Those who entered Berlin in the West after 1979 passed a building that felt like an alien entity wedged between a stark, mid-1930s exhibition centre, a motorway, and a turn-of-the-century neighbourhood. The unusual structure was squat and elongated, with spiral staircases protruding like insect legs from its exoskeleton; it seemed frozen in a mechanical forward motion. Still there to this day, the ICC is one of Berlin’s great sleeping giants: a building once constructed with a single function in mind, like decommissioned airports or an animal testing facility; and it is now waiting for its new purpose.

The ICC (Internationales Congress Centrum), designed by the couple Ralf Schüler and Ursulina Schüler-Witte, was conceived to serve conferences. It features two large auditoriums, seating five and two thousand bodies respectively, and about eighty smaller spaces, restaurants and a roof garden, at a scale that rivalled East Berlin’s multifunctional Palast der Republik or Paris’s Centre Pompidou.

Explore the soon-to-be-transformed ICC Berlin

At the time of its completion, locals called it a spaceship, with its visible structure and multi-level exterior staircases. Clad in metal, futuristic in appearance, it looked like a machine in a landscape shaped by automobile traffic. It is almost inaccessible to pedestrians, wrote architecture critic Julius Posener in 1979: ‘People have to sneak into this menacing building,’ he lamented. It is awkwardly placed, isolated from the city, like a self-contained, self-propelled engine for economic growth. Accessing it from the underground taxi deck, people would be guided through areas, seemingly processed as if on an assembly line, from reception to auditorium, from restaurant to toilet.

The ICC’s carapace was intended to shield it from noise and vibration, making the metal cladding functional and not just an aesthetic nod to the space age. However, the comparison with the Centre Pompidou does it no favours, because the Paris building - said Posener in 1979 - is embedded in a city and in a network of streets at a pedestrian scale. It does a much better job at inviting visitors in.

The whole building with its elaborate ventilation system - conference attendees apparently smoked profusely at its time of completion - needed to be rebooted like an old desktop computer if it wasn’t in permanent use. It rarely operated at full capacity and was deemed inefficient and too expensive. So, since 2014, the ICC has been out of use. It took five years, until 2019, for the structure to be listed as a historical monument. Little happened there, save for a large-scale art show during the COVID pandemic.

In 2022, an initiative led by local PR specialists and architects pushed the gargantuan building back into the public eye by suggesting it be open 24/7 and available for cultural use. In the autumn of 2024, actors across the political spectrum initiated a competition for ideas and designs. Given the pace of redevelopment elsewhere in Berlin - Tegel or Tempelhof airports, for example - a decade between closure and project initiative seems relatively short.

On a sweltering day in late June, not far from the ICC, the news was unveiled that a partnership of nine architecture studios and engineering firms was taking on the project. They have two and a half years to enable the redevelopment. ‘The aim,’ says Björn Werner, architect at Max Dudler, one of the nine partners, ‘is to breathe life back into the building.’

First, what’s needed is a viable concept. Graft and Max Dudler, two of the partnering firms, envision multiple uses. Bike paths will connect the site to the neighbourhood; there will be more green. The site should cease to be a blind spot that is scorching hot in the summer and devastatingly grey in winter. The partnership proposes to add two high-rises opposite the ICC's northern and southern facades to connect them to the complex, creating plazas and opening up the currently closed-off structure.

The aim is to draw on the ICC’s existing formal language but make it sleeker. For the inside, the partners are thinking about different formats. Concerts, for example; the Berlin Philharmonic could use the venue. Or, after some adjustments, the auditoriums could house table tennis tournaments or boxing matches.

One of them might turn into an exhibition space, and the unused rooms spread throughout the building could become artists’ or recording studios. The ideas are many; little is settled. ’The formal language of the building gives us a lot of orientation: the way the car park extends under the structure, which seems to prop itself up via the staircases; the materiality, the rounded corners, variability of the facade, horizontality, layering, the transitions of the body to its exterior,’ says Graft’s Thomas Willemeit.

Flexibility is one of the words Willemeit and Björn Werner use a lot when talking about their project on this summer day in the Graft office on a street corner in Berlin-Mitte: ‘To grant the ground floor expression is essential.’ These are problems that Posener outlined at the close of the 1970s show; the then-architecture tackled other problems than what is required for present day operations. The past era's promises of an automobile-centric city have not been fulfilled. On the contrary, they turned into an urban nightmare. In the 2020s neighbourhoods and urbanity are more connected, fewer cars are used and pedestrian lifestyles are prefered.

‘In Berlin, we have been led to believe that large-scale projects - like the transformation of the two airports - proceed very slowly,’ explains Willemeit. ‘We need unconventional partnerships to find commercially viable solutions, and we shouldn’t wait for a single international player to give us one.’

Another idea is for the new ICC to be open to all, without a ticket, staying accessible late into the night. A possible model for that is Oodi, Helsinki’s central library, which provides space to make music, play video games, and study. Public space, such as that of a library with a multitude of uses, is vital for an open society. Werner adds: ‘We can turn this symbol of failure and stasis into a symbol. It is possible when municipality, investors, and cultural politics get together.’

When asked why they took on such a volatile project, Willemeit muses on the decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when East and West experienced tech-fuelled optimism. ‘This building, spaceship on the outside, plush on the inside, embodies this hope for the future.’ He adds: ‘As architects, we have a great affinity to positive visions of the future.’

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Tomás Saraceno is preoccupied with the essential in life. For the Argentinian-born artist, elements such as water and salt – and the less welcome dust and spiderwebs – form the basis for epic, community-minded projects at the intersection of art and science.

With past projects, including 2015’s Aerocene Foundation, a movement that saw aerosolar sculptures rise in fossil-fuel-free flight that set 32 world records in the process, Saraceno has prioritised a focus on eco-social justice. He examines all his works in context, weaving links with local communities throughout and welcoming community participation.

Saraceno, who has had solo exhibitions at the Serpentine, Palais de Tokyo and SFMOMA, now unveils a major takeover of Munich’s historic Haus der Kunst museum. 'Ancestral Futures' builds on several facets of Saraceno’s thought, from his work into the behaviour of spiders to an exploration into the possibilities of air.

‘We are looking at pluralistic futures, with an s at the end,’ says Saraceno on the exhibition’s multi-faceted nature. ‘There are many futures - the futures of the spiders, the futures of the community, the futures of other forms of knowing.’

The exhibition’s subject matter may be disparate, but it is united by a sense of connection, epitomised most literally in Algo-r(h)i(y)thms (2019), an installation made up of suspended ropes that vibrate in deep and satisfying tones when pinged or flicked. Truly immersive, it is strictly hands on, and visitors are encouraged to crawl, hop or navigate their way through the sensory maze. It is an accumulation of Saraceno’s research into the habits of spiders, and an immersive and effective tribute to their collective way of existing.

Water, too, is central to Saraceno’s vision here, and the exhibition marks the unveiling of a permanent piece of land art created by Saraceno, working in close collaboration with the Indigenous communities of Red Atacama, Las Salinas Grandes in Northern Argentina, in their fight against the rapid depletion of ground water. Whether gently pooled in immersive other worlds Saraceno creates here, or contained in mountains of salt crystals which crunch underfoot, water is omnipresent.

‘The community have been trying to strongly convey the message, telling me for almost 15 years, all you do for the air is wonderful, but watch the water,' says Saraceno, 'focus on what is really important. Without water, nobody can live. It is fundamental for everybody, and not only for us as humans, but for the whole ecosystem we are part of.’

It was crucial for Saraceno to draw attention to the water crisis in an immersive, almost playful way. In the vast halls of the Haus der Kunst, visitors – adults, children and dogs – are encouraged to touch and to play.

‘When you stop playing, you stop learning and usually we stop playing at a certain age,' the artist says. 'Artists allow us to keep playing for longer. Let's enjoy it. Let's build something with joy and hope, and then hopefully we will learn something.’

'Tomás Saraceno. Ancestral Futures' is on view at the Haus der Kunst until 7 February 2027

Munich is the victim of more than its fair share of lazy Bavarian clichés, but beyond the beer halls and lederhosen lies a city with a far richer creative history than many visitors realise. ‘There are certain cities I feel like I just get very fast,’ says interior designer Tatjana von Stein, whose largest hotel project to date opens there this month. ‘Munich I found a little bit harder to grasp, if I'm totally honest.’

The admission is perhaps surprising. Von Stein was born in Munich to a German father and French mother before moving to the Austrian Tyrol as a young child. Now based in London, designing the latest offering from Irish-born lifestyle hotel brand The Dean has offered an opportunity to rediscover her birthplace from a fresh perspective.

What von Stein found was a city whose cultural identity proved far more layered than its reputation suggests. In the hotel’s Westend neighbourhood she discovered a burgeoning creative community, where pottery studios, wine bars and independent restaurants sit side by side, reminding her of her home in London. ‘Two big movements really came roaring out of the research: Jugendstil (the German and Austrian interpretation of Art Nouveau)... and the music industry (which boomed there in the 1980s). That really surprised me,’ she says. ‘I don't feel Munich is known for that kind of music scene at all.’

These seemingly disparate movements became the basis for the 281-room hotel’s interior, which oozes the sort of sultry sophistication that has become a hallmark of von Stein’s work, albeit dialled up a few notches. Working within the framework of an existing postmodern hotel, von Stein retained elements where possible – including the black stone floors in the lobby – before completely reimagining the public spaces as a sequence of increasingly theatrical interiors.

Wallpaper* checks in at The Dean Munich

What are the design standouts?

In the lobby, guests are greeted by softly curved Art Nouveau-inspired forms and floral motifs paired with flashes of 1980s glamour – lacquered finishes, reflective surfaces and polished metals that bring softness and warmth. A cream lacquer wall is set with stainless steel lighting by Cologne-based Studio Kuhlmann. ‘I don't want people to walk into a space and understand everything immediately,’ says von Stein of the design-era mash up. ‘I like nuance and discovery.’

Throughout the hotel, curator Christian Ganzenberg's site-specific art programme provides another layer of interpretation. Rather than attempting to match the interiors, the contemporary works deliberately create moments of friction – something von Stein sees as one of the project's strengths. 'Sometimes tension can be wonderful,' she says. 'Different people see and feel different things.'

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Further inside at Ibasho, a Japanese restaurant with a menu conceived by consultant chef Alex Craciun, the palette becomes warmer. Stained-glass screens reinterpret Jugendstil motifs in a more geometric language while apertures in the partitions frame views through the space. A glossy C-shaped bar and sunken seating area, topped by a mirrored ceiling, create a cosy cocktail spot within the restaurant. Rust-coloured carpets woven with floral motifs soften the room, in one instance climbing up the back of a banquette.

Vintage pieces, including designs by Josef Hoffmann, sit alongside von Stein's own bespoke furniture featuring fringing, velvet upholstery and glossy black veneer. The effect is one of controlled decadence: richly layered without ever tipping into excess.

Where to switch off?

‘I've always been obsessed with flow and tempo,’ she says of the hidden speakeasy. ‘Like the spaces are revving up, if you know what I mean.’ At The Dean, the interiors build to a crescendo in Noren, a small but richly decorated bar with a timber-lined ceiling that sits behind Ibasho. Here, tiger print sits alongside glossy timber, tapestry-style banquettes, mountain-inspired wallpaper and a lacquered bar illuminated by vintage Gabriella Crespi bamboo lamps, while custom lime-green Friendly Pressure speakers mounted to the ceiling inject an unexpected note of playfulness. Von Stein’s affection for this space is clear: ‘it’s such a vibe – an explosion of indulgence’.

The room to book

If the public spaces are designed as a crescendo, the guestrooms provide the exhale. Rather than starting from scratch, von Stein worked within the framework of the existing hotel, refreshing the rooms with new furniture, textiles and joinery while retaining much of the original architecture. Muted greens, soft curves and tactile finishes temper the visual exuberance of the public spaces below, creating rooms intended to restore.

The verdict

‘I would say we're primarily hospitality designers, and I think the part I love about that is the fact that we get to indulge in the story,' she reflects. Asked what unites her increasingly varied portfolio, von Stein is reluctant to pin it down. ‘I'm such an intuitive designer,’ she says. ‘It simply has to feel right.’ Judging by The Dean Munich, that instinct is remarkably well calibrated.

The Dean Munich is located at Landsberger Str. 68, 80339 München, Germany. Rates: €225 per night.

A new addition to the Vitra Campus, 'Water Garden' by Bas Smets, marks the start of summer for the celebrated furniture manufacturer and its famous headquarters on the Swiss-German border. Launched today (17 June 2026), during Art Basel, the design is a highly site-specific piece by the Belgian landscape architect – and one that is more than it might initially seem.

It's been a tradition for the Vitra home in Weil am Rhein to unveil an exciting new project on its campus every summer. Water Garden follows Vitra's reveal last year of Doshi Retreat, 2024's Khudi Bari, and 2023's Tane Garden House. This time, the offering is the result of a long and ongoing collaboration between Smets and the manufacturer. The aim? To make the latter's large campus, full of landmark architecture, more climate resilient.

Explore Bas Smets’ Water Garden at the Vitra Campus

The patch of land that is now transformed, in true Smets-style, into the fresh, living, breathing ecosystem that is the Water Garden, sits right by Frank Gehry’s Vitra Design Museum. It all started in 2023, when Smets proposed planting 8,000 young trees across the site in order to establish 'micro-forests' based on the principles of Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, who argued for the restoration of ecosystems by mimicking the way natural forests grow and evolve. It formed a thoughtful response to Vitra's mission to rewild its home.

'The first building on the campus was a factory and office building completed in 1954. It was built on what had previously been a garden. So, the campus began with the destruction of a beautiful natural site. And over the following decades, with the expansion of factory space, many cherry trees disappeared without anyone questioning the loss,' says Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman emeritus at Vitra.

'A shift in thinking began in 1994 with Tadao Ando’s conference building, which was placed within a cherry orchard so carefully that only three trees had to be removed. This marked the first moment when the relationship between architecture and nature was reconsidered on the campus. Tree planting began in front of the VitraHaus by Herzog & de Meuron in 2010, followed by the first comprehensive landscape plan developed with Günther Vogt around 2015. But the true breakthrough came with the Oudolf Garden in 2021 – a project that felt like a reconciliation with the earlier decades of destruction. With the garden as a new point of reference, every aspect of the campus was re-examined through a different lens.'

The Water Garden plot is centred on a large pond. It is wrapped in trees and aquatic vegetation, with an emphasis on biodiversity and resilience, as the species were carefully positioned and selected to attract birds and support fish, allowing wildlife to thrive within the campus. Some 500 cubic metres of earth were dug out to make the pond, and were then used to make the berm surrounding it.

'It is this beautiful combination of landscape architecture and art,' Smets says, highlighting the way he hopes his work will grow to play a role within the wider campus, amid the classic works by the likes of Gehry, Ando, Balkrishna Doshi, Zaha Hadid and more. Smets continues to explain: 'The landscape is also something that connects all these objects, which changes the relationship [between them].'

Working with Vitra was an exciting challenge and fruitful collaboration for Smets. 'I love the idea that they're so used to testing a chair before it goes into the market [and] I thought, “OK, let's prototype a landscape”, and they wanted me to do it,' he says. 'No city would want you to prototype. They want the real thing now, right?'

More is yet to come. Beyond the growth and care of the wider project across the site, at Water Garden, three large-scale ceramic sculptures by designer Hella Jongerius – part of her Angry Animals series – are set to be installed as fountains. Plans won't stop there, Fehlbaum explains. Right now, a fish-shaped bench by Doshi and a small, original demountable 4x4 prefabricated house by Jean Prouvé are also positioned by the pond.

'With the Oudolf Garden in mind, we looked at all aspects of the campus with new eyes,’ says Fehlbaum. ‘It was at this moment that Bas entered the picture. He analysed the entire site and proposed a long-term ecological strategy that would gradually transform the campus biosphere. The first visible result is the Miyawaki Forest, followed by the Water Garden. More steps will follow: reducing paved surfaces, planting additional Miyawaki forests, and continuing to restore biodiversity across the grounds.'

The Water Garden opens to the public on 17 June 2026 at Vitra Campus, Charles-Eames-Straße 2, 79576 Weil am Rhein, Germany

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vitra.com

Casele began with a Sunday walk. Raffaele Colonna – the restaurant’s German-Italian owner, chef, host and sommelier – was strolling through Glockenbach, one of Munich's more colourful neighbourhoods: dense with independent addresses, shaped by a long queer history along Müllerstraße, and the kind of place where a culturally alert crowd still does its own grocery shopping. He chanced upon a vacant shop on the street: the former Schlagbauer, a family butcher that had anchored the neighbourhood for 75 years before closing in March 2024. Colonna recognised its potential immediately.

Wallpaper* dines at Casele, Munich

The mood: A mash-up of mahogany and British racing green

Casele – short for Casa di Raffaele – is what followed: a southern Italian restaurant and bar with no interest in diluting its provenance for its postcode. Somewhat quixotically, diners enter through the bustling kitchen and into a courtyard festooned with the hanging laundry of the building’s residents above. One half expects a young Sofia Loren to lean out over a balcony crooning a saucy ditty, which is the point. ‘It does not read like a branded restaurant concept,’ says Colonna, ‘but more like an extension of its host – personal, informal, a little idiosyncratic.’

Local design studio, Holzrausch – founded by Tobias Petri and Sven Petzold – worked with Colonna to keep the butcher’s shop skeleton intact. ‘Instead of smoothing the past away,’ says Petri, ‘we kept the old counter, the cooling rooms and the logic of the place alive.’

Around that armature are layers of coffered timber ceilings, pale glazed wall tiles, dark green stone at the bar, stainless-steel elements and brass lighting. Velvet banquettes in British racing green – a nod to Colonna’s love of classic cars – sit alongside blush-toned upholstered chairs and vintage pieces. One room goes further still: a boardroom from a large Munich insurance company was rebuilt on a one-to-one scale inside the restaurant, giving that corner of Casele a strangely intact, almost cinematic second life.

Art circulates rather than decorates: mirror works by Alexander Deubl and lighting pieces by OHA here, mixed-media works by Stefanie Seethaler and flash photographs by Dylan Don there. ‘The logic is intuitive rather than formal,’ says Petri of the curation. ‘Whatever feels stranger, sharper or less expected than the obvious choice.’

The food: Naples by way of a Glockenbach butcher’s shop

Channelling Colonna’s own heritage, the menu is unapologetically southern Italian: fried octopus with chickpeas and Sicilian capers; aubergine involtini with Provolone DOP and San Marzano tomato; Paccheri Genovese with beef shank and eight-hour onions. ‘My cooking is built on product and memory,’ he says, ‘but handled with enough precision to keep it from turning nostalgic.’

The wine list – Ferrari Perlé 2018, Antinori Tignanello 2022, Gaja Barbaresco 2012, several vintages of Sassicaia – reflects years of nurtured relationships with producers, estates visited, and long evenings with the growers behind the bottles. At the bar, the cocktail programme is as idiosyncratic as the interior. ‘Guests can simply say what they feel like drinking,’ says Colonna, ‘and have something mixed around that.’

Casele – Cucina e Bar del Sud is located at Müllerstrasse 25, 80469 Munich, Germany; Reservations essential; the dining room is currently booked three to four months ahead. Walk-ins welcome at the bar.

Frankfurt Airport has a striking new interior look, courtesy of German architects LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture). Terminal 3's Marketplace, the communal waiting and leisure space just beyond security at the major German transport hub, has been thoroughly redesigned to elevate the travel experience, using 'computational design tools and human-centred spatial strategies', the architects explain.

Discover the new Frankfurt airport interior by LAVA

Airports are complex places. There are health and safety logistics, as well as lots of restrictions and multiple layers (such as circulation areas for ground staff, visitors, and airline employees) to consider, before even getting to an aesthetic approach.

LAVA, founded in 2007 by Chris Bosse, Alexander Rieck, and Tobias Wallisser, has a base in Berlin and Stuttgart, as well as Ho Chi Minh City and Sydney, and is known for not shying away from a challenge.

The studio has tackled complex, multi-layered briefs before – including masterplans, civic infrastructure and the German Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka – and functions as a laboratory, often working with digital technology to help guide the team to the best possible solutions. This was also the case here, at Frankfurt Airport.

Rieck, partner at LAVA, says: 'The goal was to transform waiting times in a liminal space into moments of reflection and wellbeing [through careful design], enhancing the travel experience with digital processes. With the Terminal 3 Marketplace, we’ve created a transient space that invites people to stay.'

Working with notions of 'movement, pause, and daylight', the team organised their floorplan as an 'archipelago' of spatial moments. These 'islands' present as large-scale terrazzo-clad elements. They hold different functions, such as retail, dining, and a lounge.

Cones forming in a fluid, parametric, 'lava-like' ceiling above help define these areas, bringing everything together visually, too, and creating an important architectural centrepiece for the design. They also incorporate skylights, which bring natural light into the airport hall, which will help calibrate 'the circadian rhythm of international travellers crossing time zones', the architecture team explains.

'With the Terminal 3 Marketplace, we are creating a central space that enhances the passenger experience beyond functionality. In collaboration with LAVA, we have developed an environment that responds to the complexity of airport operations while offering clarity, comfort, and orientation for travellers,' says Harald Rohr, managing director (technical affairs) with Fraport, which operates the terminal.

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'You are invited to build something, maybe to demolish something. You are invited to build with others. You are invited also not to build and just stay looking at others working,' says Lithuanian artist Lina Lapelyte of her installation of 400,000 wood cubes at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. The cubes, chunked from trees from her homeland, spread out and pile up in the 2,500 sq m space like a giant construction site awaiting human hands

While architect Friedrich Neuhaus conceived the space as a handsome train station in the mid-19th century, with ease of travel in mind, Lapelyte has transformed what is today a voluminous gallery into a place of interaction and experimentation.

Although the vision might initially suggest ‘kindergarten’, the artist touches on many aspects within her work – community, improvisation and creation among them. The installation is accompanied by live performances featuring locals singing poetic verses that Lapelyte, musically trained, has translated into moving scores. The exhibition’s title, ‘We Make Years Out of Hours’, borrowed from Jürgen Paape, a German electronic music producer and DJ, invites one to slow down and appreciate the impact of rumination and playful action.

'It is perhaps the small things that count – the one tiny cube that measures ten by ten – when we build together, turning a space into a landscape, into an environment, into a building. When we have a voice of one, it's one thing, but when we have a choir, it becomes another thing. For me, this work is very much about believing in small gestures, in small connections, in our relationships as well; in humanity,' says Lapelyte.

She held an open call for performers. 'There is a sailor, there is a theatre producer, there are some dancers, singers, actors, and some who had never performed. Then we all try to find a way to be within the piece and it's beautiful how we open up, accept the other, and that's what the work is about.’

The sculptural/polyphonic installation is the second Chanel Culture Fund commission at the museum, following 2025’s project with artist Klára Hosnedlová. The three-year programme supports female artists with big visions who create at scale.

‘In the industrial age, people would be running around to catch their trains. What we see here is very dedicated and distilled,' says Yana Peel, president of arts, culture & heritage at Chanel. She first came across Lapelyte’s work in 2014, but it was her operatic piece, Sun & Sea (Marina), for the Venice Biennale in 2019 (winning the Golden Lion) that cemented her reputation as a leading voice. For that piece, set on a faux indoor beach, performers in sunhats and swimsuits sang about the impact of climate change. That stealthy subversion of expectations and genres is a Lapelyte hallmark.

'Deep in my heart, I am a musician, but for me, music was never just about performing a score. For me, music is also about listening and how we listen to the world. Music is a metaphor,' she says. ‘We Make Years Out of Hours’ was gestating in her mind when the invitation for the commission arrived, and Hamburger Bahnhof provided the ideal immersive space with the vaults creating superb acoustics. 'The Chanel Culture Fund generously invites an artist to envision an artwork that probably would be hard without that kind of support and openness,' she adds.

As Peel says, it is great to see so many extraordinary female artists taking up significant space right now: Rose Wylie, Tracey Emin, and Klára Hosnedlová among them. 'Lina’s vision is a non-monument in a sense and really brave,' says Peel, who collaborates with Hamburger Bahnhof directors Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath on the commission.

The Chanel Culture Fund does not build museums or permanent collections, explains Peel, but strengthens existing institutions essential to their home cities. It currently has 42 projects across 15 countries. 'We invest not with the next quarter in mind, but the next generation,' she says of the distinct cultural patronage.

In November 2025, Chanel opened the Espace Gabrielle Chanel at Shanghai’s Power Station of Art, designed by Japanese architect Kazunari Sakamoto. It is the first public art library dedicated to contemporary art in Mainland China. Recently, the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland and the Chanel Culture Fund announced the appointment of a Chanel Botanical Curator, the first of its kind at a major arts institution.

As Lapelyte’s installation in Berlin suggests, big change, both societally and personally, starts brick by brick and in incremental steps – and ideally, with sonic interludes.

‘Lina Lapelyte. We Make Years Out of Hours’, until 10 January 2027, smb.museum

Brought to life in sultry technicolour by award-winning hospitality interior designer Rachael Gowdridge, The Dean Berlin embodies the German capital’s unique character with a considered offering that feels intimate and tailored specifically to the needs of today’s urban traveller. Located in a historic west Berlin neighbourhood, a stone’s throw from one of the city’s main arteries, the hotel’s 81 rooms and thoughtfully designed communal spaces act as a cosy base from which to get to know one of the world’s most layered cultural destinations.

The first of two culture-rich lifestyle hotels opened by The Dean Group in Germany – with its new Munich outpost following quickly behind – The Dean Berlin offers a modern take on hospitality, balancing a no-frills approach to on-site amenities and services with a refined, design-led architectural standard that includes a curation of artworks from local artists and galleries.

The Dean Group has teamed up with Berlin brunch favourite Benedict for its ground-floor bar and restaurant, serving breakfast classics from early in the morning until all the way into the evening, positioning the hotel as a daytime social hub while embracing local food culture. Here's what else to expect from your stay.

Wallpaper* checks in at The Dean Berlin

What’s on your doorstep?

Situated in a peaceful Charlottenburg neighbourhood just a 10-minute walk from Berlin’s most famous shopping street, Kurfürstendamm, The Dean offers itself as a gateway to the elevated shopping, dining and entertainment experiences the west side of Berlin has built its legacy on. Local highlights include the Zoo Palast cinema, C/O Berlin photography gallery, the Helmut Newton Foundation and Schwarzes Café – a legendary café that has been attracting artists and writers since 1978. Meanwhile, more ambitious explorers enjoy easy access to public transit in order to explore the full breadth of the city, with multiple U-bahn (metro), S-bahn (overground) and mainline train stations within strolling distance of the hotel. The hotel even has bicycles available for hire, inviting guests to explore the city like a local.

Who’s behind the design?

British designer Rachael Gowdridge has breathed new life into a late-19th-century building with interiors that centre the building’s multi-faceted history. Original architectural details collide with punchy colour schemes, sculptural lighting and avant-garde aesthetics, bringing a confident sense of Berlin’s personality into each aspect of the hotel.

Having previously worked for hospitality-specialised practices Martin Brudnizki Design Studio and Ennismore International, before launching her own studio in 2021, Gowdridge is well-versed in employing design principles and intuition to shape premium hospitality experiences. Amenities and services are kept to a minimum, but the considered design ensures that the needs of the modern traveller are met with ample desk and seating space, atmospheric lighting and a number of options for connectivity and entertainment.

‘From the outset, we thought carefully about how people actually travel today and how the hotel could support those shifting rhythms. Hotels are no longer just places to sleep: they’re spaces where guests might work, meet, socialise or simply pause between experiencing the city,' Gowdridge says.

Upon arriving at The Dean, guests are greeted by a lounge-like lobby featuring a snug library alcove. Clad in eye-catching Ettore Sottsass veneer, the space is furnished with an enticing blend of contemporary and vintage pieces and feels more like a private living room or studio. A bespoke art curation titled Wanderers by Thom Oosterhof adorns the hotel’s communal spaces and rooms with off-centre works from local galleries and artists, complementing Gowdridge’s design scheme, which she explains is built on ‘contrast, restraint and moments that make you pause.’

The room to book

Guests of The Dean Berlin are enveloped in Gowdridge’s decadent palette of colour and texture, with a focus on textiles and finishes that nod toward the work of German artists such as Anni Albers. A welcome arrangement of visually interesting floor and table lamps offers a warm glow, while the intuitive installation of end-grain timber flooring and graphic carpet gently outlines key areas of each room.

The Cosy and Double rooms provide compact but well-designed options that are perfect for short stays spent traversing the city’s many wonders, while the range of suites available invites dedicated travellers to make themselves at home. In particular, the generously sized Balcony Suite comes complete with a spacious lounge area; a beautifully designed dining table and chairs; plenty of work space and an irresistible bed that faces the balcony with views of the city that stretch as far as the iconic TV Tower at Alexanderplatz.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

Despite its brunch-forward menu, Benedict, the hotel's on-site restaurant, is the perfect place to start or end your day. Open from early morning to late evening, the inviting eatery spills into the lobby, promising casual dining with a touch of glamour. Breakfast favourites such as a hearty full English, steak and eggs and (of course) eggs Benedict are accompanied by an intriguing drinks list designed to suit brunch orders and beyond.

While there is no dedicated dinner menu, some of the more decadent dishes on the menu make a suitable late-in-the-day order, and the restaurant’s experienced bartenders are more than happy to cater to off-menu cocktail orders, such as a classic martini with a twist. Benedict’s reputation as a must-visit brunch spot extends far beyond the hotel itself, so be sure to snag a reservation when you check in.

The verdict

It is the attention to detail and richness of the design of The Dean Berlin that elevates the experience of your stay. Thanks to Gowdridge's hands-on design approach (many aesthetic decisions were made on-site 'with a hammer in hand,' she says) each room and communal space feels tactile and unique. While some might hope for a more tailored evening offering from the restaurant and bar – perhaps with a dedicated dinner menu and a bar open later than 10 pm – Benedict’s brunch concept is executed with excellence, and the surrounding city offers plenty of alternatives. With no on-site amenities such as a gym or spa, The Dean Berlin is most suited to adventurous travellers keen to get up and go out.

The Dean Berlin is located at Uhlandstr. 49, 10719 Berlin, Germany

Hans Hansen is not necessarily well known to anyone but the most studious of photographic historians. Throughout a long career, the self-taught German photographer has quietly carved a niche as a master of still life and commercial image-making. His work explores colour and composition, as well as drawing lessons from modern artistic movements, resulting in some of the most striking and memorable product images of the 1970s, 1980s and beyond.

Curated by Dr Esther Ruelfs and Claire Müller, ‘Photo: Hans Hansen’ is a large-scale retrospective of Hansen’s work, a collection of 220 photographs that cover every aspect of a six-decade career. Hansen’s clients have included brands such as Volkswagen, Kodak, Erco, Nikon and Lufthansa.

In unskilled hands, his stark compositions and use of light and shadow would create stark, lifeless imagery, but somehow, Hansen ekes out the playful and the unexpected, creating images that have formed the heart of influential campaigns in the process.

Born in Bielefeld in 1940, Hans Hansen studied lithography and Applied Graphics at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, although he never graduated. Working with a medium-format Rolleiflex camera, Hansen began his career with a collaboration capturing the Finnish designer Tapio Wirkkala’s glass collaborations with Iittala.

Hansen used the camera as a compositional and creative tool, part informed by the era’s rediscovery and rehabilitation of the Bauhaus and other modern movements. This is photographic minimalism, to be sure, but it’s also technically precise.

Among the images on display are his seminal vision of the 1988 Volkswagen Golf, dismantled into 6,843 constituent parts. This advertising photograph was actually an update of an earlier campaign for the VW Beetle, part of the ‘Think Small’ series commissioned by the pioneering New York ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach.

Working with the deep-pocketed auto industry – he also worked for Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and Fiat – also helped Hansen acquire studio space and technology, including custom flash units. He was able to deploy the unexpected use of colour to highlight form and brand, taking car photography away from its serious, quasi-scientific roots.

His work for Lufthansa was paired with the typography of Otl Aicher, showcasing the very best in German creativity. Other specialities included the use of abstracted series, especially for the work done for lighting manufacturer Erco, as well as food photography and his own personal projects, including the most recent, Analog.

The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg manages Hans Hansen’s 10,000-strong slide archive, as well as his personal collection of art glass, documentation and correspondence. The exhibition is a rare opportunity to revisit the work of this pioneering photographer.

‘Photo: Hans Hansen’ is at MKG Hamburg from 17 April to 1 November 2026.

For more information, visit MKG-Hamburg.de, @MKGhamburg, Hansen.Works

The ochre-red house at Burgfeld 136, in north Frankfurt, has two large, sunny bedrooms, a deep tub in the bathroom and a maid’s room. The two living spaces, furnished with oak sideboards by Austrian rationalist Franz Schuster, connect to an eat-in kitchen, designed by Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, where everything – from the pantry canisters to the ironing board – is built into the teak cabinetry. It overlooks a long garden with fruit trees and vegetable beds. In short, it’s a place many urbanites would kill for, even though it was constructed 100 years ago on a wave of social idealism and modernist fever.

What is Neues Frankfurt?

Burgfeld was one of 12,000 affordable units in a 1920s housing scheme called Neues Frankfurt, planned by architect Ernst May and mayor Ludwig Landmann, social reformers determined to create lively, high-functioning, green-belt communities for working-class Frankfurters. The tree-lined streets encompassed schools, playgrounds and community centres, operating both as an incubator for the various architects, urban planners and designers involved, as well as offering a ticket to a simpler life. ‘This was the first fully electrified housing estate in Germany,’ says Elisa Lecointe, a Schuster furniture expert who works with the Ernst May Society. And it allowed Schütte-Lihotzky’s influential, compact, low-cost, wood-based ‘Frankfurt kitchen’ to shine. ‘A lot of the older residents still use the original kitchens today,’ says Lecointe.

Presaging model midcentury cities, the experiment was ahead of its time, even if the high-spec tilework, modular furnishings and built-ins pushed rents up beyond the widely affordable. May’s upbeat, functional modernism made him a hero, even in Berlin and Dessau. And it made Frankfurt a Weimar-era hotspot. If the 1929 stock market crash hadn’t kicked off a 15-year nightmare of poverty, political upheaval and war, May and Landmann – both Jews – might not have fled the country. And the Neues Frankfurt project might not have been halted five years into its ten-year timetable. ‘The Nazis hated this architecture,’ says Lecointe. ‘They couldn’t stand that form followed function. They preferred the idea of a British-style garden city – a traditional village with pitched roofs.’ Flat roofs, they said, looked Semitic.

‘When the grand plans for affordable housing were halted in the 1930s due to political and economic changes, not only were concrete projects lost, but important lessons and ideals were also neglected,’ says Matthias Wagner K, director of Frankfurt’s Museum of Applied Arts, and a May expert. That included not only social housing and communal spaces but strategies for sustainable living.

Yet Neues Frankfurt still has thousands of homes to celebrate in its centenary. Some of the units house families that have been in situ for generations, while others are home to arrivistes, drawn to their revolutionary principles and hyper-functionality. ‘Even the door handles by Ferdinand Kramer are sought-after objects,’ says Wagner. ‘Tecnoline now reproduces them with permission from the Kramer family.’

Today, says Lecointe, the rents are far more affordable. ‘The local property authority has a low-cost mandate, and it can only charge a quarter of your salary.’ And that covetable house at Burgfeld 136 has opened to the public as the Ernst May House museum, with plans in the offing for it to be bookable as a B&B.

The scheme’s centenary happened at an auspicious time for Frankfurt. It heralded the city’s turn as World Design Capital for 2026, and events are now kicking off across the Rhine-Main region, intended to demonstrate why the area deserves some of the kudos normally reserved for the design hotbeds of the Bauhaus movement, such as Weimar or Dessau.

Dutch architecture firm UNStudio is launching its sky-skimming live/work scheme Four, touted as a new Neues Frankfurt, with a street-level bar named after Ernst May. A modular pavilion designed by Constructlab will tour the region, hosting talks, workshops and educational programmes. And Hanau, a town to the east that was flattened by Allied raids, will introduce visitors to mobile botanical gardens developed by designer Kai Linke.

The southern suburb of Darmstadt is celebrating its own milestone: it’s 125 years since the artists’ colony (and Unesco World Heritage site) was built in gilded Arts-and-Crafts glory by Peter Behrens and a coterie of Jugendstil artists – it’s worth visiting just for a glimpse of the mosaics in Joseph Maria Olbrich’s bizarre Wedding Tower. If these don’t get people on the U-Bahn, then it’s a safe bet they’ll make the 20-minute journey to the housing estates and market halls that remain from May’s satellite projects.

‘The memory of Neues Frankfurt, of the energy that was mustered in the difficult times of the 1920s, formed not the sole but an important basis for our application for the title of World Design Capital,’ says Wagner K, who led the region’s bid. Now might be a good time to be reminded of an era when progressive thinking was institutionalised, and humanity and hope were central to residential design.

ernst-may-gesellschaft.de

This article appears in the April 2026 Global Interiors Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + from 5 March 2025. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

East Berlin’s Karl-Marx-Allee, where Kino International is located, was purposefully laid out as a striking showcase of socialist architecture. From its monumental apartment blocks to the lofty, domed towers at Frankfurter Tor, everything along the grand boulevard was built to impress. And among the jewels in its crown was this film-lover's destination, a gleaming modernist cinema conceived as a statement of Soviet sophistication.

Tour Kino International, a cinema gem reborn in Berlin

No expense was spared when it came to its construction. Architects Josef Kaiser and Heinz Aust’s bold design features a cantilevered foyer on the first floor that floats unsupported over the entrance below, with its windowless side walls covered in a vast sculptural relief depicting scenes of a Communist utopia. The cinema opened 1963, with custom-made crystal chandeliers and gleaming parquet floors leading audiences to the 500-seat auditorium – complete with elaborate wood panelling and a distinctive, wave-shaped ceiling that was meticulously shaped to optimise acoustics.

After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the building was granted heritage protection and taken over by the Yorck Cinema Group. But by 2024, after more than 60 years of continuous use, the once-futuristic movie theatre was beginning to show its age. Architecture firm Dickmann Richter was called in to bring the building back up to scratch with modern technical standards and polish up some of its original features, and the cinema has just reopened following 18 months of painstaking renovations.

'The building services systems have been completely modernised, and the latest projection and sound technologies have been integrated,' says Dickmann Richter architect Helen Hart. 'With restored architectural surfaces, a refreshed colour scheme, and carefully designed lighting, the building once again radiates the modernity that distinguished it at its opening in 1963.'

The process of breathing new life into the cinema’s historic fabric required the expertise of a team of master craftspeople who were assembled from across Germany to work on the project. 'Almost 800 sq m of textile wall covering were replaced, and all of the wooden slats – amounting to more than 7km in total – were meticulously refurbished,' says Hart. But of all these restoration challenges, one feature called for particular attention: the stage curtain, which was adorned with some 40 million sequins. 'It’s certainly the building’s most iconic feature, and its restoration required an enormous amount of care and effort.'

For architect Daniel Dickmann, co-founder of Dickmann Richter, the refurbishment was a rare opportunity to safeguard one of the city’s key architectural landmarks. 'We consider it extremely important to preserve such a significant representation of recent German history,' says Dickmann. 'For many East Berliners in particular, Kino International is not merely a cinema, but a place of shared memory across generations.'

dickmannrichter.de

See more of the best cinemas around the world.

First impressions matter. Formed in a moment, they set the tone for everything that follows. A lobby, in many ways, is to a hotel what a facial expression is to a person. Welcoming guests is a precise ritual: weekly floral arrangements, an impeccably dressed front-of-house, a perfectly timed glass of something sparkling. Yet every choreography needs its stage, and this is where architecture takes hold.

In Munich, Hotel Bayerischer Hof – often dubbed the city’s ‘grande dame’ – has unveiled the latest chapter in its ongoing transformation, led by Belgian interior designer, art collector and antiques dealer Axel Vervoordt. Their collaboration began in 2009 with the hotel’s Atelier and Garden restaurants, before expanding across public, entertainment and guest spaces. The newest evolution in this nearly two-decade partnership is the reconsideration of the lobby, conceived as a reflection of the city’s palatial grandeur.

Axel Vervoordt redesigns Hotel Bayerischer Hof’s lobby

‘The lobby is the first impression and simultaneously the central space where the full diversity and depth of the hotel must be manifested,’ says Vervoordt. As such, the space now connects seamlessly to the hotel’s F&B landscape: Falk’s Bar, Trader Vic’s, Palais Keller, alongside the Garden and Atelier restaurants.

To establish clarity and proportion, Vervoordt tapped Japanese architect Tatsuro Miki, a close collaborator with whom he has worked on myriad projects, from a monolithic art gallery on the Oaxacan coast to a stately penthouse, part of the Greenwich Hotel in New York. For Hotel Bayerischer Hof’s new lobby, an original balustrade was replaced with non-load-bearing walls, while an inserted coffered ceiling now encloses the Italianate courtyard façade above.

Materially, the language remains grounded and exacting. Walls are finished in clay plaster; joinery in European walnut; leather elements in naturally tanned and dyed hides. The existing stone flooring is retained, with additional surfaces realised in ‘Hungarian Red’, sourced from the country’s last active quarry and long associated with aristocratic and ecclesiastical architecture across Austria and southern Germany.

Restraint carries through to the art. Positioned just off the Atrium entrance, an imposing work by the late Korean abstract painter Chung Chang-Sup anchors the room. ‘It expresses the peace and strength of the Seonbi spirit, typical of Korean art: intelligence conveyed in the most noble and humble way,’ notes Vervoordt.

Hotel Bayerischer Hof is located at Promenadepl. 2-6, 80333 München, Germany

The diner is the ultimate pop culture motif: a neutral no-man’s-land for dialogue between families, friends, lovers and enemies. Its interior uniform of repeating limited-session seating and endearingly predictable menus has punctuated film and television sets alike for decades: from the iconic, orgasmic screenwriting of Norah Ephron and the enigmatic, Journey-soundtracked final scene of The Sopranos, to the subtle symbolism of repeat rendezvous at the Midnight Express in Kar-wai’s breakthrough movie Chungking Express. With each wipe-down of a table or countertop comes the chance to tell a brand-new tale.

The cross-cultural reach of the Berlin diner

In Germany, where the diner culture ingrained in North America and other European countries has long been usurped by unpretentious curbside snack stands and the smoky back rooms of Kneipen (a form of pub or tavern known for its popularity with residents of the former German Democratic Republic), a new assimilation of international lifestyle habits is emerging in the country’s capital, Berlin, in the form of a string of restaurant openings that borrow their food, interior and menu concepts, to varying degrees of abstraction, from diner-style venues around the world.

A testament to the cultural richness fostered by growing multiculturalism, the visual and culinary codes of North American, Southeast Asian and European diners, delis and cafeterias are deconstructed, simmered and distilled to their essence at Onette, one of Berlin’s most talked-about 2025 openings. Founded by restaurant industry veterans Tamara Siedentopf and Brienne West, and designed by London and Berlin-based architecture practice Studio Bates Rai, the Schöneberg eatery-cum-wine bar is a sanctuary of light, with sunshine cascading through large windows over a painstakingly proportioned interior of identical booths and bar stools.

As architect and Studio Bates Rai co-founder Thomas Bates explains, the concept and design approach for this new foodie hotspot is anchored in an evocative use of materials and a carefully cultivated ambiguity – one that invites guests to project their own expectations and interpretations onto the space, free from the influence of visual clichés. He explains, ‘The danger of designing diners is that you can fall into a pastiche position, with red upholstered seats and chrome everywhere. We were really conscious that we didn’t want to do that.’ By breaking down the material and spatial DNA of these long-held aesthetic stereotypes, Onette’s architects – who are also responsible for the design of London’s new favourite ice cream and wine spot The Dreamery – were able to deliver something brand new that still manages to resonate with those familiar with the classic format.

‘It’s about the level of comfort, the size of the table, and that sort of intimacy,’ says Bates. ‘We looked at very different geographical diners – Southeast Asian, British, American – because there’s common ground between all of them, but they’re actually quite different. Taking that breadth of ideas gives you the space to make something that can feel new and contemporary.’ Vintage pendant lamps from California illuminate each bright white booth table, while antique café curtains, sourced from Lithuania, accent the bespoke furniture and central bar area with an ode to the city’s historic Eastern European influences.

While the team behind Onette’s abstraction of aesthetic codes has consciously veered away from prescriptive ideas of what a diner should be, chef Arianna Plevisani leaned into cinematic motifs while self-designing her new, and already much-loved, Kreuzberg restaurant, Ari’s, where red banquet seating and an open kitchen serve as an unspoken invitation to gather without the pressures of formality.

Originally from Peru, and having lived and worked in New York City before moving to Berlin 14 years ago, Plevisani once dreamt of a career in filmmaking. Exploring her love of the diner as a cultural concept, she explains, ‘I think the idea of the diner as this setting for life was really imprinted in my brain. I joke that Ari’s is a Peruvian sandwich shop hidden in a diner. But it’s not really a joke. I just think that the diner is a great vessel for any kind of immigrant cuisine, and always has been.’

While she has collaborated with friend and artist Laura Schusinski to refine her vision, as well as enlisting the skills of local carpenter Rainer Spehl, Ari’s was born of Plevisani’s own fantasy and is rife with artefacts of her passion, such as wall lights handmade by her and a kitchen configured to her specific working ideals. ‘I opened the restaurant that I wish existed,’ she says. ‘From my love of movies. From the food that I want to eat on a daily basis.’

Onette and Ari’s are the most recent names to break into the emerging Berlin diner scene, and both capture the synergy of culture, custom and community, but it was Dashi that laid its foundations. A physical manifestation of the friendship that connects co-founders Thu Thuy Pham and Phuong Thao Westphal, Dashi diner’s first location – opened in 2022, in the Mitte district of Berlin – celebrates the Japanese culinary concept of ‘yōshoku’, wherein Western dishes are infused with notable Japanese flavours. For the two restaurateurs, who share a Vietnamese-German background, building a menu within the internationally translated diner format has allowed them to play with both Eastern and Western food influences, without the pressure of so-called ‘authenticity’.

The duo explain, ‘As Vietnamese-born women living in Germany, our personalities, experiences and tastes exist in a cross-section of Western and Eastern food and culture. Inspired by Western-style cafés in Asia, our menu and aesthetic evoke a certain nostalgia and provide an escape from everyday stresses while simultaneously opening conversations around food, looking toward the past, present and future.’

Having kick-started the German capital’s newfound love of diner-style dining, Dashi launched a second location, in Charlottenberg, in 2024 – just a few months before restaurateur Shabnam Syed opened the doors to Neukölln’s Desi Diner.

Located on the banks of one of the city’s famous canals, Syed’s almost psychedelic, pastel-hued community hub embraces the codes of the classic diner while reimagining it through her own cultural lens. Honing in on the tactile nuance of diner-design DNA, she explains, ‘For me, a diner isn’t really a diner without a menu board. That idea became the focal point of the space: I worked with my brand designer, Rocketfuelled, on the lettering and overall identity, and collaborated with the industrial design studio Überdruck3D, who built and fabricated the piece. It’s a nod to nostalgia, but reimagined through my perspective, with South Asian influences and Berlin’s contemporary energy’.

With more than three decades of reunification under its belt and an increasingly culturally diverse population, the gusto with which Berlin’s new contemporary diner scene has found popularity signifies a voracious appetite for global culinary influences, and the communal spaces where people from all corners of the city and world can congregate and enjoy them. In the shadow of a political landscape that is increasingly sowing the seeds of division, kitchens throughout the capital are emerging as spaces where cross-cultural conviviality holds the power to bring people together.

Unlike the flashiness of yachts or the heftiness of passenger ships, luxury riverboats have a long-held romanticism associated with a charmingly unhurried and leisurely pace. ‘There’s a unique rhythm and intimacy that’s quite distinct from other cruising experiences,’ says Stacey Van Harn, director of Hecker Guthrie, the Australian firm responsible for the design of APT Solara, a new 150m vessel that sails through the Rhine, Main, and Danube Rivers. ‘You’re always close to the land, moving through layered, historic landscapes and story-rich towns. That constant connection to place deeply informed our design thinking.’

APT Solara

Decks, windows and balconies offer almost-within-reach views of the picturesque mountains, castles and forests. The outside is brought indoors, too, by works by Australian photographer Nicholas Wilkins that capture the European locations of the boat’s passage. In addition, there are also landscapes by painter Greg Wood, inspired by his time in Germany, and scenic wallpaper depicting a forest inhabited by birds.

While the boat’s exterior is sleek, with glazing and chrome handrails, the interiors adopt a more relaxed sensibility. There is a focus on built-in furniture – to minimise movement, breakage and vibrations as the boat steers through the river locks. It was also important that the weight of the fitout be minimised to ensure that it wouldn’t impact the draft of the boat. The calming, neutral material palette of creamy stone and blonde timber is layered with upholstered banquettes and rattan armchairs. Pieces from Gubi, Expormim, Cassina, Gebruder Thonet, Sika, Fritz Hansen and Gervasoni pepper the interiors.

Conceived as a ‘floating hotel’, Solara accommodates 154 people across 77 cabins. There are three room types: Owner’s Suite, the largest, with a balcony and sitting room; The French Balcony Suite, with electric floor-to-ceiling slide-down windows; and Twin Window Seat, a smaller yet cosy timber-panelled space. Structurally, contemporary curved corners on the walls are juxtaposed with traditional wainscoting elements.

There are subtle maritime references throughout: cast aluminium hooks by Australian designer Henry Wilson nod to nautical anchors, cabin lighting is inspired by a ship’s lantern, woven artworks by Jo Elbourne hint at naval flags, and circular design details allude to portholes. There’s also an impressive pendant by Sarah Parkes, whose knotted light is draped from the lobby skylight, calling to mind a chunky rope used for rigging or mooring.

With trips spanning 14 days, culinary options are important, and there are five to choose from. ‘Guests spend two weeks aboard the ship, eating all meals there, so we wanted to create variety within the hospitality offerings in addition to other calmer and more intimate spaces they could retreat to. This new but tangential design language allows for subtle shifts in mood and ambience, all underpinned by elegance,’ says Van Hearn. The main restaurant, Bistro Saison, is fitted out with slipcovered chairs and decorative tablecloths by Lewis and Wood.

The multifunctional sun deck has space for dining and a sunken lounge at which to hang out. ‘It’s a place for both quiet reflection and social connection,’ says Van Hearn. ‘It’s a convivial, communal space to pause, meet and talk while taking in the views. It’s where people naturally gather to watch the landscape unfold.’ At the rear, the bar hydraulically lifts up to deck level when the boat is moored, transforming into an open-air rooftop where guests can relax and drink in the stillness of the surrounding natural environment, from powder-coated outdoor furniture.

aptouring.com

The Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein has accumulated a lot of 'firsts' over the years. There is Khudi Bari, the first building by Marina Tabassum outside of her home country of Bangladesh; the Vitra Design Museum, Frank Gehry's first design outside of the USA; and, famously, Zaha Hadid's first design to be built ever, the Vitra Fire Station.

Now, there's a new feather in Vitra's cap; welcome to Doshi Retreat, the revered and ever-growing campus' contemplative installation by Indian 2018 Pritzker Prize-winning architect Balkrishna Doshi, designed in close collaboration with his granddaughter Khushnu Panthaki Hoof and her husband Sönke Hoof. The structure, nestled in a green field next to Tadao Ando's Conference Pavilion, is not only the first piece of architecture by Doshi outside of his native India but also the first he designed to be completed posthumously – as it is also the last the modernist architecture master worked on before his death, in 2023.

Stepping inside the Doshi Retreat

Doshi Retreat is an homage to the great architect's legacy, and was conceived by him as a place for serenity and spirituality – a sensory journey of sound and feeling. Its origin story begins with Vitra chairman emeritus Rolf Fehlbaum's visit to India a while back, Panthaki Hoof recalls. 'It all started with a friendship between them. Together they visited a temple [the Modhera Sun Temple], which had a small shrine as part of it.' It inspired Fehlbaum to approach Doshi much later for the design of a 'space for silence' in the campus – something that would reflect the serenity and feelings of calm he felt when inside that small shrine.

Doshi created a concept around a number of notions and words, trying to distil the project's meaning. He went to Panthaki Hoof with it, saying, 'Here, this is the retreat.' This birthed the design, which the three architects developed together. 'Our question to answer was, what do you want to feel in this place? What does the shrine mean?' she recalls. The project progressed during the pandemic, and Doshi's passing left the husband-and-wife team (who have since worked on more projects linked to Doshi's legacy, such as the new toilet block at the Institute of Indology in Ahmedabad) to complete it.

The design evolved in an organic way as the three architects collaborated on it – growing beyond the compact space that Fehlbaum might have originally envisioned. 'We were a bit nervous as Rolf was expecting a 2x2m shrine, and this was bigger. It was all driven by intuition,' says Panthaki Hoof. She explains: ‘This architecture was born from a dream Doshi had of two interweaving cobras. From this subconscious vision emerged a written narrative, followed by a sketched concept composed of notes and evocations. It then evolved into an invitation to embark on a journey of discovery.’

The piece – part architectural pavilion, part art installation – sits near the edge of the campus, off the main entrance and a stone's throw from Vitra's manufacturing facilities and museum. This was not where it was originally meant to be, but the architects, walking through the site as they were working on their design, stumbled upon a piece of land next to the Conference Pavilion that felt like the perfect fit. Fehlbaum feels that this way, the project's 'silence answers to Ando,' as all the buildings in the Vitra Campus 'need to speak with each other.'

The parcel of land included three mature trees and a sloped terrain, so the design was crafted to weave between these existing plants, digging a 'river delta-like' path towards the main pavilion space. This journey into the pavilion is as exciting as the arrival at its inner sanctum. As the visitor moves towards the main room, the walls retaining the site's earth and greenery get taller, the guest's gaze urged to turn upwards towards the sky. It affords a feeling of seemingly leaving the prior surroundings behind.

This experience serves as a smooth, gradual transition from the busy, working campus towards the retreat's meditative nature. Meanwhile, small rest stops on slightly higher ground are formed around the trees, offering opportunities to emerge, take a breath and look around.

The project's materiality is key. The pathways are flanked by weathered XCarb steel, the same cladding that wraps the main space too, which is matched in colour with the crushed bricks that line the approach. This reddish colouring creates a strong contrast with the leafy lawn, yet brings in a tactile feel. It also somehow accentuates the green element, bridging effortlessly nature and architecture – an element Vitra is keen to explore further. A masterplan for the wider campus is currently in development with Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets and involves the creation of mini forests across the entire site.

Inside the Doshi Retreat, a single, round chamber featuring a water pond and two simple, curved stone benches invites guests to sit and enjoy the gentle hum of a sequence of gong and ceramic flute that echoes in the room. This sound piece was faintly heard upon approach, too, but here it becomes more engulfing and subtly cocooning. A hand-hammered brass mandala crafted in India adorns the ceiling.

The project's main material, steel donated by ArcelorMittal, is set to age and change patina over time, adding to the pavilion's relationship with nature. As Hoof explains, it was produced using renewable resources to support a sustainable architecture approach. To that end, the foundations were not dug deep but were instead screwed in, so as to minimally disturb the existing land.

The Doshi Retreat was created as an invitation to solitude and a mindful pause – a space without a specific label. Its thoughtful nature and inauguration this week highlighted the Indian modernist's legacy – and his absence. What was it like, finishing the project without the great master, one of its three creators? Panthaki Hoof: ‘[Doshi] used to say that “silence is the most generous form of guidance”, and when he left, his absence was that silence for us.’

vitra.com

sangath.org

It’s an incontrovertible fact that Berlin is an art town. It’s the unofficial artist capital of Europe, backed by a network of edgy contemporary art galleries and world-class institutions exhibiting the history and range of human creativity. But Berlin as a design hub? Well, that’s not quite yet been established in the city’s relentless brand of cool – perhaps until now.

While whispers flutter across the city about Berlin’s first design biennale (called Conceptual, debuting October 2025), another signal of the city’s turn towards design? 'Crafting Community', a monumental exhibition pulling together 19 of design’s most evocative and global practitioners at The Foundry, the creative hub launched last year by lighting lab Bocci (inside the 18,000 sq ft former iron-casting factory-turned arts complex known as Wilhelm Hallen).

For 'Crafting Community', which runs until 14 September 2025 and debuts 'a new annual platform to spotlight creativity through design and art', Bocci tapped curator Anna Carnick, who’s perhaps most visibly known for her work with Design Miami and has been residing in Berlin for the last eight years.

'We were really trying to create more opportunities to spotlight design specifically within Berlin because there are a lot of great design talents, but there aren't so many platforms,' says Carnick

'Crafting Community' was opened as part of Hallen 06, the annual art fair-of-sorts during Berlin Art Week, co-created by Bocci to activate the additional gallery residents of Wilhelm Hallen.

Long-time Berlin art and design resident, Johannes Schön, who’s also Bocci’s brand director, adds: 'In the mid 1990s, artists were showing things everywhere, like in squatting places, and artists becoming gallerists. Design now reminds me of these times. You can now see it with other initiatives that are following our example,' alluding to the design biennial, which arrives after Bocci’s first design/art exhibition last year, titled 'Unexpected Guests 2', that saw 18,000 visitors.

'I think we are kind of ahead of the curve,' Schön continues. 'We gave a good start to this, to offer a bigger platform for a design to be shown.'

Carnick had free reign to curate but calls this exhibition the result of 'us happily conspiring for years. Art and design, there are bridges that can connect people.' This is a decidedly curatorial venture, not commercial ('it’s not a selling exhibition,' Carnick clarifies) but is instead 'a continuation of what we've been doing for 20 years', adds Schön.

Bocci was founded by Omer Arbel in 2005 as a design studio and research lab to explore a range of production methods, ever pushing materials to their limits. 'Experimentation and dialogue have been the core of our practice, and we work with artists, designers, and architects in our studio, and I think for us, it was like, how can we connect here?' The Foundry is being used as a space simply to showcase (not sell).

With familiarity and fidelity in mind, Carnick approached 'Crafting Community' as a way to honour exceptional craft made by thoughtful practitioners who, on the surface, don’t have inter-related practices other than intentionality. 'In this moment, when so many stories and histories are under threat of being erased or rewritten, it is more important than ever to create space to honour one another's stories and to share them,' she says.

In perhaps a statement of how far-reaching community connections can be, the artists and designers in this titular exhibition hail from across all cultures and continents, and 'are in some way giving back to their own community', explains Carnick.

The show includes top-line names Rooms Studio (Georgia), Noe Kuremoto (UK), Beatriz Morales (Mexico), Estefania de Ros (Guatemala), Anas Chao (Taiwan via Saudi Arabia), Mischer’Traxler Studio (Austria), as well as more emerging talent like Yassine Ben Abdallah (Réunion), Bokja (Lebanon), ibiyanε (Martinique).

'There's a lot of shared values between these artists and designers,' explains Carnick. 'There's an openness and an intention to share their talent and their stories, and there's an openness to also hear other people's stories.'

Yet, indeed, community is inherently political, and thus, so is the show. 'This is a reminder and example of the individual and collective power we have,' says Carnick. Though there are no big Ai Weiwei-esque or Banksy-style statements included, the strongest tie amid all these practitioners is their subtle and subversive acts of resistance through these objects, whether it’s the preservation of ancestral wisdom or a material response to governing policy.

That sounds incredibly high-minded, but consider something like Tiblisi-based Rooms' 'Bus Stop Benches', where the studio collaborated with artist Max Machaidze to graffiti replicas of Soviet-style public seating (for more on Machaidze, see Wallpaper’s trip to Tbilisi), or Rozana Montiel’s participatory Collective Correspondence installation of modifying letters and literary texts in German, English and Spanish, and the less abstracted these political gestures become.

Take Victoria Yakusha’s Ukrainian folkloric creatures from her 'Land of Light' series that are meant as a direct response to the Russian invasion of her homeland; when she tried to envision how to get through these dark times, she imagined these mythical beings who could guide her and others out.

Then there’s Jerome Byron’s kevlar dining table dubbed 'Everyday Altar', reflecting and embodying the increasingly militarised presence in Los Angeles, where he lived for nine years (he currently practices in Berlin).

Meanwhile, Chaos’ Homes Away From Home is an installation of handcrafted dining plates and felted tablecloths that feature tribute texts in English and German referencing restaurants where the designer 'broke bread' to feel at home across Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and Europe.

'Anna says this is about stories, but I think she’s seeing the soul, the soul of people and objects,' said Golnar Roshan, of Amsterdam-based studio Rive Roshan, whose 3D-printed sand 'Voices Vessel 03', inspired by a pleated skirt in motion, was selected for its evocation of the current struggle for women's liberation in Iran. (Roshan is Persian by way of Australia.)

'When somebody makes something, they put themselves into it,' adds Estefania De Ros, whose Visions of the Lake commission deploys traditional Mayan cosmology and weaving techniques practiced by Indigenous artisans that are both under threat of extinction from globalized means of production and appropriation. Change lies in community, too, and maybe more than ever, we need to see to believe how in fact we are stronger together.

With a serene waterside setting in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, forested surroundings, and expanses of timber inside and out, Chiemgauhof Lakeside Retreat certainly nods to the region’s log-cabin vernacular. But the new hotel by Italian architect and designer Matteo Thun is an altogether more luxurious and contemporary hideaway.

Rest and relax at Chiemgauhof, a cosy lakeside retreat in Übersee, Germany

Thun is known for his sustainable construction and use of natural materials (as far back as his Vigilius mountain resort in South Tyrol, which marked 20 years in 2024). When conceptualising the design for Chiemgauhof Lakeside Retreat, Thun decided to begin by painting a watercolour that would capture the essence of the hotel’s surrounding context. ‘I wanted every building to reflect the aura of the genius loci and tell a story,’ he tells Wallpaper*.

After two years of construction, his vision was realised: a minimalist hotel with a seamless transition between indoor and outdoor living. Open structures were built using natural materials local to the area, such as wood, stone and glass. The hotel offers 28 suites, intimate yet spacious, all positioned to face the lake. Choose the Corner Suites for large bay windows, the Garden Suites for direct lake access and a private garden, and the Junior Suites for their bijou private balcony.

‘[The hotel] connects the region’s heritage with the benefits of modern hospitality. We have translated the special allure of the old wooden barns into the here and now. Nature will take care of the rest over time, giving the entire hotel a beautiful patina,’ explains Thun. Eagle-eyed guests will appreciate the dedicated attention to detail. Japanese-inspired larch-wood bathtubs make a relaxing spot to observe the lake, while a double-sided fireplace creates a cosy atmosphere. Handmade rugs from German designer Jan Kath soften the oiled oak floorboards.

Although there is little need to step out of the relaxing confines of the suites, the hotel’s restaurant offers a tempting escape. Led by Edip Sigl (who was behind Restaurant Es:senz, awarded three Michelin stars in 2024) and Max Müller, the menu spans from sushi made with freshly caught fish to regional-inspired classics such as the Münchner Schnitzel.

Chiemgauhof is the perfect spot to blissfully do nothing. You might, though, wish to start the day with a cold plunge in the lake, or perhaps swim a few lengths of the 18m (heated) outdoor pool. The property also offers activities such as stand-up paddleboarding, yoga, pilates, boat rides and e-bike riding.

Chiemgauhof is located at Julius-Exter-Promenade 21, 83236 Übersee, Germany.

Kunsthalle Schweinfurt in Germany is presenting a new exhibition, ‘Rolf Sachs: Be-rühren’, opening this Saturday, July 18, and running through October 5 2025.

This will be the most comprehensive retrospective to date of the Swiss artist and designer Rolf Sachs. Showcasing over 150 works spanning from the 1990s to the present day, the exhibition encompasses sculpture, photography, painting and design. ‘Be-rühren’ is German for ‘touch’, and evokes both Sachs’ exploration of sensory perception and his interest in the human condition.

‘Rolf Sachs: Be-rühren’: a multidisciplinary survey

‘Rolf Sachs: Be-rühren’ surveys his entire career, organised thematically around bodies of work. These explore the motifs that define the artist’s practice: a poetic sensibility, an empathetic perspective and a playful reimagining of domestic objects. The latter, in particular, is a central theme, as Sachs seeks to transform ordinary materials into works imbued with wit, emotion and tactility, encouraging both sensory and emotional engagement.

Reimagining the everyday

A dedicated gallery is given to Sachs’ reinterpretation of domestic objects, including sculptures – which often draw on the artist’s Swiss Alpine heritage (he was born in Lausanne, but is now based in Rome) – that recontextualise mundane items. This is felt in Heu, Ross, Wolle and Mist, monumental vitrines filled with natural materials such as hay, manure, wool and horsehair, and Bodenständigkeit, a pine branch cast in bronze.

Blurring boundaries through photography

Sachs’ photography also features prominently, where the artist uses long exposures and flash techniques for spectral, abstract results. In Camera in Motion, inspired by the Swiss landscape, Sachs employs experimental photography to depict a journey along the Albula railway line – the images caught between abstraction and reality. Meanwhile, series like Moving Stills and Shadows transform everyday objects such as toilet paper and spaghetti into ambiguous forms.

Modular design, reconfigured

Another highlight is the presentation of Sachs’ modular furniture series ‘p-arts + fun c'tion’, shown for the first time in over 30 years. This collection of chairs, armchairs and desks is constructed without nails or screws, instead relying on gravity and intelligent design. Its modularity allows for limitless reconfigurations. Notable pieces include the Attraction bed, which fuses cold steel with warm wood to symbolise the emotional connection between its inhabitants, and the Horgenglarus chair, which Sachs has been reinterpreting since 1992 in new materials such silicone, slate, wax, felt and resin.

A new chapter

While ‘Rolf Sachs: Be-rühren’ is a retrospective, it also introduces a new chapter in the artist’s career. A grand hall at Kunsthalle Schweinfurt is dedicated to his latest paintings and drawings – a focus since 2020, inspired by his relocation to Rome. Series such as Can Paintings, Défroissage and Touchée blend abstraction and figuration, with the latter created using Sachs’ fingers rather than a brush.

‘Rolf Sachs: Be-rühren’ is an immersion into the artist’s exploration of abstraction and meaning, underscoring not only the breadth of his practice, but its continuing evolution.

It’s a century since the birth of Frei Otto (1925-2015), the German structural engineer and architect and one of the pioneers of the new, lightweight style of highly technical architecture that was to dominate public buildings, event spaces, spans and stadiums from the 1970s onwards.

Who is architect and engineer Frei Otto?

Frei Otto: Building with Nature looks back at Otto’s life and career, with special emphasis on the designer’s exploration of large-scale, lightweight structures. These days, Otto’s legacy is pretty much cemented by the dramatic landscape of the Munich Olympic Park, started in 1968 and completed for the 1972 Games. The tented structures, some of which ring the tiered seating of the Olympiastadion, co-designed with Günther Behnisch, were inspired by Alpine vistas.

Behnisch had been switched on to Otto’s work by the dramatic forms of the West German Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal. Characterised by his intense study of plant structures and geometry, Otto’s biomechanical forms predated the digital age and the widespread use of CAD design. Instead, the method of choice was model making, and the book is awash with imagery of these detailed, structurally precise, scale models that helped Otto determine how materials would perform.

In Otto’s view, lightweight architecture meant minimising a structure’s impact on the environment, not just physically but also in terms of use of materials and energy. It was the heyday of high tech’s association with what were once left-field concerns but are now mainstream architectural thought. Awarded the Pritzker Prize in the week of his death, Otto’s contribution to the sustainability debate can’t be overstated.

Projects include Montreal and Munich, as well as Otto’s own house and Atelier near Stuttgart (completed in 1971), the Multihalle exhibition centre in Mannheim (1975) and many more, along with unbuilt projects and schemes.

'Frei Otto: Building with Nature,' edited by Joaquín Medina Warmburg and Anna-Maria Meister, Prestel, £50, available through Prestel.com

The Shakers: A World in the Making

On 7 June 2025, the Vitra Design Museum in Germany will launch ‘The Shakers: A World in the Making’, which will run until 28 September. The exhibition will explore the enduring influence of the Shakers, a Protestant sect that originated in England in the mid-1700s, its members emigrating to the American colonies in 1774.

‘The Shakers: A World in the Making’, with an exhibition design by Milan-based studio Formafantasma (a winner at Wallpaper's 2025 Design Awards), will bring together over 150 original Shaker artefacts, as well as newly commissioned works by contemporary artists and designers, creating a dialogue between history and modern creativity.

One of the exhibition’s four sections, titled ‘I Don’t Want to be Remembered as a Chair’, argues that Shaker design should not be appreciated purely for its aesthetics but through the lens of the group’s religious and communal philosophy. Thus, ‘The Shakers: A World in the Making’ will examine how these values became a wellspring of inspiration for modern designers, and how the Shakers’ legacy continues to resonate in art and design today.

Today, ‘Shaker style’ has come to mean a number of things: design that is simple, minimalist and democratic; functional, practical and optimised; and that prioritises craftsmanship and, later, technology. Below, we explore how these principles are manifested in key 20th-century movements such as modernism and Bauhaus, which find their roots in the Shakers’ way of life.

How Shaker principles have informed modern design

Simplicity, minimalism and democratic design

The Shakers were, in many ways, ahead of their time, espousing egalitarian ideals and even institutionalising gender equality in the 1780s. These values extended to those with physical disabilities. The Shakers’ inclusive philosophy, explored in the exhibition through the work of artist Finnegan Shannon, was reflected in their architecture and design, which prioritised accessibility and simplicity – design for all, not just the elite.

This laid the groundwork for modernism, which emerged in the early 20th century as a reaction against the ornate styles of Victorian and art nouveau. Modernist designers preferred clean lines and rejected unnecessary decoration, intending for their work to be applicable across cultures and contexts. The likes of Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto and Charles and Ray Eames admired Shaker principles.

Bauhaus, which emerged in 1919, adopted similar ideals, with its clean lines and geometric shapes, avoiding ornamentation. Scandinavian design, too, bears the hallmarks of Shaker design, with its uncluttered, streamlined look (think Danish designer Hans Wegner’s iconic ‘Wishbone’ chair, as seen in this Swiss chalet, which has distinct echoes of Shaker seating). It also follows democratic ideals, aiming to create high-quality design for the many, distilled in the business model of Swedish stalwart Ikea.

Functionality, practicality and spatial optimisation

The importance that the Shakers placed on labour translated into designs that were functional: think ladder-back chairs, straight-legged tables, built-in cupboards, and efficient storage solutions such as wall-mounted rails, boxes and baskets. The Shakers were early adopters of serial furniture production; in the exhibition, in the section titled ‘When We Find a Good Thing, We Stick To It’, audiences can see examples of standardised and customisable Shaker chairs.

This element of Shaker design can be felt in Bauhaus, where decorative elements were minimised unless they served a function, and Scandinavian design, which seeks to create beauty from utility. Modernism sought to create efficient spaces and objects for modern life; the idea underpinning the ‘Eames Molded Plywood Chair’, for example, was that every element served a purpose. Modernism’s layouts, meanwhile, often used an optimised grid system.

‘The Shakers: A World in the Making’ uses furniture such as cabinets, chests of drawers and sewing desks to illustrate the community’s instinct towards orderliness, as codified in their 1821 and 1845 Millennial Laws, a body of teachings covering a wide range of aspects of Shaker life, including behaviour, dress and even how to climb stairs.

Craftsmanship, natural materials and openness to technology

The Shakers had a strong work ethic, which also translated into a focus on craftsmanship. In ‘I Don’t Want to be Remembered as a Chair’, the Shaker belief in labour as a form of worship is reinterpreted by artist and designer Chris Halstrøm through a large-scale embroidered artwork where each stitch is represented as a prayer.

The group’s emphasis on handmade quality resonated with the Arts and Crafts movements which took off in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and valued natural materials, simple joinery and built-to-last construction. The idea is also felt in Scandinavian design, where quality is paramount; this movement also, like the Shakers, favours organic materials such as wood, leather, linen, and stone.

Despite their insular communities, the Shakers were open to outside influences. The exhibition’s ‘Every Force Evolves a Form’ section traces how they interacted with the advancements of the wider world, showcasing oval boxes and rudimentary power tools. In ‘The Place Just Right’, audiences can see a radio that belonged to the Shaker community in Canterbury, Connecticut, as well as musical artefacts such as a metronome (music was a big part of Shaker life; they gained their moniker through the worshipful dance for which they were known). Shaker innovation is also explored through a commission from Christien Meindertsma, who reimagines their basketry as a biodegradable coffin.

Like the Shakers, later design movements such as modernism and Bauhaus embraced technological progress, especially industrial production, as a means of improving everyday life.

Full exhibition details at vitradesignmuseum.de

The cover of the 1919 Bauhaus Manifesto featured an expressionist woodcut of a Gothic cathedral with dazzling stars shooting beams from its towers. Drawn by Bauhaus founder architect Walter Gropius, the manifesto kicked off with the phrase ‘The ultimate goal of all art is the building.'

Yet the Bauhaus, which has come to represent more than anything a style of stripped, modernist, functional architecture, did not initially even have an architecture department. It is only one of a plethora of paradoxes about the most famous art school ever. The Bauhaus, we have to remember, was never just one thing.

What is Bauhaus architecture?

Founded in the wake of the devastation of the First World War, which left Germany beaten, impoverished, shamed and traumatised, Bauhaus was intended as a new guild, based on a medieval model in which the crafts could be unified to serve a modern agenda. The cathedral on that cover represented the zenith of the western Gesamtkunstwerk (a 'total work of art' in German), a building that embodied symbolism and meaning, stonework, applied arts, geometry and collaboration.

Today, though, when we think of Bauhaus, we probably think of a particular style; the white villas of the 1920s and 30s, rigorous blocks of repetitive flats or the tubular chairs of Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe. We might also think of all the things that the word ‘Bauhaus’ is applied to, the modernist apartment blocks of Stuttgart, Budapest, Bucharest or Tel Aviv.

Bauhaus: its origins and scope

If the Bauhaus is known for control, perfection and modernist minimalism, its beginnings were surprisingly diverse and a little chaotic. There was the abstraction of artists Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, the pottery, ceramics and textiles of the women designers who were excluded from the art studios and furniture workshops, which were the preserve of males, and there was photography, metalwork, theatre and graphics and more. Its beginnings were steeped not in functionalism but in mysticism, in the cultish atmosphere of devotion, such as the monkish demeanour of painter and designer Johannes Itten with his occult leanings and adherence to the odd pseudo-religion of Mazdaznan (a movement aiming to elevate consciousness through body and spirit). It only slowly shed these more eclectic leanings as director Gropius pursued a more rigorous line towards modernist architecture and design.

Over the course of the 1920s, the school began to shift towards a more architectural approach and by the time Hannes Meyer and later Mies van der Rohe were in charge (1928-1933), architecture had become firmly established as its key legacy.

Bauhaus manages to be both a badge of honour and an insult. To those who love it, it is the pinnacle of modernism; pure, clear, honest, revolutionary and functional. For others, it exemplifies the pretension, arrogance, inhumanity and fakery of modern architecture.

In architecture, its features have become cliché yet still often look astonishingly modern. Take the Bauhaus building itself. Designed by Walter Gropius in Dessau (where the school had moved to from Weimar) in 1925-26, it was intended to look industrial; a factory of ideas and images as well as production. The glass curtain walls dematerialised its presence while creating light-filled interiors, another element appears as a bridge, seemingly floating over a central spine route, similarly light and airy.

Ribbon windows accentuate its horizontality, indicating the direction of travel within the building. On one wall, a grid of small balconies casts a photogenic pattern of shadows and appears almost like diving boards from which to launch into the future. Materials are concrete, steel and glass (at least, they are made to appear to be). It is a building which, a century after it was designed, still looks contemporary, and that is because the Bauhaus defined our idea of what modern should look like.

We might also look at the Masters’ Houses (1925, Gropius again) designed for his colleagues, Marcel Breuer, Klee and Kandinsky. They are blocky, asymmetric and Constructivist, revelling in their composition as apparently abstract architectural sculptures which are actually meticulously designed to suit their purposes, expressing the volumes inside. They remain, in a way, the model for modernist villas, with roof decks, nautical railings and blocky, boxy forms. And, perhaps most of all, white walls. The white expressed a new purity of form, a departure from the grey tones of the dirty, polluted city into an idealised perfection, architecture as clean and full of potential as a crisp new sheet of paper.

The material was supposed to be concrete, that protean matter which could be moulded into any modern form. In fact, it was mostly brick, rendered with plaster to look modern. Concrete was still expensive and rare. Brick and block were cheap and ubiquitous. Here, we see something of the Bauhaus that was so often parodied, a willingness to sacrifice actual integrity for the appearance of integrity. Mies van der Rohe was also later parodied for sticking steel I-beams onto the outsides of his buildings because he’d had to cover up the real structural elements for fireproofing. For a movement steeped in ideas about morality, it was notably willing to compromise.

Just as the furniture, the bent steel tubes and glass were intended to appear mass-produced, fit for the mechanical age, but were actually made by craftsmen creating expensive handmade pieces. The architecture was about an idea of mass production aimed at a model of worker housing, but made by hand.

At the heart of the Bauhaus was an idea of design for all, of design as a force for social good the ultimate goal of which was the creation of a new, more equitable world of decent housing for the working classes, of green spaces and efficient buildings, well-lit, well-ventilated and fit for a new openness of everyday life. It posed the ending of compartmented, small, dark rooms for open plan spaces and balconies and roof terraces. It promoted communal dining rooms and facilities, a new way of living together with the Bauhaus school in Dessau as its model. It was socially deterministic in a manner that has become deeply unfashionable - the suggestion was that architects could mould society through their buildings to become better.

There were many experiments, most notably the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart (1927) with its mass of model housing, white-walled blocks designed by architects from Mies van der Rohe to Le Corbusier to propose a new way of living in the green of the suburbs.

Bauhaus: an evolution

But the dreams never quite materialised. The aesthetic was taken up by the intellectual bourgeoisie while the proletariat remained suspicious. Most of the Bauhaus architects ended up working on middle-class villas in the suburban hills. Wander around the leafy suburbs of Budapest or Berlin, Brno or Bucharest, and you will find exquisite white-walled villas, often crumbling a little, the legacy of the fashion of Bauhaus style. The familiar elements coalesced into that very recognisable style. There were big picture windows and narrow strip windows. There was an attempt to break down the divisions between internal and external space, with terraces and balconies being treated as sun rooms. There were fluid interiors, rejecting compartmentalisation in favour of open plans. These were blocky white structures but also ones often augmented by curved corners or semi-circular balconies or towers - all based on the platonic geometries beloved of the Bauhaus founder, the back-to-basics set of building blocks.

There were oceanliner handrails (because what could be more functional than a ship?) and there were stripped-down fittings - from door handles to lights, often resembling industrial engineering more than domestic design. There were dramatic stairs in cylindrical towers or with open treads, or industrial steel spirals. The mouldings of traditional houses were banished along with fireplaces and sculptural plasterwork. Heavy furniture was disbanded in favour of tubular steel and glass, items which were almost transparent, that cast no dark shadows. Kitchens were built in and small, functional spaces which celebrated efficiency rather than conviviality. And there were no cellars or attics, only flat roofs - none of the dark repositories of memory or nostalgia.

The extent to which we can itemise these elements and archetypes is a little ironic, of course. Gropius and Mies were attempting to escape style, to drive at an objective, functional architecture, which was irrefutable in its practicality. Yet style it became.

Tom Wolfe, in his scathing book ‘From Bauhaus to Our House’ (1981), reflected on the appropriation of a worker-housing aesthetic applied to everything from schools to corporate offices. After the Second World War you might argue that it was Bauhaus architecture that inspired the explosion in social housing blocks set in green spaces which proliferated across the edges of cities around the world.

What does Bauhaus mean today?

Now the word ‘Bauhaus’ has become ubiquitous and a little meaningless as a consequence. László Tóth, the fictional protagonist of 2024 film ‘The Brutalist’ was, of course, trained at the Bauhaus. It is a code so that we understand he was there at the source of modernism. Hungarians were indeed prominent there; there was Marcel Breuer and there was Farkas Molnár, who designed the first ever Bauhaus residence, the Red House of 1923, which was never built. And most of all, there was László Moholy-Nagy who ran the famous foundation course and set the tone, even if he wasn’t himself an architect.

Bauhaus (literally ‘house of building’) is just too good a word. There was a band named after it and a German DIY store. It is universally applied to apartment blocks in Tel Aviv, few of whose designers had anything to do with the Bauhaus, although they may have come from the same central European backgrounds. It is universally applied across Europe to refer to inter-war modernism of a certain type, just as Brutalism became the go-to description for anything post-war, concrete and sculptural.

The Bauhaus itself lasted only till 1933, when the Nazis made it impossible to continue. By then, its director was Mies van der Rohe, who would later emigrate to the US and take his (rather more luxuriously minimal) version of the Bauhaus to Chicago, where it arguably had an even greater impact, not on worker housing but on corporate America.

Today, the idea of the Bauhaus has a tinge of asceticism, of a kind of functional puritanism. Yet a look at the photos of the school in everyday action reveals a world of parties and balls, of goofy photos and radical theatre. The school appears to be full of women, as it indeed was, and they look like they are enjoying themselves. Their efforts are now being reassessed with figures like Anni Albers, Marianne Brandt and Eva Zeisel being finally given their due, albeit outside architecture. It might be worth remembering that, as well as a legacy of austere houses and apartment blocks that look like factories, the Bauhaus was probably, against all expectations and reputations, also a lot of fun.

Examples of Bauhaus architecture

The Bauhaus Dessau, Germany, by Walter Gropius

Masters’ Houses, Dessau, Germany, by Walter Gropius

Barcelona Pavilion, Spain, by Mies van der Rohe

Doldertal Apartment Building, Zurich, Switzerland, by Marcel Breuer

ADGB Trade Union School, Bern, Berlin, by Hannes Meyer

Dalnoki-Kovats villa, Budapest, Hungary, by Farkas Molnar

2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus School’s move from Weimar to its iconic home in Dessau, Germany, designed by Walter Gropius. To mark the occasion, a programme of exhibitions, conferences and festivals organised by the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation will take place in the city of Dessau from September 2025 to March 2026.

For more information visit bauhaus-dessau.de

Enter the Langen Foundation, the low-lying Tadao Ando-designed space located in the green Neuss cultural district outside Düsseldorf, and you will be blown away by a show of the rarely seen Ringier Collection. An astonishing 500 works, spanning sketches to vast oils and photographic works, from artists including Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, John Baldessari and Sylvie Fleury, are on display in a mind-boggling reveal. The private collection is owned by Swiss publishing mogul Michael Ringier, who started his collecting habit in earnest 30 years ago.

Entitled ‘Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound’, the exhibition explores the boundaries of artistic media, the artifice of art, and perception – subjects that have fascinated Ringier since he and his wife first started investing in Russian Constructivist art.

‘The works on paper were really quite affordable back then,’ he smiles. As his fortunes amassed, so too did his ambitions to build a peerless collection of work that dates from the 1960s to the present day. To that end, he has worked with curator, Beatrix Ruf for over 20 years. She teamed up with American artist Wade Guyton to mastermind this show. It was some task – Ringier’s full collection comprises 5,000 works.

‘An exhibition is in the life of every collector and this is a very special place to show it. Usually, when viewing works of art, you have five, six, seven in one room and that's it. Here you have, I don't know, 150 in one room and that changes everything,’ says Ringier of the accumulation. The works are positioned in vitrines and on podiums, and reach from floor to ceiling in Ando’s stacked pavilion galleries with smooth-as-silk concrete walls.

Ruf and Guyton (Ringier has been collecting the latter's work since 2006) took a deep dive into the collection, part of which is on display in Ringier’s homes and throughout his company HQ. ‘We wanted to create a show in the Wunderkammer tradition. Before the 20th century, oil paintings, relics, ceramics, objects were treated as equal, and we also wanted the works to be in dialogue with one another,’ Ruf explains.

The exhibition moves through works on paper (Sarah Lucas with Rodney Graham and Jim Shaw; George Condo with Seth Price) flanked by Lee Friedlander’s haunting black-and-white photographic works, and shifts into bigger-scale works by Thomas Ruff, Alighiero Boetti, Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince. One is not quite sure where to land one’s eyes, and discombobulation is the point.

As a publisher and former journalist, Ringier’s fascination is with Western artists who question and satirise methods of communication and tropes of image-making, whether that be Prince’s appropriation of advertising imagery (Marlboro Cowboys and Brooke Shields), Guyton’s terrific giant facsimiles of found book pages, or Sherman’s autobiographical enquiry into identity and style. ‘What's truth? What is real? This has always been an important question, but today, it is No. 1,’ says the sprightly 76-year-old Ringier, referencing the inflation of information, false news, and AI. The Ringier Group, where he serves as chairman of the board of directors, still employs 2,000 journalists across magazines and newspapers, but 80 per cent of the business is now the development of tech-driven marketplace platforms.

‘It shows you also how great an artist is if someone was already asking these questions 30 years ago. Time is absolutely essential for art because here are decades-old works and they look fresh: they answer very actual questions or they are asking questions and that makes great art,’ Ringier says.

The subterranean gallery spaces are hung with an explosion of works: Wolfgang Tillmans segues to Albert Oehlen to Paul Thek, Georg Herold onto Karen Kilimnik, Urs Fischer and Laura Owens in mediums that range from monumental abstracts to post-modern collage and faux naive. The final gallery sees a splurge of sculptures and objects, with over 36 works from Peter Doig’s StudioFilmClub hung high like a frieze. At floor level, find Guyton’s appropriated Mies Van der Rohe chairs (from the Enron HQ), alongside Fischli/ Weiss black rubberised artefacts, Rosemarie Trockel’s ceramics and Valentin Carron’s refurbished Piaggio Ciao moped.

Collecting on this scale has to be an obsession and what Ringier and Ruf have committed to is buying deep into every artist’s collection. ‘There's not one artist where we don't have early career works. But of course, you cannot afford to have everything you want. Every collector is “missing” something and that’s the destiny,’ he says. And the collection is ever-evolving, being hung and re-hung around private homes, the Ringier company HQ and out on loan to institutions and museums around the world. Ringier was subversive in his ‘office art’ mission. ‘The idea was to sneak art into the daily life of our people just by being there – it’s not just a Sunday excursion,’ he asserts. Every year, he commissions an artist for the annual report, resulting in some strange and obscure artefacts.

Right now, Ringier is thrilled to be giving his collection an airing. ‘I'm extremely happy about all the people visiting the place and enjoying it or not enjoying it, whatever. But at the end it's for me!’ he says.

‘Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Film, Video, Sound’, Ringier Collection 1995-2025 at the Langen Foundation, Neuss until October 5, 2025, langenfoundation.de

Clockwise Bremen, a co-working space for real estate investor Castelforge, is the first office of its kind to open in the historic Hanseatic city, a major cultural and economic hub of Northern Germany.

It is also a first for its authors, SODA – marking the London-based studio's inaugural scheme to be completed in the country. Founded by Russell Potter and Laura Sanjuan in 2012, SODA works across architecture, interiors, graphic design and branding, with projects ranging from the first permanent outlet for Chai Guys Bakehouse in Portobello Road, London, to the transformation of a former office block in Liverpool into 120 apartments.

Clockwise Bremen: inspired by its location

A warm and welcoming communal workspace for the city’s creatives and start-ups, SODA's design takes its cues from Bremen’s location, on a sand dune on the River Weser. This unique geology inspired the workspace’s reception and café, with a desk and bar featuring layers of hand-applied plaster, and matching walls in corrugated plaster.

‘Our concept draws on the rich history of the surrounding agricultural land of Bremen and the River Weser,' explains Ryan Holland, director at SODA. ‘The reception desk and bar lounge encapsulate this through soft, curved forms made of natural clay plaster, providing an organic and grounded touchpoint for users as a natural gathering point.’

Natural textiles, house plants and colourful artwork add homely touches to the space, which features a ground-floor club area with banquette seating and booths, a coffee spot, and high chairs for quick and informal working.

‘Creating workspaces for multiple smaller companies allows us to weave our design concept more evenly across the whole building, as there is no need to provide a generic space for a large anchor tenant,’ he continues. ‘We enjoyed using natural materials to engender warmth and personality, encouraging tenants away from the home office and into a more sociable environment.’

A key element of this project was adapting the 1980s building to its new use. ‘Working with existing buildings naturally has its challenges when uncovering the bones of the structure, but in this instance, it was the existing circulation that presented the main difficulty,’ says Holland. ‘We introduced a new “meandering” staircase to provide a clear, intuitive route through the floor plates, unifying the communal and tenant spaces and successfully bringing users together to encourage interaction and collaboration.’

The hung steel staircases leads to a variety of different types of workspaces and private areas, arranged in a staggered circular formation around the central core – a shape ‘allowing for push-pull moments to stop and pause that are punctuated with different types of furniture,’ say the architects, who have also stripped back to the precast concrete frame and left it exposed.

Building on the success of Clockwork Bremen, SODA is now working on another project with the same team, in an art deco-inspired tower in the centre of Brussels, and the architects are also looking forward to the opening of MYO King’s Cross this summer. ‘It's a scheme we have been working on for almost three years, featuring a mix of serviced offices, communal amenities, and a dedicated events space in a unique heritage site, which will be great to see in operation,’ concludes Holland.

sodastudio.co.uk

work-clockwise.com

In a world tour across five contemporary homes, we set out to explore how we live. A series of case studies look into ways of living, addressing questions around residential architecture, such as what it means and who it serves. Is the villa typology due for an overhaul? Can homes help preserve communities? What role do light and nature play in slowing down? How can indoor/outdoor living work? Can homes be works of art? All this and more is examined in our series, which unfolds below.

Hop on our world tour of five contemporary homes

Our world tour makes five stops, looking at domestic examples in Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania and the Americas. Our stopovers - India, Germany, Côte d’Ivoire, Australia and the USA, respectively – offer rich food for thought around contemporary dwellings and their design. Scroll down and click for more.

Dua Villa by Architecture Brio

A short boat ride from Mumbai, Dua Villa, in Alibaug, is a contemporary Indian villa and the perfect getaway in all seasons, from the monsoon’s torrential rain in July to the scorching high temperatures through May. Built by Architecture Brio, an award-winning firm with offices in Mumbai and Rotterdam, the home was designed as a refuge from the city throughout the year.

The house and grounds – five acres of gardens designed by Kunal Maniar & Associates – were conceived as one, with water features and a swimming pool beautifully enmeshed in the spacious home. For the owners, a couple with three teenage children, the villa’s chunky brick walls set up a cosy enclave, sheltering them from the unpredictable weather. ‘Our clients wanted to be able to get away from the city and feel immersed in this landscape, while still feeling cocooned from the elements,’ says architect Shefali Balwani, who worked on the project with partner and co-founder Robert Verrijt.

Villa Munich by Manuel Herz

This Munich villa's author, Manuel Herz, is known for his adventurous body of work across the globe, from the moving walls of the Babyn Yar synagogue in Ukraine to a sinuous maternity clinic at Tambacounda Hospital in Senegal (W*244), and, opening this April, his Swiss Pavilion for Osaka’s Expo 2025, a light structure of pneumatic spheres. The Basel-based architect has long resisted a one-size-fits-all design approach. ‘There’s no formula in terms of material or geometry that we apply again and again,’ he says. Instead, he sees each project with fresh eyes, responding to the specificities of location, client and programme.

His latest venture is in Munich’s leafy Herzogpark district. A seemingly clear-cut assignment, the commission became an opportunity for Herz to challenge some basic assumptions about what a house should be. The result is a dwelling that not only serves as a family home but also blurs the lines between architecture, art and nature.

L House by Steven Holl

In collectors’ circles, Mark McDonald has been called the godfather of midcentury modern design. His first gallery, Fifty/50, which opened in downtown Manhattan in 1983, jump-started the market for vintage furniture by Marcel Breuer, Alvar Aalto, the Eameses and their contemporaries. Twenty years later, exhausted by the growing competition, he relocated to the upstate New York town of Hudson, where he turned a former department store into a showcase for classic modern design. It’s becoming ever harder to make discoveries from that era, so McDonald and his partner Dwayne Resnick closed the store and commissioned Steven Holl to design a live-work space, a house on a vacant plot behind it to serve as an office, library and showcase for pieces they want to sell. There’s an upstairs bedroom, but their main residence is in nearby Hillsdale, and it’s there they keep the treasures they cannot bear to part with.

‘During the pandemic, I found I didn’t like working from home – too many distractions and not enough space,’ says McDonald. ‘I interviewed Steven at the beginning of his career and followed his work over the years. So, when we decided to build, I sent an email to ask if he would be interested, and half an hour later, he replied: “That would be a nice project for me”.’ Architect and client are near contemporaries – and near neighbours since Holl moved home and archive to Rhinebeck, while keeping his large office in Manhattan.Though McDonald had a limited budget and wanted something straightforward, nothing is simple when two perfectionists collaborate on a project.

Pavilion Ebrah by Koffi & Diabaté Architectes

Thirty years ago, Ivorian architect Guillaume Koffi discovered the coastal town of Assinie-Mafia. A land of exceptional natural beauty, with a lush green forest canopy and 18km of sandy shoreline stretching along the Gulf of Guinea, it was a haven of calm around 80km south east of Côte d’Ivoire’s largest city, Abidjan. Drawn by its distinct topography, marked by the languid waters of Aby Lagoon opening into the tropical waves of the Atlantic, Koffi bought 5,000 sq m of land in the 2000s. The architect’s first objective was to establish a ‘foothold’ in Assinie-Mafia, with the longer term aim of developing a weekend retreat there - a contemporary Côte d'Ivoire house. ‘I didn’t build the house all in one go,’ he says. ‘The construction was spread out in four main steps.’

Koffi began by landscaping the grounds. Later, he built a swimming pool and small pavilion – a simple, modular structure containing a lounge, kitchen, bathroom and gym. His young family would pitch tents and camp on the land. Three bedrooms were added a few years later, followed by a ‘service pavilion’ with guest bedroom and laundry.

Byron Bay 'treehouse'

Elevated on a hill behind two back-to-back cul-de-sacs, this 1980s 'treehouse' home kisses the edge of Arakwal National Park – a conservation area and gloriously verdant rainforest on the far north-east coast of Australia’s New South Wales. Framed by lush greenery, a path leads to the biscuity stretch of sand that spans from Tallow Beach to Broken Head, where sharks, surfers and dolphins share the waves.

In the coveted coastal enclave of Byron Bay, older beach estates of this size and location are rare. Although within cycling distance of town, the neighbourhood feels worlds away from its gentrifying hustle and bustle. The house only takes up a quarter of the plot, the rest being a wild web of native oversized palms, gums, donkey tail succulents and a ten-storey-high pine tree. There is no noise pollution – just a choir of resident rainbow lorikeets, kookaburras and tawny frogmouths forming the soundtrack to daily life for the young family that calls this ‘treehouse’ home.

All five house tours also appear in the April 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on newsstands from 6 March 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Walking past this picturesque timber dwelling in Germany, you might not immediately realise its radical nature. Haus Anton II in the countryside outside Augsburg is not only a labour of love by local architect Manfred Lux and Antxon Cánovas of CÁNOVAS ARQUITECTURA but also a striking piece of wood architecture, challenging the norm in its field for its purism and boundary-pushing approach.

Step inside Haus Anton II, a radical timber dwelling

The home was born out of Lux's explorations with timber building. A passionate proponent of handcraft and architecture that both draws on traditional building techniques and goes against the grain of current trends, he created the home initially as a case study for what can be achieved by building - only - with wood. When approached by his clients, a pair with a particular interest in sustainable architecture and healthy living, the project became a real-life commission. Now set in a quaint orchard in the Bavarian countryside, it is the current owners' dream home.

The house is constructed using almost exclusively timber - not even glue or metal for joints. Importantly, it was made almost entirely by hand, by a small team of wood builders and Lux himself, who prefabricated components and assembled them on site, as specialists layered on electrical and other contemporary operating systems.

Lux addressed the project 'as a piece of furniture,' he explains. Its seemingly straightforward outline and shingle-covered external skin belies the complexity and internal gymnastics of its structure. No formaldehyde-containing adhesives or galvanized metal connections were used anywhere, and wooden surfaces were left untreated throughout.

Stepping inside, a visible coffered ceiling celebrates the timber construction, with wooden elements in full view everywhere. Loose furnishings are sparse as built-in cabinetry and other joinery coming with the house ensure the users' needs are largely covered. Untreated ash is the main material protagonist here, enveloping all living spaces in a warm, textured and light coloured skin - which is also the load-bearing frame for the home.

Haus Anton II's simplicity and modular building methods mean that it can also be completely demountable if needed. Importantly, this is not a one-hit-wonder story, but more a test proving a theory, which Lux intends on exploring and ultimately, expanding, further.

The architect explains: 'Although the house appears very unique and individual at first glance, Haus Anton has been designed and realized as a series house – with square or round basic shapes, clad with shingles, thatch, or metal, ranging from one to three stories – based on an inner, rational, and easily scalable grid, planned using traditional knowledge about valuable wood properties but digitally manufactured. The ecological house could already be widely reproduced today. The static proof is available.'

lux-architect.com

Manuel Herz is known for his adventurous body of work across the globe, from the moving walls of the Babyn Yar synagogue in Ukraine to a sinuous maternity clinic at Tambacounda Hospital in Senegal (W*244), and, opening this April, his Swiss Pavilion for Osaka’s Expo 2025, a light structure of pneumatic spheres. The Basel-based architect has long resisted a one-size-fits-all design approach. ‘There’s no formula in terms of material or geometry that we apply again and again,’ he says. Instead, he sees each project with fresh eyes, responding to the specificities of location, client and programme.

Explore a Munich villa that challenges its typology

His latest venture is in Munich’s leafy Herzogpark district. A seemingly clear-cut assignment, the commission became an opportunity for Herz to challenge some basic assumptions about what a house should be. The result is a dwelling that not only serves as a family home but also blurs the lines between architecture, art and nature.

The site for Villa Munich, which replaces a bulky 1980s structure, provided Herz with a particularly compelling canvas. The clients, with their intrepid spirit, were also a good match. The couple, who work in real estate, wanted a home base that would reflect their love of design and craft. It needed to be a personal and evolving space where their family could both enjoy privacy and gather, as well as surround themselves with the landscape and their growing art collection.

From the outset, Herz sought to dissolve the conventional separation between house and garden. A close collaboration with Zurich-based landscape architect Robin Winogrond resulted in a seamless interplay between the built and natural environments, with free-flowing, sliding, floor-to-ceiling glass walls allowing the outside to penetrate the home. The house embraces the garden and, in turn, the garden embraces the house, creating a place of wonder and revelation.

Each level has its own distinct identity, radically different in its exterior appearance and its overall geometry and floor plan, reflecting the programmatic needs of the rooms within. In a way, says Herz, within the relatively small footprint of a villa typology, the diversity of spatial demands is as wide as it gets, a fact that prompted inquiry. ‘Could we design a house,’ he asks, ‘that offers different experiences in each of these spheres that are not simply the result of extruding the legal footprint of the site into two or three floors?’

In contrast to the sweeping, boundary-dissolving ground floor, where the family gathers and entertains, the first floor, housing the three daughters’ bedrooms, is introverted, orthogonal and monolithic, defined on the exterior by charcoal-grey ceramic cladding. The top floor, where the primary bedroom is located, is a cylindrical volume wrapped in glass. It functions both as a retreat and a place of contemplation, offering 180-degree views out to the garden and the Isar River below.

An adjacent glass-walled volume holds a small greenhouse that doubles as a cocktail bar, while connecting the floors is a circular elm staircase executed by Bavaria-based carpenters Rasshofer, who were instrumental in the creation of the overall interiors. This sculptural vertical spine dramatically stitches together the house’s different zones.

The clients preferred materials in their raw, authentic state – ones that could be appreciated on multiple sensory levels and that would age gracefully. To achieve this, Herz collaborated with master craftsmen to employ singular materials and finishes, inside and out. The two façade panels were created in partnership with a specialist ceramic company, using a careful pigment selection and glazing techniques that give the surfaces depth and character.

The interplay of materials and forms – smooth terrazzo floors, sandblasted wood surfaces and metallic exterior drapes – creates a dynamic textural dialogue. One poetic detail is how the flowing sun-shading textile resonates with the curved façade tiles on the ground floor as if freezing drapery in time. This conversation between rigid and fluid, between structure and softness, is a recurring motif throughout the villa.

For both the owners and the architects, the house is a constant source of discovery and surprise. ‘If you think you know exactly how a building will turn out from the start, you’re either an impostor or doing boring architecture,’ says Herz. This philosophy is evident in the way Villa Munich came together – not as a fixed object, but as an ever-evolving entity responding to its inhabitants and surroundings. In breaking away from the constraints of the typical villa design, Herz has crafted something profoundly personal, setting the stage to let life unfold.  

manuelherz.com

A version of this article appears in the April 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on newsstands from 6 March 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Glitter. A material so seemingly frivolous, yet so deeply embedded in our collective memory. Our first encounters with glitter often occur in childhood –scattered across craft tables, pressed onto greeting cards, and dusted over school projects. It’s a material reserved for celebrations, for moments when the mundane must be transformed into something dazzling. But as we grow older, glitter is relegated to a realm of unseriousness, dismissed as superficial or excessive. And yet, its innate power to demand attention never fades – it merely becomes stifled by societal constraints. Glitter refuses to be ignored. It seeps into every crevice, leaves its mark long after its moment, and in doing so, becomes a symbol of persistence, presence, and power.

MK&G presents 'Glitter'

It is this duality – the playfulness of glitter and its underlying significance – that 'Glitter', the world’s first exhibition devoted to the material, explores at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G). Hamburg is arguably the ideal location for the 'Glitter' exhibition to open, given not only its history as a progressive and welcoming city but also the current socio-political climate in Germany. Co-curated by Dr Julia Meer and Nina Lucia Groß, the exhibition reframes glitter not as mere decoration but as a statement – one that asserts visibility, identity, and protest. As Groß succinctly puts it, 'Glitter is so much more than you think it is.'

Glitter is, at its core, an act of self-expression. From childhood sticker collections to teenage rebellion in the form of rhinestone-studded jeans and glitter-laden eyeliner, it becomes an intimate means of defining ourselves. It is applied deliberately, an embellishment that transforms objects – and people – into something more vibrant, more defiant. 'When you use glitter, you don’t use it casually,' explains Groß. 'It’s always intentional, always telling a story.'

The exhibition taps into this personal relationship through its Hall of Glitter, a gallery lined with over 100 objects submitted by the public, each carrying a deeply personal memory. A sequined jacket worn to a defining night out. A glittery diary cover that once held teenage secrets. A well-worn pair of shimmering dance shoes. These objects, much like glitter itself, hold remnants of the past, encapsulating emotions and experiences that refuse to be forgotten.

This intimacy extends to the curated works within the exhibition, where artists explore the role of glitter in personal transformation. One prominent example can be found in a recreated teenage bedroom by German artist Jenny Schäfer, where visitors are invited to step back into a space where glitter was once a rite of passage – a material that signified belonging, rebellion, and self-invention.

But glitter does not exist in a vacuum. It interacts with the world, often as a provocation. The way it clings stubbornly to the skin mirrors the way those who wield it refuse to be erased. 'Who is allowed to sparkle and shine – and who is not?' Groß asks. It’s a question that underscores the deeper socio-political implications of glitter.

Throughout history, glitter has been weaponised as both an act of resistance and a means of reclamation. In queer culture, it has long been a symbol of pride and defiance, from the sequined suits of drag performers to the glitter bombs thrown in protest against discriminatory policies. The exhibition explores this theme through pieces like African-American artist Mickalene Thomas' dazzlingly adorned skateboards, where Black, queer, and feminist identities intersect with unapologetic glamour. Meanwhile, stage costumes worn by figures such as Bill Kaulitz reinforce the idea that visibility – glittering, unabashed visibility – is a form of power.

The exhibition’s Glitter Up! section pays tribute to moments where glitter has served as a political tool. From feminist movements to environmental protests, it has been used to make statements that refuse to be ignored. Whether smeared onto bodies in acts of self-ownership or hurled in acts of defiance, glitter is never neutral. It forces attention, challenges perception, and insists on a reaction. Glitter: a mascot for playful perseverance in the face of persecution.

Yet, 'Glitter' is not merely an exhibition; it is an invitation to reconsider our relationship with this long under-estimated material. To see it not just as something frivolous, but as something formidable. To understand that those who embrace glitter are often those who have had to fight for the right to be seen.

The interactive aspects of the exhibition encourage this deeper engagement. Visitors can contribute to a glitter timeline, tracing its presence from ancient cosmetic applications to contemporary cultural touchpoints. A DIY workshop space pays tribute to glitter's status in craft culture as a symbol of empowerment and accessibility. And in Puff Out, an upcoming immersive installation by Brussels-based artist duo :mentalKLINIK, set to debut in June 2025, robotic vacuum cleaners create ever-changing glitter patterns on the floor, underscoring the material’s ephemeral yet persistent nature – glitter may be swept away, but it is never truly gone.

For those who fall under its spell, glitter is a beacon of joyful defiance, a refusal to fade into the background. As Tulga Beyerle, director of MK&G, states, 'We wanted to show that glitter is not just decoration – it’s a way to take up space, to be seen, to be heard.' To dismiss glitter is to misunderstand its power. It is at once delicate and unyielding, temporary yet enduring. It is the remnants of a celebration, the trace of a protest, the glimmer of a dream not yet realised.

As a groundbreaking world-first exhibition, discussions about its future are already underway. Much like glitter spilling from a bottle, the show’s influence cannot be contained, and it will soon reach audiences in the far-flung corners of the world, where its impact is likely to be felt long after the exhibition has gone.

MK&G 'Glitter' is on show until 26 October 2025 mkg-hamburg.de

The relationship between craft and design can be tumultuous. To many people, craft preserves the past, while design forges the future. And yet, in the past decade, we have witnessed an overwhelming resurgence in the practice of craft in the field of design. As the consequences of our globalised, homogenised and rampantly commercial behaviours become ever-more evident, we are re-evaluating the potential of craft, not just as a substitute for our wanton ways, but as a solution for our ignominious ills. The power of mind, hand and material meeting the needs of people in time and place is the original purpose of both craft and design. Surely they can work together in harmony rather than in opposition?

This is the question that Leipzig-based designer Johanna Seelemann has tasked herself with answering in her practice, which is currently focused on the Ore Mountain region, or Erzgebirge in German, of her native homeland. Travelling through this hilly borderland between east Germany and the Czech Republic, visitors will happen upon signs outside every second house pointing to carpentry workshops.

Johanna Seelemann's craft inspired by her homeland

Following the decline of the mining industry in the 17th and 18th centuries, the canny inhabitants turned their attention to their other big resource, trees, with wood-turning being the dominant modus operandi. The Erzgebirge region has since become the epicentre of production for the particular decorative objects that one associates with Mitteleuropean Christmas markets: nutcrackers, fir trees, candle arches and pyramids. ‘We all grew up with them in our homes,’ says Seelemann. ‘They were a core part of our annual rituals in the run-up to Christmas.’ Today, there are around 16,500 small and medium-sized businesses in the Erzgebirge region, of which a significant proportion are working with wood in the realm of craft.

So far so cosy, you may be thinking. Could there be a more idyllic image of old men in woody workshops carefully making snowy figurines for the most wonderful time of the year? The uncomfortable truth is that, within the next decade, 50 per cent of the workshops are set to close. As the old men hang up their tools in retirement, there are no young people waiting by the wood piles.

In fact, there are few young people living in these villages, let alone young woodworkers keen to continue the family business. Salaries for the artisans are low and it is not an attractive proposition for younger generations. Combined with the broader secularisation of society, dwindling enthusiasm is rendering this particular craft tradition, and the communities it supports, not just precarious, but critically endangered.

Enter Seelemann and her particular mode of design as an anthropological and social tool for improvement. She describes her ‘fascination for unravelling the objects that we might take for granted’. For two and a half years, together with photographer and  fellow Erzgebirger Robert Damisch, the pair have been documenting and gently infiltrating the community to assess how best they might reawaken what they believe to be a sleeping giant. Seelemann talks about their mission plainly: ‘We are trying to connect craftspeople to younger people and different audiences. We are interested in developing platforms beyond the Christmas markets and beyond the region. The knowledge and skill of this region is immense and has enormous potential.’

The first physical output of Seelemann is the arresting ‘Satellite’, a candy-coloured LED-lit chandelier. Sponsored by the Dregeno Seiffen woodworkers’ association in Erzgebirge, it was commissioned by the curator Alice Stori Liechtenstein and exhibited at her always-fascinating Schloss Hollenegg for Design earlier this year. A rambunctious creation, combining the fantastical imagination of Roald Dahl with the exuberant expression of the Memphis Group, it is entirely made from component parts from the Erzgebirge workshops that might otherwise have found their place as polite candle pyramids or noses for nutcrackers on the windowsill of a German suburban semi. By contrast, ‘Satellite’ belongs centre stage in a palace.

This tactic of design is far cleverer than one might first assume. It is not about making humble craft appropriate for a gallery; in the first instance, it is a communication tool for capturing people’s attention. ‘Wow’ and ‘gosh’ is very much the intended response. ‘Alice Stori pushed us for something wild and experimental,’ says Seelemann. ‘The real issue in the region, particularly where young people are concerned, is the attitude towards it,’ says Damisch. ‘Our goal is to attract attention and inspire people to think differently, to open their minds to the possibility of what might happen with what exists. Opening up a discussion with a propositional object was our primary objective,’ he adds.

In her Leipzig studio, Seelemann is holding up a series of intricately turned and carved wooden trees, each with a different texture and distinct personality according to its tooling technique. Away from the Erzgebirge workshops, in Seelemann’s hands, the trees are liberated to become something less literal. She is working on tables and lights, incorporating the whimsical properties of handmade elements into intriguing objects for a range of domestic purposes. Importantly, they bear the hallmark and character of the Erzgebirge tradition – Seelemann is not trying to disguise or dilute the hallmark skills that made the region famous, rather she is recontextualising them to augment their potential.

‘Many of the craftspeople struggle with the idea of change and find what we are doing shocking,’ admits Seelemann. ‘We understand, of course; we are consciously trying to bring a different perspective to something familiar, something that people feel deeply attached to. Some people will never accept that trees can be upended to become table legs,’ she laughs. ‘And yet, our design methodology is to be radical to create space for young people to imagine a life for themselves in Erzgebirge. We are not just trying to find people to carry on traditions, we hope to inspire people to evolve heritage skills into future traditions. We have to inspire people to understand that they can bring their own vision to the workbench more than just taking over the workshop from their father.’

Erzgebirge’s prognosis is echoed in a thousand communities and cultures where successful artisanal traditions have backed themselves into a corner to become crafts in stasis more than evolution. Just as design has increasingly looked to craft of late to help re-establish its human roots and soul, so the methodology of design can repay the favour by helping craft to resurrect its relevance and potential in contemporary life. What’s at stake is more than just nutcrackers, it is the knowledge intrinsic to the social infrastructure of a rural economy and its cultural identity. 

johannaseelemann.com

robertdamisch.com

A version of this article appears in the January 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

Berlin is a green city, with the Tiergarten at its heart and a necklace of forests and lakes. Still, a public park atop a new office building is a new model of urban landscaping for the German capital. Named Darwinstrasse 1 for its street address in the Charlottenberg district, this is an eight-storey linear block – the first to be built on a former industrial site beside the River Spree.

Designed by the prolific Berlin firm Grüntuch Ernst Architeken, it applies the sustainable architecture principles laid out in Hortitecture, a book that includes contributions made by 33 architects at a series of symposia on the synergy of architecture and plantings, and how that enhances the environment.

Discover Darwinstrasse, an elevated, new Berlin park

As GEA observes in its introduction, 'unlike solid building materials, which are fixed and controlled by the architect, living green materials challenge the design with the dynamics of growth'. It’s a challenge GEA has mastered in several other commercial projects and schools, and in Berlin’s Wilmina Hotel, which the firm created within a former women’s prison.

The commission for Darwinstrasse 1 came from Bauwens Development, a Cologne-based firm, who responded enthusiastically to the planners’ mandate for a publicly accessible roof garden that would create a valuable amenity for tenants and the neighbourhood. An open staircase runs up the west side of the 120m-long block to the north end of the fourth floor and the 2,200 sq m park cascades down from the south end. Trees in planters 2m deep rise from each terrace.

Ingenhoven Architeken’s Marina One complex employs a similar strategy in Singapore, where every new commercial development has to devote 25 per cent of the site to green space that is open to the public 24/7. In Berlin, where innovation is often stifled by a forest of regulations, it is a new departure that deserves to be widely copied, just as the Viaduc des Arts in Paris and New York’s High Line have inspired planners around the world.

Inevitably, the park and staircase added to the complexity and cost of construction. 'We were lucky to have a client willing to pay for that,' says GEA co-principal Armand Grüntuch.

For the architects, who worked with landscapers capattistaubach on the park, a major challenge was to reinforce the roofs to sustain the weight of wet earth 40-150cm deep and create a waterproof seal. They specified a concrete with embedded carbon and the building utilises renewable energy from the neighbouring power station. The open-plan floors are lit from expansive windows that can be shaded by external blinds. The spaces have an open technical infrastructure in the ceilings and they can be easily reconfigured with soundproofed partitions to accommodate a thousand workstations.

A large Bavarian investment firm bought Darwinstrasse 1 and is now leasing it to other firms. The landscaping will continue to grow but already it has created a significant micro-climate, with a measurable difference of temperature between park and street. Multiply that ten thousand times and Berlin would be the greenest city in Europe.

gruentuchernst.de

capattistaubach.de

An industrial park on the outskirts of Stuttgart is the rather unlikely location for one of Germany’s newest architectural gems. Designed by Gabriele Glöckler to house a private art collection managed by the Froehlich Foundation, it’s home to hundreds of modern artworks by mostly German and American artists including Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter.

It was Josef Froehlich’s wish that his art collection did not languish in storage, wrapped up and tucked away. To achieve that, the climate- and light-controlled building had to be conceived of as a modestly sized private museum, which can be visited by appointment. The task fell to Glöckler, who won long overdue recognition in 2011 when her quietly sophisticated design for the National Library in Leipzig extension was rewarded with the city’s Architekturpreis.

Take a tour of Stiftung Froehlich in Stuttgart

Her building is a striking vision: its organically-shaped roof appears to undulate in the air like a monocoque cloud, jutting out into the skies above a glass-walled upper level, while bunny-eared figures – a bronze sculpture by Barry Flanagan – appear to be revelling on the deck below. The two levels that house the artworks form a bunker-like concrete square, surrounded by what looks like a modern-day moat. It conceals an emergency water-drainage system, a recent regulation in the German building code for new structures in this flood-prone region.

The new building sits next to the foundation’s existing art depot, inaugurated in 2009 and also designed by Glöckler. It was important that the link between the two structures felt seamless, but, she says, ‘I don’t think of these things as challenges. That’s what architecture is about – thinking of design solutions within a set of conditions and restrictions. Function creates form. The ideal commission is when the client can explain the precise functional requirements and then the ideas come from me.’ Such ideas manifest, for example, in the glass-walled top floor, a vast, seemingly floating conference room with a view, and no columns to block it.

Glöckler’s attention to practical details is so meticulous that functional elements are hard to spot. Take, for example, the lighting concept in the exhibition spaces, which receive no daylight to protect the sensitive artworks. The recessed light solution is designed to make the entire length of the wall, floor to ceiling, appear illuminated with the same intensity of light – all within the museum standard of 50-100 lux – perfectly mimicking daylight inside a concrete bunker.

The interplay of materials and movement, indoor and outdoor, function and form, free-form and regulation have come to define Glöckler’s approach. ‘My professor once said, “You need seven good projects, and then you should retire before repeating yourself”,’ she says. ‘I’m not at seven yet.’

This article appears in the November 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

stiftung-froehlich.de

gabrielegloeckler.de

This article appears in the November 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

The first buildings of Berlin’s born-again Potsdamer Platz opened 30 years ago. Largely complete by 2000, this ambitious urban development, a kilometre south of the Brandenburg Gate, had been Europe’s biggest construction site. How big? One hundred and fifty acres. Think of Potsdamer Platz as more or less the size of 50 Trafalgar Squares or 30 Midtown Manhattan blocks. Half as big again as London’s towering Canary Wharf and almost as big as Beijing’s Forbidden City.

A walk through Potsdamer Platz

How could such a big, jigsaw piece of a major European city have ever gone missing? What happened to the old Potsdamer Platz between its bright-lights 1930s heyday and the 1990s? What is the new Potsdamer Platz like 30 years on? Daniel Libeskind, the architect of Berlin’s radical Jewish Museum, which opened in 2001, said around the time of the development's completion: 'Potsdamer Platz is an example of how you can hire the best architects in the world and still not automatically end up with something great.' Proficient, that is, if a little soulless.

The buildings rising here from the early 1990s on four commercially developed plots were designed by, among others, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Hans Kollhoff, Helmut Jahn, Arata Isozaki and Rafael Moneo, all distinguished architects. The quality of construction is high, with generous use of terracotta, brick and sandstone cladding. The development also features sustainability elements that were ahead of their time, such as green roofs and the recycling of rainwater into urban pools to lower the environmental temperature. The Sony Centre, designed by the Chicago architect Helmut Jahn, has a dramatic, circus-like quality, its eight buildings sharing a dramatic vaulted roof stretched between them. There is public art galore. Frank Stella. Robert Rauschenberg. Jeff Koons.

Here is also Dunkin’ Donuts, Pret a Manger, KFC, the Legoland Discovery Centre and The Upside Down, 'Berlin’s first interactive social media museum'. On any day of the week, tourists parade in their tens of thousands. In other words, Potsdamer Platz is an interesting port of call for daytrippers, students and fans of 1990s commercial architecture and urban planning, and it remains an important site of Berlin's reunification and a powerful place in European history.

It is also an important case study for those keen to understand the effects of the privatisation of public space. At the time of its development, the large-scale scheme was controversial for bringing a commercially led attitude to a historically sensitive and central part of the city. Even with its high footfall, the development can feel detached from the city proper.

It was always going to be a challenge to re-establish what had been a No Man’s Land for many decades. Photographs, films and recollections of Potsdamer Platz between the two world wars reveal how it was once an essential and decidedly lively part of an energetic and cultured city that lost its way, along with its very fabric and thousands of its citizens, as Nazi Germany went to war in 1939.

What had been an 18th-century military parade ground morphed into Berlin’s version of Times Square or Piccadilly Circus, albeit on a much bigger scale, criss-crossed by trams and, below ground, by U-bahn and S-bahn trains, and flanked by grand department stores, Neo-Baroque embassies and government offices, nightclubs, neon lights and a general sense that all modern life was here.

In 1933, as Martin Wagner, the chief city architect, drew up plans to completely reconstruct Potsdamer Platz in a modern style, the Expressionist architect Erich Mendelson completed his ultra-modern, multi-use Columbushaus on one side of the great square. Remarkably, Columbshaus survived the Second World War only to be gutted by fire and then demolished with the coming of the Wall and No Man’s Land on either side.

Since the reunification of Berlin and Germany in 1990, a debate had raged as to how the city should be rebuilt. One solution was Potsdamer Platz, vilified for bringing commercially driven development and privatised public space into the heart of an old European city. Compared, though, to many later such schemes around the world, it can still look remarkably refined and restrained – an outlying, unexpected sample of 1990s architecture.

Looking at Lake House, the newest work by Danish architect Sigurd Larsen, you might assume it's set deep in a lush forest, perhaps in the countryside of his adopted home country, Germany. Yet, while of course trees and nature form an important part of the project's concept and environment, you might be surprised to hear that it is in fact part of western Berlin – located in the city's suburban lake landscape.

Tour The Lake House by Sigurd Larsen

The scheme adopts residential forms and is even called a 'house', yet it hosts a sports and health retreat – catering to guests who come to take part in various activities or to relax and recuperate. Made up of a cluster of long, pitched-roof timber volumes, the complex draws on the archetypal form of a house, and aspires to evoke the comfort of one for its guests.

Its location was carefully chosen for its seclusion and discretion, ensuring it's a serene haven and healing space that focuses on health, sports and wellbeing. The programme includes guest accommodation, as well as areas for conferences, workshops, therapy treatments, and coaching sessions.

Made predominantly out of wood, the structure reflects not only its surrounding environment (slim timber columns on the glass façades are a nod to the trees), but also makes the most of the natural material's power to soothe and cocoon.

At the same time, there's drama hidden in its rigorously planned design. Larsen explains: 'The five roofs with varying pitches overlap and intersect to form a single volume, creating a silhouette that serves as a spectacular entrance to the building complex.'

Meanwhile, the generous ceiling height and glazed openings make sure visitors can be constantly surrounded by the wooded context. The architect adds: 'Those who have ever spent a mild summer evening under old Berlin street trees know the magic of the setting sun, whose rays sparkle through the canopy of leaves.'

sigurdlarsen.com

Roughly 48 hours after British athlete Keely Hodgkinson secured her first Olympic victory, in the women’s 800m final at Paris 2024, Nike was already celebrating in full bloom at its London flagship store, Nike Town, on buzzy Oxford Street. I witnessed it firsthand: a glass vitrine paraded a replica of Hodgkinson’s winning sneaker (signed by herself), complete with the time stamp of her gold-worthy race and an aerial shot of the finish line – let’s not forget the sprawling red and black LED screen column reminding us that ‘all-time greats don’t stop at gold’.

Are we even surprised? Of course not. Nike is both the master and student when it comes to its unrelenting encouragement to ‘Just do it’. Over the past 50 years, the sportswear giant’s evolutionary and revolutionary creative telescope rests in a simple truth: ‘to invite everybody – and every body – to experience sport for themselves’. For the grassroots startup turned global phenomenon (valued at just under 30 billion USD as of 2024), if you have a body, then you’re an athlete, and it’s via an unwavering commitment to design that the brand embraces the endless pursuit of athletic betterment in all its forms; no garment or sneaker comes out from pure instinct.

From the battered Air Force 1 kicks most teenagers wear to school to the Nike Zoom Victory 2 silhouette in which Hodgkinson won Olympic gold, every Nike product arises from years of ‘tinkering, adjusting, testing and refining’. As cited in the company’s 2023 design manifesto, No Finish Line: ‘Each successive product charts a new point on a never-ending journey forward.’ This was the ethos its co-founder and University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman pushed forward from the early days – he notably developed the label’s fabled Waffle sole using a kitchen iron at home.

Tour ‘Nike: Form Follows Motion’ at the Vitra Design Museum

Across technology, performance, sports and pop culture, Nike’s presence is so ubiquitous that the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, hosting the first major exhibition dedicated to the American behemoth may come as a surprise. Mateo Kries, director of the Vitra Design Museum, tells Wallpaper*: ‘It is a general phenomenon that design topics have taken very long to enter the museum world. During the past decade, there have been major exhibitions about some leading fashion houses, but to make an exhibition about a brand like Nike is yet another level. The brand’s design archive is an incredible treasure trove; we were lucky to come across it.’

‘Nike: Form Follows Motion’ traces five decades of the brand’s culture of design and innovation through the lens of athletes, designers, scientists and the wider community, with examples sourced from the Nike Design Archive (DNA), which consists of over 200,000 samples. As Kries emphasises: ‘There is not such a big difference between Nasa engineer Frank Rudy, who developed the original Air technology for more than a decade, and an athlete wearing Nike: both are pursuing a dream with great energy and determination.’ Of course, the question of what makes Nike Nike doesn’t have a straightforward answer, which is why the exhibition follows four chronological sections. The first, ‘Track’, delves into the brand archive’s earliest holdings: from hands-on marketing campaigns to early-day stories.

It was 1972 when American graphic designer Carolyn Davidson developed the Swoosh for Nike’s co-founders Phil Knight and Bowerman – today, one of the most recognisable logos in the world. Kries smiles at the idea that the logo itself could be the topic of a whole new exhibition: ‘It is one of the first logos that is purely abstract, which means not derived from any word or any figurative image (like an apple).’ A paragon of design perfection, the two overlaid curves with an elegant tip showing upwards elegantly express the idea of speed and movement. ‘It is also remarkable that the logo has remained unchanged over several decades, which is rare in our world of accelerated trends and images.’

Glenn Adamson, curator of the exhibition and curator-at-large at the Vitra Design Museum, recounts a story from Nike’s early days: the Tennessee State Tigerbelles, a record-breaking relay team from a historically Black university that Nike endorsed in the 1970s: ‘The four runners – Deborah Jones, Brenda Morehead, Chandra Cheeseborough and Ernestine Davis – set a world record in the indoor 880 relay in 1978; this was an emblematic moment in the Civil Rights era and a precursor to the better-known relationships that Nike would develop with Black athletes in the 1980s and later.’

From its beginnings in the track-and-field scene, the company evolved into a national and, eventually, global powerhouse. The exhibition’s second chapter, ‘Air’, highlights the transformative 1980s when Nike truly took flight, propelled by strategic sponsorships of athletes across various sports. A pivotal moment came in 1984 with the launch of the first Air Jordan shoe, created for rookie Michael Jordan during his time with the Chicago Bulls, marking Nike’s entry into the basketball arena. This success paved the way for expansion into other categories like tennis, global football and skateboarding. The legendary Air Max 1 – for which in-house designer Tinker Hatfield got inspiration from Paris’ Centre Pompidou – also emerged during this era, ushering in a new chapter in the company’s design legacy.

The third space, ‘Sensation’, delves into the research and development that shapes Nike’s design culture, highlighting the Nike Sport Research Lab in Beaverton, Oregon. Founded in 1980, this facility is among the largest and most advanced in the world for studying human movement, with many of its findings directly influencing the products we see on shelves. Adamson explains, ‘There, it’s not just about the feel of the materials or structure –though that’s certainly important – but also how a shoe or garment responds to athletes of varying body types, skill levels and needs.’ The exhibition looks at examples, such as the Alphafly series, engineered to break the two-hour marathon barrier, a feat ultimately achieved by Eliud Kipchoge, or the process behind shoes tailored for elite athletes like LeBron James, exemplifying a highly detailed ergonomic approach to design development.

Nike’s design for sustainability is also touched upon, an integral component of the Swoosh’s creative process since the early 2000s. A topic often scrutinised, Kries notes the ambition for the exhibition was to give clear examples of green initiatives and inventions at Nike: ‘We present facts and examples to demonstrate the serious research and work behind Nike. Ultimately, it’s up to the audience to decide.’ This approach allows visitors to explore the brand’s composite material, Grind, made from the soles of old sneakers, and discover Flyknit technology, a digital knitting method that significantly reduces waste during production – most notably seen in the ISPA Link Axis silhouette.

The final chapter, ‘Relation’, acts as a fitting coda that encapsulates the essence of the Nike universe: exploring collaborations with a diverse array of external designers (think Marc Newson, Comme des Garçons and Virgil Abloh), athletes, musicians and other community-based initiatives that reflect the brand’s influential role in both popular and counter cultures. Reflecting on pivotal moments, Adamson recalls when American soccer player Brandi Chastain unveiled a Nike-developed sports bra during her 1999 championship celebration: ‘This was an encouragement for many women to request sports equipment adapted to their specific needs.’

For the sneakerheads eager to explore footwear rarities up close, Adamson promises two sections sure to captivate, including a prototype of the aforementioned Bowerman’s Waffle trainer. ‘These objects rarely leave the Nike campus, if ever, so having them in the exhibition is such an exciting opportunity.’ It’s the final room that heralds some never-before-seen highlights, such as a special never-released edition Air Force 1 designed to accompany American rapper Nelly’s 2002 album ‘Nellyville’; a 2018 Air Span created as a tribute to British blogger Gary Warnett (with only 40 pairs made); and shoes made back in 1982 for Elton John and Donna Summer.

‘Nike: Form Follows Motion’ will be on display at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany until 4 May 2025, and it’s set to travel to other international museums in the future. For more information, visit design-museum.de

Le Big TamTam in Hamburg’s Hanse District is anything but an ordinary food court. Designed by German practice Studio Aisslinger in collaboration with Tellerrand Consulting, the project, which took over four years to realise, breathes new life into the city’s first heritage-listed mall, Hanseviertel at Große Bleichen, and reinvents the traditional urban food market as a funfair-like experience. With elements like the ‘smallest bar in Hamburg’ and a central ‘Farming Tower’, Le Big TamTam bursts with colour and flavour.

Le Big TamTam, Hamburg

Reflecting the growing trend for homemade, authentic dishes in major European cities, the five different culinary offerings at Le Big TamTam are incredibly diverse and international. Diners can choose to savour authentic Japanese ramen at Momo Ramen, indulge in Neapolitan pizzas paired with craft beers from ÜberQuell, a microbrewery in St Pauli, or enjoy vibrant Mexican street food from Miguel Zaldiva. Seafood lovers can delight in classic dishes served by Burhan Schawich and Samet Kaplan, while Yeahboy offers a fresh take on vegan comfort food.

Beyond the tantalising menus, the space, which caters to up to 500 guests, features the smallest bar in town, set 14m up and accessed through a narrow, steep staircase; an artisan bakery; a stage for live concerts and DJ sets, and a dedicated events area. For Studio Aisslinger (whose past projects include Kantini and a retro-futuristic apothecary, both in Berlin), enhancing connectivity through design was paramount in their vision for the space. Every detail, whether grand or subtle, tells a story.

The atmosphere is delightfully playful, with vibrant colour combinations, dynamic geometry and custom-made furniture, such as an imaginative lighting concept by Studio De Schutter, creating a unique feel-good environment. For Werner Aisslinger, founder of the studio, managing director and head designer, the best part is the evershifting pop-up concept dubbed The Kiosk: 'a small wonderworld bringing memories of funfairs, fancy markets and fairytales together in a small, welcoming unit’.

Le Big TamTam is located at Große Bleichen 32, Hamburg, lebigtamtam.com

For the last two months, a new aparthotel in Berlin’s Hackescher Markt has been inviting people to try and give feedback on its design and experience. Wallpaper* took up this offer, spending two nights as a willing guinea pig. Dubbed MM:NT Berlin Lab, the hospitality concept was developed by Philippa Wagner, an experienced design strategist at PeoplePlacesSpaces, for apartment hotel operator Adina Hotels, part of Sydney-based TFE Hotels.

Inside MM:NT Berlin Lab aparthotel

MM:NT Berlin Lab bills itself as a ‘digital first’, self-serve experience. ‘You need to be digitally savvy, ideally a digital native,’ says MM:NT operations lead Janek Gensch. As such, spots like the front entrance, guest rooms, and in-room drawers and cupboards had to be accessed by swiping the corresponding ‘key’ on the app. Although bewildering at first, the system eventually became second nature.

With no staff on site during the beta mode period – just an MM:NT intercom system connecting with a staff member – the only background noise we experienced was the incidental music in the communal spaces or that of other guests conversing about the futuristic nature of the experience.

Design-wise, the interiors emanate a minimal and functional energy. ACME, a studio based in London, Berlin and Madrid, developed most shared spaces and bedrooms, while BWM in Vienna crafted one room with a different approach. In the communal area, ACME installed a large table made of recycled plastic from Smile Plastic and adorned the space with floor-to-ceiling green drapes to soften the concrete walls.

Our two-night stay commenced in one of ACME’s ‘small’ rooms, a compact 14 sq m space without windows, resembling a Scandinavian cabin on a cruise ship. Distinctively, the bathroom boasted terracotta recycled glass tiles from Eco-Friendly Tiles. On our second night, we stayed in BWM’s ‘medium’ room, where the team ingeniously fit a kitchenette with a Foresso worktop made of recycled materials into the available 19 sq m – space-saving features included fold-out shelves and tables integrated into the walls.

MM:NT Berlin Lab is set to open to the public on 1 July 2024, while the brand has plans to expand in more European cities and Australia.

MM:NT Berlin Lab is located at, An d. Spandauer Brücke 11, mmnt-intime.com

Found within the future-facing Volkswagen campus – which serves as a brand hub and an experience centre – in Wolfsburg, Germany, restaurant Beef Club has reopened its doors following an extensive refresh by Ester Bruzkus Architekten. The project follows a basic rule of sustainability, which, according to Peter Greenberg, partner at the German architecture studio, is ‘to save as much as possible but to make it as contemporary as possible’. As such, the team strived to reuse elements from the restaurant’s previous iteration but repurposed them to upgrade its atmosphere.

Nature and innovation collide at Beef Club

The fresh design – which references the fire and salt that are key elements of Beef Club cooking – combines a spacious communal area with a sophisticated private zone. At the heart of the public dining experience is a visible open kitchen and brick fireplace that display the theatrical grilling of meats and vegetables. Both follow a composition of three kinds of fired brick, glazed and unglazed, in different formats. Adjacent to this is a large pink salt monolith by Königssalz, used as a counter to display different kinds of salt that are used in the dishes. Individual tables lie ahead, crafted from salt-treated wood and displaying a unique colour and texture. Meanwhile, wooden benches running the room’s length and inspired by Alvar Aalto’s Wolfsburg churches, enhance the social feel of the restaurant.

Enveloping Beef Club is a discreet, earthy colour palette complemented by industrial-style lighting and technical fixtures, such as silver cylindrical overhead lamps repurposed from the previous space. Shades of green, brown, orange, and black contribute to the cosy atmosphere of the room, which looks out to a leafy canal. A shift into darker floor tiles welcomes guests into the private dining room, where the light and colours are slightly more lavish. Here, the old booth seating and bar set-up are reused with new finishes to maintain a cohesive look. ‘All in all, the project’s concept is to harness the archaic within the technological, inviting the community of Wolfsburg into the campus,’ adds Greenberg.

Beef Club is located at Stadtbrücke, Wolfsburg, autostadt.de

When I arrived at E-WERK Luckenwalde, a former power station half an hour on a train south of Berlin, the place was quiet. Eerily so, for a site soon to open a performance art festival headlined with raucous angst from Pussy Riot. I had been here before, so knew my way around the campus, comprising the power station, the town’s former swimming pool, and the variety of ancillary pavilions and buildings that E-WERK Luckenwalde’s founders – artist Pablo Wendel and curator Helen Turner – had transformed into spaces for experimental culture.

Like me, Wallpaper* had also previously visited. In 2019, when E-WERK Luckenwalde opened with a bang, writer Emma O’Kelly was told by Wendel that the project would be ‘offering art as a power supply’. I confidently strolled straight up the entrance steps of Stadtbad, the swimming pool, and through the double doors to encounter the light-filled Bauhaus hall empty other than for a musician at a piano, filling the space with delicate notes. Immediately, I took out my camera and started recording, a kneejerk reaction to a space and situation I was totally at ease and familiar with. As I completed my panning video, the musician stopped playing to say ‘hello’. I replied, said it was beautiful, then left.

‘Tell Them I Said No’, the title of the two-day festival, was an eclectic mix of performance, workshops, and discussion. Taking its title from an essay series by Martin Herbert, considering artists who had withdrawn from or rejected an art-market-focused art world, the festival – programmed by Turner and freelance senior curator Katharina Worf – sought to explore modes of separation, sustenance and survival.

Hettie Judah, curator of the current touring exhibition ‘Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood’, spoke about the lack of space in a competitive, precarious and constraining art world for caregiving, parents and those who don’t want to conform to a rigid capitalist rhythm. Florence Peake nestled her crotch into that of life- and art-partner Eve Stainton, and without separating, the entangled two then manoeuvred up and down the emptied swimming pool slope for Practice 1, a performance of support, struggle and anxiety that for all its poetic poise, always seemed on the edge of serious injury.

In a discussion on expectations upon being an artist and making work, and the compression into or fight away from conforming neoliberal tendencies, Abbas Zahedi spoke beautifully about his practice as a performance poet in relation to former employment as a medic and community worker. In the art world, Zahedi considers himself a ‘participatory ethnographer’, an outsider less interested in sculpting utopia than engaging with concerns. ‘People think that galleries are where you go and look at things,’ the performer said, then asked ‘but how does that space get converted into something that's more about witnessing, and how can I engender that within the work itself, or require that from the institution or audience?’

Eglė Budvytytė’s workshop in collaboration with Fernanda Muñoz Newsome, Some Were Dragged, Some Were Carried, also spoke to the body unceremoniously being taken through space. Training how a pair can alternatively support the movement of another, the work draws inspiration from how authorities drag disobedient bodies away from sites of protest, but here transforms into mutual support and tenderness. Within E-WERK Luckenwalde’s geodesic dome, Asad Raza’s workshop also explored co-dependency and nurture, but with soil – his session training participants how to create a neo-soil, and through it more deeply understand ecosystems and relationships.

On the second day I needed to step away. The football team I had supported for 30 years were playing an important final game of the season in which they could get promoted to the English Premier League. Holed away in Wendel’s office with my laptop and two cans of beer, I watched Ipswich Town’s 2-0 followed by a pitch invasion and outpouring of collective joy. I was happy, though only felt a profound sadness, thinking of how my father would have been so full of life today had prostate cancer not taken him. At that moment, I didn’t want to be staring at a laptop in Luckenwalde, but in that Ipswich crowd reliving memories for and with my father. A sense of grief I don’t think I had felt in the eight years since he died was building inside.

Back in the power station’s Turbine Hall, SERAFINE1369 presented IV, a dance work lasting for one exact hour. Like a spoken clock, each minute was read out over a glitchy, hauntological soundtrack that conjured the mechanics of the building’s past. Instead of machinery, four dancers adhered to chronological order, then tried to break from it, floating between collaboration and independence before an equilibrium of freedom was found. I held back my tears, just.

After it ended, I tried talking to people about Ipswich’s promotion, its memories and sense of loss, and how witnessing such pleasure could fill me with an empty pain. But, unsurprisingly, the exploits of a small Suffolk football team didn’t seem that important to the down-from-Berlin art crowd, and so I kept it inside, carrying on with the festival programme, staying just on the edge. Regardless, I thought to myself, what I was feeling was sadness, and there are far bigger issues right now in the world.

A panel of Lamis Ammar, Candice Breitz and Zoë Claire Miller discussed Gaza within a world of grief, the art world’s response, and the delicate situation of funding and free speech in Germany – a situation that makes E-WERK Luckenwalde’s political event not only an act of bravery, but perhaps one of defiance. ‘I think there is definitely fear,’ Turner said, ‘but what is the point of having a cultural institution if you can't keep it open and invite people to have discourse – I think that is the priority above everything else.’

The final hours of the event comprised performances in the Stadtbad, the empty pool’s slope and two tiers of balconies, creating a perfect auditorium not only for headliners Pussy Riot, but the preceding acts. ‘I got an email that said when life gives you lemons…’ Abbas Zahedi says in his audio-visual performance, using the fruit as a vehicle to explore trauma, time and ancestry. ‘I have been told that speaking of the past is bad form, improper etiquette, so I speak of lemons instead,’ and in speaking through lemons Zahedi turned the Stadtbad into a space of collective grief – for his neighbours from Grenfell, for ancestors we never met, for strangers and for family.

Then, Jjjjjerome Ellis came on to perform the poetic Aster of Ceremonies. Clearly anxious, Ellis spoke of stuttering from a young age and how it is now folded into the artist’s identity, work and name. They read: ‘The art of the stutter is to give away being on time, the art of the stutter is to utter in time, not on time.’ Ellis owns the stutter, and all the personal trauma it carries, then uses it to empower a broader memory of Black and disabled people, using it as a tool to appropriate the language of escaped slave adverts to speak to timeless trauma and grief.

When they sat at a piano to put words to music, I immediately realised that it had been Ellis’ rehearsal I had so arrogantly walked in on and started filming. A sense of regret struck me. Who was I to have imposed myself into the space yesterday, immediately start filming them, extract that beauty then leave? I began to listen deeper, thinking of not only Ellis’ connected ideas of taking loss and grief to rebuild and renew, but all the other ways these themes were woven into modes of opposition, conversation, creativity and network over ‘Tell Them I Said No’. And in that moment of witnessing, my own grief didn’t feel trapped or interior, but as a tiny part of a wider, shared sense of loss, one of acknowledged vulnerability and with a potential to create new kinds of collective power if considered with care.

‘The Drop Out: Tell Them I Said No’ at E-WERK Luckenwalde in 2024 

Supported by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation), Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Luckenwalde

kunststrom.com

A dozen casually dressed performers animate Hamburger Bahnhof’s central hall, leading visitors around the curious topography as they stage a series of live tableaus or vignettes – regularly punctuated by polyphonic singing and semi-poetic speech. An imposing sand dune has been implanted into the space, and a few of them stand atop it, grasping at handfuls as if in search of something. Their actions are not frantic, but precise and methodical. One of them suddenly abandons the excavation project and begins to slowly roll down the side of the dune. Reaching the bottom and continuing to roll across the floor, they are eventually picked up by two others, carried ceremoniously up a winding ramp and set atop a raised platform next to a prominently displayed agate stone. The person and the large stone appear on the same level, and a kind of duet between them begins, enhanced by the sound of another performer humming a short Bach excerpt.

Alexandra Pirici’s ‘Attune’ at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

This is just one small part of Alexandra Pirici’s Attune, the artist and choreographer’s largest work to date, co-commissioned by Hamburger Bahnhof and Audemars Piguet Contemporary, which supported the project from its inception. In the buttressed hall of the former train station, with its impressive windowed-wall as a backdrop, Pirici has created what she describes as an itinerary or parcours that feels like a landscape. Performers will activate the space for four hours each day of the exhibition’s run, with a choreography that loops three times over. Most elements of the action are fixed, but some remain fluid and subject to the performers’ improvisation and consonance with one another.

However playful or abstract Pirici’s choreographies may appear, they are often grounded in extensive research and a desire to address urgent political questions. For her, rigour and playfulness are not rigidly distinct artistic methods: the success of Attune lies in the solidarity it creates between storytelling and scientific inquiry. 

Pirici explains that she ‘intended Attune to be a celebration of the continuum between the animate and the inanimate... I believe that continuum should be celebrated because it literally situates us within the larger fabric of the world, made of the same matter, belonging to the same universe.'

Attune stresses the importance of listening to different voices, both human and non-human. The polyphonic chorus, inspired by Georgian or Corsican folk songs, fills the vast space and draws visitors into a meditation on the necessity of acknowledging our place in a multi-perspectival world. Polyphony, Pirici notes, is challenging for the modern ear, which is so focused on the individual voice – it takes a considered level of engagement to both perform and distinguish the multiplicity of voices.

The sound of the performers singing also occasionally intervenes directly in the chemical processes taking place on the stainless-steel installation mounted in the space, which Pirici has dubbed the 'Organ'. Referencing its part in a larger system, or organism, as well as its resemblance to the musical instrument, this vegetal-like structure has glass cylinders hanging from its branches, which contain different experiments. As the performers sing their 'Organ songs', the colour and composition of the substances changes, adding another layer to the interspecies collaboration at work in the piece.

Placing human bodies in direct dialogue, or chorus, with organic and inorganic matter, Attune draws our attention to the self-organising impulses that exist, not just in human communities but also, and importantly, among seemingly inert materials. By paying attention to the capacity of our surrounding environment to be both active and creative, we can gain a renewed sense of our own propensity for cooperation. Attune, Pirici insists, presents us with an 'invitation to harmonise'.

Attune, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, until 6 October 2024, smb.museum

My first experience at Lanserhof Sylt left me, glowing, full of energy and already thinking about when I was going to book my second stay.

Boasting the largest thatched roof in Europe, it floats heavily over a curved glass facade and does its best (despite its scale) to blend in with the traditional Frisian houses you pass on the way, with their highly pitched thatched roofs and low-bricked areas. The health resort occupies 20,000 square metres and was designed by Dusseldorf-based architect Christoph Ingenhoven. As soon as I arrived, entering through a subterranean drop off area and carpark with nine metre ceilings, I was welcomed with a hot towel and whisked to my room, first stopping to admire the staircase cum atrium spanning the resort’s five storeys.

The Lanserhof Sylt heals the gut with its ‘Cure Classic’ programme

My room came with a terrace set into the thatched roof and was spread over two floors, with a living and working space downstairs and a bedroom and bathroom upstairs. In place of the usual bottle of champagne or sweet treats on arrival, guests are gifted a pair of Lanserhof-blue Birkenstocks. After a bowl of ‘base’ soup for dinner, made of potato and easy-to-digest vegetables, I went to the introductory medical lecture to understand the cure and treatment ahead.

The Lanserhof Cure focuses on the thorough regeneration of gut health and is named after the Lansehof’s first location, which opened in 1994 in Lans, Austria. Frank Xaver Mayr, discovered that our gut is the root of good health, and developed a programme based around mild fasting, with stale spelt bread and yoghurt followed by broth or tea in the early evening (the latter to be taken with a teaspoon and chewed 30 times). Subsequently, saliva starts the breakdown of the food before it reaches the gut, allowing the stomach to cleanse and purify, benefiting the entire body.

The food served in the programme has been adapted to be tastier than its original iteration. It is offered lactose-free for those who need it, and includes more bread options, and fermented foods, whilst being beautifully presented and tasty, while keeping portion size small.

Alongside the diet, there is a full and comprehensive programme of treatments, beginning each morning. On the first day, at seven AM (after taking salts prepared for me which assist with cleansing), I went for bioimpedance analysis, which shows your body fat, muscle and water percentages, and a pair of blood tests to show your lactate and metabolic measurements. The lab processes the tests on-site, so by the time I met my doctor an hour later, she had the results to hand; I had been assigned a physician based on a thorough medical history questionnaire that is completed before your arrival.

I ventured off most days on smart e-bikes, for hour-long cycle rides through the spectacular dunes covered in heather and beach grasses. Along the way I fell for Sylt’s landscape; its a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The Island is on Germany’s northernmost border with Denmark, on the east side it faces the tidal Wadden Sea and on the west the North Sea. In the past, it was used as a military base. Today it’s referred to as the ‘Hamptons of Germany’ and many of the houses built originally for officers have been refurbished. The fauna and flora, and breeze off the North Sea mean that Sylt is an ideal place to come to cure yourself of allergies, skin problems and respiratory disease.

Back inside, the air has an exquisite smell of wood from the floors and walls. Aside from the clinic, the entire resort including upholstery, walls and bathrooms are cleaned only with steam so there is no residue or smell of any cleaning products. Between appointments I made myself comfortable on an Eames lounger with my bare feet on the ottoman, in the lodge with a view over the dunes and the Wadden Sea.

All the doctors are trained in the The Lanserhof Cure (mine had been practising it for 12 years) and include a neurologist, cardiologist, urologist, ophthalmologist, dermatologist, rheumatologist and orthopedist. Your first appointment lasts an hour and can, depending on your physical and mental state lead to more tests. It’s here you get to agree on your cure level, from the hardcore ‘0’ – which is only broth or tea three times a day – or ‘1’, ‘2’ or ‘3’, which get progressively more gentle. I started with ‘1’, which consists of two slices of tasty toasted spelt, buckwheat or rye bread and yoghurt for breakfast, one slice of the same bread and some base soup for lunch, and just the soup for dinner.

The basic program also features the abdominal treatment, which helps stimulate the cleansing of the small and large intestines. I had some excellent therapeutic massages, too, a fantastic gentle physio for a shoulder problem, a detox drainage massage, reflexology and a hay bath, where you are wrapped up in a giant ‘teabag’ full of hay from the Sylt mountains and left on a floating bed to nap. Other tests included a urine test, a metabolism measurement test, and a 3D Body mapping exam with Canfield’s whole body imaging scanner, which provides a scan of your body via 90 precision cameras. (It also shows a map of all your moles, and any that look suspect are revisited with a handheld scanner with 15–200x magnification).

The interior, also by Christoph Ingenhoven, consists of wide limed oak floors, polished cement pillars and slatted timber walls, furnished with Cassina, Vitra and Knoll, upholstered in shades of oatmeal and warm grey. Everything is carefully curated and considered, down to the Flos Tab lamps, the Kettal outdoor furniture on your terrace and beside the pool landscaped into, the Dibbern porcelain, and littala glasses (which you will use a lot as it is suggested to drink three to four litres per day during the cure).

After my last medical appointment, I am rewarded with a final Sunday lunch of rosti potatoes, fillet steak, asparagus and a slice of spelt bread. I even get a dessert. Later, for my last dinner, my beetroot soup (full of polyphenols which are strong antioxidants) was supplemented with a portion of sheep’s cheese from nearby Galmsbüll. It was so good that I ordered half a kilo to take home.

Rates at Lanserhof Sylt start from €6,400 for a seven night Lanserhof Cure Classic.

lanserhof.com

Reethaus' gently imposing thatched roof hints at its context's wider approach; an artisan- and design-led, slowly crafted environment, drawing from the past but firmly reconfigured for the 21st century. The new cultural space, which opened recently in Berlin, is the first in a series of completions coming up in a new urban development for Berlin. Titled Flussbad, it aims to become a leading creative campus, which will eventually comprise old and new structures, including wild parkland and workspaces, restaurants and accommodation set within historic Weimar-era river baths on the Spree riverfront – with Reethaus at its heart.

Reethaus: a space for art, community and contemplation

While the surrounding landscape and complex are still in development, Reethaus has opened its doors, hosting a rolling programme of performances – from community activities to art, with a wide cultural scope, including sound installations and musical performances (the latest being a Tibetan choir).

Claus Sendlinger, who is behind the Flussbad scheme, explained: 'The Reethaus was conceived as a place for radical presence. It’s often compared to a temple and it is indeed a place where deep, contemplative, even spiritual experiences take place, but it’s also a space for exploration, connection and experimentation. Its 360-degree in-built spatial sound system allows for a new kind of immersive sonic experience. With the full opening of the Flussbad campus, the Reethaus will become the place where our community gathers to experience truly impactful programming, from health rituals to artistic performance to immersive learning and workshops.'

'In some ways, you can also see the Reethaus as replacing an outdated concept: the conference centre. With mass digitisation and the rise of remote work, the rules of engagement have changed. When we come together in the physical world, whether for business or leisure or to learn something new, we want to truly connect and experience something akin to awe or wonder. This is what the Reethaus was designed to do. It’s where you could say, the magic happens.'

The architect behind it is Austrian Monika Gogl, who worked alongside Belgian interior designer Cédric Etienne on the building. Their design approach was more about textures, light and capturing the 'emotional power of stillness', they explain, than designing a traditional auditorium or art centre. 

The duo were inspired by a variety of influences – as far away as Japanese teahouses and the tea ceremony, and as close as the green nature of the Spree riverside around the site. 

'The task is [to allow the visitor] to feel, smell, recognise the soil and the energy of a place,' said Gogl. 'There are many options for using the space. The visitor should dive in, along the long concrete entrance ramp (like a flâneur of Walter Benjamin) and feel calmer, letting all fears behind them. They enter through the big steel door (a kind of transition) and connect with the earth, through the light which comes from above. [There is] a beautiful view of the river, the water and the green. They should see the transformation of the materials in the daylight, they should feel the connection to nature. They should feel secure and “held”, and witness the different spatial situations in the foyer, the atrium, the different energy of the meeting rooms…'

The calm and at the same time powerful creative draw of the Reethaus will keep inviting guests in with its varied performances – meanwhile, more reasons to visit the area are coming up later in 2024, as the team behind Flussbad is gearing up for further openings on the site. 

'Next year will be the big one for Flussbad,' said Sendlinger. 'We’re expecting the entire campus to open, welcoming gastronomy, health offerings, guest rooms and working lofts within an architectural ensemble by neo-brutalist master Arno Brandlhuber integrated into one of the greenest, vastest sections of Berlin’s riverside. Flussbad will also host the “learning environment” of Slowness, a laboratory of new ideas in hospitality that we’ve been building over the past few years, bringing together a vanguard community of designers, artists, scientists, farmers, chefs and other visionaries whose work engages with slowness toward a resetting of values.'

flussbad.com

'Duplex' seems something of a misnomer for this single-family house outside Leipzig – until you investigate further. Fusing two petite gable-roofed houses into one ample home, the architects Atelier ST doubled down on the syncopated shift of the property’s original footprint. Opening up the two volumes with a series of split levels, they created a conversation between lateral counterparts, introducing an easy flow of space and purpose. 

Duplex: a raw home echoing its residents' taste

The project represents a homecoming for the clients, who’d set out years earlier for careers in the city. Returning to the northeastern suburb of Leipzig-Portitz, they brought an appreciation for unconventional design and a real fondness for the converted school they’d been living in. The arch motif that defines the windows and doorways at Duplex nods to the barrel vault of the school’s former auditorium. The graphic curves and their wooden inserts filter natural light through the lush surrounds and into the meandering spaces in ever-evolving patterns. 

In the hands of Silvia Schellenberg-Thaut and Sebastian Thaut, the couple behind Atelier ST, the new house puts on a straightforward façade. The exposed board-formed concrete structure, while breaking with the community standard, sits simply and comfortably within the surrounding woodland. It takes up no more space than its neighbours. It doesn’t try to prove itself. 

Yet it belies the complex sequence of spaces within. Connected by those archways – or 'portals', in the architects’ parlance – the rooms are in a constant state of flux. Beginning in the open-plan kitchen and dining room, they swing between levels with dynamic efficiency, each one a few steps from the next. 

The transitions are easy yet definitive, offering new views and perspectives. Even the shallow staircase leading up to the private quarters, much longer than the others, makes a gentle progression while playing with the elongated framework of the house.

Up here, too, the rooms maintain a close concert with one another. Still, the master suite takes on a hallowed, secluded quality, even though the children’s rooms, office and guest quarters are just a few steps above, on the upper level. The nursery focuses outward through the porthole window to a cluster of fruit trees. 

Concrete infiltrates every space, whether in the flooring, built-in furnishings or the two bracing walls that run up through the core. And yet Duplex never gets cold.

Practically, ST experimented with thermal 'hemplime' insulation plastered with natural clay, an energy-efficient solution that also helps cool the house in summer. The natural palette and woody accents go a long way toward the warm, hospitable feeling that very much blends in with the neighbourhood. 

atelier-st.de 

For those of us never acquainted with the smoky boardroom glamour of the 1960s and 1970s, Hamburg’s Central Congress Bar exists to thrill with a sense of the illicit. Where else might one drink a cocktail and smoke a cigarette in such a formal office-style setting in the 21st century?

At Central Congress Bar, a conference-style location meets a laid-back drinks menu

From outside, on the cold and imposing Steinstrasse, Central Congress Bar’s floor-to-ceiling windows offer a unique insight into the past. The space looks, at first glance, like a boardroom, complete with strip lighting overhead and grey, square-tiled carpet underfoot. Only the incognito stainless steel bar in the corner and the nightly influx of dock worker-hat-wearing clientele give the game away.

Owners Johannes Wilder and Oliver Horr opted against trendy neighbourhood Sternschanze or tourist-heavy Sankt Paulli for their boardroom-themed break from the working day. Their innovative concept had to be in Hamburg’s centre, moments away from the city’s Central Station, placing the bar at the heart of the business district.

‘Before we opened here, this used to be a dodgy travel agent,’ says owner Wilder, who has a penchant for all things old, especially places around Hamburg with a nostalgic feel.

Every last inch of the space is brand new, but you wouldn’t know it, looking at the chestnut-coloured wood panelling that lines the walls – divided by sleek, vertical gold lines and accented with a golden wall clock to let all in the room know when happy hour begins. Midcentury leather chairs in bottle green have been placed around the room edges, on the periphery of a conference table designed to invite conversation.

‘It started with the belief that bars are not supposed to be dingy places in basements with ugly red walls,’ says Wilder, acknowledging that too many bars in his city fall under this description. ‘We wanted a beautiful space with precise and delicious cocktails and a clean environment but also a convivial feel, where people can meet someone new and talk with someone different from the person they came in with,’ he says, referencing how a table with Castelli chairs is oriented to encourage guest interaction.

Thoughtful touches dotted around the room only add to the allure of this place – a glass vase filled with white peonies, a drinks trolley complete with old newspapers and heavy glass ashtrays for the smokers, who will relish the rare opportunity to light up in this old-style setting.

centralcongress.de

Atelier Gardens, a six-acre creative film and community impact campus in Berlin, has welcomed the opening of the bright yellow ‘Haus 1’, an inventively and sustainably refurbished 1990s office building. Haus 1 is a new central hub for the campus, and was an important site for German film, TV and even propaganda since the early 20th century, located just south of Tempelhof Field.

The five-storey building hosts a concierge, a cafe, office space, and a daylight-filled rooftop events venue with skyline views. It also features a dynamic 57m-long yellow ‘stair-scape’ that channels rainwater for re-use in the gardens and toilets – vital functions that are all strategic to growing the environmentally and socially sustainable campus vision of London-based developer and operator Fabrix, which took stewardship in 2020.

HAUS 1: a key part of MVRDV's Atelier Gardens masterplan

The adaptive re-use and eco-friendly interior design of the building is part of Dutch architects MVRDV’s masterplan to transform the previously tired industrial site into a playful, colourful village that champions circularity by design. MVRDV architect Klaas Hofman saw a lot of potential in the group of 'introvert' yet 'diverse' buildings, ranging from a 1934 heritage-protected studio warehouse to boxy late 20th century office blocks. Despite varying quality, they vowed to demolish nothing, instead creating community and identity through renovations, landscaping, bold colours and way-finding.

Today, a cross-disciplinary community buzzes between the five film studios, 11 dubbing studios and 140 workspaces. It’s not uncommon to see Brad Pitt or Taika Waititi grabbing a coffee and sets being built for Amazon or Netflix. Yet alongside this quite transient activity, you’ll find social and environmental activists turning up for work everyday; such as Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future amongst others. Haus 1 is a key anchor for this latter activity, now offering larger workspaces with newly opened up floor plans, bio-based insulation, solar shading and the CLT rooftop extension, all led together with local architects Hirschmüller Schindele Architekten.

Across the campus, landscape design by London-based Harris Bugg Studio supports Atelier Gardens’ circular vision. Waste concrete from the building was re-used or crushed into a soil aggregate for water retention, weed suppression and improved habitat diversity – all resulting in 300 tonnes of material prevented from landfill to date, and more to come.

It’s very much a 'working site' says landscape designer Charlotte Harris, who has begun a 'radical re-greening' with tough pioneering and nitrogen-fixing plants. She started with six trees, now there are 57, with a total of 180 planned. It’s her long-term goal to eventually forge a green corridor with Tempelhof Field; all while improving soil health with composting initiatives run by the zero-waste restaurant Roots Radical; and creating hospitable natural spaces for wellbeing.

At MVRDV, Hofman has been working on adaptive re-use for decades  since he joined in 2008, and has recognised a shift in how people receive it, specially with former industrial buildings. 'Today people really appreciate open-ended industrial spaces, yet it’s important to bring an identity to them.' 

Colour, he explains, is a key tool: 'By using bright colours we can bring industrial buildings into the foreground, instead of making them disappear. It’s much more interesting and we can celebrate the building once again.' He also wrapped a colourful (this time, red) staircase around the MVRDV-designed, new yet industrially-inspired and fully demountable Portlantis Harbour Experience Centre in Rotterdam (opening 2024). 

Atelier Gardens will continue to unfold without a specified end point. 'It’s an evolving masterplan guided by the principles of sustainability and re-use,' says Hofman. 'Each mile stone is a stepping stone, attracting different users, with the landscape forming around it into a natural environment.' 

While Haus 1 plays a key part in bringing more businesses to the campus, its bright yellow colour and dynamic ‘stair-scape’ importantly marks Atelier Gardens as a place of optimism: 'It’s a colour that says “there’s something happening here!” and that all urban buildings have potential,' says Hofman. 

mvrdv.com 

atelier-gardens.berlin

Rosewood Munich opened its grand baroque doors in October 2023. This is global hotel brand Rosewood's newest offering, located in the heart of the old town, on the historic Kardinal-Faulhaber-Straße near Marienplatz. The venue unfolds across two historic buildings combining original baroque and rococo architecture from the 18th and 19th centuries and a very contemporary vision of the hotel as a sprawling, luxuriant living room. Comfortable yet elegant interiors by designer Tara Bernerd capture both the 'effortlessly chic' lifestyle of Munich today and the craft traditions of Bavaria.

Step inside Rosewood Munich

The experience of the Tardis-like hotel begins in the grand entrance lobby with its sweeping double staircase, vaulted ceiling and frescos. Munich-based architecture practice Hilmer Sattler Architekten Ahlers has restored and redesigned the former State Bank of Bavaria and Palais Neuhaus-Preysing creating 73 rooms, 59 suites, and five unique ‘houses’, all set around two interior courtyards, cultivating a private residential feeling. In the Palais, decorative interiors of the formal event rooms were preserved using historic techniques such as cleaning the gold leaf gilding with a dried crust of black bread.

Amidst chequered marble floors and a variety of room types, Bernerd established a warm, adaptable interior DNA of organic shapes, simple geometries, grounding neutrals and rich jewel tones from turquoise to ochre. Elegant nods to the locale in the rooms include the forest green loden sofas and smoothly intuitive ‘personal bars’ in green lacquer, timber, stone and antique brass, warm to the touch and reminiscent of the traditional Bavarian ’schrank’. The largest of the premier suites, King Maximilian I House, is an aspirational apartment stretching beneath the eaves of the Palais layered with luxurious materials; a dynamic fireplace of celadon and grey-coloured stones, mirrors and brass divides the open plan living space, and modern yet decorative sage green 3D tiles clad the chef’s kitchen.

Bernerd describes the quality of craftsmanship in Munich as ‘impeccable’; whether in LA (see the Conrad Los Angeles), Shibuya Tokyo, or the Yucatan Peninsula (Maroma), her hotel interiors are always informed by local materials, craft and culture. She compares hotel design to ‘theatre’ – 'from the interaction with people, to the palette and the moment, it’s a real privilege if you get it right,' she says.

The ‘performance’ at Rosewood Munich is already in full swing as we sit in the chic ground floor Wintergarten the morning after the hotel’s buzzy opening party. This is the social heart of the hotel, between the Modern Bavarian restaurant Brasserie Cuvilliés and live music cocktail haunt Bar Montez, both designed by local interior studio Dippold. Both have their own street entrances (very separate from the main entrance, as the hotel spans most of an Old Town block) which Roland Dürr, managing director at Rosewood Munich, who has launched Rosewoods in New York and Abu Dhabi, says was important to situating the hotel at the heart of Munich’s sophisticated social life.

Capturing the ‘sense of place’ through attention to locally inspired detail is at the core of the Rosewood philosophy. It’s what keeps the brand grounded amidst the pace of 32-and-counting properties across the world, such as the Carlyle in New York and Hôtel de Crillon in Paris, a busy schedule of upcoming hotels – including the anticipated London opening of The Chancery Rosewood in the former US Embassy on Grosvenor Square in 2025 – and the growing global Asaya spa brand (Munich hosts the sixth, with an exquisite subterranean wellbeing centre stocked with curated, innovative products from OTO and Vyrao).

Here in Munich, that detail can be seen in the hotel ‘stamp’ inspired by the city’s heritage; the bespoke ‘House branded’ Nymphenburg porcelain; the regional culinary delights (Alpine caviar, Bavarian rice, ‘Teygu’ beef from Tegernsee, fresh fish from the grounds of sister hotel Rosewood Schloss Fuschl in Austria which opens in 2024). From the handsome interiors, to the bright hotel team, the stylish crowd and right down to the tiniest of details, the stage has been set at Munich Rosewood for a truly immersive theatre.

rosewoodhotels.com 

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Locke at East Side Gallery has landed in Berlin, marking the innovative hospitality brand's 14th location globally, and showcasing its refreshing, design-led spirit in the German capital. The aparthotel is also the company's first venue in the city, located on the borders of three key inner-city neighbourhoods, Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg and Mitte. The property follows the launch of Ember Locke earlier in the year, and the previous openings of Munich's WunderLocke by Holloway Li and Buckle Street Studios in east London by New York City architecture studio Grzywinski+Pons – the practice also behind the Berlin space. 

Step inside Locke at East Side Gallery

The new Locke at East Side Gallery features an expansive 176 sleek studio apartments. Each is equipped with its own independent kitchenettes and living areas, as is the aparthotel's usual approach. Many have access to a private balcony for long city views - and all are bathed in light. Guests can lounge at their private space, or spend time at the complimentary co-working area, shared by both guests and locals, strategically ensuring the hotel is embedded into the neighbourhood life this way. A coffee shop, a bar and the restaurant Anima are also on the premises for more options. 

Matthew Grzywinski of Grzywinski+Pons envisioned the space as a playful, chic continuation of the building's context, mixing planting with neutral tones, natural textures, and raw concrete. Meanwhile, pops of colour and furniture with tons of character make sure interiors stand out when they need to. 

A carefully curated music and event programme, as well as rotating art on site, highlight Locke's creative edge and invites the city's inherent dynamism into the property. This is reflected in the restaurant's approach too, as explained by head chef Andrea Lannicella: ‘It’s important to keep the true nature of ingredients and introducing creative twists to culinary traditions is vital. Berlin is an inspiring setting that encourages exploration and experimentation in the field of food and culture and this will be reflected in our offerings at Anima.’

'We are thrilled to be opening our first Locke in Berlin, a city of innovation and creativity. Locke at East Side Gallery has been a very special project for us and the finished result is an incredible offering. With an exciting partnership in place with audiophile bar and restaurant Anima, spectacular views across the River Spree and located in a great location within the trendy inner-city districts Friedrichschain, Kreuzberg and Mitte, we are excited to open the doors and welcome people to Locke at East Side Gallery,' said Stephen McCall, Locke's CEO.

lockeliving.com 

One of the stars of this year’s IAA Mobility International Motor Show in Munich, BMW’s Vision Neue Klasse is a bold statement of the future of what was once the company’s core segment, the traditional saloon car. Once dominant, the ‘three box’ saloon’s popularity has been steadily eroded by the relentless rise of SUVs.

Vision Neue Klasse is a bold attempt to right the ship and give modern form to the visionary, forward-looking forms assembled by the likes of Wilhelm Hofmeister back in the 1960s and 1970s. ‘The design of the Neue Klasse is typically BMW and so progressive it looks like we skipped a model generation,’ says the current head of BMW Group Design, Adrian van Hooydonk.

The Vision car is a concept only, and BMW’s show cars are invariably a few steps removed from the resulting production model. That said, there’s nothing about this handsomely minimal machine that couldn’t be manufactured, and elements like the use of secondary raw materials and full electric power are pretty much standard features already.

The concept is also notable for its emphasis on key BMW design elements like the so-called ‘Hofmeister kink’, the curve on the C-pillar that has been an integral part of practically every BMW for half a century. It also presents a more coherent BMW kidney grille, bleeding the form into the full width of the frontal area, with integrated headlights and a pronounced central division.

The company stresses that every facet of this concept represents a sizeable advance, including ‘30 per cent more range, 30 per cent faster charging, [and] 25 per cent more efficiency’. Inside, there’s a new generation of BMW’s pioneering iDrive HMI working in harmony with ‘BMW Panoramic Vision’, a head-up display system that projects information across the entire width of the windscreen.

Elsewhere, the cabin is finished in typically minimal concept style, with yellow corduroy making a welcome change from traditional interior. The company notes that the absence of decorative leather and chrome is another obvious way of keeping the car’s carbon footprint as low as possible.

Why is this concept important? After squandering its impressive lead in electrification to its rivals, BMW knows it needs to re-set its EV strategy and ensure that manufacturing and innovation are perfectly aligned with a new design vision. This car points the way to next-generation mobility; expect elements of the Vision Neue Klasse to creep into BMW’s production vehicles over the next two to three years.

More information at BMW.co.uk

In West Germany's Reichshof region, the headquarters of Schwalbe, the well-known bicycle-tyre manufacturer, is a business home where technology and innovation meet flexibility, workspace wellness and contemporary, sustainable architecture. Titled Schwalbe Hybrid Building, the project (whose shell and core were designed by architect Ralf Janz) features interiors by London-based Archiproba Studios, headed by architect Tamara Muradova, and implemented over three years during the pandemic. 

Schwalbe office building by Archiproba: a sustainable workspace

'Schwalbe, the leading bicycle-tyre manufacturer, owes its success to the uncompromising quality, continuous innovation and new technologies, and pushing for more environmentally aware production,' the architects write, explaining their approach. 

The HQ was born to reflect these values, and the project had the 'ambitious goal to create a responsible building for the future'.

As a result, the team at Archiproba placed sustainability at the heart of their approach, using 98 per cent recyclable project materials, while 100 per cent of the concrete and steel in the building can also be recycled in the future. 

An air heat pump helps control energy spend, while, making the most of the region's regular heavy rainfalls, rainwater is collected to irrigate the roof gardens and green walls and for use in the bathrooms. Meanwhile, the planted rooftop produces fresh fruit and vegetables, which are then used in the canteen.  

Both client and architect put environmental and social responsibility at the heart of their work. Following those principles, Archiproba created a design that can be adaptable, resilient and as future-proofed as possible in order to achieve longevity and be flexible to absorb any upcoming needs by the bike company. 

Spanning three floors of workspace and a generous ground-floor reception, the project blends desk areas with meeting rooms and bicycle workshops. Careful lighting and material choices throughout ensure each space is fit for its purpose. 

At the very top, a bridge connects the new building, with the company's old base next door. 'The bridge became a “common room” where the employees from both buildings can meet halfway to play a ping-pong match or host a casual meeting. The fully glazed side of the bridge allows more daylight and provides an additional outdoor environment for lunch breaks. For quicker access, the bridge can be crossed with a scooter,' the architects explain. 

archiproba.com 

A Berlin house in the quiet neighbourhood on the edge of the Grunewald Forest has been extended by London based O'Sullivan Skoufoglou Architects, who took a single-storey house with a pitched roof and transformed it into a modern brick-and-limestone villa. Inspired by US architects Moore Lyndon Turnbull & Whitaker, who consoled Postmodern architecture with landscape in San Francisco, this dwelling is both romantic and protective, an effect achieved through its strong materiality in response to the woods.

Berlin house by O'Sullivan Skoufoglou Architects

Although O’Sullivan Skoufoglou is based in London, the project felt close to home, because the client was the brother of architect Jody O’Sullivan, practice co-director with Amalia Skoufoglou. For 15 years since moving in with his family, O’Sullivan had already been ‘designing, debating, amending, iterating’ the house over the years. Now that the children were grown, it was time for a home refresh, introducing more flexibility and privacy, while making the most of the scenic, linear plot. 

This time it was to be a bolder transformation. The duo replaced the pitched roof with a new two-storey, timber-structured volume (its form guided by local planning regulation, as advised by local executive architecture practice Tectur). They carefully-deliberated a robust material palette that would age well and reflect the patina of the forest: limestone from Dietfurt, one of the oldest quarries in south Germany; brickwork from Belgium; and naturally-oiled solid oak window profiles. 

The long shape of the house did present some challenges for the interior plan, which the architects solved with inspiration from Charles Moore's New Haven house. In a similar way to the latter, they carved out the staircase from a central rectangular void, from which the plan unfolds, succeeding in balancing privacy, openness and interconnectivity influenced by Mies Van der Rohe’s Lemke House in Berlin.  

The interior is lined with natural materials and smoothly-finished surfaces. There are solid ash and ash-lined plywood walls in the hallway and staircase. The kitchen features solid oak and linseed-oil-stained veneered panels, a counter of emerald quartzite from Poland and terrazzo flooring from Italy. Elegant, seamless and unified, these materials hide practical in-built storage essential for family life. 

It’s an interior approach the architects consistently return to: 'Having practised in tight urban sites in London, we’ve become familiar with the need for as much storage as possible without closing up space,' says Skoufoglou. 'We’ve often used joinery to do so and enjoy working with joiners and on-site carpenters to incorporate different door configurations, when budget allows.' And in that case, when it comes to this suburban villa, it’s clear from the generosity of open space and integrated storage – no expense was spared. 

osullivanskoufoglou.com 

Stone Island’s synonymy with innovation and experimentation inspires its latest retail venture in Munich, a continuation of the brand’s ‘redefinition’ of its international fashion stores by architectural firm OMA/AMO that began with an opening in Chicago last year.

The store itself is located in the city’s Old Town, a vast three-storey space with an open granite-cut façade that will host the brand’s full collections – alongside the limited Ghost, Marina and Stellina lines – as well as a ‘community hub’ in the basement featuring curved amphitheatre-style seating and a screen for presentations and events. 

Stone Island Munich, designed by OMA/AMO

'What became evident from the first conversations with Stone Island around the Munich store was the presence of a loyal following in Germany, mainly in Munich,’ explains Samir Bantal, director of AMO (AMO is the ‘research and design studio’ arm of the practice which seeks to ‘apply architectural thinking to domains beyond’). ‘The followers who have massed incredible collections of one-offs, prototypes, and extremely rare products.’

As such, ‘process’ became one of the store’s inspirations, Bantal noting the ‘unique relation’ that Stone Island has to garment treatment, which is one of the hallmarks of the label. ‘Stored in Ravarino, Italy [Stone Island’s headquarters] are more than 50,000 recipes containing different techniques, processing materials, fabrics, and colours to a very distinct language – often even treated by hand,’ he explains.

Bantal says that Stone Island’s previous retail spaces did not always communicate these processes; as such, the Munich store contains a number of displays highlighting the brand’s textile and garment innovation, filmed over the years in Stone Island’s ‘kitchen’. Other installations show the journey from fabric to garment. ‘In our early conversations, it was clear that this passion for fabric treatment, colour dying and engineering was something that was really the core of the brand. It was missing in the store,’ he says.

‘A person who doesn’t know the brand always reacts amazed and impressed with the level of dedication Stone Island puts in their products,’ he continues. ‘It was time we showed this, not in exhibitions or online videos, but physically in the store. The Munich process wall is a prototype and will have additional features in future stores.’

Other features include the ‘chandelier’, a ‘visual display module’ in stainless steel, which can play content from the brand, be tilted and rotated, or lowered into a table (with digital media offering ‘a new layer of expression, this device will function as a small gallery’, says Bantal). An upper floor sees AMO collaborate with creative practice Elvis Wesley on an aluminium case to display Stone Island’s ‘Ghost’ collection, while materials featured throughout the store reflect those in Chicago: burnt cork, sand-sprayed surfaces and Tyvek ceilings.

The basement auditorium, meanwhile, features walls made from compressed layers of soil ‘resembling the veins that run through the earth’. Made to host lectures and events, community areas like this are essential to the store’s design. ‘Every floor could host a special moment of reveal or communication. The auditorium in the basement can host a talk a presentation, not only of new products, but could even host a talk by a collector, or an invited guest from a discipline or culture that related or inspires Stone Island,’ says Bantal. ‘The upper floor is focused on the intimate moments of browsing and sharing with peers. The sense of community can be found on every floor. ’

‘In a time when the digital becomes such a ubiquitous form of communication, we think that physical spaces where likeminded people meet are important,’ he continues. ‘I want people to feel like they want to explore the store; that every part has something to discover, be it product, be it architecture, be it material.’

Stone Island Munich, Perusastrasse 2, 80333 München, Germany.

stoneisland.com

This new German suburban home for a family, designed by architecture studio KHBT, occupies a remote but nature-rich site on the banks of the River Main, just outside Frankfurt. Bordering a nature reserve as well as the river, it offers verdant views from every window, with a sober modern exterior that also buffers against potential flooding.

A German suburban home in nature

The site was once a horse farm, now transformed into a residential area, albeit one surrounded by a flood protection wall to safeguard against seasonal variations in the nearby river. The house is orientated towards the views of nature to the west, whilst the shallow monopitch roof is angled south to catch the best light throughout the day.

A solid hammered concrete base provides flood protection and a plinth on which the sheer white walls of the main house sits. A capacious basement floor provides underground parking for two cars, complete with turntable, as well as a secondary guest suite, utility rooms and technical equipment.

Up above on the ground floor, the floorplan is bisected by a wall of glass that cuts diagonally through the space. This creates a covered external terrace, adjoining a lap pool, behind which is the living and dining space. Services and the main stairs are located on the south side of the building, with a top-lit linear staircase running the length of the east elevation up to the first floor.

On these large expanses of interior wall, finishes are deliberately left rough and unpolished, allowing the light to animate the surface and create a more textured play of light and shadow. Detailing is meticulous, especially in the way shutters and windows fit precisely into their allocated slots, with no extraneous elements to break up the composition of the façade.

Up here there are four bedrooms and the best views, the latter helped by a long glass-walled balcony accessed from three of the bedrooms. Folding shutters provide privacy and screen glare when needed. The main bedroom occupies the north-west corner of the plot, with spectacular views across the river. Between the bed area and en-suite bathroom is a staircase up to a small mezzanine level.

Recently longlisted for the German House of the Year awards, the house was designed by Alice D’Andrea, Bernd Truempler and professor Karsten Huneck of KHBT, a studio set up by Truempler and Huneck and currently operating out of London and Berlin. The duo are also partners in the Office for Subversive Architecture, a London-based outpost of experimental and provocative design. They combine their current practice with teaching; Huneck is a professor at Berlin International University.

khbt.eu