of the Indian subcontinent, in the Villupuram district, straddling the states of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

A brief history of Auroville

The city was founded in 1968 by Mirra Alfassa, known as the Mother, a French-Indian spiritual leader and close collaborator of Sri Aurobindo, the Indian philosopher and freedom fighter who had a vision to have a new way of individual and collective life. French architect Roger Anger translated that idea into a master plan: a huge spiral with the Matrimandir at its centre and four zones spreading outwards. Much of the forest around it was planted by residents after the settlement began.

For most of Auroville's history, the tension was between the city Anger drew and the slower settlement that actually grew in the forest. That gap is now becoming harder to ignore. The argument over what Auroville should be has become very physical.

Tour Auroville's architecture in a day

Exploring Auroville's landscape of buildings and forest can be like entering a complex ecosystem. I would spend a day moving through it with that in mind.

Matrimandir

The first building to see is, inevitably, the Matrimandir. Its golden sphere rises above the trees, surrounded by 12 red sandstone petals. From a distance, it can look almost unreal. Up close, you see the individual discs of gold leaf and the sandstone holding the whole thing to the ground.

Inside, everything is much quieter: white marble, white carpet, four columns, a crystal globe and a single shaft of sunlight. There are no images, priests or elaborate rituals. The building is deliberately restrained. Designed by Roger Anger, construction began in 1971 and was completed in 2008, the year of his death.

Visitor Centre

The Auroville Visitors’ Centre is probably the easiest place to begin understanding the town. Built in 1998, it is where most visitors first arrive: there is an information desk, exhibition spaces, a video hall, café, bookshop, handicraft shops and an open-air theatre. It gets busy, but the building itself is worth slowing down for.

The centre was designed by Suhasini Ayer as a demonstration of Auroville's approach to construction. The Auroville Building Centre used the project to experiment with alternative building technologies, particularly Compressed Stabilised Earth Blocks, while making the most of natural light and cross-ventilation. The local climate, materials and building skills all shaped the design. Renewable energy was part of the brief from the beginning.

I like that it is not hidden away as a prototype or research building. It is a place that thousands of people pass through every day, so the experiment has to work as a real public building. In that sense, it is a good introduction to Auroville: the architecture is trying to do something, but it also has to get on with the business of receiving people.

The Townhall

The Town Hall is a better building to understand how Auroville actually functions. Completed in 2003, it brings administrative activities into a compact group of spaces connected by ramps, bridges and cantilevers. Reinforced concrete, brick and ferrocement give it a practical, slightly unfinished character. The whole complex sits within sight of the Matrimandir. This was part of Anger's idea: the people making decisions for Auroville should have its central building in view. The Town Hall was designed by Anupama Kundoo, who came to Auroville in 1990 and worked alongside Anger.

Nearby, the Multimedia Centre continues the same idea. Completed in 2005, it houses graphic services, an audio and video library and Cinema Paradiso. Between the centre and the nearby Centre for Urban Research, a series of deep steps leads down towards the City Centre Café. It is one of the few places in Auroville that feels like a conventional public square. The building also quietly does the practical work: roof water is collected, wastewater is treated and reused, and the concrete has been allowed to weather rather than being endlessly repaired to look new.

Solar Kitchen

The Solar Kitchen is where some of Auroville's biggest ideas become very ordinary. Completed in 1997, it is the communal dining hall, serving around a thousand meals a day. The Pour Tous distribution centre occupies the same complex, while the roof also has a café, guest service office and internet room. The building was also designed by Suhasini Ayer, who first came to Auroville in 1985 as an architecture student and stayed on.

One of the things worth checking out here is the roof. A 15m-wide spherical solar concentrator is placed above the building, made from prefabricated ferrocement segments and around 11,000 hand-cut mirror facets. The mirrors focus the sun onto a receiver, producing steam for the kitchen below. A diesel boiler helps with the morning cooking, before the solar system takes over once the sun is high enough.

The Crown

The Crown is the ring road at the centre of Auroville's original master plan. For decades it existed mostly as a line on a drawing. Today a lot of it is built. Along parts of it, mature trees have been cleared and replaced by lawns and ornamental planting. The road has become the most visible point of disagreement over Auroville's future.

For the Auroville Foundation, the Crown is the original master plan finally taking shape. For many residents, the problem is the way it happened: houses were demolished and trees felled without the consent of the Residents' Assembly, which they believe should have had a say. Both positions have been argued in court. Meanwhile, the road got built.

The Water Tower

The water tower between Prayatna and Vikas is one of my favourite landmarks in Auroville. Built in 1996, it rises 26m above the ground in a stabilised earth block. Four cylindrical columns support a 130,000-litre ferrocement tank, with another 200,000 litres stored underground. It is infrastructure, but it also works as civic architecture. In a place like Auroville – without conventional addresses, a building like this becomes a landmark. People use it to navigate. The tower was designed by Helmut Schmid, who came to Auroville from Stuttgart in 1979.

Savitri Bhavan

Savitri Bhavan is a centre for the study of Savitri, Sri Aurobindo's long epic poem. The building sits on an artificial plateau, with a pond in the central plaza collecting rainwater from the roofs. The curved wall connects its different volumes, while concrete fins shade the long façade from the western sun.

Inside is a gallery with around 600 paintings made by Huta under the Mother's guidance between 1961 and 1970. Completed in 2004, it was also designed by Helmut Schmid. In the same complex, there is also a rammed-earth wall made using 96 soil samples from 27 countries – for the 50th anniversary of Auroville in 2018.

The Peace Table

Next to Savitri Bhavan, in the Unity Pavilion, is a very different kind of object. The Peace Table consists of two slabs of black walnut made from a 300-year-old tree. They were created by George Nakashima as part of his Altars for Peace project. Nakashima first came to Pondicherry in 1936 as a project architect before returning to the US. His daughter Mira completed the second altar after his death, and the two pieces were brought together and rededicated in Auroville in 2014. There is very little around them. The timber does most of the talking.

The Tibetan Pavilion

The Tibetan Pavilion is one of the most distinctive projects in Auroville's international zone. Its plan follows the Kalachakra mandala, with a courtyard and a water feature carved from local granite. White walls rise into a red roof mass, with deeply recessed windows giving the building the feeling of a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas. At the same time, the construction is very much Auroville: an RCC frame, ferrocement roofing and stabilised earth blocks. It was designed by André Hababou and Satprem Maïni, with the Dalai Lama laying the foundation stone in 1993 and donating some seed money.

Udavi School

Udavi School is one of the quieter buildings adjacent to Edayanchavadi village. It was designed by Poppo Pingle, who was involved with Auroville from its early years and was one of the people who trained young architects through practical work rather than in a conventional office.

The school grows around shaded and open spaces and caters to the children from the local villages. The classrooms feel connected to the landscape, with simple materials and plenty of air moving through the building. It has the directness of many of the early Auroville projects: make what you need, use what is around you, and use the climate in the best way possible.

The Vérité Meditation Hall

The Vérité Meditation Hall is a circular room made from compressed earth blocks, with heavy piers supporting a ferrocement dome. A single opening in the roof brings a sharp beam of light onto the red oxide floor. Long, low windows keep the garden close to the interior. There is no air conditioning and very little fuss. It was designed by AK Raman in 1994.

The Integral Learning Centre at Vérité

This structure uses rammed-earth walls with an RCC frame. From outside, the concrete columns and suspended roof create a series of white boxes, floating above the heavier earth walls. The entrance is narrow but opens into a much larger courtyard, with a pond and granite acoustic instruments at its centre. David Nightingale and Ganesh Bala designed the building in 2006.

The Bamboo Centre

Bamboo is grown here, then cured, split, steamed and bent, and the structures are not demonstrations behind glass. They are a working campus, with apprentices from nearby Tamil villages working alongside architecture students and visiting designers. They organise constant workshops similar to the Auroville Earth Institute.

About eight minutes away on foot is Swaram, a sound experience and healing centre started by Aurelio, a sound artist and instrument maker. It is another side of Auroville's tendency to turn everyday activities such as listening, making, eating, learning into experiments in their own right.

Fired houses

Some of Auroville's most interesting experiments began with ideas that sounded slightly impossible. Ray Meeker spent years developing houses that could be fired like kilns. His idea was to build a house from raw mud brick, fill it with bricks and other ceramic products, and then fire the whole structure and bake the house. The building acts like the kiln, and the products inside help pay for the process. One of the early houses, Agni Jata, has four vaults around a central dome. At another house, Meeker angled a wall to absorb the expansion caused by firing, and decided he liked the way it looked.

The experiment eventually stopped because the energy required made it difficult to call the process sustainable. That seems important to remember. Auroville is full of successful experiments, but it is also full of things that were tried, questioned and abandoned. Meeker developed the technique with Deborah Smith through Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry, and around 20 buildings were eventually produced.

Dustudio’s courtyard

This is one of the spaces I like most in Auroville. It reminds me of a traditional Indian stepwell, with the levels gradually stepping down towards the centre. The rammed-earth walls, with their original colour of local red soil and impressions of moss in places, become a canvas for Dharmesh Jadeja’s Devanagari calligraphy, bringing together the many sides of his practice. Founded by Jadeja in 1992, Dustudio treats indigenous building techniques as contemporary processes. You can see that idea in the courtyard quite clearly – the materials are simple, but the space feels rich because of the way they are made, placed and lived with.

EcoService

EcoService is another place worth visiting. Situated in Kottakarai, it is probably the least photogenic stop and, in its own way, one of the most honest. Waste from homes, communities, guest houses, restaurants and other units is brought here for sorting. The system depends on residents separating their waste at source, which sounds simple until you stand on the sorting floor and open the bags. Things marked as plastic routinely contain metal, cloth and food.

There are also attempts to bring some of that waste back into the building process. Thermocol is shredded, mixed with cement and made into non-load-bearing partition blocks for buildings elsewhere in Auroville. The waste stream becomes part of the construction stream. This is the less glamorous side of Auroville's experiment – but an important one. It is also run by people and volunteers who have been figuring it out, sorting it and doing the work for decades.

Centerfield

Centerfield is a completely different kind of stop. I end up there at night almost every time I am in Auroville. It is a good place to sit and look at the stars. After a day spent looking at buildings, roads, infrastructure and arguments about the future of the city, I like the fact that there is nothing much to do there. You just sit, look up and let the forest take over.

The takeaway?

Auroville remains unfinished, and that is still its attraction. But the terms have shifted. For 50 years, the argument was about what the place should become, while much of the original plan existed only on paper. Now the ring road exists, mostly, and the argument is being played out on the ground. The forest, the water towers, the schools, the houses, the sorting sheds and the cafés still tell different versions of what this place could be. You are not touring a finished architectural idea. You are walking through one that is still being worked out. For some, the utopia is already lost. For others, it is yet to begin.

For more about Auroville, visit auroville.org/

Set in a cosy, friendly pocket of San Francisco, Precita House is a residence designed around light, explains its author, local architect Ryan Leidner. The home 'explores light as a material – at times expansive and open, at others softened through structure, threshold, and fabric,' he adds.

The project, created for a family of four, was designed to act as an urban retreat, a sheltering cocoon that remains in touch with the natural rhythm of time passing during the day, while balancing creature comforts with the sensibilities of a desert landscape – in the sense of being frugal with materials and smart with the points where the inside meets the outside.

Leidner's past experience – he's a deft hand at both urban and rural residential work – includes High Desert House, a modernist architecture-inspired Joshua Tree home conceived with similar principles in mind.

In the case of Precita House, the architect brings the same approach to a more urban environment, creating an internal journey within the existing home by completely redesigning its transition from the public-facing street elevation to the more private interior and the secluded-feeling garden at the rear.

The home's quiet, inward-facing presence sets the tone from the get-go. Meanwhile, the project's main communal and family areas are orientated towards the sleepy garden and its leafy planting, courtesy of Stephens Design Studio.

The architect's chosen material palette supports the house's organic minimalism throughout. Douglas Fir cladding floors, ceilings, cabinetry, and stair elements, meets Venetian plaster in a soft composition that invites the play of light.

Several elements across the plan serve as sculptural focal points: the deep green marble kitchen island; the geometric timber staircase; and the vertically slatted ceiling that brings beams of sunlight and moving shadows from the skylights above in.

'A muted palette and varied textures, informed by the clients’ affinity for desert environments, allow the landscape to function as an extension of daily living,' Leidner writes, explaining the project.

'Precita House brings together spatial clarity, material restraint, and moderated daylight to create a residence that balances privacy at the street with openness to the garden, shaping daily life through gradual transitions of light, space, and view.'

ryanleidner.com

Take a tour of Europe’s rich heritage of music and architecture courtesy of this new monograph from Thomas Aujero Small and Wallpaper* contributor Michael Webb. Subtitled ‘Opera Houses and Concert Halls of Europe, 1672–2022’, the duo’s new book from ORO Editions is both architour and musical history lesson, tracing the association between opera, aristocracy, and architecture over the centuries.

Discover the powerful relationship between music and architecture

In total, there are ninety featured halls, ranging from the gilded excesses of high Baroque (like the magnificent Markgräfliches Opernhaus in Bayreuth) to modern iterations of the opera house, from sculptural Brutalism through to Baroque’s contemporary equal, the ultra-high-modernism of projects like Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the Oslo Opera House by Snøhetta.

Webb brings his architectural knowledge to bear on the physical form of the concert hall, and how changing modes of performance, taste and technology have seen the form factor evolve. The role of the acoustician is also considered in detail, with interviews with the legendary Yasuhisa Toyota, exploring not just how the expression and projection of sound have shaped modern halls but also how classical structures have been subtly updated to keep track of the times.

Thomas Aujero Small is a music impresario and writer who contributes to ConcertoNet, one of the longest-running online classical music portals. Together, the duo travelled around Europe to undertake what sounds like very enjoyable research – visiting halls, attending concerts, etc. Nearly 200 images capture the scale, grandeur and richness of the venues.

The book is arranged chronologically, with a special focus on Europe’s so-called musical capitals - Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Prague and London. If nothing else, the monograph provides the enthusiast with the ultimate bucket list of performance venues, complete with helpful histories of artistic directors, orchestras, opera companies and festivals.

'Music and Architecture in Harmony: Opera Houses and Concert Halls of Europe, 1672–2022', Michael Webb and Thomas Aujero Small, ORO Editions, is released on October 19.

Announced today, the RIBA International Prize 2026 shortlist reveals just four buildings – one of which will be announced as the year's best. The diverse projects, spanning from Belgium to Bangladesh, each offer an exciting architectural proposition. Their common ground? 'Design improves daily life while responding to a changing climate,' RIBA's representatives explain.

Ranging from cultural space to urban transformation, there is certainly variety in the mix. From now till 15 October 2026, when the winner will be unveiled, the judges will visit, examine, debate and eventually decide which project merits the coveted top spot. The winner will be announced alongside the recipient of the RIBA International Emerging Architect award.

The RIBA International Prize 2026 shortlist

Neil Gillespie, chair of the RIBA Awards group, said: 'The RIBA International Prize shortlist represents the full range of what the prize seeks to recognise – buildings that are rigorously designed, deeply considered, and genuinely meaningful to the people and places they serve. Each project demonstrates an exceptional understanding of its context, showing how architecture can enrich everyday life while responding with imagination and purpose to the complex challenges shaping our built environment.'

It all comes together to mark an important moment for RIBA awards; 2026 marks the tenth birthday of the RIBA International Prize. Meanwhile, the RIBA Stirling Prize, also to be revealed at a dedicated ceremony in London come October, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, having been first awarded in 1996 (and indeed sharing its birthday with that of Wallpaper*).

BRAC University by WOHA, Dhaka, Bangladesh

A formidable reinvention story, this project transforms a former landfill site in Dhaka into a vertical, 13-storey campus serving 20,000 students and a variety of public spaces. Passive cooling strategies, natural cross-ventilation and extensive landscaping are just a few of its sustainability strategies, making this scheme an exemplar in how to bring life back into neglected urban space.

Green Field Factory of Karupannya Rangpur Limited by Nakshabid Architects, Rangpur, Bangladesh

What if a textile factory were treated not as industrial ground, but first and foremost as workplace, wellbeing hub and space for community? The result might look something like the Green Field Factory, a deceptively large, seven storey building that takes its cues from its country's vernacular and rural Bengali homesteads.

Royale Belge by Caruso St John Architects and Bovenbouw Architectuur with DDS+, Watermael-Boitsfort, Brussels, Belgium

Surrounded by leafy, south-east Belgian forests, Royal Belge brings a modernist landmark into the 21st century. The original structure, designed by Belgian architect René Stapels and Pierre Dufau in the 1960s as the headquarters of the insurance company, has been sensitively reused, protected and adapted, showing how 20th-century heritage can play an important role in today's life too.

Z33 by Francesca Torzo Architetto, Hasselt, Belgium

Hasselt’s historic Beguinage, a walled garden enclave of brick buildings that used to be an almshouse, has recently been brought into the 21st century. Now, with Torzo's new building at its heart, it also has a dedicated, fresh space for contemporary art, design and public gathering. Adaptive reuse is executed on another level here, as local materials meet traditional craftsmanship to impressive results.

riba.org

Frank Lloyd Wright was nothing if not prolific. The great American architect was both a workaholic and a natural self-publicist, pioneering the use of elaborate conceptual schemes to draw attention to his studio and his work. Over the course of a long, long career, Wright reputedly designed over 1,100 buildings, of which around 46 per cent were actually built. A substantial number of these were houses, ranging from hilltop mansions to World Heritage-listed sites of global importance, and more modest, out-of-the-way buildings.

This house in Michigan is one of the latter. For sale through Signature Sotheby’s International Realty, the Samuel Eppstein House dates back to 1953, when Wright was very much in the twilight of his career (he was 85 when the house was completed). Nevertheless, the house, in Kalamazoo County, is a finely realised example of his ‘Usonian’ vision for middle-class housing, often located in pre-planned housing developments and intended to be a more generous and creative response to the homogeneity of suburban design.

The Eppstein House is modest in scale, at 2,500 sq ft. Containing five bedrooms, four of which are little more than compact sleeping cells, the house saves its powder for the primary living space at one end of the linear plan. Set beneath a soaring monopitch roof above an array of glazing leading out onto a terrace, this room stands in stark counterpoint to the rest of the single-storey, low-slung structure.

In common with the majority of the Usonian houses, the Eppstein House is made from monumental concrete blocks, visible both outside and in. Largely modified – and certainly not extended – it survives as an expression of the original architectural vision.

The surrounding areas are also pretty special. The plot is located on the Galesburg Country Homes community, a 70-acre spread of land half way between Detroit and Chicago that gives each house a unique rural outlook. In fact, it’s one of four Wright-designed houses at ‘The Acres’ – the others include the Weisblat House, the Curtis Meyer House and the Eric & Pat Pratt House. All follow similar design principles, animated by the use of sculpted building blocks, bespoke joinery and linear floor plans.

Joining the community of Frank Lloyd Wright owners is not for the faint-hearted, such is the demand for information, rentals and photoshoots. If you have the enthusiasm and passion for one of the true masters of modern architecture, then it’s good to know there are still opportunities for ownership.

Samuel Eppstein Residence, 11090 Hawthorne Drive, Galesburg, Michigan, USA, $2.1M at Signature Sotheby’s International Realty, SothebysRealty.com, @SothebysRealty

A new Melbourne house draws on the country's brutalist traditions – an architectural history that produced works such as Ken Woolley’s Sirius Building, an apartment block in Sydney; the Fisher Library at the University of Sydney; and Robin Gibson's Queensland Art Gallery. While not strictly following the same school of thought, Hill House nods to the raw surfaces and crisp forms of brutalist architecture; while adding its own contemporary approach and warmth.

Step inside a Melbourne house full of brutalist character

The monolithic family home comprises brick and concrete, designed to accommodate three generations of one family. The project was spearheaded by architecture firm Taylor Knights, who reimagined the idea of suburban living and crafted a house that nestles into the ridgeline in Wheelers Hill.

The multigenerational home had to accommodate the client’s wish for a base to support personal life, professional activity, and evolving family needs. ‘Hill House began with the idea of creating a home for a lifetime; not simply for the clients as they are today, but one capable of evolving with three generations of their family over many years,’ co-founder Peter Knights tells Wallpaper*.

‘The brief was unusually broad: family life, work, entertaining, wellness centre, sports facilities including a soccer pitch, pickleball court, and moments of solitude all needed to coexist within a single home and garden. Rather than treating these as separate functions, we became interested in how architecture could bring them together while still allowing each person their own sense of retreat.’

Knights explains that the site became fundamental to this idea, prompting them to create a home stepped with the terrain rather than sitting upon it. He continues, ‘From this emerged the central atrium: a vertical garden and light-filled void around which the different parts of the house are organised. In many ways, the house became less about designing individual rooms and more about creating a framework for family life to unfold and change over time.’

This atrium was central to accommodating the expansive brief. From this space, visitors can head towards welllness toward wellness, entertaining, and extended family and friends; up and left toward communal life; or upward again or right toward the more private family and working spaces. ‘The architecture is large, but we never wanted the experience of it to feel overwhelming,’ he says.

Hill House was designed to offer two different experiences. When approaching from the street, visitors find the house is, as Knights describes, ‘deliberately grounded and monolithic’. Relatively little is revealed about what lies behind the brickwork façade.

Upon entering the house, the solidity of the exterior gives way to a soft core. A bridge suspended above a sunken garden leads to an atrium, filtering in natural light. Knights concludes, ‘We wanted visitors to feel grounded and calm, but also curious, to have the sense that there is always another layer of the house to discover. That contrast is important to us: a house that feels protective from the outside, but generous and open from within’.

taylorknights.com.au

In a part of the world with abundant natural beauty, a new Chilean holiday home was designed to be in sync with its setting. LoyCo House was designed by Santiago-based CCRA Arquitectura to draw on the different identities of its region – being steps away from a small jetty on the shores of Vichuquén Lake on one hand, while also set close to Llico Beach on the central coast of Chile and the nearby Colchagua wine region.

Step inside this a Chilean holiday home by CCRA Arquitectura

The home's creators, architects Ricardo Atanacio and Carolina Contreras, drew on the organic feel, remote character and tactile nature of their site right from the get-go as they started developing this house, a getaway for a client with a regular base in a more urban setting.

Examining the brief, it felt imperative that Loyco bring its inhabitants close to the area's strong agricultural and fishing traditions – be it through incorporating the care of the native, rich vegetation (in the shape of garden space) or by allowing them to remain in touch with the complex river systems and ecologies of the different bodies of water in proximity to the site.

The residence itself is organised in an L-shaped floorplan, weaving public and private areas around an inner courtyard and two gardens. The property spans two levels. Four double bedroom suites and an expansive kitchen, dinning and living interior occupy the first. A further two double bedrooms (one is the primary suite with its own walk-in wardrobe) and a family breakout space are situated above.

An outside sport facility, including a 180 cm tall pool-pond built above natural ground level, completes the composition.

The Chilean holiday home's timber upper structure (glulam trusses) nods to the region's agricultural buildings while helping the house feel entirely of its place within the leafy, forested setting, which is hard to reach by conventional road. The timber cladding ages along with the house, offering a pleasing patina to the exterior and ensuring it maintains a natural feel.

At the same time, the outline of the overall composition's volumes is simple and nods to farming warehouses or small industrial structures, referencing local vernacular.

Everything is safely anchored to the ground by a slightly raised concrete basement. This gesture keeps the home away from water during possible flooding incidents and protects the building's steel-frame foundations. Meanwhile, landscape architects Cristóbal Elgueta and Macarena Calvo worked on an outdoor environment that elegantly wraps around the building, supporting the users' daily needs while blending architecture and surrounding nature.

ccra arquitectura

If the words 'Mykonos house' bring to mind island parties, beachside negronis and the big blue Aegean Sea, you might be surprised to find out that only one of these things define the experience at Anamesa. The new home, designed by Athens-based practice K-Studio, is a private residence in one of Greece's busiest, buzziest islands; yet it was designed to bring peace and balance to its inhabitants, who were keen to make the most of the island, and all its different facets.

Explore Anamesa, a new Mykonos house by K-Studio

Anamesa means 'in between', the architects explain, and it was the liminal place between buzz and quiet, business and domestic calm that they tried to capture for their client through this design. To achieve this, the plot, set above Kalafatis beach, on the quieter east side of the island, was picked for the choices it provides – activities on offer nearby range from social spots to sporting sites and more low-key corners, something to suit every mood.

This tension, option and balance set the scene for a Mykonos home that draws on local land and intelligence. The architects explain: 'Anamesa draws from this expanded field: inseparable from the rawness of its elements, the island spirit is honed by the Cycladic light, the meltemi winds and the salt of the sea force, into a culture of openness, conviviality, and exchange. Alongside this primal condition, Mykonos has evolved into a cosmopolitan crossroads defined by nightlife, multicultural energy, and a globally influential hospitality culture.

'At the same time, the ancestral presence of Delos with its open-air archaeological landscape bridges contemporary life with memory and heritage.'

The architects describe the forces at play here, such as solitude and celebration, rawness and refinement, stillness and movement, tradition and contemporary existence, 'not as oppositions, but as overlapping conditions'. The result is a home that feels at once welcoming and clearly defined, full of character yet not shouting for attention.

Soft corners, natural materials, neutral colours that sit comfortably within the broader context and an effortless transition between inside and out that helps to negotiate seasonal changes and different weather conditions make for a residence designed for easy living, to be used year-round.

Textures and surfaces were selected to complement each other - you will not find sharp juxtapositions and intensity here. The home's grandeur comes from its majestic poise as it sits nestled into the island's rocky terrain.

Semi-buried into the hill, the structure is orientated to look out towards the long views of the Aegean, while cosy – yet still expansive – rooms inside offer options to feel open to the horizon on offer, or remain cocooned within the land.

The interior spans private bedroom suites, wellness areas, and service functions, connected by a softened, skylit circulation system. Meanwhile, the outdoor areas and landscaping complete the composition.

'The landscape is not an extension but a continuation of the architecture, where stone retaining walls, native vegetation, and crafted outdoor moments include a Citrus House for dining and a circular threshing-floor fire lounge, gradually blurring the separation between built form and ground,' write the team.

Indeed, elements such as Citrus House, a round-shaped stone structure – a site-specific version of a conversation pit – on one of the open terraces, bring local vernacular elements into the contemporary design solution.

'Situated by the entrance, [it] reinterprets a vernacular typology as a gesture of protected openness, to express a culture of hospitality where what arrives from elsewhere is welcomed, adapted, and allowed to belong,' the architects explain.

To perfect their vision, the architects worked with local Cycladic craftspeople and their time-honed skills, putting together a material palette of stone, lime, and timber in a composition that feels appropriate and elevated.

Traditional techniques have been reinterpreted and enhanced through modern technology, while bespoke furniture, lighting and curated spatial sequences make this Mykonos house a truly one-of-a-kind, tailored experience.

k-studio.gr

Fuel’s latest foray into the crumbling ruins of architectural good intentions is Socialist Hotels, a photographic monograph by Elena Amabili that traces the state-sponsored holiday industry in the former Eastern Bloc. It follows on from works like Soviet Scientific Institutes, the Soviet Bus Stops series and the Spomenik Monument Database, all of which pair a fascination with monumental mid-century ambition with a study of a lost era of architectural politics.

Socialist Hotels is no different. Amabili is a Berlin-based Italian photographer whose work mines this rich but vanishing seam of socialist brutalism. Her extensive travels for this new book took her to, deep breath, Abkhazia, Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Crimea, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and many more, a comprehensive laundry list of countries who laboured under the yoke of Soviet influence. In all, over 150 hotels are featured, ranging from modest writers’ retreats to time honoured classics of the genre, like Crimea’s Hotel Druzhba.

Like many visual travelogues of these regions and styles, part of the fascination lies in the apparent stasis of the subjects – décor that feels unchanged in decades, along with crumbling façades and the occasional modern ruin. But many of these outfits are still in operation, fulfilling their original function as affordable palaces of the people, seaside destinations for everyday workers to enjoy.

Like all the most intriguing architecture of the period, the best works here excel in geometric invention and richness of fittings and fixtures, from elaborate chandeliers to murals and signage. The book also contains an introduction from food writer Caroline Eden, setting these structures in their social and historic context, as well as sharing her own personal experiences staying in some of these locations.

Described by the publishers as a ‘fascinating legacy of a social and cultural idiosyncrasy,’ many of the featured buildings are under threat of destruction, redevelopment or ill-considered ‘modernisation’, making Socialist Hotels another valuable study of an intersection of time, place and politics that may never again come to pass.

Socialist Hotels, Elena Amabili, £28, Fuel Publishing, Fuel-Design.com, @FuelPublishing

A modern passive house has replaced a tired, existing bungalow in this idyllic spot in a Hertfordshire valley suburb. Welcome to Three Rivers Passive House, the newest residential offering by London-based Gbolade Design Studio.

Explore Three Rivers Passive House by Gbolade Design Studio

The project, a generously sized two-storey, 5005 sq ft home, is entirely newly built. It spans five bedrooms and a lush surrounding garden, which helps negotiate the site's slope - the entry is approached via a steep incline, which helps create an impressive moment as the residence reveals itself from the street.

A simple material palette of Belgian long-format bricks, glazing and smoke grey charred larch cladding makes for an elegant, geometric composition that cuts a contemporary figure among the greenery and surrounding, more conventional homes.

It is a special moment when the American Oak pivot front door, flanked by slender 4.5 m-tall glazing, opens to a striking double-height interior entry hall. This space anchors the home, flooded with light via a large circular rooflight above and leading to a central courtyard.

This is 'inspired by the practice’s West African heritage and the client’s desired way of living, which prioritises communal, interdependent and a fluidity of indoor-outdoor connection around multiple habitable spaces,' the architects at the dynamic studio, founded by Tara Gbolade and Lanre Gbolade, explain.

The ground floor has a flowing plan that contains the entrance hall, a gently sunken living space, dining and kitchen space, as well as a gym, a home office, a swimming pool, gym and sauna facilities. Bedrooms and further private areas are located upstairs. Meanwhile, conceived for multi-generational living, the property also includes a ground-floor private senior-living guest suite that can act as a fully independent living unit.

'The project really allowed us to bring a striking and bold vision to life, whilst achieving a home for our client with exceptional sustainable performance levels and regenerative credentials,' says Lanre Gbolade. 'The client’s understanding of the value of architecture, sustainable design and collaborative teamwork made this a genuinely pleasurable project to work on. As a practice, we prioritise a contextually responsive approach to all projects and ensure they give back more than they extract.'

And it is true. Gbolade Design Studio is a deft hand at incorporating environmentally friendly approaches in their designs - delicately and almost imperceptibly. Here, too, they crafted a home that meets RIBA 2030 Climate Challenge embodied carbon and operational energy targets, but is also Net-Zero.

Construction was carried out with off-site manufactured, low-carbon Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) and Glulam superstructure and complementary renewable technologies. The result is a high-performance yet low operational energy home through gestures such as the inclusion of Air Source Heat Pumps, PV panels and biodiversity enrichment through sedum roofs.

gboladedesignstudio.com

In a new Wallpaper* summer series, architect Carlo Ratti explores Italy through the ordinary objects that define daily life. Meet the Monoloc, the omnipresent plastic chair that inspires strong emotions

Carlo Ratti on the Monobloc plastic chair

Italy's most hated piece of design might also be its most beloved. We are talking about the monobloc plastic chair.

I also cannot make up my mind. Love or hate? Fieri sentio et excrucior — I feel it happening, and it is torture, as the poet Catullus might have put it. This summer, we encountered it everywhere: at Aunt Mariuccia’s barbecue. At an improvised open-air cinema in Lipari. Under the umbrellas on Ipanema Beach. Even on the cover of Bad Bunny’s latest album, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. And yet, in the garden of our Italian offices, it is banned. The same went from 2008–2017 for the Swiss city of Basel.

Its origins are more noble than one might think. Many trace it back to Joe Colombo, one of the great masters of 20th-century Italian design. His Universale 4867 chair, produced by Kartell and now part of the collection of MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, revolutionised design in the 1960s.

It stacks easily, one chair on top of another. And it celebrates the possibilities of a material that was then revolutionary: plastic. Unlike traditional woodworking objects, made by subtraction and the assembly of separate parts and joints, in the Universale 4867 chair, everything is created through addition. Plastic injected into moulds. Psssst.

The monobloc is not as elegant as the Universale 4867. Yet it stacks better. And, above all, it has conquered half the world. It is estimated that more than one billion have been produced. One Italian company alone produces around ten million a year, at a unit cost of just a few euros.

And this is why the most beloved chair also becomes the most hated. First of all, because our relationship with plastic has changed. Once seen as a marvellous material, it has become a symbol of one of the great environmental challenges of our time. As it breaks down, it turns into thousands of fragments, which then fragment further into microplastics. We find them practically everywhere: from Antarctica to our brains, as well as throughout the food chain that connects them.

But beyond environmental concerns, there is another problem: repetition. The monobloc chair has become so ubiquitous that it can make you nauseous. Like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons: beautiful, but unbearable after the umpteenth replay in a neighbourhood pizzeria. Everything can be poison, Paracelsus said: it is the dose that makes the difference.

And perhaps the same is true of design. Objects, ultimately, tell us something about ourselves. From the primordial artifacts our ancestors displayed as trophies — the pelt of a bear, the pendant carved from a sharpened stone — to contemporary design products, there is always a story behind them. But what remains of a story when everyone tells it? According to my MIT colleague Ethan Zuckerman, the monobloc may have reached a state of ubiquity. So ubiquitous that it has disappeared.

And so, let us allow ourselves a brief moment of rest. As the back of the monobloc chair creaks, our gaze settles on the barbecue. There, between the Pachino tomato sizzling and the red Rotonda eggplant browning, another kind of design comes into view: the kind that tells us a story about who we are and what we have become. As yet another monobloc chair fades into the heat.

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

Revealed to the public for the very first time since it was completed in 1952, this is the Mahogany House, a richly detailed piece of mid-century residential design by the architect Fred Thornton Hollingsworth. The British-Canadian designer (1917-2015) moved to Canada as a child, only qualifying as an architect in 1959 after an early career as an ad-hoc architectural designer in and around Vancouver.

The Mahogany House shows some of Hollingsworth’s early fascination with the work of Frank Lloyd Wright (he met the legendary architect at his Taliesin West studio). The house is located in Sunset Gardens, a neighbourhood of nearly 50 houses in North Vancouver’s Canyon Heights district.

Sunset Gardens was planned by Hollingsworth, who brought a wealth of influences from West Coast modernism and European residential to bear on his ‘Neoteric’ style, which was better suited to the Vancouver climate and warmer in material palette. This four-bedroom house is almost entirely original, having been in the same family since 1970.

The house was originally commissioned by the owner of nearby millwork business, Frank Paxton. Paxton specified external cladding in mahogany boat plywood, with a similar plywood veneer throughout the interior spaces. The result is a warm jewel of a structure, with precise cabinetry and carpentry paired with solid painted concrete blocks, large panes of glass and high-level windows.

Arranged over one level, the house is a modest 1,990 square feet and contains four bedrooms, two bathrooms and two separate living rooms. The private garden originally included a mature cedar tree that the dining room was built around, while even the front door is discretely positioned out of sight of the street.

These are the first images of the house taken since it was finished and will surely entice a new owner to take on this impressive structure. The current owner recalls their first visit in 1986. ‘I was eight years old the first time I entered [what was then] my uncle's home, she says, ‘I remember thinking the house was huge. I was impressed by the wall of windows at the back, the two living rooms, and all the trees — a very different kind of home for an eight-year-old who grew up in the city.’

Mahogany House, 4065 Sunset Blvd, Canyon Heights, North Vancouver (Fred Hollingsworth, 1952), CA $2,599,000. WestCoastModern.ca, @WestCoastModernHomes

This new residential project from Dallas-based Smitharc architecture + interiors continues the studio’s run of elegant contemporary houses in the area – see this house in Greenway Parks, the St Andrews Residence and Griggs Residence for earlier examples.

The Northaven Residence follows an established template of a flexible pavilion that combines a strong sense of transparency with careful planning to ensure privacy for the occupants – from outside and from each other – as well as a baked-in longevity that’ll allow for evolution and growth over the years.

The client is a professional mother with three young sons, and the tailored brief not only gives the family space to grow over the decades to come but also provides the children with their own ‘zone’. This takes the form of a dedicated upper-floor wing containing three identical en-suite bedrooms and a separate sitting area, raised up and away from the living room (and the mother’s room).

These rooms are reached by a striking sculptural oak and steel staircase, with a satin brass railing. At the top of the stairs, a circular rooflight, or oculi, illuminates the curved and polished plaster walls. From the outside, a corner window reveals the form of the stair, treating like a vignette in a case.

Everything else takes place on the L-shaped ground floor, with architectural elements that spread into the generous one-acre lot. A large, covered terrace adjoins the outdoor pool, which overlooks the sloping, wooded garden. There’s plenty of space for everything from cookouts to soccer parties, with lawns scattered with mature oak trees.

Directly beneath the boys’ rooms you’ll find the triple garage, utility area, gymnasium and a second snug, while the entrance foyer with the grand stair serves as the dividing space between utility, sleeping and the living spaces.

These are collected together in one long linear double-height space, a Great Room with banks of windows to the north – the public-facing façade - and south across over the pool. A separate formal dining room adjoins the kitchen and pantry, with a kitchen table and island unit adjoining the main living space.

Tall custom-built metal screens provide separation in the space. The covered terrace is set beneath a spectacular raised roof which oversails the living room and creating views through the entire structure.

The principal bedroom suite is housed in another wing, accessed through a discrete opening in the monumental limestone clad walls. This is treated like private sanctuary, with a generous walk-in closet and a large private bathroom with a view into its own walled-off area of the garden.

In total, the living spaces run to a generous 4,500 square feet. In addition to the extensive use of Texas limestone, the materials palette includes plaster, white oak and cypress. Despite the open expanses of space and the large windows, the house still offers plenty of places to retreat into.

Although there is a clear mid-century modern influence running throughout, the Northaven Residence is no retro throwback. Instead, it offers a luxurious expression of a well-defined brief with a consistent aesthetic approach.

Smitharc.com, @Smitharcarchitects

The 2026 London Open House Festival is upon us, with over 600 venues opening their doors to visitors from 12-20 September in one of the capital's biggest architectural celebrations. After the event's closing day (it used to last a weekend, then slowly grew to an entire week due to popular demand), things go quiet for a year, until the cycle restarts. And between festivals, not much happens, right? Wrong.

2026 London Open House and its lasting impact

We spoke to Manijeh Verghese, CEO of Open City, the charity that oversees the London Open House happenings – and everything that takes place behind the scenes in the run-up and after. She tells us that, while, of course, the public-facing, now-eight-day festival has a tremendous impact in terms of promoting architecture in the capital and raising awareness by connecting everyone with buildings they might not otherwise have been able to access, there are indeed many more ways the Open House initiative pays off.

'We strongly believe that the Open House Festival changes people’s relationship with specific places and neighbourhoods as well as with other Londoners,' Verghese says. 'In our surveys of visitors, contributors and volunteers after the festival, we often see people reflect on how the festival makes them feel a greater sense of belonging, or more connected to their local area as well as the city as a whole. We enjoy seeing how visitors become volunteers or even contributors over time, and therefore start to influence the many ways in which we can open up and share our city for collective enjoyment. Seventy per cent of visitors to the 2025 festival said that they were accessing all the spaces that they visited for the first time.'

The lasting, less-expected benefits of Open House London

Looking beyond the festival dates, there are lots of anecdotal stories about young people becoming inspired to enter the architecture profession, or members of the public who experience a space that they otherwise wouldn't have, which changes their world view. The idea of togetherness and learning about each other is arguably a great incentive to take part, too. Yet it is not just the visitors who get to feel a positive impact. Participating venues also have a strong benefit, Verghese explains.

'The Festival is a great way for contributors to experiment and pilot how to open up their spaces in new ways to new audiences. For example, this year, the Zaha Hadid Foundation is opening its archive in the old Design Museum building in Shad Thames to the public for the very first time,' she says. 'Similarly, the festival team engages diverse audiences to uphold our values to prioritise access and inclusion for all. Last year, the festival team asked our two young assistant curators – as alumni from the Open City Accelerate programme for 16-18-year-olds from underrepresented backgrounds – to assist us in visiting an important civic building to look at their festival offer in advance and to sense-check how it might be perceived by young people. We offer training focused on inclusion to all contributors to ensure they have the resources and skills to welcome visitors with different needs.'

Festival director Celia Mead also highlights that taking part is a way for organisations to actively demonstrate their civic conscience. The annual survey of the London Open House Festival has shown that among the participants' 'objectives for taking part', the aims of raising awareness, reaching new audiences, and discussing specific issues in architecture or the environment all ranked quite highly, at 63 per cent, 66 per cent and 21 per cent, respectively.

It pays to stick with it too, Verghese says. Long-standing participating venues at Open House London have learned about their own operations over the years at the festival. Feedback from contributors in surveys has helped venues figure out the best way to provide volunteer support, queue management, tours and how best to ensure comfort for visitors and users. Often, the festival becomes an incentive or testing ground for different types of programming within venues, too.

There are lots of stories of participants who feel passionate about the festival, and to unexpected results. 'A favourite story is that of Fabian Watkinson, a musician who has been opening his home in Highgate New Town since 2001,' continues Verghese. 'He thought he would do it for a few years and then everyone would have seen it, but it continues to be extremely popular each year, with his tours getting fully booked in a matter of minutes! Over the years, he has also become an expert on modernist social housing through his tours for Open House visitors and social tenants who are placed in the estate, to give them a sense of pride in their area.'

While you might not think the London Open House Festival is linked to planning decisions or policy changes, there are surprising and impactful benefits for the public in this realm too. Several multi-year partnerships with different London Boroughs through their involvement in the festival were aligned to help them deliver on their cultural strategies.

Verghese highlights: 'Haringey is a great example of a borough where we are not only working with them on the festival but also with a cohort as part of our tour guide training programme, The Golden Key Academy. They have created fully funded places for local people, often community leaders, to train as tour guides and tell new stories about the area. Called the Rebel Guides, they will launch their tours during this year’s festival and will then continue to deliver them next year when Haringey is the London Borough of Culture.'

So, what's in store at the 2026 London Open House Festival?

This year, the festival returns for its 35th edition with quite a few bangers for your to-visit list. The programme contains somewhere between 600 and 700 listings for venues far and wide across the capital. From a sneak peek into the rarely open Zaha Hadid Foundation archive (our October 2026 issue story took the deep dive) to celebrating 40 years since the launch of Richard Rogers Partnership's (and we do not take this word lightly) iconic high-tech architecture at Lloyd's of London in the City, several lesser-known gems and rarely open hits have joined the list of options.

You can tour 10 Downing Street and explore the Barbican Conservatory before it is updated by Harris Bugg Studio; and of course there is a wealth of private homes, innovative and everyday, but all exceptionally designed and worth a browse – whether you are seeking home-improvement inspiration or are simply archi-curious.

'What is great about the festival is that the monumental and civic sit alongside the social, domestic and everyday – reflecting the complex mix of spaces that make up cities. Visitors choose to navigate the programme in a variety of ways, whether that’s through our themed collections, their own unique interests, their immediate neighbourhood, a planned set of visits based on bookings, or [simply] what they can encounter that is available for drop-ins,' says Verghese.

'While the iconic spaces like Lloyds or Downing Street attract large numbers of visitors who want the chance to see inside, popular spaces include private homes, faith and community spaces, as well as open studios for practices where you get a chance to see inside [creatives'] processes and ways of working. New models of social or affordable housing or new ways of living and working together are increasing in popularity, with the festival an ideal way to share these innovative alternatives with a wide audience.'

Manijeh Verghese’s highlights for 2026

Manijeh Verghese picked three favourites from this year's programme. In her words...

Wapping Hydraulic Power Station

'Wapping Hydraulic Power Station is new to the programme this year and provides a rare opportunity to visit London’s last hydraulic power station to be decommissioned. Built in 1890, it has been closed for the last ten years but is now entering a new era under the custodianship of the Glass Castle Foundation, which is transforming it into a centre for experimental arts.'

Punchdrunk Enrichment Stores

'Punchdrunk Enrichment Stores is a unique and immersive theatre space in Wembley that works with families, schools and communities. Tours of the space will showcase the different objects that fill its shelves and discuss how these have been developed with young people in Brent. Unfortunately, this is now fully booked, but you can check out an incredible range of drop-ins in our No Booking Needed collection.'

Humanise Spotters Guide

'As a way to better understand and experience what makes a building interesting, characterful and joyful, the Humanise campaign has created a downloadable, mobile-friendly spotters' guide to invite the public to look more closely and ask questions of our built environment. To test this out, visitors are invited to explore King's Cross, starting at Heatherwick Studio’s Making House and taking in 11 other buildings en route.'

5 Wallpaper* highlights to book for 2026 Open House London

It's nearly impossible to narrow down a nearly 700-item list to just five – if nothing else, because we want to be everywhere and see everything. However, if we really had to, these are five events that feel special within the 2026 Open House London festival programme.

The Lloyd’s Building

Initially criticised for its unusual look, the 14-storey building, designed as the home of insurers Lloyd’s of London, is now a beloved landmark. The project was built as three towers, each with its own service section. They surround a central 60m-high atrium flooded with natural light. The building, in the heart of the City of London is now Grade I listed, described by Historic England as ‘one of the key buildings of the modern epoch’.

Zaha Hadid Foundation

The Zaha Hadid Foundation is entering a bold new era, driven by a visionary director, Aric Chen, who is intent on protecting, preserving and promoting the late, great architect’s legacy. The great architect's archive is housed in the old Design Museum building in Shad Thames and will be open for tours in a rare opportunity to explore the architectural legacy – and personality – of Zaha Hadid.

Barbican Conservatory

In 2025, the Barbican Centre shared proposals for its extensive upcoming renewal project. The project addresses the deteriorating structures – built between 1965 and 1982 – and the brutalist architecture's contemporary issues of accessibility and sustainability. It also looks at public spaces such as the foyers and lakeside terrace, and – excitingly – its eco-brutalist conservatory. London-based Harris Bugg Studio is working on the refresh.

A design tour of Olympia

After five years of construction, the Victorian landmark, West London's Olympia, reimagined as a vibrant cultural hub by Heatherwick Studio and SPPARC, is nearly complete. With this tour, you can take a design-led look inside.

The Cloud House

Many private homes are part of the 2026 London Open House programme, and style-wise, there's definitely something for everyone in its listings. If we had to pick one, it might have to be this fluffy-feeling pink home in north London, a new design by architect Peter Morris. The project consists of two semi-detached homes in leafy Hampstead Heath, and it certainly brings a smile to our faces.

The 2026 London Open House Festival runs 12-20 September 2026, book your visit at openhouse.org.uk

The origins of BWGTBLD, the production business Philipp Ramhofer set up in 2012, are humble as they are personal: the founder's own bedroom in the small German city of Solingen. Visiting the firm's current headquarters, a majestic Berlin townhouse on Neue Schönhauser Straße 13, the difference appears stark – yet Ramhofer's relationship with his workspace is just as intimate, despite the seemingly grander setting.

The building sits in the fashionable Mitte neighbourhood, a handsome, early 1890s structure designed by architect Alfred Messel. It was originally built as a communal dining hall for Berlin workers, a revolutionary concept for its time. It has since changed hands and had different lives, from a cafe to a cinema and was eventually listed for its beautiful architecture. When Ramhofer acquired it, he envisioned not just a workspace for his thriving business, but also an opportunity to celebrate art and the creativity BWGTBLD represents.

'I'm very sensitive to spaces. To me a space is one of the highest art forms there is, up there with music and film. An office can be a devastating place. In the worst case it drains every bit of creativity out of you. So I asked myself, what would have to change to create the exact opposite: a place that infuses you with energy and creativity, that sparks rather than depletes,' he says.

'The building was a good foundation. It's an Alfred Messel house from the 1890s, originally Berlin's first communal dining hall for working people, later a cinema, so it already had more character than anything we could have designed. My ideal way to show the space for the first time is empty, late at night, when it feels like a gallery. I put on a playlist, light an incense, dim the lights, and we walk from room to room. Its in this setting that you can really get an impression for the core of the company's DNA. It's also, frankly, very selfish. It would kill me to work out of a conventional advertising office.'

In short, BWGTBLD is not just another office. Set against the structure's neo-renaissance architecture is a slew of artworks by names established and emerging, in all different shapes, media and sizes. The idea, the founder explains, is to create something where creativity in its different forms merges and flows together, and what might be perceived as a conventional office during the working day can become an art gallery at chosen times of the year.

Every three months or so, on select weekends, the property becomes a museum to visit, with organised, bookable sessions and art tours led by Ramhofer himself and BWGTBLD's in-house curator. The pieces on display come mostly from the founder's own collection - he has been collecting for over four years now.

'The first "real" piece, in the sense of a serious gallery and a serious artist, was a Wolfgang Tillmans from Galerie Buchholz, followed by Tim Breuer from Tramps and Raphaela Simon painting from Max Hetzler. I decided early to collect only what I truly love and would actually hang. I would never acquire something as an investment that I don't want to live with every day,' he explains.

'What attracts me is hard to articulate. In painting it's bodies, mostly. Figures pressed into each other, faces, skin. It leans heavy and dark, strong emotion over anything light or decorative but then in photography it's the opposite. Nothing dark, snapshots, intimacy, people caught in a moment. And it isn't only painting and photography. With design it's different again. There I go for material and a bit of humour. Almost everything is a type of metal, Frederik Fialin's brushed aluminium and stainless steel tables, EJR Barnes' polished steel Parasol Lamp, Mario Tsai's Pagoda, and then the USM cabinets in orange and green against it,mixed with 70s pieces like a Bellini Area lamp. And things that play with you, like Illya Goldman Gubin's bench, which is a crumpled cardboard moving box cast in resin, it looks like it's about to be thrown out and it weighs a ton.'

He continues: 'Where I find the pieces depends on what they are. For painting, photography, vessels, it's mostly galleries, and some of those artists have become friends over the years. For design, lamps, tables, the occasional sculpture, it's largely Instagram. My feed is nothing but design and young, emerging artists. And then online auctions. I'll go through thousands of lots looking for the strange thing nobody else noticed. That's how I ended up with a two-by-four-metre painting for my office. Sometimes it's shit, sometimes you get lucky. With the established artists, I wait for a show and buy there. So it's both planned and impulsive.'

There is no particular rotation or a strict plan as to how the collection grows. When a new piece is acquired, room is made for it. Some things might never move, but some might also shift according to the mood or the changing needs of each room. Specially commissioned pieces also adorn certain areas, created specifically for their spot. And when desired, specific shows are mounted, working with external galleries or particular artists, so the whole is kept alive year-round.

Ramhofer is behind the styling and the curation's oversight. Taking a deep, personal interest in how it all comes together and where everything sits, he is a keen maestro of space and interiors. Much of the furniture is made bespoke by Frederik Fialin, such as the long Manta Manta table, the reception desk, and a wall sculpture. Lamps are by EJR Barnes, and it all works with an Erco lighting system for the art. There is also a Yasmin Bawa-commissioned hempcrete wall relief.

As to why open his space to the wider public? He explains: 'I'm bored by most spaces right now. Instagram and the algorithm have flattened taste into a single, agreeable look and I see it even in the work of good interior designers, a lot of it plays it safe, chasing whatever the interior accounts happen to be pushing that month. It's hard not to fall for it yourself when we all drink from the same feeds and mood boards. That's why I love to go back to books and I love looking at collectors' houses from the 80s and 90s, it's wild how nobody would dare to live like that anymore.'

'I suspect it's the same reason we keep returning to architects like Lina Bo Bardi, to Niemeyer, to Bofill. Individuals, not consensus. Strange, personal places that still refuse to look like anything else. But I'm also not free of it myself, of course we didn't invent the metal look, it's been everywhere the last few years. But then I'm still excited that Frederik Fialin made us something like the Manta Manta table, in a shape and a size I've never seen anywhere before. I hold an almost spiritual belief that people are meant to create, and that what they create is meant to be shared.'

bwgtbld.tv

This Toronto home has two personalities. From its street-facing exterior, HCD House presents itself as a cosy neighbourhood home with red slate roof tiling and large window frames – a reasonably low-key period design, friendly and inviting. Its rear end, however, is more raw and modern, comprising cubic volumes and a stripped-back brick façade. What unites both façades is the interior they enclose, which is an ode to local heritage and craftsmanship.

Tour HCD House, a new Toronto home

COMN Architects, an architecture and interior design firm based in the city, was asked by the clients to preserve the home, which is designed in the Craftsman style (similar to the Arts and Crafts movement) and its original 1921 façade. ‘The main inspiration was finding a way to allow the original 1920s Craftsman house and the new contemporary addition to coexist naturally,’ Clarissa Nam, founding partner of COMN, tells Wallpaper*.

Nam continues, ‘Rather than treating the heritage portion as something separate or simply preserving it as a façade, we wanted the original character, proportions, and craftsmanship to influence the design of the entire home. The clients’ love of books, music, and entertaining also became a major part of the design. This led to the idea of the two-storey library and intimate music space as the heart of the house, creating a central space that connects the old and new portions of the home.’

As a result, the project naturally slots into its Toronto neighbourhood, nodding to its architectural history while also supporting contemporary functionality. Inside the two-storey home, the heritage section features the living room and dining area, with large original windows.

At the rear of the residence, the clients had an unexpected request. They desired a solarium with buckets of natural light. To accommodate this, the architects installed large windows and skylights, while a newly landscaped courtyard acts as a divider between the kitchen and solarium and the remaining living spaces.

Throughout the home, the joinery is something to be marvelled at. ‘We sought to honour the authentic spirit of craftsman design in this portion of the interior, which inspired our choice of custom wall panelling,’ notes Nam. ‘An existing wood-burning fireplace was also preserved, offering a subtle modern interpretation of historical elements.’

Peter McNeil, also founding partner of the firm, adds that their favourite part of the residence is the library and music space: ‘It became the heart of the project and is where many of the ideas behind the house come together. The library brings natural light into the centre of the home, while the plaster stair and walnut shelving create a layered backdrop for the grand piano and intimate concert space. We also like that it was carved out of the existing structure. It feels simultaneously connected to the history of the house and completely new.’

The Toronto home now sparks warmth and curiosity, and is designed as a slow reveal. Despite the openness of the spaces, the firm describes the sense of intimacy as you move through each room, and the relationship between the original house and the new addition gradually becomes apparent.

The architects conclude, ‘Natural materials, custom millwork, books, music, and carefully framed views give the house a lived-in quality. We wanted it to feel like a home first and a piece of architecture second.’

comnarchitects.com

Set within a wooded plot beside Wimbledon Common stands 22 Parkside, a landmark of British modernism, recognisable for its glass-and-steel exterior. The home, also known as the Rogers House or Wimbledon House, is a pioneering home designed by Richard Rogers. Built between 1968 and 1970 for his parents, Nino and Dada Rogers, and inspired in part by his upbringing in Italy, the house is considered one of his most personal and influential works.

Enter 22 Parkside, aka the Rogers House, in Wimbledon Common

An example of Hi-Tech architecture and functionalist design, 22 Parkside was built using a prefabricated construction system, reflecting Rogers’ interest in flexible living. Arranged around a central courtyard, two separate single-storey pavilions are flooded with natural light. The house became a testing ground for ideas that would later find expression in some of Rogers’ most celebrated international projects, including the Lloyd’s Building in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Renzo Piano, who designed the latter with Rogers, said: 'There is no doubt that 22 Parkside was one of the most important buildings that Richard created. It worked as a miniature prototype for the sort of approach we took in the Centre Pompidou.'

With the aim of protecting one of the UK’s most important examples of modern architecture for future generations, the house has been donated to the National Trust by the Rogers family through the Richard Rogers Charitable Settlement. Ben Rogers, the son of Richard and Su Rogers, said, 'As a family, we wanted to ensure that this remarkable house would be protected, cared for and shared with future generations, rather than remaining a private asset.'

This acquisition joins the National Trust’s growing collection of 20th-century heritage, which includes 2 Willow Road in Hampstead and The Homewood in Surrey. The charity will curate a programme of guided visits, partnerships and digital content, opening the house to students, researchers and visitors.

The house’s new role as an educational resource reflects a belief that was close to Rogers’ heart, as his wife, Ruthie, explains: 'Richard regarded public access to culture – whether architecture, art, theatre, music, or design – as one of the great aspirations in life. It filled him with such joy that the public would have access to this house that was once private, a house that was a prototype for what he thought houses could be for all.'

22 Parkside will open to the public on Saturday 12 September as part of Open House London. A week later, visitors will also have the chance to step inside Rogers’ Lloyd’s Building, which this year marks its 40th anniversary.

The National Trust notes that public access to 22 Parkside will be introduced in stages while it cares for the building and develops its future programme. nationaltrust.org.uk

Ninjago is a world where ancient temples exist alongside powerful dragons, mechanical giants and ninjas mastering elemental powers. Drawing on mythology, martial arts and East Asian influences, Lego’s long-running franchise (initially released in 2011) began as a toy line before expanding into television, film and video games. Yet beneath its battles, mystical powers and fantastical landscapes, the series has always been about how young people can unlock their potential.

To mark Ninjago’s 15th anniversary, Lego has partnered with New York-based artist Futura to create new artwork drawing on the fantasy series. It brings together two worlds connected by imagination, curiosity and a shared instinct for world-building.

Inside the Lego x Futura Ninjago collaboration

Born Leonard Hilton McGurr in New York, Futura adopted his moniker as a teenager when he emerged from the city’s graffiti and subway culture during the 1970s. From the beginning, anonymity became a space for invention. ‘I started off anonymous but wanted to create a mythology behind my work,’ he explains. That impulse would become central to a practice populated by recurring characters, symbols and forms that together feel like fragments of a larger universe.

Over the decades, Futura developed a distinctive graphical approach of fluid aerosol gestures, atmospheric colour and floating forms. Figures such as Pointman emerge from these compositions as different facets of an imagined future. Moving between painting, sculpture and product design, he has continually expanded that language without losing his youthful approach. This energy and playfulness drew Lego to Futura, whose visual language seemed naturally suited to the Ninjago series; he has now been named an official creative collaborator and artistic co-creator for the brand.

The collaboration began in Billund, Denmark, at Lego’s headquarters. There, Futura met the designers shaping Ninjago, delved into the company’s archives and witnessed how designs move from an initial sketch to a finished object. Walking through the factory and seeing the precision and care invested in every component shifted his sense of what the partnership might become. ‘My visit completely expanded my vision of what could be possible,’ he says. ‘After that experience, I truly understood the outcome would be fantastical.’

Back in New York, McGurr’s studio became a playground of scattered bricks and unfolding ideas. At the centre was the minifigure, one of Lego’s most important storytelling objects, first launched in its current form in 1978. This plastic figurine became the vessel for Futura to carry his visual language into the Ninjago universe. As a result, ‘the design process began with simple silhouettes, front, back and side views’.

A natural point of departure was Pointman, Futura’s elongated, futuristic figure that has appeared throughout his work for decades. With its sharp edges, stretched head and extended limbs, this alien-like symbol exists somewhere between human and machine. But the intention was never simply to reproduce this character as a minifigure. Instead, the Lego team worked closely with Futura to explore how elements of his creative style could be translated into the Ninjago world – the result was Ninja of the Futura, a 3D art piece. ‘We started by working up sketches of a mask, gear and body plates,’ says Futura.

Pointman’s influence is most clearly seen in this new artwork, its elongated form, pointed details, and sharp oval eyes echoing the silhouette of Futura’s iconic figure while fitting carefully within the Ninjago universe. In Lego’s fantasy series, this type of accessory conceals a person’s identity, but can also be a powerful magical artefact, giving the design both a visual and narrative role. Yet for the New York-based artist, appearance is only the starting point.

‘There are two parts to creating this character. What they look like and, more importantly, who they are,’ explains Futura. ‘There is so much room to tell a wonderful story, but we also have to respect the audience Ninjago has created and understand how young people grow with that world.’

Rather than creating a hero defined by strength alone, Futura has imagined a grounded figure who acts as a teacher to the young ninjas. ‘The character does not necessarily need to be the strongest or have the most spectacular powers. His strength could come from knowledge, experience and wisdom,’ states Futura. To reflect this, Ninja of the Futura’s rucksack is filled with tools rather than combat equipment. ‘The backpack has an assortment of selected items, not weapons, but necessary tools. These will be of great power to the character and the community,’ he explains.

Futura’s collaboration with Lego also includes original artworks that reimagine fan favourite characters from the fantasy series, Nya and Kai. ‘This project feels bigger than a single product. It brings together an entire world that can continue to grow.’

For Futura, collaborating with the Danish toymaker marks the fulfilment of a long-held ambition. A lifelong Lego collector, he had imagined what it might be like to work with the company for decades, long before the opportunity became a reality. ‘For years, I always thought it would be incredible to work with the brand, and now it is happening,’ he notes. ‘This is not a vanity project or simply about being able to say that I worked with Lego. What excites me is the possibility of becoming part of a story that can guide, empower and inspire young people.’

Ultimately, the collaboration goes beyond placing an established artist within a global franchise. Through Futura’s work, the Ninjago universe introduces a different idea of what power can look like in the series. Not greater strength or a more spectacular weapon, but knowledge, experience and the ability to pass both on.

In a fantasy world built around young ninjas learning to master extraordinary powers, Futura’s character feels especially fitting. He offers a reminder that growing stronger is not only about what you can do, but what you can share, teach and leave with others.

The new partnership will be experienced for the first time on Friday 18 September 2026 at the I Park Mall Yongsan, Seoul, as part of the Lego Ninjago: Legends DuskFall Fan Event

lego.com

Twenty years ago, Freitag, the Swiss bag makers with a penchant for second-life materials, opened its first flagship store in Zurich. At the time, the idea of using a stack of decommissioned shipping containers was rather novel, and not yet a ready identifier of commerce-driven pre- or post-development pop-up ‘happening’.

Working alongside architects Spillman Eschle, the company took a site in the former industrial district alongside Zurich’s Hardbrücke road bridge, hardly a very prepossessing spot for a retail experiment. The architects craned a total of 19 containers onto the spot, with nine of them forming what the company called ‘Zurich’s smallest skyscraper’.

The spot was actually logistically perfect (just 150m from what was then the Freitag bag factory) and close by a busy road populated by the tarpaulin-swathed trucks that provided Freitag’s unique source material. To this day, no two Freitag bags are the same, each crafted from reused heavy duty trucking tarpaulin to enjoy a second life as a backpack, carry on or messenger bag.

As well as proving a swift and cost-effective method of creating a ‘permanent temporary structure’, the Zurich HQ was an instant PR masterstroke, even in the days before virality, let alone social media. Visible from both road and rail lines, the project was featured in design, architecture and lifestyle magazines around the globe, including our September 2006 issue, literally helping put Freitag on the map.

It took just six months to get the Flagship Store installed, with containers sourced from Hamburg’s port craned into position. The modular construction allowed for new containers to be added and in 2014, thanks to near continuous upgrades and maintenance, it was granted permanent status. Over the years, the elements haven’t been kind to the building blocks, and a complete overhaul was required in 2019 to cover up the rust and smarten up the exterior.

The most recent improvements include a new photovoltaic system to shade the metal roofs and generate onsite power, as well as the installation of a dedicated Repair Studio for customers to visit the company and give their bags a fresh lease of life. Since 2006, the surrounding area has also had a glow-up, with bars, restaurants, vintage stores and other businesses springing up alongside.

‘The store became a physical extension of that same philosophy: giving existing materials a new purpose while challenging conventional ideas of retail and design,’ say the firm, who have extended their material palette to include old car seat belts and unwanted ski boots.

For the next few months, the upper floors of the container tower will play host to a new exhibition, ‘A Second Life’, that delves into the company’s past and its role as a pioneer in the circular economy.

The Freitag Flagship Store is at Geroldstrasse 17, 8005, Zürich, Tel +41 433 669520

Gazing across the rolling hills of Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, the keen-eyed traveller might spot a flash of terracotta in the distance. It wouldn't be entirely out of place to presume it might belong to one of the agricultural region's traditional farmhouses, defined by their clay roof tiles. Approaching the site, however, it soon becomes clear that an altogether different architectural proposition is at play here. All blocky, geometric shapes and a brutalist spirit, House on the Hills cuts a confident, albeit remarkably stealthy, figure among the area's wheat fields, vineyards and woodlands.

The project is the holiday home of architects Fabio Calvi and Paolo Brambilla, who co-founded their namesake Milan-based studio in 2006. The creative duo were after a countryside retreat, and they found what they were looking for near Piacenza, an hour and a half south of Milan, just beyond the industrial plain of the Po Valley.

Step inside this Italian retreat on a hill

‘From the very beginning, we wanted the house to be a strong, contemporary architectural gesture that clearly stands apart from the natural landscape,' the duo say. ‘At the same time, we wanted its colour palette to feel deeply connected to the place, echoing both the surrounding countryside and the traditional colours of the local architecture. This balance between contrast in form and harmony in colour was one of the project's guiding ideas.'

As a result, the house is a bold blend of regional references and 20th-century modern architecture, sprinkled with its creators' sharp sense of style and conceptual clarity. A pleasingly weighty concrete roof in an earthy colour becomes a key exterior feature that appears to float above the leafy surrounding, thanks to the subtle, organic mineral hue (somewhere between warm grey and taupe) of its similarly sturdy walls. It also translates into a powerful coffered ceiling internally, offering a 90 x 90cm grid that helps shape the layout's arrangement.

‘Beyond the colour palette rooted in the local landscape, our references included the coffered ceilings of the region's historic noble residences and the terracotta friezes of the medieval castles around Piacenza,' the architects add. ‘We are passionate students of architecture and design history. Rather than repeating the same formal language or design attitude from project to project, we try to find references that are specific and appropriate to each context. We often reinterpret elements from the past through a contemporary lens, allowing every project to develop its own identity.'

Stepping inside, a compressed entrance area opens up into a generous living space with a slightly sunken seating and entertaining area that makes you feel like you are nestled within the surrounding garden – the property's thick walls not only acting as structural load-bearers, but also accentuating the framing of verdant vistas in all directions. Spreading out beyond to the outdoors, the interior's coffered ceiling becomes a deep lattice outside, shading the terrace and swimming pool.

The sense of security provided by the house design's honest solidity is matched by its material selection. Gridded artificial stone paving flows inside and outside, connecting all spaces. Its finer, 5cm square grid ‘evokes the visionary landscapes imagined by Superstudio during the Radical Architecture movement of the late 1960s', the architects explain, referencing the era's Italian movement that challenged modern architecture and consumer capitalism through bold and imaginative photocollages and design visuals often featuring grids.

Furnishings are a balanced mix of 20th-century vintage finds and pieces designed by the architects for companies such as Zanotta, Frigerio and Pianca. And bespoke elements abound too, defined by oversized solid wooden knobs, which can be found on the kitchen cupboards and other storage elements. As the pair put it: ‘These tactile details introduce an almost archetypal domestic quality, recalling traditional farm furniture and affirming the building's primary vocation: a country house intended to be shared around long meals, seasonal gatherings and everyday family life.'

As to whether it was challenging to design a home for themselves, Calvi and Brambilla's 20 years' experience makes them feel confident in their choices: ‘We approached the project in exactly the same way, treating ourselves as the clients. The design evolved through a very careful and continuous dialogue between us, and looking back, we would make almost exactly the same decisions again. Apart from a few minor details, we wouldn't change anything.'

calvibrambilla.it

Canadian studio Superkül has often graced these pages. Now there’s a chance to own a recent project by the practice, Valley House in Hogg’s Hollow, a verdant residential enclave about 10km due north of downtown Toronto.

Step inside Valley House

The house makes the most of its location. Ostensibly set on a gentle suburban crescent, the generous lot backs onto a forested ravine. The car port and drive give little clue as to what is within, with only the crowns of the neighbourhood’s mature trees at the rear indicating the combination of verdant views and privacy that the site allows.

Superkül have combined the calm, four-square minimalism of the exterior, with its timber and brick screens, clean lines and set back entrance, with an richly designed interior that opens up onto the rear view thanks to large sliding glass full height doors. Where privacy is more of a concern, light is brought into the spaces through clerestory windows and rooflights.

The interior palette is warm and natural, using cherry wood, walnut and teak for cabinetry and floors, with details in porcelain, glass and stone. Grasscloth (seagrass) wallpaper is used extensively to add another layer of natural texture and warmth. The primary living spaces flow between one another, with a sunken family room, study and snug alongside a kitchen, dining and living space.

Specification is high throughout, including bespoke Bulthaup cabinetry and Gaggenau appliances in the kitchen, with Caesarstone work surfaces and a substantial central island. A dining area is situated adjacent to the rear yard, as are the main living spaces. A large double-sided wood-burning fireplace provides a focal point for the room.

The primary suite is also sited on the ground floor, with panoramic views out into the courtyard, while three further bedrooms are located upstairs, along with a separate lounge and study. The latter contains a run of custom banquette seating, a place to sit and overlook the ravine. A basement level houses the guest suite along with a utility room, media room and a gym.

Naturalistic planting and the preservation of the forest floor allow the rear garden to blend with the natural landscape, suggesting a limitless space beyond the glass, while at night, the house glows like a lantern shining through the trees.

Valley House, Toronto, $7.298M CAD, for sale via Sotheby’s International Canada, SothebysRealty.com, Superkül.ca

The historic Czech town of Jihlava lies nestled between Brno and the capital of Prague. It is a lesser-known destination for the meandering tourist, often enjoyed for its quaint architecture and picturesque town squares. However, this sleepy city is about to welcome a big cultural moment with the opening of the Jihlava Municipal Arena.

The new sports space was designed by Brno-based architecture firm CHYBÍK + KRIŠTOF, the same studio creating The London Bowl, a proposed multifunctional arena and mixed-use development designed to accommodate basketball, boxing, and international e-sports events. The firm designed the new arena after winning a regional competition and securing an 80,000,000 EUR public investment.

‘Building today is all about having context. Here, the context is these beautiful grown trees. It doesn't look like an arena in the middle of nowhere. It is a truly urban environment,’ explains Ondřej Chybík, co-founder of the firm. ‘These layers of trees, buildings, and even the neighbouring brewery give the feeling of a grown, built territory.’

When approaching the arena from the park, the building emerges in glimpses of red and grey triangles juxtaposed against the greenery, its seemingly spiky facade inspired its nickname, ‘The Hedgehog.'

'The shape comes from the Gothic origins of the city,’ explains Chybík. ‘You see a lot of these triangles in local Gothic architecture from the era when the city was the richest in its history. But it's not just a slightly sophisticated historical story; it can also be understood as a hedgehog, as this is the city’s animal. Even 100 years ago, there wasn't a Czech name for this city; it was a German name, Iglau. Igel in German means hedgehog.’

Chybík shares that local children are also calling the building ‘our hedgehog’, a positive sign that it belongs to them. The popular triangular facade, however, came as a surprise, as the firm won the competition with a different external design – one that consisted of white, horizontal lamellas.

Says Chybík: ‘It was really not enough to be a new symbol of the city, and that is what it should be: a new symbol, because it's funded by public money and is publicly accessible and oriented. We wished to have a building where, if you close your eyes, you would remember the shape forever – a building that could be memorable and understandable even to small kids.’

Sandwiched between the garden and a university, the multifunctional space can accommodate 5650 spectators and is divided into four buildings, including a 230-metre running track on the roof, a food court area, a 29-room hotel, and a gym and sports hall accessible through open-air walkways and seating spaces.

Inside, the oval-shaped arena was designed to highlight the spatial experience. Its large exterior shell transitions to a compressed area indoors, which in turn opens up into an expansive arena at its heart. The ground floor is a 360-degree open space, allowing easy access to seats and to grab a quick drink while the game is still on, without missing a moment.

The materiality is honest, easily legible and often left raw. Concrete is prefabricated; its curved shape symbolically embraces the pitch, while also expressing the civic presence of a coliseum. Curtains surrounding the exterior seating soften the concrete and add a theatrical element. The fabric can also be lowered for the space to feel cosier and the stadium to appear fuller for junior games. The chairs were crafted to support the acoustics and were designed in colours that match the club.

The second floor is designed to be symmetrical in plan. The large windows connect the exterior with the interior – one side overlooking the park, and the other, the university. The VIP area is located on this level, and overhangs allow guests to feel closer to the game.

After six years of construction, the building’s bold façade, coupled with its simple but striking materiality, has resulted in an inclusive destination for locals and beyond to enjoy coming together through sport.

chybik-kristof.com

The Curious House is a new-built private residence in Zagreb, completed by Dinko Uglesic, Ina Vlahovic and Marijana Rancic of the Croatian architecture studio FORVM. Arranged across two storeys on a sloping site, the new house is set amongst a carefully planted landscape on a plot that’s set back from the main road. The architects have divided the accommodation up into three distinct components, a mirrored box, a metal-clad self-contained studio, and a bedroom wing that is cantilevered above the ground floor.

The mirrored box contains a glazed ground floor, with one façade opening up onto the sloping garden and the other onto a terrace with steps down to a lap pool, which runs beneath the seating area above. The floor plan incorporates the garage, above which is the studio, and the primary entrance, which opens up into a linear kitchen, dining and seating area adjacent to the terrace.

The other end of the box houses the primary bedroom suite, complete with bath with a view across the slope to distant trees. The angled studio box, with its all-over metal cladding and mono-pitched roof houses a kitchen and bathroom alongside a raised bed and sitting area, both of which have views across the distant city rooftops. As well as the internal staircase, there’s also an external pathway leading down from the French doors and across the flat roof to the adjacent bedroom wing.

This component incorporates two en-suite bedrooms and a study, alongside a generous shelf-lined landing. Here you’ll find a straight staircase leading down to the living room below. The way the three elements are juxtaposed creates a series of pathways through the space, as well as unique views, and public and private areas. The programme and plan also conceal the house’s generous 400 square metre size.

As a result, the Curious House certainly earns its name, from the reflective ground floor that serves to amplify the plants and trees that surround it, to the elevated, discrete, upper storey components. Far-reaching views are combined with space, privacy, and an endless source of fascination.

@Forvm.Arhitektura

In a Wallpaper* summer series, architect Carlo Ratti explores Italy through the ordinary objects that define daily life. Enjoy building on the beach with a classic bucket and spade.

Carlo Ratti on the bucket and spade

No architecture firm in the world can match the volume of construction that goes up along the Italian coast every summer. The tools behind this seasonal boom cost less than an espresso and are wielded by a workforce with no licences whatsoever.

We are talking about the plastic bucket and spade. They are the entry point for new generations into the world of construction. They still hold their own against the digital temptations of tablets and smartphones, introducing children to the logic of space through a cycle of rapid creation and immediate collapse: a kind of creative destruction, as Joseph Schumpeter might have called it, that probably works better on the shoreline than it does in economics.

Today, we are once again on the shoreline, bucket and spade in hand. We have seen them a thousand times this summer, hanging from metal hooks outside virtually every tobacconist along the coast between May and September, swaying like brightly colored fruit. They signal that the coast is about to be transformed into an open-air public-works construction site: fortresses, canals, and ramparts erected by tiny master builders who can indulge their architectural fantasies without having to answer to anyone (a bit like, some might say, the current occupant of the White House).

The true kings of the Italian bucket, however, are not found here but in the industrial North. Companies such as Androni Giocattoli churn out endless quantities of these sets using injection-moulding presses. The design is an anonymous midcentury one that spread across the country at the intersection of the construction boom and the boom in seaside holidays.

The design is brilliant in its simplicity. The bucket is not a container but a geometric mould in negative: wet sand is packed into it, the bucket is turned upside down, and voilà – a tower appears. The trick lies in the slight taper of its walls, which makes it easier to release whatever has been formed inside. The spade, meanwhile, is an extension of the arm, sized to fit a child’s hand. No decorative frills: its form follows entirely from the physics of the sandcastle.

The bucket challenges our obsession with permanence. We live in a society devoted to pouring concrete, locking down data, and designing structures to last forever. This plastic toy puts the human ego face to face with an unappealable critic: the tide. You build a castle for three hours, admire it for five minutes, and the sea erases everything. The true value lies in the joy of making, not in the longevity of the structure. We might call it a seaside mandala: beauty that knows it is ephemeral and is enjoyed on the spot for exactly that reason.

When the season ends, the shops take down the beach toys and the shore goes back to being flat and empty. The toys, however, do not disappear – they merely migrate. When the tan has faded, and the fog has sealed our cities, one day we will reach beneath the back seat of the car and our hand will strike a rounded plastic edge. That cracked and faded bucket, with a few grains of dry sand rattling at the bottom, carries a certain promise: another building summer will soon arrive.

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

Zaha Hadid's sudden death at the age of 65, in 2016, was a cruel blow. Having fought so hard for her ideas, she was at the height of her career and had so much more to do. It was an incalculable loss in a world that desperately needs her sense of ambition and visionary thinking. An extraordinary architect and individual, Hadid's personality and professional output are hard to disentangle, and nowhere is this more evident than in her vast archive of drawings, models, furniture, clothing and design tools.

Step inside the Zaha Hadid Foundation and its archive

Her former tutor at the Architectural Association (AA), Rem Koolhaas, famously described her as ‘a planet in her own orbit.' The phrase aptly captures the enormity of her talent and the vivid image of a person who was constantly questioning and creating, in a class of her own. With characteristic foresight, in 2013, Hadid set up the Zaha Hadid Foundation (ZHF) with three main objectives: to support the education of young people in architecture, design and related disciplines; to take care of her archive and collections and produce exhibitions; and to establish or support a permanent museum or gallery. A few months after setting up the ZHF, she bought the site of the former Design Museum at Shad Thames, next to Tower Bridge in London, for approximately £10m. Sadly, she did not live to complete her vision for a museum there, but her team at Zaha Hadid Architects moved the archives and collections to the site in the summer of 2018 to continue the archiving process.

Hadid often seemed to live in a future world, imagining a form of architecture that was well beyond our experience. Indeed, for the first decade of her career, she struggled to find a client who would commit to her bold vision. At the same time, she was a magpie with an avid interest in the world around her. She was fascinated by culture, other architects' work, and the related disciplines of fashion, design and art. She was a keen collector and shopper, who would acquire work by a fashion graduate she had spotted at their catwalk show; or buy the same shoes or garments in several colourways.

For many architects, legacy is about the buildings they leave behind rather than the rolls of drawings and models that gather dust (or the servers full of CAD files, a struggle for museums due to constant software updates). Conventionally, an architect's output becomes part of the built fabric of society, whereas in the case of Hadid, legacy is a broader and more complex subject. There is no doubt that she changed the course of architectural practice. But in the UK – the country she chose to make her home, having grown up in Iraq – her vision was not widely accepted. Despite the advances in design thinking and construction that she led, British architecture largely consists of what her long-term friend and current ZHF trustee, Archigram co-founder Peter Cook, describes as vernacular-inspired, ‘biscuit-coloured' buildings.

During her life, Hadid completed around 35 buildings, alongside pavilions, installations, and design, furniture and fashion projects. Built work includes the Vitra Fire Station (1991) in Weil am Rhein, Phaeno Science Center (2005) in Wolfsburg (both in Germany), MAXXI Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome (2009) and the London Aquatics Centre (2012). More than 35 projects were in progress at the time of her death, including the Port Authority Building in Antwerp and the Mathematics Gallery at London's Science Museum.

Her ideas, particularly research into parametricism, virtual worlds, product design and new materials, continue to be developed by the architectural practice that now operates as ZHA. In June this year, the practice replaced her name following a court case, in which ZHA won the right to terminate the 2014 agreement that committed the company to paying six per cent of its revenue to the ZHF to continue using her name. The ruling and title change mark a new era in the practice's development. The renaming has caused controversy among many of Hadid's loyal followers, but as ZHA principal, Patrik Schumacher, says, ‘Of course, we love Zaha, and we've been working with her, the leadership and myself, for many decades, on these projects, but she's no longer with us – in spirit only – and we have a lot of new projects coming out.'

The court ruling, which came a decade after Hadid's death, also marks a new era for the ZHF under the leadership of architecture and design curator Aric Chen. Since the summer of 2025, Chen has brought a fresh wave of energy, initiating a new brand identity and website by Amsterdam-based design collective Experimental Jetset, as well as a light renovation by Studio KA of the practice's former studio, on Bowling Green Lane in Clerkenwell, which will become a public architecture centre complete with residency space and room for temporary shows and other programmes. Alongside this, the team is accelerating its work to catalogue and display Hadid's collections and archive, most of which are stored at Shad Thames.

Plans are also coming together for a major retrospective exhibition, aiming to tour Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the US. One of Chen's first moves, just a few months into the job, was to organise regular ‘Guess Who's in Town' evening events, where a mystery architect visiting London is invited to speak to an audience about their work. The sense of fun, informal debate and international glamour of these events seems an appropriate way to honour Hadid's fast-paced life, strong views and global network. Chen acknowledges that the ZHF's two properties need a lot of work, and that it will take time to plan for the future. In the meantime, his aim is for the Clerkenwell studio to provide galleries and education spaces for architectural culture, welcoming the public five days a week.

Chen has been busy creating alliances that reflect the life and work of Hadid. This autumn, to mark the relaunch of the ZHF, the team is planning a two-day, multi-venue symposium. Taking place 30-31 October (the latter being Hadid's birthday), the event will be a collaboration between the ZHF, the AA and the Serpentine, which built one of her first completed buildings, a temporary pavilion in the summer of 2000 (it was also the Serpentine's inaugural pavilion). Chen describes the planned sessions as ranging from ‘scholarship to gossip', looking at influences from the architect's early years in Baghdad and Beirut, through to her student days at the AA, her furniture and product designs, and the broader networks of clients, media and institutions in which she operated.

Over at Shad Thames, the archive is a longer-term project. The building is more than 40 years old and requires repairs. Some are ongoing. When we visit, a bucket positioned below a newly replaced rooflight catches rainwater drips - teething issues with one of the fixes to be done to ensure Hadid's collection, arguably one of the largest and most diverse archives ever created by an architect, has a safe home. The team says it is undertaking further improvements in order to maintain the progress of its inventory.

In Zaha Hadid: Complete Works, published by Thames & Hudson in 2004, US architect Greg Lynn, who taught alongside Hadid at Yale School of Architecture, wrote she ‘has always been at the epicentre of innovation of architectural communication, as well as having one of the strongest creative visions in our field... She combines painting, projective geometry, perspective, model building, computer renderings and smooth curvaceous geometric surfaces into the masses, interiors and structure of her buildings.'

The 2004 publication was a remarkable object in its own right – its red Perspex box contained four hardback volumes, of varying shapes and sizes, which seemed to explode from its sides. Lynn compared Hadid to the Italian Renaissance architect and stage designer Vincenzo Scamozzi and to Inigo Jones, the 17th-century architect, who also designed elaborate stage sets and costumes.

In the early years, Hadid's focus on ‘paper architecture' reinforced her drive to work in different formats, including set design. This work will be the subject of an exhibition at the ZHF in the newly renovated gallery in October. Curated jointly by Libby Sellers and ZHF's Catherine Howe, it will consider how Hadid's architectural language extended into immersive environments for contemporary dance, classical opera and pop music, and will include the Music Video Pavilion in Groningen, Netherlands (1990), which was commissioned for an urban festival promoting the fast-growing music video phenomenon, as well as a set for the Pet Shop Boys' Nightlife world tour (1999-2000).

Hadid's remarkable archive will be the subject of research, speculation and debate for years to come. Chen aims to make the material as accessible to students and scholars as possible, but he also faces a challenge. The ZHF consists of a team of 16, eight of whom are collections and research staff working their way through thousands of items, many of which have not been catalogued. Rolls of drawings are stacked up in tubes, with no detailed inventories. Part of the problem is that, although the entire archive covering the period up to 2016, including paintings, models and Hadid's fashion collection, was transferred from the practice to the ZHF in 2019, the digital transfer of the data, including provenance for objects in the collection, has been complicated.

Because of incompatibility between digital platforms, the ZHF collections and research teams are having to painstakingly retrieve information and add it to a new database. At the time of Hadid's death, the studio had inventorised and assigned unique archive collection numbers to roughly 17,000 objects. Given the scale of the archive and the resources available, many items had not been processed. Since then, the ZHF team has continued the documentation and cataloguing programme, resulting in a rough estimate of approximately 300,000 objects in the collection as a whole.

For Hadid, the collecting and archival process was of fundamental importance, and its origins reflect her holistic design vision. On a personal level, the collection includes her clothes (both those she collected for their design value and those she wore), shoes, handbags and furniture, together with her own designs for shoes, bags and jewellery. There are also folders of receipts from her clothing purchases, carefully put to one side. In her library, architecture books – many of them gifts from friends – sit alongside exhibition and building product catalogues, and copies of her favourite DVDs, including American Gigolo, which she reportedly used to watch on repeat.

Why did she keep all this stuff ? ‘I read into it a kind of sweet sentimentality,' says Chen. ‘She felt deeply about things, and people were important to her.' Many of the objects give an insight into Hadid's personality, and in particular, her playful side. For example, she is pictured on the cover of a publication accompanying her 1989 solo show at Arc en Rêve in Bordeaux, wearing an asymmetrical jacket that she had hand-painted, featuring a single ‘googly eye' tucked into one of its lower corners.

ZHA's head of exhibitions and archive Manon Janssens worked alongside Hadid for more than 20 years and formed a unique insight into her magpie-like ways. ‘The archive was at the centre of her practice. It was never considered a dead repository; it was very much alive and constantly consulted, revisited and used,' she notes. ‘Every detail was important to her, from the clothes she wore to how she lived at home and the office. She never threw anything away. The archive preserves not only the final outcomes but also the evidence of Zaha's creative thinking and development.'

Janssens joined the practice in 2003 as press officer. Hadid was much in demand as a speaker, and the pair often travelled around the world together, with Janssens preparing slides for lectures, responding to press requests and organising press conferences, such as for the Pritzker Prize ceremony at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg in 2004. At that stage, the archive was recorded on a series of Excel spreadsheets, with items listed mainly if they had been part of exhibitions. There was no full catalogue, but Janssens recalls ‘colourful polaroids glued to boxes to show what was inside'. She says, ‘Zaha would frequently challenge me to locate models or documents at short notice, reinforcing the need for a database that was capable of tracking all things in the archive and its continual growth.'

Janssens left in 2005 for a stint at David Chipperfield Architects, but returned in 2008 to work on the practice's exhibitions, together with Zaha Hadid Design director Woody Yao, and to set up detailed catalogues of its physical and digital assets. These operated as a research tool, while also supporting the regular requests for loans and exhibitions that came from all over the world. Having visited archives at the Tate, Royal Academy, V&A and various global practices, the decision was made to build a bespoke cataloguing system that could deal with specific Hadid requests – for example, automating printing of well-designed product booklets, linking the personal archive to an iPad app, or printing shipping labels.

The bespoke catalogue is still in operation as the brain of the renamed ZHA, but the pre-2016 objects have been physically handed over to the ZHF. While it is understandable that the ZHF chose to adopt a system designed for museum collections (TMS), the bespoke digital platform itself is arguably a Hadid-designed ‘object'. Her dedication to producing such a sophisticated tool reflects the importance of exhibitions to Hadid and the meticulous way she approached them. The system was beautifully designed with graphic icons to symbolise categories of items, and even recorded the clothing Hadid had worn to particular exhibition openings. From 1981 to date, the practice participated in and organised 250 exhibitions, ranging from installations in art galleries and private residences to loans and displays at major retrospective exhibitions, such as those that took place at the Guggenheim in New York (2006), the Design Museum in London (2007), the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg (2015), the Palazzo Franchetti in Venice (2016) or, most recently, at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning in Shenzhen (2026).

Hadid's creation of the ZHF and her dedication to collecting were part of her commitment to making a better world, and that vision was inseparable from design innovation. The founding document of the charity specifically states that it should ‘advance the public knowledge of modern architecture…and the parametric style.' Today, in the UK at least, parametricism – a style that was synonymous with Hadid – seems out of step with a culture that is more interested in small-scale, artisanal approaches to making buildings. So it seems fair to ask, how will the ZHF be true to Hadid, as well as being, as Chen puts it, ‘relevant to our time'?

Chen believes the notion that Hadid was futuristic is reductive: ‘It relies on a singular notion of what the future looks like,' he says. ‘Zaha was immersed in the present – she didn't think she was futuristic. She was about invention and imagination, re-envisioning spatiality and the ways we live and operate in the here and now.' He chuckles, recalling the famous quote of French philosopher Paul Valéry, ‘The trouble with our times is that the future isn't what it used to be'.

zhfoundation.com

Wallpaper’s 30th-anniversary, October 2026 Guest Editors’ Issue – with guest-edited sections by Es Devlin, Carrie Mae Weems and Palace Skateboards – is available from 3 September, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Perched on a sleepy residential road in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Kitsilano is a contemporary, cabin-like home. Designed by Canadian firm Scott and Scott Architects (past projects include a farmhouse on the country's West Coast), the house was crafted with longevity in mind, slotting neatly into its leafy plot, garnished with mature oak trees.

Step inside Kitsilano House

Much like its surrounding context – the neighbourhood is known for its outdoorsy aesthetic with streets selling activewear and outdoor gear – Kitsilano House feels suited to a grounded way of living. The design is put together with two distinct parts: the first is a more robust volume, while the other is a delicate ‘cabin’, which is under a canopy of flowering rhododendrons and magnolia trees. Much like a dainty bird's nest nestled within the branches of a sturdy tree.

The clients approached David Scott, founder of the firm, with a desire for a crafted home that would feel like a family heirloom. ‘The site of the home is a stretch of a corridor which is in transition from bungalows to taller, denser buildings,’ explains Scott. ‘Our objective was to design a home which has both a gentle strength and a form of privacy which would be generous to the neighbourhood.’

The result was a residence that offered a living and dining area within the solid-feeling concrete base. On the terrace, a series of flowering trees would create a natural screen to secure more private bedrooms on the two timber floors.

The lower floors have white walls and a western clerestory window to frame the evening sun and bring gentle light in. The living room is tucked into this north side of the house. In contrast to the walls of the street-level living spaces, the home's central core is clad in locally sourced Douglas fir boards extending upwards through the bedroom floors and down into the movie room below. A soothing atmosphere is underlined by the sounds of morning birdsong from the canopy's wild residents. Shelving is built into the walls to display the client’s ceramics, both made and collected.

Scott, who also designed Osler House, a midcentury gem in Vancouver, loves that Kitsilano House is always changing, saying, ‘On the exterior, the plants and split cedar siding and fencing are evolving each season. The joinery within the home is all solid wood, while the cabinetry tops and handrails are all finished in leather to be durable, all of which will show use and age.’

It is these small details that Scott wants to highlight, as they magnify the history of the house and the materials of the region. He notes, ‘The base of the house was formed with the boards from the small bungalow which preceded it, and the hand-split cedar boards, interior fir, and the oak tables which we made in our studio were all sourced from small mills on Vancouver Island.’

A distinct sense of calm permeates all areas at Kitsilano House. As the residence is designed to evolve with time, the shadows and light which disperse through the space add a cinematic quality. Scott concludes, ‘Vancouver has a long grey rainy season which leads to a month in the spring where the quiet streets come alive with magnolias, rhododendrons and wisteria. We wanted to make a home where the warmth of the wood is comforting during winter and which celebrates this colourful spring moment.’

scottandscott.ca

The Pan-African Biennale 2026 is gearing up to launch on 7 September in Nairobi, Kenya, marking an important global milestone – the continent's first-ever dedicated architecture platform, focusing solely on the built environment of Africa. The emphasis is on creativity and thought leadership from within African countries, rather than from the outside looking in – so exhibits will share spatial stories and designs from African or diasporic studios.

What is the Pan-African Biennale 2026?

The event's inaugural curator, Somali-Italian architect Omar Degan, discussed the festival's mission, vision and scope with us a year ago, and he explained how he hopes it will grow into an important platform for discourse and experimentation in the African continent. Degan (whose past works include Arbe, a Somali café for the community in Mogadishu) worked with the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK) and its president, architect George A Ndege, to develop the festival, which is due to open next week.

Degan is keen to create a biennale that 'belongs to all of Africa', he explained at the time.

The Pan-African Biennale 2026 theme and structure

The inaugural biennale's theme is Shifting the Center: From Fragility to Resilience. From there, the curator organised the displays around five key topics: 'Shifting the Center', 'Ecologies of Repair', 'Living Archives and Embodied Knowledge', 'Imagining Otherwise, on African futures', and 'Pan-Africanism, the Centre in Motion'.

In a break from a more country-focused approach, the show is organised by climatic zone. Degan explains: 'Practices are grouped by the conditions they actually work in, so the Sahel sits with the Sahel and the coast sits with the coast, and the national border, which was drawn elsewhere and imposed later, does not structure the room. What unifies a group is what nature established and what extraction has done to it, not what a treaty decided.

'Two practices two thousand kilometres apart and separated by four borders often share a soil, a rainfall pattern, a building material and a history of removal, and once the work is arranged that way, the shared knowledge becomes visible immediately. It also removes the comparison the pavilion model invites, where visitors move from country to country, keeping score. Here you move through conditions.'

Brief and exhibitors

There are a total of 54 exhibitors across the Pan-African Biennale 2026 – at least one practice, collective or individual per country. The responses vary, as uniformity was never the goal, the organisers explain. The point was for every nation to be represented. Kenya, as the host, is prominently represented by a group of studios who were asked to work together on a single piece.

Exhibitors were asked to bring their own work and knowledge in a way that relates to the five main themes – 'what the land is doing, what has been inherited and is still being used, what is being archived or lost, and what is being imagined next', Degan explains. They had to show 'evidence rather than image' in order to present process and information rather than focus on aesthetics and an overly curated image. 'The biennale is arguing that African spatial knowledge exists in abundance and has simply not been assembled in one place before, so the brief had to invite proof of that rather than representation of it,' Degan adds.

How were exhibitors selected?

There was no open call for participation for the inaugural Pan-African Biennale. The exhibits were selected through curatorial decisions, which were rooted in local realities and key questions that the event as a whole sought to address: climate, urbanisation, material culture, and future spatial imaginaries.

'The founding position matters here,' Degan says. 'The biennale does not operate a national pavilion model, because that model has always required a country to fund and secure its own representation, which quietly decides in advance which nations appear and which do not. Selecting from within removes that filter. This is the first time African spatial practices have convened under a single curatorial framework built from within the continent.'

Meanwhile, Africa is addressed not merely as a geography but as a range of diasporic cultures, too. As a result, the biennale is a mixture of Africa-based works and diasporic practices. 'The same reasoning produces the climatic organisation of the show,' adds the curator. 'We are grouping people by the conditions and histories they share, not by the lines on a map or the passports they hold.'

Pan-African Biennale 2026 venues

The Kenyatta International Convention Centre is the main biennale hub, hosting the opening and closing events – but the event as a whole is spread across several other venues, mostly in the Ngara district of Naibori. The spaces and activities include an evening film programme at Unseen Nairobi drawn from an international open call.

Degan's intention was to use the city as a continuous backdrop to the biennale, rather than concentrate it all in a single venue where everything unfolds internally, separate from city life.

Programming beyond the exhibits

Beyond the main show and its five topics, a wealth of public programming aims to bring the architectural debate alive and engage with visitors and the wider public. This will include five days of keynote addresses, institutional dialogues, public panels, workshops and site-based encounters. There is also the evening film programme at Unseen Nairobi, selected through an international open call.

Meanwhile, New York's Van Alen Institute has revived its Paris Prize, which has been dormant for three decades. For the biennale, it will be relaunched as the Re:Paris Prize, 'The [prize's] history is the point,' says Degan. 'From 1904 to 1997, the prize sent young architects to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and its winners included William Van Alen himself. It defined architectural merit from a single Western vantage point for over a century. The relaunched prize turns that around, towards reparative and regenerative urbanism across the post-colonial world.'

The winning group will be announced in Nairobi on 10 September, allowing the chosen architects to carry out field research within the continent, 'with an emphasis on communities that have long navigated displacement and exclusion'.

The biennale's future

The Pan-African Biennale's concept is that it will move to a different African city every two years. Nairobi is just the first stop.

Access and tickets

The Pan-African Biennale 2026 will remain open to the public across its Nairobi venues, from 7 to 11 September 2026. General admission to the exhibition and the talks is free.

Tickets and venue details are available at panafricanbiennale.org

Solange Calio Arquitetos has completed a single-storey house in São Paulo’s Catanduva municipality for a doctor, a businessman and their family. Characterised by clean lines, expressive materials and a dynamic interior/exterior relationship, the new house takes up a generous 517 sq m on a 1,000 sq m plot.

Discover the new Solange Calio house design

The house’s low, linear appearance is complemented by the living spaces’ proximity to the courtyard garden, a landscape designed by LF Paisagismo. Outdoor spaces include covered dining terrace, pool, as well as a pond surrounded by mature trees and shrubs with seating areas scattered around the garden. ‘We designed large openings with fully retractable doors, allowing, for example, the dining room, TV room, and [outdoor] gourmet area to be completely integrated depending on the occasion,’ says Solange.

Inside, warmth is created thanks to the reclaimed wood cladding across many of the vertical and horizontal surfaces. Sanded and treated, the timber is taken back to a light tone that matches the chromium-grey cement floor coatings and Itaúnas granite countertops.

The interior programme includes a large kitchen and dining room, alongside a TV room, a playroom and a powder room, with a children’s suite, primary suite and utility spaces. The playroom is designed so that it can eventually become a second child’s bedroom.

Fixtures, furniture and fittings were acquired specially for the project, including reclaimed timber table, armchairs, and sofa by Carlos Motta and bar stools by Guilherme Wentz. The dining chairs are ‘Senior’ by Jorge Zalszupin, while the bedroom includes ‘Platô’ armchairs by Lucas Neves. Other bespoke elements are designed by the studio.

‘Developing this project was extremely rewarding because the site was excellent and, from the beginning, the clients were very confident in what they wanted,‘ the architects says. ‘Our greatest challenge was meeting both our own expectations and theirs, creating a home that is modern, minimalist, and at the same time full of personality.‘

The overall feel – that of living on a permanent vacation – is carried throughout the indoor and outdoor space, making this a house to enjoy as well as occupy.

SolangeCalio.com.br