Paris Design Week runs from 10-19 September 2026, and to mark the occasion Garnier & Linker is branching into outdoor lighting for the very first time.

The French lighting brand’s new collection, ‘Aurora’, is built on a simple premise: rather than inventing a new design language for outdoor use, it extends Garnier & Linker's existing universe – one that founders Guillaume Garnier and Florent Linker say draws from ‘the decorative arts and contemporary sculpture’.

‘Through the various – often technical – research projects we conducted to develop this outdoor collection, we thought it would be interesting to adapt some of our current models. To bring the indoors outdoors, so to speak,’ they elaborate.

'Aurora' reinterprets existing designs – including ‘Nezu’, ‘Kora’, ‘Teree’ and ‘Thea’ – through the introduction of a new material. Where the brand’s indoor pieces have tended towards bronze or plaster, ‘Aurora’ uses cast aluminium. ‘Beyond its qualities, which are well-suited to outdoor use, we also wanted to focus on its aesthetic appeal – which is both raw and refined,’ the founders explain.

Developed at Les Granges, the founders’ studio near the Forest of Fontainebleau just south-east of Paris, ‘Aurora’ still feels sculptural – a hallmark of the brand – but leans slightly more architectural and industrial.

The design process stayed true to the studio's usual hybrid method – ‘moving back and forth between the studio and the workshop, and between drawing and sculpting or modelling’ – but this time layered with demands specific to the outdoors, including electrical testing and the development of a proprietary, compact power source. Interestingly, the attention to materials, texture and process developed for outdoor durability has now found its way back indoors, too – ‘thus bringing us full circle’, say Garnier and Linker.

The pair describe ‘Aurora’, which, they tease, is only the first chapter of a larger outdoor lighting line, as a challenge to the codes of the category. ‘We feel that the conventions are set in stone, both in terms of form and the materials used, and that the design vocabulary is consequently limited,’ they say. The new collection explores ‘how the differences between interior and exterior can sometimes be challenged to achieve greater fluidity’.

UK housing estates and Brutalist tower blocks such as the Barbican and Trellick Tower have long divided opinion among onlookers – what is a modernist masterpiece to one person is an eyesore to another. But of course, for many whose opinions are not so often heard, they are simply a home – a backdrop to daily life. For Shawn Adams and his fellow members of POoR Collective (Power Out of Restriction), some of whom grew up on housing estates, these buildings are a source of inspiration – one the studio has channelled into a joyful new rug for British brand Floor Story.

Realised in two contrasting colourways of New Zealand wool, the flatwoven design, named 'Power', is informed by the rigorous geometry found in the plans and sections of London tower blocks. In the pattern, these vertical and horizontal elements are abstracted, hinting at the outline of a deck-access walkway or a circular column borrowed from the Barbican.

The goal, Adams says, was to translate these spatial, three-dimensional concepts into a two-dimensional medium while maintaining an optimistic aesthetic rather than creating an austere or literal architectural plan.

'It's about finding the beauty in something everyday that might ordinarily be overlooked,' says Adams, who, born and raised in south-west London, runs POoR Collective alongside Matt Harvey-Agyemang, Ben Spry, Akmaral Khassen and Larry Botchway. 'We asked, "If we were to take the stories of an estate and try and make it into a rug, what would that look like?"'

He likens the resulting designs to a palimpsest – a visual translation of the layered lives and histories of residents who live within architecture that is so frequently fetishised or derided, and who are often talked about but rarely listened to.

For POoR, which primarily works on architectural projects focused on community development and platforming young people, designing a rug was a new but natural extension of its spatial design practice. 'It’s kind of the same process in a way,' he says, 'whether it’s 2D or 3D. We sketched out ideas, gathered references and started creating and testing. I think all of us were quite aligned from the start.'

To bring the collection to life, POoR worked with Floor Story's head designer Gill Thorpe. 'I was drawn to POoR Collective's ethos of community, joy, wellbeing and their beautifully coloured graphic language,' says Thorpe. 'Power is a versatile and graphically structured flatweave, the only one in the wider collection that comes in two stock colourways. The pattern has been made with the intention of building onto the shapes instead of just scaling up or down, reflecting the inspiration of London's tower blocks.'

Made in Mirzapur, India, POoR's rugs are being showcased during London Design Festival alongside four other designs by four London-based creative practices: Coco Lom, House of Quinn, artist Lakwena Maciver and Les Keepers. Thorpe deliberately chose to work with local designers who had not designed rugs before. 'Each of the five designers has such different styles and ways of creating,' she told Wallpaper*. 'Paint, textiles, photography and mark-making were all brought into the world of rugs for the first time; it was both exciting and explorative.'

While the designers brought new energy and creativity, Thorpe provided the essential technical insights regarding material depth, weave textures and practical considerations like colour durability for high-traffic areas. The POoR team moved from hand sketches to digital drawings and finally to physical samples to understand how different fibres and colour movements would behave in person. The ability to see and touch the fibres in person, Adams says, was a vital part of the process. 'There are aspects like the movement of the weave that you can’t really capture in the same way in a drawing or on a computer screen – you have to see how it will look in person and in samples, and see how the textures will work.'

The rugs will be displayed next month at Floor Story's Shoreditch showroom, which will be transformed into a series of room sets featuring furniture from Spanish brand Sancal and curated by Trifle* Creative. The display will include all five designs – a fitting celebration of London's design talent.

For POoR Collective, the rug offers another medium through which to continue deeper conversations that have long informed its work. Housing estates are filled with overlooked design stories. Platforming them, POoR argues, is a way to challenge design hierarchies and invite marginalised voices to the table. 'With our work moving forward, we’re really looking at what power means,' says Adams. 'We want to talk about buildings, spaces and aspects of design that people don’t typically discuss. We want to shift the conversation.'

The rugs will be on display during London Design Festival, 15–18 September 2026, 10am–6pm daily; Saturday 19 September, 11am–5pm, at Floor Story, Cairo Studios, 4 Nile Street, London N1 7RF

British designer Lee Broom invites visitors into The Chant Chambers, a new installation for London Design Festival 2026. Last year we saw his original piece ‘Beacon’ light up the South Bank. This year sees a continuation of the designer’s portable lighting piece entitled ‘Chant’. The newly expanded collection includes oversized chandelier compositions, sculptural wall lights, linear pendants and architectural lighting structures.

Step inside The Chant Chambers by Lee Broom

Broom, who has been busy illuminating Madonna's Confessions II film , notes that some pieces feel complete as a single object, while others are collections that can evolve. ‘It’s often the ones based around very simple shapes that allow me to do that, and ‘Chant’ has that quality. It’s a very pure form, a glass cube with a circular indentation, so there’s a natural opportunity to play with repetition, scale, and different configurations. I’ve always loved lighting that can really inhabit a space, rather than simply sit within it, and that became the starting point for expanding the collection.’

The cubic design allows it to flow through a room and intertwine within the interior, sitting at the intersection between architecture and decor. The pieces feel atmospheric and sultry. Presented in a new smoked glass finish, the darker tones echo a 1970s interior.

‘I’m a modernist,’ exclaims Broom, ‘but I’ve always been drawn to nostalgia, particularly the late 1970s. There was something very distinctive about interiors from that period; they could be decorative, but they also had a real sculptural quality, and often a slightly more masculine sensibility than traditional interior decoration. I love the smoked glass, mirrors, and wall-to-wall carpeting.

‘They were strong design gestures that created a real atmosphere. I also like the lighting from that period too. It didn’t always take centre stage, but there would often be one strong sculptural chandelier, or lighting would be integrated throughout the interior in a much more architectural way.’

When designing ‘Chant ', Broom looked towards the glass block’s two historical references: when it first emerged during the Art Deco period, and then its re-emergence in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The collection draws on these moments, but filtered through a modernist lens.

Broom’s work has a distinctive sense of geometry, yet he doesn’t quite know why. ‘Even when I try to design something more organic or textural, there is usually some sense of symmetry, balance or geometry sitting within. I’m not a particularly mathematical person, but I do think I’m very drawn to order.

‘I suppose it also reflects the way I am generally. I like order, I like discipline, and I’m a perfectionist. So the geometry within the work probably comes quite naturally from that. It gives me a framework, and then within that framework I can start to play with material, proportion and light.’

For Broom’s expanded vision of ‘Chant’, how it makes you feel is just as important as how it functions. ‘I’ve always designed from quite an emotive place. Of course, form and function are fundamental, and that’s where the real challenges lie, but with the expanded Chant collection I wanted to create something that also brings a sense of nostalgia and playfulness, while still feeling very considered and conceptual.

'There’s something quite mesmerising about seeing these glass forms repeated across a ceiling or through a space. In multiples, they become almost hypnotic. So I hope people feel uplifted by it, a sense of joy, but also slightly transported, so that they stop for a moment and really experience the light rather than simply see it.’

The full installation will be on view to the public during London Design Festival, 15–20 September 2026, at Lee Broom, 91, 93 and 95 Rivington Street, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3AY

‘Serene’ is a word you’d rarely use to describe Midtown Manhattan. But Sutton Place, a pint-size residential enclave perched above the East River, is about the closest you’ll get to a an escape from concrete jungle, with its stately prewar buildings and verdant pocket parks.

A Connecticut couple in search of a New York pied-à-terre were similarly drawn to the neighbourhood, and wound up purchasing a one-bedroom apartment in a handsome co-op designed by Emery Roth in 1938. ‘My family had an apartment for 25 years in a different Emery Roth building, and so a lot of the details in the common areas felt very familiar,’ the wife says.

Less familiar were the apartment’s interiors, which in addition to a quirky layout that included a sunken living room, featured heavy, late-1990s details like dark wood accents, crystal sconces and a dated marble bathroom. Still, the clients saw potential in the 850 sq ft unit’s graciously proportioned rooms and glimmers of Roth’s original details. ‘I thought we could do something great with it,’ the wife says.

Enter New York-based interior designer Lauren Carlucci, who started her eponymous studio in 2023 after spending years in the art world. ‘I started this project at my kitchen table,’ Carlucci says. While the designer has an affinity for exuberant pattern, the client wanted something more subdued: ‘Our home in Connecticut is very traditional Connecticut. There's a lot of wallpaper,’ she says. ‘For this, I wanted something that was different, something that was calm, clean, and restful – an oasis in the busy city.’

‘She wanted a Parisian jewel box,’ Carlucci adds, ‘so that’s exactly what we delivered.’

The designer started by stripping back the apartment’s non-original details and clarifying the floorplan. Closet space was sacrificed to enlarge the galley kitchen and the small bathroom. Gone went the ornate mouldings and a bulky wood bannister fencing in the sunken living room. ‘We demolished it all,’ Carlucci says.

During the design phase, Carlucci fell in love with the few original 1930s details that remained in the home – soft curves on the doorframes and ceiling mouldings. She designed to lean into these modernist influences in her scheme. ‘I really left these little breadcrumbs,’ Carlucci says of her historical influences, ‘a mix of art deco, streamline moderne, and maybe a little Bauhaus here and there.’

That starts as soon as you enter the apartment and are greeted by a set of green lacquered storage closets and a hexagonal mirror. Look closely, and you’ll spot a stepped, art deco motif in the cabinet hardware and the baseboards. A lively Jazz Age squiggle can be found in the border of the custom rug as well as the silhouette of a railing tracing a diminutive set of steps down to the living area.

Gone, of course, is the bannister, which made the sunken living room feel small and disconnected from the rest of the apartment. Now, the room almost vibrates thanks to cream coloured walls, and furnishings in rich burgundy and chocolate brown, and – the biggest surprise – a carpet in a zippy chartreuse silk.

A new fireplace surrounded by shelving that displays artworks and objects from the clients’ personal collection creates a restful focal point. No surprise, the profile of the new mantel matches the profile of the doors and mouldings. ‘There’s a story being told,’ Carlucci says.

Back up the mini set of stairs, guests reach the kitchen, which is similarly drenched in a restful off-white palette. A small dining nook, where the clients will have their morning coffee and read the newspaper, is a moment of sheer fun, with red banquette seating and a tubular chair where Carlucci had the opportunity to inject a ‘blast of pattern’ via a leopard-print fabric.

Carlucci amped up the art deco glamour in the bathroom. Dark millwork, polished nickel, and black marble create a sophisticated, timeless atmosphere.’I loved the idea of bringing in black,’ Carlucci says. Open up the shower, though, and there’s a surprise: an enclosure of handmade brown tiles, mottled like tortoiseshell from the British company Balineum. ‘It’s fun designing small spaces because you can pack a punch,’ the designer adds.

The apartment’s sole bedroom is a serene retreat, thanks to taupe walls (‘Matchstick’ by Farrow & Ball), and a plush turquoise carpet. Like the living room, the colour palette is unexpected – the bed is upholstered in a deep rust velvet, while a reading chair is covered in a lime-coloured cotton – but the rich tones, sumptuous textures and neutral walls allow them to harmonise.

Carlucci didn’t have to shop for much furniture; items from the couple’s own collection were reupholstered and refinished. Flanking the bed are a pair of art deco nightstands from the husband’s bachelor apartment. ‘They've been with us a long time, and it's wonderful to see them,’ the client says. The living room sofa also got restuffed and reupholstered and is now the optimal snuggling spot for the homeowners’ Havanese, Ginger.

‘We wanted it to be luxurious, but without being fussy. And I think that Lauren has accomplished that perfectly,’ the client says. ‘We're very happy here.’

A basement gives a bar one immediate advantage: night arrives whenever the door opens. At Qode, beneath an outhouse in Gandipet on Hyderabad’s western edge, the light might dim, but the mood never does. Commissioned by Golkonda Hospitality, the Studio Nilasha-designed venue occupies 4,500 sq ft: a largely enclosed 3,000 sq ft basement and a further 1,500 sq ft outside. Entry begins in a corner of the café above, where a green-marble spiral staircase winds underground. Walnut encloses its outer curve and a mirror lines the inner face, cutting off the room above as guests descend. ‘Qode allows visitors to discover it gradually,’ says Nilasha, principal designer of her eponymous firm.

Wallpaper* dines at Qode, Hyderabad

The mood: marble underground

The central bar is the basement’s organising device. Black Marquina runs from the floor onto the counter, joined by deep-green Verde Guatemala marble and antique brushed brass. Above it, perforated brass and fluted glass form a tiered ellipse that works as lighting and bottle storage. Studio Nilasha designed the installation with lighting studio SPK Valo; from here, a three-dimensional ceiling spreads across the room, concealing pipes and wiring within its geometry.

Booths follow the perimeter in a loose, curved plan, creating pockets for groups without dividing the bar into separate rooms. Fluted walnut, black textured stone, antique mirror and tropical wallpaper make a suitably dense backdrop; emerald, topaz and burnt-sienna upholstery brings colour at seat level. Even the washroom joins in, with a monolithic Black Marquina basin, green tiles and a beaten-metal ceiling.

A set of doors changes the register entirely. Outside, the palette contracts to grey and green Kota stone, pale neo-cement, black-stained timber and stone-topped tables. Built-in seats gather around the existing trees, with branches and open sky replacing the basement’s geometric ceiling.

The food and drinks: Camembert, lamb and late hours

Qode’s menu covers Asia, the Mediterranean, Europe and India. The kitchen narrows the field to two recommendations. Start with baked Camembert, served with spiced honey, rosemary and roasted garlic for the table to share. Then order the Mediterranean braised lamb, pairing slow-cooked shanks with aromatic Arabic couscous. It has the substance required for dinner in a venue otherwise geared towards drinks and small plates. The bar does the same with Sakura San and Persian Jasmine, its two recommended cocktails.

Qode, The Golkonda Resort, Sagar Mahal Complex, Gandipet, Hyderabad, Telangana, India

Lighting a candle is an act of self-care. A simple gesture can create a soothing atmosphere, and now the Los Angeles-based design brand Dumæ wants to elevate this further. The Kayla Lighter is a chic replacement for the everyday match or worn-out plastic igniter.

Sculpted from brass, handcrafted in India and refillable, the lighter sits between a functional object and a homeware accessory, and is as beautiful as it is functional. Founded by Kym Gold and Sakshi Khurana, Dumæ works with artisan partners across India to create pieces that bring a sense of permanence and beauty to an everyday ritual.

The Kayla Lighter was presented alongside a wider collection, including pieces varying from tabletop and serving vessels to candle lights, lighting, and collectible gifts. What ties each piece together is its aesthetics and functionality, which encourage conversation, as mundane household objects are transformed into objects of beauty.

Dumæ's creative vision is centred on contemporary design paired with artisanal knowledge. The brand’s name is derived from Point Dume, the Malibu coastline where Gold grew up, and combined with Mae, a spiritual tribute to motherhood and the women who have shaped her life and creative perspective.

The founding partners come from a fashion background, with Gold previously co-founding the high-end jeans brand True Religion, while Khurana has worked across operations and product development with brands like Giorgio Armani and Urban Zen by Donna Karan. For them, Dumæ is a vessel to utilise their shared fashion experience and transplant it into the design world.

Working with ceramics, wax and metal, to paper, textiles and lighting, the brand has now ventured into sculptural brass through the Kayla Lighter, which now joins Dumæ’s portfolio of objects that can move effortlessly between homes, hotels and shared spaces.

Did you hear? The bathroom is the most precious room of the house: part wellness space, part intimate sanctuary, it is the private heart of a home and one that has often been overlooked. We round up four contemporary bathroom design ideas that our team created from this year's boldest bathroom launches – many spotted at Salone del Mobile – accessorised with unexpected design gestures that bring excitement to the washroom.

Browse our bathroom design ideas imagined to elevate the formerly humble room, from bold materiality to serene colour palettes, from unexpected wallcovering that add warmth to the room to spatial design that transforms a practical room into a refined, modern temple to the art of wellness.

Bathroom design trends to elevate your wellness space in 2027

Bold materials

Yes, traditional bathroom materials might be practical, but combine dynamic tiling and marble and top it off with brushed stainless steel for a modern take on the washroom. Laufen's 'Rivo’ washbasin’, in brushed stainless steel, is both utilitarian and elegant - accents like a wooden screen or a wall-mounted steel vase bring the room together in refined ways.

‘Pantàlica’ limited-edition screen, by Nicolò Spinelli, for Studio Twenty Seven. ‘Rivo’ washbasin’, by Laufen. ‘Flora’ basin levers, by Vincent Van Duysen, for Fantini. Oregano soap, by Loewe. Fleur Éclair eau de parfum, by Régime des Fleurs. Steel wall vase, by Eitan Boiarsky, from Tage Gallery. ‘Beaton’ double-ended bath in gloss, ‘Ten Ten’ bath/shower mixer with handwheels on standpipes in silver nickel, both by Lefroy Brooks. ‘Dots Glass’ wall lamp, by Martín Azúa, for Vibia. Terry towel in Yellow Ochre, by Tekla. ‘Mid’ wall tiles in Ambra and Turchese, price on request, by Ragno. ‘Santafiora Venata’ floor slabs, by Margraf

Design with tiles

A tile can go a long way if the colour is right, and a bold colour combination can offer unexpectedly serene interiors. We chose Florim's 'SensiColore' tiles in moss with burgundy accents, and arranged them structurally to design the room. The rich hues of the tiles perfectly frame our sunken bath and give a serene, peaceful mood to the space.

‘OG-NM301' stainless steel stool, by Andrea Ferrari, for Quadro Design and NM3. Terry towel in Forest Green, by Tekla. Scent of Marihuana soap, by Loewe. True Ionized Cleansing Water 1, by Buly 1803. Rock River Melody eau de parfum; Fleur Éclair eau de parfum, by Régime des Fleurs. ‘Nuio Duo Zen Edition' bathtub, by Stefan Diez, for Kaldewei. ‘Diametro 35 S' deck-mounted bath mixers, by Ritmonio. ‘SensiColore' tiles in Vino and Muschio, by Matteo Thun and Benedetto Fasciana, for Florim

Unexpected wallcoverings

A perfect backdrop for our sculptural bathroom set up is offered by this wall panelling that adds warmth to the room. The Canaletto Walnut wall panelling from Florim is a perfect way to bring visual richness to this temple of wellness, that feels more like a sophisticated cabin in the woods than a room for quotidian routines.

‘Greenwich’ towel in Rhus, by Baina. ‘Cenote’ bathtub, from by Patricia Urquiola, for Agape. ‘Flora’ floorstanding bath mixer, by Vincent Van Duysen, for Fantini. ‘Settecento Cut’ washbasin in Bianco, by Giulio Cappellini, for Ceramica Flaminia. ‘FFQT’ basin mixers, by Formafantasma, for Quadro Design. ‘Crea’ wall panelling, by Marazzi. ‘SensiColore’ wall tiles in Vino, by Matteo Thun and Benedetto Fasciana, for Florim

Similarly, the Schotten & Hansen Ridgeline wall panelling is 'inspired by the rugged beauty of split wood and the deep, time-worn tones of oak': a concept that perfectly encapsulates the new tonal and material approach of these rooms. Here, the material is accompanies by a chromatic takeover in the form of tiling and textiles: the Albers-inspired tiles on the floor and the grand curtain at the back help create a space you'll want to get lost in.

‘Allure’ wall-mounted double-movement mixer, by Natalino Malasorti, for Ceadesign. Fleur Éclair eau de parfum, by Régime des Fleurs. True Ionized Cleansing Water 1, by Buly 1803. ‘Arc’ sconce in Satin Black, by De Troupe ‘Reverie’ freestanding bath, by Kohler. ‘Axor Uno’ curved floorstanding bath spout, by Phoenix Design, for Axor. ‘Adamo & Eva’ cotton velvet in 143, by Dedar. ‘Tabouret Meribel’ stool, by Charlotte Perriand, for Cassina. ‘Celeste & Chalk’ towels, by Baina. ‘Ridgeline’ wall panelling, by Torben Hansen and Francisco Cortina, for Schotten & Hansen. ‘Homage to the Square’ floor tiles in Sea, by the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, for Mutina

Modern sanctuaries

Think of a bathroom as a temple of wellness: a space where symmetry, dramatic lighting and bold structural detail come together to celebrate the act (and art) of bathing. In our space, the elegant centrepiece of the basin is flanked by discreet shower mixers, and the porcelain-effect wallcovering (in a shade that bears the evocative name of 'Magma') offers a delicious accompaniment to the space's visual effect.

‘Octo’ built-in thermostatic shower mixers with two stop valves, by David Lopez Quincoces; ‘Bar 59’ 50mm rain jet shower heads, by Matteo Fiorini with Studio Lys, all for Zucchetti. ‘Orfeo’ mirrors; ‘Teseo’ washbasin, by Andrea Parisio and Giuseppe Pezzano, for Ceramica Cielo. ‘Vice Versa’ towel in Terracotta, by Hermès. ‘Diametro 35 S’ exposed single-lever basin mixers, by Ritmonio. Oregano liquid soap, Tomato Leaves soap, both by Loewe. ‘Éclos’ surface in Wondr, by Cosentino. ‘Grande Lume’ slabs in Magma, by Marazzi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Explore the Made x Barbican furniture and lighting collection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Announced today (12 August), Ikea’s latest collection seeks to answer some pretty lofty questions: what is art, what can it do and why does it matter? Called ‘Konstrunda’, the collection – available now – includes 22 decorative objects, textiles and furniture pieces by seven artists and designers, whose brief was to bring art into the home.

Using the words ‘liberated, happy and fearless’ as a guide, Andu Masebo, Lisa Hilland, Igor Holtermann, Ingrid Leander Berg, Emanuele Stamuli, Lisa Reiser and Akanksha Deo have come up with a collection of adventurous pieces – mostly vessels and decorative objects that you could imagine displayed on a plinth in an art gallery, but also intriguing textiles and small pieces of furniture with out-of-the-ordinary forms and finishes.

To create ‘Konstrunda’, Ikea creative leader Karin Gustavsson says she deliberately chose people working across different disciplines and with a variety of materials and techniques. ‘Some are people I've worked with for years, while others I discovered through their exhibitions or by following their work,’ she explains. ‘“Konstrunda” is rooted in a belief that art should be accessible. Rather than focusing on a specific format, the collection invites multiple interpretations of what art in the home can be.’

In ‘Konstrunda’, those interpretations range from Swedish designer Lisa Reiser’s decorative tabletop objects, with their futuristic, fluid forms realised in glossy lacquered glass, to Andu Masebo’s tubular steel side tables and lacquered pine stools, alongside a doughnut-shaped vessel in mirror-polished stainless steel.

Akanksha Deo has created a series of ‘companion’ pieces, while Emanuele Stamuli has contributed black-and-white objects based on graphic, totemic forms. Swedish designers Igor Holtermann and Ingrid Leander Berg have applied overlapping palm motifs to cotton cushion covers, a rug and a mirror.

One of the most high profile names among the cohort is London designer Andu Masebo (recognised as a Future Icon by Wallpaper* back in December 2022), whose recent projects include bespoke furniture for TOG’s sustainable Black & White Building, modular tables for AHEC, an exhibition of birdhouses at the South London Gallery and a live design-research project for London Design Festival 2025. His pieces for the ‘Konstrunda’ collection translate a design language already established through that wider practice into objects available at an Ikea price point. He sees his objects for Ikea as prompts for customers to exercise their own creativity.

‘What I love about these objects the most is that they create the potential for the creativity of others in the home,’ he tells Wallpaper*. ‘Surfaces that naturally invite decoration, objects that reflect their environment and that change depending on what's arranged around and in them. Art isn't just an object, it's also an action.’

Trained in carpentry, metalwork and ceramics, Masebo has said in the past that his hands-on involvement in the making process has naturally led him to design objects with an air of honesty or truth to them – or, as he puts it, ‘things that engage with how they are made and that lean more into feelings than aesthetics’. The collaboration with Ikea has tapped into this inclination, showing up in his material and finishing choices, which he has kept deliberately simple ‘so that the making wouldn’t involve any unnecessary processes’.

For visual artist and in-house Ikea designer Akanksha Deo, whose playful work references Indian textile traditions, the pieces she has created for ‘Konstrunda’ are not just objects, but something closer to friends. They include ‘The Melting Pot’, a highly polished stainless steel vessel squeezed into itself. ‘The Custodian’ – a stack of building blocks with a mirrored centre – draws on the wooden toys of Channapatna, a small town in Karnataka, India, known for generations of turned-wood craftsmanship. ‘It watches over your space when you’re gone, and sits quietly with you when you’re home,’ she says. Meanwhile, ‘Confetti Carol’ – the name given to a hanging tapestry made from blue recycled polyester – exists simply to bring a little optimism into a room.

‘Growing up, I watched how easily reverence finds its way into small things: a stone placed on a windowsill, a leaf kept for no reason, a carved figure given a name,’ she reflects. ‘There’s something in us that wants to believe an object can hold more than its material, that it can watch, remember, protect.’

For Deo, bringing art into the home should be something joyful and even a little humorous. ‘Life is genuinely not that serious, and design that pretends otherwise tends to be exhausting to be around. A little levity goes a long way. We could all use more of it, frankly.’

For Ikea, ‘Konstrunda’ also feels like a further push into the territory of collectible design – something its experimental Ikea ‘PS’ collections and collaborations with designers including Gustaf Westman and Ilse Crawford have edged towards in the past, with some pieces later becoming sought-after on the secondary market. ‘Konstrunda’ brings some of the experimentation, individual authorship and art-object quality associated with collectible design into the realm of mass production.

‘We can bring distinctive art objects into people's homes at a scale very few others can,’ reflects Gustavsson. ‘For me personally, working at the intersection of art and mass production has been one of the most rewarding parts of this project. It was a constant balance between preserving the creative vision and finding innovative ways to produce it for the many.’

‘Konstrunda’ available worldwide now. Browse the full collection.

Having frequented the optometrist for the past 25 years, it is hard not to notice the lack of inspiring interiors. Often greeted with two options: a moody space with ironically poor lighting and dingy carpets, or it is brightly lit, white, and clinical space; either doesn’t inspire the desire to have one's eyesight corrected. However, Wink offers something completely different. Spearheaded by Mitchell Zurek and Andy Kelly of Brud Studia the interior of the Australia-based optometrist feels like coming home.

‘Optical stores have always felt to me like the waiting room of a very wealthy dentist,’ says Andy Kelly, one half of the studio. ‘Everything is intimidating, and you're expected to make a very serious decision about your face in front of a stranger. They can be beautiful, but they're rarely relaxed. We wanted to make somewhere people forgot they were shopping altogether. Somewhere that invited leaning. Somewhere you wanted to sit, drink a coffee, open a drawer.’

The optometrist in Elwood, Melbourne, marks the duo's first retail interior project under Brud Studia. However, they wanted to create an environment which stepped away from behaving like a traditional retail space. Instead, they created a character.

Zurek and Kelly wanted to create a space where it felt like you were stepping inside someone else's world for half an hour. ‘Every decision was simply asking what our character would have done.’

They looked at the old English nursery rhyme, There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, ‘except this time she lived inside her glasses case, which itself lived inside a Simone Rocha egg clutch,’ Kelly shares. ‘She was part Iris Apfel, part impossibly glamorous grandmother. She tears bread without ever crushing it. Every object she has arrived through circumstance rather than shopping. She collected beautiful things but couldn't remember where she'd found half of them. Every surface held another story. Every drawer concealed another treasure; nothing matched, and somehow everything belonged together.’

Much like their worldly character, the interiors are well travelled, with references dancing between Milan apartments, 70s New York, and Australia’s suburbia influenced by European sensibilities. A retail counter was replaced with a kitchen, with a central island at the core of the space, as Kelly shares, ‘Counters separate people. Kitchens bring them together. The island asks clients to gather around it rather than stand opposite. It changes the entire rhythm of the space.’

Inside, the interior is complete with stainless steel, block colours, and timber joinery. Collectible design objects punctuate the space. It's an amalgamation of texture and tones, yet feels entirely cohesive, without a central piece fighting for attention. ‘Retail interiors often feel obligated to announce themselves immediately, but we were far more interested in creating a space that revealed itself gradually,’ explains the studio founders.

‘Even the boldest gestures, like the lacquered red cabinetry, exist within a deliberately domestic scale. There are tiny mosaic tiles underfoot, small drawers to open, carefully considered handles, mirrors that catch unexpected reflections, and lighting that quietly punctuates the room rather than dominates it. Nothing exists simply to be photographed. The experience unfolds slowly, rewarding curiosity rather than demanding your immediate attention.’

Glasses occupy a funny place in our lives, as they allow you to try out different versions of yourself and how you want to present yourself to the world. Kelly and Zurek agree: ‘They're practical objects, of course, but they're also one of life's great disguises. A new pair of glasses quietly permits you to become someone else. Wink is, technically speaking, an optometrist. But with the right frames and a hurried box of black hair dye applied in a petrol station bathroom, she's retail in witness protection.’

With many reflective materials from mirrors to the industrial mesh ceiling, each new glimpse offers another version of the space. ‘In an optometrist, you're constantly looking at yourself. Rather than disguising that fact, we exaggerated it.’ There is a disguised tension. And perhaps that is rather fitting.

brudstudia.com
winkoptom.com.au

1970s Italian design is having a moment: from little-known furniture pieces to legendary design experiments, lighting and even bathroom taps, the year's new launches were punctuated by reissues of pieces that help paint a picture of this unsung decade in Italian design.

The 1970s in Italian design were largely defined by 'Italy: the new domestic landscape', a 1972 MoMA exhibition that reflected on the country's culmination of creative excellence following the industrial boom that represented the post-WWII period in design. It was a look at Italian design at a time when Italian design was reviewing itself.

Italian design critic Paola Antonelli, the MoMA's Senior Curator of Architecture and Design, drew a comparison between the political and social turmoil of the decade, and the current times of uncertainty. Antonelli noted how designers in the 1970s (and those taking part in the MoMA exhibition in particular) represented 'a culture that was really worried about the future of society. It's really interesting to see how designs that stemmed from a complicated moment are now being celebrated with nostalgia.

'Italian design has always been great: it was fabulous in the 50s. It was even better in the 60s, and in the 70s, was still great, but with this undertone of anxiety.'

Antonelli also explains how the evolution of Italian design throughout the second half of the last century took projects beyond their aesthetic and functionality, but made them part of a bigger domestic ecosystem (something the exhibition documented well and can be found in examples such as Joe Colombo's Total Furnishing Unit. 'It was a moment of real fervour,' concludes Antonelli. 'It had to do not with products, but rather with new ways of life. '

Great 1970s Italian design reissued for contemporary interiors

Cigno chair by Vittorio Varo, for Visionnaire

Originally conceived in the early 1970s for Visionnaire's parent company IPE, the Cigno chair by Vittorio Varo was fittingly chosen to furnish 'Déjà-Vu', a listening room curated by Marco Morandini during Milan Design Week 2026, that celebrated the decade's cultural spirit through design and music.

Parioli Cabinet by Lodovico Acerbis

A 1971 design by Acerbis founder Lodovico Acerbis, Parioli is a piece that brings architectural modularity to storage furniture. The wooden structure (in ash or walnut) disappears behind the geometry of satin stainless steel doors, whose design define the design with an expressive aesthetic informed by rigour and movement.

Sintesi by Ernesto Gismondi for Artemide

The first Artemide lamp designed by founder Ernesto Gismondi, the Sintesi brings the bare functionality that defined 1970s Italian design to the fore. A few essential components define its design, that is both practical and versatile, with two profiles that intersect to create a standing lighting object (and a wall version based on the same system). 'It’s like a magic formula and finding it is never guaranteed,' said its creator.

Alcinoo by Gae Aulenti for Artemide

Gae Aulenti's 1975 design for Artemide merges an appreciation for artisanal techniques (the mouth blown glass sphere) with an industrial language (the metal cylinder holding it). A sculptural home for an essential lighting idea, the lamp is a shell for three lightbulbs set at its base. 'It was tough, Gae has strong ideas (...)' Artemide founder Ernesto Gismondi recalled. 'And the moment you switch the lamp on, you realise she was right: the character fills the room with tiny traces of light.

T35 Trio by Pierangelo Gallotti

The 1970s marked a turning point for Italian glass brand Gallotti e Radice, who celebrated their 70th anniversary at Milan Design Week this year. In 1975, it developed a method of joining panes of glass with a simple stainless steel joint, enabling larger and more structurally complex pieces, such as the ‘T35 Trio' – a three-part coffee table set designed by Pierangelo Gallotti in 1975 – now presented in an anniversary edition in bronze-tinted tempered glass and brushed silver travertine. Text: Laura May Todd

Papero by Cini Boeri for Codiceicona

Cini Boeri's Papero was conceived in 1971 and reflects the experimental approach to craft and industrial design that defined the decade. Shaped as a duck (from which it borrows its name), the lamp features two impact-resistant opal polystyrene pieces connected by a chrome-plated steel plate with a black PVC profile.

Fachiro by Marzio Cecchi for Gufram

Marzio Cecchi's 1975 Fachiro for Gufram reflects the more playful end of the decade's design spectrum. Harsh looking but definitely comfortable to sit on thanks to the soft leather construction, the design is informed by the work of Cecchi's couturier mother and his ongoing observations of nature, and how it can dialogue with design.

Pallino by Elio Martinelli

A 1970s design by Elio Martinelli, Pallino is both playful and minimal. Dubbed 'a curious lamp' from its creator, the design of Pallino brings to mind an inquisitive character taking a peek at whoever is on the other side. 'Reintroducing Pallino means bringing back into today’s homes a touch of the formal lightness and chromatic boldness that made Italian design great,' comments Emiliana Martinelli, President of Martinelli Luce. 'It means choosing an object with a story to tell, one that still looks ahead together with those who own it.'

Joe Colombo for Mamoli

Joe Colombo's design was firmly rooted in the idea that 'all the objects needed in a house should be integrated with the usable spaces; hence, they no longer ought to be called furnishings but ‘equipment.’ His Total Furnishing Unit was originally presented at the exhibition 'Italy: The New Domestic Landscape' and among a bigger design idea for domestic living, it introduced the humble tap not just as accessory, but as 'an integral part of both the space and the domestic experience'. Mamoli's reissue of the tap design is only slightly updated for modern use, and reflects Colombo's idea of a home based on functionality.

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

Good things come in small packages – and this 80-square-metre apartment in Madrid's Malasaña district, reimagined by London- and Mallorca-based studio Archive for Space, proves it. The home feels historical, contemporary and ‘grandmotherly’ all at once. On paper, those elements shouldn't coexist; in practice, they do.

For co-founders Arabella Maza and Stephen Maginn, the project was guided by a wish to preserve the apartment's early twentieth-century bones while layering in contemporary interventions. Malasaña itself offered a reference point – a neighbourhood of ornate façades, independent vintage stores, late-night bars and bohemian spirit. Restored plaster cornices, decorative ceiling medallions and original timber shutters all pay tribute to that heritage.

During the renovation, the designers uncovered treasure beneath the old carpet: the apartment's original terracotta flooring. Restored and patched, the tiles shift from checkerboard to diamond motifs, becoming both a practical foundation and conceptual anchor for the project.

Recreate the mood

Against this earthy backdrop, polished stainless steel introduces an industrial precision. Maza has described the aesthetic as ‘a grandmother in latex’ – rather vivid shorthand for a space willing to challenge convention without losing its warmth.

Its position within a shared building ruled out major alterations to its envelope. Instead, the studio leaned on spatial efficiency and material continuity to turn a long, narrow footprint into a home with two bedrooms, two en-suite bathrooms and a generous central kitchen. Living spaces occupy the street-facing rooms, while the bedrooms and bathrooms wrap around an internal patio.

At the heart of the plan sits the kitchen – our favourite space. Cool steel, used for the countertops and integrated appliances, pairs irresistibly with softly gathered linen skirting below, while rough plaster walls and the restored floors add tactility. The circular extractor hood, custom-designed by the studio, deserves a mention too – it reads more like a sculptural object than an appliance.

That dialogue between softness and structure continues in the living room, where a restored ceiling medallion and a loose-covered sofa sit alongside a vintage floral armchair, stainless-steel coffee table and the charming Pea Head Lamp by Six Dots Design. In the primary bedroom, a cross-stitched floral textile stands in for a headboard, adding another handmade touch.

The bedroom also embraces one of our favourite design moves: floor-to-ceiling drapery. Here, the curtains separate the room from its en-suite – an unconventional solution born of spatial constraints. The bathrooms depart from the creamy palette found elsewhere, wrapped in glossy black tiles with chrome fittings and veined Calacatta marble.

It would have been easy to overplay the contrasts – forcing the floral armchair against shiny metal, or leaning too nostalgic with the buttery yellow walls. Instead, this is an apartment that knows exactly when to make a statement and when to step back – making it, in our estimation, very close to perfect.

Tasked with preserving the heritage of his late father, legendary French designer Pierre Paulin, Benjamin Paulin has been clear that this design legacy is not static. Interpreting the late designer's ethos, Paulin set up Paulin, Paulin, Paulin with his wife Alice Paulin as a studio that expands the design world by connecting the original ideas with contemporary design and popular culture.

Among the latest initiatives is an installation to backdrop British record producer Fred Again.. and Mexican trio Latin Mafia's collaborative mixtape, '9 months & 50 hours', recorded at LagoAlgo, a cultural centre set within a 1960s building on the shores of a lake in Bosque de Chapultepec, Mexico City.

The artists installed themselves in the modernist architectural masterpiece with the aim of working on a collaborative mixtape, documented on a livestream on YouTube. The artists worked from the space, longing on Paulin's masterpiece which proved a fitting design to encourage creative brainstorming.

This installation is a fitting embodiment of the designer's original idea. Paulin conceived the Dune sofa as part of his radical vision for an interior design based on fluid landscape, rather than static objects. The modular system encourages freedom of movement and is designed with conversation in mind. While the piece was never produced during the designer's lifetime, it is one of his most celebrated works and an integral part of Paulin, Paulin, Paulin's celebration of his legacy and released in super limited edition.

'By accompanying Fred Again.. and Latin Mafia during the final moments of their creative process, Paulin, Paulin, Paulin continues its dialogue with today's leading cultural figures, placing its timeless designs at the heart of contemporary artistic expression,' reads a note from the studio introducing their involvement in the collaboration. This installation continues Benjamin Paulin's exploration of his father's legacy through popular culture, and music in particular.

Earlier this year, he launched Sounds Like Paulin, a cultural label centred on music with the aim of transforming 'the concept of the salon into an immersive sound meeting place – an environment capable of bringing together friends and artists who might never have crossed paths otherwise,’ said Paulin upon launching the initiative.

Watch: '9 months & 50 hours' by Fred Again.. and Latin Mafia, hour 26 of finishing the mixtape

For young people living in a city, square footage in a home can be hard to come by. Studios with storage space are gold dust, house shares may be a necessity, and moves may be frequent. After spending time with young adults living in central London, Ikea has developed a new furniture and accessories collection inspired by the realities of renting, moving home, and student life.

Adpatable and portable, Ikea’s ‘Kompishäng’ collection

Among the participating twentysomethings, they discovered consistent challenges: limited storage space, and worn-out moving boxes used in place of furniture. What they also saw was a small number of easily movable objects that had been carried from one property to the next.

The ‘Kompishäng’ collection features 12 designs, including a folding table/desk, stools that stack to become shelving or a display unit, a pick-up-able bookshelf-bookend combo, a hanging wardrobe organiser that can be carried like a bag, back-of-door storage, and even a collapsible jute plant pot.

The collection is designed to be durable and functional, with pieces crafted from materials such as solid pine, powder-coated steel, and canvas.

'It's designed to accompany life's transitions – equally at home in a first apartment, a family house, or even a retirement space,' says designer David Wahl, whose round side table is lightweight and folds flat.

To help ease the stress of transporting furniture across the city, there is also a bag on wheels, which can equally serve as a shopping bag or a picnic basket. 'We wanted to create furniture that could be moved with your body alone, without needing a car,' comments Ikea designer Wiebke Braasch.

‘Even if you move often, you don’t want your home to feel temporary,' says Dora Ding, Ikea product developer. 'We saw how carefully people chose the things they carried with them from place to place, and that insight shaped the collection. We wanted the collection to be portable but still have a permanent look: people should feel settled and considered.’

Shop the collection

Around the turn of the 20th century, the Lido, a seven-mile barrier island in the Venetian Lagoon, was home to some of the grandest hotels in Europe. It inspired Thomas Mann to pen his novella Death in Venice there in 1912, and, two decades later, was so cinematic that it became the home of the Venice Film festival.

Even if you don’t have plans to visit Venice this summer, New York’s Galerie56 is offering the next-best thing – for design buffs, anyway. Now through 17 October, the Manhattan art and design outpost is teaming up with Italy’s prestigious Nilufar gallery on a new exhibition of design rarities called ‘Nilufar Grand Hotel, Vista Mare.’

The residency (Nilufar’s second stateside presentation with Galerie56) is a continuation of the Milanese collectible design powerhouse’s Milan Design Week show, ‘Grand Hotel’, in which gallery founder Nina Yashar reimagined the Nilufar Depot as if it were a sumptuous Old World resort. The New York version, similarly, uses design treasures to conjure a hotel – only this time, one set in the Lido.

‘I found myself returning to the atmosphere of Venice in summer – not Venice as a destination, but Venice as an idea: a place where architecture, water, light, memory and culture merge into a singular, evocative experience,’ said Galerie56 founder, architect Lee Mindel.

Mindel, working with the Nilufar team, hand-selected objects that conjured a sunny beach scene in the Lido – a place the architect first visited as a teenager. An ultra-rare, Formica-topped Carlo Mollino dining table, first designed in 1956, forms an imaginary lobby, flanked by a pair of minimalist wood ‘Miguelito’ chairs by Mexican architect Luis Barragán. Opposite the entrance, a golden ‘40s-era knotted rug designed by Swedish designer Barbro Nilsson forms an expanse of ‘sand’, while a round Fontana Arte cocktail table and whimsical Gabriella Crespi floor lamp evoke the sun and a cheerful beach umbrella, respectively.

Fans of Crespi, the glamorous multidisciplinary Italian designer who rose to fame during the 1950s, will find many delights here, from a carved-wood table lamp in the shape of a frog; to rattan furniture; to a set of gleaming brass drawers created for Christian Dior; to a futuristic metallic floor lamp that sprouts from the floor like buoys floating on the sea. Other design masters, including Gio Ponti, Martino Gamper and the Italian-born Brazilian designer Lina Bo Bardi, make cameos.

One of the most enticing items in the show is actually one of the oldest – a scroll-shaped mirror and shelf designed by Carlo Bugatti. Created in 1902 – a decade before Mann authored Death in Venice – the piece feels at once of its era and strikingly modern, thanks to a stenciled Art Nouveau iris border; embossed copper and mother of pearl decorative elements; and a small hinged cupboard that opens to reveal diminutive drawers and turned columns evocative of Piazza San Marco.

‘They are works of exceptional craftsmanship and beauty, but they also carry stories, cultural references, and emotional resonance,’ Mindel said. ‘“Grand Hotel, Vista Mare” is ultimately a celebration of those connections – an exploration of hospitality, elegance and the enduring romance of Italian design.’

'Grand Hotel, Vista Mare' is on view through 17 October at Galerie56, located at 240 Church Street New York, NY, USA 10013

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

Casacor São Paulo, the flagship edition of Brazil's annual architecture and interiors exhibition – where designers transform an existing site into dozens of showcase spaces – concludes on 9 August 2026. Before it does, Brazil-based design enthusiasts should make their way to the historic Parque da Água Branca to experience ‘Semibreve Studio’, a space by Estúdio Clara Nahas.

The 55 sq m apartment is a tribute to Nahas' late mother, a pianist who profoundly shaped the designer’s creative outlook. Framed in the bedroom is the original score of a song her mother composed after Nahas' birth – the designer describes it as a kind of birth certificate for her artistic sensibility. In the living area, a Todeschini kitchen finished in a Giardino-tinted oak veneer flows into a sideboard built for a record player and her mother's vinyl collection, capped by a Da Vinci quartzite countertop.

The studio's name references the semibreve – the longest note value in musical notation. That idea of sustained stillness runs through the design, which is meant to slow visitors down. One way it achieves this is by inverting typical housing logic: you enter through the private zone, passing the bedroom and study, before arriving at the open living and kitchen areas.

Recreate the mood

At the centre of the plan stands a sculptural burgundy cylinder clad in deep red ceramic tiles by Turkish manufacturer Keramika, proportioned to tuck beneath the building's principal ceiling beam. It serves a triple function, enclosing the bathroom while carving out a study desk on one side and, on the bedroom face, a combined music nook and vanity. Above this, a display of hourglasses serves as another poetic reminder of time's passage.

The apartment preserves the building's original timber parquet floors and gabled beam-and-slat ceiling, while introducing a series of quirky interventions. Furniture favours soft, organic forms, including the ‘Amana’ modular sofa by Nildo José, paired with a curated selection of Brazilian design and art that foregrounds women creators: pieces by Lina Bo Bardi and Cristiana Bertolucci, a golden-grass pendant lamp crafted by Quilombola artisans, and artworks by Maria Bonomi, Jandyra Waters and others.

The bedroom features layered indirect lighting, a Líder Design bed and a Botteh rug, while the adjoining bathroom turns fully immersive – wrapping floor and ceiling in red and pairing honed Napoleon Bordeaux marble with dark-finished Deca fixtures.

Semibreve Studio achieves a remarkable amount within the confines of a showcase apartment. Its personal and musical allusions are constant, clever and cohesive – a moving tribute to Nahas' mother that succeeds in making visitors pause and reflect amid the chaos of São Paulo.

Fans, feathers, chevrons and palm fronds – there is no shortage of motifs to choose from in the glamorous, geometric universe of art deco, a movement born just over a century ago, at Paris’ 1925 Exposition Internationale. But for Cordelia de Castellane, artistic director of Dior Maison, inspiration came from an equally bountiful source: the great archive of the French maison, which holds thousands of items spanning from 1947 to the present day.

Her find was the ‘Godron’ motif, a simple but effective design combining rows of rounded elements to create a fluted decoration. The first Dior Maison objects adorned with the Godron date back to 1974, with the motif particularly widespread in the brand's 1980s and 1990s collections.

Reinterpreted for a new tableware collection, its thin blue stripes, punctuated by rounded hatched rectangles in white, navy and gold, now run along a series of Limoges porcelain pieces ranging from egg cups to oval platters.

The blue stripes are used in a variety of ways throughout the collection, which is designed for both everyday use and grand occasions. They form what looks like tiny stepped pyramids – a classic art deco trope inspired by ancient Mesoamerican structures – on decorative plates and trays; swirl into concentric circles on tea cup saucers; wrap around a butter dish like a hat band; and create an elegant train track circuit on a relish dish.

The collection also extends to trays, vases, frames and trinket dishes, and a matching selection of linens, beachwear and bathrobes, for a truly luxurious art deco experience. The towels, on which a line of Godron crosses an elegant blue frame, are a particular highlight, while the placemat and napkin set would look equally at home on a seaside terrace or a Parisian restaurant.

The ‘Godron’ collection can be paired with de Castellane’s first furniture collection for Dior Maison, Dior Greenhouse. Also just launched, the latter’s clover-shaped rattan pieces are inspired by the winter garden of Christian Dior's childhood home in Granville.

Godron collection, from £95, dior.com

It’s been decades since Knoll last added a bed to its line-up. The Pennsylvania-based furniture juggernaut, though, decided that it wasn’t an opportunity to sleep on much longer. Today, Knoll debuted a brand new bed design in collaboration with multi-hyphenate designer, Willo Perron.

Perron is one of the most innovative voices working in design today, with a portfolio that encompasses furniture, objects, sets, stages and brand identities for the likes of Beyoncé, Charli XCX, St. Vincent, Chanel and more. Wallpaper* even named Perron as our 2026 Designer of the Year.

No surprise, Perron’s latest project is just as fun. Called the 'Pillo' bed, the cushiony cot is an extension of the Los Angeles-based designer’s ongoing collaboration with Knoll, a partnership that launched in 2024 with the reveal of the 'Pillo' sofa, and that has since expanded to include lounge chairs, modular seating and – true to its namesake – pillows.

The bed is as inviting as it is a design statement, with a plush upholstered frame that blurs the boundary between pillows and bed. The headboard functions as a massive cushion, allowing loungers to prop themselves up to read a book or binge-watch their new favourite series.

The bed is neutral enough to work within a variety of contexts, ‘quietening and simplifying the bedroom,’ as Jonathan Olivares, Knoll’s creative director, put it. Buyers can also customise the upholstery colour to suit their space. Of course, it pairs perfectly with other items in the 'Pillo' family.

Perron, for his part, prefers to mix and match. ‘I don’t believe in uniformity and that extends to this bed – my pieces are designed to be a kind of functional system, but in an adaptable way where they can become unique to each person and each space through material, colour and context,’ Perron said in a statement. ‘I like seeing how people ultimately make them their own.’

Island Records and EMI have come together under one roof at a newly unveiled shared headquarters in King's Cross, London, the result of an 18-month collaboration between spatial design studio Interesting Projects and Studio Island, the labels' in-house creative team. But rather than merge two identities into one, the studios treated the brief as a curatorial challenge, bringing two labels with distinct personalities and legacies together in one space.

The answer was to approach the space like it was an exhibition. 'Commissioning and collaborating with Interesting Projects stemmed from my deep admiration for their exhibition design for the Keith Haring retrospective at Tate Liverpool in 2019,' explains Holly Williams, creative director at Studio Island, of why the design duo made a natural choice for this project.

Inside Island Records and EMI's London HQ: ‘a museum to the labels’

James Mason and Joana Filipe, directors of Interesting Projects, approached the commission like 'a museum to the labels', explaining the ask was for 'a space that feels alive, relevant and connected to the way music is made and experienced today'.

That thinking plays out as two parallel stories. Island's entrance is staged like, well, a stage, its base nodding to carnival sound systems, opening into a mural of Bob Marley's ‘One Love’, painted by British-Jamaican signwriter SignsbyJorge as a twin to an original in Jamaica by the Nurse Signs Collective. Both murals carry the signwriters' mobile numbers, painted on; Williams explains that 'if you need a mural, you know who to call'.

EMI's entrance takes a different route, built as a curated archive of memorabilia, photography and correspondence, including a letter criticising the label's decision to sign the Sex Pistols. Further in, a Corbin Shaw textile piece, Just Four Lads From Liverpool, reworks Burberry check into a Beatles homage. 'Corbin was top of our list for EMI because his practice explores Britishness, identity and often masculinity,' Williams says.

The two labels touch in the kitchen and dining area. A window was cut into the kitchen wall onto the Island side, framing a photograph of a young Amy Winehouse from the Frank era. Opposite, in a separate eating space, a matching window opens onto EMI's red wall, where Corbin Shaw's Beatles piece sits in conversation with an iconic shot of the Spice Girls.

'Island Records and EMI are united by a commitment to exceptional artists and enduring music, while each has its own distinct identity,' says Louis Bloom, president of Island Records EMI Label Group. 'The new office brings this shared ethos to life with a bold, collaborative space that celebrates the heritage of both labels while inspiring creativity, connection, and the next generation of artists.'

For Williams, the best thing about the project is the learning opportunities it has brought. EMI's history mural alone spans almost a century of British music milestones, including the fact that King George VI's 1939 speech declaring Britain's entry into the Second World War was recorded at Abbey Road. 'Through the art,’ she says, ‘staff and artists have learnt more about the history of both labels.’

Taschen has announced a new piece of furniture, a bookstand with a difference. Designed by Marc Newson, ‘Bookstand’ is a heavyweight piece of bibliophilic furniture that weighs in at 14kg and is sturdily shaped for big publishing projects.

This isn’t Newson’s first rodeo with Taschen – far from it. The legendary German publisher put out the official Marc Newson monograph in 2024, the culmination of many years of collaboration. Back in 2018, Newson oversaw an aluminium slipcase for the Collector’s Edition of Pino Allievi’s epic Catalogue raisonné on Ferrari. Newson also created the sailcloth case for the XXL edition of the publisher’s America’s Cup monograph, as well as the carbon-fibre stand for the book’s special Marc Newson Edition.

True completists will also want to snare one of just 12 examples of the ‘Lunar Rock Edition’ of Norman Mailer’s MoonFire, a collection of essays originally published in 1970 but reissued as a monograph in 2009. The following year, Newson’s Lunar Rock Edition not only contained a specimen of lunar meteorite but came in a lunar module-inspired case. You’ll have to scour the auction houses for a copy.

Still, anyone wanting a slice of Newson style for their oversized volume display area (what the rest of us would call a library) can now bypass the second-hand market and go straight to the source. Made from acrylic glass, aluminium and steel and resting on sturdy tripod legs, the stand has been designed to accommodate Taschen’s Collector’s Edition portfolio of oversized art, design, photography, fashion and architecture books.

Adjustability is handled with a bright red aluminium turner, while the forged aluminium tripod head is topped with a thick slab of transparent acrylic, bent to hold even the weightiest tome securely in place.

Marc Newson. Bookstand, £1,500, Taschen.com, @Taschen, Marc-Newson.com

There's one category in design that many would rather ignore: the toilet. Functional and unglamorous, this basest of interior objects often remains an afterthought. A ‘high-end’ market exists, but it’s cornered by the Japanese smart toilet: sleek and spaceship-like. If you want sculpture, not software, options are conspicuously limited.

Enter Trone – the brainchild of Hugo Volpei, who launched the French bathroom brand in 2018 on the premise that the humble toilet deserves its moment in the sun. The idea was born during a visit to what may be the world’s most Instagrammed toilets: the two-metre-high egg-shaped pods at London’s Sketch, which have become something of a cultural phenomenon. And yet, inside those eggs? The same white, clinical, forgettable toilet found almost anywhere. What if the fixture itself became the star, Volpei wondered?

A graduate of HEC, France's leading business school, Volpei displayed an early flair for design, reselling customised T-shirts as a child and aspiring to become an architect in his teens. Trone was an offshoot of his final-year thesis, launched with zero industry contacts – just a Google search for ‘toilet manufacturing process’. It was scrappy from day one, with a childhood friend modelling the first prototype.

Then came the company's breakout – a deal with Big Mamma, the restaurant group behind some of Europe's biggest hospitality venues, and a brutal deadline of seven toilets in six months. Volpei brought in an engineer to turn sketches into reality, and the client list has only grown more glamorous since, with names including LVMH, Marriott International and The Berkeley.

The Trone catalogue now spans toilets, basins, flush plates, taps and accessories – sleek one moment, playful the next, in palettes that swing from bold to powder-soft. They come in forms that take a second to register for what they actually are: stepped bowls, asymmetric lids, transparent cisterns. Three hero toilet designs – ‘Callipyge’, ‘Icone’ and the newest arrival, ‘Altesse’ – showcase amorphous curves, glazed coloured ceramic and terrazzo-flecked finishes.

‘Altesse’, unveiled at Milan Design Week 2026, is Trone's answer to the Japanese smart toilet: with the lid closed, it barely registers as a toilet at all, appearing instead as a smooth, wall-mounted pod. Gone is the notorious over-engineering that’s left more than one unsuspecting user in a slapstick standoff with rogue water jets. In its place: a remote tucked behind a discreet ceramic panel.

The basins are equally sculptural, with designs ranging from the doughnut-shaped ‘Orbe’ to ‘Ritual’, where water vanishes into a funnel-shaped vortex, as if being sucked into a black hole.

‘In France and Europe, people generally don't talk about [the toilet],’ observes Volpei. ‘And when they do, they laugh about it. Making this moment “cool” is a huge ambition. Creating desire around an object that's never been desirable – that's the real challenge.’

It’s this irreverence, as much as the genuinely beautiful toilet designs, that gives Trone its appeal. Volpei has made sure the brand never takes itself too seriously: Trone means ‘throne’, ‘Altesse’ means ‘highness’, and ‘Callipyge’ is an adjective that means having well-shaped or beautiful buttocks. Because you can’t build a bathroom brand without embracing a little toilet humour.

Yabu Pushelberg design studio founders George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg came to their Amagansett house by chance, but once they were in, the East Hampton location became a crucial place for them to expand on their design approach. An escape for the Toronto- and New York-based designers, the beachfront house is a clear reflection of the duo's creative values. Durability, purpose, functionality and a soulful minimalism are key elements shaping the space and are evident in the way the designers experience the home.

The pieces from Yabu Pushelberg's ongoing collaboration with Belgian outdoor company Tribù are perfectly at ease in these spaces, from sofas to loungers in natural materials, adapting to the house's many lives throughout the seasons.

Here, the designers invite us in (and out), and tell us a bit about the time they spend in Amagansett.

In Amagansett with Yabu Pushelberg

Wallpaper*: Can you tell us about your summer house?

Glenn Pushelberg: Our house was designed around the protected sand dunes. Because of the landscape, we borrowed a layout more common in yacht design than houses, completely immersing us in the natural surroundings.

The house is split across three levels. The lower level holds two guest suites and a bunk room that sleeps six. We love to host, so this floor tends to take on a life of its own.

George Yabu: The main living space sits on the second level, where the kitchen, dining, and living rooms open onto a wraparound balcony. When we designed the home with Frederick Stelle, we wanted the outdoor deck to feel like an extension of the interior. To do this, we engineered the structure without a corner column, allowing the floor-to-ceiling glass walls to slide completely out of sight. When they're open, the corner disappears entirely. This floor also holds the primary bedroom – meaning everything we need for daily life happens on this single level, where we spend most of our time.

GP: The rooftop is the final level, filled with Tribù pieces and a hot tub. It is our favourite spot to end the night – looking at the stars and listening to the waves.

W*: How did you choose it, and how long have you had it?

GP: The house was completed in June 2012. We found the property entirely by chance while flipping through a [newspaper] real estate column on a flight back from London. We weren’t looking for a new place, and when we went to visit, we didn’t love the existing house on the site – but the moment we saw the view and the surrounding neighbourhood, we knew it was home.

W*: When do you usually visit?

GP: We return as often as we can. We try to spend as much time there as possible over the summer because it gives us something we don’t get in Toronto or New York. That sense of quiet and distance is vital for us to have for a few months each year.

W*: How did you put the interiors together?

CP: We didn’t want anything to feel overly formal or precious. The idea is to walk in and immediately feel at ease, instinctively knowing how to use the space.

To bring that feeling to life, we filled the home with a few of our designs for Tribu. Some of the first pieces we brought into the house were the ‘Nodi’ loungers and armchairs – one of our earliest and most well-resolved collections.

Our newest additions are pieces from the Elio collection. It's enveloping and inviting, and has quickly become a favourite of ours.

W*: What role do the materials of the furniture pieces play in your experience of the house?

GY: We chose the materials to directly support how we want the house to feel, keeping everything soft and neutral. The goal wasn’t to make a loud design statement; we wanted the interiors to act as a calm, gentle backdrop that frames the view.

Because the artwork, objects, and furniture are always evolving in our homes, we focus on how pieces interact to create an easy, natural flow. For example, we actually cut our dining table and chairs down by three inches. That subtle, non-standard height brings them closer to the scale of the living room furniture, completely changing the energy. It encourages guests to linger longer over dinner, then flow naturally back into the living space. The materials and the proportions work together to keep the focus exactly where it should be: on the landscape and the company.

W*: What is the best time of the day at the house, and why? 

GP: Late at night, lying in bed and hearing the water and distant sound of the train passing by, or the quiet stillness just before sunrise, right when the birds start to chirp.

GY: Heading up to the roof late at night to stargaze and listen to the waves.

W*: Do you have a favourite view? 

GP: Looking out at the ocean from the living room, I could easily sit there and stare at it all day long, and often, I do… just don’t tell anyone!

GY: Especially with the doors slid completely open.

W*: What is your favourite activity in the area? 

GP: We love hosting, cooking together, visiting the local farmers market, and just enjoying the company of our friends and family.

yabupushelberg.com

Lighting brand Blue Green Works is something of a unique voice in American design. Launched by Wallpaper* US 400 honoree Peter B Staples in 2020, it is defined by an open-ended dialogue with vernacular histories fused with Staples' personal perspectives, offering up proportions and silhouettes that are, in his words, ‘bold, and reference decades of work and rooms as inspiration'. Some would call its aesthetic vocabulary minimal, others referential. ‘I'm not in a rush to define it,' says Staples, who honed his palate at leading collectible design gallery The Future Perfect and lighting brand Apparatus, where he cut his teeth learning the ins and outs of the trade.

His open-ended, ever-curious approach has allowed the studio to be exploratory in both its creation and production. Previous collections have included a survey of lighting objects that contemplate symbols of power (from trophies to 1930s military tattoos), and fixtures referencing Horace Gifford's modernist Fire Island homes. Inspiration for the studio's latest series (its seventh) took Staples all the way to the Venetian glass-blowing mecca of Murano. One of the island's leading fabricators had seen Blue Green Works in a magazine article and reached out. The fourth generation owner has since become a close confidante. ‘I hope the friendship is lifelong,' says Staples.

Murano Glass and Blue Green Works

The start of the project was marked by a personal event in Staples' life: as he was en route to Venice to initiate the collaboration, he received news that his beloved mother had died. He boarded a plane, but it wasn't to Italy – instead he flew to the Midwest, where his father still resides in the Gustav Stickley Craftsman home that he grew up in. A few weeks later, Staples picked up the transatlantic journey again and would then spend the next seven months travelling back and forth to the workshops to consult with its furnace experts. ‘It was interesting to be alone in Venice, which is a very weird place in the most incredible way and it would come over me in waves, like “wow, this is me out in the world, and I'm an accumulation of all of the work and love that [my mother] put into me”,' he reflects.

The time spent in Venice resulted in a collection titled ‘Garden'. ‘I needed a medium that was expressive like nothing else I had worked with,' says Staples. ‘Murano glass just felt so natural because it's expressive in its objective state, and draws from hundreds of years of stewardship and artistry. It clicked with me that the kind of emotion I needed to convey at this moment in my life was not something I had in my toolbox. I wanted to make something that was about heartbreak.'

The ‘Garden' collection is defined by clear glass, which is arranged into delicate leaves and feathers, drifting in all directions. ‘There's a stillness when you're rendering something that's alive in conveying motion, but in a solid form,' says Staples. He references the ‘Fountain' and ‘Landscape' chandeliers, where each tentacle of the feathery form almost flutters. Known for its vibrant colours and slick sturdiness, Murano glass favours drama and virtuosity; but instead, Staples pushed for each component to reveal its vulnerabilities with visible edges and unconcealed construction. ‘I've looked at so much Murano glass, but I still haven't found anything that is exactly this,' he says.

While the collection features seven works, each piece is one of one. ‘There are moulds for certain metal shapes, but these works are not being produced and stocked – everything will be created by hand for each client,' says Staples. This adds a further personalised element to this already intimate collection.

‘The more I sit with Murano glass, the more I find ways that can grow the vocabulary we're forming as a studio,' reflects Staples, who says he found a salve in ‘borrowing the emotional vocabulary of another language. So often my work is about distilling ideas and references down to very simple forms. But this project was different from the start'.

bluegreenworks.com

This article appears in the August 2026 Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

The classic 1970s ‘Mah Jong’ sofa seems to be on Charli XCX's wish list. In her newly released song, 'Card Declined', her shopping list includes 'a handbag', 'a personality', 'a whole new life' as well as the Roche Bobois, hippy-coded sofa.

‘Mah Jong’ sofa: a 1970s seating landscape

The story of the ‘Mah Jong’ sofa started from an idea of German designer, painter, and sculptor Hans Hopfer, generally recognised for inventing the concept of a 'seating landscape'. His first designs, created in the 1960s for furniture company Mobiliar-Basar, included the ‘Bausystem’ (1965), a streamlined sofa bed design, and the ‘Mobiliante’ (1967), a unique piece that incorporated sofa, love seat and ottoman. Both concepts were based on an idea of essential forms, functionality and responding to the needs of modern life.

This experience led him to create the Mah Jong sofa, for French furniture company Roche Bobois, in 1971. A fully modular, ever-changing seating system, the ‘Mah Jong’ sofa was conceived to adapt to the constant evolution of domestic lifestyles. Bohemian in its execution and based on comfort, durability and flexibility, the ‘Mah Jong’ features a system of cushions upholstered in bold textiles; over the years, the sofa has been dressed by the likes of Kenzo Takada, Missoni and Sonia Rykiel.

For Hopfer, the creation of the ‘Mah Jong’ sofa coincided with the birth of his first child and a pivot towards thinking about a piece of furniture that would serve the life of a family. Initially dubbed 'The Forever Sofa', a name that is also a mission statement for a design piece, it was later renamed after the Chinese tile game its forms closely resemble. The design of the sofa is based on pure modularity, with a corner, back and flat bottom section, which users can combine into virtually infinite compositions.

At the time of its creation, it was an innovative idea to give people the agency to design their own sofa and living space through a series of pieces that could be configured in formats that best suit their users' needs. While the earlier models featured a more streamlined cushion design, over the years the sofa evolved with visible seams and irregular edges, looking like a refined DIY composition and enhancing its mission. Added platforms and outdoor versions (as well as adjustable backs) have expanded the design's scope within the home.

Defined by bold patterns that are often found in mix-and-match compositions and definitely better suited to large spaces, where compositions can truly bring to life its creator's original idea, it is undeniable that the ‘Mah Jong’ sofa makes for an exciting shopping trip indeed.

roche-bobois.com

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

On the outskirts of Marseille, where centuries-old pines meet the Mediterranean Sea, interior architect Sandrine Sarah Faivre has transformed a former caretaker’s house into an idyllic coastal retreat. Standing beside the home where her client grew up, Villa Rossignols spans 200 sq m of interiors cascading across three levels, with an equal area of terraces.

The brief for this weekend pied-à-terre centred on two defining features: views of the sea and the majestic pines that shape the landscape. Faivre was determined to preserve two particularly remarkable specimens, regardless of the challenges this posed during construction.

Recreate the mood

The interiors exude the easy elegance of a Mediterranean escape. Sunlight pours in, washing the spaces in a sense of airy, restorative calm. Pine parquet underfoot echoes the trees outside, while pale, fine-grained limestone flows through the terrace level and bathrooms, its textures creating a dialogue between the original structure and the new interventions.

The renovation’s greatest technical challenge lay beneath the house. Being excavated into the rock face, the ceiling height of a new terrace-level floor was compressed; Faivre counterbalanced this by elongating the space, using mirrors to amplify its sense of depth and draw the eye towards the horizon, where west-facing bay windows frame the sea. Full-height curtains filter the intensity of the southern sun, moving softly with the sea breeze. Within this elongated volume, Faivre choreographs a sequence of living zones: a kitchen and dining area, a living room centred around a fireplace, and a cosy reading nook, complete with bespoke oak daybed.

While the architecture speaks the long-established language of Mediterranean summers, the furnishings gave Faivre an opportunity to add some edge. Villa Rossignols becomes a showcase of Marseille’s creative community, bringing together custom padouk-veneer joinery, hand-woven raffia canework, terracotta vessels and ceramics sourced from Moroccan artisans. There are vintage icons by Charlotte Perriand – including the ‘Tabouret Méribel’ stool – and Pierre Chapo's ‘S11’ dining chairs, alongside geometric rugs, wobbly glassware and contemporary artworks.

Perhaps it is inevitable, in the end, that Faivre’s favourite space is the terrace. At its essence, this is a holiday home – a place defined by the space between sand and sea, and shaped by the presence of the pines.

The foosball table – aka table football or baby-foot – isn’t typically associated with luxury or design, conjuring images of dingy pubs and bachelor basements instead. Irish luxury furniture house Orior has set out to change that with a high-end foosball table for the discerning games enthusiast. There's no tacky plastic in sight, no garish green – just a beautiful, handcrafted piece that's as functional as it is striking. It will be available to purchase via Orior's website.

The table's solid wood frame is bold and blocky, anchoring the piece in a warm, rich walnut. The playing field is the real showstopper: 'Irish Green' and 'Orior Crema' marble contrast with the wood – a refined reinterpretation of the Crayola-green felt found on a typical table.

The clean, architectural silhouette carries through in the satin steel-lined interior walls, which lend a industrial counterpoint to the marble and walnut, and in the satin steel rods that run through the frame, capped with solid cast bronze handles. The players are carved from oak and finished with leather detailing and lacquer, while the goals are wrapped in leather. These materials elevate the table into a piece that functions equally as a game and a collectible design object.

There's a story behind the launch – timed to coincide with the recent Fifa World Cup final: Orior's company leaders met as teammates on the Savannah College of Art and Design football team, where a shared love of the sport sparked friendships that would go on to shape the next chapter of the business. The foosball table stands as a tribute to Orior's origins.

For Federico Stefanovich, mimicking nature literally in design misses the point: there’s much more to gain from this vital source of inspiration than just surface level floral patterns or leaf motifs. The Mexican talent – a 2025 Wallpaper* Ascending Star – goes deeper and finds clever ways to evoke the anatomical structures intrinsic to plant and animal life.

Presented by Mexico City’s Ago Projects gallery, Stefanovich's latest collection, Salina, stems from close observations of aquatic organisms – the vast morphology of shells and carapaces beneath the ocean’s surface. Stefanovich has interpreted the essential osseous qualities of these natural elements in the formation of collectible lamp and table designs.

‘Rather than reproduce these references literally, the collection reinterprets them through an abstract lens, seeking to capture the delicate balance between fragility and strength – the rigidity and organic fluidity that characterizes many forms of marine life,’ Stefanovich says. ‘Rather than looking primarily at existing design references or typologies, I tend to begin with structures, behaviours and relationships.’

For Stefanovich, sand-cast bronze is the best process and material to authentically capture the skeleton shapes that keep shells together. 'This process allows me to create intricate yet robust forms – limbs and branches – that can remain hollow and accommodate electrical components when necessary,' he adds.

On top of his interest in natural systems, the designer is also fascinated by the intersection of traditional craftsmanship and contemporary technologies. ‘Much of my work involves moving between handmade processes and digital tools, each informs the other,’ says Stefanovich. ‘Discovering new materials and exploring their possibilities is an important part of the process, as is finding ways to celebrate the traces of making rather than conceal them’.

Fibreglass was chosen for the lampshades because of the material's balance of precision and unpredictability; air bubble imperfections resemble the irregularities one might find on a shell’s surface. Shaped in 3D-printed moulds, the semi-translucent material is ideal for diffusing light. When illuminated, the complex-curve forms reveal all of their textural variations. ‘One material feels skeletal and dense, while the other appears lighter, translucent and almost organic,’ he says. ‘Together they create a tension that becomes central to the collection.'

That’s especially true in the table designs in which Stefanovich attempted to push the limits of asymmetry. 'I’m deeply interested in the engineering dimension of design. Balance, structural logic, assembly and weight distribution are often as important to me as the visual outcome,' he explains.

Stefanovich's solutions are both functional and expressive, allowing the way an object supports itself or comes together to become its identity – just as Mother Nature would have intended.

Fashion designer Jil Sander made her first foray into furniture design in 2025. Collaborating with the German furniture designer Thonet, she brought her minimalist yet innovative approach to reinterpretations of classic Bauhaus designs by Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Now, she has added two new designs to the resulting JS Thonet collection: the ‘S 411’ lounge chair and the ‘S 1070’ table. Both pieces, rooted in technical developments, offer contemporary takes on classic designs and are available in ‘Serious’ and ‘Nordic’ editions, comprising more sober and lighter colours and finishes, respectively.

The lounge chair takes its framework from a Thonet factory design that dates back to 1932. Its distinct, S-shaped tubular frame combines an elegant cantilevered form with sprung upholstery and is paired with a matching footstool for comfort.

In her design approach, Sander sees herself as closely aligned with the Bauhaus philosophy of elevating everyday objects by marrying functionalism with minimalist aesthetics, but also with Marcel Breuer in particular. ‘It was important to Breuer to combine industrial techniques and components with attractive, high-quality traditional materials such as leather, wood, and tubular steel. He strove to reconcile avant-garde aesthetics with an appreciation for comfort. This approach showed foresight and makes all the difference in the market today.’

She adds, 'The chair appears to defy gravity, in a spirit of constructivism, as if floating freely in space,' she says. 'I wanted to achieve this weightlessness without the glitz of chrome, grounding the “S 411”.'

The JS Thonet collection’s new ‘S 1070’ tables, meanwhile, are an interpretation of a Glen Oliver Löw design from 2004, which itself nodded to Bauhaus designs – in particular, Marcel Breuer’s 1920s ‘B 9’ nesting tables.

Sander has taken the clean-lined piece and added her own finishes and colours, her glossy tabletop nodding to the finish on a Steinway grand piano. ‘To me, colours are like musical notes that can speak to each other and resonate by association,’ she says.

Sander’s purist aesthetic echoes throughout the collection, as Thonet’s creative director Norbert Ruf notes: ‘Jil Sander’s designs have always represented laid-back, elegant luxury and her clothes are worn with pleasure year after year. [She] wants to use her products to convey a sense of value.’

thonet.de

Also in the JS Thonet collection

Club de Mar Mallorca has never been just another marina. Founded in 1972, as Palma was becoming an international sailing destination, it helped draw large yachts from the French Riviera and place the city on the Mediterranean nautical map. After a five-and-a-half-year redevelopment, the club has reopened with whimsical interiors by Madrid-based designer Marta de la Rica.

Sail into Club de Mar in Mallorca

Her brief was to honour the club’s past without turning it into a museum of maritime nostalgia. ‘I wanted to create a unity of purpose through colour, material and shape,’ says de la Rica. She looked to vintage Riva runabouts – their high-varnish hulls, lacquered surfaces and easy glamour – as well as the club’s own 1970s origins, ‘an era that expressed luxury in a very sensorial and relaxed way’.

High-gloss lacquered wood runs through the bars, counters and wall panels, with slats, softened corners and rounded edges giving the rooms a nautical language without anchors on the wall. Light catches the varnish, chrome and glass, warming the interiors as it moves through the space.

The palette borrows from nautical flags, with red, blue and yellow drawn from the International Code of Signals. Stripes appear across upholstery and textiles, while sculptural furniture, rounded geometries, burgundy conical lamps and oval bars give the club a strong visual identity. Much of it was custom-designed, with nautical antiques from the club archive placed throughout: boat models, barometers, anchors and diving helmets. ‘Antiques bring soul and history to a space,’ says de la Rica.

Looking towards Palma’s Old Town and cathedral, the terrace feels afloat. ‘When you’re on the terrace looking out towards the Old Town and the cathedral, it feels as though you’re on a boat,’ says de la Rica. For her, the sea is present ‘not through thematic elements, but through materials, proportions and light’. The result is glossy, graphic and rooted in place: a 1970s-tinged yacht club interior that knows exactly where it belongs.

Club de Mar is located at Muelle Pelaires, 07015 Palma, Balearic Islands, Spain

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

At the top of Regent's Park Road, where Primrose Hill's terraces begin their steep climb, a tall, narrow townhouse manages to feel both serious and unserious, sophisticated yet lighthearted.

Home to a couple and their dog, the three-storey house had a specific brief – one that isn't requested enough in a world of extreme curation in high-end design: the ability to not feel ‘overly interior designed’. Finding an interior designer to execute this wasn't necessarily easy, but in 2021 the couple came across Studio Iro's breezy, under-curated work in a magazine feature.

The architectural bones were already in place, courtesy of Chassay & Last, who opened the rear of the house into a double-height volume, slotted a mezzanine above the kitchen, and installed a stone, blackened-steel and glass staircase, drawn together with a shadow-gap detail sharp enough to cut.

Recreate the mood

Onto this, Studio Iro refined the layouts and specified finishes in a way that never feels over-engineered. Central to achieving this are the colour threads running through the house: a blue leopard-print carpet in the hallway sets the indigo undertone found throughout the property, echoed in a deep navy in the bedroom, lavender-grey stone in one bathroom and ridged dark-blue glazed tiles below ground. A burnt-orange sofa and terracotta accents on the top floor provide the contrast.

Texture plays an equally important role in lending sophistication. Clay Works limewash brings a soft, chalky quality to the primary bedroom and bathroom, while limewashed wood, stone and microcement create a tactile backdrop throughout. On the lower ground floor, microcement flows from the open-plan interior out into the garden, pairing with blackened-steel kitchen cabinetry and exposed brick for a calm, industrial feel.

Where the house does allow itself a flourish, it's a considered one: a kitchen island developed with Adam Blencowe, and a custom chest of drawers, vanity console and rug for the primary bedroom. The kitchen, built with Roundhouse, sets a Caesarstone worktop against blue-painted timber joinery; De La Espada dining chairs gather around a table the clients already owned.

That instinct – to add rather than replace – runs through the whole project. The clients' collection of modernist furniture, some of it decades old, wasn't cleared out to make way for something new. Instead, Studio Iro folded it back in, setting it alongside contemporary pieces in kindred materials.

The refusal to over-assert gives this house its authority. Studio Iro's real skill here isn't visible in any single room – it's in everything left alone, and every decision not to push further than necessary.

An often overlooked genre, outdoor showers are on the rise. Versatile and practical, they elevate outdoor spaces and offer both a pause from the heat and a practical solution to cool off in the Summer. A must-have poolside tool, we also like the idea of an outdoor shower as an indulgent, refreshing addition to a garden space.

We look at five recent outdoor shower designs that we'd like to have in our backyard right now.

Five outdoor showers we love

FormaLibera by Pierattelli Architetture for IB Rubinetterie

FormaLibera is a modular and customisable outdoor shower system by Pierattelli Architetture for IB Rubinetterie that is both a minimal design and an ultra-accessorised functional object. The idea, the architects explains, comes from showering in unconventional outdoor settings, from a field to a remote beach. From this, a first concept featured a portable version that comes with a dedicated kit and case to be easily transported and used anywhere. Evolving into a freestanding or wall-mounted shower system, FormaLibera is defined by accessory bars, soap holders and multi-purpose supports.

weareib.it

Pool by Roca

One of the leading bathrooms and faucets companies globally, Spanish brand Roca is expanding its offering outside the washroom and into outdoor spaces with Pool, a new shower that combines a minimal design with the company's expertise. The elegant, sleek outdoor shower is designed with versatility in mind, imagined for both residential environment as well as hospitality and wellness spaces. The minimalist silhouette is available in both wall-mounted and freestanding and a palette that will bring a joyful touch of colour to your garden.

roca.com

FFQT by Formafantasma for QuadroDesign

For their outdoor shower for Italian bathroom specialist QuadroDesign, Formafantasma decided not to reinvent the wheel, and instead to play on the genre's most intuitive iteration. 'Sometimes a design is effective when it is at its most subtle state, what stands out, are the services it provides,' say the designers, perfectly describing their concept. The outdoor shower is simply a stainless steel support onto which a standard hose can be installed: an ingenious way to make the most with a simple gesture.

quadrodesign.it

Bold by Natalino Malasorti for Cea Design

Cea Design's Bold by Natalino Malasorti is the result of extensive technological research to create a freestanding outdoor shower that is both minimal and powerful. The elegant stainless steel body is resistant to corrosion and the adjustable showerhead allows for options that include a rain jet or aerated rain jet, wider or closer.

ceadesign.it

Outdoor Shower by Cristina

This outdoor shower by Italian bathroom brand Cristina was conceived to be an unobtrusive, discreet presence in an outdoor setting. Its sinuous minimalist design is characterised by a freestanding design paired steel for durability and withstanding being exposed to all climates. Products like this outdoor shower affirm the brand's mission to offer 'solutions designed not to revolutionize, but to evolve what already exists sustainably and consciously.'

cristinarubinetterie.com

Today, two seemingly disparate worlds collide: the vibrant universe of British-Nigerian artist and designer Yinka Ilori MBE, and Dunelm, the UK's largest homeware retailer. As of today (8 July 2026), the pair are launching a summery new collection, available online and in selected stores.

Anyone familiar with Ilori's work will know that his visual language is joyous, often built around vibrant shades and geometric patterns (as seen in his recent London exhibition, ‘Joy Through Resistance’, and his Milan Design Week collaboration with Veuve Clicquot). That sensibility runs throughout the 40 pieces in the Dunelm collection, which spans furniture, bedding, lighting, rugs and soft furnishings, with prices ranging from an accessible £9 cotton jacquard hand towel to a £799 king-size boucle ottoman bed.

Ilori felt a personal connection to Dunelm's origins as a market stall in Leicester, having grown up around his parents' local supermarket in north London. ‘What struck me about Dunelm's beginnings was their love for community,’ he explains. ‘Growing up in a working-class environment, community was everything for my family. There were similarities with this and Dunelm's beginnings as a market stall – how they sought community.’

That focus runs through the collection. Many pieces draw on the diverse communities that shaped Leicester's textile industry across the 20th century, with floral patterns referencing national flowers from countries including India and Pakistan, in a nod to the city's Asian, African and Caribbean cultures. This commitment to authenticity extends to the campaign photography, which features real Dunelm employees.

Shop the collection

A handful of pieces have emerged as favourites among the design team and Ilori himself. The ‘Sweet Flows’ swivel chair (£299) is a colourful, pattern-rich armchair that he says ‘instantly makes you want to smile’. ‘Home interiors can be quite serious, so I chose a colourful palette and vibrant pattern that is immediately engaging. It sparks joy and stands on its own as a piece of art. It's also really comfortable!’

The ‘Bell LED’ lamp (£65), meanwhile, feels ‘very playful and nostalgic’, Ilori continues. ‘It's a classic and timeless piece that would feel at home in the 70s or 80s. There are also elements that feel quite art deco.’

The ‘Net Floral’ duvet cover set (from £16) reimagines the classic British net curtain with floral motifs, while the ‘Gerbera’ cushion (£26) combines crewel wool embroidery with a geometric floral pattern. The ‘Kaleidoscope’ floral round rug (from £135) is a handmade, 100 per cent wool piece with a textured, bobbled finish, and the ‘Half-Log’ sideboard (£599) brings a sculptural silhouette to life with a warm oak finish and chrome legs.

Both Ilori and Dunelm frame the collaboration around the shared belief that good design shouldn't be reserved for a select few. ‘I think it's important we design objects that are rich in storytelling, that speak to people in different ways and that celebrate unique ideas,' says Ilori. 'I hope this collection brings joy into people's everyday lives.’

Yinka Ilori's collection for Dunelm is available to shop from today.

Today (8 July 2026), British designer Faye Toogood unveils her latest collection. ‘Bone, Roll, Slump’ comprises furniture pieces that have an air of the archaeological about them – objects that feel found or unearthed rather than made.

The first chapter, ‘Bone’, centres on a dining collection inspired by mudlarked bones and fossils. At its heart is the ‘Bone Table’, a monolithic superellipse carved from solid oak. Asymmetrical in form, it is available in an eight-seat version or a smaller, more circular table for six.

Rather than being lacquered, the oak is oiled, preserving its natural texture and allowing the material to age gracefully. Four circular piercings punctuate the tabletop, recalling the oversized timber plugs once used in traditional joinery. They expose the oak's vertical grain while anchoring the surface to its stout, rounded legs. The swollen, sculptural profile of those legs, shared by the table and its chairs, reference knucklebones – once used in games and divination.

The ‘Bone Chairs’, meanwhile, stand on two solid legs, adopting a primal stance. Beneath their tactile exterior lies a timber frame sculpted with wool, coconut husk and natural latex – upholstered in bouclé as standard, with other fabrics available. The family comprises a dining chair, an armchair and an oversized ‘Jumbo’ armchair.

Where ‘Bone’ feels excavated, ‘Roll’ is more contained, while retaining the collection's preoccupation with weight, volume and organic geometry. Three-drawer consoles and single-drawer bedside tables take the form of rounded timber lozenges resting on stout, trunk-like bases or, alternatively, cantilevering from the wall. The grain follows the curvature of each piece, while finishes include golden oak, rich walnut and ash stained in ‘Chalk’, ‘Putty’ or ‘Malachite’.

The collection concludes with ‘Soft Slump’ – asymmetrical, bagel-like lounge chairs which appear to collapse gently into themselves. The effect is achieved through an unconventional construction: rather than stretching upholstery taut, around four metres of fabric are gathered and cinched, a bit like the drawstring of a duffel bag, creating deep folds. Set atop either hand-forged, dimpled steel legs or industrial castors, Toogood insists these are also the most comfortable chairs she has ever made.

'Bone, Roll, Slump' is unique, intriguing and pleasingly tactile – a quality that makes it feel both contemporary and somehow elemental.

Pieces from the collection can be purchased from Faye Toogood’s website.

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

Talk of New York's real estate scene currently centres on 262 Fifth Avenue, a new residential tower rising on one of Manhattan's most famous streets. Standing 860 feet and 52 storeys tall, the project marks the first New York collaboration between Meganom and Norm Architects, with Five Points Development Group behind its delivery. Italian design house Molteni&C was tapped to furnish the interiors; today, Wallpaper* takes a look inside.

In a skyline increasingly defined by its density, 262 Fifth Avenue takes a more restrained approach. The building comprises just 26 full-floor and duplex residences, allowing generosity of space to become its defining luxury. That sense of deliberation continues in the architecture itself: each home is column-free, creating uninterrupted living spaces – and uninterrupted views of Manhattan.

Norm Architects, responsible for the interiors, describe each residence as a ‘sanctuary in the sky’ – places of calm that sit above the city's tumult while remaining intrinsically connected to it. The Copenhagen studio draws on its understated vocabulary of natural materials, fine craftsmanship and muted tones, producing spaces that feel subtly luxurious rather than ostentatious.

Molteni&C contributes two of the home's defining architectural elements: the 'Prime' kitchen and the 'Gliss Master Filo Door' wardrobe system. Installed throughout every residence, the kitchen combines natural stone and wood veneers which harmonise with the palette of tactile, understated finishes. Its pared-back geometry lends the living spaces a soothing architectural rhythm, balancing New York's metropolitan sensibility with the material rigour of Italian craftsmanship.

The partnership builds on Molteni&C's longstanding history of collaborating with architects and developers on landmark residential buildings. At 262 Fifth Avenue, the brand showcases a level of craftsmanship that has room to breathe, helping the tower stand apart in an increasingly homogeneous landscape of Manhattan luxury developments.

If you love vintage furniture and British heritage design, this one's for you. Pre-loved furniture marketplace Vinterior is joining forces with British design house Liberty London on a five-piece capsule collection, launching today (1 July 2026), which pairs meticulously sourced midcentury and modernist furniture with fabrics drawn from Liberty's archive.

The collaboration is led by Liberty's head of design for home and interiors, Genevieve Bennett, who selected each furniture piece with specific fabrics in mind. The result is a tightly curated edit that bridges the design philosophies of both brands: Vinterior's commitment to circular furnishing and Liberty's century-and-a-half tradition of textile innovation.

Our favourite pieces from the collection include a ‘Cassina Maralunga’ two-seater sofa, originally designed by Vico Magistretti for the Italian manufacturer Cassina, now upholstered in Liberty's ‘Shadow Stripe Weave’ in ‘Amalfi’, a pattern drawing on Futurist and Vorticist influences. Equally covetable is an early 1970s ‘Alky’ chair, designed by Giancarlo Piretti and produced by Anonima Castelli, finished in Liberty's ‘Zig Zag Velvet’ from the ‘FuturLiberty’ range, a jacquard velvet referencing early 20th-century design and the energy of jazz-age dance.

The collection also features two 1960s Vico Magistretti ‘Carimate’ chairs, sourced from Vinterior's archive and dressed in Liberty's densely embroidered ‘Mount Stitch’ fabric in ‘Acacia’, a woodland and mountain-inspired print that pops against the chairs' red frames. A 1960s Swedish ‘Lamino’ footstool is covered in Liberty's ‘Cravat’ fabric in ‘Scarab Lacquer’, chosen to complement its curved silhouette, while a vintage 1960s beech standard lamp is finished with a bespoke Liberty lampshade in ‘Ottoman Spot’ velvet, a design inspired by a 19th-century artwork unearthed in the Liberty archive.

‘[Liberty’s] designs have outlasted trends for over 150 years, and the pieces in this collection have done the same. That's the spirit this partnership is built on: timeless design, beautifully made, built to last,’ says Vinterior founder and CEO Sandrine Zhang Ferron.

‘We were naturally drawn to fabrics from our FuturLiberty and The House of Liberty collections, inspired by the same 1960s-70s periods as the selected furniture pieces – each fabric felt perfectly aligned in history and aesthetic,’ adds Bennett. ‘Sculptural, curved silhouettes juxtapose dynamic geometrics, charming scenic landscapes and bold textures.’

With just five pieces available, this collection is unlikely to stay on the market for long. Shop the furniture below for a rare opportunity to own a timeless piece of design history, reimagined for the present.

Shop the pieces

Dae Lim started his apparel and lifestyle brand Sundae School based on a cheeky proposition: ‘What if God was Korean and smoked weed every day?’

Eight years later, that concept – a label that would showcase Lim’s rich Korean heritage with an ethos that was equal parts streetwear and stoner – has evolved into a cult New York-based e-commerce brand, known for its distinctly-styled relaxed-fit hoodies, chinos, batik bandanas and, yes, mochi edibles.

The opportunity to open a bricks-and-mortar store offered something more: to cater to Lim’s community. ‘I knew [the location] had to be Chinatown,’ Lim says. ‘The Asian American diaspora started here. We wanted to plant a stake in the ground where our roots are.’

He found the perfect spot in a compact, 450 sq ft storefront on Hester Street, once home to the studio of minimalist artist Sol LeWitt. Conveniently, Dae’s husband Nohar Agadi is an architect, who cut his teeth at Foster + Partners before starting his own studio, Nohar’s Ark.

Much like the garments and accessories Lim and his team design (‘We’ve aimed to distill the hanbok costume tradition in wearable, modern uniforms,’ he says), the flagship is sleek and pared back, with selective embellishments. In particular, Agadi chose to reference the Haeinsa temple in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea, a Unesco World Heritage List site famous for its collection of Buddhist writings, in his design. At the temple, 80,000 texts are kept in a wooden shelf system, an element Abadu referenced when developing the store’s modular aluminum display system.

The open structure, kit-of-parts seamlessly incorporates screw-in hanging bars and racks. Depending on the use of the flexible space – playing host to a community gathering, launch, or the screening of a World Cup football match – this solution can be easily reconfigured. Above, a grid of light-strip fixtures, developed with lighting designer Frank Favia, mimics the paper lantern canopies that cover traditional temple courtyards.

‘The interesting thing about [Korean temples’ spaces] is that they’re laid out to take visitors on a journey,’ Agadi explains. ‘A series of gates lead them from a secular into a spiritual and sacred world. Here, we're expressing this condition with a layering of different, carefully selected materials, helping people transition off of the street.’

While the room-within-a-room’s modular display system is made up of hyper-engineered aluminum components, the interior is wrapped in light pink (reminiscent of the Korean hibiscus flower) floor-to-ceiling curtains that also help to section off two changing rooms and conceal offices.

Lim, Agadi and co-architect Andy Kim tapped Seoul-based talent Hyunhee Kim to create a series of custom artworks, based on Sundae School’s logo, a clever amalgam of the Korean national emblem emblazoned with the word Ddul (weed in Korean). The insignia carries through the shop on from a large backdrop panel to a custom display table. The same five-petal shape adorns frosted acrylic panes inserted within the shelving system.

Reinterpreted traditional Korean doors imbue the store with an additional layer of architectural resonance. They also help to conceptually welcome in customers and visitors – creating a new type of sacred space for Sundae School’s thriving community.

Sundae School is located at 117 Hester St, New York, NY 10002.

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

Nestled at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains in Sierra Madre, a 1947 adobe home – a traditional building method using sun-dried bricks of organic materials – has been reimagined. Removed from the noise and polish of Los Angeles, this neighbourhood is shaded by California oaks, eucalyptus and pine, and shares its hillside with bears. It's an unusual setting for a design story.

The home’s transformation began with a fire that destroyed much of the structure, leaving only the original adobe brick wall standing. Rather than rebuild from scratch, designer Kirsten Blazek of A1000XBetter chose to work with what remained.

‘The overall vision was to maintain as much of the original character and style of the home as possible, while making it more functional for modern living,’ she explains. New rooms were added – a kitchen, a primary suite, a family room – though the expansion was restrained. ‘We worked mainly within the original footprint,’ the designer notes, ‘only adding a small amount of square footage for the primary closet.’

On the original adobe side, the layout was left untouched. The hallway windows, original to the 1947 build and ‘one of [Blazek’s] favourite features’, were preserved. ‘I wanted the house to feel like a modern California hacienda,’ she says of her guiding aesthetic, ‘and embraced that through every colour choice and finish.'

That palette draws directly from the landscape. Dunn-Edwards paints in warm, grounded tones – including an exterior shade named ‘Wild Horses’ – echo the surrounding terrain and scrubland. ‘I very much gravitate to an earth-based palette,’ says Blazek, ‘and the location at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains made that feel completely natural.’

Recreate the mood

The interiors, meanwhile, speak to a lifelong passion. ‘I have a deep connection with the American Southwest and have long collected Native American and western-influenced art and objects,’ she says. Yet the rooms never tip into pastiche. Midcentury furniture – sourced from MidcenturyLA, Amsterdam Modern and Lawson-Fenning – grounds the collected pieces with clean, modern lines. Rugs from Pampa and Salam Hello add warmth underfoot; drapery by Zak and Fox frames the windows. ‘I never want my work to feel too referential,’ Blazek reflects. ‘I love midcentury lines, so there's a pleasing blend of both genres throughout.’

Among her favourite moments is the dining room fireplace – original to the house, but updated with dimensional tile from Lofa Tile. Nearby, a framed print by artist Mark Maggiori anchors the wall. ‘It's one of my favourite pieces,’ she says. ‘I was grateful to finally find the perfect place for it.’

Between the ancient craft of adobe and the clean geometry of midcentury design, this renovation represents both preservation and reinvention – a modern hacienda rooted in its land, its past and the strength of Blazek’s vision.

It has been 11 years since Ilse Crawford launched her first collaboration with Ikea, marking a new chapter in the Swedish retailer's relationship with independent designers. Called 'Sinnerlig', the collection of cork and natural-fibre homeware translated Crawford's human-centred design approach into products available at Ikea's scale, and scooped her a 2016 Wallpaper* Design Award in the process. While some pieces from that first collection remain in production – including the popular bamboo pendant lamp – many sold out quickly, becoming collectors' items that now command several times their original price on resale sites.

Now, Crawford revisits the partnership with ‘Halgatt’, a pair of table lamps made from ceramic, linen and brass. Rendered in the earth-toned materials Crawford describes as 'classic', the designs embody the visual warmth and tactility that have long been hallmarks of her work.

One comprises a white stoneware block with a matching linen shade – square and architectural, tone-on-tone. The other pairs a dark cylindrical ceramic base with a beige linen shade. Both feature neat brass dimmer switches on their side. It’s the sort of understated design that you can imagine fitting into any interior, which, as Crawford explains, was her intention.

‘When I design lamps, I want them to bring warmth and life to a room,’ the designer reflects. ‘The challenge is to capture a classic's qualities – the right proportions, choice of materials and shade, and a timelessness that makes the lamp always feel relevant. My inspiration for “Halgatt” comes from how we live our lives. The lamps have a versatility that supports the decor rather than dominating it – and are just as suitable in the living room as in a dining room, a bedroom or a work area.’

Crawford, who began her career as the founding editor of Elle Decoration before establishing Studioilse in London, has built an international reputation for designs that prioritise human experience. From furniture collections and homeware to hospitality projects including Cathay Pacific's acclaimed airport lounges, her work is guided by a belief that good design should support everyday life through care, comfort, trust, soul, dignity, generosity and resourcefulness.

Writing in Wallpaper's February 2025 issue, Crawford reflected on these values: 'We believe that design is a tool for building new and better models for life and living. In the studio, we think about how we can “elevate the elemental”, by which we mean prioritising the tactility of the things we touch daily, optimising natural light and celebrating natural materials to support humane experiences.'

The Ikea x Ilse Crawford ‘Halgatt’ collection is available online and in UK stores, with the beige/brown ceramic lamp retailing at £35 and the white ceramic lamp retailing at £25.

The work of Laurids Gallée is defined by a distinctive sense of colour expressed through transparencies. Working primarily in polymer resin (with occasional experiments in wood or aluminium), the Austrian designer gives the material an almost liquid quality, playing with shape and colour to create objects that defy traditional forms. ‘The creative process is characterised by a mandatory playfulness,’ he says of his work, which is still guided by a serious approach to both traditional and contemporary craftsmanship, and functionality as the final goal (lighting design being a preferred medium).

Despite the glass-like appearance of many of his works, Gallée had never worked with the material until recently, when he collaborated with Moser on a new series of glass vessels. Dubbed ‘Axis’, the collection explores the Czech glassmaker’s creative director Jan Plecháč‘s vision of pushing the expressive boundaries of crystal glass and its manufacturing possibilities. The pieces are defined by an architectural approach (nodding to early 20th-century modernism), with grid-like cuts defining their design in ‘Rosalin’, Moser’s traditional pink hue, which is rendered from a rich brick-like tone on the thick base of the vessels to a delicate shade towards the top.

Within the collection, which also includes tumblers, saucers and a carafe, the vase was particularly challenging to create and pushed the boundaries of the material and the Moser glassmaking workshop. Blown into a mould characterised by a sharp angle, the vase features an angular exterior and round core, both a pure expression of the craft and a feat of technical ability (it can be mouth-blown by only the most experienced glassblowers).

‘Pushing the absolute limits of what’s technically possible is truly exciting,’ comments Gallée. ‘I have immense respect for the craftsmanship of the team at Moser, who have not only surpassed those limits, but even extended them further. It’s an enormous honour for me to work with someone who’s taken their art to such perfection.’

When Roy Halston Frowick – the Iowa-born fashion designer better known as ‘Halston’ – designed a garment, he wanted to make it ‘more simple’, ‘more American,’ and ‘more contemporary’, he said.

Halston took a similar approach to his office design, located in an International Style skyscraper designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) in Manhattan. With its vertiginous Fifth Avenue views, red carpet, glass expanses and mirrored walls, the HQ embodied what made the designer the clothier of the 1970s: minimalism, freshness and a healthy dose of sex appeal.

The office also featured minimal chairs specially created for the fashion designer in 1979 by Charles Pfister, who led interiors at SOM for 15 years. The furnishings echoed the modernist qualities of the skyscraper they were in: a gleaming tubular-steel frame and a cantilevered profile that supported the sitter just so.

Though the chair design had the potential to become a design classic, it remained a one-off for Halston’s office. Nearly half a century later, though, SOM has dusted off the design and revived the chair in partnership with Ikonstudio, a contract furniture company owned by Teknion (an earlier collection resurrected designs from Louis Kahn’s archive).

Just like Halston’s own seats, the ‘SOM79’ chair features a hand-polished chrome frame and dark leather upholstery. Ikonstudio, however, has reworked it slightly, to align with contemporary manufacturing techniques, ergonomic principles and sustainability standards.

The company has also released a complementary ‘SOM79’ table, which features a matching tubular frame that, when viewed through the transparent glass tabletop, creates the form of an ‘H’ to honour its original patron.

The chairs were teased in May 2026 at New York Design Week as part of the Afternoon Light fair, and launched in June during Chicago’s Design Days. They are now available to purchase through Ikonstudio, to be specified in homes, offices and hospitality spaces.

And there is more in store for SOM: later in the year, in tandem with Form Portfolios, it will launch a new archival collection with the American furniture company Haworth.

‘These works emerged from a moment when architecture firms were deeply engaged in every aspect of the built environment,’ said SOM partner Julia Murphy in a press release, ‘down to the scale of the chair’ – a philosophy, clearly, that has never gone out of style.

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

In a waterfront enclave of Red Hook, Brooklyn, a loft in the historic New York Dock Building served as an industrial landmark, a cabinet of curiosities sourced from across the globe, and – above all – the home of interior designer Laurie Blumenfeld and her husband, Robert Russo. Conceived and executed by Blumenfeld's studio, the space takes raw industrial architecture and coaxes it toward warmth and worldliness.

Built in 1910 as a warehouse for the New York Dock Company, the building arrives with all the industrial splendour one might hope for: soaring beamed ceilings, 13ft metal-framed windows, and original concrete columns still bearing traces of graffiti from the building's years as an unofficial street art museum. The structure was reimagined into residences in 2018.

When Blumenfeld arrived, she set out to build on its spirit, treating the home as a kind of autobiography rendered in objects. The result is part gallery, part travel journal, part family heirloom – filled with pieces old and new from South Africa, India, Greece, Peru, Vietnam, Brazil, Turkey and Italy, each woven naturally into the interior rather than displayed as trophies.

Among the most compelling of the apartment's stories: a visit to the Basquiat and Warhol exhibition at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris led Blumenfeld to commission a large-scale artwork from artist Alex Mitrecey for the living room. Around it, other vignettes unfold – a ceramic bowl from Umbria, a soapstone sculpture from Cape Town, chairs by Brazilian designer Juliana Vasconcellos alongside ‘Wassily’ chairs, Marcel Breuer's 1925 Bauhaus classic.

Recreate the mood

The neutral palette – black, taupe, ivory, gunmetal gray and white – serves a dual purpose: canvas for the eclectic objects on show, and complement to the building's industrial character. Powder-coated black metal echoes the factory-style window frames and threads through the kitchen, office and bedroom. Cerused wood, sheepskin, travertine and glass bring warmth, while colour arrives deliberately – through large-scale art and a striking antique concave mirror in the primary bedroom.

Then there are moments that depart from the script entirely. The powder room, draped in Farrow & Ball's ‘Paean Black’ in limewash and anchored by an asymmetrical vanity in Cipollina Ondulato Rosso marble, is moody and immersive – a world apart from the airy openness of the living areas.

Yet for all its gallery-like qualities, there is no mistaking this loft for anything other than a home. Russo loves to cook, and the bespoke kitchen storage system – a sculptural centrepiece that immediately draws the eye – was designed with dinner parties in mind. Each room also carries an original piece designed by Blumenfeld's studio: a personal signature that runs through the whole.

Red Hook, Blumenfeld says, is ‘a place where past and present coexist effortlessly’ – and the loft holds true to that: industrial and intimate, globally sourced and place-specific.

'I have a strong desire to escape from the forces of gravitation, to free myself from gravity and float free': these words shine a light on the essence of Shiro Kuramata. Playful and poetic, radical and innovative, Kuramata was a pivotal figure in 20th-century Japanese design – and continues to leave an imprint, with lingering traces of his furniture, objects and interior spaces exploring notions of materiality, lightness and perception.

Shiro Kuramata's unique vision

From iconic chairs, lighting, vases and perfume bottles to legendary bar spaces, restaurants and retail interiors, Kuramata’s singular vision shaped decades of creative output in Japan’s seminal post-war period, blending traditional Japanese aesthetic concepts with modernist expression.

Typically defined by a sense of impermanence, a playful experimentation and a dematerialisation of form – expressed in curves, geometry, colour – his work captured a precise moment in time that was never meant to last (today, 35 years after his death, very few of his interiors still exist – as he anticipated).

Acrylic resin, glass, steel mesh, aluminium: industrial material experimentation was a key thread, with Kuramata’s surreal and sculptural objects often defying spatial physicality, instead embodying a visual sense of lightness and emptiness, in his pursuit of freedom.

Or, in his own words: 'I continue to hold onto the naïve hope that only when we are freed from conventions, established concepts and ideals, and all kinds of constructs that have long been attached to this earth, will we be able to gain freedom in the true sense of the word.'

Shiro Kuramata: life in design

Born in Tokyo in 1934 as the youngest of six siblings, Kuramata’s earliest visual landscape was shaped by an upbringing in company housing at RIKEN (the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research), where his father worked.

As the Second World War unfolded, Kuramata moved between stints in bomb-blitzed Tokyo, Yokohama and rural Shizuoka Prefecture, while also discovering an early love of carpentry (his father reportedly gifted him children’s carpentry tools on his eighth birthday).

After high school, Kuramata joined the design department of a furniture factory before studying for a year at the Living Design Department of the newly created Kuwasawa Design School. A new building under construction at an intersection in Ginza then caught his eye – leading to his involvement creating interior elements for San-ai Dream Center, a progressive urban retail and leisure complex by architect Shoji Hayashi, completed in 1963.

Two years later, Kuramata, then aged 31, established his own design practice Kuramata Design Office in Tokyo – a move that catalysed the freedom for him to explore decades of radical experimentation, through furniture, objects and spaces.

Within a few years, Kuramata unveiled his Furniture with Drawers series – a layered structural composition balancing functional precision with a surrealist touch. The project, self-initiated without a client commission, was featured in a Danish magazine, marking his overseas debut. 'I am interested in furniture that is not intended to be used, but simply happens to manifest as furniture,' he said.

Key projects

Imbued with the energy of Japan's fast-paced post-war recovery, Kuramata went on to design his first architectural project in 1967: the HQ of fashion company Edward’s in Tokyo, where floor-to-ceiling light pillars consolidated the increasingly elemental role of light in his spatial vision. His iconic 1972 K-series Oba-Q Lamps followed, created using heated acrylic, draped like fabric, resulting in luminous, hovering white ghost-like forms.

It’s perhaps little surprise that Kuramata shared a deep creative synergy with fellow visionary Issey Miyake. A decades-long partnership unfolded when Kuramata designed his first retail space for Miyake inside the innovative From 1st complex in Minami-Aoyama in 1976.

A clean minimalist backdrop with playful pops of luminous fluorescent lighting, the new store not only radically disrupted conventional notions of formulaic shop interiors, it was a spatial expression of the spirit of the clothing itself, fusing purity and lightness with a timeless touch of futurism.

As Kuramata continued to design countless restaurants, bars and retail spaces, his experimentations in materials such as acrylic metal mesh deepened – reflecting his growing interest in material expressions of transparency and light, perceptions and illusions.

Shiro Kuramata chairs

It was in 1976 that Kuramata conceived The Glass Chair – with six structural plates of glass created without screws, using a newly developed UV-curing photopolymer adhesive – resulting in a chair imbued with an ethereal sense of immateriality.

One celebrated creation is How High the Moon, a chair designed in 1986 which appears to be comprised mainly of air – its clean-lined form outlined in near-invisible industrial mesh, evoking a poetic sense of weightlessness, transparency and illusion.

The Miss Blanche chair – unveiled in 1988, just three years before his death – is another masterful expression of lightness, perception and impermanence, with its clear acrylic resin form peppered with a frozen scattering of artificial red roses.

Shiro Kuramata and Memphis

Another key force for Kuramata was his creative synergy with Italian designer Ettore Sottsass. Aligned in their postmodern expressions of bold colour and geometric form, Kuramata became a founding member of Sottsass’ seminal Memphis project in 1981 – consolidating his visibility and reputation in the international design world.

Kuramata’s death in February 1991 at the age of 56 due to heart failure was as sudden as it was premature. Since then, just as he anticipated, his immaterial creative output has almost completely vanished.

Legacy

Among the few interiors by Kuramata still intact today is Comblé, a 1988 cocktail bar in Shizuoka city. Here, hidden in the first floor of an otherwise nondescript building is a time capsule of Kuramata’s designs: geometric lines, a vivid red aluminium wall panel, a curved counter in yellow fibre reinforced polymer and terrazzo flooring with light-emitting diodes.

Kuramata lovers can also make a pilgrimage to Hong Kong, where Kiyotomo Sushi Bar, completed in Tokyo in 1988, lives on at M+ Museum – after the entire structure was dismantled, shipped and reconstructed in its new home.

Meanwhile, select furniture and lighting designs continue with a limited number of manufacturers, including Cappellini, whose output includes his 1970 rotating storage unit Revolving Cabinet and the iconic Miss Blanche chair; and Vitra, which produces How High the Moon chair.

For Kuramata, his diminished material presence in the world today would most likely come as little surprise, with his creative output rooted in the fleeting, immaterial and impermanent – yet his radical imprint on the design world is here to stay.

So much time is spent thinking about adult-sized furniture that it is easy to forget the needs of children. A new exhibition at the design museum MK&G in Hamburg, 'Mini Furniture: Chairs for Children' (14 June to 1 November 2026), aims to change that.

The show looks at 130 child-centric chair designs across two centuries, with a European focus. It demonstrates how designers have taken small humans into account – in both practical and playful ways – and how those kids have engaged with chairs over time.

The designs span traditional high chairs to modernist creations bringing ‘high design’ to the younger generations. There are also chairs that are designed to support children’s social and creative development – showing that furniture can help us grow.

‘Children are not only an important part of our society, they are also the current and future users of the designed world,’ says Simon Klingler, the exhibition curator. ‘Yet design history is still predominantly told from an adult perspective – a perspective we are keen to broaden.’

‘We have observed that children would rather spend their time playing, exploring and moving around than sitting down,’ adds Klingler. ‘This is why we’re interested in chairs as companions, figures of identification and, at times, even playmates.’

The exhibition is arranged in four chapters: ‘Variety’, ‘Form: From High to Low’, ‘Function’ and ‘Colour’.

‘Variety’ displays the overall breadth of children’s chair designs, put in their historical context – from a miniature version of Marcel Breuer’s iconic B34 (3/4) cantilevered armchair (1929) to the Lou Lou Ghost (2008) by Philippe Starck, the ‘baby’ version of the Louis Ghost.

‘Form: From High to Low’ contrasts two distinctive children’s chair types rooted in practicality: the stool and the high chair. While low stools adapt to a child’s height, the high chair brings babies and toddlers up to the scale of an adult table, with a focus on safety and security.

Many high chairs show the potential for adaptability, like the well-known Tripp Trapp chair – originally designed by Peter Opsvik for Norwegian furniture-maker Stokke in 1972. ‘Its construction is so adaptable that it can be used from early childhood as a high chair through to adolescence as a regular seat, demonstrating how thoughtful design can grow alongside its users,’ says Klingler.

The exhibition’s ‘Function’ section is dedicated to chairs that go beyond seating and embrace play, while the chapter on ‘Colour’ looks to the role that colourful furniture plays in children’s wellbeing and psychological development.

‘The exhibition demonstrates that children’s chairs are far more than simply scaled-down versions of adult furniture – they constitute a distinct field of experimentation for materials, colours and design ideas,’ says Klingler.

During the process of research and curation, Klingler was surprised by how long modular and adaptable concepts have been around. ‘A hundred years ago, designers were developing high chairs that could be adjusted to different ages and needs by folding, repositioning or turning individual elements,’ he says. ‘Many of the issues we discuss today under the headings of sustainability and flexibility were already being explored in the design of children’s furniture at a very early stage.’

One of the exhibition’s key insights, says Klingler, is that good design is not an abstract concept, but an integral part of our everyday lives from the earliest stages of childhood. ‘It influences the way we perceive and engage with our surroundings, often without us even realising it.’

Here is a look at nine chairs from ‘Mini Furniture’.

Children’s high chair by Gebrüder Thonet, c. 1900

This beech, plywood and rattan high chair displays the elegant and innovative bentwood approach that Thonet became celebrated for. It features an inbuilt tray for food, that can be folded back, as well as a foot support.

Armchair by William Birch for Liberty & Co, c. 1900

This Arts and Crafts design in oak and rush shows how even long ago, children’s seating needs were being carefully considered and designed for, with a high-quality approach similar to adult furniture. Antique dealers have noted that these chairs would sometimes have inlays in the back panel depicting scenes from nursery rhymes.

Children’s ladder chair by Erich Dieckmann, c. 1925

Dieckmann, an important furniture designer of the Bauhaus alongside Marcel Breuer, designed this children’s wooden and linoleum chair in the 1920s. Rectilinear and minimalist, the chair doubles as steps that can be used to reach high shelves or surfaces.

Correction Chair, unknown maker, 1931

This English chair in mahogany is an example of how chairs were used to correct children’s posture, or otherwise harnessed as a disciplinary tool at school or home – a version of the ‘naughty step’.

Eames Elephant by Charles and Ray Eames / Eames Office, 1945

While the American husband-and-wife design duo was experimenting with moulding plywood into everyday furniture, they envisaged a group of animals for children to sit on and play with. The elephant has since become iconic, and is now manufactured by Vitra in recycled polypropylene or plywood, in a range of colours.

Rocking car by Hans Brockhage, 1950

‘I am intrigued by furniture that blurs the boundary between sitting and playing,’ says Klingler, referring to the rocking car designed by German artist Hans Brockhage. ‘These designs challenge conventional ideas of furniture by encouraging movement, interaction and imagination.’

The Rocking car is purposefully playful and inventively adaptive. Shaped to resemble a car, and move like one with its wheels, the wooden piece has climbing ladders at the front and back; once turned over, it becomes a rocking chair.

Zocker by Luigi Colani, 1972

Conceived by German industrial designer Luigi Colani, the bright orange Zocker chair reflects the bold style of the 1970s as well as the increasingly popular use of plastic for furniture. ‘I am particularly fascinated by the Pop Design creations of the 1970s,’ says Klingler. ‘Zocker conveys a sense of playful functionality while also evoking slightly nostalgic visions of childhood.’

Ergonomic studies informed the boulder-like design, resulting in a multifunctional chair that can also be used as a seated desk, a lectern-style shelf or a toy. Colani released a slightly modified version for adults a year later, but the design was first and foremost for children.

Ring of seats by Ginbande Design, 1991

This sculptural piece – which almost looks like a surrealist artwork – seats three children on an upholstered donut-like circle, complete with wooden backrests. It encourages social interaction and play – and has hopefully, over time, let to the cementing of a few friendships.

Hippo by Wolfgang Rebentisch, 1993

A colourful, geometric interpretation of a rocking horse, Hippo – designed by Rebentisch for children’s furniture maker Stokke – confidently invites play and movement.

British designer Lee Broom has received a lot of milestone calls over his career. Beginning his creative tenure in the fashion world by interning for Vivienne Westwood, he’s spent the last 20 years crafting award-winning light pieces and luxury furniture with his eponymous design brand, exhibiting from Milan Design Week to Mexico City. In 2020, he collaborated with Beyoncé, providing a minimalist yet striking gold Hanging Hoop Chair that sat central to her 2020 visual album Black Is King. Yet for Broom, who first endeared himself to Westwood by creating a fantasy costume for Madonna in a junior design competition and has now contributed his own bespoke piece to the pop superstar’s newly-released Confessions II film, there are few calls like one from the Queen of Pop.

'The 15-year-old me is doing cartwheels in their bedroom, for sure. I was thrilled. Growing up, I really appreciated her artistry not just as a musician but as a visionary, a spokesperson for LGBTQ+ rights, and an all-round blueprint for the pop industry,' he tells Wallpaper*. 'I grew up in theatre and then went into fashion, so performance, art, fashion, design all infiltrated my work. An artist like Madonna who has a sort of performative storytelling, pushing-the-envelope quality to their work – I was completely sucked in.'

Broom was contacted by Madonna’s production design team back in February, inquiring about potential products that could be utilised for 'a top secret project with a very famous artist'. Later, he was sent a storyboard showing the expansive concept for the film, which takes viewers through the pop icon’s forthcoming Confessions II album via a series of interlinked rooms and vignettes. In the section dedicated to new song One Step Away, Madonna is featured in a slick, hard-edged kitchen. For the scene, it’s a bespoke adaptation of Broom’s 2015 Crystal Tube Light that illuminates the image.

The original Crystal Tube Light is a cut-glass, handcrafted piece that was previously featured as part of the designer’s 2015 Milan show, The Department Store. 'I designed a number of crystal light fixtures with this idea of creating industrial lighting products and combining them with the sort of decorative cut glass that you would get in decanters or whiskey glasses,' he explains. 'Laurie Walters, the art director for the Confessions II film, really loved the piece because the setting that it's in is a very contemporary apartment with art deco references, and this light fixture is very much that. They wanted something elongated that could hang above the kitchen island unit and create this sort of linear vision in shots in the background.'

In order to fit the brief for the video, which demanded a longer, two metre version of the piece, Broom set about designing prototypes from his East London studio. 'My product development team looked to find ways that we could increase the overall scale of the piece. We kept the tube formation diameter exactly the same, but we connected elements together and changed some of the crystal cuts so that it worked as a pattern on a much larger scale,' he explains. Bringing in hand-cut glass from the Czech Republic and assembling the object in Barking, the featured scene was then shot on location elsewhere in London. 'I quite fancied delivering the items myself, disguised as a delivery guy. But no, that wasn't the case,' Broom jokes. 'Everything was very secretive and locked down.'

For Broom, who has always looked to mediums beyond design, working with a global superstar such as Madonna offers a chance to bring his work into the frame of popular culture. 'When you talk specifically about the design industry, it's a very loose, open word, but it's actually very specific: it’s furniture, product, industrial design, perhaps interior design. It's restricted in a way, and I feel like the general public who aren't in that industry sometimes find it difficult to connect with what we're producing,' he suggests. 'So when you have an opportunity to insert your work and your vision into something as globally iconic and as popular as a Madonna music video or film, it opens it up into a different ether that people aren't used to.

He continues: 'My own work as a lighting designer and a product designer is in a commercial space, but I love the avant-garde and I feel like if you can allow those two points to meet – the commercial and the art – then that’s a really interesting tipping point that’s sometimes difficult to get right. But when you look at an artist like Madonna, that idea epitomises some of their work.'

Later in the year, Broom will begin work on his 20th-anniversary show in Milan, with more collaborative projects also in the pipeline following his recent projects with Lladró and Fendi Casa. For the designer’s childhood self, however, there’s likely to be few things as memorable as his Confessions II contribution.

'For my 16th birthday, I remember getting my mother to buy me Madonna’s SEX book,” he chuckles. 'She got her friend Audrey, who worked next door to Waterstones, to queue up in the morning and buy it, neither of them knowing exactly what the content of the book was. It was literally the best birthday present I've ever had, even though she wasn't so happy when she actually got to see what was inside…' From superfan to collaborator, it’s yet another milestone to tick off in Broom’s illustrious trajectory.

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

This Kolkata office has taken the belief that a stimulating environment unlocks creativity to heart. As the brand headquarters of Doreme, an Indian children's clothing label, the space takes its identity literally – transforming 3,600 sq ft into a giant sewing kit. Designer Pooja Bihani of Spaces and Design brought the vision to life through oversized buttons, cross-stitch patterning and neon-coloured lacing woven throughout the interior.

The office occupies a former warehouse – precisely the kind of open, generous shell that such a concept requires. Within it, Bihani introduced curved, flowing forms: amoebic workstations, oval meeting areas and a central showroom table stretching nearly twenty feet. Circulation has been carefully choreographed through subtle pathways, minimal doors and few visual barriers – an approach, again, well documented for its positive effects on workplace wellbeing. In place of solid partitions, curtain panels made from Doreme's own textiles, which mimic the drape and fold of garments, guide visitors.

Recreate the mood

The scene-stealer is the dramatic canopy ceiling: lime-green fabric fans out in a sunburst from a central stretch ceiling, acting as an art installation in its own right. Customised oval illumination tracks bring it to life – and serve a practical purpose too, providing the light required for accurate colour rendering in a fabric workshop.

The broader palette stays grounded in neutrals – white walls and muted grey surfaces – allowing neon accents to land with full force. Greens, pinks, oranges and yellows pulse through the space with a colour logic borrowed directly from the children's world Doreme inhabits, but applied here with a sophistication that feels entirely grown-up.

In this office, no detail is incidental. The tools and materials of garment-making have been elevated into design elements in their own right. Glass table bases are filled with thousands of buttons, zips, yarns and drawstrings. Storage units wear perforated faces patterned in cross-stitch; oversized buttons replace handles; desk partitions are laced with neon string; and functional dividers are reimagined as woven textile art.

By embedding the vocabulary of making into every element, the Doreme workspace achieves something whimsical and rigorous in equal measure – a kids’ wonderland that takes craft seriously.

There has been a loosening up of upholstery in recent years. Where tightly tailored forms once dominated, furniture with ruffles, skirts and softer silhouettes has become increasingly common. At this year's 3 Days of Design, Vitra offers its own interpretation with 'Bascule', an easy chair by Berlin-based Studio Πthat combines fashion-inspired upholstery with an adjustable suspension system hidden beneath its surface.

Named after the French word for 'seesaw', ‘Bascule’ features a generous seat wrapped in a loosely cut textile cover that drapes around the frame like a jacket. Beneath the upholstery, however, lies a mechanism developed by Vitra's engineers that automatically adapts to the sitter's weight, allowing the chair to move smoothly from an upright position to a near-horizontal recline.

'Like a cross between a swing and a seesaw,' explain designers Lisa Ertel and Anne-Sophie Oberkrome, who took the new mechanism as the starting point for the design. Concealed within the armrests, it responds to subtle shifts in body weight with a gentle rocking movement supporting a range of sitting positions, regardless of the user's size.

When it came to upholstery, Ertel and Oberkrome looked to tailoring techniques from the world of fashion – originally developed for ease of dressing and freedom of movement – and translated them into the chair's design. During development, fabric was draped directly onto working prototypes to observe how it responded as the chair reclined and returned upright. Different textiles produced distinct fold patterns and surface textures, emphasising the chair's changing form.

'It always got exciting when movement came into play,' say the designers. 'As soon as “Bascule” moved, you could see how the fabrics responded – where they stretched taut, where they fell loosely and where folds formed.'

The result is a chair whose appearance shifts with use, lending it an air of effortless nonchalance.

‘Bascule’ can be customised with fabrics chosen in a single colour or in combinations of two different hues for the inner and outer faces. It comes in a high-back version with an integrated height-adjustable neck cushion that adds to its anthropomorphic appearance, or as a low-back model. Bases are available in aluminium swivel and wooden versions.

The comparison to clothing extends beyond appearance. Conventional polyurethane foams and permanently bonded components have been replaced with materials and construction methods designed for repair, replacement and eventual recycling. Cushions are made from recycled fibres or V-Foam, a material developed by Vitra and BASF that the company describes as the world's first economically recyclable polyurethane foam.

The approach reflects Studio Œ's broader interest in honest, long-lasting design, with components that can be separated and returned to the circular economy rather than discarded.

Vitra sees Bascule as a design equally suited to domestic interiors and workplace lounges. For Studio Œ, meanwhile, it continues an approach focused on repairability, material honesty and longevity.

'For us, the comparison with a jacket couldn't be more fitting,' says Oberkrome. 'A favourite jacket you love to slip on, one that is soft, familiar and simply comfortable.'

‘Bascule’ will officially launch in September 2026, but a preview is on show at Vitra's Copenhagen showroom during 3 Days of Design (10-12 June). There, the chair is presented beneath a tent-like canopy of soft fabric within what the brand describes as an immersive sensory setting.

Vitra, Klubiensvej 22, Pakhus 48 2150 Nordhavn Copenhagen

vitra.com

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

Oblouková 171 in Žatec is a building that almost wasn't. The Czech townhouse sheltered the same family for four decades before falling into serious neglect – and now emerges as one of the most compelling restoration projects in recent memory.

The story begins in the 1920s, when the current owners' great-great-grandparents settled in the town. Successive generations lived there until the Velvet Revolution, after which the house fell into disuse. By the time it passed to its current owners as an inheritance, it was barely standing. The roof leaked, ceilings were caving in, entire sections of the roof truss were missing and dry rot had spread through the structure.

The inheritors, as it happened, were architects – Jan and Barbora Hora of Ora – and they saw potential where others might have seen a write-off. When they discovered a spot in the attic where the family had hidden moonshine behind a beam, their minds were made up: the house had to be saved.

The renovation took eight years, and was predictably gruelling. Steel tie rods were used to brace the entire building; a collapsed vault was rebuilt; and a concrete slab replaced a ceiling so waterlogged it had sprouted a destructive fungus large enough, as the owners put it, to fill a skillet. Most demanding of all was the three-tiered hop-drying attic – a structure typical of Žatec and its hop-growing heritage – which required specialist craftsmen to restore.

From the outset, salvage and reuse were guiding principles. The owners had spent years collecting reclaimed materials – old floor tiles, handmade bricks, antique beams – and Oblouková 171 finally gave them a home. Rotten ceiling joists were replaced with hand-hewn beams sourced from a demolished house 400 kilometres away; red marble tiles were rescued from a skip; courtyard paving came from Šatov tiles that had sat in a barn for a century. The result is something of a Frankenstein house – a patchwork of parts gathered far and wide, stitched together with care and conviction.

Recreate the mood

Where new elements were unavoidable, they were handled with utmost taste. Custom ash-wood doors reinterpret traditional panelled designs; new windows faithfully match the profiles of the originals. The street façade was the thorniest problem: stripped of its detailing in the 1990s, it required historical photographs just to establish what had been lost. The architects then chose reinterpretation over reproduction, restoring the underlying geometry while simplifying the ornament. The result, with its pretty pastel symmetry, looks like something out of a Wes Anderson film.

The completed building now functions as guest apartments, a family holiday retreat and a taproom serving craft beer from a local brewery, which is fitting: Žatec – recently inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage List – built its identity on hops. Oblouková 171 now raises a glass to that legacy while adding a new chapter of its own.

The word itself gives something away. To the American ear, a ‘line' is simply a line. The British ‘queue', on the other hand, contains multitudes: the soft consonant, the sighing vowels trailing listlessly behind like people who've already given up. It's a word that expects patience of you before you've even reached the end of the aspiration.

The Hungarian-British satirist George Mikes once observed that an Englishman, even if alone, forms an orderly queue of one. A wry quip, perhaps, but it also suggests that queuing isn't really about waiting at all; it's about enacting a social identity, a public declaration of belonging.

And wasn't it the sociologist Émile Durkheim who insisted that society runs on invisible forces – norms, obligations, collective agreements – as binding as any physical law? What, I ask, is a queue but Durkheim made flesh? Society's invisible hand; a spontaneous, self-policing act of mutual deference that requires no referee, no rulebook, no app. You simply take your place and trust the system.

Of course, not everyone does. In India and China, the queue is a polite fiction, a non sequitur to be circumvented by the quick-footed and the shameless. In Singapore, the opposite pathology prevails: see a queue, join it, find out why later. It is civic trust with a dash of FOMO in its purest form.

Milan Design Week, which draws half a million visitors through the city each spring, has become the world's most theatrical queue, with design houses measuring their success by the length of the snaking line outside.

The queue has a darker face, too. At disaster relief points and refugee camps the world over, it is something altogether grimmer – a rationing mechanism for food, water and medicine; scarcity made visible where lines measure not patience, but desperation.

At the other end of human experience entirely, consider the Titanic, where men in evening dress heroically stood back and let women and children – strangers – board the lifeboats first. The most extreme queue in history was also the most distilled act of civilisation that proved the line holds, even when everything else is literally going under.

For what the queue demands of us (patience, deference, faith that order will eventually deliver us somewhere worth going) is a rehearsal for how to live alongside other people. But the point is, the front of the line will come. It always does.

This article appears in Wallpaper’s July 2026 Design Directory, available from 4 June, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

When you think of the quintessential office chair, chances are you picture Herman Miller's 'Aeron'. When it launched in 1994, it rejected the foam-and-fabric conventions of office seating in favour of advanced suspension technology. It was more than a chair, it was a serious piece of kit – the product of an experimental ethos that Herman Miller shared with figures like Charles and Ray Eames.

More than three decades after it changed office seating, the ‘Aeron’ is evolving again, this time to reflect a further shift in how we occupy our working environments. Today, the company has announced two new colourways, material innovations and expanded size inclusivity for its flagship ergonomic seat.

Since its debut, the 'Aeron' has been synonymous with neutral tones – 'Onyx', 'Graphite', 'Carbon', 'Mineral' – cool, professional looks calibrated to the offices of the 1990s. Colour on the original ‘Aeron’ was always limited; early versions applied pigment only to the Pellicle suspension mesh, leaving a jarring contrast with the neutral frame. Material advances now allow a single consistent tone across both frame and Pellicle – a seemingly small detail that makes a big difference.

Two new, bolder hues now join the line-up: 'Jasper', a warm, earthy olive that leans into the biophilic design trend sweeping modern workplaces, and 'Nightfall', a deep midnight blue. These tones reflect a looser, more informal relationship with work – a merging of lifestyle and office.

‘Our research suggests that strategic use of colour can have a powerful effect on workplace engagement and individual productivity,’ elaborates Joseph White, director of design strategy at MillerKnoll. ‘Saturated colours in cohesive environments have the capacity to change our respiration, our blood pressure and even our body temperature.’

The 'Aeron' has always been a material innovator. In 2021, it became the first chair in Herman Miller's portfolio to incorporate ocean-bound plastics. Now, the aluminium base has been redesigned using generative engineering tools, shedding nearly two pounds without sacrificing durability. Combined with increased use of post-industrial recycled content and bio-based nylons, these changes are estimated to reduce the chair's global average embodied carbon footprint by 12 percent. ‘By using the right materials, in the right amounts, in a product built to last, Aeron shows what circular design can achieve at scale,’ says Gabe Wing, MillerKnoll's vice president of sustainability.

The 'Aeron's' ergonomic credentials, meanwhile, remain firmly intact. A sci-fi-sounding roster of technologies – PostureFit SL, Harmonic 2 Tilt, 8Z Pellicle – work in concert to support the body. The chair has also been updated for greater size inclusivity.

With over nine million chairs sold and a replacement rate of just 0.055 per cent, the 'Aeron's' longevity may be its most telling quality indicator of all.

The updated chair makes its public debut at Fulton Market Design Days in Chicago, 8-10 June 2026. UK customers can purchase the 'Aeron' here.