The ability to update a historic structure – such as this barn in Kent – should be in every architect’s toolset, but the reality is different. In heritage-obsessed countries like the UK, with its rich seam of listed buildings and copious accompanying legislation, even the simplest of changes can be a daunting prospect.

That’s often for the best, given the cavalier attitude some have to history, but when necessity, sensitivity and innovation finally come together, the process is no less protracted.

Tour this refreshed barn and its new extension

This re-jigged barn conversion is a case in point. The original building dates back to the 16th century and is now Grade 2 listed. Built in the 16th century, the oak framed barn has a clay tiled roof and horizontal weatherboarding and also lies within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The owners, a curator and joinery designer, wanted to update and enhance the layout of the original conversion into a dwelling.

That work, carried out back in 2003, left the barn divorced from its context by closing off the connection from the original farmhouse and entrance yard. As a result, the orientation left it disconnected from the tranche of garden allocated to the new dwelling.

Sandy Rendel Architects, the South London-based practice best known for Bury Gate Farm, an award-winning house on the South Downs and an elegant village residence, were commissioned to update and improve the outlook.

‘The main aim of the project was to help reorientate the house and offer a much clearer connection with the external spaces and views across the fields to the southwest,’ says Rendel, citing ‘extensive negotiations’ with the planners that resulted in a breakthrough for the design of the new kitchen extension that transforms the interior arrangement of the former barn.

‘It was actually the heritage officer who suggested a Corten steel roof to provide a clear distinction and contemporary twist on the clay tiles,’ the architect recalls, noting that the practice has become all too familiar with the material in recent works. ‘We ran with the idea and developed the concept of expressing the roof very directly and abstractly as these simple sheets of metal with fine crisp edge that stands out against the wavy softness of the sagging original roof and its original handmade tiles,’ Rendel continues.

It’s here that the practice’s obsession with detail stands out, with a recessed gutter tucked beneath the eaves, with water collecting in laser-cut slots running around the perimeter of the Corten steel. Beneath the roof, the gutter and downpipes are formed from dark zinc so as to blend with the black stained larch cladding on the extension.

The new addition is a timber framed structure, in keeping with the construction method of the original barn. To showcase the carpentry skills of Scott Partnership, who constructed the framework, everything is revealed, from the roof rafters to the ridge, hips and collar ties.

Large sliding glass doors provide the all-important connection to the garden, with the span supported by single slender square column, rotated at 45 degrees to the other timbers, supporting the ring beam.

Although the new extension is spiritually connected to the barn through the construction method and the material juxtaposition, there’s still a sense of separation between old and new thanks to the glazed structural link between the new buildings. Inside, the meticulous joinery of the kitchen cabinets – executed by the client – follows the grain and texture of the roof structure.

‘The project is one of the smallest things we have done but it was great to really get into the fine details of the timber connections,’ says Rendel, ‘it was a truly collaborative process with engineers Foster Structures and St Pierre Contractors, along with the frame makers and the clients themselves.’

SandyRendel.com

The London Museum is a full-circle moment for Asif Khan. The east London-based creative was a first-year student at the Bartlett School of Architecture when he was tasked with surveying Smithfield Market for a design workshop; 26 years on, he is about to complete a major collaborative project there and mark a landmark cultural moment: the first-phase reopening of what was formerly known as the Museum of London, which has relocated from London Wall to the site of the famous meat market.

Asif Khan talks to us about the London Museum and more

Khan worked on the project alongside architecture studio Stanton Williams and conservation specialists Julian Harrap Architects. While Stanton Williams led the project and tackled the poultry market, basement galleries and covered street linking the two markets, Khan took charge primarily of the general market's above-ground interiors and exterior. This includes its ground-floor public spaces, upper storeys and entrances (working closely with Julian Harrap Architects), and forms part of the first stage in a staggered launch of a project that will eventually also take over the poultry market next door.

The general market, containing a wealth of public-facing areas, was a fascinating one for Khan, who had set a personal goal in 2012 to work on a big cultural institution within the next ten years. Khan started practising independently when he set up his studio in 2007. Smaller-scale commissions, such as a beach café in Littlehampton and the Coca-Cola Beatbox Pavilion at the London Olympics (a key moment for the firm), put him on the map for his unique blend of spatial design with a dynamic, interactive twist. He was the only British studio among the finalists for the Guggenheim Museum Helsinki in 2014, the largest architectural competition in history. Since then, he has expanded significantly, with work from a broad range of commissions across 12 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, North America, Australia and Africa, and he was awarded an MBE for services to architecture in 2017.

Recent projects include a meandering red boardwalk across London's Canada Water basin, 6km of public realm at the Dubai Expo 2020, and the transformation of a Soviet-era cinema in Almaty, Kazakhstan, into the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture. Beyond the London Museum, his presence in the capital takes in exhibition design, including the 2025 ‘Cartier' show at the V&A Museum, and a shared lead architect role (with Allies and Morrison, working alongside a wider team) on the overhaul of the Barbican Centre. It is currently ongoing, a stone's throw from the London Museum.

And just as the London Museum featured in Khan's own story long before it became part of his portfolio, there are similar personal connections to more than one of his other projects. The Tselinny building was deeply important to Khan's wife, Kazakh architect Zaure Aitayeva, while the Barbican is a space he felt close to throughout his life. ‘We were taken there as children, as babies. I've been going there all my life. It was our family living room.' He explains: ‘All the projects I do are very personal. I don't take on projects where I don't have a personal reason to be there. I think this one is as much a self-portrait as a portrait of London and of this possibility for the institution.'

What remains constant in all of Khan's projects is his ability to create spaces that connect, flow and allow a high level of interaction. His works rarely prescribe, but rather create a framework for exploration – and ultimately, all look towards the future. Khan regularly employs cultural sensitivity, sensory experiences, material explorations and a desire to bring people together. Speaking of his ongoing Museum of the Incense Road in AlUla, Saudi Arabia, he says, ‘We are trying to think of the museum not just as a repository of history but as a melting pot for the community to meet each other and to transform their livelihoods.' He could be describing the London Museum, too.

At the Smithfield site, his suggestion to transform 48 historic shop units into 12 ‘houses' was welcomed. Six of them would be reserved for the institution's use, and six would be given to external ventures in a mix that the museum would curate. The idea was that it would become an incubator, a ‘coral reef of multiple institutes', as Khan puts it. Alec Shaw, the London Museum's director of new museum project and estate, says: ‘We were constantly doing open-heart surgery into different parts of the building to try and adapt them to make them more welcoming. Without being too grand, I'm hoping this is a complete game changer for city museums across the world.'

Khan describes the new museum as a ‘sponge for city life', and it's easy to see why, as it has been designed to be able to absorb different uses, meanings and activities. The same attitude can be found throughout his work, be it the relatively small Canada Water boardwalk, with its gentle undulation and integration of nature and history, or the Tselinny Center, which, he told us at the opening in 2025, is designed to blend contemporary architecture and culture with a ‘mythological force from ancient memory.'

With the London Museum, Khan tackles past, present and future, as well as big concepts addressing community and culture, ensuring a sense of fluidity remains central so the museum can move alongside its ever-evolving host city. ‘It can always be an unfinished project,' he notes. ‘This is what has been missing, in a way, from the museum of the 20th century. Here, it's baked into the architecture, the capacity and the need to change.'

asif-khan.com

londonmuseum.org.uk

A version of this article appears in the December 2026 issue of Wallpaper*, available from 5 November in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

A bright but overcast afternoon in late September. Eleven floors up at the St Clement hotel – a new build near the river, looming over Temple Gardens at 180 The Thames – Florence Knight is holding court at her new 30-seat restaurant, Lunette. Flooded with early autumn light, its off-white palette, swathes of pale wood, steel tabletops, artist monographs artfully arranged on a coffee table and an abundance of Jean Prouvé’s modernist ‘INSA’ panels lining the walls make it resemble a curated loft apartment as much as a dining room. Lunette is a deeply personal project for Knight and, though the space was a concrete shell when she first saw it, the potential was clear. ‘I could see it instantly; the kitchen here, the bar there. The light, the movement and the water, it feels like it's almost holding you,’ she says.

Lunette at St Clement

Knight is a quietly totemic figure in London's food scene; first leading the pass at Polpetto (a standalone spin-off of Russell Norman's game-changing Soho bacaro Polpo), and then at Clerkenwell’s Sessions Arts Club, the beautifully weathered palazzo of a restaurant she co-founded with artist Jonny Gent in 2021. In 2024, she departed Sessions with the intention of opening her first solo venture. Where Sessions was ‘a roaring beast’, Knight says, ‘I realised that I wanted a sense of intimacy, something smaller.’ Nearly three years on, Lunette – developed with 180 Quarter’s Mark Wadhwa, St Clement mastermind (and Soho House founder) Nick Jones, and interiors studio Eagle + Hodges – is the result.

Given Knight’s epicurean bona fides, it may seem disjointed to talk design before dishes. But Lunette – named after the arched windows of the nearby disused Aldwych underground station, and a word that ‘writes beautifully’ – is a full-service undertaking, and irrefutably dreamy to look at. Knight studied fashion before segueing into kitchens, and she has the vibe of an artist who just happens to be a dynamite chef, too.

All of Lunette’s sofas, dining surfaces, chairs and lighting (save a midcentury Pierre Chapo teardrop table, and a wooden service station fashioned by Southampton’s shipyard fabricators Calshot) are of Eagle + Hodges’ own design – as is the chic utilitarian staff garb, created by co-founder Alex Eagle’s fashion label. But Knight commissioned nearly everything else: from the steely open kitchen to ceramics by Tetsuya Otani and Michel François, sinuous blown glassware by Danish designer Alexander Kirkeby, and even the finely layered and weighted paper menus, the embossed double ‘t’ in Lunette resembling a Lilliputian table. The room’s speaker system was created by artist and audio engineer Devon Turnbull, a neat callback to his immersive listening room up the block at 180 Studios, while the Prouvés were drawn from the personal collection of real-life couple Wadhwa and Eagle.

‘Florence has got amazing taste,’ says Eagle, a longtime friend of Knight’s. ‘She cares about texture, about light, about feeling and space – which is what makes me and Sophie [Hodges] tick. The collaboration is people coming together and being inspired, rather than trying to elevate or change her.’

Fundamentally, Eagle says, the room functions as a ‘very chic blank canvas’ for Knight’s food – which is, naturally, the main draw at Lunette. Even then, says Knight, ‘it’s completely transmissible’ to the surroundings. The balancing of layers and textures, of hard and soft (not least in the curtains, which she insisted were translucent, ‘like a thin onion skin’), is integral to her identity as a chef. ‘I’m always seeing things from a visual perspective,’ she says. ‘I just think that food is my material.’

Knight’s cooking is precise, seasonal, ‘reasonably gentle in flavour’, and inspired by nature and art. It has developed over the years, but there are through-lines for those who’ve been following. Take the fêted Sessions dish of layered confit potato and eel cake – at Lunette, it’s reconfigured into a pomme soufflé with smoked eel, roe and nasturtium flowers. These things, she says, ‘just matured with my technical ability, and with where I am as a person’.

There’s a painterly assemblage of raw, late-summer runner and yellow French beans with slow-cooked squid, dressed with tomato water; a sunny dish of rice cooked in crab stock, with a sauce of long peppers and tomato juice, egg-yolk jam and cock crab in crab-shell butter; a more autumnal plate of French guinea fowl with a hazelnut and celeriac sauce, beetroot purée, and a jus split with hazelnut and tarragon oils; and an edgeless chocolate tart, its super-short pastry crisp with rice flour and depth afforded by tea-soaked raisins. The full dinner menu will feature eight courses, plus sundries.

Even on a restaurant scene as punctilious as London’s, the presentation is impressive, but ‘the precision is not to intimidate people’, Knight says. ‘Food is about pleasure, right? It needs to be joyful and fun, and have those nods to nostalgia and the things that we love.’

It’s clear how meaningful an endeavour Lunette is to Knight – every facet of it is a crystalline evocation of exactly where she is, right now, as both chef and aesthete. ‘Everything I’ve done has been personal because of the level of care and attention I’ve tried to give it,’ she concludes. ‘This time round, it is so much more than just the food. From someone who’s a control freak, it feels even more special.’

Lunette is located at Level 11, The Thames, St Clement 180, 12 Temple Pl, Temple, London WC2R 2NF, United Kingdom

A version of this article appears in the December 2026 Entertaining Issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + from 5 November. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.

The site of Connaught House is a storied one. Its corner of north London on St John's Wood Terrace is a stone's throw from Abbey Road Studios, Lord's Cricket Ground and Regent's Park. The building itself was initially a chapel, but then evolved into a squash club for a while, and the studio where Queen filmed Radio Ga Ga. Now, the Grade II-listed structure is entering a new chapter in life, as owner Marcus Cooper Group and developer Valouran reveal a new, boutique family of homes within, featuring architecture by Darling Associates and interiors by Gunter and Co.

Explore Connaught House in London

Connaught House was originally built in 1841, a handsome neoclassical religious structure, featuring intricate Corinthian columns and crisp white stucco. Designed by architect John Tarring, it's been a local landmark and popular community spot for decades. The redesign project has been a painstakingly detailed one, transforming the interior into just five contemporary homes.

The original chapel's striking crowning cupola, which was lost for almost 100 years due to past alterations, was beautifully restored. Meanwhile, handcrafted windows and refined rooflines help bring the building into the 21st century.

The resulting five apartments are all unique, designed using a common language of green and neutral tones, and timber and stone surfaces to create a coherent whole. Gunter and Co's Irene Gunter says:

'Our approach to the interiors was shaped by a pursuit centred on bringing back the chapel's original character- celebrating the arches, the period detailing, and the quality of daylight, and restoring features lost to a series of unsympathetic alterations over the years. We were careful, though, not to simply wind the clock back. It was just as important that the five homes felt luxurious, refined and considered for modern-day living, not a museum piece.

'The overarching approach was to let the architecture dictate the language, room by room, rather than applying one flat design across all five homes. The apartments with the arched windows at the front of the building lean into a more classical style, in keeping with the chapel's original proportions and detailing. To the rear, where the building is more contemporary, the interiors shift into a more modern design language,' she continues.

'What ties the apartments together is a shared material palette - sympathetic wood tones, neutral paint colours, and consistent ironmongery and tapware carried through both the classical and contemporary spaces. That common thread is what gives the collection cohesion, even as each apartment's character shifts depending on where it sits in the building.'

Soft furnishings, curated artwork and the building sense of space and generosity – through tall ceilings and large windows that open up to the surrounding green spaces – complement perfectly the design studio's craft-led approach.

Says Gunter: 'Every supplier and maker was chosen through the same lens as everything else on this project – quality, craft and longevity. We leaned heavily on a team of suppliers we've tested and trusted over years of projects, with a strong focus on UK makers. Around 80 per cent of what you'll find across the homes is UK-made. This is a proudly British project, and investing in that craftsmanship felt like the right way to honour it. We also wanted this to be a chance to shine a light on new artisans we've discovered along the way. In each of the apartments, you'll find beautiful bespoke pieces created by makers we've met at craft fairs, and others discovered along the way and beyond.'

gunterandco.com

valouran.com

connaught-house.com

As a former design editor and a resident of the Barbican, Tom Morris’ taste credentials are somewhat impeccable. In 2019, he quit journalism to set up his London-based interior design firm Morrisstudio but that journalistic eye is still there in the considered, narrative-led approach he takes to his work for everything from private residences and retail concepts to brand consultancy.

Storytelling and craftsmanship lie at the heart of all his projects, including his latest, a collaboration with Swedish design brand Layered. For the collection of six handwoven 100 per cent wool rugs, entitled ‘Cloth’, Morris drew on the textile traditions of the British Isles, using his English and Welsh heritage to reinterpret familiar historic patterns through a contemporary lens.

Three contrasting colourways – Dandelion, Olwen Blue and Bardsey Green – draw on the bold geometric patterns of Welsh blankets. Margarine, Betty Brown and Cooper Green, meanwhile, reference striped textiles found across English visual culture, with influences ranging from Savile Row tailoring and deckchairs to horse racing.

'I’ve always been fascinated by the quiet beauty of traditional British textiles,’ says Morris. ‘They carry generations of craftsmanship, and I wanted to reinterpret that heritage in a way that felt contemporary rather than nostalgic.'

‘Cloth’ marks Morris’ first foray into product design, and for his debut, he chose to experiment with traditional flatweaving techniques, aided by Layered’s valuable expertise. The linear stripe motifs presented a distinct technical challenge, requiring specialised adjustments to the handloom process to achieve crisp, straight lines. The collection was woven on a pit loom, one of the oldest types of hand loom, which results in exceptionally dense, durable, versatile rugs with a soft, tactile quality that highlights the weave’s texture and craftsmanship.

Morris’ design ethos has long been rooted in modernism, gravitating towards clean lines, symmetry and geometric patterns through intentionally contrasting colourways. The collection’s palette has been carefully selected as an ode to the North Wales coastline, echoing the hues of the natural landscape. Rich, muted tones are deliberately offset by bold graphic lines and patterns, resulting in statement rugs that lend a calm, grounding presence to any room.

‘We were drawn to Morris’ modernist interior style and his confident colour palette,’ says Malin Glemme, Layered’s founder and creative director. ‘His designs are both atmospheric and striking. This collection represents an exciting new direction for us, exploring British textile traditions through the lens of Scandinavian craftsmanship.’

morrisstudio.co.uk
layeredinterior.com

Graham Little’s otherworldly paintings are increasingly hard to define. Originally concerned with representing beauty – in the past, Little has considered it through the lens of fashion photography – the Dundee-born artist has now turned his gaze sideways, considering the context, rather than the subject.

Before making the works, Little assembles the various elements for his paintings in his studio, using an assortment of materials, from paper to objects found on the streets near his home, and his friends, who pose as models. It is a process of deconstruction that's reflected in the works themselves, which pick out paraphernalia scattered around the sidelines of a life, and bring it into sharp relief, as the figure recedes into the background.

‘I find it humbling and grace-filled that we can make a lot of overcomplicated and destructive decisions as a society, and yet, every year new flowers and fruit still appear,’ says Little. ‘And they bring hope, and don't judge or mention any unwanted advice. It gives the sense to me that there is some care outside of the structures that we build.’

Little is an astute observer of these nuances, a skill honed during his childhood in Scotland, which shaped the way he experienced images. ‘Scotland was a good place to grow up – it was a fantastic community,’ says Little. ‘There wasn’t much contemporary art but I would go to the galleries in Edinburgh and not eat or drink all day – just stare at the art. I always felt a pull to make things. If my friends were indoors, I’d sit with them for ten minutes, then head home to finish a drawing.’

Little’s paintings are magical in their elevation of the everyday. The artist celebrates the cracks, the blemishes and the mundane. He builds on the fashion photography that has always interested him by widening his definition of beauty, and celebrating its rougher edges. ‘In childhood, I wanted to understand what I saw in the editorials and adverts and to immerse myself in that,’ Little adds. ‘Those images still inform the work now, but I am constructing my own versions and also communicating my own understandings and unconscious networks. I still feel much conflict with beauty and am not sure if it’s present, a mirage, projection or a hope.’

Graham Little at Alison Jacques, London, until 14 November 2026

King's Cross has evolved into more than a pass-through transit hub. Coal Drops Yard has a bustling independent Japanese crafts market, cool listening bars and design shops galore. Meanwhile, visitors can soak in the creative energy of the neighbouring arts college, Central St Martins.

Adding to this mix, positioned at the northern edge of Lewis Cubitt Park, are the newly finished Cadence residences by London-based architecture firm Alison Brooks Architects (ABA). The red brick facade, with dramatic arched windows, makes the complex instantly intriguing, and you can’t help but think as you pass by, ‘I bet it's nice in there.’

Wallpaper* got a look when we toured the new ‘courtyard tower’ with its architect.

Step inside Cadence in King's Cross

Cadence houses 163 residential units, with commercial and social spaces, including an open courtyard and a gym. Upon entering, its lobby towers above you – almost like a cathedral, thanks to towering arches and mirrored walls that create a sense of infinite space. Ahead, a large glass door frames a courtyard, which is surrounded by small cloister walkways.

At the heart of this courtyard is a sunken reflection pool, with low-hanging sculptural lights carefully suspended above. Brooks explains that the pool was inspired by Venice, and she initially wanted the water to rise and sink like the changing tide. In the end, it sits peacefully still. But there are still overt references to the Floating City: Receding steps, just like the ones along Venice's canals, descend into the water, and small enclaves filled with greenery are reminiscent of canal algae.

Brooks looked to the building’s context and used red brick throughout to pay homage to London’s St Pancras station. The Canadian-British architect also was inspired by the arched buildings of Paris and Rome, where she studied for four months in 1985. It's all typical of her style, which blurs the boundaries between period, places and materials. ‘We can draw on memory which in turn enriches a pragmatic approach to a place,’ Brooks explains.

The building is placed within a six-sided block, with two towers of 12 and 16 storeys. The first two floors of both buildings are devoted to commercial, social and service spaces, while the remaining levels comprise homes and apartments.

There are plenty of perks to be had at Cadence. The apartments are spacious. ('Residents love it because they get morning sun, midday sun and afternoon sun. It's filled with light,’ says Brooks), plus the building sits on top of the Thameslink line.

The latter proved crucial to the design of the towers. ‘There are two tunnels that go under the building, and so that determines the geometry and the alignment of this building,’ the architect explains. ‘It had to be designed with isolators and very special consideration of the structure to come down on either side of the tunnels’.

While Cadence has a made-in-place feel, nearly 85 per cent of the buildings are made from prefabricated components – including the world's first prefab lift system. ABA, working closely with contractor Laing O'Rourke, leaned into the innovative construction method.

‘Everything you see in the building has been manufactured off-site: the columns, the beams, the slabs, the lift shafts, the facade panels and the bathroom pods,' Brooks says. ‘Everything came in and was lifted into place, which made it very clean and practically very little waste.’

Construction moved quickly, but there was an unexpected setback: a bird’s nest was found on the site. ‘It was on top of one of the cores, so the construction had to stop until the eggs had hatched. It was a protected species, a redstart. It was a three-month delay,’ Brooks says.

Of the 163 residential units, 60 are affordable rentals acquired on behalf of the CBRE UK Affordable Housing Fund. These are offered at discounted market rents, with priority given to individuals and families from the Camden community. The market-rate one-bed homes were listed or resold from £585,000 to £860,000, while larger residences are listed between £1.9 million to £2.4 million or more (Penthouses, for instance, are listed for upwards of £15 million).

The mix feels reflective of Cadence's blend of styles and ideas – playful and robust, solid yet soft. Above all, the project is a welcome addition to the ever-evolving King's Cross neighbourhood.

‘It's unusual for me to be in a space like this. Art and photography, in the UK anyway, have had a checkered relationship, so I wasn't expecting to be here.’ Sat below a Roger Hilton painting in the Bechstein room at Kettle’s Yard, the photographer Sunil Gupta reflects on how his stunning new retrospective came to be in the exhibition gallery of the Cambridge institution, best known as the former abode of Jim and Helen Ede, and for their vast collection of 20th-century art that remains in situ.

‘The more I got to know about Jim Ede, it seemed appropriate. There was obviously something queer going on here.’ Indeed, ‘Life With a Camera, 1970 – Now’ (on display at Kettle's Yard through 31 January 2027, before travelling to Ikon Gallery in Birmingham and Leeds Art Gallery) is an apt fit for the space: a great chunk of Gupta’s work is made in the home, while the notion of community has been at the centre of his practice for the past five decades, tethering it to the spirit of Kettle’s Yard.

Arranged chronologically, with curation by Andrew Nairne and Guy Haywood with Susie Biller, the new show opens with Friends and Lovers: Coming Out In Montréal. A largely domestic series displayed on a shelf characterised by Nairne as a mantelpiece (the descriptor gently underscoring the intimacy tied into the show’s moniker), the pictures were made in the early 1970s and highlight Gupta’s friends and family, as well as his introduction to the gay liberation movement.

Similarly domestic but more overtly posed, nearby is Lovers: Ten years On, in which lesbian and gay couples appear in their respective homes, positioned mostly in front of posters and paintings that speak to their wider interests. Gupta had followed his partner Rudi from Canada (he appears frequently in the earlier series) to the States, and then the UK, and the work, made in London in the mid-1980s, was a response to the break-up of their relationship.

‘I was interested in homosexual relationships from the beginning, and they seem to mostly be domestic,’ he observes. ‘Unless it’s a demonstration, there's very little queer public life. I haven't seen it since Christopher Street [in New York] in 1976, when there was a very visible, middle-of-the-day presence on the streets. In London it was all indoors.’

Perhaps his most recognisable work, the Christopher Street series was made during a semester studying under Lissette Model at the New School for Social Research in New York, and was conceived as a kind of social anthropology, documenting men as they strode around the New York neighbourhood synonymous with gay life, after Stonewall and before Aids. The images now read as both cool and celebratory – nostalgic too – and at Kettle’s Yard are strikingly placed so as to be the first thing visitors see, hung close together on a red-pink wall (upstairs, contact sheets from the series are laid out in a vitrine against the same bright shade).

As per the foundations of Gupta’s practice, his own identities feed much of the show’s content – being gay, Indian, and HIV positive – and subsequently there are a number of self-portraits, while other projects emerge from questions relevant to his circumstances (the photographer’s voice, additionally, guides visitors through via wall panels).

Significantly larger than ‘From Here to Eternity’, his 2020 survey at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, ‘Life With a Camera’ includes more than 140 works. ‘That show was following a photography thread and highlighting not just the queer stuff, but my history with race,’ says Gupta, a founding member of Autograph (Association of Black Photographers), which was established in an era when Black was used more broadly as a political signifier against the racist landscape of 1980s Britain. ‘Here, I think Andrew Nairne wanted to maybe try to liberate me from the sociology of the work.

‘It's fun to see what gets emphasised,’ he adds. ‘Nobody's ever shown the pictures of the children with HIV, for example. Most people just want me to be Black and gay.’ Made in New Delhi in 2005, where Gupta was living until 2012 (and where he met his husband, Charan Singh, with whom he now lives in London and collaborates often), A Time to Care was made with the Naz Foundation, which ran a care home for children navigating life after diagnosis. The pictures, of flip-flopped feet and anonymised toddlers in arms, are far removed from the photographer’s series Homelands, exploring his own relationship to the virus, which the exhibition includes in the same room. Marrying images made in the UK, India, US and Canada, here, Gupta juxtaposes his undressed body with fields of green, describing them as ‘benign pictures of landscapes through which a terrifying virus was spreading’.

Further context is provided upstairs, where the themes and scope of Gupta’s work are examined through a different lens: newspaper clippings insert his pictures into Aids narratives, exhibition posters highlight the organisations he’s worked with, a table full of books, amongst them the exhibition catalogue and new Trolley Books title I Call You My Love, speak to his prolific output.

There are framed photographs also, like the Helmut Lang A/W 2020 campaign revisiting Christopher Street (creative director Thomas Cawson had been inspired by the original series), and a portrait of Gupta and Singh, shot recently in the house at Kettle’s Yard for Lovers, Revisited. Building on the series he made 40 years ago, the picture is part of a larger body of work, now international but still centered around people he knows personally, exploring what queer couples look like today. ‘We appear wherever the work takes us,’ says Gupta, ‘and it takes us to a lot of places.’ In each instance, the camera claims its presence, as ‘Life With a Camera’ boldly asserts.

‘Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970 – Now’ is at Kettle's Yard until 31 January 2027

Elliott Kaye worked at kitchens that take themselves very seriously – Lyle’s, The French House, Leroy – before making his name with Norman’s café in north London. This reimagining of the greasy spoon turned a workaday stretch of Archway A-road into a destination for the fashion crowd – Burberry even took it over during London Fashion Week. Following the closure of Norman’s, Kaye is hoping to put another scruffy street on the food map, this time on the Hackney-Homerton border. Marrion’s, his first solo venture, is a local that is part cocktail bar, part wine bar and part bistro.

Wallpaper* dines at Marrion’s, London

The mood: Drinks, dinner or both

Kaye designed the interiors himself, with the Big Apple as his starting point. ‘We were drawn to the simplicity and intimacy of New York neighbourhood bars and diners, particularly the idea of a place where the distinction between drinking and dining is deliberately blurred,’ he says. ‘We wanted Marrion’s to feel as though it had always been part of the neighbourhood rather than like a newly opened restaurant trying to look new.’

The initial impression is beguilingly understated – red-topped two-seat tables on dark timber legs, cream walls and a pale tiled floor, plus standing tables fixed to the wall for drinkers – but it takes work to appear this effortless. The furniture was designed and made by Oscar Oliver Studio, down to the curved black bar, which doubles as an eating counter.

If the room is inspired by the US, the Marrion’s logo looks closer to home, borrowing from the lettering of Watney’s, the London brewer whose Red Barrel bitter was a pub staple in the 1960s and 70s. It all sounds too cool for school – staff are kitted out in uniforms from Danish brand Another Aspect – but the welcome couldn’t be any friendlier, including for dogs. The only art is a framed print of Vincenzo Campi’s ‘The Ricotta Eaters’, a 16th-century scene of grinning diners digging into a mound of fresh cheese – a reminder that a good night out has always been more about the company than the cooking.

The food: Old favourites, no fuss

Like the room, the cooking makes a virtue of simplicity. The menu is as short as the drinks list, and Kaye cooks it himself in a tiny kitchen at the back. Start with a glass of red vermouth served with a chunky wedge of lemon and an olive, alongside a bowl of fried olives in breadcrumbs speared with cocktail sticks.

The prawn cocktail is served New York-style, with five pink tails balanced on the rim of a martini glass above a dipping sauce flushed with the heat of horseradish and Tabasco. Devilled crab rarebit comes on a slice of toasted sourdough, cut down the middle so it’s easy to share, while the pork schnitzel Holstein is classically topped with fried egg, capers and long slivers of anchovies. Finish with banoffee pie under a swirl of cocoa-dusted whipped cream, as sweet as the intentions behind this place.

None of this is beyond the skill of a talented home cook, but that isn’t really the point. Marrion’s is a chilled-out, low-key hangout, the sort of place where you end up chatting to the next table or whoever is sitting beside you at the bar, and prices won’t break the bank. Most of the wine is natural, and there’s a monthly changing house martini among the cocktails. Sunday brunch is on the way, too, promising anchovy soldiers to dip into boiled eggs.

Marrion’s is located at 177 Morning Ln, London E9 6LH, United Kingdom

Have you ever wondered where creatives live? Artists’ Modernist Houses, a new book by publisher Batsford, looks at just that, taking readers on a fascinating journey across scales and territories in the midcentury movement and looking at homes 'which are or have been lived in by artists'.

The book, authored by Wallpaper* contributor – and former staffer – Harriet Thorpe, compiles 50 examples. The projects include residences not only commissioned by artists, but also, on occasion, co-designed by them, exploring how art and the owners' creative spirit help form space and the entire living experience.

Discover a treasure trove in ‘Artists’ Modernist Houses’

Projects span the globe, being built anywhere between the mid- to end of the 20th century – always in the progressive, for the time, modernist architecture style. Examples span from André Wogenscky and Marta Pan's home outside Paris to Barbara Hepworth’s studio and Georgia O’Keeffe’s ranch in New Mexico, the Bauhaus Masters’ Houses in Germany, and the studio and houses of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in Mexico City.

'I’ve always loved visiting artists’ house museums, where the aura of the artist remains, absorbed through their personal objects [such as] notebooks, sketches and books, [and] their daily views and working processes. I feel like in those kinds of rooms you can really start to understand an artist on a deeper level,’ Thorpe says.

The author says: 'Working on this book made me think about exactly why I love to get lost in those domestic worlds. My mother loves art, particularly the Impressionists and early abstract art, artists like Mary Cassatt, Modigliani, and Gabriele Munter – so paintings, in the form of postcards, books and exhibitions, were very present in my childhood.

'I went on to study art history and then developed a closer interest in the 20th century and domestic space while writing as a journalist about architecture. I realised that artists’ houses brought together all of these parts of me through a kind of journey into experiencing someone else’s life.'

Thorpe's investigations and analyses go beyond 'just' looking at the case studies – rich, varied and visually captivating as they are. Artists' Modernist Houses also includes a series of essays that lets readers dive deeper into what it means to have art in the home, how architecture enters into dialogue with art, and museums within homes, particularly artists' homes.

Meanwhile, luxurious photography, a mix of newly captured and archival imagery, adds a sense of expansiveness to each case study, transporting the reader into the beautiful dwellings.

'During the process, I felt a growing nostalgia for a “modern” way of life. These houses were imagined as personal vessels for thinking and creating; many of them feel like private worlds, where objects and resources were well-made and treasured. Today we live faster, with far more connection and convenience, yet it comes at a mental and spatial cost on the atmospheres of our homes and what they mean to us,' says Thorpe.

'While writing the book, I did lose some of this nostalgia, particularly reflecting on the social challenges that women and people of colour faced and fought to break in the 20th century; and on the changing meaning of home during and in the aftermath of two world wars. Yet even in the face of these challenges, artists continued to carve out their ideas and philosophies into space and living in radical ways, which really inspired me.'

She adds, of the sense of discovery that working on this book afforded: 'I think what I discovered is the relationship between modern art and modern architecture in the 20th century. Modern art seemed to pave the way through theory and movements, then modern architecture had the task of translating this thinking into three dimensions. Art and architecture had moments of deep reciprocity, which can be seen in like-minded collaborations or echoing aesthetics, yet also developed on their own independent trajectories too.

'In the book, some artists gave an architect carte blanche, trusting their total interpretation of their artistic way of life; others collaborated with an architect sharing influences; while some artists used architecture as their medium, creating living sculptures; and others took on the formal role of the architect themselves. Every space reflects radical ways of thinking about how we can live creatively in the world, and the extraordinary ideas that can emerge when the two disciplines meet.'

'Artists’ Modernist Houses', Batsford, £30, published by batsfordbooks.com, also available from Waterstones

When Zaha Hadid died, back on a spring day in 2016, the architecture world froze in shock. It was unexpected – the legendary Iraq-born British architect was only 65 and was in Miami when she passed following a short illness. It took the industry a while to digest the news, and her absence was felt for years; which is why now, a decade later and in the year that would have marked her 76th birthday, it feels fitting and indeed necessary to celebrate Zaha Hadid's enduring legacy and incomparable impact.

Celebrating with the Zaha Hadid Foundation

Marking the occasion, the Zaha Hadid Foundation, which the architect set up in 2013, is announcing an exciting new chapter in its life with the reopening of a newly refurbished building at 10 Bowling Green Lane (the original Hadid office headquarters) in London's Clerkenwell this week, and a series of events and shows that aim to showcase the breadth and visionary and lasting nature of the architect's work.

The new Zaha Hadid Foundation hub

The handsome old brick Victorian school building on 10 Bowling Green Lane is part of Hadid's story, housing her office for 30 years (ZHA relocated in 2021 to another location, not too far away), and has been intrinsically connected to her memory. It is now part of the Zaha Hadid Foundation and has just been refurbished by London-based Studio KA to become a hub of architectural showcases and debate for the local and global community.

The space, which soft-launched with a preview today (29 October 2026) ahead of the public opening on 3 November 2026, includes galleries, a learning space, a lecture hall and a collection display. More spaces reserved for the foundation's use will become a hub for exhibitions, talks, workshops and even creative residencies in the future.

Meanwhile, the building will remain the home of Zaha Hadid Design, and will naturally feature furniture and objects designed by Zaha and her studio. Surfaces throughout have been updated, while original features such as a fireplace and doorways have been restored.

The three opening showcases span the architect's work and reveal its breadth. The first, 'Zaha Hadid: Architecture of Performance', is the foundation’s first collection-based exhibition dedicated to stage and set designs and is curated by Catherine Howe, with Libby Sellers as guest curator.

The second event is titled 'The Rebar Beneath', and it's a special commission by artist LionHeart. Inspired by the archive, it brings together film, poetry, performance and spatial installation. Thirdly is another special commission, by Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrator Mona Chalabi. 'The Completely Exhausting Inexhaustibility of Zaha Hadid' offers a 'playful approach to data visualisation' by creating a timeline of the architect's influence.

The symposium: ‘89° of Zaha Hadid’

A two-day symposium, ‘89° of Zaha Hadid’, on 30 and 31 October 2026 (the latter being Zaha’s birthday) will bring another dimension to this moment's celebration. Organised by the Zaha Hadid Foundation, the Architectural Association and the Serpentine, the event will take place across all three partner venues, spreading across London for all to enjoy.

A star-studded list of speakers – some 40 in total – includes architectural photographer Hélène Binet, architects Nigel Coates, Sir Peter Cook and Rem Koolhaas, Vitra’s chairman emeritus Rolf Fehlbaum, Walbrook owner and chair Hayat Palumbo, and artist and OMA co-founder Madelon Vriesendorp. Topics range from Hadid's early life in Baghdad and her studies to her professional career, influence, body of work and vision for the future.

The Zaha Hadid Foundation's director, Aric Chen, told us about Hadid's forward-thinking attitude when we toured the archives for our October 2026 issue: ‘Zaha was immersed in the present – she didn't think she was futuristic. She was about invention and imagination, re-envisioning spatiality and the ways we live and operate in the here and now.'

A fresh identity

London-based agency Made by ON worked on a complete refresh of the Zaha Hadid Foundation's new website design. This is perfectly complemented by a new visual identity crafted by Amsterdam-based studio Experimental Jetset. It was born from the development of a dynamic system, or 'visual language,' as the studio puts it.

Inspired by Hadid's knack for experimentation and pioneering, uncompromising attitude, the foundation's fresh look is not logo-based, as is often the way. Instead, it centres its new identity on a 'flexible typographic system, perpetually mutated by a distorting grid, that evolves and transforms across the foundation’s programmes and communications,' the ZHF explains.

It is perfectly fitting to the late architect's life work and overall approach to architecture. 'It was Zaha’s wish for the foundation to preserve her legacy while carrying her ideas forward: advancing education, supporting future generations and contributing to the wider field of architecture,' says Rana Hadid, chair of the trustees of the Zaha Hadid Foundation.

'At the heart of that mission is her extraordinary archive, a profound record of her work, imagination and intellectual life. This next step will allow us to safeguard that archive, open it to wider audiences, and create new opportunities for learning, scholarship and creative discovery, ensuring that Zaha’s ideas continue to inspire generations to come.'

The Zaha Hadid Foundation exhibition space at the former headquarters on 10 Bowling Green Lane opens to the public on 3 November 2026

The symposium '89° of Zaha Hadid' runs on 30 and 31 October, presented in partnership with the Serpentine and the Architectural Association

zhfoundation.com

Marfa Stance was built on the belief that surplus materials are not something to conceal, but rather something to celebrate. Those familiar with the British label will instantly recognise its modular, fully reversible outerwear, which combines sophisticated patchwork construction with an approach informed by artist Donald Judd's functional design philosophy. Judd lived and worked in Marfa, Texas, from which the brand takes its name.

Crafted in Italy by female-led factories using surplus Japanese and Italian nylon, wool, and cashmere deadstock, the pieces are both utilitarian and luxurious.

This month, seven years after its founding, the brand unveils its first furniture collection, designed in collaboration with Stephen Kenn Studio. ‘We've never believed design should live within one category,’ says Marfa Stance’s founder, British designer Georgia Dant, who describes the move as the ‘logical next step'.

A meeting of minds

The choice of Los Angeles furniture designer Stephen Kenn as a collaborator was a natural one, she recalls: his studio had supplied the furniture for the brand’s first New York flagship a few years earlier. Like Marfa Stance, Kenn embraces reclaimed materials, celebrating their history, irregularities and inherent character rather than seeking uniformity.

‘The way we think about a piece of outerwear, how it's made, what happens to the materials, how long it can live, how it can change with its owner, is actually very close to how Stephen approaches furniture,’ says Dant, who founded the brand in 2019 after leading men’s and women’s design teams at Burberry and Rag & Bone. ‘We share a belief in utility, longevity, and making something beautiful from what's already around us. This collaboration lets us take that philosophy somewhere completely new.’

For Marfa Stance, Kenn has created a series of three steel-framed chairs and a bench, each with a chunky seat upholstered in quilts made by Alabama’s Gee’s Bend quilters – a community of African American women living along a bend in the Alabama River in Wilcox County, where quilting traditions have been passed down through generations. Marfa Stance has collaborated with the community since 2022, transforming deadstock fabrics sourced from Italy into colourful quilted jackets and blankets.

‘When I first saw a Marfa Stance jacket I was transported back to some of my earliest days studying vintage military clothing,’ says Kenn. ‘The careful consideration and thoughtful details evoked an admiration and immediate kinship. I couldn’t help but wonder, if this jacket were a reversible slip cover, what would it look like?’

The chairs are the answer to Kenn’s question. Each is upholstered in a Gee’s Bend quilt and installed at a different Marfa Stance store – Montecito, Chicago, Madison Avenue in NYC, and Chelsea in London – inviting customers to experience the collaboration first-hand.

The chairs are based on two of Kenn's existing designs – the Inheritance Collection – with its blackened steel frame and cotton webbing and leather belts holding loose chunky cushions – and the Ease Collection, with its curved upholstered form made from a combination of different foam densities providing both structure and softness.

Following their in-store debut, the chairs will be available to buy online, with prices on enquiry.

Due to the unique nature of the quilts, each chair is one of a kind and made to order in Los Angeles by Kenn’s small team and local vendors, many of them family-run businesses in East and South LA. They are designed to be repaired and adapted, acquiring character through continued use. Marfa Stance hints that more home pieces could follow. For now, the chairs demonstrate a clever and considered brand expansion that carries Marfa Stance's emphasis on adaptability, craftsmanship and longevity from wardrobe to home.

This autumn in London, the Hermès Maison window at 166 New Bond Street unveils a spectacular new display dreamt up by architects Space Popular. Scenes across its six arched windows sweep passersby up into a cosy and surreal drawing room built of cotton-and-silk-blend quilts in warm and toasty colours, inspired by the Georgian history of the Maison’s architecture.

Discover the new Hermès Maison window design in London

Titled ‘Ciel de Lit’, the storybook tableaux are wrapped in quilted sash windows ready to lift off into quilted clouds, a roaring fireplace, and a door that opens just ajar, hinting at imaginary worlds beyond. There’s humour in the details – floating Hermès gloves draw open the curtains, a silk scarf adorns an easel and a leather belt plugs into a stitched socket – sparking contrasts between the softness of the fabric-world and the exquisite reality of fine craft.

'We like to create things that make you look twice, widen your mind and spark curiosity,' says architect Fredrik Hellberg, one half of the Space Popular duo with architect Lara Lesmes.

Interested in virtual worlds, surrealism and trompe l’oeil, they were inspired by the strange magic of ‘moments between sleeping and waking’. The duo also looked to Hermès’ 2026 guiding creative theme of the year, ‘Venture Beyond’, and the whimsy of the London Maison itself, a magical village of six buildings and 55 uniquely designed rooms that unfolds beyond the windows.

After working together for many years, Space Popular has, over the past decade, turned increasingly to textiles, resonating with how the medium resonates deeply with the body, humanises architecture and tells stories over millennia. This first foray into quilting evolved in collaboration with a group of artisans and London-based crafts specialist Andy Knight, who joined nearly 500 pieces of quilted textiles together to create the vast installation, their largest endeavour to date.

'It’s incomprehensible how many hundreds of miles of stitching there is, yet how slow and precise it is too, because of all of the ornaments and details. You'll see that the stitching doesn't miss a millimetre,' says Hellberg, reflecting on the awe of the craft.

Space Popular worked closely with the Hermès team to curate the house’s objects within the display, many of which were drawn from the Home collection. There’s the Pippa stool, originally designed in 1983 by architects Peter Coles and Rena Dumas (1937-2009), the latter whose studio, Rena Dumas Architecture Intérieure (RDAI), now under the artistic direction of Denis Montel, is behind the design of the London Maison and establishing the interior vision of Hermès stores worldwide. As well as a luxurious sofa re-edition by Jean-Michel Frank; the Les Trotteuses d’Hermès occasional table; and Pantographe arc floor lamp.

When viewed in-person, one absorbs the architectural reflections, shifting light, the shiny speed of black cabs, and the elegant bustle of New Bond Street as another illusion, softly mirrored into the scene.

This history of Hermès’ windows is a tradition and art form in its own right, which was overseen for many years, between 1978 and 2013, by Tunisian designer-decorator Leïla Menchari (1927-2020), then in charge of the Hermès windows at Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Her work is celebrated in the book ‘Leïla Menchari, the Queen of Enchantment,' published by Hermès.

'This is the kind of legacy that you’re stepping into,' says Hellberg on Space Popular’s participation in this window display, recognising in admiration previous artistic collaborators of their generation such as Wang & Söderström. For Space Popular, part of the beauty of this installation is in reaching the broad public audience of the street with its wonder: 'We are called Space Popular for a reason,' he says, 'At our core we are really interested in what people like and what people enjoy.'

'Ciel de Lit by Space Popular' is on display at Maison Hermès at 166 New Bond St, London, W1S 4RB until 30 October 2026

It's exactly ten years since Dame Zaha Hadid passed away unexpectedly at the age of 65, leaving an unassailable legacy in her Issey Miyake-clad wake. In a strange piece of synchronicity, there’s now an incredibly rare chance to own one of her buildings in the heart of London.

Constructed from 2014 onwards, this house in Belgravia’s Grosvenor Crescent Mews has the distinction of being one of only two private residential projects completed by the studio (the other being the Capital Hill Residence outside Moscow).

A unicorn in the London property market, 6 Grosvenor Crescent Mews isn’t just a rare example of Hadid’s work but it’s also a 3,980 sq ft house with integral garage just a stone’s throw from Hyde Park Corner, located in what is Belgravia's only private gated mews.

Gaining permission for such an avant-garde structure in the midst of a thicket of Conservation Areas and listed buildings was no mean feat, even for an architecture of the calibre of Zaha Hadid. The site had boundaries with no fewer than nine different neighbours, placed in such a way that the only public-facing façade was just six metres in width.

That element, a rippling curtain of back-lit brickwork lattices and patterned glass, belies the scale of the house behind it, which extends over four generous 1,000 sq ft floorplans.

The garage was a planning condition, but it was fitted out to a residential specification so that it can be used as a study area if needed. It adjoins the main reception room, a space bounded by the curved interventions of the polished balustrade rail and the custom-designed staircase, formed from polished concrete and shaped to wind sinuously between the floors.

Like many London mews and conversion projects, the house goes down as well as up, with a kitchen and sitting room located in the basement, beneath a double height space which in itself is topped by a glazed terrace at first floor level. With windows, parapets, courtyards and walls arranged so as to avoid overlooking from surrounding properties, the entire house is cleverly folded into its site, making the most from the available space.

Utility, plant and stores are tucked away in the basement behind the kitchen, another area that is defined by a trademark Hadidian swoop, this time in the form of a polished kitchen counter that projects out from the wall like a geological form.

From here, the two-storey atrium rises up to the gauzy light that filters through the glass roof, with the polished balustrade playing off the curved concrete stair risers contained behind a glazed wall.

The first floor houses the principal bedroom suite, complete with curved glass and sole access to the terrace. A living wall flanks the perimeter of the property (it’s joined by a brown roof system designed to improve the house’s insulation), while the glazed stair tower rises up beneath the fluted forms of another skylight. On the second floor there are two further ensuite bedrooms, each winding around a central dressing room space.

The artistry and style of 6 Grosvenor Crescent Mews is sadly unrepeatable, making this project a rare opportunity to acquire a functional work of art in the heart of London.

In the decade since her death, the firm Hadid established in Studio 9 of a former school on Bowling Green Lane in Clerkenwell has gone all out into making her wildly exuberant approach into a clearly defined architectural style, Parametricism, translating Hadid’s wild, analogue forms into a heady, AI-infused cocktail of data-shaped aesthetic adventures.

If you can ignore the Succession-like shenanigans that have swirled around ZHA in the years that followed, the Zaha Hadid Foundation holds a fascinating archive of her work.

6 Grosvenor Crescent Mews, London SW1X is for sale at £11.95m through Forbes Gilbert-Green, ForbesGilbertGreen.com

Turkish cooking in London has long meant the ocakbaşı grill houses of the north-east of the capital, and few chefs have done more to move them on than Sertaç Dirik. He grew up in the kitchen of Mangal II, the Dalston dining room his father opened in 1994, and after cooking with the top names in Copenhagen, he returned home six years ago to reinvent the family business with his brother Ferhat, propelling it into the National Restaurant Awards Top 50. Kid in Soho is his first solo restaurant, and his partner is David Carter, who has spent the past decade turning out great places to eat, from Smokestak and Manteca in Shoreditch to Oma and Agora in Borough Market. Carter knows how to open a hit; recruiting Dirik has given him an extra shot of cool.

Wallpaper* dines at Kid, London

The mood: Soho, set alight

The first realisation for guests is that getting in is a challenge. Walk the length of the Frith Street frontage, and you’ll see diners having the time of their lives inside, but there’s no obvious door. That’s round the side on Bateman Street – look out for the tiny goat stamped in the metal – and the first thing it reveals is Dirik manning the flames of the grill. The second is the certainty that you’ve arrived in one of the most happening rooms in London.

Carter has worked with Box 9 for more than ten years, and here the London-based design practice has joined two units of an 1897 corner building and united them through brick: 73,000 unfired K-Briqs, to be precise, made from construction waste and used to form niches, a latticed screen, a fireplace surround and a curving wall down the stairs. ‘We studied the brick patterns and coursing found across historic London façades and worked closely with the bricklayers to understand their trade,’ says Box 9 co-founder Lou Davies. ‘The fit-out was drawn brick by brick, with every joint aligned, allowing the brick to become more than a structural material and instead a contemporary expression of Turkish symbols.’

Overhead, cork joists from Amorim in Portugal soften the ceiling, while the banquettes are covered in chocolate-brown Arc of Joan textiles, dyed by hand and embroidered with kilim motifs, and the chairs are in moss-green canvas. An oversized mobile by the Turkish artist Selin Nisa Açıkel, cast in bronze from recycled copper, hangs above the stairs that lead to the most important part of the whole operation: an open bakery.

The food: Kid gloves off

Begin with bread from downstairs: the tombik pide arrives puffed and blistered from the wood oven, the Wildfarmed pide scored and charred from the grill. Snacks come by the individual piece, so order a courgette flower in crisp batter, blanketed in grated tulum goat’s cheese and drizzled with atom honey, and chubby slices of the house sucuk sausage with a purée of grilled peach that tastes like sweet ketchup. From the meze, muhammara comes heaped with walnuts and feta-like beyaz peynir, and the hummus is all but buried under a crunchy rubble of fried chickpeas.

Skewers of lamb belly and sweetbreads, glossy and blackened at the edges, are a contrast of succulence and squidge cut through by a bed of grilled onions, but the showstopper is the mixed kebap: Adana köfte, chicken and lamb piled high with scorched peppers and a tangle of pink onions, plus a çoban salata of cucumber and tomato on the side.

To finish, the mountain tea rice pudding with orange blossom is already one of London’s most tempting desserts, like a sophisticated cross between Ambrosia and crème brûlée. And whatever else you drink, have a şeftali margarita, as peachy as a Bellini. And, happily, the door is much easier to find on the way out.

Kid is located at 55 Frith Street, London W1D 4SJ, UK

If you like to go out regularly in London, particularly in the south and east, you might have noticed a number of new ‘listening bars’ in recent months. The concept, which originated in Japan, means that everything, from the way the space is insulated and designed to the nightly music curation, revolves around sound. Some of these bars have quickly become beloved and highly respected spaces, such as Waltz in Shoreditch, owned by Tokyo-born Gento Torigata, who was formerly the manager of Kwãnt. At Waltz, speakers take centre stage alongside the spirits and a meticulously curated menu in a warm, ambient space.

What separates a listening bar from a bar with good speakers?

While many of these bars are faithful to the original concept, there are, of course, things that differentiate them from the Tokyo-based neighbourhood spots. One is that the price point, naturally, has to be much higher for a bar to survive on the mean streets of London.

James Gilbody is the owner of Freaking Out The Neighborhood, a listening bar in Bangkok. He recently moved back to London, so he has a perspective on the proliferation of listening bars across two continents. ‘It’s definitely a trend globally, and Bangkok is no different,’ he says, telling me that listening bars even got their own awards category this year in the local lifestyle publication BK Magazine. Gilbody’s own motivation for opening one was that there weren’t many places that played the kind of music he and his partner enjoy: left-field jazz, rock, indie and punk. ‘Selfishly, we wanted a space where we could listen to our favourite albums on a nice system at full volume,’ he says.

Michael Sager is the owner and director of Equal Parts, a listening bar in Hackney that opened in 2023 and has since won several awards and a spot on best-of lists. When opening Equal Parts, says Sager, the brief was always sound and drinks in equal measure: ‘The listening element was structural from day one, not a differentiator we retrofitted.’ In his opinion, the popularity of listening bars is down to a simple fact: they give people permission to actually listen. ‘Most hospitality spaces use music as atmosphere management – something to fill silence and keep energy up. A listening bar inverts that. The music is the reason you're there, and the drink is what you hold while you're paying attention. For a certain kind of person, that's an enormous relief.’

Of course, if being a listening bar is something that gives one bar an edge over another, it would follow that some might be tempted to call themselves one without actually understanding what the concept means. Some spaces might do so without actually evoking the soul of some Shimokitazawa neighbourhood spot that’s been built around music.

Sager says that what differentiates a true listening bar is ‘intention and consequence’. At Equal Parts, they developed the sound system in collaboration with Audio Gold, and the room itself is lined with walnut and felt to cancel noise and enhance how sound moves through the space. They play exclusively vinyl, always full albums in order, because they believe in respecting the artist’s intention. The staff themselves are experts in selecting music, and, as Sager says, ‘Any bar can put on a good record. A listening bar is one where the music dictates the energy of the room, not the other way around.’

Gilbody agrees, adding that there are few authentic listening bars outside of Japan. ‘The main trend globally is people opening bars with nice speakers but not much music curation from the venue and not much listening happening,’ he says. ‘It’s Instagram friendly and an easy way to essentially rebrand a cocktail bar or have something else to market.’

What differentiates a listening bar, according to Gilbody, is that the experience should be quiet and cosy, something he and his wife Ki fell in love with. While some Japanese listening bars don’t even let you speak or go on your phone, he doesn’t think it needs to be that strict – but it should be intimate. ‘It should feel like you’re in someone’s living room listening to their record collection. The personality of the place and the curation of the music should ideally come from the owners,’ he says.

The explosion of listening bars across London might point to something beyond a fascination with Japan or simple trend-following. It is harder than ever to break even as a bar, especially a new one, in the city. That means, to stand out against the thousands of bars in London, you have to offer something unique. There’s a need for an experiential component beyond sleek interiors and well-balanced drinks. Guest bar takeovers, collaborations, events and themed menus have become the norm at the city’s top bars, and owners are getting increasingly creative.

Ryan Chetiyawardana, also known as Mr Lyan, is the award-winning owner behind Seed Library and, most recently, Lyaness in the Sea Containers on the South Bank. Lyaness is a bar with stunning interiors, imaginative drinks and an unbeatable view – but going above and beyond that, there are regular collaborations with global bars such as SIPS (Barcelona), Candelaria (Paris), Native (Singapore) and more through the Sunday Lyan series.

Bars innovating to thrive

‘With all our bars, we try to balance the fact that we're a destination venue with being as democratic and available to as many people as possible, functioning as a great neighbourhood bar can,’ says Chetiyawardana. ‘Innovation, excitement and togetherness are central pillars to our work, so we always wanted to go beyond what was more ubiquitous.’

When choosing collaborators, the team look to people who can push and inspire them. ‘Every business needs a point of difference, and having a unique voice is something that tends to resonate well in places where there are a lot of options,’ he says, adding, ‘As the expectations for drinking and dining out have risen, there have been more attempts to differentiate. But these are often copycat moves – the best venues have a USP that is honest and personal to them.’ Chetiyawardana agrees that the financial landscape and pressure on hospitality mean there needs to be more to your experience.

Andy Loudon is director of bars at the Rosewood London in Holborn. Rosewood’s Scarfes Bar is uniquely innovative for a hotel bar, with playful themed menus and regular live music. ‘A great cocktail bar should engage all the senses, and live music has the power to transform a room in a way that no design element or drinks menu can,’ says Loudon. ‘Two guests can order the same cocktail on different evenings and have an entirely different experience because of the music, the crowd and the energy in the room.’

Given how competitive bars are today, that experience is essential. ‘The most successful bars understand that hospitality is ultimately about creating memories. That can be through music, storytelling, design, service, education or a sense of community. Guests rarely remember every ingredient in a cocktail, but they will remember how a place made them feel,’ says Loudon.

To survive today, success isn’t only about picking a trend or offering great drinks. Sager says that the best bars have a genuine point of view and hold it consistently. ‘The bars that are struggling are the ones that tried to be everything – great cocktails, great food, great music, great design – without a clear hierarchy of intent. Guests can feel when a venue knows exactly what it is. That coherence is increasingly rare, and increasingly what people seek out.’

Chetiyawardana adds that, as bar owners, it’s important to see one another as peers, not competitors. ‘Hospitality is only in competition with apathy and loneliness, and the more we can show that togetherness is an important factor of happiness, then the better venues do.’

Imogen Kwok has made a career out of asking food to do unexpected things, with projects including trompe l’œil white chocolate pears for Loewe and a Georg Jensen installation featuring thousands of crystallised edible flowers. Further commissions for Loro Piana, Miu Miu, Hermès and Bulgari have made her one of design’s most sought-after culinary collaborators.

‘In my world, food is natural, beautiful chaos,’ she says. ‘It is defined by its inevitable undoing: constantly changing, unpredictable and irregular. Cooking is my way of carving out a moment of stillness within that, finding beauty just before the first bite, taste or touch.’

Her route into this world was unconventional. Born in Sydney and raised in New York, Kwok studied art history at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and worked in galleries such as Lehmann Maupin before training at the Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park and Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Since settling in London in 2019, she has brought those disciplines together, constructing edible installations that resemble still-life paintings while retaining the flavour and technique of fine dining.

The British capital has proved to be an apt base. ‘Its energy matches the way I approach food,’ says Kwok. ‘There is this layered friction between the highly curated and the beautifully messy. London isn’t one singular vibe; it is a collection of little cities, all put together.’ Each neighbourhood has its own personality, while history and experimentation continually overlap: ‘You push through a crowd, turn a corner and find a pocket of beauty.’ Relocating here also recast her idea of what a chef could be. ‘It gave me the freedom to experiment,’ she says. ‘London let me be who I wanted to be.’

Imogen Kwok’s London

In Holland Park, The Cosmic House embodies the city’s eccentric streak. Charles and Maggie Jencks’ former home is a postmodern cosmos of celestial symbols, its architecture unfolding like an elaborate visual puzzle. ‘It is whimsical and disorientating in a wonderful way, like being inside a dream,’ says Kwok.

St James’s Dover Street Market is Kwok’s answer to wardrobe panic. ‘I tend to go there because I know I’m going to find something I love,’ she says. Nearby, Gallery Fumi speaks directly to her own practice, with a programme centring on designers who consider the process of making and the emotional life of a material. ‘That is the way I see food as well,’ says Kwok.

For dinner, Kwok chooses Mountain, Tomos Parry’s Soho restaurant. ‘It isn’t pretentious or fussy. The food is incredibly tasty,’ she says. ‘Tomos is known for fire-grilled fish and meat, yet there is also a very delicate hand in the way he handles ingredients.’

In south-east London, Eltham Palace stages the kind of historical collision Kwok values in the city. Built alongside the surviving Great Hall of a medieval royal palace is a 1930s art deco mansion, fusing several centuries into one improbable address. ‘I only discovered it recently, and it is very special,’ she says.

Her final choice takes her east to Cafe Oto in Dalston, a daytime restaurant that turns into a live music venue after dark. ‘They have a genuinely original programme,’ says Kwok. Like London itself, its appeal lies in the unexpected combinations.

Kwok particularly loves London in spring. ‘The sky fills with colour and light, and the streets teem with people, basking in the sun and drinking,’ says Kwok. ‘It makes winter worth enduring.’ And if London had a taste? ‘Creamy and briny.’

According to Imogen...

What is the best month to visit London? The end of June or early July. Or whenever it’s hottest, although that is unpredictable.

What should one wear to blend in? A chic hat – although that is probably better for standing out.

Favourite Londoner? Daniel Day-Lewis. Perhaps because I’ve just watched a run of his films.

What is the best way to make friends? Start a conversation with a stranger and stick with it. Londoners open up eventually.

Where is the best place to misbehave? Hackney.

For more recommendations, buy our London Travel Guide.

Film by Zack Melluish

The RIBA Stirling Prize 2026 winner announcement today (15 October) marks not just a much-anticipated annual moment in the global architecture world, but also the 30th anniversary of the respected accolade – which this year goes to the housing scheme Lion Green Road in Croydon, south London, the brainchild of architect Mary Duggan.

The shortlist of six projects provided grounds for some fierce competition and debate – schemes spanned typologies and scales, and included a luxuriously restrained family home, a large-scale building over a key London transport hub, and an eco-friendly community space.

The RIBA Stirling Prize 2026 winner: Lion Green Road  by Mary Duggan Architects (design) with RUFF Architects (delivery) 

Lion Green Road comprises 157 dwellings – both private and affordable. They are arranged into five prismatic 13-sided blocks set on the green hillside in Coulsdon, Croydon, on the southern edge of London.

The jury citation explains the project's particular challenges: 'The site fronts onto Lion Green Road, with low-rise green‑belt housing set on higher ground to the south and traditional suburban streets to the north. Its dramatic 8m level changes and position within a geological basin demanded an inventive design response from the architects. Additional constraints included the need to maintain access to the housing and open land to the rear, and the requirement to protect a neighbouring scheduled monument associated with the historic Surrey Iron Railway.'

Part of the project's appeal is its carefully calculated yet gentle approach – both in terms of its sculptural volumes and the way they relate to their surroundings. The textured material and its immaculate composition – brick, placed to form various patterns – also support this sensitive response to the brief and context.

Discover the RIBA Stirling Prize 2026 winner

The project puts the pristine, green landscape around it first, weaving the architecture between trees and other planting, using its tactile, detailed brick fabric to craft volumes in subtle dialogue with their surroundings, instead of dominating them.

The jury citation highlights this approach too: 'Balconies are oriented to avoid direct overlooking, allowing the pavilions to be placed closer together while still maintaining long views from the private spaces. A richly planted, biodiverse landscape weaves the site together and plays a central role in the project’s identity. The landscape strategy accommodates significant level changes while creating a variety of shared spaces, from children’s play areas to seating zones and dedicated growing spaces. Public pathways thread through the planting, inviting community use and enhancing permeability.'

It was this combination of inventive yet relatively quiet design, a site-specific attitude, and a landscape-first approach that allowed the pavilion arrangement to be woven into the natural context that made the project stand out to the jury – which was composed this year of Chris Williamson (RIBA president), 6a architects director Stephanie Macdonald, RSHP senior director Tracy Meller, head of net zero policy at CIBSE Dr Julie Godefroy, Sir John Soane’s Museum director Will Gompertz, and VP Product & Experience at Autodesk Catherine Winfield.

'[It] delivers meaningful public benefit while offering high‑quality amenity for residents and supporting a strong sense of community,' they wrote.

The RIBA Stirling Prize 2026 shortlist

RIBA President Chris Williamson said, when the shortlist was revealed during the summer: 'This year's shortlist shows us what architecture can achieve when creativity, purpose and public value come together. In their distinct ambitions to revitalise communities, transform public infrastructure, deliver exemplary housing, carefully evolve historic institutions and create a thoughtful new home, these projects show that UK architecture is not only defined by style, but by true impact on people and place.'

'As the Stirling Prize marks its 30th year, this exceptional shortlist joins a distinguished legacy of projects that represent the very best of British architecture – where ambition, ingenuity and social responsibility combine to create places of lasting value.'

Here are the other buildings that formed the shortlist.

A house at Fairmead, High Beach, Epping Forest by Sergison Bates 

Located at the edge of Epping Forest in the outskirts of London, this home responds to its rural, leafy setting with a material and formal restraint, allowing the nature around it to take centre stage. It is not just about looks either, as sustainable architecture techniques involved in the construction include the use of insulating clay blocks finished with lime plaster, which ensure better heat management within.

A dramatic 4.5m-high living room not only becomes the heart of the home, but is also a moment of joyful openness, in a play of compression and expansion, private and public, within the home's design.

Beam, Hertfordshire, by Bennetts Associates  

This striking multi-arts venue set on the banks of the River Lea is a forward-thinking transformation of the existing, ageing 1970s Hertford Theatre into a 21st-century venue. The building has been updated by wrapping the original building in a new brick form.

This houses a cinema and events space. The council-led scheme highlights reuse and retrofitting, while creating a highly functional civic and community hub that responds to today's needs.

Paddington Square by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (Paris) in collaboration with Adamson Associates (London) 

Paddington Square features a transparent, cube-shaped, mixed-use building, containing office, food and beverage offerings, retail and a public square, as well as a new Bakerloo Line entrance and ticket hall. The project includes an expert level of architectural mastery in order to craft not 'just the looks, but also the permeability and accessibility of the public realm on the site', said architect Joost Moolhuijzen of RPBW at the time of its completion.

The architects moved an existing street to reveal direct access to the station, effectively creating a more visible, new gateway towards the platforms for the public. A hard-working public plaza at its foot offers entrances to the train hub, the underground, the retail and the offices above, as well as open green space.

Pembroke, Mill Lane by Haworth Tompkins 

The project encompasses a significant expansion within Cambridge's Historic Core Conservation Area – a reimagining of Pembroke College that artfully blends old and new. Six refreshed existing buildings meet six new structures in a broader site that balances history and modern use, public openness and functionality.

The project has also employed key sustainable architecture strategies, including important passive design measures. Solutions span triple glazing, exposed thermal mass and photovoltaic panels.

River Wing, Clare College by Witherford Watson Mann Architects 

A tricky site, the the Grade I-listed Clare College in Cambridge, was brought into the 21st century as a series of underused, unfit-for-purpose spaces were redesigned for modern standards. The project's existing, historic brick walls are complemented by a palette of oak, for the structure and wall panelling, and Purbeck stone floors.

The result is both sensitive to its existing condition and immaculately detailed. The college's new wing brings together past and present in a seemingly effortless but in reality highly calibrated and intensely planned contemporary expansion.

RIBA International Prize 2026

More awards were revealed on the same evening, beyond the Stirling. The RIBA International Prize 2026 shortlist included just four buildings – and from those, the Green Field Factory in Bangladesh was announced the year's best. The diverse projects, spanning from Europe to Asia, each offer an exciting architectural proposition. Their common ground? 'Design [that] improves daily life while responding to a changing climate,' RIBA's representatives explain.

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

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

RIBA International Emerging Architect Award 2026

This RIBA award celebrates young talent and emerging practice across the world – this year, highlighting Maker Architecten for a residential project in Belgium that 'revitalises a 1920s garden-city neighbourhood without wholesale demolition'.

Winner: Maker Architecten

The studio was founded in 2019 in Ghent, led by architects Ana Castillo and Lieven De Groote. The design that made them stand out in this case is titled ‘YIMBY’ (Yes in my BackYard) and is set in the country's city of Kortrijk. Making the most of elements of reuse and smart adaptability, the architects breathed new life into an existing site.

They said: 'We are honoured that Maker has been recognised with the RIBA International Emerging Architect 2026 award. The project YIMBY explores how small-scale interventions can contribute to a larger transformation of the city. At a time when affordable housing, resource scarcity and social fragmentation are pressing challenges across Europe, we believe the existing city is one of our most valuable resources. Its buildings, materials and social networks all hold potential for the future. YIMBY is an attempt to work with that potential, creating new value without erasing the stories embedded in the place.'

riba.org

‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ is the saying, and it rings true for the home extension at this Victorian terraced house in Brockley, south-east London. Bolans Architects recently led the residence's loft conversion and elaborate refurbishment. However, it is the rear extension, unseen from the street, where a green ceramic ‘brick’ façade packs a punch and gives the project its name, Ceramic House.

Step inside Bolans Architects' new home extension, Ceramic House

Lanre Falase, architect at Bolans Architects, led the project. ‘A big part of the inspiration came from wanting to articulate the ceramic brickwork more decoratively, rather than simply using it as a flat finish,’ he explains. ‘That level of detail comes partly from my own self-build, Black Edge House, where every junction and detail really mattered. We also wanted the clients to have a constant connection to the garden, even from the deeper parts of the house. So the extension was not just about adding more space, but about drawing light, views and the garden back through the house.’

The façade is composed of arches, recesses and changing planes, which Falase unified with the smooth, green surface. ‘There is a real playfulness to it, but at the same time it feels quite sophisticated,’ he says. ‘I love the way the façade changes depending on where you are standing. From a distance, it reads as one composition, but as you get closer you start to notice the arches, the recesses, the different profiles and all the smaller details that make it work. It looks playful and almost effortless now, but there was a lot of work behind it.’

The project also included a reconfiguration of the property’s ground floor. A new utility room was introduced, along with a concealed pantry and a guest bathroom. The kitchen gained a new curved island, which draws the eye through the home and outwards towards the garden.

However, trying to make the most of the space without overcrowding it was difficult. ‘We had to ensure that every space had a clear purpose, while also understanding which rooms needed natural light and which spaces could work deeper within the plan,’ Falase told Wallpaper*. ‘The ground floor also had to work incredibly hard. We needed to fit in a utility room, pantry, kitchen, dining area and snug, alongside storage and circulation, without it feeling overcrowded. Everything needed to flow together naturally.’

The loft proved to be the biggest challenge. The architect explains: ‘The original houses do not really have enough headroom to form a comfortable loft conversion, so we had to lower the entire floor structure to make it work. At the same time, we needed not to compromise the character of the first-floor rooms or their relationship with the existing windows.’ This loft space is accessed via a new staircase, with cork flooring seen on the staircase and the upper level.

Achieving a cohesive result was also due to the close involvement of the clients, one of whom is a project manager at a large construction firm. His professional understanding of procurement, sequencing and the realities of delivering complex construction work proved valuable, along with a willingness to see the design through to completion.

Falase concludes, ‘As you move through the house, your eye is drawn towards the garden and the extension, but you also start to notice the different volumes and the way the fixed furniture helps shape the spaces. We did not want it to feel like one large open-plan room. There are different areas and moments throughout the ground floor, but they still connect. Hopefully there is that feeling of the house gradually opening up as you move through it.’

bolansgroup.com

From the roof terrace of Cloud House, architect Peter Morris' new north London home, it is easy to see what inspired the project's name. A scalloped top edge painted in soft pink makes sitting on a lounger here feel like you are peeking at the Gospel Oak skyline through fluffy clouds of sweet candy floss.

The façade plays a part in this illusion too. Set on a quiet road off the southern edge of Hampstead Heath, on a little road that has everything from a Grade II-listed French school to an old church, Victorian homes and some modestly scaled new housing blocks, Cloud House stands out, for sure, cutting a distinct figure through its whimsical colour and shape.

It also somehow weirdly blends in. Its volumes follow the massing and rooflines of its adjacent buildings, and its arches echo the shapes found on the Grade I-listed St Martin's Church across the street. Were it not for its uncompromising soft pink and green hues, this project might have been an entirely different proposition.

Step inside Cloud House by Peter Morris

Cloud House's architect designed it as a showcase – a true expression of his own mood, vision and style. It is a very personal project, and one tackled with a lot of care precisely because of that. The scheme, in fact, comprises two semi-detached homes – one for his own family (he lives there with his partner Emily Kennedy, a producer) and the other belonging to clients who are about to start moving in.

The site contained an existing Victorian property, where the family previously lived, but which was getting increasingly worn and volatile – damp rising and urgent fixes needed. Morris decided to apply for it to be replaced, and after working with Camden Council over a few years, his permission was granted, and he embarked on Cloud House's design journey, which took ten years to complete.

The design changed significantly along the way, but only for the better, Morris explains – and it maintained its distinctive flair and individuality throughout the long-drawn process. 'The council saw my personal connection as a positive thing; they said my personality comes through with this house,' Morris recalls, wearing bright blue overalls and bold, round, black-rimmed glasses.

The fact that the street on this corner of Gospel Oak consists of a large blend of styles, from period to contemporary, and uses, including residential, educational and religious, helped. Cloud House contributes to an established diversity here. 'My work is typically more reserved than this. I might start colourful, but things get toned down quite a lot in the end,' he says. 'Here, I wanted to follow through with my own home.'

The long planning and construction process complicated things financially, but Morris was keen to remain true to his original vision. Some elements might have been adjusted, but important features – such as the arches and the colours – remained strong. Kind, crowdsourced help from the community ensured the painting and decorating finished on time.

What made things easier is that the house, a fairly conventional brick and concrete construction, is now clad with light polystyrene stone, a material that, Morris explains, is cost-effective but also highly functional, adding the building's thermal mass and insulation, while being easy to mould, lightweight and waterproof (it's been treated with rough render on top, making it near-indistinguishable from the typical peers).

Inside, the home spans three levels. A generous ground floor contains living spaces and Morris's home office. Bedrooms and bathrooms occupy the two upstairs floors, while a glass skylight at the top, right above the stairwell, opens to the roof terrace, a little sun trap that serves as the home's main outdoor space (a small courtyard downstairs is another open area – Morris plans to plant a herb garden here).

Bold colours, stripes and quirky details abound – just as you would expect, stepping inside a home that looks like a pink fairytale from the street. Painted arches on walls blend visually with arch-shaped doors, and round, ball-shaped plaster mouldings are reminiscent of the ones in Sir John Soane's Museum. Everything is decorated in Morris and Kennedy's personal style – 'It's the museum of Peter and Emily,' he smiles. No doubt, a good measure of success – a home truly reflecting its owners' spirit to the smallest detail.

Morris hopes for word to spread and more work in the Cloud House realm to come through for him, where he can let his imagination run wild and make someone else's dreams a reality too. 'The Cloud House is a colourful, joyful place, but it is also a statement about what residential architecture can be,' he says.

petermorrisarchitects.com

All photos by Will Pryce

This Clerkenwell house represents the near-complete remodel of an existing property - the keen-eyed reader might recognise it as the home of designer Roksanda Ilincic ten years ago. Now reinvented for a family of three with a passion for travelling and art, the building was fully redesigned by architect Pauline Gidoin of MM Studio Interior.

The current owners had been living in the home for eight years, using a mix of the furniture they owned prior to purchasing it, and the original project's existing structure. Over the years, they realised they needed to fine tune the space and upgrade it to their own personal needs. They called upon Gidoin to optimise and tailor design their space for their specific purposes.

'Although the architecture was very strong, the rooms didn't necessarily feel connected to the scale or character of the house. In the large open-plan ground floor in particular, pieces felt as though they were floating within the space rather than defining it,' the architect says.

'Just before they contacted us, they had completed two infill extensions to the upper bedrooms, creating two much more usable rooms that now needed to be properly designed. It felt like the right moment to look at the house in its entirety.'

Gidoin developed a design working closely with Tate Joinery, who worked on all the bespoke storage elements throughout. The aim was the balance the property's bold looks with functionality, and bring warmth to the strong architectural interior.

She explains: 'We described the design language early on as Brutalist and minimalist. I didn't want to fight the architecture or fill the house with objects. Instead, the idea was to work with a relatively restrained number of pieces, but make each one count through proportion, texture and materiality.'

'Spatially, each floor presented almost the opposite problem. The ground floor was extremely generous and needed to be broken down into distinct living, dining and music areas without introducing walls. Upstairs and on the lower-ground floor, the challenge was much more about making every centimetre useful, incorporating storage and responding to very different qualities of natural light. We used furniture placement, rugs, lighting, art and bespoke joinery almost architecturally to define those spaces.'

It was this challenge, the need to rebalance and fine-tune between large, flowing and cosy spaces, that helped define the project, the architect explains: 'I think that contrast ultimately became one of the strengths of the project: some spaces needed to be given more definition, while others needed to work much harder within a smaller footprint. The bespoke elements helped us solve those very different conditions, while the consistent material palette and the clients’ art collection create continuity throughout the house.'

Natural materials throughout, particularly travertine in both refined and rougher finishes, oak, walnut, limestone, leather and chrome, were used in an honest way, exposed and left 'brutalist' to add texture to the spaces. Instead of using lots of different finishes, the team worked with a restrained family of materials repeatedly, simply altering their scale, texture and application from room to room. This allowed the whole to feel consistent but also varied and truly bespoke.

In order to fully capture the essence of South Barn, the home of Studio Weave practice founder Je Ahn, it is important to understand his starting point. 'It [is a project that] ties to ideas of flexibility, comfort and looseness – ultimately, having the trust and confidence to be relaxed about the result,' he told us in 2025, when we interviewed him about a building that made him smile, as he was completing the project.

It is this attitude of effortlessness, and at the same time luxury, that permeates this small but perfectly formed project, set on the UK's Isle of Wight, near the town of Cowes.

Explore South Barn by Studio Weave

The project came to be when Ahn had the opportunity to acquire an existing barn within a working farm – a relatively modest building of 158 sq m. He decided to snap it up for his own personal escape, and embarked on redesigning it to transform it into a pared-down retreat – as utilitarian and raw as they come, yet no less lush and charming.

Ahn recalled at the time: 'The budget was limited, but the project had an inherent sense of luxury in that I was in the unusual position of being my own client, so I could respond more nimbly and directly to project demands, such as the site’s conditions, market pricing and contractor capacity.'

The Studio Weave team developed the project with great respect for the existing structure and its 50-plus-year-old fabric. Many of the original materials were kept, often left exposed, and only repaired to ensure they are aligned with 21st-century habitation. Minimal overall changes were made, ensuring the new house feels like it's always been there, a true celebration of its agricultural context and building integrity.

A large open-plan kitchen and living area, featuring large windows, is the undisputed heart of the home. Off it, a small corridor leads to three bedrooms. Meticulous detailing and craftwork bring the fabric back to life – all done in collaboration with maker Mike at Imphouse and his team. The landscape was also an important collaborative work, produced together with Tom Massey Studio.

Ahn says: 'You cannot design the feel of an aged building – we knew it was important to retain the elements which expressed the passing of time. Studio Weave’s aim is to open up the building, both practically and metaphorically – making South Barn more accessible to the new inhabitants.

'The concept of “deep reuse” informs the design – we repurpose materials we have found on site, both [for] their narrative and practical value, in rebuilding this agricultural building. We also understand the importance of understanding the way people live – this project makes a backdrop for people’s lives.'

studioweave.com

UK architecture studio Koto has made a speciality of prefabricated architecture, elevating the humble cabin into a well-crafted structure that can be precisely tailored to its location and use. The firm’s newest product is Haku, a ‘fully mobile piece of architecture’ pitched at everyone from hotels to homeowners who want the flexibility of additional accommodation without being tied down to a specific spot.

Explore Koto's new Haku suite cabin

The first Haku sites have recently been completed at the Denton Estate in Yorkshire. Demonstrating the flexibility of the system, Haku has been configured as an upscale hotel suite, complete with wood-burning stove and rain-shower bathroom. Countless other uses are possible, all thanks to the way the design slides into a particular loophole in UK planning law.

Because it sits on a wheeled chassis, the Haku is legally defined as a caravan (under the under the Caravan Sites Act 1968, no less). At a stroke, that does away with restrictions on placement in the landscape, giving the unit access to spots that might otherwise be out of bounds. Because it needs no foundations or concrete slab, the Haku can be removed as easily as it is installed, leaving no scar on the landscape. Measuring 9.74m long by 3.60m wide and 3.85m high, the Haku can easily be trucked onto most sites.

The building itself is timber framed, with an organic façade made from expanded cork. Koto can also fully furnish the Haku, creating a turnkey hospitality solution, with ultra-short lead times for design, construction and delivery compared to a conventional building. Order enough, and the price comes down – Koto suggests a unit cost of £80k per suite (or £90k each for off-grid units) if you take 15 units.

‘Haku takes the same philosophy as every Koto commission and releases it from a fixed address,’ says Koto’s co-founder Johnathon Little. ‘What matters is where it can stand: the clearing, the shelf above the water, the ground an estate has always had to leave alone. [It is] architecture that finds its place.’

Haku is available to hotels, estates and landowners from today. At volume, Haku starts from £80,000 per suite on-grid and £90,000 off-grid at fifteen units, with a tiered pricing scale available for operators planning a phased or multi-suite rollout.

Koto.co.uk

Chris D’Sylva has been taking over Notting Hill, one food business at a time, since 2019: first with Smart Grocers, the Fish + Meat Shop and Supermarket of Dreams, then with Dorian Bistro and Eel Sushi. At Nakimushi, he’s stuck to Japanese but dropped the sushi and entrusted the £2m townhouse conversion to the two chefs running the place. Robin Kosuge and Yuji Shimokawa Kelly made a name for themselves with the Robin’s Ramen and Urchin residencies respectively and now share a permanent home at Nakimushi, just off Notting Hill Gate, with ramen at street level and a wider-ranging Japanese menu upstairs.

Wallpaper* dines at Nakimushi, London

The mood: Tokyo in a Kensington terrace

Jack Architecture & Design, the London practice founded in 2020 by Jonathan Richardson, has combined a spare Japanese sensibility with British heritage details. The original brick façade survives, with the shopfront painted oxblood and a noren curtain hung above the door. The deep red carries through all three floors in hand-glazed Kit Kat tiles and the leather banquettes lining the walls. Everywhere else is brushed pine, with parquet underfoot and brass around the edges: check out the clever little table lamps which can be unscrewed and repositioned.

‘We wanted to move away from the identity of sushi restaurants,’ explains Shimokawa Kelly. ‘The hinoki you get in most of them has a very cold feeling to it. It’s much more enjoyable to eat in a warm environment, because the food looks better – and so do the guests and the staff.’

The open kitchen takes up half the ground floor, kitted out with a built-to-order grill to handle proper robata. A men bako – the box a ramen shop keeps its noodles in – has been made by a friend of Kosuge’s, carrying his Japanese nickname where the noodle factory’s name would usually go.

The other half is occupied by a central communal table and more seats by the window; upstairs is the calmer 25-seat dining room and a tiled bar. Look out for the glass-walled cold room by the stairs to the loos, where whole ducks and Ibérico Duroc pork are hung to age.

The food: Ramen and then some

Downstairs is designed for in-and-out quick eats of ramen such as Kosuge's signature chashu pork belly bowl, a Basque chicken broth with noodles cut to his own wheat-and-rye specification by Komugi Noodles in Manchester, and a ramen egg steeped in Yorkshire Tea and soy.

Upstairs is meant for a more leisurely exploration of a menu that, like Kosuge and Yuji Shimokawa Kelly, is half Japanese, half London. Corn tempura arrives wrapped in a crackling sheet of nori and dusted with salt made from fig leaves foraged a few streets away. There is quail tempura with apricot purée and a jerk-spiked tendashi dipping sauce, and a taco – ‘tako’ being Japanese for ‘octopus’ – whose buckwheat shell is enriched with fat left over from rendering the ramen’s chicken, the octopus brined and grilled under red pepper and plum. And you can order ramen up here, too.

It’s serious Japanese food for people who don’t take what they eat too seriously – the karaage tastes like the best chicken nugget in west London – but do care about the deliciousness of what they put in their mouth, whether that’s a luscious grilled Ibérico pork loin with an umami kiss of red almond miso, or a glass of aged junmai saké brewed to a recipe from 1703.

Nakimushi is located at 7 Kensington Mall, London W8 4EB, United Kingdom

The Newt is a luxurious country house hotel in Somerset, England, set on a 3,000-acre estate that also operates as a working farm, with beautiful grounds, including an apple-tree maze, woodlands and orchards. Its collaborative partners include major names such as Burberry (which staged a takeover in 2025), high-end gardening tool brand Niwaki, and Claridge’s hotel.

Discover the Newt’s first advent calendar

History, beauty, and nature come together at The Newt, and now they're wrapped up in a delicious-looking 25-day advent calendar, a first for the estate. It is inspired by Hadspen House, the hotel’s 12-room guest house, built in the 17th century and later remodelled in the Georgian period.

Festive illustrations decorate the advent calendar’s exterior, and the tucked-away gifts vary from pantry delights to kitchen tools. Among the indulgences, you’ll find gingerbread spread, garden piccalilli, Babylonstoren Blend olive oil, and sage hand cream. Behind the final window, there’s something very special: a garden membership offering access to the estate and renowned partner gardens for a year.

The full line-up:

• The Feast Mini Wooden Jigsaw Puzzle (Exclusive to advent calendar)
• Gingerbread Spread 210g
• Apple Gin 20cl
• 1847 Sage Hand Cream 75ml
• Double Cheese Sable Biscuits 80g
• Decorations inspired by the garden
• Somerset Soft Set Honey 227g
• Estate Print Tea Towel
• Milk Chocolate & Sea Salt Caramel Buttons 140g
• 3 x Newt Chocolate Bars
• 3 x Newt Seeds
• Robin Notecards
• Babylonstoren Macadamia Nut Tin 150g
• Emily The Cow Iced Ginger Biscuit 50g
• Brandy Butter 210g
• Garden Piccalilli 198g
• Mulled Spices Bag 25g
• Somerset Butter Fudge 150g
• 2 x Newt Cordials
• Organic English Breakfast Tea 45g
• Somerset Cyder Fruit Chutney 198g
• Babylonstoren Extra Virgin Olive Oil Blend 500ml
• Old English Mints In Sweet Tin 120g
• The Newt Corkscrew
• 12-month Newt Garden Membership

The Newt Advent Calendar, £250, is available from its online shop as well as The Newt Farm Shop on the estate and The Creamery at Castle Cary station.

Located in Henley-on-Thames, Friar Park has a mysterious energy. Fans of The Beatles may know it as the home of the late George Harrison, where he and his family resided. Harrison purchased the Victorian neo-Gothic estate in 1970, when it was overgrown and needed some serious care. It is now managed by his family, who helped to maintain the private land. His son, Dhani Harrison – also a musician and co-head of Dark Horse Records– worked with Niwaki on the collaboration.

Perfectly pruned, yet outrageously wild, the gardens are managed to the highest order, not for anyone to see, but for the joy of gardening. It is no surprise that premium gardening tool and accessories brand Niwaki decided to partner with Dhani, who helps to maintain its legacy.

Discover the Niwaki x Friar Park collaboration

‘It's a very well-known, but completely unseen garden,’ explains Jake Hobson, founder of Niwaki. ‘Everyone's heard about it: it's got this incredible topiary garden, which is very English, with a baroque intensity. But then it's got this very beautiful Japanese garden a few minutes away from it. It's that contrast between the two that makes the place so special.’

Hobson became close with Dhani after the latter consistently frequented the brand’s London, Chiltern Street store. ‘We had a shared – passion isn't the right word – I think obsession with Japan, with gardens, and with the pleasure of being involved in gardens, working in gardens, living with gardens, and seeing gardens. The collaboration is kind of a fusion of Japan and England, which made perfect sense,’ Hobson tells Wallpaper* over a call on a hazy autumnal morning.

Dhani agrees. ‘I am extremely addicted to the Niwaki brand,’ he shares. ‘I use it because I’m a maker and I like to build – I don’t just use the topiary tools, but the chisels, the wood planes, the whittling knives, the axes, ladders, gaiters, tabi boots: you name it, I use it. Because I spent so much time in the store, I eventually became friends with the team there, and Jake and I started talking, and it turns out we got on very well, and that’s how the whole thing came about, from a friendship.’

The collection includes a Meditation Jacket, inspired by Niwaki’s Kojima Work Jacket. It features long tails and a hood, and has a cloak-like quality, and was inspired by Dhani’s love of meditating in the estate’s Japanese garden. Hoods are often used in meditation to increase inward focus and block out distractions.

Meditation is as much a part of Dhani’s life as is music, as he tells Wallpaper*: ‘I listen to the same thing over and over throughout the seasons – the same piece of flute music or the same piece of choral music. I’ll use the music as a meditation through the garden every day, whether it’s rain or shine. I think it’s important to listen to the same thing if it’s something that moves you, so you can experience the consistency of the spirit through the passing of time – it’s quite an interesting experiment. I’ve been listening a lot to Canyon Trilogy by Carlos R Nakai, which is a record we put out on vinyl for the first time this year on Dark Horse Records.’

The collaboration’s colour palette is inspired by the maroon of the Acer Palmatum tree when it turns in autumn. ‘This is such a prominent colour in Friar Park,’ says Dhani. ‘There is a week every year where it just becomes fire – you have that whole spectrum of maroon, through to fire red and yellow.’

The collection also includes a Kojima Jacket and Rucksack. There are also essential pruning tools, including Garden Shears and a Karikomi Holster, the Hori Hori Pro, Higurashi Secateurs and Moku Pruning Saw, in Japanese carbon steel. Keen gardeners wishing to purchase the full collection can also opt for the Friar Park x Niwaki Collector's Edition, a gift set that brings all these tools together, plus a Cap, Lunch Bag and an exclusive George Harrison vinyl.

‘Japanese design is, for want of a better word, perfect’, says Dhani. ‘Jake said to me that all of these products come from individual Japanese artisans, and chances are there are only two people working at these companies, like a father and son, who have been doing it for generations, and that’s the one thing they focus on, so the skill level is very high. It’s almost too hard to explain, but Japan, as a concept, is probably the most inspirational thing in my life. If I had to [put it in] one word, it’s the mindfulness.’

While Dhani may describe Japanese design as ‘perfect’, can a garden ever be? Hobson notes, ‘There was a joke in English society gardening, that the three things you need are the three M's (money, muck, and muscle), to make a perfect garden. I don't think any of that counts. It's the passion and the personality of the person involved with the garden. A garden is never finished, and that's how a garden can live through generations.’

The Friar Park x Niwaki collection is available in limited quantities from Niwaki Chiltern Street, London; Niwaki HQ in Semley, Dorset; and niwaki.com from 12 October 2026

In Kentish Town, the slightly sleepier side of Camden, a newly renovated Victorian residence artfully blends midcentury interiors with characterful, original period details. The clients, a designer and creative director working in film, had owned the building's upper maisonette for 14 years; when the lower flat became available, they saw the potential for a project.

Step inside this modern Victorian conversion

Working closely with Architecture for London (which also recently completed a Neo-Georgian Islington house), the couple converted the Victorian structure's two separate flats back into one. The transformation wasn’t intended to be a huge revelation, however; instead, it whispers.

‘The clients loved the Victorian character of the house, so we tried to retain and reuse as much of the existing fabric as we could,’ explains Sophie Armstrong, senior architect at Architecture for London. ‘Instead of choosing between old and new, we wanted the two to sit side by side comfortably. The house had been divided into two flats, so much of the work was undoing that and restoring the generosity of a single family home.’

The big focus of the project was for the client’s midcentury furniture to fit effortlessly into the space. The architecture firm completely reconfigured the space. The former maisonette’s kitchen, on the first floor, was converted into a laundry and shower room, while the second floor was reconfigured, including moving the stairway, to create a spacious main bedroom.

The roof was replaced with a new loft conversion, which allowed space for two additional bedrooms and a large bathroom. The ground floor opens up into a spacious Shaker-style kitchen and a generous living and dining room.

Says Armstrong, ‘The exposed timbers and large rooflight [in the kitchen] give a generous sense of height, and the metal-framed glazing, reclaimed brick and Portland stone lintels help it sit seamlessly against the existing house. The kitchen is at the heart of the plan, and the lowered snug beside it adds a cosy pocket of space.’

Achieving this result wasn’t as effortless as it seems, as the biggest challenge was converting the two flats back into one while the clients continued to live on site. There was also a planning challenge.

Armstrong tells Wallpaper*, ‘The house lies within a conservation area, so external alterations had to respond sensitively to the area and meet the council's requirements. Every visible change, from the rear extension to the lead-clad loft dormers, needed to sit naturally within the character of the Victorian terrace.’

The house feels unfussy and welcoming. ‘It's a home for a working, creative family, so it should feel relaxed, rather than precious,’ shares Armstrong. ‘Tactile materials like timber and marble bring warmth, and the light-filled kitchen at the centre of the plan draws people in. It should feel like a Victorian house that has been quietly and thoughtfully refined, rather than being completely transformed.’

architectureforlondon.com

The flowers at Coworth Park have found some unexpected places to settle. They are suspended in resin tabletops, pressed into clay for bathroom reliefs and drawn across linen-covered walls. For the redesign of the Berkshire hotel’s stable rooms, suites and cottages, Martin Hulbert Design has made the estate’s wildflower meadows a recurring presence, down to the dried specimens gathered from its grounds.

Set within 240 acres of parkland near Ascot, Dorchester Collection’s country retreat offers Londoners an appealing change of scenery, with polo fields, a spa and Adam Smith’s exquisite culinary proposal at Woven. Its latest renovation marks a homecoming for Hulbert, whose studio was established during the creation of Coworth Park’s original interiors over 15 years ago. Returning alongside design directors Jay Grierson and Emma Webster, he has approached the project with an affection for what was already there.

Martin Hulbert Design revisits Coworth Park’s stable suites and cottages

‘The brief was clear: build on the legacy of Coworth Park’s past, while shaping it for the future,’ says Hulbert. That continuity is evident in the rooms, where existing oak floors and freshly painted wardrobes accompany new joinery details in storm-fallen walnut. Much of the leather upholstery has also been reused, its saddlery associations particularly apt for an estate with an established equestrian life. Hulbert describes the interiors as ‘a palimpsest where traditional craftsmanship and modern tools exist, and the previous eras are still subtly visible’.

Against this familiar backdrop, the new furnishings introduce the colours of the changing seasons. Spring yellows and autumnal shades run through mohair upholstery and handwoven wool rugs, while fabric-lined walls lend the bedrooms an enveloping country-house warmth.

Floral drawings made in the studio have been translated into block prints for linen wall coverings and curtains, carrying the botanical theme across the rooms. Elsewhere, the references become pleasingly particular: dried blooms are held within resin tabletops, while bathroom reliefs record the delicate impressions of flowers pressed into clay.

The art collection broadens this study of the grounds. Curated and commissioned by MHD, it encompasses equestrian life, hedgerows and seasonal cycles, with contributions from artists including Miles Cole, Catherine Reynolds and Hannastina Crick. Intricate botanical drawings sit within a varied repertoire of impasto oils, woven textiles and hand-forged steel flowers.

Beyond the interiors, the landscaping takes on a newly intimate scale. Coworth Park’s garden designer and horticulturalist Terri Crow is among the renovation project’s collaborators, with cottage gardens combining wild and cultivated woodland species above an understorey of spring flowers. In the stable courtyard, sculpted yew hedges divide the space into garden rooms, their edges softened by tall grasses.

Private terraces make room for breakfast outdoors or a drink before dinner, with the wider parkland waiting beyond. And when the season’s last flowers disappear from the grounds, their counterparts in linen, clay and resin will remain in residence.

Coworth Park is located at Blacknest Rd, Sunningdale, Ascot SL5 7SE, UK

British Airways has announced a redesign of its A380 interiors and Heathrow lounges, drawing on British craftsmanship across both. Among the commissions are Swaine amenity kits containing Wildsmith products, and Studio William cutlery and wine glasses developed with Richard Brendon and Jancis Robinson, while a new lounge at Terminal 5’s C Gates will pair British-made furnishings with a 17m bar overlooking the airfield.

BA’s redesign puts British craft in first class

The first refitted A380 is expected to enter service in the coming months, with new seats in all four classes and redesigned galleys and stairways. In the 12-suite ‘First’ cabin, dividers between centre seats open to create a shared lounge, with stowable tables allowing companions to dine together. Swaine’s royal-blue and cream amenity kits take their cue from early air travellers’ suitcases, complemented by herringbone blankets and navy sleepwear featuring BA’s bespoke tartan.

Business class occupies the entire upper deck, where 106 Club Suites form what BA calls the world’s largest business-class cabin. Four zones divide the space, with communal areas and Club Kitchens. The updated suites have additional storage and a blue, red and cream palette. Elsewhere, premium economy gains privacy wings and larger screens, while economy receives wider seats and larger screens of its own.

British sourcing also informs the new lounge at Heathrow Terminal 5’s C Gates, due to open at the end of 2028. UK-sourced timber, glazing, metalwork, textiles and bespoke furnishings will furnish a space overlooking the airfield and concourse, with a 17m bar that BA expects to rank among the world’s longest in an airport lounge. Within it, a dedicated Concorde lounge for First passengers will introduce darker materials, richer textures, private concierge service and separate dining spaces.

Developing the design concept recently introduced in Miami, the project forms part of a programme to redesign every BA lounge at Heathrow. Terminal 5’s Arrivals lounge is scheduled to open by the end of 2027, with 59 shower rooms, a coffee bar and deli, and dedicated work booths. A new Concorde Arrivals area will give First passengers private cabanas and dining spaces, with glass screens providing privacy within interiors in the airline’s blue, red and cream.

Some changes will be in place well before then. A dark-red First check-in area, developed with American Airlines, opens at Terminal 3 this winter, while Swaine’s amenity kits launched on outbound First services from Heathrow on 6 October 2026. Inbound passengers will receive them over the coming months.

britishairways.com

The tenth British Art Show has opened in Coventry (where it's on until 10 January 2027), celebrating what’s exciting about art made by artists born or based in the UK now, with an eye on the future. Curated by writer, curator and Wallpaper* contributing editor Ekow Eshun, the exhibition features 37 artists, showcased in three literature-inspired sections around the city centre.

Titled ‘British Art Show 10: A Chorus of Strangers’, the exhibition ‘asks questions about what happens when we see from several different positions all together, at once', says Eshun at its opening. 'Perhaps what we see and hear is a set of voices in attunement, sometimes even in disagreement, but a chorus nevertheless speaks on several different levels at the same time.'

Devised to be accessible, free of charge and to travel around the country (after its stint in Coventry, it will tour until June 2028), the exhibition is divided into three strands, each inspired by a different figure. 'Moments of Being' is inspired by literary giant Virginia Woolf; 'Ways of Living', by thinker and theorist Stuart Hall; and 'States of', by ecological philosopher Timothy Morton. On show are the works of both emerging artists and contemporary superstars alike.

‘I didn't start with the texts – the process of thinking about a show starts with the artists', says Eshun. 'But there's a research process that is just about assembling ideas, and then that starts to spill out into thinking about who else has been in this vein. I wanted to put the artist in relation to a wider body of thinking which has always been there.’

Walking into the Mead Gallery at Coventry’s Warwick Arts Centre, we enter a section of ‘Moments of Being’ – described as the moments when the cotton wool comes off life – and see a huge work painted on fabric by Emma Talbot with a fabric sculpture of a fantasy equine figure. The frieze-like work contains philosophical or empathetic phrases alongside an episodic series of vignettes.

The rooms in this venue are filled with painting and sculpture by contemporary greats, such as Mohammed Sami, Louise Giovanelli, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami, as well as the less well-known Matthew Krishnau, 2025 Turner Prize-winner Nenea Kalu, and late figurative painter Alastair MacKinven. There’s also a series of paintings on fabric by Nengi Okumu.

There is a sense of comfort and light in these works by a group of artists that is truly diverse, including in what they choose to represent, from the scars of war to gender and family.

Giovanelli’s painting of a sparkling curtain is set alongside her ecstatic Maenad, (2024), named after the cannibalistic ancient female mythical being. Krishnau’s paintings tell a story of friendship through tiny figures in epic landscapes. Ceramics by Shawanda Corbett and Rae-Yen Song represent this popular medium, executed in completely different ways.

‘“A Chorus for Strangers” unites so many works about coming together,' Eshun says. 'For example, Alex Margo Arden's account, Julianknxx’s film, Joy Gerard's paintings of crowds surging. There are so many works that hopefully articulate something on a few different registers at the same time. Those are the works I'm drawn to.’

These works, housed at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, represent protest, catharsis and healing and the collapse of industry. Together, Julianknxx’s beautiful film Shifting | Spirit | Time, 2025, a three-channel work of a choral performance of a single word, ‘wai’, Gerrard’s black-and-white paintings of crowds surging in protest around the world, and Arden’s bound workers represent the shifts in industry that Britain still reels from. Hannah Quinlan & Rosie Hastings’ large-scale fresco The Reconstruction, 2026, features a portrait of Quinlan’s grandmother and mother in a reimagined, queered version of a traditional family. Alvaro Barrington’s roller blinds set against a wallpaper of questionable online posts raises questions about expression and representation.

Now is a great time to be working with artists in Britain – so many are based here, making excellent work, with the support networks among them leading to a wonderful scene. Artists such as Lindsey Mendick, Jack O’Brien, Dala Nesser, Precious Okoyomon and Osman Yousefzada, all included in the show, demonstrate this.

‘I'm always trying to think about patterns that start to form and after a while, it doesn't become about an origin point and a line, it becomes a lattice and I have that in my head the whole time. I ended up in places with some artists that I hadn't anticipated before,’ Eshun says of the process of curation.

‘In my most optimistic version of these things, I like to think that an exhibition itself is a small utopia where anything is possible. I wanted to see if we could create a version of that within the walls of these exhibition spaces.’

I ask Eshun about his storied work on identity, in relation to a show about art in Britain at this time. ‘Let's say the show is as much about being as it is about Britain,’ he says.

‘British Art Show 10’ is a Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition, launched in Coventry, where it shows until 10 January 2027, before touring to Swansea, Bristol, Sheffield and Newcastle Gateshead. For all dates, see southbankcentre.co.uk

Sophie Calle is concerned with absence, she says, upon the opening of her new exhibition at Turner Contemporary in Margate.

It is her first UK exhibition in 2009, itself a surprising absence when considering the prolific nature of the French artist’s work. Calle resists easy definition, flitting between photography, video and installation, interested always in an eclectic array of subjects. In conceptual art project The Hotel (1981), Calle’s documenting of the Venice hotel’s inhabitants during her three weeks as a chambermaid was revealing and moving; in The Sleepers (1979), she invited 28 strangers to sleep in her bed, photographing the results. The works may be diverse, but they reveal a preoccupation with the human condition, exposing an undercurrent of vulnerability.

They are themes very much at play in Something Missing, a travelling exhibition formerly at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Here, absence takes shape in a multitude of forms – in the longing for a partner evident in On the Hunt (2017–2024), a compilation of the qualities most desired in a romantic partner in a series of classifieds, to Catalogue Raisonné of the Unfinished (2023), a gathering of the projects Calle began but never finished.

‘The Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Museum of Hunting and Nature) in Paris gave me an idea,’ says Calle. ‘I didn't know about hunting, but I know about hunting for a man. This museum had the oldest newspaper with personal ads, from 1890, so I went through them.’ In On the Hunt, Calle traces the journey from these ads, at a time before the war when a woman was expected to be a virgin, through to today’s desire for convenience and ease, encapsulated in apps such as Tinder.

‘What I like a lot about it is the economy of language,’ Calle says on the ads, which are touching in their directness (would marry intellectually interesting woman, pretty to look at, or 30-year-old seeks young woman, enormous bust only or bright eyes, without any prejudices on age difference, with artistic, somewhat literary tastes, and able to spend winter in town). ‘They’re like little haikus, because you have to pay by the word, so you have to be very precise and short. This is a vocabulary I generally like to use for my own text, as short and dry as possible.’

Elsewhere, it’s the work that’s missing, although the ideas are very much present, gathered and showcased as part of Catalogue Raisonné of the Unfinished, a tribute to all Calle’s projects which never made it to completion. Here, we have scraps of thoughts which never reached fruition and letters to fellow artists on projects which never materialised. ‘It was a way for me to get rid of everything I haven't finished,’ Calle says. ‘To finish it that way, to give it a life and an achievement, freeing me from all those things that have not worked because you have not done it. It was a way to give life to my project, even the ones that did not exist. So that catalogue, now, has been finished.’

As well a skilled archivist, Calle is an investigator and a sociologist. She is as interested in the experience of others as she is in her own, collecting first-person accounts throughout. Both Turners (1988 - 2013) – where she investigates the case of the stolen Turner paintings in 1994 by talking to security guards, curators and others – and Voir la Mer (2011), where she films residents of Istanbul seeing the sea for the first time, build on this desire to really know another.

‘Voir la Mer is totally silent except for the sound of the sea,’ Calle adds. ‘It’s the first time I did not use words because, for the first time, I had the feeling that the image was saying enough and there was no need to add anything, or I will disturb it. That happens to me so rarely.’

'Something Missing?' at Turner Contemporary until 24 January 2027

David Gingell is a chef and the co-owner, with Jeremie Cometto-Lingenheim, of London’s pioneering triumvirate of Newington Green restaurants, Primeur, Westerns Laundry and Jolene (as well as the smattering of Jolene bakeries) – a small group that upended seasonal eating in unprepossessingly chic environs when Primeur opened in 2014.

Gingell now lives in Falmouth, where he grew up. Cornwall’s set-apart nature, he says, is a boon to its food scene and the approach of its chefs: 'In Cornwall, I think you’re much more attached to the ingredients; whereas in London you’re separated by the person who sells it to you. The cooks who have moved here have embraced the life, but also that not everything is there all the time. It’s not a bad thing to be out of the latest trends.'

Here, he offers his pick of the county’s epicurean best bits.

Restaurants

Front and centre, Gingell says, is Rich Adams’s Argoe, in an elevated shack on the edge of the marina in the arty Penwith port town of Newlyn. 'As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best fish restaurant in the UK,' he says, emphatically. 'It’s got a reason for being there. Rich’s dad has a fish business in Newlyn and he’s able to get the best pick of things – the John Dory and nice sardines. They’re cooked very simply: grilled with delicious local vegetables. With that kind of food, there’s nowhere to hide.'

Up in Helston, meanwhile – and somewhat off the thronging coastal tourist trail – he likes both Pica Rico (a technicolour standing joint doing a short menu of tacos, tostadas and ceviche) and the pacific Cast Café: 'a little restaurant on the edge of a studio/gallery complex type thing. They just do really lovely food: an amazing toastie, a nice bowl of fish soup, pig’s head croquettes, the best piece of duck I’ve ever eaten.'

Seven miles or so to the east, near the village of St Martin, is the Trelowarren Estate and Flora, a café/restaurant run by Cornish cooking godhead Tim Spedding and his partner Louise. 'Tim’s one of the best chefs in the country. I’ve eaten his food in London: he was at P Franco for a bit when he started. But when I’ve eaten his food in Cornwall, it feels like he’s relaxed a bit, for it to be on another level.’ His pristine sourcing and precise cooking is seen in dishes like Westcombe ricotta and cavolo nero agnolotti, or smoked eel with green apple and curried egg mimosa.

Drinking

Gingell’s go-to pub harks back to his youth: the Seaview Inn in Falmouth is where he and his pals sank pints before big nights on the town. 'Vernon Brewery in Penryn took it over a few years ago,' he says. 'They’re local, really nice IPAs, and they did just enough to it: cleaned the toilets, sanded the floors, kept the pool table. It’s not the most beautiful, but I’ll go for some pints and a curry.”

Gingell has a 'crappy old fishing boat that I’m yet to kill myself in', which gets him and his family to and from the landing at the Pandora Inn, a thatched pub on the river in Mylor. 'It’s a beautiful, old pub, where the kids can go crabbing off the pontoon. I don’t tend to go there in summer as it’s rammed full of people bumping into each other in hire boats. But when it's calm, we’ll pootle up there.'

For wine, he’ll head to St Eia in St Ives. ‘There’s another place I do not go in summer, and that’s St Ives!’ he laughs. 'So we’ll go in the winter. Mark [Quick] and Ellie [Venning] have opened a lovely little bar that sells the occasional anchovy or a plate of something. When the sea gets colder, we’ll head to the new Kiln sauna and then have a long, boozy lunch there.'

The rest

On a more low-key bent, Gingell loves Kelp Canteen in Falmouth: 'A little van, painted blue and white, on Custom House Quay. It’s quaint, but the boys there can cook. You might get a bit of fried squid, a few oysters. It’s a vibe: busy, full of life, you go there on a hot evening in the summer and see the tourists having a brilliant time.' Similarly dreamy is Potager, a community garden, studio hub and café in Constantine doing a fine trade in soups, homemade breads and grain-flecked salads. ‘It’s nice and gentle,’ Gingell says. ‘Sometimes you need that, somewhere that’s a bit of a slower pace.’

A loaded question for the man that runs Jolene, but what’s Gingell’s favourite bakery? He bigs up Pavilion at Flushing farmers’ market, but also Native Grain in otherwise rather un-happening Truro. 'They don’t even sell coffee! Just really good pastries and bread.' Dark Pony in Falmouth, meanwhile, is his go-to for caffeine: 'They take it seriously, roast their own beans and they always have three or four coffees on. I might say “give me a random one” and I’ll always like it.'

Finally, the de rigeur Cornish pasty. 'Gear Farm near Helston,' he says without missing a beat. ‘They make them there: grow the swede, the carrot, the onions and potatoes. I’ve never had a dud, and I’ve had a lot of pasties in my life. It’s the undisputed GOAT.'

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

Explore Elsley House, a new London workspace by SODA

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

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

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

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

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

sodastudio.co.uk

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

Explore a west London extension with Ealing Return

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

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

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

Kitchen manufacturer Armony Cucine took on the build.

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

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

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

brownurbanism.com

kitchenbeedesign.com

Chanel is marking its third year as official timekeeping partner of The Chanel J12 Boat Race with a first for the maison – the creation of two new trophies. Chanel is the first title sponsor for the annual race between Oxford and Cambridge on the River Thames, which will mark the centenary of the first Women’s Race in 1927.

For director of the Chanel Watch Creation Studio, Arnaud Chastaingt, these are milestones to be celebrated with a considered approach. To create the sporting trophies, the first time Chanel has ever done so, required a process at the intersection of design, heritage and modernity.

‘Designing the trophy for The Boat Race was a deeply moving creative challenge,’ says Chastaingt. ‘It was not simply about creating an object, but about giving form to the emotion of a victory shared by an entire crew. What resonates most with me about this race is the extraordinary discipline, trust and synchronisation it requires. We wanted the trophy to honour everything that happens before the final moment of triumph: the effort, the commitment and the collective energy that make such an achievement possible.’

The two new trophies, for the men’s and women’s races, translate this energy into a streamlined form, their silver silhouettes a sculpted foil against the angular lines of their frames – polished white with matte black lines for the women’s trophy, and polished black with matte black lines for the men’s, the colours distinctive to Chanel.

‘From the very beginning, I wanted the women’s and men’s trophies to be exactly the same size, as they represent the same achievement, the same intensity, discipline, collective ambition, and moment of victory,’ Chastaingt adds. ‘There was no reason to express any difference in scale, as both crews deserve to be celebrated with the same strength and significance. The two trophies share a common design language, distinguished only by black and white details that make them unique while remaining complementary, an essential harmony within the Chanel vocabulary. This felt particularly important as the women’s race approaches its centenary in 2027, offering an opportunity to celebrate it.’

The trophies, designed to be lifted as well as admired, created new challenges for Chastaingt, who also had to consider how they felt to hold. Ergonomics, weight and structural integrity were as key to consider as aesthetics, and Chanel worked with British designer and maker of trophies Thomas Lyte to overcome challenges. Bringing the trophies to life took two years overall, with the process requiring 320 hours for each trophy.

It is a natural expression of craft for Chanel, and a discreet and meaningful token of the partnership with The Boat Race, a philosophy Chastaingt was keen to reflect in the trophy’s form. ‘The frame was designed almost like a setting, revealing and elevating what truly matters: The Boat Race itself, its history, its athletes and the intensity of victory,’ he says. ‘For me, this is where modernity lies. Not in adding more, but in refining, distilling and creating space for something that already carries such powerful meaning. The J12 naturally became the link between these two worlds. As a symbol of precision and a constant source of inspiration, it embodies values shared by both Chanel and The Boat Race, making this encounter feel both authentic and meaningful.

theboatrace.org

UK-based tech firm Gomi set out a firm ethos right from its earliest days, foregrounding sustainable sourcing and the right to repair. The Brighton company’s range of Bluetooth speakers, powerbanks and wireless chargers all have a modular construction, so easy repair is prioritised. In addition to reusing e-bike batteries, Gomi’s products are easily discernible thanks to their swirling, polychromatic, unique casings, proudly formed from recycled plastics and resembling miniature canvases.

Now there’s another source of plastic in the mix. The company has launched a new 'Childhood Memories Collection’, with materials taken from recycled Barbie dolls and their myriad accessories. The plastic figures will now find a second life in Gomi’s limited-edition range of handmade speakers, power banks and tracker tags.

According to Gomi co-founder Tom Meades, the project emerged out of a desire to make waste material more meaningful and relatable. ‘We’re ending boring grey consumer tech, and instead creating colourful interesting objects made from waste materials that tell a story,’ Meades explains. ‘In making the latest Childhood Memories Collection, we’re asking the public to send us their Barbie dolls, to melt down, and recycle parts of these materials into Gomi power banks, tracker tags and speakers – all designed to last a lifetime.’

Each month, Gomi plans to take the expected deluge of donated dolls and splice them with its plastic supply to create a series of unique and distinctive pieces of consumer electronics that are struck through with remnants of Barbie’s brightly coloured world – perhaps there’ll even be a Barbie phone or two?

To accommodate Mattel’s favourite lady, Gomi had to make some adjustments to its production process. Barbie, Ken and friends will be blended with plastic-bag waste (not commonly accepted through the UK’s household recycling systems) and resurface as second-use, repairable products that will hopefully retain some spark and colour, whilst also demonstrating to a young audience ‘how familiar objects can be thoughtfully reimagined through circular design’.

According to Gomi, ‘this very deliberate combination of nostalgia, creativity and product innovation [will] encourage conversations about keeping materials in use for longer and considering what can come next for products at the end of their original life’.

More details of the Childhood Memories Collection at gomi.design, @gomidesign

In the multifaceted world of Faye Toogood, clay is a material that is both recurring and beautifully shaped by the designer's hands. Her propensity for hand-prototyping is well-documented throughout her practice, and every project begins with an intimate act of creation before developing into fully fledged products. It is surprising, then, that throughout her career, the British designer had not yet tried her hand (literally and figuratively) at making tiles. 'As a studio, we have been asked by a few tile companies to collaborate,' the designer admitted earlier this week. 'But I turned them down in the hope that maybe one day I would get a call from Mutina.'

That call eventually arrived, and the pair just unveiled their first collaboration at the company's HQ in Fiorano Modenese, Italy. Titled 'Faces & Figures', the collection speaks the visual language of clay through a dual approach that is both discreet and boldly figurative, a testament to the designer's ability to shape her thinking into three-dimensional expressions.

‘Faces & Figures’ tiles by Faye Toogood for Mutina

The starting point for Toogood was a question: 'How can I challenge the industrial nature of Mutina to create something that felt like it had been touched by the hand?'

Hailing from Italy's centre for ceramic tile production, Mutina has perhaps been the company that most successfully continued the industrial tradition of its manufacturing district while opening up its portfolio to some of the most celebrated creative voices of today. From Patricia Urquiola to Barber Osgerby and Nathalie Du Pasquier, Mutina's collaborators have had a go at reinventing the tile both functionally and creatively.

The project started in Toogood's London studio, as the designer began modelling with clay, cardboard, paper and canvas – her usual palette of materials that helped visualise the collection's direction. The result is a full toolkit for creating a space: three sizes of plain geometric tiles in four colours (chalk, sand, clay and mud), each available in glossy and matt finishes, and two matching organic forms in a brushed matte clay effect, as well as a series of extruded bricks (bricks being a staple of Mutina, which has reinvented the genre creatively).

The human body was at the heart of Toogood's exploration, and the resulting collection features the subtle warmth of clay and the bolder expression of anthropomorphous forms. Sculptural eyes, ears, mouths, noses and nipples peek out from tiles, animating their surfaces, and serve as a complement to the more neutral pieces.

Although every tile in the collection is the result of Mutina's industrial process, they appear handmade, as if they just came out of the designer's studio. The idea is for every element to be able to be mixed and matched in both traditional and unexpected patterns, the more human elements able to insert themselves into the visual conversation quite seamlessly. 'Maybe the fact that I didn't study design means that I'm able to open a door without even realising I'm breaking a boundary, because I haven't had those boundaries and lines created for me,' notes Toogood, who started her career as a magazine editor before pivoting towards design.

It is an admirable feat, to be able to create something that is so warm and personal ('There couldn't more of me in this collection,' Toogood admits) and yet replicable on an industrial scale to be used effectively and efficiently to design a space. 'Could we create, on an industrial scale, something that generally felt like it just came out of my studio?' she asked earlier on in the process, and the answer is an astounding yes.

'When I think about a chair, I think about how the body connects to the chair, when I make a table, I think of how the legs sit underneath the table. It's all about how the body connects to furniture and objects,' Toogood shares of her process. 'And I wanted to do very much the same with a surface, so it couldn't be only geometric. I wanted it to feel like it had actually had a human touch.'

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

Step inside the new Park Hyatt Residences show apartments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

riverthamesresidences.com

Hong Kong food – while commonly tucked under the wider umbrella of Cantonese cuisine – has its own distinct identity, with unique local takes on dishes and drinks, from Hong Kong French toast (a peanut butter fried sandwich) to milk tea (with evaporated and/or condensed milk) and char siu (sticky-glazed roast pork).

Putting Hong Kong food on the map in London is Nicole Ma, co-founder of Hoko, a growing line of cafés. The Brick Lane original is inspired by a cha chaan teng (a traditional Hong Kong café) and feels at once retro and contemporary; the second concept, in Seven Dials, Hoko Wonton Noodles, dishes up plump and succulent hand-wrapped noodles; and now a third opening, Bakery Hoko on Bethnal Green Road, leans into the sweeter side of life.

Inside Bakery Hoko

Each Hoko location feels different, but all are marked by the intention to create a space that sits at the intersection of Hong Kong design and the context of London.

For Bakery Hoko, Ma worked with Justin Melican of Block One Design, who also designed Hoko’s Brick Lane café. Together they decided to focus on the material language of Hong Kong’s post-war public housing estates, which has been interpreted through a restrained brutalist lens.

‘Hong Kong’s post-war housing estates often had humble neighbourhood bakeries within them,’ says Ma. ‘So that relationship between everyday architecture and bakery culture felt very natural to us.’

She explains that they referenced visual codes such as repetition, grids, dense geometry, and very direct use of materials. However, ‘rather than recreating a Hong Kong bakery literally, the idea was to capture something of that architectural character and give it a contemporary London identity’.

She continues, ‘I shared lots of photographs and references I’d collected in Hong Kong, things I recognise instinctively as a Hong Konger, while Justin brought another perspective through materials and [knowledge of] brutalist architecture. We had plenty of friendly “battles” along the way, but that back-and-forth helped us find the balance between Hong Kong nostalgia and a contemporary London identity.’

One thing they both settled on was the bold mix of materials often found in Hong Kong, such as mosaic tiles, terrazzo, concrete and strong colours. In the bakery, this dynamic energy is seen, for example, in tiling and concrete working in harmony with Ketley brick counter, a nod to the Barbican.

Ma continues, ‘There are smaller, more personal details: our own photographs of Hong Kong housing estates, plastic bread trays, orange bakery tongs, and vintage blue melamine plates sourced by my mum. Those are probably the details that make the space feel most like home to me.’

The food: try a Hong Kong egg tart for a start

The baked goods look as good as the surroundings. Each gets its signature springy texture from Japanese flour. The breads are made using a sponge dough method, with controlled low-temperature fermentation. This means part of the dough is fermented separately at a lower temperature before the final mix, allowing flavour and dough structure to develop gradually.

There are both sweet and savoury goods on offer, from seaweed egg salad buns to lemon honey butter toast and bolo buns. At the heart of the bakery is Hong Kong’s most recognisable bake: the egg tart.

‘For me, the perfect egg tart is all about balance,’ says Ma. ‘The egg filling should be just cooked, soft, light and silky, almost closer to steamed egg than custard. It shouldn’t be too sweet, and you should still be able to really taste the egg. I also love a handmade crust with a slightly thicker lip. It gives you a proper crunch, and the small imperfections are part of what makes it beautiful. The pastry itself should be rich in butter and very crumbly. And most importantly, it should be eaten warm, when the filling is at its softest and the buttery aroma is at its best.’

Ma also notes not to miss the snow-crust char siu bun, filled with barbecue pork and wrapped in soft bread with a thin, crisp sweet crust on top; the Horlicks Swiss roll, with a very light, eggy sponge with malted Horlicks cream; and a strong Hong Kong milk tea.

You don’t need to be familiar with Hong Kong to enjoy the bakery. Just bring a hungry curiosity.

Bakery Hoko is located at 152-154, Bethnal Green Road, London E2 6DG

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

Reviving the Barbican’s Sculpture Court

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

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

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

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

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

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

barbican.org.uk

On our first visit to The Horses, the final details were being attended to. In serendipitous timing, the new pub’s sign – a Renaissance-style painting of, you guessed it, horses – had been brought out, ready for installation. ‘It’s perfect. This is my first time seeing the sign,’ exclaimed Phil Winser, co-founder of Public House Group, with James Gummer and Olivier van Themsche, the trio behind London’s ‘posh pub’ favourites including The Pelican (Notting Hill), The Hart (Marylebone) and The Hero (Maida Vale). Tucked down a side street, around a ten-minute walk from Farringdon station, the new pub retains the group’s elevated take on the traditional boozer, while incorporating an elegantly casual seafood dining room upstairs that leans into the best of the British coast.

Wallpaper* dines at The Horses, London

The mood: a casually elegant ode to the sea

The interiors for The Horses were designed in-house and spearheaded by Winser himself. The team wanted to draw on the site’s history: it sits near the former Central Fish Market in Smithfield, Farringdon.

What makes The Horses so beautiful is its departure from seaside cliché, instead welcoming abstract references to the UK coastline. ‘The biggest challenge was weaving the seafood narrative into the design in a way that felt fresh and subtle, while still creating a sense of enchantment and immersion for guests,’ Winser tells Wallpaper*. ‘We spent a long time exploring familiar nautical references – light reflecting across the kitchen tiles recalls sunlight breaking on waves; delicate wool curtains reference fishing nets; and vintage motorboat ventilator covers have been cast in porcelain to create bespoke wall lights.’

The team succeeds in its restraint. Orange and yellow circular stained-glass panels divide the ground-floor dining areas, recalling washed-up sea glass. One of Winser’s favourite details is the cast-brass push plates on the doors.

‘It’s a tiny detail,’ he explains, ‘but one with a wonderful story: they are antiques salvaged from the SS Amerikanis, an old ocean liner. There’s something particularly poetic about these objects having travelled the seas and now finding a new home in a space dedicated to celebrating the produce of them.’ These details reward eagle-eyed diners – and those versed in maritime history.

The food: fresh, simple, and well executed

The dining experience shifts from floor to floor, each with its own distinct character. The pub has a warm, convivial feel, with tall panelling, upholstered ceiling panels and intimate nooks arranged around a central bar. Here, British beers are served alongside classic bar snacks, including pork pies and a scallop and bacon bap. The first floor is home to a classic oyster bar, with a large sharing table and counter seating overlooking the fish display, framed by timber cabinets.

Up another level sits the main dining room. A long, snaking banquette traces the room’s curve, while bar seating on the right follows its contours like a wave. Winser notes that the open kitchen is the focal point: ‘Low-level lighting creates a moody, theatrical atmosphere, and the bespoke wine fridges sit alongside diners, reinforcing the sense of being right at the heart of the action.’ Finally, beneath the eaves, the top floor has been designed to feel private, with a log burner and layers of soft upholstery creating a more intimate setting.

From the grill, order the Dover sole or monkfish, both well suited to the peppercorn sauce and herby garlic butter. Add a fresh salad, zingy tomatoes and, naturally, extra chips. We were advised to try the restaurant’s ‘lighter’ take on sticky toffee pudding. There was no need for a second look at the menu: a sumptuous caramel tart arrived with hints of almond and pear, alongside boozy Chantilly cream.

The Horses has an air of nostalgia, the sort of place where a smartphone feels out of place. It comes through in the setting, but also in the attentive service, which gives the experience its easy rhythm.

The Horses is located at 26-28 Ray Street London, EC1R 3DJ, United Kingdom

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

Tour the Cornwall beach house now for sale

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do you create a fragrance brand that genuinely disrupts the beauty industry? It wasn’t even a question on Charlie Vickery’s mind when he started creating 12_things, but it's one he’s answered.

Following his role as managing director of the brand formerly known as Haeckels (now Dulcie), Vickery wasn’t looking to start his own brand. Yet, years spent reconfiguring the industry from the inside had primed him to question the status quo), and clearly, the status quo. So, when he started being served perfume brands on Instagram that each looked exactly the same, each pushing the same ingredients and generating generic, AI-sloppy content, he started to think: ‘Is there a way in which you can create a world unto itself that is two fingers up to the perfume industry?'

For Vickery, who lives in London, the answer was to create a fragrance that drew ingredients and inspiration not from gardens and beautiful lands, but instead, from the often unpleasant realities of everyday life, especially everyday life in a modern city with its industry, decay, and even, the ultimate taboo word in brand marketing, death. A way of, in his words, ‘creating beauty in the ugliness around you by looking at the materials that we typically ignore’.

12_things debuts that concept with its first launch, Inkskin, a fragrance inspired by the act of rewriting your story after a difficult ending, a kind of rebirth after a figurative death. It opens notes of metal (inspired by the smell of a morgue), before developing into paper accords (the idea of ‘writing yourself into existence again’) and rounding out with the smell of sweaty skin. Together, they create an olfactory narrative of coming back to yourself after an experience that seemed like it would un-do you.

While the storytelling aspect of the scent is interesting, what makes it most compelling is that, against all reason, it actually smells good, really good. The same is true for the other scents that will soon be added to the collection, including White Dust, a scent inspired by the remnants of a house after you move out, with notes of plastic, vapour and dust; and Infrastructure, an ode to the destruction of a city, with notes of concrete, rain-on-asphalt accord, charred cashmere, musk, and iris fraction. It even holds for Cold Storage, the most aggressive scent in the collection, which is inspired by the smell of preserving a dead body, with notes of cold metal, plastic, and ambergris, iodine, a salty skin accord – in Vickery’s words, ‘sounds minging, is beautiful’.

Beautiful, yes, and also, despite its sometimes macabre subject matter, ultimately hopeful in its message. ‘In the brand world, you're just expected to churn things out again and again,’ says Vickery. ‘So I was drawn to the idea that you could turn the ending into a celebration, turn destruction into beauty.’

That notion of turning destruction into beauty is not only present in the fragrances themselves, but the entire brand identity. 12 Things is not only an experiment in how to disrupt the fragrance industry, but how to disrupt the playbook for building any kind of brand in the Instagram-era.

Products come packed in deliberately photo-unfriendly grey, foam boxes or, for smaller sizes, plastic bags with printer paper that lists out the fragrance’s notes and makes it look more like a medical sample than a luxury perfume. To buy it, customers go to a website that looks like an early Y2K coding exercise gone awry, where they will find no products to purchase. Instead, they’ll find a phone number that they have to text in order to purchase – a way of combating the thoughtless click-to-instantly-own impulse that has become a feature of modern life. When the 12 Things physical retail space does come to London in October 2026, it will be ‘a store that destroys itself’, the details of which Vickery plans to unveil closer to the opening.

Altogether, it's an approach that doesn’t make things effortless for the customer, but then, that’s the point. ‘I think we've lost the world of retail to this sort of grey colourways and beautiful materials, but we're not really inviting the customer in,’ Vickery says. ‘I love this idea of discovery because not all things should be spoon-fed to your audience. You should breadcrumb it, and you should make them want more.

‘That will isolate 95 per cent of the population who just want stuff served to them on an ad, but that really small percentage who are interested in lore and world-building and stories and narratives need to be rewarded.’

12-things.com

Jeremy and Cath Brown founded Feldspar, the Devon-based design studio, to create pieces they needed for their own home. Working from their workshop, a 500-year-old cider farm, they focus on creating items of longevity in the form of dainty bone china tableware, elegant homewares, Feldspar's first furniture collection (which debuted in 2025 at London Design Festival), lambswool blankets, and more. Now, they have translated their simple, cosy, and playful dimpled aesthetic into a new lighting collection.

Discover Feldspar's first lighting collection

‘We always wanted to be able to create anything we needed for our home, and so we've been experimenting with larger-scale items for years now – last year's furniture collection included the very biggest things we can physically fit into our kilns, [such as] the “Merrivale” side-table base. With the pendants, the main challenge was to find the balance between casting them finely to ensure the light glowed through, and ensuring they are still structurally strong,’ Cath Brown tells Wallpaper*.

The collection comprises a series of four new pendants and two table lamps. What the founders loved about the fine bone china is that it seems white and opaque by day, but takes on a warming, paper-lantern glow during the evening.

The table lamps, the larger ‘Merrivale’ and smaller ‘Burra’, have a base made from fine bone china – thicker than the pendants for a sturdier result – with all made at Feldspar’s Devon studio. The table lamps’ shades come in pale-blue and grey linen, and are handmade by designer Eloise Scotland, based in Bath. Here, she uses traditional hand-stitching techniques. Clean lines are used for the construction, which means there are no requirements for any trim or tape around the edges.

Brown says, ‘The lampshades we designed with Eloise were inspired by the shape of a bowl of her Grandpa's, an avid ceramics collector, and each has a hidden cobalt-blue rib inside, a nod to the cobalt blue we use on our ceramics. The finishing touch is a hand-carved brass dimmer switch, tactile and unexpected.’

The pieces are elegant, but not serious, an important combination for creating a space that feels tasteful, yet lived in. ‘We took inspiration from the rooms in our home and were inspired by shapes we like from our existing collections,’ shares Brown. ‘Our kitchen has a high ceiling, so we wanted a taller pendant to sit within the space there.’ The result was ‘Big Slim’, a tall and elegant pendant to hang above a table. Another pendant in the series, meanwhile, ‘Big Bell’, has a shade that references the ‘Merrivale’ table and lamp base, ‘echoing the curves of that graceful bell shape’.

Feldspar is named after the abundant mineral found in granite that gives ceramics their strength. And strong they are, as the studio is all about designing everyday functional items that are also intended to be treasured – influenced by the longevity of pieces previous generations used to own. Brown concludes, ‘Our new range is what we call the 'staples' – classic pendants and lamps in a collection of different sizes, for all eventualities. We wanted to create truly bespoke and unique objects; each is beautifully hand-crafted.'

feldspar.studio

Hull, in Yorkshire, is a city shaped by water, industrial history and generations of seafaring. For London Design Festival 2026, internationally acclaimed sound artist Chris Watson draws upon this rich maritime heritage in Trent Falls. This immersive spatial installation takes listeners on a sonic journey along northern England’s Humber Estuary.

‘This is a sound voyage that moves with the tide, down the estuary and eventually out into the North Sea,’ explains Watson.

The journey begins at Goole Docks, where the rivers Trent and Ouse converge to form the Humber. Following the ebbing tide, the piece moves through the reeds of Faxfleet Nature Reserve before a freight train rattles past the former Oxmardyke signal box. According to Watson, this sequence draws on the railway and Charles Dickens’ mystery story, The Signal-Man. ‘These sounds connect the industrial landscape with the human story of the estuary.’

The soundscape then passes beneath the Humber Bridge, announced by the thunder of vehicles crossing its expansion joints. Later, it gathers the cries of a local fairground, cathedral bells and the roar of supporters at a Hull Kingston Rovers home game.

Further along the estuary, birds scour the mudflats while their calls mingle with the distant echoes of Saltend Chemicals Park. ‘The piece is a mix of wildlife and industrial sounds constantly interrupting one another,’ states Watson.

The journey eventually reaches Spurn Point, an extraordinary, remote spit of land extending into the North Sea. Here, the haunting calls of grey seals drift across the water alongside the rolling wash of the waves. ‘I regard my work as cinematic. I want it to fire people’s imagination,’ notes Watson.

Created from recordings gathered over nearly two years, Trent Falls compresses time and collapses distance, drawing geography, seasons and memory into a single continuous passage. Originally commissioned as part of Hull’s year as UK City of Culture (in 2017), the work extends beyond the city to capture the wider character of the Humber Estuary.

‘The piece is inspired by Hull, but it’s really about listening to the whole estuary and how it changes as you move through it,’ says Watson.

At its heart, Trent Falls is an invitation to slow down and hear both Hull and its surrounding areas. ‘With my installations, I give people the time to listen. I want them to turn their phones off and allow themselves to be taken somewhere else.’

This exploration of water, infrastructure and industry finds a fitting setting at Wapping Hydraulic Power Station. Built in 1890 and closed to the public for 13 years, the building is hosting its first cultural programme under the custodianship of the Glass Castle Foundation. Here, Trent Falls is presented through L-Acoustics’ immersive sound system as part of The Art of Sound programme for the London Design Festival.

Running until 15 September 2026, The Art of Sound also features work by Max Cooper, alongside Hollie Buhagiar’s Lengua Desollada and Helen Lyon’s A Decade Is a Long Time. Both works were created in collaboration with L-Acoustics and the Alliance for Women Film Composers.

Follow the latest from London Design Festival 2026 with our live blog.

Bloomsbury is one of London’s most studious neighbourhoods, with a rich history as the home of writers and thinkers. Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster belonged to the influential Bloomsbury Group, while Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens and Bob Marley all lived in the area at various points.

Russell Square feels like the perfect autumn day all year round. From the historic architecture of Gower Street to the secluded garden squares that offer an escape from the noise of London, its bookish atmosphere brings comfort to the city’s more introverted residents. The latest arrival in the neighbourhood is The Imperial Bloomsbury, a contemporary hotel set just behind Russell Square’s main thoroughfare.

Wallpaper* checks in at The Imperial Bloomsbury, London

What’s on your doorstep?

From the hotel, I recommend strolling to the British Museum. En route, stop at Momo’s Garden Café, a charming coffee stand in Gordon Square serving delicious cakes – its banana bread is particularly good – and a flat white that is actually a flat white. Turn onto Gower Street, admire the Gothic architecture and gargoyles perched above, then continue to Store Street, where you’ll find Treadwell’s, an atmospheric bookshop specialising in magic and witchcraft, before arriving at the museum. For an escape from the tourists, head behind the hotel to Fortitude Bakehouse, an excellent bakery tucked into the mews. From there, follow Marchmont Street past its cafés, restaurants and pubs towards the British Library and King’s Cross station.

Who’s behind the design?

The hotel first opened in 1905, in a building designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll. Architects at Cube Design retained its striking concrete façade while restoring many of its original features. The 357-room hotel now has reimagined interiors by Trevillion Interiors and Keane Brands, conceived as a tribute to the area’s creative spirit.

The building’s Edwardian character is balanced with modernist elements. As the designers at Keane tell Wallpaper*: ‘We avoided recreating a period interior. Instead, we treated the building’s history as a series of layers: its original Edwardian, neo-Gothic character and its later bold modernist architecture.’

They continue: ‘The existing concrete and geometric forms became a “Brutalist canvas”, softened with midcentury furniture, warm textures, seasonal colour and carefully integrated lighting. History therefore informed the design without dictating it. Architectural geometry is echoed subtly in patterns and detailing, while curated artwork and references to Bloomsbury bring a strong sense of place. The result is a contemporary space that respects the building’s past while giving it a fresh identity.’

The room to book

Although every room feels warm and inviting, The Hideaway is the one to book. Its small outdoor terrace features seating and a ‘hidden’ bathtub tucked beneath a pavilion – a playful take on the conventional hotel room. Keane explains that the team sought to soften the building’s concrete character through contrast, introducing natural timber, upholstery and textured fabrics.

‘Curved furniture and organic forms counterbalance the façade’s strong geometry, while planting and layered, golden lighting bring warmth and softness throughout,’ the designers say. ‘The concrete remains an important part of the building’s identity, but these richer, more human materials make the space feel welcoming rather than austere.’

Staying for drinks and dinner?

On the tenth floor, guests will find Arcus, a bar perched high above Bloomsbury. Hotel restaurants can sometimes feel barren, turning dinner into a transactional experience. Arcus is far from that. On our visit, the room was vibrant and busy, set against the London skyline with the BT Tower glowing in the distance. It is difficult for the panoramic view not to become part of the experience. The cocktail list is indulgent, combining original creations with familiar classics. The food menu is light, leaning towards snacks rather than full meals, which suits the setting. Both the steak and the lamb tacos were delicious.

Where to switch off

The gym is generously sized and even has an outdoor terrace where guests can cool down after a session. Fully equipped with Technogym machines, free weights and kettlebells, it is well suited to light resistance training, kettlebell workouts and bodyweight exercises. It is considerably larger than the average hotel gym, although you should not expect to be squatting any PBs.

The Bell Room and Terrace offers another place to unwind over board games, all-day grazing or an intimate conversation. Its name comes from the five bells on the adjoining terrace, which have been a feature of the hotel since it opened. Access is reserved for guests staying in the premium room categories: City, Horizon, Hideaway, Nest and Beacon.

The verdict

The Imperial feels like an escape within the city, which celebrates its context’s rich history while also feeling fresh and relevant.

The Imperial is located at 61, 66 Russell Sq, London WC1B 5BB, United Kingdom

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

Explore Three Rivers Passive House by Gbolade Design Studio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

gboladedesignstudio.com

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

2026 London Open House and its lasting impact

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

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

The lasting, less-expected benefits of Open House London

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manijeh Verghese’s highlights for 2026

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

Wapping Hydraulic Power Station

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

Punchdrunk Enrichment Stores

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

Humanise Spotters Guide

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

5 Wallpaper* highlights to book for 2026 Open House London

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

The Lloyd’s Building

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

Zaha Hadid Foundation

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

Barbican Conservatory

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

A design tour of Olympia

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

The Cloud House

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

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

London diners have become used to the idea of a sushi-based omakase menu; now this Fitzrovia import – the first European outpost of Ushio Haruyoshi Bettei in Fukuoka on the island of Kyushu – is introducing the capital to multi-course menus of wagyu beef. Put aside any preconceptions of fatty meat, however: the dinner-only restaurant specialises in akami (lean) wagyu rather than heavy marbling. Almost all the meat has been imported from Japan, along with the chefs who grill it and the ceramics it’s served on – not great for air miles, perhaps, but a guarantee of the niche authenticity the restaurant offers.

Wallpaper* dines at Wagyu Yakiniku Ushio, London

The mood: Counter-top cool

The restaurant’s interiors have been modelled on the Fukuoka original, with the best seats arranged around the L-shaped counter behind which the chefs sear and serve, though unless you speak Japanese, don’t expect much in the way of cheffy chat. Not that beef-based banter is the point, says chef-owner Hakusei Chin. ‘At Ushio, we’ve always believed that the quality of the ingredients and the skill of the chef should speak for themselves, so we wanted the space to feel equally calm and focused.’

He’s certainly managed that. All the staff – from the chefs to the saké-pouring sommeliers – are charm itself, while ceramics sourced from Kyushu display the same individual character. A backlit shelf behind the counter carries ceramics from Arita, the Kyushu town where Japan’s first porcelain was fired four centuries ago. Some of it is Ko-Imari, the heavily decorated porcelain that Europe bought by the shipload from the 1600s; some from Lin, a modern range glazed to a metallic finish. Vases holding seasonal flowers come courtesy of ceramicist Taeko Kajihara, who builds her pieces by hand instead of throwing them on a wheel.

‘Rather than expressing Japan through decoration,’ Chin says, ‘we chose to work with natural materials like wood, stone and plaster, and to keep the space as minimal as possible. In doing so, the counter and the act of cooking naturally become the centre of the experience.’ That minimalism extends to the lack of any obvious signage on the exterior, but rest assured that once inside, the experience doesn’t feel in the slightest bit unwelcoming.

The food: Lean cuisine

Each course of beef, whether from an omakase of A5 wagyu, a six-piece tasting selection or the à la carte, arrives with a card with the relevant cut stamped on an illustration of a cow. First comes top blade served sashimi-style, the pink meat lightly scored and faintly marbled; it looks almost like a slice of fatty tuna garnished with a shiso leaf but tastes powerfully and lingeringly of beefy umami.

The rest of the cuts come cooked, treated to the briefest of sears on the grills (‘yakiniku’ means ‘grilled meat’ in Japanese) before being flipped over and plated up. One arrangement features a trio of tongue, tenderloin and kurimi (lean shoulder), simply seasoned with salt; another plate brings top blade lightly glazed with tare. The richest-tasting of all is sirloin seared with sukiyaki marinade and presented with an egg yolk and a dome of steamed rice.

This lighter style of beef, the restaurant claims, is higher in protein and lower in fat than traditional wagyu, with the result common to many omakase meals that you may still be hungry at the end. If you’re feeling peckish, ask for an extra course of Fukuoka-style wagyu curry of slow-cooked beef tendon, its gravy-like sauce scooped up with a wooden spoon – it’s as comfortingly unsophisticated as the rest of the meal has been elegantly refined.

Wagyu Yakiniku Ushio is located at 12 Charlotte Street, London, W1T 2LU, UK.

See more of London's newest restaurant openings.

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

Step inside the Zaha Hadid Foundation and its archive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

zhfoundation.com

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