Artists and designers the world over continue to choose to make the US their home. As the latest newcomers in this ‘nation of immigrants' join a crowd of inspiring locals with dual heritage, their varied experiences help shape creative America. To celebrate the country's role as a meeting point of creative minds, we look at the plurality of voices contributing to its enduring crucible of culture and dynamism. We speak to five studios – whose founders (all Wallpaper* US400 honorees) have roots in Poland, Vietnam, India, South Korea and China, but who have made the US their creative base – about how their heritage influences their output.

Meet a new generation of American designers

Soft Geometry

For many creatives, geography is less a fixed point than an inheritance, carried across borders and reimagined in new contexts. This is true for Utharaa Zacharias and Palaash Chaudhary, founders of Soft-Geometry, a practice that took root in India and found a fuller expression in the US, as the two became partners in work and life.

A rich cultural potpourri is the core of their practice. ‘Palaash is from Ghaziabad, near Delhi, and I am from Kochi, Kerala; it would be hard to pick two places more diametrically opposite,' says Zacharias. Growing up, they spoke different languages, ate different food and were raised in different religions, but their friendship found common ground in design. It began in college in Delhi and continued at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, where working on projects revealed a shared aesthetic. One afternoon, they scribbled in a notebook that together they made ‘soft geometries'. Text by Aditi Sharma

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Dominik Tarabański

Dominik Tarabański was born in 1982 in Radymno, Poland, a small town near the Ukrainian border, and studied photography in Łódź and Warsaw. After four years moving between Polish cities, he left for New York in 2012. Heading to New York, he says, was like going to the moon; a single three-week visit decided it for him. Fashion photography paid the bills and took him between New York, Paris and London. The still lifes he made by hand, away from the crowded sets.

Tarabański says he is pursuing ‘this intersection of synthetic and organic', which sits ‘at the foundation of everything I do'. He contorts living matter into arrangements as deliberately impossible as a Dutch flower painting, then photographs them at the fleeting point of giving way. The finished prints are large, over 2m tall, and hold the wall like sculpture. From a rubber band and a dried stem, he makes what he calls a kind of magic: ‘Nothing becomes something.' Text by Reeme Idris

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Vy Voi

For Steffany Tran, the Vietnamese-American founder of New York-based studio Vy Voi, objects become storytellers. Their materials, form and construction reflect longstanding cultural traditions, which she interprets through her own voice. ‘I describe my practice as almost like using a metal detector and finding nuggets in history,' she says. Tran, whose parents are both refugees, grew up between San José, California, and Saigon, where she spent summers visiting her family.

After studying industrial design in the San Francisco Bay Area, Tran moved to New York, where she worked in traditional firms, where the fast pace and problem-solving briefs were not exactly aligned with her personal interest in the art of making. She then took up ceramics at a local community centre as a creative outlet and eventually, she decided to dedicate all her time to creating handmade objects inspired by Vietnamese craft, which she felt were missing from the contemporary design world. ‘It was almost an exercise in this idea of if you can't find it, build it yourself,' Tran says. Text by Diana Budds

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Minjae Kim

Seoul-born, New York-based designer Minjae Kim discovered the US on an exchange in high school. After studying painting and architecture, and a stint of military service back home, in 2008 he travelled to Seattle to continue his studies, later moving to New York for a Master of Architecture at Columbia University. He spent three years at Studio Giancarlo Valle, then started his own practice from the basement of his old apartment during the pandemic.

His debut in 2021 at LA design gallery Marta catalogued Western typologies, such as a chair adapted from Freud's personal study. These were objects that differed from his understanding of the world, and he made them his by remaking them – for example, by treating fibreglass like cloth, quilting it before coating it with resin. Text by Reeme Idris

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Kawabi

Lanterns are talismanic in Chinese folklore. They are beacons that guide ancestral spirits, invite prosperity, and protect against malevolent forces. For Aaron and Irisa Chan-Kawabi, founders of New York studio Kawabi, they are also symbols of belonging.

Whenever the designers encountered these objects in the US, typically at Chinese restaurants or souvenir shops, they were the same symmetrical red or white design. ‘How does a typology move from one culture to another?' Aaron wondered. He and Irisa saw parallels to their own experience as part of the diaspora (Irisa was born in China and grew up in Massachusetts; Aaron was born in Brooklyn to parents who emigrated from Hong Kong) and began to contemplate what a lantern that represented their own experience might look like. Text by Diana Budds

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Lanterns are talismanic in Chinese folklore. They are beacons that guide ancestral spirits, invite prosperity, and protect against malevolent forces. For Aaron and Irisa Chan-Kawabi, founders of New York studio Kawabi, they are also symbols of belonging.

Whenever the designers encountered these objects in the US, typically at Chinese restaurants or souvenir shops, they were the same symmetrical red or white design. ‘How does a typology move from one culture to another?' Aaron wondered. He and Irisa saw parallels to their own experience as part of the diaspora (Irisa was born in China and grew up in Massachusetts; Aaron was born in Brooklyn to parents who emigrated from Hong Kong) and began to contemplate what a lantern that represented their own experience might look like.

Bringing the conversation into the studio, the two began designing their own lanterns. Informed by one-dollar shades, as well as Japanese lantern-making techniques, the results were asymmetrical and irregular.

The pair met on their first day at Parsons School of Design. Irisa says they had a ‘friendly rivalry' while in school, which turned into a relationship after they graduated. They maintained separate practices (Irisa as a product designer, Aaron as a fabricator) before launching Kawabi in 2024.

Aaron and Irisa are cerebral designers who think through what they create, the work all done by hand in their studio. ‘It's personal, it's free-flowing, and a lot of the time we don't really understand what we're making until the very end when we have our own discussions and critiques about it,' Aaron says.

The first lamp they designed and made – the ‘Souvenir' lamp, a kozo paper lantern suspended in a wood frame – came out of necessity: they needed to furnish their home and couldn't find pieces they liked. So, they created a series of lamps referencing bonsai trees, legumes and folding screens.

The duo describe their lamps as cross-cultural relics that reflect their relationship and personal histories. ‘Before we started this studio, we used to obsess over lost stories,' says Irisa, adding that the passing of grandparents and the reluctance of living family members to talk about more difficult memories have led them to try and fill in the gaps through their design practice. For Aaron, whose half-Japanese grandfather was born in Canton during the Japanese occupation, using Japanese techniques is part of him creating a different relationship to that part of his heritage than his elders had.

Not being bound to tradition, yet still finding interest in it, has yielded unusual forms, like a walnut triptych embedded with paper lanterns, or ‘Amica', the studio's newest collection. A collaboration with ceramic artist Christopher Merchant, the latter explores the idea of welcoming a new material and another person's viewpoint into their work.

With each piece, Kawabi affirms an experience that will be familiar to diasporic Americans, yet remains underdiscussed. ‘For me, there's a great desire for reclamation inside America,' Irisa says. ‘Heritage is part of the story, but our home is here.'

kawabi.com

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

I came to scoff and stayed to praise. Dataland, the museum of AI arts in Los Angeles by Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, is their supernatural fantasy of gorgeous data. Unlikely as it seems, with multi-coloured lights swirling overhead, underfoot and patterning the body, it is all drawn from the natural world.

The Turkish artists, who are married, first conceived of it during the 2019 Covid pandemic when they felt deprived of actual nature due to the parks and trails that were closed. Working indoors, they created their own out-of-doors, an AI realm that evolved as the new Machine Dreams: Rainforest.

Immersive art installations are commonplace now, but Dataland is a world apart, literally.

Eighty-four 4K Epson projectors and 50 billion pixels deliver images from the Amazon selected from the Smithsonian’s Encyclopedia of Life, a digital resource at the National Museum of Natural History. These are not films but the multicoloured, photographic essences of butterflies, orchids, ferns and fauna. It evolved from Anadol’s own choice to take ayahuasca (a psychedelic) with a spiritual leader and discover profound connections to the rainforest. Here, the journey through the galleries concludes with one called the Sanctuary and a sacred healing song of the Yawanawá people.

Is this recreated world a hallucinatory experience? Pretty much, and doubtless many visitors will enhance their 20 or more minutes of wandering or dancing to light and music.

An omni-sensual experience, it was designed by Anadol, Erkılıç and his collaborators to respond to your responses. At the entry to the 25,000 sq ft structure on the lower level of a Frank Gehry-designed high-rise in the downtown arts district, visitors are given wristbands that convey their physiological and emotional responses. A padded collar around the neck wafts a series of individualised odours, a collaboration with L’Oréal. I got sweet moonflower.

Walking through towering rooms radiant with patterns as well as specific images of foliage and fluidity, with birds and lightning bugs flittering about, my own response was astonishment. The music leans towards techno-pop with bird song from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. During my visit, a long passage from Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.3 added to the sense of being in a meadow dappled with sunlight. The romantic theme was suggested by Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor laureate of the LA Philharmonic at Disney Hall, which stands across the street. This integration of past, present and future may be key to some sense of wellbeing within the unprecedented presentation. Far from jarring, the Infinity Room is an Avatar-like virtual landscape and fable about a glass hummingbird based on Anadol’s own dreams. But the haunting sound of a mating call is that of a now-extinct bird in Hawaii. It is the last known recording of its call.

Anadol is the most advanced and sophisticated of artists using AI. His pulsing flat screens appear to morph from two to three dimensions and have been shown in many galleries and museums. Art critics were unconvinced and made unflattering comparisons to lava lamps. Anadol accelerated into the challenge by using AI to build his Large Nature Model – ‘the world’s first open-source AI model based solely on nature data’, trained on datasets drawn from 'ethical sources'. As he walked among visitors to this creation, he explained, 'Everything here was designed from the beginning. There are no cables. Intentionally, everything is just art and technology. It’s a first, never been done before. This is ten years of practice.'

He points out that for thousands of years, we have looked at art and had feelings. 'Our model is asking, can art feel us back? Our heartbeat, our emotions, our goosebumps? If it feels, what does that mean? We can hear, touch, smell, feel, even taste, so it's truly exploring the five senses.'

On the taste front, various types of chocolate – 'data sculptures' – are given to visitors at the conclusion of their wander through different galleries. The LA chocolaterie Valerie Confections used data from the show to make the sweets, some being fruity, another with an ashy, woodsy flavour.

About that data: Refik Anadol Studio claims it is erased after 30 days. Visitors can choose to keep their data, which can be used to decorate a T-shirt, available in the gift shop, of course. There are Dataland memberships offering priority visits as well as NFT options. At the conclusion of the show, there is an ironic moment. A gallery with an enormous robotic arm can use your data to produce paintings. The kind that hang on your wall as, well, art.

dataland.art

In contrast to the compressed, efficient install that's often typical of high-end residential design efforts, Jamie Bush welcomed an extended timeline when transforming a midcentury Pierre Koenig house – a 1966 home originally designed by the Southern California modernism master.

‘It was this slow, layered process, which was wonderful,’ the Los Angeles–based, New York–bred designer says. The clients, who live in Washington, DC, bought the property as ‘a hideaway in California that they could escape to, but live a very different life. They tasked us to reimagine the house as a contemporary craftsman/artisan take on this midcentury treasure,’ Bush explains.

The four-bedroom, relatively compact house sits on a bluff in coastal Rancho Palos Verdes, a neighbourhood located south of Los Angeles. While the property was structurally intact, a prior renovation that Bush describes as ‘a clean, impersonal contemporary take’ on Koenig's celebrated post-and-beam work – which includes the famed Case Study Houses #21 and #22 – called for a soulful update.

Revisiting this Pierre Koenig house's midcentury materiality

Bush took a hyper-sensitive approach to remove overly clinical interventions from the early 2000s. ‘This is a good example where Koenig would have black posts and beams and white walls, which we wanted to keep,’ he states. ‘Then there would be isolated moments of wood and colour with a lot of his buildings. It was an opportunity to bring in the crafted layer on top of this midcentury pavilion.’ As per the oft-followed West Coast impulse, exteriors and interiors would be seamlessly integrated, here in collaboration with SoCal native landscape gurus Terremoto.

Like all quality architectural rehabilitation projects that don't set out to make a time capsule, the founder of Jamie Bush + Co drew upon both intensive research and creative licence. ‘We basically did a partial restoration and reimagining of this house because they didn't want to recreate everything that was historical,’ he explains. His experience reviving other historical homes, such as John Lautner's Silvertop in collaboration with architect Barbara Bestor, informed the strategy.

So, the house's signature chevron-profiled folded-plate roof, wood surface treatments, open floor plan, and footprint were to remain. Specific features begged for proper repair, notably the red brick-clad fireplace that had been swathed in black. Bush then took the bold yet fitting step of freshly coating the front door in a reddish-persimmon hue.

His handling of millwork illustrates how Bush identified and navigated certain currents in the Palos Verdes Koenig. ‘When many of these houses were built originally, they would have one craftsman that would build the cabinetry and the panelling,’ Bush notes. The library and primary bedroom are panelled in ipe tropical hardwood that is articulated ‘in the same language’ as the building's exterior wood elements, resulting in ‘more enveloping and rich’ spaces.

He further explored material expression via walnut cabinetry and terrazzo surfaces in the kitchen and bathrooms. ‘There's a modesty and an economy, if you will, of using the same materials – maybe in different colours and in different ways – so there's like variations on the theme,’ Bush elaborates. When customising the earthy grey terrazzo mix, ‘I wanted chunky – that sort of slight primitiveness. It's not something necessarily that Koenig would use, but it felt right,’ he says. The result reads as refined Flintstones, less fictionally futuristic Jetsons.

A through-line of what he describes as ‘a modernist, natural aesthetic [with] a midcentury ethos of form and texture highlighting materiality’ emerged from this particular mix of furnishings, decor, and art that also operate as foils for the architecture's pronounced geometry. ‘It was a great challenge to heighten all the textures and the natural finishes and the wabi-sabi of the perfect imperfection in natural materials and patina of vintage pieces, and highlight it by eliminating strong colour,’ Bush observes. Nonetheless, artwork by the likes of Jonathan Ryan and Alexander Calder introduces subtle chromatic components.

Along with collectible objects of domestic and global origins ranging from George and Mira Nakashima to Sergio Rodrigues, Bush was drawn to historical and contemporary artisans and artists with California ties. Works by Florence Nolan, Peter Voulkos, Mattea Perrotta, Bradley Duncan, Casey Johnson, and Commune appear in the home's cosily scaled spaces. Outside, a large-scale, turquoise-hued installation commissioned from celebrated ceramic artist Stan Bitters animates a wall next to the pool, its reflection seen dancing on the water's surface.

To ensure that the indoor-outdoor spatial dynamic would feel ‘like one idea’, Bush called upon Los Angeles landscape firm Terremoto to transform the grounds by activating the home's two private courtyards, installing new plant life throughout, and enhancing the view corridors. Drought-tolerant, low-maintenance plantings are simultaneously environmentally preferable and practical, given that the homeowners are part-time residents.

Terremoto's plan integrated other design considerations, too. ‘Spare sculptural plantings made their way into the house as well,’ Bush says, emphasising the interplay among cacti and succulents, and the home's tactile artworks and sculptural furnishings. Steps away from the pocketing living room doors, Terremoto shaped an outdoor patio with a fire pit to function as a viewing platform for enjoying the proximity to the Pacific Ocean. The sandstone hardscape reflects ‘a palette that would respond to the interior finishes’, Bush adds.

This holistic, multidisciplinary coordination, which unfolded over multiple years, demonstrates how the design team found common ground between homage and interpretation. ‘We tried to honour and respect the original intent of these indoor-outdoor spaces,’ Bush says. ‘We think Koenig would have appreciated this level of consideration and craft if he were practising today.’

jamiebush.com

Last year in Seoul, Minjae Kim presented ten chairs that a carpenter friend had spent a year building and lacquering. The technique was traditional, the kind formally preserved in South Korea and largely absent from contemporary furniture and, for Kim – born in Seoul, based in New York – the first time he had used it in earnest. He had been making furniture for five years, and much of that time had gone into figuring out, on his own terms, what to make of his birthplace.

Kim discovered the US on an exchange in high school. After studying painting and architecture, and completing a stint of military service back home, in 2008 he travelled to Seattle to continue his studies, later moving to New York for an architecture master’s at Columbia University. He spent three years at Studio Giancarlo Valle, then started his own practice from the basement of his old apartment during the pandemic.

His debut in 2021 at LA design gallery Marta catalogued Western typologies, such as a chair adapted from Freud's personal study. These were objects that differed from his understanding of the world, and he made them his by remaking them – for example, by treating fibreglass like cloth, quilting it before coating it with resin. The following year, with his mother, the painter Myoungae Lee, he co-presented an exhibition at Matter Projects in New York: four pieces drew on her work, including a chair inspired by one of her Coexistence paintings.

Press attention after the two shows fixed on his heritage in ways Kim did not recognise in the work itself. ‘If it wasn't me making it,' he says, ‘nobody would say this has a Korean tradition.' His response was the next show, with Nina Johnson Gallery in Miami, titled ‘IYKYK' (If You're Korean You Know). Here Kim made moon jars from fibreglass rope and lights based on ceremonial robes. The Korean references were unmistakable; he has described his spirit at the time as almost punk, ‘I'll show you how to do it.'

Three years ago, an invitation arrived from non-profit cultural foundation Arumjigi to bring the IYKYK approach to a South Korean audience. It softened and matured what had been a somewhat defiant gesture, and led, in time, to the lacquered ‘Seoul' chairs. In the Marta show ‘Phantom-22', in 2025, Kim switched focus again, to LA, a city where a mountain lion, who had crossed the freeways into Griffith Park, settled and died, had become a local icon. Kim's sculpture took the cougar's name, P-22; the phantom of the exhibition’s title referenced ‘the spectres of the city… creatures, ideas, and topographies that define Los Angeles’. The production furniture was made in California, and carried Kim's touch in its cast-resin handles.

Kim has spoken of fighting a lonely fight in New York with references people around him are not likely to recognise. However, he notes that as South Korea itself has become globally visible in recent years, he has had to explain himself less and the gap has narrowed. Going home is still double-edged, he says: he stands out, he tries to blend in. ‘The identity crisis,' he says, ‘has been kind of melting away.' In September 2026, he will show with Marta at Frieze Seoul.

minjae.kim

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

For decades, one of architect Kendrick Bangs Kellogg’s most intriguing works remained almost unknown outside of architectural circles. Sitting on a quiet stretch of Solana Beach, San Diego County, it was known only to the family who built it. Now, for the first time, the Chapman Residence has come to market (following Kellogg's Kravis Residence earlier this month), listed for $4.75 million, offering a glimpse of what happens when an ordinary tract house is transformed into a work of art.

In 1960, artists Wayne and Barbara Chapman purchased a modest suburban home. After marrying in 1969, they enlisted Kellogg to reinvent it. The transformation occupied much of the 1970s, turning an unremarkable house into something almost unrecognisable from its origins.

Kellogg worked closely with the Chapmans throughout the project. Wayne effectively acted as construction manager, recruiting friends to help source massive utility poles and thousands of board feet of rough-sawn redwood, while Barbara shaped the interiors. The result, therefore, is less a conventional architect-client relationship than a collaboratively hand-built home where, as Wayne later recalled, nearly every piece of timber bore his own fingerprints.

The roughly 3,900 sq ft, three-level residence is defined by Kellogg's signature organic architecture. Sculptural fireplaces anchor many of the interior spaces, while flowing, curvilinear forms dissolve the boxy logic of the original house. Redwood and glass dominate the material palette, complemented by hand-carved timber entrance doors. A dedicated ceramics studio was created for Wayne's practice, and arrival at the house unfolds through a sequence of Japanese-inspired gardens.

This experiential element was central to Kellogg's architectural philosophy. Drawing on Frank Lloyd Wright's principles of organic architecture, he pushed them into a more expressive, biomorphic realm. Here, structural elements evoke ribs and bones, while forms borrow from shells, plants and geological formations. Craftsmanship – in wood, stone and concrete – is inseparable from the architecture itself, and the relationship between house and garden is treated as every bit as important as the interiors.

Carved from the shell of an ordinary suburban house, with portions of the original structure retained even as its identity was completely reimagined, the Chapman Residence is unmistakably Kellogg. Yet it is equally a testament to the Chapmans, whose vision, labour and artistic sensibilities shaped every stage of its creation.

The Chapman Residence is listed with Keith York at Agents of Architecture.

Despite the foggy morning marine layer at the shore, summer is upon us in Los Angeles, and that means many trips to the beach for fresh seafood and frothy margaritas. Enrique Olvera of local Downtown LA favourite Damian, and award-winning Pujol in Mexico City, has recently unveiled a new concept for Mexican mariscos and agave cocktails in Venice, San Damián. Here's what to expect.

Wallpaper* dines at San Damián, Los Angelesdamian

The mood: Airy California cantina

The former ATLA space on Abbott Kinney was taken up a notch by Mexico City-based architecture studio TALLER ADG who collaborated with brand consultant Charlotte Fischli to refresh the dining room and bar. Lush greenery pops against the airy palette of light timber, which includes tables from Artless and chairs by Mexican architect and designer Oscar Hagerman.

The petate ceiling, made from woven palm fronds, adds a touch of tropical whimsy and draws the eye to colourful pieces from Mexican artists Marcela Calderon and Perla Valtierra. Coming soon: the back patio will become a taqueria, which will no doubt also be packed on the weekends.

The food: Michelin-level Mexican seafood

The pottery and ceramics for plating were all sourced In Mexico City, Oaxaca and Michoacán and make a stunning backdrop for the Mexico-meets-California focused dishes from chef Chuy Cervantes (also of Damian DTLA).

Cervantes is a master of ceviches and tangy poached shrimp aguachile, and you will be tempted to order everything from the raw dishes, along with a smoky mezcal Paloma or Mijenta Blanco margarita. But don’t overlook the crispy tlayuda topped with chorizo de pescado; fish tacos; or a crunchy Weiser Farms potato flauta. Large format plates include pescado asado guacachile amarillo – a whole fish (usually branzino), that is served with tortillas and salsas. And remember to save room for classic churros with a rich chocolate dip. You can walk it all off later on the boardwalk.

San Damián is located at 1025 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice, CA 90291, United States

For Steffany Tran, the Vietnamese-American founder of New York-based studio Vy Voi, objects become storytellers. Their materials, form and construction reflect longstanding cultural traditions, which she interprets through her own voice. ‘I describe my practice as almost like using a metal detector and finding nuggets in history,' she says.

Tran, whose parents are both refugees, grew up between San José, California, and Saigon, where she spent summers visiting her family. Thanks to her cross-cultural upbringing, ‘I could weave in and out of both of those identities very cleanly,' she says. ‘That openness and tenderness to what those identities are really shaped how I am as a person and my practice as well. I'm not coming from an outsider's gaze.'

After studying industrial design in the San Francisco Bay Area, Tran moved to New York, where she worked in traditional firms including Lippincott and Smart Design. The fast pace and problem-solving briefs were not exactly aligned with her personal interest in the art of making, so she took up ceramics at a local community centre as a creative outlet. There, she focused on perfecting the loose gestural glazing found in Vietnamese pottery. Eventually, she decided to dedicate all her time to creating handmade objects inspired by Vietnamese craft, which she felt were missing from the contemporary design world. ‘It was almost an exercise in this idea of if you can't find it, build it yourself,' Tran says.

Tran's Vietnam trips began to include visits to libraries and meetings with art historians and anthropologists to build her vocabulary around Vietnamese design and craft. She was particularly interested in how contemporary studios continued age-old traditions and reflected different sensibilities compared to East Asian aesthetics. This line of inquiry led her to dó, a textured paper made from tree bark that has been produced in Vietnam for over 800 years. She met one of the few families in the country who continue to make the material, and used it to design lamps, creating oblong shapes inspired by traditional kites, as well as welcoming, rounded silhouettes. Her newest collection derives its form from folded banana leaves, a core ingredient in Vietnamese cooking.

Tran is currently developing a new body of work based on her latest obsession: 17th-century Vietnamese lacquer, which was commonly applied to musical instruments and furniture with decorative inlays. ‘Design has the ability to make the seemingly unknown – and sometimes as a result, overlooked – feel more familiar and distinct,' Tran says. ‘If we can understand and covet Korean moon jars, Japanese joinery or Italian glass, I think we can make space for Vietnamese lacquer art and Lao weaving, too.'

The ultimate Vy Voi project is about expanding cultural vocabulary, democratising important narratives, and affirming human experience through captivating objects. So far the results have been heartwarming. ‘One of the most fulfilling things about doing this is when people message me to say, “I loved hearing the story”,' says Tran.

vyvoi.com

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

This article appears in the August 2026, Creative America issue of Wallpaper*, available from 2 July in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

For Keith Haring, New York was a blank canvas, becoming a central piece of his artistic identity after he moved to the city in 1978. It shaped an aesthetic located at the intersection of urban art and activism, which Haring cultivated in the 1980s alongside peers Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. They led a movement that brought art into the public space, in murals or on the subway, a crucial factor for Haring in raising awareness for fraught and urgent topics such as AIDS and education about drugs.

Born in New York, it was an energy that spread around the world, taking shape in an instantly recognisable shared visual language, a fluidity celebrated now with an exhibition, ‘Keith Haring: A World in Motion’, at New York art space 60 White.

‘Haring did not simply travel the world, he entered into dialogue with it,’ says Carlo McCormick, who curated the exhibition in collaboration with Lio Malca. ‘His work pulses with the energy of New York street culture while reflecting the histories, images, and rhythms of the places he encountered. The result is a global conversation, joyful, immediate, and profoundly connected.’

Recreated in 60 White’s multistorey space is San Francisco nightclub DV8, a hedonistic playground of the 1980s-90s that featured murals painted by Haring. This kind of community element is central to Haring’s work, and is also epitomised in his chalk drawings on black paper, which became familiar sights on the New York subway, and the Sister Cities – For Tokyo painting that he created in 1985, marking the friendship between New York and Tokyo, a bold and brilliant tribute to two cities he loved.

Adds Malca: ‘Keith Haring’s work is rooted in New York, but it belongs to the world. This exhibition highlights his ability to connect people through a shared visual language that remains as immediate and powerful today as it was in the 1980s.’

‘Keith Haring: A World in Motion’ is at 60 White, sixtywhite.com

When Central City Plaza, a shopping centre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, first opened in 1973, it was a vibrant hub for Black life. Designed by the state’s first licensed African American architect Alonzo Robinson Jr. in the optimistic New Formalist style, the complex housed Black-owned businesses that included a bowling alley, attorneys' offices and a restaurant that dished up soul food and cordon bleu.

Over the decades, Central City Plaza fell into disrepair and neglect, and, even after a public awareness campaign halted the demolition of one its buildings, the campus’s future was uncertain. Today, however, thanks to a grant from the Getty Foundation and The National Trust for Historic Preservation, Central City Plaza – in addition to four other historically-significant sites designed by Black architects and designers – has the opportunity to rewrite its next chapter.

The program, Conserving Black Modernism, was established in 2022 by the Getty in partnership with The National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund to protect modern sites that are integral to Black history, many of which are overlooked and under threat. Sites are identified through an application process, with winners receiving $150,000 to conduct repairs, hire staff or undertake preservation planning. Since the program was launched, more than $4.85 million in funding has been distributed.

‘Conserving Black Modernism has helped communities in nearly every region of the US protect the work of Black architects and has helped broaden the very definition of modernist architecture,’ Joan Weinstein, the Getty Foundation’s director, said in a statement. ‘Teaming up with the National Trust over the past five years has allowed us to take actionable steps to preserve underrepresented sites that embody Black excellence in design, activism and resilience.’

This cycle's winners include Central City Plaza; the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanities Center at Texas Southern University in Houston.; The Park-Johnson Hall at Fisk University in Nashville; portions of Boston’s Southwest Corridor; and St. Mark AME Zion Church in Indiana.

The National Trust Action Fund, meanwhile, is distributing an additional $2.26 million to 22 more locations around the country, including a seed barn in rural Alabama that will serve as the future home of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center, and barracks at Camp Naco in Arizona that housed the Black army regiment known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

Read on to learn more about the grantees.

Central City Plaza – Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Central City Plaza was completed by architect Alonzo Robinson Jr in 1973. Robinson was Wisconsin’s first licensed architect and designed the complex in the New Formalist style, a rarity for Milwaukee. The plaza includes three buildings defined by arcades, concrete panels and sweeping porticos or ‘wings.’ The Salvation Army took over several structures in the early 1980s, and now runs a homeless shelter on the site. According to the Getty and the National Trust, the grant will fund a strategic report that will guide restoration and allow the Salvation Army to expand its services.

Martin Luther King Jr. Humanities Center at Texas Southern University – Houston

This building contains the School of Communications at Texas Southern University, one of America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). The modernist building was completed by architect John Saunders Chase Jr. in 1969, just a year after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The building, which features a sweeping roof and a central volume that appears as a series of stacked discs, is said to evoke King’s legacy. Chase Jr. went on to be a founding member of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), a group that has advocated for equity in the architectural profession. The grant will fund a report on the building that will identify key preservation priorities and delve into the building’s history.

The Park-Johnson Hall at Fisk University – Nashville

New York- and Philadelphia- practice McKissack & McKissack is the oldest Black-owned architecture firm in the US. In 1954, founding partner Moses McKissack III designed this campus building for Fisk University, an HBCU in Nashville. The low-slung three-story building is defined by a red brick facade and modernist proportions, and contains classrooms, administrative spaces and a lecture hall. The grant money will help develop a preservation and management plan for the structure, and help document McKissack & McKissack’s work on the greater Fisk campus.

Southwest Corridor – Boston

After activists halted the construction of a 12-lane highway that would cut through Boston, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority built a four-mile park that contained a public train line in addition to a 52-acre park. The work, most notably the postmodern Ruggles Station, was led by Stull & Lee, Inc., a Black-led Boston-based architecture firm. The Getty funds will help document the site through 3D modeling, photography and more.

St. Mark AME Zion Church – East Chicago, Indiana

Designed by Wendell Campbell (who, along with John Saunders Chase Jr, was a founder of NOMA), this striking modernist church in East Chicago, Indiana was designed to evoke praying hands. The structure features a dramatic origami-like roof, triangular ribbon windows and an airy, column-free sanctuary. The grant funding will help the church create a preservation plan supporting ongoing maintenance and rehabilitation needs.

Roses for Mother began in 2018 as intimate, improvised postcards: flowers that Dominik Tarabański arranged and photographed while travelling, then sent home to his mother as a way of bringing her the world she had taught him to believe in. He could not send the flowers themselves, so a photo went in their place. The series is on view at Bergdorf Goodman, as part of Gabriella Khalil's design residency, until the end of August 2026.

Tarabański was born in 1982 in Radymno, Poland, a small town near the Ukrainian border, and studied photography in Łódź and Warsaw. After four years moving between Polish cities, he left for New York in 2012. He has what he calls a primal side: the pull to go farthest and fastest, to do a little more than is asked. Heading to New York, he says, was like going to the moon; a single three-week visit decided it for him. Fashion photography paid the bills and took him between New York, Paris and London. The still lifes he made by hand, away from the crowded sets.

Tarabański says he is pursuing ‘this intersection of synthetic and organic', which sits ‘at the foundation of everything I do'. He contorts living matter into arrangements as deliberately impossible as a Dutch flower painting, then photographs them at the fleeting point of giving way. The finished prints are large, over 2m tall, and hold the wall like sculpture. From a rubber band and a dried stem, he makes what he calls a kind of magic: ‘Nothing becomes something.' He could have worked in concrete, he says; the delicacy was deliberate, a counterweight to a world he finds increasingly harsh.

Asked about what he retains of his birthplace, Tarabański is wary of the question and the clichés it invites, but what he will own is a disposition. There is the composure he trains for each morning through a hard physical routine, so that the day's work comes to him more easily; the optimism and the sensitivity he traces to his mother; and an economy he calls ‘very Polish', the instinct of a culture ‘excellent at being efficient'. It shows (or doesn't) as a privately held ethic, the discipline of working well when nobody looks at you, and in the determination to keep a contemporary vernacular of his native Polish, unwilling to let distance wear it down. Since moving to New York, Tarabański has become a compulsive hiker, seeking out a trail wherever he travels. This, and the wildness of the elements in his work, are his reply to a city of pressure and hard surface. The same balance runs through the rest of his life, in the way Poland and New York each answer to the word ‘home'.

His latest series, Between Stems, makes pressure its subject: knotweed, orchid and lily pinned and taped under tension, a measure of how much the world can load onto a thing before it gives. The work was shown this year with LA gallery Marta at FOG Design+Art in San Francisco, alongside that of Minjae Kim. A further solo exhibition in New York, also with Marta, is planned for autumn 2026. It will draw on Little Roses, a freer parallel series of pieces that run from the hand-sized to ones taller than Tarabański is.

tarabanski.com

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

New Mexico-based artist, and Wallpaper* US400 honoree, Johnny DeFeo has an excellent motto: ‘The more seriously you take a silly idea, the more silly it can be.' His biggest, boldest and silliest idea to date has been to build a rentable house in the shape of a giant coyote head, in the desert just outside Taos. ‘It's a place to recharge and not worry about your Wi-Fi, and just have a quiet time in a place that is visually novel and beautiful,' says DeFeo. And like many great ideas, this one came to him in a dream. ‘So clichéd!' he adds.

Tour Coyote house and its quirky, mesmerising interiors

Six years ago, the artist and his girlfriend were looking to move from Denver to New Mexico, because ‘it had always been a romantic place in our minds'. Following a visit to a large, bucolic property close to Vallecitos, he had a vivid dream in which he saw five houses shaped like different animal heads surrounding a black pond. DeFeo immediately sketched out this zoomorphic camp, and while the couple didn't purchase the property, the imaginative vision lingered.

It wasn't until June 2022, when he saw an Instagram ad for an Airbnb competition, that DeFeo saw an opportunity to turn his dream into reality. The OMG! Fund was seeking proposals for ‘really weird' rental properties, and offering $100,000 each to 100 winning applicants to realise their fantastical projects. ‘I almost didn't apply because I hated the name of it so much,' DeFeo jokes. But he did and, after submitting a short written description, sketches, a budget proposal and a construction timeline, The Trickster, also known as Coyote Casita, was finally selected as a winner.

Then came the challenge of actually building it. DeFeo found a site in Arroyo Hondo and interviewed several local architects and general contractors, but none of them truly understood his vision. Eventually, he was introduced to San Antonio-based sculptor Jacob Tobar of Mas Rústico, who specialises in faux-bois concrete and has experience fabricating large-scale public art projects, and they were ‘immediately on the same page'. Intrigued by DeFeo's model and proposal, Tobar visited the site and took a few measurements, then assured him that what they would build together was going to be ‘a lot better than the model'.

‘He's my hero,' DeFeo says. ‘He came with all the know-how for making a big, concrete, crazy sculpture, getting the permits, and making it look how we wanted.' The pair set about scaling up the maquette into a 30fttall structure that would look visually striking while also comfortably accommodating paying guests. The key structural elements were calculated and constructed just as a typical house would be built, then additional concrete was slowly added and shaped over the top.

Over 30 tonnes of concrete, countless rebar lengths, and ‘gallons of sweat and blood' later, the finished building really does resemble a coyote's head. Its sharp-toothed jaws form a cavern-like entrance that DeFeo likens to the tiger-shaped Cave of Wonders in Disney's Aladdin. ‘There was something about walking into the mouth that I just thought was whimsical,' he says.

A balcony from the loft bedroom extends atop the nose, creating a perfect vantage point for watching the setting sun illuminate the distant peaks in a ‘bright fuchsia' hue. Guests can also peer at the mountains through the coyote's nostrils. While the concrete head is highly sculptural and textured, the back of the building is smoother and more orthogonal. ‘I wanted the rest of it to feel quiet, and definitely Southwest, but not in a knock-off, hackneyed way,' says DeFeo.

Inside, the house is much more akin to a traditional New Mexican adobe home, evoking the textured mud-plaster walls and rounded corners found across the region. ‘I love the softness of the architecture,' says DeFeo. ‘You don't do 90-degree angles out here.' Through the mouth-accessed arched doorway is a small foyer that leads to an enclosed, light-filled bathroom with a shower lined with stones and pebbles.

Further down the coyote's ‘throat', the polished-aggregate hallway opens into a double-height space. A small kitchenette with terrazzo counters, a walnut dining table and chairs, and comfy sofas create a snug living area. ‘It has pretty high ceilings, but it feels very cosy,' DeFeo says. The loft bedroom is spacious enough to accommodate a king-size bed and an antique storage cabinet. ‘The fact that it's nice inside makes it funnier that it's coyote-shaped,' the artist says.

DeFeo is still adding to the interior décor. He recently purchased taxidermy coyote paws, which a friend has used to create moulds to produce cast-iron drawer handles. Many of DeFeo's own paintings also adorn the walls, most of which he created specifically for the house, and which feature coyotes within the Southwest landscape. ‘I usually paint animals that are ubiquitous and that everyone has a story about seeing,' he says. ‘And the coyote felt Southwest to me.'

The Trickster is the first of the five houses dreamt up by DeFeo, who is looking for financial backing to build the remaining rabbit-, doe-, bear- and fox-shaped guest houses. He readily acknowledges that the project is not for everyone. But in this part of the country, he notes, most people leave each other to their own business. DeFeo hopes that The Trickster encourages more artists to turn their offbeat ideas into reality, no matter the scale. ‘You don't have to build a box for a house,' he says. ‘You can just make something weird.' All in the spirit of serious silliness.

johnnydefeo.com

For many creatives, geography is less a fixed point than an inheritance, carried across borders and reimagined in new contexts. This is true for Utharaa Zacharias and Palaash Chaudhary, founders of Soft-Geometry, a practice that took root in India and found a fuller expression in the US, as the two became partners in work and life.

A rich cultural potpourri is the core of their practice. ‘Palaash is from Ghaziabad, near Delhi, and I am from Kochi, Kerala; it would be hard to pick two places more diametrically opposite,' says Zacharias. Growing up, they spoke different languages, ate different food and were raised in different religions, but their friendship found common ground in design. It began in college in Delhi and continued at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, where working on projects revealed a shared aesthetic. One afternoon, they scribbled in a notebook that together they made ‘soft geometries'.

Soft Geometry: a declaration of intent

The phrase became the name of their practice, established in 2019 in San Francisco and built on intricate, imperfect and layered forms, moulded in malleable materials such as cane, wool, repurposed wood, acrylic, wax, resin, hemp, lime and concrete, with subtle callbacks to their culture. ‘The shortcut to Indian design is often to ‘apply' it, to reduce centuries of craft knowledge into an identifiably Indian-looking pattern,' says Chaudhary. ‘Instead, we attempt, with flaws, to uncover the underlying philosophies and natural behaviours that inform subcultures, rather than simply adopting the visual.'

While the studio life brought excitement, the uncertainty of US visas meant they never felt tied to any one city. The idea of ‘the studio is wherever we are' took form, and over time, they moved to Los Angeles. Inevitably, tensions of US life began to seep into their work. A pivotal show, the 2023 ‘Mirrors for Aliens' at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, emerged from the rigidity of immigrant life.

At the time, the two had applied for the EB-1A green card, for ‘Aliens of extraordinary ability', in an effort to escape a 22-year waiting list for Indian workers. The idea came to them one night while washing their thali platters, when they noticed their reflections in them. Night after night, as they worked on their visa applications, they cleaned and sanded the plates, hoping the reflections would grow clearer. ‘This simple ritual gave us a way to process the emotional intensity of proving ourselves and planted the seed for ‘Mirrors for Aliens',' says Zacharias. They are now a permanent fixture in the museum's collection.

For their more recent ‘Flowers in our Hair' sconce collection, the duo drew on childhood memories and the California superbloom to create lighting inspired by petals, schoolgirl pigtails and the intimate rituals of oiling, combing and braiding hair. As their work circles home and memory, Soft-Geometry's next chapter feels closer still. With a baby on the way, life and work seem to be drawing closer with cosy family time, more objects shaped by India and ‘more softness'.

soft-geometry.com

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

Aficionados, innovators and the comfortably moneyed but innately curious will get an early chance to get their hands on the new Ferrari Luce, courtesy of this summer’s RM Sotheby’s Auction at Monterey Car Week. Ferrari is presenting the first production Luce off the line, Chassis 0, for auction at the auctioneer's August sale, conjuring up a unique specification for this special car.

This unique first edition of the Luce was overseen by Ferrari’s Tailor Made programme, a service that is open to every customer across all Ferrari models. Luce will be no different, and the specification of this one-off car is but a small dip in the ocean in terms of what can be achieved.

We haven’t been living under a rock for the past few months so feel duty bound to point out that the Luce wasn’t exactly heralded by fanfares from the Ferraristi. Despite a cohesive, creative and hugely involved design process, courtesy of Jony Ive, Marc Newson and the rest of the team at LoveFrom, a vocal coterie of enraged keyboard warriors found plenty to object to, from concept, form and detail all the way down to the idea of an electrified Ferrari.

Perhaps Chassis 0 won’t change any minds, but it’s worth noting that this configuration is pretty stunning, bringing a fresh angle to the Luce’s controversial forms. A white Ferrari is inevitably rather Crockett and Tubbs, but on the Luce it looks nothing short of sensational. The paintwork is a unique Madreperla Semi-Gloss finish with the interior finished in Perla Le Mans metallic leather in Perla with Grigio Corvara secondary elements.

That white-on-white finish really accentuates the simplicity of car’s silhouette, with the monochrome details taken to the extreme with special wheels, bespoke brake calipers with even the Ferrari logo using an optical white background.

The paintwork contains a unique pigment that accentuates iridescent reflections – Ferrari describe them as ‘evolving from green to violet depending on the intensity and angle of the light.’ It also emphasises the distinction between the aerodynamic bodywork and the glazed passenger shell.

Inside, the exceptional interior is finished in white Le Mans metallic leather, another unique Ferrari development that high quality Swiss hides and a finish that brings more light into the already spacious car. On the ‘regular’ Luce, the secondary interior elements are usually finished in black, but on Chassis 0, the team at Tailor Made have used Grigio Corvara.

The whole package is finished off with a dedicated plaque to honour its unique status as the first production chassis of the Luce production programme.

The car is being sold without reserve, although RM Sotheby’s is suggesting that the value of this unique machine is somewhere in excess of $1.1m, a healthy mark-up over the c$645,000 US list price. Ferrari will be donating all proceeds of the sale to ‘benefit future educational initiatives’ through The Ferrari Foundation.

Ferrari Luce Chassis 0, offered without reserve, RMSothebys.com, Tailormade.Ferrari.com, Ferrari.com, @Ferrari.com

Making it in the land of opportunity has often required outlandish signage and bold graphical articulation. Here we have selected a series of American objects that bear instantly recognisable design statements that have stood the test of time. Is there something distinctly American in their combination of commerce and culture, or is successful branding simply a case of mass consumption meets volume marketing?

All the examples featured here have become acknowledged showstoppers in their respective genres, adorning everything from fashion and fast food to architectural wonders and waistbands, mashing up high art and commerce in wondrous combinations along the way. These are their creative stories.

14 American logos that made contemporary graphic design history

I ❤️ NY

By its sheer ubiquity, I Love NY may be the world's most appropriated logo. Fifty years after it was introduced, it has become an all-purpose shorthand for allegiance and affection for anything, anywhere. Designed by Milton Glaser in 1976, it originally served as the graphic punchline to an ad campaign that helped rescue NYC from the brink of bankruptcy. Desperate to arrest its ballooning fiscal deficit, city officials funded the campaign to lure tourists back to the Big Apple. Doodling on the taxi ride from his home to the office, as he often did, Glaser drew a red heart paired with the letters ‘I' and ‘NY' rendered in American Typewriter, a slab serif with a 1970s flair, and worked with longtime studio assistant George Leavitt to slightly tweak it. Decades before the proliferation of emojis, some worried that the rebus-like construction would confuse people. Nevertheless, the city officials accepted the proposal, and soon made it the logo for the entire state. Copycats emerged almost immediately, but the state secured copyright, earning it tens of thousands of dollars in licensing fees each year.

The logo's widespread popularity became Glaser's calling card but also a kind of creative prison, with almost every article about him inevitably circling back to it. The 2009 National Medal of Arts honoree's many other achievements include co-founding New York magazine, designing restaurants, and producing hundreds of posters, album covers and book jackets, as well as logos for Brooklyn Brewery, DC Comics, and Italian gelato maker Sammontana. Glaser, who passed away on his 91st birthday in 2020, never lost sight of the New York logo's original purpose as a civic symbol. In the aftermath of 9/11, he appended it with the words ‘More Than Ever', added a burn mark to a corner of the heart, and gave the grieving city a ready-made banner. The same poster re-emerged in shop windows and on food carts during the pandemic. In 2023, the city felt compelled to rebrand Glaser's logo, but the flood of complaints confirmed one thing: a ferocious affection for the original. Text by Anne Quito

Read more about the design of I Love NY

New York Mets

Selected by a public competition, the design for the New York Mets logo, unveiled in 1961, was the work of illustrator Ray Gotto. Though the baseball team would play in Queens (as rivals New York Yankees were based in the Bronx), Gotto sensed that an emblem that could unite the entire city was needed, so he drew a symbolic New York skyline using a medley of landmarks from various boroughs, including the Woolworth Building, the Empire State Building and the UN HQ, while a suspension bridge anchors the composition. Originally rendered in black and pink, the palette was later revised to blue, orange and white, colours that also echo New York City's flag. In the decades since, the Mets have cycled through owners, managers, stadiums and uniforms, but Gotto's logo remains a fiercely guarded emblem. Text by Anne Quito

Read more about the design of the New York Mets logo

Tiffany & Co

The Tiffany box sits on the illustrious list of famous objects that money can't buy. ‘Charles Lewis Tiffany has one thing in stock that you cannot buy for any price; he will only give it to you. And that is one of his boxes,' read a 1906 article in the New York Sun, and the rule still stands. The box's distinctive shade of turquoise has been trademarked since 1998 and an official Pantone colour since 2001 (dubbed 1837 Blue to reflect the company's founding year). Having remained largely unchanged, in 2005, Pentagram partner Paula Scher was asked to give the brand a discreet refresh. The new identity focused on the blue box, and the shade was rolled out to include advertising, bags and the inside of the boxes. The new logo was hand-drawn to resemble a hot-stamped, letterpress typeface, signalling a combination of luxury and craft. Text by Rosa Bertoli

Read more about the design of the Tiffany & Co logo

Chateau Marmont

Chateau Marmont occupies a mythic place in Hollywood folklore: a decadent sanctuary overlooking the Sunset Strip that has been attracting artists, movie stars and musicians for almost a century. It opened originally as an apartment building in 1929, modelled loosely on the medieval Château d'Amboise in the Loire Valley, before becoming a hotel in the 1930s. When André Balazs took over in 1990, he wanted to retain as much of its historic ambience as possible, working with creative agency Pandiscio Green on a visual identity. The hotel's storied past is reflected in its timeless logo, which uses the medieval-style lettering of the Libra font (created by Dutch typographer Sjoerd Hendrik de Roos in 1938) – its hand-drawn look is perfectly in keeping with the property's French gothic, intentionally shabby aesthetic. Text by Kevin EG Perry

Read more about the design of the Chateau Marmont logo

IBM

Designed in 1956, at a time when International Business Machines was still using vacuum tubes in its vast room-filling computers, the IBM logo was the work of Paul Rand, who had honed his skills as a magazine art director before turning to corporate identity. The simple three-letter device gave the industrial monolith a coherence across a dizzying range and scale of products, capable of coping with everything from a business card to a business park entrance. Rand would modify it in 1960 and again in 1972 to create the familiar striped version.

Distinctive, bold and graphic, it was an appropriately serious signifier for the world’s largest computer maker, and is still in use today. In many respects, IBM was a pioneering design collaborator, also choosing to work with the likes of Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi, Eliot Noyes, George Nelson, Denys Lasdun and Eero Saarinen.

Read more about the design of the IBM logo

Snoopy

Created by Charles M Schulz, comic strip Peanuts followed the exploits of Charlie Brown and his dog Snoopy. Snoopy was the result of Schulz's observation of the relationship between children and dogs, noting the high levels of tolerance a dog has for children's games. Schulz originally drew him as an ordinary-looking black and white beagle who walked on all fours, but he later simplified him, with Snoopy developing long ears and expressive dots for eyes. The streamlined design made Snoopy both instantly recognisable and adaptable, meaning he could move easily from newspaper strips and toys to products, ad campaigns and fashion collaborations. He has appeared in collections by the likes of Chanel, Gucci and Lacoste, and on everything from sneakers to watches, including Timex, who, in 1965, became one of the first watch brands to obtain licences for the use of the Peanuts characters. Text by Hannah Silver

Read more about the origins of Snoopy

Campbell's

The Campbell's soup can was already one of the most recognisable pieces of packaging in America by the time Andy Warhol turned his attention to it in the 1960s. Adept at blurring the boundaries between commercial design and fine art, Warhol was unique in recognising the power packaging had to transcend the mundane, becoming a cultural symbol in its own right. By reproducing the soup can almost exactly, and without comment, Warhol asked viewers to consider why such an everyday item held so much significance, and whether it came from his reproduction or the effectiveness of the original package design. The work became a defining image of the Pop Art movement, presenting an entirely new vision of what contemporary art could be, as well as influencing generations of graphic designers and advertisers to come. Text by Hannah Silver

Read more about the origins of the Campbell's soup can

Hollywood

The most famous sign in the world transcended every conceivable aspiration of its originators, developers SH Woodruff and Tracy E Shoults, who, in 1923, were part of a consortium looking to promote their new real estate venture Hollywoodland. The job went to Thomas Fisk Goff of the Crescent Sign Company, who set out the name in 50ft-high blocky capital letters across the hillside above Beachwood Canyon. Visible for miles, and illuminated for its first decade, the sign was initially popular but soon started to decay. Demolition was considered at the point when it simply read ‘ollywoodland', but, in 1949, buoyed by local support, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce stepped in, reinstating the ‘H' and dropping the ‘land'. And there it has remained ever since, even threatening to outlast the industry it celebrates. Text by Jonathan Bell

Read more about the Hollywoodland sign design

MoMA

Ivan Chermayeff 's logotype for MoMA first surfaced in 1964, taking a starkly typographic approach with its effective and appropriately modern use of Franklin Gothic No.2. MoMA Gothic, a custom typeface designed by Matthew Carter, was introduced in 2004 and, five years later, Pentagram was appointed to create guidelines for the use of MoMA Gothic across the museum's entire visual output, from signage to posters and publications. The agency worked in parallel with Julia Hoffmann, MoMA's creative director for graphics and advertising, to devise ways it could be cropped, coloured and paired with content, reducing the logo down to an abstracted set of letters. Chermayeff 's original solution proved so enduring that it remains the foundation stone of the museum's visual identity more than 60 years after it was devised. Text by Jonathan Bell

Read more about the MoMA logo design

McDonald's

The first McDonald's restaurant to showcase the golden arches in physical form opened in 1953 in Phoenix, Arizona, designed by Stanley Clark Meston. Working with co-founder Richard McDonald, who suggested the idea of the arches, Meston's assistant Charles Fish rendered the forms not as simple curves but as structural parabolas. However, it was the company's head of engineering and design Jim Schindler who would translate the physical incarnations into the extended ‘M' logo, with the signature yellow and red colours providing eye-catching contrast. Today's McDonald's franchises are flat-packed structures that can be erected in 24 hours, not neon-lit Googie wonders that send midcentury buffs salivating. But on packaging, the golden arches have been served up to billions in the decades that followed their creation. Text by Jonathan Bell

Read more about the origins of the Golden Arches

Nike Swoosh

‘I don't love it, but it will grow on me.' This was the reaction of Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, when he first saw what would become the Nike ‘swoosh', conceived by Carolyn Davidson to adorn the fledgling sports label's footwear. (Then a design student at Portland State University, she was paid $35 for the commission, though was later rewarded with shares in the company and a diamond ring bearing the motif.) Originally designed as a take on the stripe that featured on other sneakers of the time, its elongated silhouette was conceived by Davidson to express a feeling of speed and agility – as if it was being viewed dashing past. And dash it did. In 1972, one year after Davidson submitted the design, two of the top American finishers at the Boston Marathon crossed the line wearing Nike shoes marked with the swoosh. Text by Jack Moss

Read more about the story behind the Nike Swoosh

Levi's

Levi's began in San Francisco in the mid-1850s during the California gold rush when Bavarian immigrant Levi Strauss identified a need for hard-wearing work clothing for miners. In 1873, he invented the ‘waist overall' (crafted from indigo selvedge denim with metal rivets, they are what we now know as the ‘original blue jean') and the year is stamped on the leather patch that appears on every pair of Levi's jeans. Known as the ‘two-horse patch' in reference to its protagonists (two horses pulling a pair of jeans in opposite directions without destroying them), the pictorial design was used because of high illiteracy levels in the American West; the idea was that people could go into stores and ask for ‘those pants with the two horses'. The brand's logo has evolved, but the two-horse patch has endured, a symbol of what remains the US' definitive fashion export. Text by Jack Moss

Read more about Levi's design origins

Calvin Klein

Calvin Klein's sans serif logo, first introduced by its namesake designer in 1968, is an exercise in simplicity and directness – a reflection of Klein's approach to fashion, which would flourish in the 1990s. And, while the logo has appeared on everything from fragrance bottles to T-shirts, it will be forever associated with the elastic waistband of the brand's underwear – a stroke of marketing genius that saw people hitch down their jeans to reveal their brand allegiance. Their ubiquity was achieved through Klein's evocative underwear ads photographed by the likes of Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts. Memorable campaign stars have included Olympic pole vaulter Tom Hintnaus, Mark Wahlberg, Kate Moss, Freddie Ljungberg, Naomi Campbell, Justin Bieber, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Jeremy Allen White and Bad Bunny. Text by Jack Moss

Read more about the origins of the Calvin Klein logo

Nirvana

In 1989, Nirvana's first record label, Sub Pop, was in need of artwork for the band's debut album Bleach. It commissioned designer Lisa Orth, who at the time was working at The Rocket, a Seattle music paper that was one of the driving forces behind the nascent grunge scene. The story goes that she simply asked her colleague Grant Alden to use whatever font had just been used on their typesetting machine. It happened to be Onyx, a blocky serif display font that gelled so well with the reversed black-and-white live image on the cover that it became the band's logo going forwards, appearing on records, T-shirts, patches and the like. The font deviates slightly from that used in the band's infamous ‘Satan Worshippin' Mother Fucker' T-shirts, which have flipped ‘N's and appear to be a little more Bodoni-adjacent. Text by Jonathan Bell

Read more about the origins of the Nirvana logo

Olalekan Jeyifous is a builder of provocative futures. For ‘Hydricosmic Litanies', a new solo exhibition at the Walker Art Center (6 August 2026 – 3 January 2027), the Brooklyn-based artist, a trained architect and a Wallpaper* US400 honoree, imagined a society in Minneapolis that evolved around the ecology of the Mississippi River, which flows through the heart of the city. Working like an archaeologist discovering and documenting this culture, Jeyifous created digital collages of the cityscape, with highways that once displaced Black neighbourhoods transforming into waterways that sustain aquaculture, travel and housing. A series of 3D-printed sculptures depict the industrial, technical and cultural artefacts that this society produced and deities that protect them.

‘I'm always dusting off the fragments and figuring out who lived there, what they looked like, and what was important to them,' he says.

Meet architect-trained artist Olalekan Jeyifous

Jeyifous' worlds emerge from different parameters and narratives, but they share throughlines: communal societies, close relationships between people and natural ecosystems, and joyful Black life.

For ‘The Frozen Neighborhoods’, which appeared in MoMA's ‘Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America', he conducted a similar excavation of a society in which mobility was restricted. In ‘ACE/AAP', which won the Silver Lion award at the 2023 Venice Biennale, he depicted a world in which Pan-Africanism and decolonisation of the continent were successful, ushering in an era of renewable energy innovation and environmental restoration based on Indigenous land stewardship.

Jeyifous has become one of the leading artistic thinkers of our time. He rejects inevitable conclusions and instead sees alternative futures that invite us all to reconsider the trajectory we're on and what course-corrections might look like.

‘At a moment when so many of our social and ecological crises are also crises of imagination, Jeyifous' work offers something rare: a speculative language equal to the complexity of the world we actually inhabit,' says Taylor Jasper, the curator of ‘Hydricosmic Litanies'. ‘His practice understands that the future is sedimented in the past, shaped by what has been engineered, inherited, broken and remade. He gives us a way to think about culture as something tidal: always moving between what has been lost, what remains, and what might still be made.'

Born in Nigeria but raised in the US, Jeyifous wanted to be an architect from a young age, but was especially interested in cultural critique and using research, world-building and visualisation to provoke conversation. His thesis applied the Yoruba myth of the Abiku child (a spirit that is born to the human world only to die young and repeat the cycle because it does not want to inhabit the painful, unjust world of people, preferring to exist in the idealistic supernatural realm) to postcolonial nation-building and architecture's role in making spaces that support new systems.

Jeyifous identifies with the Abiku child's cycle-breaking. ‘I do not like what has been made of the world,' he says. ‘We could have built a world where different countries and different cultures respect each other.'

Jeyifous uses tools such as hand drawing, photo montage, collage and AI visualisations to design what he calls protopias. Distinct from utopias, which present unrealistic perfect worlds, protopias acknowledge an ongoing project. For this approach, Mabel O Wilson – chair of the African American and African diaspora studies department at Columbia University, and co-curator of ‘Reconstructions' – has called Jeyifous ‘the next Lebbeus Woods', referring to the cult figure who used visionary drawings to drive conversation about politics and ideology. ‘He's deeply committed to understanding architectural representation but using it as a language to point to the kinds of things that are going on socially and culturally,' Wilson says, noting how his work traces its lineage to Afrofuturism and hip-hop sampling.

Until 2004, Jeyifous worked as an architectural renderer. It paid the bills, but it wasn't creatively nourishing, so he decided to take a leap into art-making full-time while completing rendering projects on the side to support his work. By 2016, his public art commissions had grown larger and more frequent, and he was able to stop freelancing. He soon won a fellowship at the Socrates Sculpture Park and prestigious residencies at MacDowell in New Hampshire and the Headlands Center for the Arts in California.

After receiving a commission for a sculpture at Coachella in 2017, his practice took off. He has elevated a New York subway station with glass panels; created an installation at the threshold of the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago, in collaboration with artist Amanda Williams; and is working on a monument for Shirley Chisholm, who, in 1968, became the first Black woman to be elected to Congress.

Yoruban spirituality is at the heart of Jeyifous' world-building. It's a particular focus of ‘Ancestral Ecologies', an exhibition on show at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden until 25 October 2026. Created in collaboration with New York firm AD-WO, the installation features sculptures made from earthen tiles, recycled glass, material designed to decompose, and garlands inspired by African trade beads. Encountering these sculptures in the garden feels almost like stepping into a quiet moment within one of his verdant renderings.

‘There's a soft touch to environmental justice that he brings to the discourse that I really appreciate,' says Emanuel Admassu, co-founder of AD-WO. ‘We share a political agenda, and the way we think about liberation is not necessarily through big explosive gestures, but folks just tending to plants, folks spending time together with their family, and a lush, green environment.'

‘Hydricosmic Litanies' is on show from 6 August 2026 – 3 January 2027 at Walker Art Center. ‘

Ancestral Ecologies' is on show until 25 October 2026 at Brooklyn Botanic Garden

More on the artist at jeyifo.us

New York artist Jordan Eagles was biking along the East River three years ago when he noticed a man with a sports jersey that read 'The Mets are in our blood.' A lifelong fan of the legendary baseball team, Eagles was struck by the bodily immediacy of the emblazoned slogan.

Eagles swiftly turned to eBay to track down the shirt. As it happened, the merchandise was handed out to blood donor fans at the team’s stadium, Citi Field. After customising the top into a muscle t-shirt for his gym workouts, however, the artist realised he was deprived from truly owning the jersey for what it promotes. 'I could not earn this shirt although I was captivated by my own love of the Mets,' he tells Wallpaper*.

While the artist has been creating works with real animal blood since the 1990s, Eagles himself cannot be a blood donor, owing to being on PrEP, the medication that drastically reduces the risk of contracting HIV. The irony was not lost on the artist, and is the focus of a powerful ongoing exhibition, 'Bases Loaded', on view at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn.

The show features 13 of the same Mets jerseys with blood of an undetectable HIV-positive man splashed across them. The grouping of orange and grey uniforms echo the total number of defensive and offensive players on the baseball field, yet here, devoid of perspiring bodies, they become drenched in another form of corporeality. The exhibition also features nine mixed media resin sculptures shaped in the form of a home plate – the base players must touch in order to score a run.

Gay men in the US have long faced stigma around blood donation. After decades of a ban on gay and bisexual men’s choice to donate blood, the FDA eased the restriction in 2023 and began imposing questions about sexual history to any potential donor. The questionnaire, as Eagles notes, still has a bias towards anal intercourse and HIV status. PrEP users cannot donate unless they stop taking the pill for three months.

The politics of blood has long concerned Eagles who has utilised real blood of gay men in myriad forms. From soaking vintage Superman cartoons with blood at an exhibition at the Princeton University Art Museum to projecting close-up blood blotches at institutions such as the Getty and High Museum of Art, the artist has made the public intimate with the spine-chilling tactility of the life-giving fluid.

The show at the Brooklyn multimedia art space, however, holds a deeper personal bond for Eagles. Besides Eagles's own blood and that of the anonymous donor, some of the resin sculptures contain the blood of the artist’s father. As the figure who exposed the artist to Mets fandom and a symbol of familial blood lineage, the inclusion embodies the son’s reckoning with his own reality and his innate need to fit in. Inside a series of resin sculptures, meanwhile, the artist has suspended family photos, in which everyone wears Mets T-shirts, in blood. Other works contain needles, face masks or baseball cards blend with the densely red fluid.

'This project invites the public to think about policy but it is also more broadly about identity, belonging and what it means to be be a part of something,' Eagles says.

Besides the immediate tactility of the works on view, the slipperiness of semantics unifies them and the seemingly disparate realms of sports and sexuality. From the show’s suggestive title to baseball sayings such as 'first base,' 'innings' or 'receivers,' the linguistic flirt between the game and gay sex imbues a playfulness to the otherwise heavy subject.

'Blood in language is often used to be divisive as well, but I am also thinking about my own life and ways of belonging to a community and wanting to be a part of a team that ultimately you are not permitted to be a part of,' Eagles says.

'Jordan Eagles: Bases Loaded' is on view at Pioneer Works through 9 August 2026

A Blakely Island cabin was designed for immersive forest living among the mature trees of the San Juan Islands archipelago on the Salish Sea. This corner of Washington state is rich in nature, with the particular site nestled between a glacial erratic rock and Douglas fir trees. Within this leafy setting, Wittman Estes has designed a private retreat drawing on the most basic of architectural escapes, in the tradition of Thoreau’s Walden Cabin and Le Corbusier’s 1952 Cabanon.

Tour this Blakely Island cabin in Washington state

Led by architect Matt Wittman and landscape designer Jody Estes, the Seattle-based architecture practice was well placed to tackle the challenge of this commission, a tiny 400 sq ft guest house deep in the woods and offering sweeping views of foliage and water. The raised volume sits on stilts to minimise disturbance to its natural site.

The bijou structure measures a mere 16ft x 20ft. The boxy volume contains a small kitchen, one Murphy bed, one bath, and an open loft area with two bunk beds. The interior is a simple and flowing single space, guiding the eye outwards towards the magnificent vistas.

Made primarily out of timber inside and out (a Western red cedar main body is accessed by a suspended metal walkway), the interiors feel cosy and warm. Between the hardwood decking that continues the forest's material palette indoors and the large glazed openings (including a generous corner-bathroom window), there's synergy between indoors and outdoors.

The Blakely Island cabin was constructed using modular elements and off-site fabrication. The entire house was prefabricated at the contractor’s yard in Everett before being moved, in parts, and reassembled on-site.

'Local materials and small spaces distil living down to a simple essence; in the words of Thoreau, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life",' the architects explain.

wittman-estes.com

It’s been a busy few years for Selldorf Architects, the award-winning New York practice helmed by US400 architect Annabelle Selldorf, with museum projects including The Frick, The National Gallery and The Louvre in the books or on the boards.

The Clark Art Institute, a renowned museum and research institute located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, is also set to receive the Selldorf treatment, via a new 15,000 sq ft wing, slated to open in 2028.

The addition will include 12 dedicated galleries to house more than 300 works of art donated by Aso O. Tavitian, a self-made entrepreneur who amassed a formidable collection of European art between 2004 up until his death in 2020. Tavitian also allowed for a $45 million gift to fund construction and support his collection’s curation and care.

‘Before Aso Tavidian's untimely passing, we had a discussion with him about who would be the ideal architect of the wing. Annabelle Selldorf was the person that he wanted, and the person that we wanted,’ said museum director Esther Bell during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

The architects, who had renovated the Clark’s Manton Research Center a decade ago, faced a challenging task: how to unite a 1970s red granite gallery wing with the Clark's original marble building, a 1950s neoclassical design by Daniel Perry. (Tadao Ando also has two structures on the 140-acre campus). Previously, the buildings had been connected in a ‘shall we say, inelegant way,’ via a bridge, Annabelle Selldorf said. ‘It never felt like it was a gracious transition between one and the other.’

‘They’re personalities,’ the architect added, ‘So, what is one to do but to create a companion?’

That architectural 'companion' was revealed Wednesday for the first time. The insertion is Selldorf's brand of quiet elegance, appearing as a simple rectilinear volume nestled between two existing buildings. The facade, however, is a pixelated array of Calacatta Malva marble, whose rich indigo veining helps create a visual transition between the all-white ‘50s building and the speckled red-and-blue granite one from the '70s. The move, ‘creates a kind of mosaic but also brings together colouration and a sympathy in two directions,’ Selldorf explained.

The gallery interiors will be similarly straight-forward, with white oak flooring and bronze-framed windows, all the better to show off a new landscape, designed by Reed Hildebrand, and Tavitian’s treasures, which include four centuries of arresting Renaissance, Netherlandish, Baroque and 18th-century French artworks by Anthony van Dyck, Peter Paul Rubens, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Elizabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun and more. The works are the subject of an exhibition, now on view at the Clark through February 2027.

‘There's simply nothing more fun and interesting than to work with the curators, get to know the art, look at it first on small images on the computer, and then see the real thing,' Selldorf said. 'I think we're going to make really extraordinarily beautiful spaces for galleries in these 12 rooms.'

Sitting among tangles of oak and Monterey pine, on the lip of a canyon in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Owl House is part art, part architecture, its rich contradictions impossible to grasp at a glance. The redwood structure looks different from every angle, emerging onto the street like a fox's den hollowed out of the brush, or perched like a massive nest from the canyon behind. Where it looms largest, however, it is also generously glazed, giving it the all-seeing gaze of its namesake. Inside, it feels exposed, enclosed and, in some places, both. Sculptural, layered and textural, it offers a series of inhabitable collages that are rigorous in their geometry, reverent toward nature, but playful nonetheless.

Discover this refreshed Mickey Muennig house in California

Designed in the early 1970s by architect Mickey Muennig, the house was restored in 2024 by landscape architect Bernard Trainor of Ground Studio. Then last year, its interiors were renovated by Wallpaper* US400 honoree Nicole Hollis' San Francisco design studio for a pair of empty nesters, who use it as a weekend retreat. Like so many things that come to define the identity of a place, the house's Californian aesthetic was created by a transplant.

Muennig, who would come to be known as ‘the man who built Big Sur', moved to California from Missouri and the Midwest. Having studied under Bruce Goff, he travelled to the nearby Esalen Institute in 1971 for a Gestalt therapy workshop and never returned home. Instead, he began to design unusual buildings, using organic forms and local materials that bridge indoors and out. On a ridge above Big Sur, Muennig embarked on private architectural experiments that embraced nature, light and views: a stone and glass teepee with a bed suspended in its conical crown surveyed the sea, while a boxy house nearby featured tiered, spiralling redwood ceilings and a living room bisected by running water.

Meanwhile, he was also designing lush coastal homes and celebrated Northern California destinations: the Baths at Esalen, the Hawthorne Gallery, and the plush Post Ranch Inn, whose guest rooms took the form of treehouses and burrows with wildflower-sown roofs. Architecture became an extension, even a totem, of the landscape, a link between human and nature. The Owl House had presaged themes that Muennig would play with in much of his later work.

Also a transplant, from the southeastern coast of Australia, Trainor became a temporary steward of the house in 2023. His restoration stabilised and protected materials ranging from the copper roof to wooden decks. ‘It was a passion project that combined art and design, and it brought together years of learning along the way,' he says. In late 2024, when a longtime client bought the house, Hollis and colleague Adele Cunningham set to work with great restraint. The result is clarifying, drawing the architecture to the fore and making room for its new residents.

Essential to Muennig's design are moments of sculptural intensity. The entrance operates as a human-scale collage featuring radial trusswork, a semicircular skylight, layered doorways, cut-away walls, and a tilted demilune clerestory window. Wooden collages by Japanese artist Kishio Suga, chosen from the couple's existing collection by consultants Mary Zlot and Sabrina Buell, resonates with the house's language of fragmentation and flow.

To their credit, Hollis' team cleared the space instead of filling it. They opted for materials that complement rather than contrast, and fewer furnishings that, no matter their age, might have always been there. ‘It's a small house, so I didn't want to overwhelm or overthink it,' says Hollis. ‘You don't want to crowd that architecture. You want it to sing.'

Hollis understood the architecture as tactile as much as it is visually extreme. Texture here serves as a unifying principle, with expressive wooden ceilings and terracotta floor tiles. ‘We thought, are the tiles too busy? They're so graphic,' Hollis recalls. ‘But then we all got used to them, and now we can't imagine the house without them.' Harmonising with the redwood and the brass of the fireplace, colourful textiles add cosiness and energy to each room.

Like texture, geometry is palpable throughout, from the hexagonal tiles to the curving walls. In the kitchen, revitalised cabinetry is faced with vertical slats in varying widths, while a globe pendant and loop-base table echo the house's porthole windows. Because the plan resembles a nautilus shell (with bedroom walls curling into cylinders that contain baths), Hollis commissioned rugs from Vaheed Taheri and brought in rounded furnishings with circular or semicircular oversize pulls.

To keep the interiors relaxed, Hollis' team either met the house's whimsy halfway with curved pieces and happy hues, or stepped back to let it play out. They didn't touch the mushroom-shaped window above the kitchen sink, or the mezzanine's pony wall, cut away in a shallow arc that Hollis describes as ‘a smile'. But they brightened the living room with a green sideboard by Matthew Raw and a red sofa by George Smith: ‘Items that one might not want to live with every day,' she says, ‘but that help create an escape from everyday life.'

Outdoors, the garden continues to be a passion project for Trainor, who wove together plant species such as banksias and persimmons to make it feel ‘as if you were walking through a painting', and designed a cedar and brass fence that gambols across the undulating terrain, echoing the language of the house. The result is not a backdrop but a blossoming that feels as whimsical and wild as the architecture it embraces.

nicolehollis.com

bernardtrainor.com

This article appears in the August 2026, Creative America issue of Wallpaper*, available from 2 July in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Felice’s newest New York restaurant opens at one of Flatiron’s most privileged corners, where Fifth Avenue meets 26th Street beside Madison Square Park. Set inside a 21-storey neo-Gothic building completed in 1912, the site gives the family-run Italian brand a dining room with unusual scale, daylight from three sides and a strong connection to the street.

Wallpaper* dines at Felice Flaitron, New York

The mood: go big and come home

Since opening on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 2007, Felice has grown to fourteen locations across New York, Connecticut and Florida. Designed by local studio Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture, Felice Flatiron is arguably the brand’s most architecturally ambitious opening to date. The room boasts 18ft ceilings, windows on three sides and a Fifth Avenue presence that changes with the light. Afternoon sun cuts across amber banquettes, pale tablecloths and warm timber.

‘We wanted the space to feel instantly familiar but elevated in every detail, Tuscany in its materials, New York in its energy,’ says Enrico Bonetti, co-founder of Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture.

The design works through proportion, material and cathedral-like drama: custom Italian oak millwork crafted in Florence, Chianti terracotta sourced from Tuscany, deep red blinds, leather seating, soft pendant lamps and a 30ft illuminated wine wall. At the centre is Felice’s largest bar to date, wrapped in Grigio Versilia marble and engineered to be the restaurant’s social anchor.

The food: all-day entertainment

The menu stays close to Felice’s Tuscan roots: seasonal ingredients, regional recipes, signature pastas and dishes made for sharing. New to Flatiron is the Il Toscano Plate, with rotating salumi, pecorino, olives and crostini, alongside a tableside tiramisu cart and an interactive amaro station.

Wine remains central. The by-the-glass list champions small producers, with Italian bottles joined by selections from Spain, California and elsewhere. A ‘Back to Natural’ section brings in low-intervention wines, while the cocktail programme leans full dolce vita: Dirty Martini Spritz, aperitivo drinks, and a nightcap menu running from Amaro Shakerato to Affogato Martini.

Felice Flatiron is located at 220 5th Ave, New York, NY 10001, United States

Like many potential disruptive technologies, Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft were predicted, theorised, prototyped and over-hyped long before any practical solutions had even taken to the air. Emerging in parallel with concurrent disruptors like AI-driven autonomy, the eVTOL market is awash with potential players yet full-scale public services always seem to be a few years away.

Archer Aviation is one of the frontrunners in the race for this as-yet uncertain prize. Founded in 2018 by Brett Adock and Adam Goldstein, it is headquartered in San Jose, California, and its Midnight aircraft is currently undergoing flight tests on the route to imminent certification. Unveiled back in 2022, Midnight has 12 propellers, six to each wing.

The forward-facing props can tilt for vertical lift, whilst the rear ones are fixed to provide forward thrust. The design has the baked-in redundancy deemed essential for electric aircraft, with an expected operational range of 20 to 50 miles. Priced at $5m and built in a production plant in Atlanta, Georgia, Midnight can carry a pilot and four passengers and their luggage. The company also has an engineering hub in Bristol, UK.

Wallpaper* spoke to CEO Adam Goldstein and Julien Montousse, the company’s VP of design and innovation, about the Midnight and its projected use cases, routes and the expected debut date. One of Archer’s primary drivers has been design, not just in the corporate branding and presentation, but in the physical form of the aircraft itself. Montousse, a former senior director of design at Mazda North America, trained at France’s Strate, École de Design.

Wallpaper*: It’s clearly a very exciting time to be in aviation. What was the driving force behind Archer’s approach?

Adam Goldstein: Everything started with using multiple electric engines to fly a new type of aircraft. These are vertical take-off and landing aircraft. When you switch from combustion to these electric vehicles, you get advantages that you couldn’t get in the old world. It starts with safety. Helicopters, for example, have lots of single points of failure – instead, we have multiple levels of redundancy. You also get a lower noise profile and a better cost profile – there are both civil and defence applications for that.

W*: What’s Archer’s current timeline?

AG: On the civil side, we’re building the core aircraft and going through the certification process. eVTOL has resulted in a new category at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) called powered lift – it’s the first new category in 60 years. All that took a while to get going and we’re now in the testing phase. Our goal is to be flying aircraft as soon as we can. The FAA’s job is to pick a safe aircraft – their job is to tell us when we’re ready.

On the defence side, there is a different timeline. We have a partnership with a company called Anduril, which is building a new autonomous vertical-lift platform.

W*: Will the Midnight be autonomous?

AG: No, but the military and civil applications build on top of each other, so you need to gain all the experience, gain the hours, gain the credibility, gain the data, and then ultimately transfer that over. So whether it’s the framework on how to do it, whether it’s the actual hardware – the flight control computers, sensor suites, etc – or the software that you’re running. All that stuff gets proven out on the defence side and gives you enough ability to push over to the civil side, so they work really nicely together.

W*: Powered lift is a new category and that means all sorts of things that are new for the consumer, from safety to the way the technology is expressed and perceived. How do you translate that into industrial design that evokes confidence and clarity and explains everything it has to do?

AG: Electric engines scale down but remain very efficient. You no longer have to have one big rotor like a helicopter, instead you can have multiple sets of engines. The questions were how many engines should you have and where do you put them? You need enough redundancy so that a failure doesn’t crash the vehicle.

With two to four engines it’s very hard to stay balanced. Eight is safer, then ten, 12, etc. But if you have too many, it’s very hard to figure out where to put them, because when you’re flying, anything that’s sticking out just becomes draggy and hurts performance. You have this balance between performance and trying to make it look good.

We wanted a vehicle that created an emotional reaction, like a car. We want to bring the golden age of flying back – where people are excited to fly, they want to be in this vehicle, they want to touch the vehicle, take a picture of it. It’s a balance of performance and emotion.

Julien Montousse: The goal is to build an inspiring aircraft. Most modern airliners don’t invite connection – you might connect with the brand that operates them, but not the aircraft itself. We have four passengers and one pilot, and that intimacy requires some personal connection.

W*: Compared to the equivalent cabin size of a small passenger jet or other helicopter, what advantages does the platform and the technology give you?

JM: Weight is everything. We can’t allow any non-essential functions. The seats have to weigh just 20lb – they’re pared to the bone. And this creates this new type of design aesthetic that is much more athletic versus the opulence of a traditional private jet.

W*: How does this quest for lightness inform materials?

JM: We work with engineering to understand the load paths of the seats. By carving all the negative material away, we’re building a space frame-type structure. If you look at the seat for example, the seat only has like a quarter inch of cushion thickness. It’s extremely thin.

We’re also exploring circular design, taking some of the waste created by aviation and re-using it. For example, we collect carbon fibre offcuts and utilise [the material] as a kind of forged carbon to build parts of the cabin with. Bringing a circular design vision into a lightweight aircraft is something that no one has really done.

W*: Which elements are you most proud of being able to rethink them, taking those criteria into account?

JM: When you look at the Archer from far away, we wanted to build an identity. No plane has an identity today. We worked really hard to shape the lighting elements on the front, for example. A bird of prey was probably the most inspiring gesture that we embedded into the wing of the aircraft – it doesn’t look passive. We also wanted to show that the aircraft would fly beautifully just by looking at it.

W*: And in terms of the interior?

JM: The contouring of the seat makes you feel like you are connected with the aircraft, a kind of monocoque bucket seat that’s contoured to hold you securely. We’ve also designed a different kind of landing gear that allows for the aircraft to sit lower to the ground, which means that you can have that very fluid ingress and egress.

Other elements include a small display on the cabin, meaning that when you approach the aircraft, your name is displayed, your destination is displayed, and how much time you have until the door closes.

W*: What are the likely initial applications?

AG: You live in London, so you’ll know that Heathrow can be brutal to get to from the city. There is such stress associated with that, especially if there is traffic. I think that’s a really good route that we would like to start with. It’s our goal to target the high-end ride-share market… There are amazing routes all over the world; every city has two to three core routes that will always be busy seven days a week. Then there are also other missions like helping hospitals transport time-sensitive things like patients or organs.

W*: How does the operating cost compare to an equivalent-size helicopter?

AG: It’s substantially lower maintenance, with no piston or combustion engines. You don’t have to X-ray the gearbox to check for faults, for example. An electric engine is very simple. And because you fly much faster, you can do many more trips compared to something like an Uber.

Midnight has been designed around existing helicopter infrastructure, so we can fit within everything from the perspective of wingspan, weight and rotor downwash. As for charging, the goal would be to top off the battery every time you land.

W*: And what about timescale?

AG: We were selected as the exclusive air taxi provider for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. That’s still our goal for launch.

Archer.com, @FlyArcher

The classic A-frame cabin is given a new lease of life as a yoga retreat by Bruce Engel of BE_Design. This simple East Hampton structure is a studio space for a variety of wellness practices, located on a site in Springs, New York. Engel, an architect who practices between New York and Kigali, Rwanda, has taken the iconic form of the A-frame structure and enhanced it with a straightforward material palette and careful attention to detail.

Tour this miniature yoga retreat in East Hampton

The steeply pitched roof intersects with two cantilevered niches, pushing out from the roof plane to expand the available space inside this modest 600-square-foot structure. Described by the architects as resembling ‘a small temple among the trees,’ the Woods Retreat makes a very intentional connection between earth and sky – an embodiment of ‘the yogic integration of the grounded and celestial self.’

The structure is clad in sustainably-sourced Accoya, with a traditional charred finish akin to the Japanese practice of Shou Sugi Ban. The blackened geometric form makes a graphic contrast to the verticality of the surrounding trees, as well as being an inversion of the warm yellow cedar and plywood interior panels.

In addition to hosting meditation sessions, kundalini yoga, sauna and ice bathing rituals, the Retreat was commissioned by a teacher who wanted a ‘deeply restorative environment that supports breathwork, stillness, and embodied practice.’ Even the shape of the space has been considered, with the tall interior providing excellent acoustics for gong ceremonies.

In addition to the main space and a separate sauna, the two cushioned niches provide platform space for relaxation and contemplation, with huge picture windows providing views out to the trees.

The interior is clad in cedar and plywood, with the striking, oversized grain adding a sense of textured solidity to the interlocking floors, walls and ceiling planes.

The space is designed to be multi-functional, depending on the classes, and can be easily converted into an overnight retreat for longer courses. The architecture encourages wellness practices to spread out into the surrounding forest.

The covered front porch serves as a transition between nature and architecture, and there’s also a discrete rear porch and terrace with a connection to the outdoor shower, sauna, and ice bath. According to Engel, the sequence of heat, ice, fresh air, and forest ‘creates a multisensory experience for body and mind.’

Engel’s community-minded approach to architecture stems from several years working in East Africa, not just Rwanda but also Tanzania, Kenya, and Ghana, in addition to residential projects in New York.

Woods Retreat combines his love of vernacular forms, local materials and labour, as well as the importance of architecture as a generator of mood, place and purpose.

BruceEngelDesign.com

The world’s most famous sign transcended every conceivable aspiration of its originators, developers SH Woodruff and Tracy E Shoults. The pair were part of a consortium looking to promote their new real estate venture, Hollywoodland. The year was 1923 and the job went to Thomas Fisk Goff of the Crescent Sign Company, who set out the name in 50ft-tall blocky capital letters stalking across the hillside above Beachwood Canyon.

Visible for miles, and brightly illuminated for its first decade, the sign found local favour but soon started to decay. The final act of British starlet Peg Entwistle added tragedy to the site when she jumped off the ‘H’ in September 1932. She became a posthumous symbol of the darker side of Tinseltown.

In 1944, the city took ownership and even considered demolition – at this point, the sign simply read ‘ollywoodland’. Buoyed by local support and with a canny eye to the future, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce stepped in to save it, agreeing to reinstate the ‘H’ and drop the ‘land’.

As a result, the Hollywood sign became a globally recognised visual shortcut for a neighbourhood that was originally incorporated back in 1903. The original wooden and steel structure was completely overhauled and replaced in 1978, following a $250,000 fundraising campaign led by Hugh Hefner. Each letter was given a sponsor, including Andy Williams for the ‘W’ and Alice Cooper for one of the ‘O’s (given in memory of Groucho Marx). And there it’s remained ever since, frequently trespassed upon, occasionally vandalised, and even threatening to outlast the industry it celebrates.

hollywoodsign.org

A version of this article appears in the Wallpaper* August 2026 Creative America issue, available from 4 July, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

As seen in the August 2026 ‘Creative America at 250’ issue of Wallpaper*, we pay homage to seminal American design classics.

‘Well, I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.’ This was the reaction of Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, when he first saw what would become the Nike ‘Swoosh’ – a tick-shaped emblem conceived by Carolyn Davidson to adorn the fledgling sportswear label’s footwear.

Davidson, who was then a design student at Portland State University, was paid $35 for the commission, billing the company $2 per hour for 17.5 hours of work. So the story goes, Knight was visiting the university when he overheard Davidson telling a friend she needed money for an oil painting class; over the coming months, she would create graphs and spreadsheets for the young label, before being drafted to create a logo similar to the stripes on other sporting brands’ footwear (Onitsuka Tiger, which was based in Japan and created running shoes, was one early competitor).

Its signature elongated silhouette, which Davidson tested by holding tissue paper cut into early iterations of the design against the brand’s prototype shoes, was conceived to express a feeling of speed and agility – as if it was being viewed dashing past at speed. (Other commentators have posited its shape also evokes the wings of the ancient Greek goddess Nike, from whom the brand takes its name.)

And dash it did. In 1972, one year after Davidson submitted the original design, two of the top American finishers at the Boston Marathon crossed the line wearing Nike shoes marked with the design, and the Swoosh – which has appeared in various iterations, some with the italicised Nike logo attached – has been on the feet of countless champions on track, field, stadium and court ever since, an emblem of achievement which traverses both professional and amateur sport.

Davidson, who was eventually rewarded for her work with stocks in the company and a diamond ring engraved with the Swoosh motif, says she has enjoyed a life ‘under the radar’. ‘When I see the Swoosh on TV, and I turn on a game, and both teams are in Nike, I just get a good feeling,’ she said in 2011, which marked the emblem’s 40th anniversary. ‘Or if I turn a corner and run into a billboard, or if I watch the Olympics – I mean, it's just a good feeling inside.’

Now, the logo is one of the most recognised in the world, adorning not just footwear but a multitude of apparel, and reimagined over the past five decades – including a version bearing Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ tagline, another masterful piece of marketing. Nike’s various collaborators have also played with the Swoosh: most memorably, the late American multi-hyphenate designer Virgil Abloh, himself an expert in branding.

The Off-White and Louis Vuitton creative directed created a childlike, hand-drawn version of the motif, which was printed onto T-shirts (‘Logo’ was written above it, in Abloh’s typically irreverent style), while his various footwear collaborations with Nike featured the Swoosh impossibly blown up or attached using Frankenstinian stitching (a demonstration of his three per cent rule, which argued seminal design classics could be shifted completely in meaning with just the tiniest of changes).

‘It did grow on me,’ Knight would later admit. ‘What we wanted it to stand for was speed, which it did and still does. But now it means much more than that.’

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

Nothing embodies the calm authority of American industry like Paul Rand’s logo for IBM. Designed in 1956, at a time when International Business Machines was still using vacuum tubes in its vast room-filling computers, it remains in use, continuing to give the massive company a lustre of quiet, competent efficiency and no-nonsense directness. It is the anti-Apple, in other words.

Rand – who had already effectively re-branded himself from Peretz Rosenbaum to better appeal to Madison Avenue’s prejudices – was unashamedly inspired by the European avant-garde, in art and commerce. After honing his skills as a magazine art director, he turned to corporate identity. In IBM, he struck commercial gold.

Founded in 1911 as a maker of record-keeping systems, the company became International Business Machines in 1924, building a global empire based on the technology of the punch-card, then as one of the pioneering manufacturers of electromechanical, then vacuum tube and then transistorised computers from the 1940s onwards. In 1964, it introduced System/360, a family of modular computers with multiple applications that could be scaled up and down as required. Shaped with austere futurism by industrial designer Eliot Noyes, they were the perfect foil for Rand’s logo.

The simple three letter device gave the industrial monolith a coherence across a dizzying range and scale of products, capable of coping with everything from a business card to a business park entrance. Rand modified it in 1960 and again in 1972 to create the familiar striped logotype (with two weights of stripe, depending on the scale of use).

Distinctive, bold and graphic, it was an appropriately serious signifier for the world’s largest computer maker. In many respects, IBM was a pioneering collaborator with high design; the company also worked with notable designers like Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi and George Nelson, as well as architects as diverse as Denys Lasdun and Eero Saarinen. Navigate to its website today, and Rand’s work is still at the top of the page.

Think Donald Judd, and you immediately think of the Untitled (Stack) – or Plywood, particularly for anyone who has followed the contemporary design world over the last decade. Judd is a giant. Most people know the art, and 20th-century art history would be incomplete without his defining works and writings on the vernacular and, albeit reluctantly, minimalism. Now, a quarter of the way into the 21st century, Judd’s precise inquiries into architecture and furniture are becoming as widely recognised as his wall works and floor pieces – thanks in large part to the exhibitions and programming of Judd Foundation, as well as the four-decade-old commercial arm Donald Judd Furniture, which continues to appear across galleries, art fairs and cultural institutions. (How many celebrity homes now include a ‘Daybed’ or ‘La Mansana’ table?)

With this growing interest, in summer 2026, 101 Spring Street presents the exhibition ‘Donald Judd Furniture: Wood and Metal’, a selection of vernacular pieces that thoroughly exemplify Judd’s ethos outlined in his famous essay, ‘It’s Hard to Find A Good Lamp’.

As such, Judd Foundation ‘decided about a year ago that it needed its own [design] director’, explains Judd’s son and foundation co-president Flavin Judd (who shares responsibilities with his sister, Rainer Judd). ‘Design is just as important as art with regards to Don’s practice and spaces, as well as the work of the foundation in extending scholarship on his work and ideas.’ So who did the organisation choose for the job? ‘We already knew Alexandra and it was just obvious,’ says Flavin.

Enter Alexandra Cunningham Cameron – an honoree of the Wallpaper* US400 and a veteran of contemporary design who helped shape the design market through Design Miami and navigate the evolving institutional landscape at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. As the first-ever director of design for Judd Foundation, Cunningham Cameron arrives as the organisation prepares for the Judd Centennial in 2028 – a milestone that will bring a series of institutional exhibitions and programmes across New York, Marfa and internationally (details remain under wraps, but the scope is expansive). With considerable curiosity surrounding the appointment, Wallpaper* spoke with Cunningham Cameron about what’s next for Judd Design.

Judd Foundation’s first director of design on her new role

Wallpaper*: What does it mean to become the director of design for such an esteemed artist foundation?

Alexandra Cunningham Cameron: I'm only a month or two in, so I'm still exploring. It's a new position, and the way it’s been structured is around increasing awareness and understanding of Judd’s broader design practice. So this is a full range of activities: developing new scholarship programmes, institutional collaborations and fostering Donald Judd furniture, which continues to be produced and supports the foundation financially. I'm also looking at Judd’s work in product design, adaptive reuse, environmental design, graphic design and other areas of the field.

W*: How do you see carrying his design and architectural legacy forward?

ACC: That’s part of the plan I’m developing. Looking closely at his personal collections has been fascinating to me. He had an incredibly sophisticated understanding of international material culture, and you see that in the careful selection of objects he surrounded himself with – everything from a bedside clock to an Alvar Aalto ‘Paimio Sanatorium’ piece.

I have an unusual background in that I worked in the commercial sector for many years at Design Miami – working with design galleries, looking at the design market – eventually specialising in practices that exist between art and design: artists who became designers or architects, or architects and designers who moved more into visual art; people who maintain this kind of polyvocal approach.

Then I went to Cooper Hewitt as curator of contemporary design, and that’s when Rainer and Flavin thought of me for this role. I think they saw my ability to look at both sides. I think of design as an ecosystem. It’s a practice, but there are commercial elements. It’s related to trade and preservation. It carries forward material culture and material histories.

So I felt like this opportunity was an incredible moment to bring that experience into the foundation, which has already done such an incredible job of documenting and preserving his design legacy, inviting the public to visit the spaces in New York and Marfa, publishing catalogues…

There’s been a lot of work around design already done recently. There was an exhibition in Tokyo, a furniture exhibition in Seoul, and we just opened a small furniture exhibition upstairs here at 101 Spring Street. For me, one of the challenges is thinking about how to make design an automatic reference in the Judd lexicon – making it more familiar and available to people outside of some of the circles you mentioned.

W*: Judd kept art and design, as well as institutional and commercial, separate. How do you navigate those divisions in your role?

ACC: Judd definitely drew a hard line around use; but you see in all of the Judd spaces how the art and the design live together. When you’re looking at a practice that reaches out into different ways of making, they’re not necessarily working against each other. Two, three, four or five things can be true at the same time.

I’m less interested in trying to draw that distinction and more interested in growing the understanding around what was happening with Judd design, why it was meaningful, and how it was an important part of his overall body of work.

Something that’s incredibly interesting for me is thinking about how to connect the design work to the contemporary moment – conversations around design, and how we think about self-reliance, subjectivity and care for the environment. It’s important to think about the furniture and design practice as something that isn’t only in the past, but something that continues to live today.

The topics in the contemporary design world – organic materials, circularity, local production, craft – are all present in his design practice. They’re often topics that are less discussed, so I would love to open up more conversations about how the design practice relates to these critical contemporary design and architecture issues.

Judd was advocating for new ideas; he was bringing a critical lens to the world, and I think that’s something the international design world needs a bit more of – taking risks, acting on your own terms and standing up for your point of view.

W*: What’s one of your first projects out of the gate – how do you want to bring Judd’s ideas into actual dialogue?

ACC: At the moment I’m focused on going to Marfa to dive into the archive, spend more time thinking and planning, visit all the sites and go into storage. I’ve only been to Marfa once, for the reopening of the Architecture Office last year, so it’s all still in development.

But I would say that some of the characteristics really associated with innovation are how I want to approach his work. It’s important to remain true to his vision, but at this time that doesn’t mean it’s something static.

W*: What, out of Judd’s architecture and design canon, is the most emblematic of the way he thinks about design?

ACC: Oh, this is an interesting question. Looking at the furniture forms, their use of material and form is so clear. You can almost immediately see the thinking behind how they were made, how they will be used, and also where they’re from. There’s a clarity to that vision that many people respond to immediately, almost intuitively, which I find fascinating.

Everyone from amateur woodworkers to people running institutions – there’s really a vast range of Judd furniture enthusiasts. So one of the elemental furniture forms is probably the most familiar.

In terms of the experimental, something I’m still developing an understanding around, I’m fascinated by his work in land conservation and the 33,000 acres in Marfa. How Judd was thinking about landscaping, preservation and care for the environment – nature is wild, but abstract too – and that kind of grappling with the natural world and sciences is something I’m looking forward to developing a deeper understanding of when I’m in Marfa.

From a distance, the new Alaïa store in the heart of Miami’s design district looks to be painted a warm pastel pink. A closer look reveals that the exterior and many surfaces inside are clad in diminutive mosaic tiles, creating unexpectedly intricate textures. The choice is both a nod to Miami’s art deco history and entirely fitting for the brand, given how Azzedine Alaïa built a legacy for his namesake house of creating clothes that appear effortlessly sensual, belying their often complex, sculptural constructions.

Inside Alaïa’s serene new store in Miami’s design district

‘We wanted to create a dialogue between the identity of Alaïa and the character of Miami,’ says Ruxandra Halleröd of Swedish design studio Halleroed, who worked with the maison on the store. This Miami opening marks the fifth collaboration between Halleroed and Alaïa, which has involved working closely with former creative director Pieter Mulier. ‘From the beginning, we had many conversations about Azzedine Alaïa’s legacy and what we felt was truly archetypal for the brand,’ says Halleröd. ‘One of the ideas we developed was translating the femininity of Alaïa’s clothing into architecture in a restrained, minimal way. This resulted in a language of soft, curved forms combined with sharp rectangular geometries, creating a tension between the two.’

In the Miami store, this language unfolds in pale pink throughout, a nod to one of Alaïa’s signature shades. (In other stores by Halleroed, recognisably Alaïa design elements like laser-cut patterns are referenced in repeating circular features.) Contrasting with the soft hue, metallic and leather textures appear intermittently. The store is arranged over different levels, with areas dedicated variously to footwear, accessories, and ready-to-wear – the last defined by abundant mirrors and softly bright lighting, creating an airy yet intimate space. As in other outposts, the late Mr Alaïa’s reverence for design is reflected in a collection of exceptional furniture in the new Miami store. The selection brings together both vintage and modern pieces, by the likes of Reinhard Müller, Philippe Starck and Ron Arad, and was curated by interior designer Martin Brûlé.

Elsewhere, bespoke planters created by renowned botanist and longtime Alaïa collaborator Patrick Blanc add greenery to the interior and exterior. ‘For us, Miami is also defined by its lush tropical vegetation,’ says Halleröd, ‘so we integrated abundant planting into the architecture itself, allowing it to become part of the spatial experience rather than simply decoration.’ As well as being a link to the city, Blanc’s work is something of an Alaïa signature too: one of his ‘vertical gardens’ covers a large wall in the courtyard of the house’s sprawling flagship on rue de Marignan in Paris.

‘What we find most special is the way the architecture feels almost alive,’ says Halleröd of the Miami store. ‘Curved forms seem to grow organically out of the ground, the columns and the façade, becoming display elements, seating and oversized planters.’ The overall effect encapsulates Alaïa: a meeting of tradition and modernity, where unconventional design codes abound, the sensual is prioritised, and apparent simplicity is the result of complex consideration. The result ‘creates a fluid relationship between architecture, furniture and landscape, making the entire space feel like one continuous sculptural composition’.

The new store is at 171 NE 39th St, Miami

Chateau Marmont occupies a mythic place in Hollywood folklore: a decadent sanctuary overlooking the Sunset Strip that has been attracting artists, musicians and movie stars for almost a century. The hotel’s storied past is reflected in its timeless logo, a typemark set in calligraphic strokes that invoke the uncial script first used by biblical scribes thousands of years ago.

The story of the Chateau Marmont logo

This Gothic lettering is perfectly in keeping with the aesthetic of the property itself, which opened as an apartment building in 1929. The original owner, Fred Horowitz, instructed architects Arnold A Weitzman and William Douglas Lee to model its design after the Château d’Amboise in the Loire Valley, a French royal castle dating from the 12th century and known as the final resting place of Leonardo da Vinci.

Chateau Marmont opened when Hollywood was in a state of flux, with the silent movie era giving way to the advent of the talkies. In 1931, Horowitz sold the property to the magician and film director Albert E Smith, who reconceptualised the property as a hotel just in time for Los Angeles to host the Summer Olympics in 1932. Writers including F Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker became early fans, and it wasn’t long before Chateau Marmont acquired a reputation for debauchery and discretion. In 1939, Columbia Pictures co-founder Harry Cohn famously instructed his stars: ‘If you must get into trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont.’

When hotelier André Balazs took over the property in 1990, he knew he wanted to retain as much of the hotel’s historic ambience as possible. The logo was created soon afterwards, by creative agency Pandiscio Co, which utilised the Libra font originally created for the Amsterdam Type Foundry by renowned Dutch typographer Sjoerd Hendrik de Roos in 1938.

Given the number of artists and other creatives who flock to the hotel, it’s no surprise that the logo has been a source of inspiration ever since. After a stay at the Chateau, Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele conceived a 2019 collection that included handbags, shirts and sweaters that prominently feature the logo, as well as drawstring canvas bags inspired by the hotel’s laundry service.

The logo also appears on the Chateau’s signature stationery, which has been used as a canvas by a succession of visual artists. In a 1991 sketch on a hotel notepad, the Pop Art pioneers Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen reimagined the building’s towering exterior as a mound of caviar and avocado mousse.

More recently, the cartoonist Gary Baseman sketched Blackie the Cat enjoying Sunday brunch in the hotel’s courtyard, while the graffiti artist André Saraiva created a whole series of illustrations featuring his Mr A character on in-room stationery.

No doubt the distinctive typemark will continue to inspire those who stay at the hotel for generations to come. It is a logo that suggests that at Chateau Marmont, history is still being written.

The Florida motel has always known the power of a good sign, a swimming pool and somewhere to hide from the sun. Perroquet, a redesigned 1950s motel in Fort Lauderdale, starts there and takes it up a notch. Located on Harbor Drive, between the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean, the 37-room hotel keeps the familiar vernacular ingredients – courtyard, balcony, pool, palms, shade – and gives them a slick architectural treatment.

Come on down to Perroquet Hotel Fort Lauderdale

Hoteliers Clifford and Matthew of The Lane Organization brought in Belgian architect Bernard Dubois (recently behind The Standard Brussels) to rework the property, keeping the traditional U-shaped motel layout centred on a courtyard. On his first visit, Dubois says he ‘immediately loved’ the old motel plan, even before the building had found its new identity. His first move? To use a lush pairing of off-white and forest green across the façades, guardrails and corridor ceilings, referencing the region’s country clubs, tennis courts, and post-war motels. Dubois describes it as ‘a way of taking familiar codes and giving them a new clarity.’

Outdoors, red brick, green canvas, white railings and custom outdoor furniture give the courtyard a sculptural rhythm, while new planting turns the pool area into what Dubois calls 'a real jungle'. The trees screen the hotel from the street, draw birds into the courtyard and give the rooms a view of greenery rather than traffic. From outside, the building almost disappears behind them – clever planning by landscape architect Nathan Browning of Island Planning Corporation.

Thirty-seven rooms sit across nine categories, where a verdant palette turns slightly sulkier across linoleum floors, sheer curtains, chrome, leather and lacquered wood. Dubois designed the furniture himself, pulling from 1970s and 1980s chairs, 1990s chrome-and-leather silhouettes, Miami art deco geometry and 1930s rug patterns. The result delivers the clean snap of a boutique hotel, but also the delicious eccentricity of a roadside bolthole.

On the art front, curators Valerio Polimeno and Whitney Lane have assembled a collection that includes Salvatore Emblema, Giorgio Griffa, Jean Tinguely, Jean Cocteau, Lucio Fontana, Roberto Matta, Alekos Fassianos and Jeff Koons, with different works placed across the rooms. Elsewhere, the offer is deliberately straightforward: Sferra linens, Byredo toiletries, a self-service breakfast bar, deck chairs for the beach and a check-in style designed to leave guests to the pace of the place.

For Dubois, the contemporary motel is no longer bound by old ideas of luxury. ‘Many places that are the most authentic, charming and interesting aren’t the most traditionally luxurious,’ he says. Perroquet gives Florida a bijou hotel with panache, plenty of shade and a very good retro-style pool chair.

Perroquet Hotel Fort Lauderdale is located at 3081 Harbor Drive, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33316, United States

The USA’s World Cup dream may have come to an end last night, but the tournament’s sense of wonder is still drawing crowds in New York City. Looming above Rockefeller Plaza is a giant replica of the Fifa World Cup trophy. Rather than gold, however, it is built from more than 1.3 million Lego bricks.

It is the latest in the Lego Group’s portfolio of spectacular mega-builds, following projects such as the life-sized Formula 1 cars unveiled at last year’s Miami Grand Prix. The brick-built World Cup trophy is one of the largest Lego models ever constructed, rising 8.47m (27ft) tall, weighing approximately 4.2 tonnes and comprising 1,363,402 bricks (for comparison, the recently revealed Lego Sagrada Família, the largest set by piece count in Lego’s history, had a mere 12,060 bricks).

Over eight months, at the Lego Group's model production facility in Kladno, Czech Republic, a team of 59 designers, engineers, model builders and assembly technicians spent more than 7,000 hours recreating the trophy. Hidden beneath its Lego-brick exterior lies an internal steel skeleton weighing around 3.5 tonnes, providing the strength needed to support the massive installation.

Getting it to Manhattan was an engineering exercise in its own right. The completed model had to be dismantled into 16 sections before being shipped across the Atlantic and reconstructed at Rockefeller Plaza. The largest transport pallets measured 230x230cm, while the heaviest individual section was around two tonnes.

The final brick was placed yesterday (6 July 2026) by Brazilian football legend Cafu, who was joined by supporters representing nations competing in the tournament. Their ceremonial finishing touches officially opened a new ‘Lego Fan Zone’, where visitors can participate in building challenges, contribute to a football-themed brick mural and design personalised minifigures at the Lego Store on Fifth Avenue.

Not quite the real thing, but the Lego trophy is its own fitting piece of World Cup theatre – built brick by brick from contributions across the globe, for everyone to enjoy.

David Rockwell has designed hotels, restaurants, museums, sets for numerous Broadway shows and even the venue for the 93rd Oscars. But the renowned architect had never designed a space for magicians. ‘They are unusual, eccentric people,’ muses the Wallpaper* USA 400 honoree. ‘We don’t think anyone has ever designed for them.’ That has officially changed with the opening of The Hand & The Eye, a 36,000 sq ft venue dedicated to magic, set within Chicago’s McCormick Mansion, a stately Renaissance Revival edifice that dates from 1895.

The Hand & The Eye will leave you spellbound

Originally built as a private residence for one of the city’s most affluent families, the structure later became Pierre’s Continental Casino, then Kungsholm, a Swedish restaurant (complete with puppet opera). Following a fire, the restaurant's owner renovated and expanded the building, creating much of the limestone-clad ‘castle’ seen today, complete with quatrefoils adorning the exterior walls. Its longest resident, from 1974 to 2020, was Lawry’s The Prime Rib, a steak house.

There are few vestiges of the building’s prior lives beyond the exterior, as the mansion is not a designated historic landmark. A grand staircase (which took over four months to restore) remains from its casino days, as well as a brick wall from the original mansion. ‘We inherited a building with an incredible provenance of twists and turns and built-in eccentricities,’ says Rockwell.

It took about five years, but the result is a deliberate maze of lush, layered interiors that feels part exclusive club, part theatrical set, part design sleight of hand. ‘The residential scale of the rooms, and the numerous height changes of the floors, make for a meandering complex where multiple experiences and shows can take place at the same time,’ Rockwell explains. ‘No two rooms feel the same. Each space unfolds with a different mood and scale.’

The Hand & The Eye operates as both a private members’ club and a performance venue open to the public through ticketed admission. Guests navigate the experience through a three-hour journey guided by a concierge, moving between performances, bars and lounges, and, if one so chooses, a meal served on custom Ginori 1735 tableware.

The Hand & The Eye pays homage to Chicago-style magic, which is performed close-up in intimate spaces that encourage and enable interaction between the magician and the audience. Magic takes place throughout the building – whether in a small theatre, while seated at a bar or via spontaneous encounters. Rockwell stressed that the design is not a participant in any magic trick: there are secret doors and other elements of surprise, but the tricks are all created and performed by humans, and the design was tailored to the magicians themselves.

‘We learned so much about how magicians aren’t just hyper aware of their immediate surroundings and the people in front of them, but also of their physical surroundings,’ Rockwell notes. ‘In addition to the raked seating in the theatres, we worked closely with them to embed magic into every corner, creating areas where magicians and guests could have smaller, intimate moments in addition to the larger performance theatres.’

This translates into details most will not notice, which includes tables with adjustable height settings or removable centre panels that let the magician perform at the ‘heart’ of a table. Details that guests may notice include the floral ceiling in one of Rockwell’s favourite spaces, the Red Herring Room, made using layered UV-printed polycarbonate panels; the blue velvet panels in the Monarch Room (custom creations featuring 6,600 beaded pearls that took eight months to make); a wall of vintage security boxes and keys in The Vault; and the wall coverings in some restrooms that feature playing cards.

While seemingly random, the commission was very intentional and brought together a motley crew of men of a certain age who all shared a passion for magic. As a child in New Jersey, Rockwell became fascinated with the art. ‘I started doing magic tricks at younger kids’ birthday parties. I had a hamster – Herman the Great – who was part of my act,’ he recalls. ‘The apex of my magic career was when I built the Saw the Lady in Half trick. I did saw a lady in half. But in the rearview mirror, I see that the working drawings and building the trick was what really attracted me.’ He adds that he’s always been friends with magicians, has pondered hiring them as consultants for projects, and was involved in developing a Houdini musical that never made it to Broadway.

Rockwell was tapped for the project by his friend Glen Tullman, a healthcare entrepreneur, fellow Chicago Bears fan, and magician since the age of eight (‘He’s better than I am,’ admits Rockwell). Tullman offered Rockwell the opportunity to create something completely new from scratch, a departure from the firm’s usual work. ‘It’s a total first for Rockwell Group, and I love that it brings together performance, magic, dining and discovery in a way that reflects our long belief that architecture can choreograph wonder,’ Rockwell says. For a man who once performed tricks with a hamster named Herman the Great, the opportunity feels less like a departure than a full-circle moment.

The Hand & The Eye is located at 100 E Ontario St, Chicago, IL 60611, United States

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

FOOD was a cultural hub and restaurant in the early 1970s on the corner of Prince and Wooster streets in SoHo, New York, where it blended the rituals of dining with an experimental spirit. Robert Rauschenberg and Donald Judd crafted performative dishes while the restaurant’s co-founder Carol Goodden turned soups into paintings. In its three-year life, the restaurant saw its other cofounder Gordon Matta-Clark turn bones into necklaces. Today, a norm-pushing edge is a memory in this downtown pocket of soaring lofts and posh boutiques, but the New Museum remains something of a hub for the bygone avant-garde spirit. The institution’s recent doubling of its exhibition space by OMA has finally made possible an essential that many of peers have long enjoyed: a restaurant.

Oberon opens this week (7 July 2026) with 90 seats inside the 60,000 sq ft expansion, in the form of a self-contained black box on the ground floor. Brooklyn-based restaurant group The Oberon operates the eatery with a menu created by chefs Julia Sherman and Ali Ghriskey. The hospitality group’s founder and managing partner Henry Rich sees an opportunity in the New Museum’s alchemy of heritage and a downtown sensibility. ‘The museum straddles the world of New York institutions and edgy galleries around here,’ he tells Wallpaper* and says the non-profit holds a ‘unicorn position with a stature and a commitment to most forward-looking art’.

The non-collecting museum has held a pivotal role in career-making exhibitions for many global artists, yet it had lacked a proper restaurant throughout its 49-year history – in its first eatery, cork anchors the visual statement. Without a direct contact with Bowery Street, the interior wraps its guests as a concentrated experience in which the dominant material appears in five different ways, both in recognisable and distinct qualities.

OMA partner Shohei Shigematsu and associate Jake Forster who oversaw the expansion planned the pocket inside the overall metallic mesh and steel-heavy building to, as Shigematsu puts it, ‘complement the rest of the series of gallery spaces’. Besides FOOD, their mood board included the community gardens peppered throughout SoHo and Lower East Side. ‘We looked into communal spaces that have brought artists together and conceived the restaurant as its own volume,’ he says. A generous potpourri of plants outlines the opaque window, which lets museum-goers notice diners’ silhouettes within the silver-leaf cork exterior. Inside, Portuguese company Sofalca created black cork surfaces through a process in which the negative-footprint carbon-absorbing material is heated to extreme temperatures and blended with resin to yield large monolithic blocks. A series of textural cork domes, created by CNC milling, form overhead booths with serrated cork around their perimeters. An intensely textured cork ceiling in the centre is suspended above 20 or so two-seater wooden tables designed by Minjae Kim.

The Brooklyn-based designer says the main challenge in his first restaurant commission was to implement his vision into a fully-baked vision. ‘I responded to the inventive use of cork with texture and warmth,’ he says. For the 30ft bar, he summoned the technique of sanding into the grain of ash wood for a distressed rippling texture, with a lacquer finish. Kim also designed nine quilted fibreglass pendants through a process of running woven fibreglass in a sewing machine for an ornate sculptural effect, in contrast to the sturdy cork-led interior.

While enjoying meals such as a classic hamburger and martini pairing, art-loving diners can curb their visual appetite with Ian Cheng’s video installation behind the bar. The New York artist, known for his contemplative live simulations and real-time animations, here delivers dancing visuals, alive with a moody energy. In an homage to FOOD’s Fluxus roots, avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson provides a farewell to diners in the form of poems she has penned for the wrappings of parting chocolates.

Steps away from the surrounding neighborhood’s bustle, the hermetic culinary experience interprets cork’s thick hug into sculptural accents, complemented by a textural use of wood and a generous wash of greenery. ‘We are privileged to cater to a community that already likes to hang out,’ says Rich.

The Tiffany & Co box sits among the illustrious list of most famous objects that money can’t buy. Its combination of Robin Blue shade, white ribbon and black letterface are perhaps among the most instantly recognisable brand identities in the world. ‘Tiffany has one thing in stock that you cannot buy (...) for as much money as you may offer; he will only give it to you. And that is one of his boxes,’ read a 1906 article in the New York Sun, and the rule still stands.

Creating the Tiffany & Co iconic blue box

The box’s distinctive shade of turquoise has been trademarked since 1998 and an official Pantone colour since 2001 (dubbed 1837 Blue to reflect the company’s founding year). Its chromatic formula is one of the industry's most closely- guarded secrets. 'It's our most recognisable brand quality, and therefore, it has to be perfect, and it has to be right,' says Richard Moore, Tiffany & Co's vice president of creative visual merchandising at Tiffany & Co. 'People have a big affinity with that colour.'

Having remained largely unchanged since it was first introduced in the 1880s, in 2005, Paula Scher, partner at global creative agency Pentagram, was asked to give a discreet refresh to the brand. Tiffany & Co,’s new identity focused on the iconic blue box, and the shade was rolled out to include advertising, bags, as well as the inside of the boxes themselves. The new logo was hand-drawn to resemble a hot-stamped letterpress typeface, signalling a combination of luxury and craft.

'Long considered the ultimate in gift retailing, Tiffany & Co. was seeing increased competition in the luxury market and sought to reaffirm its status,' reads a note from the studio. '[...] Scher developed new identity and packaging standards for the luxury retailer that restored the lustre of the brand.'

During his career, Frank Lloyd Wright built only one house in Tennessee: the Shavin House, perched on Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga. Now, this unique piece of American architectural history is on the market.

The home, at 334 North Crest Road, was built in 1949 after newlyweds Seamour – a building materials salesman with an appreciation for modern design – and Gerte Shavin decided that, rather than buying an existing home, they would channel their savings into commissioning a residence from the era's most celebrated architect. They paid roughly $33,000 for the house and its Wright-designed built-in furniture, a considerable sum for the time.

Wright designed the home in his Usonian tradition – a design philosophy centred on the idea of the ideal American home: modest in scale, with open interiors, abundant natural light and a strong relationship between architecture and landscape. The Shavin residence embodies these principles, built from native Tennessee Crab Orchard stone and Louisiana cypress.

Wright himself never set foot on the Chattanooga site; construction was overseen by Marvin Bachman, one of his apprentices from Taliesin, Wright’s home, studio and school complex in Wisconsin. Bachman died in a car accident before the project was finished, but the house was nonetheless completed in 1952. It remained in the Shavin family for more than seven decades – Seamour, who also served as the home's general contractor, lived there until his death in 2005, while Gerte remained part-time until 2020.

Signature Wright touches are everywhere: a hidden entrance that reveals the main living spaces only after entry, clerestory windows, mitred glass corners that dissolve the visual boundary between interior and exterior, and a massive stone fireplace centerpiece. A dramatic cantilevered carport roof extends outward from the main building, while inside, Wright's signature built-in seating, shelving and cabinetry unify architecture and interior.

The Shavin House does depart from Wright’s usual style in one notable way: while many of his houses tuck into their surroundings, this one commands the top of Missionary Ridge, with sweeping views of the Tennessee River, Lookout Mountain and downtown Chattanooga. This distinctive character earned the home a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993, and it became Chattanooga's first official local landmark in 1995.

With its entrance to market, the Shavin House offers the chance to steward one of fewer than 100 completed Usonian houses in existence. While it may not carry the fame of Fallingwater or the Robie House, many consider it one of the finest surviving examples of Wright’s residential philosophy.

The Shavin House is on the market with Sotherby’s International Realty for $1.6 million.

In October 1950, a new weekly comic strip, Peanuts, debuted in seven newspapers across the United States. Created by American cartoonist and writer Charles M Schulz, it followed the exploits of Patty, Shermy, Charlie Brown and his dog, Snoopy.

Born in Minneapolis in 1922, Schluz grew up during the Great Depression, serving in the United States Army during the Second World War, before embarking on a career as a cartoonist. Once remarking that the army ‘taught me all I need to know about loneliness’, Schulz infused this melancholy into the character of Charlie Brown.

His dog, Snoopy, was the result of Schulz’s observation of the relationship between children and dogs, noting the particularly high levels of tolerance a dog has for children’s games, a patience that became the foundation of Charlie Brown and Snoopy’s alliance. Schulz, who had wanted to name the series Li'l Folks, based Snoopy on his childhood dog, Spike, originally drawing the animal as a very ordinary-looking black-and-white beagle who walked on all fours.

Over the years, Snoopy transformed, beginning to walk on two legs, and conducting a sly and playful inner monologue that readers accessed through his thought bubbles. Schulz simplified his drawing style, with Snoopy developing long ears and expressive dots for eyes. By Schulz’s final comic strip, in 2000, Snoopy’s form had been reduced to the essential, a distinctive mix of clean lines and abstract shapes.

Snoopy’s idiosyncrasies – sleeping on top of his kennel, experimenting with endless identities – meant both adults and children found him relatable. Snoopy imagined himself as everything from a First World War flying ace to a lawyer and a scout leader, and was usually preoccupied with themes of friendship, hope and disappointment.

The simplicity of his design made Snoopy both instantly recognisable – even at very small sizes – and adaptable. Snoopy moved easily from newspaper strips to toys, products, advertising campaigns and fashion collaborations.

Snoopy’s appeal transcended comics, extending into fashion and popular culture around the world. At its most popular, Peanuts was translated into 21 languages and syndicated in more than 2,600 newspapers across 75 countries. Notably, Nasa was particularly taken with Snoopy, using him as a safety mascot during the 1960s and introducing the Silver Snoopy Award, which was presented to those who make significant contributions to mission safety. The lunar module for the Apollo 10 mission, meanwhile, was dubbed ‘Snoopy,’ and the command module was called Charlie Brown.

The fashion industry, too, has embraced Snoopy, and he has appeared in collections by brands including Gucci and Lacoste, and on everything from sneakers to watches. Timex, which adopted Snoopy’s form in 1965, was one of the first brands to obtain licences for the use of the Peanuts characters, resulting in watches including the Peanuts x Timex Marlin Automatic Soccer.

Throughout its 50-year run, Schulz kept sole and complete creative control, personally penning every strip himself. It was a habit he maintained until his final strip, which appeared on 13 February 2000 – one day after his death.

This article appears in the August 2026, Creative America issue of Wallpaper*, available from 2 July in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

The Wallpaper* US400 is back. Now in its fourth edition, the list has evolved to become a roll call of creative talent in America today, from emerging design voices to established names in business, architecture, fashion and more. There’s plenty to celebrate in 2026; this year’s reveal coincides with the 250th anniversary of the US as well as the 30th anniversary of Wallpaper*. But what exactly is the US400, and what makes it stand out from the rest? Here, we break down everything you need to know.

What is the Wallpaper* US400?

The Wallpaper* US400 evolved out of a desire to capture the special energy that defines America’s creative ecosystem, timed to our annual US-themed August issue. Initially, in 2023, that began with a group of 300. But we quickly realised that that number didn’t quite cut it. Now in its fourth year, the project has evolved into a list of 400 individuals and firms that we feel encapsulate what the American spirit of ingenuity is all about.

Why are there 400 names?

Unlike other lists out there with 50 or 100 honourees (we won’t name names), we recognise 400 individuals and firms. Yes, 400 is a large number, but we firmly believe that a broader grouping – a sample size, for the statistically inclined – begins to better approximate the depth and breadth of creative output in the United States. We like to think of it like a snapshot at this moment in time, more than an ossified roster, one that will organically change year over year.

Here’s a fun parallel: During the Gilded Age, ‘The Four Hundred’ served as a definitive list of who was who in American society.

So who’s on the list?

Our inductees all fall under Wallpaper*’s editorial pillars: architecture, design, jewellery, fashion, hospitality, art, technology, transport and entertaining. In 2026, that included everyone from titans of industry to fledgling design practices; Blue Chip artists to indie gallerists. Essentially, the fascinating people that make up the Wallpaper* family.

How do you choose who’s on it?

There is no formal application process to be on the list. But we do take a few things into consideration. Have we published your work? Have you done something newsworthy in the last twelve months? What kind of impact have you made in your field? Have you inspired us? Simply put: the list is made of the interesting people we’d want to invite to one massive dinner party.

View the Wallpaper* US400 online and find out more about the August 2026 issue’s celebration of Creative America here.

The August issue is available from 4 July, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

The New York Metropolitan Baseball Club was established in 1962 to soothe fans still reeling from the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants. In pursuit of larger audiences and new stadiums, both beloved franchises relocated to California after the 1957 season, closing the chapter on New York’s so-called golden era of baseball.

From the outset, the Mets’ emblem (largely unchanged since its debut)was conceived as an act of reconciliation. Its dark blue field and baseball motif nod to the Brooklyn Dodgers, while the Dutch orange and interlocking 'NY' on the logo’s first version evoke the New York Giants’ branding. The result was a carefully crafted homage.

Selected from hundreds of entries in a public competition, the design was created by Ray Gotto, a prolific cartoonist best known for his syndicated baseball strips Ozark Ike and Cotton Woods. The former Navy illustrator who was living in New York City at the time approached the brief with an understanding of what was truly at stake. Though the Mets would play in Queens (as rival New York Yankees were based in the Bronx) Gotto sensed that an emblem that could unite the entire city was needed.

To foreground the Mets’ name, Gotto drew a symbolic New York skyline using a medley of landmarks from various boroughs. From left to right, he included a silhouette of a church spire, the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, the Woolworth Building, the Empire State Building, and the United Nations headquarters. A suspension bridge anchors the composition, all of it contained within the circular frame of a baseball. Originally rendered in black and pink per the logo design contest guidelines, the palette was later revised to blue, orange, and white at the team’s request—colours that also echo New York City’s tricolour flag.

In the decades since, the Mets have cycled through owners, managers, stadiums, and uniforms, yet Gotto’s skyline, stitched in blue and orange, has endured. More than branding, the Mets logo has become a fiercely guarded emblem within the 'Mets Nation.' In 2014, eagle-eyed fans noticed a subtle alteration to the logo on the club’s social media accounts. They decried that the United Nations building appeared to have been mysteriously altered to resemble the Citigroup Center tower. Whether a sneaky marketing gesture or a digital prank, the change vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. The Mets denied making any revisions to the official mark.

'The Ray Gotto design makes sense,' says Walter Bernard, former art director of New York, Time and Fortune, and a longtime Mets fan. 'Most baseball fans love their teams’ history and traditions, and the Mets logo carries so much tradition that change simply isn’t necessary.'

The logo first appeared in print in November 1961, about five months before the Mets took the field. It fulfilled its purpose brilliantly: fans swiftly bought into the new franchise and snapped up tickets to games. Gotto was paid $1,000 (around $11,000 today)—a respectable fee at the time, but a bargain in retrospect for an enduring mark that helps sell millions of dollars of merchandise for one of baseball's most valuable franchises.

‘These women I create have a mind of their own,’ says artist and Wallpaper* US400 honoree Danielle Mckinney. ‘They really challenge me. There is an alchemy that has to happen as I paint.’

American painter Mckinney is a chronicler of the human condition, and particularly adept at capturing that very specific sensation of being alone. In her cinematic and atmospheric portraits in oil paint, Mckinney’s solitary women are at home; smoking in the bath, slouching over a cup of tea, curled up on the couch or sprawled in bed. They emerge, tantalisingly, out of the depths of a darkness that doesn’t quite engulf them, drawn in richly observed palettes of colour.

Mckinney was born in Montgomery, Alabama, attending the Atlanta College of Art before studying photography at Parsons School of Design in 2013. Until the pandemic, painting was only a hobby, with her main work photographing social environments. She was drawn to the way people interacted in public spaces in New York, but when Covid hit, the streets cleared and the population donned masks, Mckinney moved inside. She began taking her painting seriously, and sending her work to galleries.

In the sense that her paintings are snapshots of grand and imagined narratives, they are a natural development from photography. ‘I think about the frame when I make the painting,’ Mckinney says. ‘Photography is all about capturing the moment, and I think I'm doing the same thing in the paintings. I'm really intrigued by interior spaces, and I really enjoy collaging those worlds together photographically and creating another moment within the painting. I feel like I never abandoned my craft. It's just that I'm using it in another way to tell the story.’

Running consistently within her stories are musings on the significance of domestic space. Throughout, the home is as consistent a character as the women themselves. Mckinney is happiest at home – ‘space for me is sacred’, she says – and is building on an art history canon by documenting its domestic rituals. She is intent on stripping back the layers of a persona to get to the heart of who a woman is when she gets home at the end of the day, and closes the door.

‘I was intrigued by the interior space and the woman. I started to look, first, for Black figurative painting, and it wasn't anything that I could really find. I went deeper, and that's when I fell in love with Vermeer and Bonnard. You feel the energy of the sitters in the room, you feel them as a watcher. They create a stage for you to enter.’ Their eschewing of hyper-realist scenes, epitomised by the likes of Rembrandt, is something Mckinney embraces in her own work, choosing raw emotion over perfection.

This emotion plays out in her richly drawn interiors. Mckinney’s women are framed by darkness – she begins by painting the canvas black – and then come the hands, the body and the face. ‘That's the signature, because I feel like that is what people are going to look at to define the mood. So I talk to her – come on, come on, don't mess up on me, please come. And she does, but she's sometimes not who I want her to be.’

The interiors follow, rendered in dark green, browns, burnt umber and sienna. ‘I love to adorn her in her space. She represents this intensity; she's by herself and sometimes not smiling, but when you look and you see these fluorescent red fingernails, it brings wittiness to the intensity.’ For the interior detailing, Mckinney pulls from Pinterest, or riffles through vintage magazines from the 1940s, which she finds on eBay. Sometimes, she listens to music, and makes the mood it triggers tangible.

By painting women alone, Mckinney is still reframing, this time rethinking the connotations inherent in the idea of a solitary woman. ‘The idea of interior space to me is extremely important, because it represents rest, it represents shelter and safety. When people enter an interior space, they're moved by it, or alarmed, or they're registering their sense of safety within that. That’s a natural thing in a painting, because people want to enter it.’

Mckinney can’t help but become attached to her women, she says. ‘I love my ladies. When they leave the studio, I’m grieving, but they don't belong to me – and they are definitely not me. I think they represent the collective, and belong to everybody. I really think they're real – in a fictional way, like how my daughter believes that her dolls are real, and she loves them just the same. The women exist in that very special way, and they're really powerful for me, because when I'm in my studio and I'm having a hard time and I have three good paintings on the wall, those ladies will give me the energy to make the rest of the show. They feed off of each other.’

'Danielle Mckinney: Shelter’ is on show until 4 October 2026 at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, norton.org

This article appears in the August 2026, Creative America issue of Wallpaper*, available from 2 July in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

In 1961, Eero Saarinen’s Thomas J Watson Research Center opened as IBM’s main research campus in the rural setting of Yorktown Heights – about 35 miles north of Manhattan. At this point in tech and computing history, Silicon Valley, as it is known today, did not yet exist, nor did any patch of land signify the singular home of computing innovation. Instead, major computer companies based themselves sporadically around North America, often close to or in established industrial cities. IBM and modernist architecture master Saarinen moved away from the grit of the urban core, designing a campus that was built, quite literally, out of the wooded hills of Westchester County, New York.

Tour the new IBM Research offices

In the years when the Yorktown Heights campus was conceived, IBM assembled a cohort of architects and designers, including, aside from Saarinen, Eliot Noyes, Paul Rand, and Ray and Charles Eames, to shape what would become central to their brand: an inextricable relationship between design and technology. Today, 65 years after its opening, IBM Research creative director Mark Podlaseck describes how these figures helped 'form this consciousness of IBM being a design-centric company'. He describes how the centre 'is connected to this history of modernism', and a 'historical movement of embracing the future in a humanistic way'.

The new Think Lab – designed by Universal Design Studio and Map Project Office in close collaboration with IBM Research – builds on this humanism. Saarinen originally created a place that was, by its very form, embracing. Semi-circular in plan, it spread across hundreds of acres with frontage that was, and still is, fully glazed. Internally, repeating corridors linked office and laboratory spaces, provoking serendipitous meetings. Researchers immersed in focused technical explorations were deliberately given an environment that aided contact – a place where they could meet with both nature and people intuitively.

This human experience extends to the centre’s latest interventions. In its most pragmatic sense, Think Lab is a technology-first project, designed to house the new systems of IBM’s quantum-centric supercomputing architecture – which combines quantum and classical computing. The design, however, forgoes rigidly separating equipment from research spaces and laboratories, instead fusing them into a whole experience.

Within the centre, IBM’s quantum computing systems sit within a holistic environment. As Universal Design Studio’s Satoshi Isono puts it, the idea has been to create an integrated centre that moves away from the ‘showroom’ format. 'We put everything into one space,' Isono says, highlighting an approach that builds on Saarinen’s own original intention for connectedness.

Today, that connection comes through new layers of tactility. The original 1960s campus was imbued with its surrounding texture and topography – its walls made of natural stone collected from its site. 'Materiality is very much aligned with the original architecture,' Isono explains, having undertaken deep research into the original scheme.

'Mark and I made several visits to Yale University, where Saarinen’s archive is kept, to look at material specifications and samples, photography from the time, hand drawings, blueprints, and so on. We weren’t trying to reinstate the space, but we kept existing proven build materials.' Additional materials within the new scheme echo the character found in situ; both past – the natural stone and original concrete – and future – the materials of the machines themselves.

Think Lab is a private space, with visitors only entering by invitation. Yet even as a non-public centre, it is defined by openness and a desire to imprint the fullness of the work it incubates. Isono talks about its immediacy, and how visitors can 'really get in front of the technology.' Podlaseck emphasises the creation of a whole experience, of inviting people to feel the technology, not merely gaze at it.

The space has been designed to engage visually, haptically and even sonically – tailored acoustic design balances the sound mix of both ambient infrastructure and the machines themselves, all while musical notes float through the air, radiating from a spinning analogue record player. Combined, these moves belong to a place designed to communicate technologies that are, to many, difficult to see or grasp. In many ways, Think Lab extends Saarinen’s original intention: to create a place of discovery, of nature, community, and of the sweeping innovation that can exist within both.

universaldesignstudio.com

research.ibm.com

mapprojectoffice.com

There is a certain phenomenon in fashion whereby no matter what theatrics might have appeared on the runway – bouncing crinolines, protrusions of taffeta, an avant-garde silhouette – when it comes to a creative director's final bow, they will usually appear to take it in a sweater and jeans. Few practise what they preach – or, put simply, wear what they design.

There are, of course, exceptions. One is Wallpaper* US400 honoree Thom Browne. For the past 25 years, he has forged a $500m brand in his own meticulous image. Every day, runway show or not, Browne wears a ‘shrunken’ grey flannel wool suit of his own design, nipped in at the body and cropped at the ankle, as if wearing one size too small. It is accessorised with a grey tie, sometimes worn with shorts and a cardigan, and completed with three-stripe socks and lace-up brogues.

It is the uniform he requires of his staff, too. Step inside the brand’s offices on West 35th Street in New York’s Garment District, and you will find an army of near-identically dressed workers in iterations of the singular look, which is distributed to new starters before their first day (the beginner's pack currently includes two grey wool suits, five white Oxford shirts, one grey wool tie and one white pocket square). Some allowances are made when it comes to summer (seersucker is acceptable), and weekends (navy can be worn from Friday to Sunday), though a series of guidelines dictates exactly how (shirts cannot be ironed, top buttons must remain undone, ties must be knotted tightly and tucked into the waistband).

It makes entering a Thom Browne event or runway show a little like performance art, something that the designer himself seems keenly aware of. One memorable presentation, held at the Pitti Uomo menswear fair in Florence back in 2009, saw him construct a surreal scene in which 40 male models – identically dressed in the Thom Browne uniform, with side-slicked hair and wire-rim glasses – populated 40 identical office desks and tapped away at their Olivetti ‘Lettera 32’ typewriters. (The designer has said the 1950s office is a perennial reference point, inspiring the design of his stores, which often feature midcentury furnishings, strip lighting and slatted blinds.) A similar scene took place at Milan Design Week in 2024, when Browne launched a bedding collaboration with Italian textile company Frette; this time, the cast of men and women donned suits and tucked themselves into identical single beds.

If it sounds megalomaniacal, Browne believes the opposite: that a uniform is liberatory, and not simply because it frees up your mind in the morning for other things than deciding what to wear on a given day (though, he argues, this is a definite benefit). ‘I think the person becomes more interesting when you're not so drawn to the clothes,’ he says during our interview at Claridge’s, his preferred address while staying in London. ‘We could all be wearing the same thing, but we look very different.’ As if to prove the point, Browne is flanked by two members of his communications team: though they all wear versions of the same thing, the three men occupy the uniform differently, their personal style still evident in a shock of peroxide blonde hair or an item of jewellery (Browne is the most classic of the trio, his close-cropped grey hair and angular features evoking the groomed 1950s businessman who still serves as his inspiration).

The dichotomy between sartorial belonging and personal expression is a large part of the success of Thom Browne, the designer believes, something proved by its surprisingly wide gamut of devotees. There are film directors (Celine Song, Barry Jenkins and Ryan Coogler all wear Thom Browne in their daily life); actors and musicians (Thom Browne has become a red-carpet mainstay; for the latest Met Gala, he dressed 12 people, making him the most represented designer at the ‘Oscars of Fashion’); and, perhaps most intriguingly for a brand that sways towards the avant-garde, basketballers and football players. In 2018, LeBron James organised custom Thom Browne suits for every member of the Cleveland Cavaliers during the 2018 NBA playoffs; the brand has been a mainstay of the ‘tunnel walk' phenomenon ever since.

‘You didn’t look at them and think: oh, they are all wearing the same thing,’ he says of reimagining the design for the players' towering proportions. ‘Together, they all looked so strong. Sometimes we don't realise how transformative the suit is until the person is wearing it. In a time when everything is not so tailored, not so constructed, you do feel the shift when you put it on. It's powerful.’

Growing up in Pennsylvania, Browne was not a rebellious dresser, nor did he gravitate towards a particular style tribe: in fact, he was more than happy to wear the school uniform of his Catholic school (his family is Irish-Italian in heritage). A competitive swimmer in childhood who would go on to swim with Notre Dame University’s Division I team, Browne had an all-American upbringing, something that filters into his work: Ivy League dress codes run through his collections, from the red, white and blue stripe grosgrain ribbon that he uses as branding in place of more overt logos, to his (oftentimes shrunken) riffs on preppy staples, including Oxford and polo shirts, cardigans, sweaters and striped ties. They are, in his collections, like the suit itself, delivered with a sense of humour, and often a hint of perversity: one memorable menswear show featured a series of Thom Browne jock straps, the sporting garment-turned-fetish item remade in Browne’s three-stripe webbing.

The shrunken suit, however, remains the nexus of his collections, abstracted into a series of fantastical forms, particularly in his womenswear, which has all the drama and savoir-faire of haute couture (he has shown on the couture schedule previously in Paris, the lofty pinnacle of French dressmaking). It has been flattened to its composite pattern pieces and attached to models as one might dress up a paper doll; adorned with dogs, lobsters or whales; worn with matching tutus or billowing skirts; or de- and reconstructed, as with an extraordinary show in 2024 held during Paris haute couture week, whereby the humble ecru muslin used to create tailoring toiles was transformed into a series of gowns and jackets blooming with appliqué flowers or adorned with gold beading (one jacket and skirt took 42 craftspeople 11,000 hours to complete).

Browne speaks of the invention of the shrunken silhouette in mythical fashion, something that arrived to him through intuition over logic (‘my father said that I was a dreamer – I was always in my head trying to create interesting things’). Arriving back on the East Coast from Los Angeles in 1997 (after graduating from Notre Dame, Browne would spend much of his twenties trying to be an actor in Hollywood), Browne initially worked as a salesman at the Giorgio Armani showroom before taking a job at Ralph Lauren offshoot Club Monaco on the design and merchandising team, despite a lack of formal training. In 2001, a line of five own-label suits were created in his one-bedroom apartment, drawing inspiration from vintage styles and strangely contracted in their proportions (he got the initial shape by tumble-drying vintage suits to shrink them; when actor Edward Norton, an early adopter, wore one for a public appearance, Browne remembers commentators quipping that he looked like he was going to middle school).

‘No one liked it,’ he says. ‘They didn’t understand it. It was a time when that look just wasn't in fashion.' But he persevered: by 2003, he had established a ready-to-wear line, and a year later, he staged his first New York Fashion Week show (help came from Miki Higasa, a former Comme des Garçons brand strategist who linked him up with buyers from major department stores). ‘It was exactly what I wanted for myself. I think in that passion, they saw that there was a reality to it.’

In 2005, David Bowie purchased an off-the-rack suit, wearing it for a performance at New York’s Radio City Music Hall days later. Over the next two decades – bolstered by a stint as creative director of Moncler's Gamme Bleu line from 2008-2017 – the Browne look filtered into the mainstream. To wear a Thom Browne suit became a status symbol: recognisable enough for those in-the-know (there is a certain intellectual cachet to his designs that makes him popular within artistic circles), but intriguing enough to pique the interest of the man on the street. In 2018, Italian luxury conglomerate Ermenegildo Zegna Group wanted in on the action: it purchased an 85 per cent share in the brand, leaving Browne with the remaining 15 per cent and full creative control (the group has since upped its share to 90 per cent).

Closer to home, another person Browne credits his success to is his husband, British fashion curator Andrew Bolton (he admits that much of his downtime is now spent with Bolton ‘watching mindless TV’ at home; they have plans to adopt a cat to join their beloved dachshund Hector, who inspired Browne's signature dog-shaped handbag). ‘Andrew is intimidating because of how much he knows about fashion,' says Browne. ‘We talk a lot. We don't always talk specifically about work, because we have to get away from it. But we do sometimes, and he's the only person that would ever make me change something.' Bolton is best known for curating the Costume Institute's annual spring exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the opening of which is heralded each year by the Met Gala, perhaps the fashion industry’s most-watched event.

Over the years, despite having long operated at the fringes, Browne is now firmly part of the establishment: in 2023, he was elected chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), succeeding Tom Ford. Part of that role, alongside representing American fashion on the world stage and overseeing the New York Fashion Week calendar, is shepherding younger designers towards the type of success he has enjoyed. ‘I think the most important thing is that they really want it, that they want to do it more than anything else in the world – it’s not going to happen overnight,’ he says. His own career has been one of perseverance: an unerring belief in what you have created, even when the world around you is yet to catch up with your vision. ‘Actually…,’ he pauses. ‘My advice for young designers is that what I say shouldn't matter. You need to look inside yourself and figure things out on your own.’

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

Before becoming a master of Pop Art, Andy Warhol was a commercial illustrator, with his drawings appearing in both fashion advertising and in magazines in the 1950s. It marked the start of the artist’s respect for consumer culture, in contrast to others of the era who publicly disdained commercial work. Warhol could see the powerful role logos and packaging held in communicating a message, a realisation in direct opposition with the artistic style popular at the time.

In 1950s America, abstract expressionism reigned, with Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko offering meditative, often energetic musings on a post-war, politically charged society. When Warhol created his soup cans series, between 1961 and 1962, he chose instead to recontextualise and therefore elevate an ordinary object familiar to millions, with his concrete, figurative style standing apart.

The series is composed of 32 works, each with a different flavour of Campbell’s soup, faithfully rendered in the design consumers instantly recognised. By focusing on repetition and standardised design, Warhol eschewed the individual entirely. Created in the late nineteenth century, the Campbell’s soup can was already a design classic, defined by its bold red and white colours, typography and a gold medallion epitomising the trust consumers put in the product. The red attracted attention; the white, a trustworthy assurance of cleanliness. By the 1960s, the design was among the most recognisable pieces of packaging in America, clearly epitomising the influential role graphic design was set to play in a burgeoning consumer society. Warhol was unique in recognising the power packaging had to transcend the mundane, becoming a cultural symbol in its own right. By reproducing it almost exactly, and without comment, Warhol asked viewers to consider why such an everyday item held so much significance - and whether it came from his reproduction, or the effectiveness of the original package design.

The repetition in the series was crucial for Warhol - when the 32 works are displayed together, they appear as if stacked on supermarket shelves. Viewed as a whole, they emphasise the single can’s place in a larger system of production, much like the identity of the end consumer herself. Taken as a series, the familiar reliability of repetition is lent an unsettling edge. By presenting this ambiguity without defining it, Warhol avoids either critique or commendation, leaving us feeling uneasy. Warhol was adept at blurring these boundaries between commercial design and fine art, and by elevating a commercial product to fine art status he foresaw the increasing dominance of brands in society. In his soup cans, Warhol predicts the power of the logo, and the potential of a brand to eclipse more traditional art in influence. Warhol’s work played a part in triggering this change, leading designers increasingly to respect the extent that everyday objects can shape visual experience. His paintings highlighted the artistry embedded within commercial graphics, influencing generations of graphic designers and advertisers.

The work became a defining image of Pop Art, the artistic movement which rethought familiar motifs from popular culture, from advertising to comics and consumer goods. Arguing against the separation of culture into high and low, in Pop Art everyday products were as legitimate a subject for an artwork as religious iconography, portraits or historical scenes had been. It is an idea epitomised most famously in Warhol’s soup cans, which presented an entirely new vision of what contemporary art could be - and are still as accessible and provocative as ever.

This article appears in the August 2026 Issue of Wallpaper*, available from 2 July in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Kitty’s Cosmopolitan Club is a basement bar with the character of something several storeys higher. The new Chicago cocktail lounge from Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants and partner-beverage director Kevin Beary sits beneath Crying Tiger at 51 W Hubbard Street, reached by way of a host station at the foot of the stairs, where a backlit glass-brick wall gives the first clue that River North’s latest watering hole is not interested in understatement.

Wallpaper* drinks at Kitty’s Cosmopolitan Club, Chicago

The mood: emerald after-dark

Designed by David Collins Studio, which also worked on Crying Tiger, the basement has been arranged with the clipped symmetry of a supper club and the atmosphere of a private cabaret. Emerald green drapery falls from the ceiling and gathers behind the bar, edging the room towards something tented and theatrical. Metallic bronze crackle-finish tiles wrap the columns; dark-stained timber walkways frame an abstract animal-print rug; plush banquettes sit against softly illuminated glass brick. The effect is a lush intoxication of green velvet, smoked mirror, polished nickel and low amber light.

There are plenty of details to linger over. Pierre Paulin bar stools, upholstered in red and metallic abstract animal print, line the bar. Handwoven emerald macramé leather screens divide the room. Behind the bottles hangs Circus Romance, a 1978 painting by Robert Kushner, while sculptural tiger table lamps and waiters in green velvet dinner jackets extend the room’s ritzy after-dark mood.

The drinks: classics, sharpened

Beary’s cocktail programme is divided into four categories – From the Bar, From the Cold Room, From the Trolley, Low and No – with drinks built around classic references but made with modern techniques and sharper spirit selections. A Kitty’s Gin Martini is stirred tableside with Old Raj 55° Dry Gin and a house vermouth blend; a Japanese Whisky Old Fashioned uses Yamazaki 12 Year Old Whisky; and the bar’s dedicated -16°F walk-in freezer station, billed as a Chicago first, gives the colder drinks their own ritual. Food follows the same indulgent maximalism: caviar chips and dip, chilled shellfish, warm Cinco Jotas Ibérico ham, dim sum and chocolate truffles.

Kitty’s Cosmopolitan Club is located at 51 W Hubbard St Ste 200, Chicago, IL 60654, United States

Theodore Roosevelt is largely remembered for his heroic command at the Battle of San Juan Hill, for doubling the national park system and for surviving an attempt on his life thanks to a serendipitously positioned eyeglasses case. But when Roosevelt arrived in the North Dakota Badlands in June 1884, he was a broken man; both his mother and his wife had died within hours of each other just months before. The wild frontier offered a place where the 25-year-old could grieve. ‘Nothing could be more lonely and nothing more beautiful,' he recounted of moonlight striking the sawtoothed expanse. Roosevelt eventually remarried and, in 1901, became America’s 26th president, an achievement he credited to his time in North Dakota.

Explore the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library

More than a century later, Roosevelt is back in the Badlands in the form of a $400m Snøhetta-designed library and museum, which will be inaugurated on Independence Day for America's 250th birthday. With its low-slung profile and grassy roof, the building appears as but a murmur on the prairie. ‘You could easily have argued that the library should have been some grand, bold representational architecture that stood in violent contrast with the landscape – but that's not what we wanted,' says the new library's CEO Edward O'Keefe, a North Dakota native.

Snøhetta won the design job in 2020, following an extensive selection process. ‘Our starting point was how to make this landscape something real. We didn't talk about a building,' says firm co-founder, and Wallpaper* US400 honoree, Craig Dykers, who spent ten days hiking through the area (‘It's called the Badlands for a reason,' deadpans Dykers). A pair of pebbles picked up on the trek made their way to a design meeting, their smooth surfaces and complementary scales suggesting a two-part building. When a leaf drifted onto the table, the architects realised they had a roof – and their concept.

The resulting, 96,000 sq ft structure differs little from the rock-and-leaf exercise. The library consists of two volumes – one for exhibition space, the other for public programmes – united by a landscaped canopy. The unique structural system is a mass-timber-and-steel hybrid, with striated rammed earth walls, attributes that will help it achieve Living Building Challenge certification, one of the world's most rigorous sustainability standards. The roof, planted with prairie grasses and lined with trails, offers panoramic views of the Badlands, vistas that would have captivated Roosevelt more than a century ago.

Inside, immersive exhibits put guests into vignettes from Roosevelt's life, from his childhood home to the Bull Moose campaign trail. There are also treasured artefacts on view, including Roosevelt's cavalry uniform and the eyeglasses case that thwarted an assassin's bullet. ‘In most museums, you're learning facts and figures about a person's life or time. Here, you're the main character in the story,' says O'Keefe.

One of the library's most important aspects is a one-mile trail that circumscribes the site and connects to a broader trail network, a nod to Roosevelt's legacy as a pioneering conservationist. At one moment, visitors may encounter an elevated boardwalk; at another, they may descend into a sunken channel and be eye-level with the prairie. ‘The idea is that we're helping people read and see this place, and learn from it in the ways that Roosevelt did,' says Michelle Delk, a landscape architect and partner at Snøhetta.

Working with North Dakota State University and restoration group Resource Environmental Solutions, the library has launched an initiative that sees students, volunteers and ecologists collect seeds from around 200 local species with the goal of cultivating and replanting them on the library site and across the Badlands region.

And there are attempts to heal the land in other ways. While Roosevelt remains one of America's most popular presidents, there are problematic facets of his legacy, including white supremacist views. Shortly after acquiring the land from the US Forest Service, the library's leadership invited members of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara (MHA) Nation, along with Roosevelt's descendants, to the site for a land blessing ceremony. Representatives of the Standing Rock Sioux, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and other tribes were also present.

There has been a lot of talk of presidential legacies in the US lately, but this building has a different aim, says O'Keefe: to use the past to inspire and interrogate what it means to be a global citizen. ‘“Library” and “museum” are probably the two least accurate words to describe what we have built,' he says. ‘It's a call to adventure.'

snohetta.com

trlibrary.com

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

By its sheer ubiquity, I ❤️ NY may be the world's most appropriated logo. Some 50 years after it was first introduced, New York state's official brandmark has become an all-purpose shorthand for allegiance and affection for anything, anywhere.

Milton Glaser and the I ❤️ NY logo

Curiously, I ❤️ NY was born during a time when there was little to love about New York City. Designed by Milton Glaser in the mid-1970s, the logo originally served as the graphic punchline to an advertising campaign that helped rescue the city from the brink of bankruptcy. Desperate to arrest its ballooning fiscal deficit, city officials funded a campaign that could lure tourists back to the Big Apple. Wells, Rich, Greene, helmed by the trailblazing ad executive Mary Wells Lawrence, produced it; songwriter Steve Karmen wrote an earworm of a jingle, and Glaser was asked to create a logo.

Working pro bono without a contract, Glaser quickly sketched a mark consisting of the tagline spelled out in all caps and divided between two black lozenge shapes. The city accepted it without changes. But a few days later he had another thought.

Doodling on the cab ride from his home to the office, as he often did, Glaser drew a red heart paired with the letters 'I' and 'NY' rendered in a friendly font. He chose American Typewriter – a slab serif with a certain 1970s flair – and worked with longtime studio assistant George Leavitt to slightly tweak it. Decades before the proliferation of emoji, some worried that the rebus-like construction would confuse people. Nevertheless, New York City adopted Glaser's second proposal, and soon made it the official tourism logo for the entire state.

Copycats emerged almost immediately. What makes I ❤️ NY remarkable is its portability. In Glaser's personal files one can find knick-knacks bearing variations of his logo – I ❤️ Macedonia, I ❤️ Ngorongoro, I ❤️ Rhodes – sent by friends and fans. Fashion brands like Chanel, Coach, Kate Spade, and Raf Simons have produced collections around the logo, while bootleg trinkets emblazoned with variations on I ❤️ NY abound. The state ultimately secured a copyright in the mid-1990s and earns tens of thousands of dollars in licensing fees each year.

A heavy legacy

Over the decades, every article about Glaser tended to circle back to I ❤️ NY. Its widespread popularity became his calling card and also a kind of creative prison. 'It's something I wish people would forget,' he said in a 2016 New York Times profile. 'I've done other things.'

Indeed, the 2009 National Medal of Arts honoree had achieved many other things, including co-founding New York magazine, designing beautiful restaurants, and producing hundreds of beloved posters, album covers and book jackets. Glaser’s abecedarium of logos includes marks for Brooklyn Brewery, DC Comics, and Italian gelato maker Sammontana. Yet nothing quite matched the universal impact of I ❤️ NY – perhaps only his iconic 1966 Bob Dylan poster counts as a distant second.

Glaser, who passed away on his birthday in 2020, never lost sight of the logo's original purpose as a civic symbol. I ❤️ NY, at its core, is a cri de coeur for resilience. In the aftermath of 9/11, Glaser appended it with the words 'More Than Ever', added a burn mark where the Twin Towers once stood, and gave the grieving city a ready-made banner. The same poster re-emerged in shop windows and food carts during the coronavirus pandemic.

In 2023, New York City felt compelled to modernise Glaser's logo. The woeful ‘We ❤ NYC’ rebrand was swiftly dismissed as a flop. The flood of complaints about it confirmed one thing: ferocious affection for Glaser's original. In an era when brand loyalty is elusive, the logo conceived half a century ago remains, somehow, irreplaceable.

miltonglaser.com

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

Welcome to our fourth annual issue dedicated to the US. As the nation turns 250, we reveal the latest instalment of the Wallpaper* US400, our roll call of those shaping the creative conversation – and you’ll meet many of this year's honorees in the issue.

For our cover story, we travelled to Taos, New Mexico, where artist Johnny DeFeo has fashioned a one-of-a-kind guest house in the form of a coyote's head – a self-described ‘silly' idea that nevertheless enshrines the sense of artistic and individual freedom that pervades this issue. Taos is also home to fellow honoree and jewellery designer Anna Sheffield, whose own artistic process has been reignited by a move back to her native New Mexico. And we head to the North Dakota Badlands to peruse the Snøhetta-designed Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, its low-slung silhouette and grassy roof beautifully photographed by Vicky Sambunaris.

In LA, we premiere Studio Muka's new base for boundary-pushing film production company Neon Rated, and tour the 1970s Owl House, a characteristically playful Mickey Muennig home renovated by the interior design studio of Nicole Hollis.

Exploring the ways in which métiers often traverse the globe to evolve in the hands of those similarly transplanted, we meet five design practices renewing their connections with Poland, Vietnam, India, South Korea and China, and we head to Italy's ‘home of glass', Murano, to discover how Peter B Staples, founder of Manhattan-based lighting design studio Blue Green Works, created a fitting memorial to his late mother.

Elsewhere, we examine the work of two artists contemplating either end of the societal scale: architect-trained Olalekan Jeyifous, creator of ‘protopias' – digital collages that propose alternative cityscapes – and Danielle Mckinney, whose canvases reflect the solace inherent in the domestic setting.

We also visit the San Francisco apartment of Ron Zuckerman, where every available surface is adorned with works chronicling two centuries of queer life, and we tasked writer and curator Lou Stoppard with analysing the simple pleasures of the swimming pool to introduce our portfolio of leading American image-makers.

Finally, by way of a salute to its ‘big birthday', we offer a miscellanea of our favourite American design motifs, a host of totemic, almost talismanic trademarks that we feel capture the country's longstanding creative and commercial kudos.

Bill Prince
Editor-in-Chief

Wallpaper’s August 2026 Creative America issue is available from 4 July, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Wilson was the ultimate nomad. The Texas-born, Pratt-educated artist and theatre-maker moved easily and always: between cities and continents, cultures and disciplines, the expressive and the elusive, defying boundaries through the force of his vision and a compelling charisma. And so it’s fitting that The Watermill Center, the laboratory for creative thinking that Wilson founded in 1992 in an abandoned Western Union building on New York’s Long Island and described as his 'greatest artistic achievement', was the setting for the first American edition of Nomad, the globe-trotting showcase for art and collectible design.

Nomad makes USA debut

Powered by extraordinary destinations, ranging from the Monaco villa once occupied by Karl Lagerfeld (another nomad par excellence) to the decommissioned modernist terminal at Abu Dhabi International Airport, nine-year-old design fair Nomad has emerged as the anti-fair. It doesn’t layer atop a site so much as nestle and immerse itself within it, soaking up the power of a place to illuminating effects.

The prospect of a stateside debut at Watermill, home to a year-round artist residency programme and funded in part by one of the most highly anticipated bacchanals of any summer in the Hamptons, was suggested to Nomad co-founder and director Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte by a trustee of the centre some years ago and ultimately blessed by Wilson in spring last year, before his death on 31 July 2025 at the age of 83. (An age at which, he’d told Wallpaper* in an interview at Watermill earlier that year, he had ‘more work than ever’, including an installation destined for Salone del Mobile.)

'I think Robert Wilson liked the concept of Nomad very much, because it aligns with his way of being interdisciplinary and combining different cultures. We have a lot of common ground,' said Bellavance-Lecompte, an architect and curator. 'It was a whole process to consider how we could come here without invading, to do it in a respectful way that could also support and promote his work, and now to expand his legacy.'

Art, design and architecture at The Watermill Center

An architect of time and space across hundreds of performances around the world, Wilson viewed The Watermill Center as 'my most concrete and accessible legacy'. He boiled down the institution’s mission to four foundational principles: honour the present, look to the past, support the local community, and support the global community.

Wilson first came upon the ten-acre property in the mid-1980s, drawn to Long Island’s East End by the beautiful light and a desire to trade Manhattan loft living for natural surroundings. In the crumbling, U-shaped industrial building – once a research hub that from 1925 until its closure in 1965 developed innovations including the high-speed fax machine – he discerned an appealing architectural simplicity and a beguiling surplus of windows.

Retaining the original footprint, he embarked on a 15-year project to rebuild it, inspired in part by the work of Philip Johnson, in whose New York architecture office Wilson worked as an assistant in the early 1960s. A barn-like artists’ residence, designed by Wilson in collaboration with the architect Roger Ferris, was completed in 2021.

Visitors to the inaugural Nomad Hamptons arrived at the centre as Wilson intended: by walking along a lush woodland path studded with monumental sculptures from his collection of more than 6,000 art and design objects, before ascending the stairs to reach what he dubbed the 'Knee building'; a zinc-sided structure that acts as a joint between the north and south wings.

With a floor lined in river stones, it is punctured by perpetually open doorways that afford a clear east-west view through the building. A veil of cherry red heralded Nomad’s four-day residency (25-28 June 2026), and in the trees fluttered American artist Rachel Hayes’ vibrant and dreamy textile collages, a special commission that also made for picnic blankets with a Rauschenbergian flair.

'The concept is always to dialogue with the architecture where we go to create an experience,' said Bellavance-Lecompte. In the Hamptons, that experience was shaped by a thoughtfully curated group of 32 exhibitions, each one unfolding in its own nook of the Watermill campus, including the third-floor eyrie that served as Wilson’s summer home. Opened for private tours guided by Noah Khoshbin, the light-filled space is a mesmerising mélange in which a petite René Magritte cloudscape can join a Bruce Nauman screenprint to float above a Navajo blanket, smoke-fired ceramic vessels by Bonnie Lynch, and a stainless-steel mesh chaise longue designed by Wilson in 1987 for his production of Parzival in Hamburg. And that’s just the first room. (Wilson furniture fans can find more in his self-explanatory 2025 book, Chairs.)

'Bob started collecting when he was 12 years old. The collection is a bit like Andy Warhol’s or André Breton’s in that all periods, mediums, and cultures are represented,' said Khoshbin, the centre’s curator, who also organised a presentation of works from Wilson’s vast archive in a lower-level space. 'His mission and his legacy for the artists who are in residence is that they have this collection as a resource – you can touch the works, move the works, have it in your studio or your bedroom.'

A visual tribute to Robert Wilson

The photography of Dominique Nabokov offered additional vantage points on Wilson’s singular approach to living and working (spoiler alert: the two were inextricable). Curated by Paris-based architect Sophie Dries, who instantly ingratiated herself to seasoned Wilson followers on the fair’s VIP day by toting a fluorescent Louis Vuitton handbag from the edition he designed in 2002 at the invitation of Marc Jacobs, the images were accompanied by Wilson-designed objects ranging from iconic chairs ('as important as a character' in most of his productions, he bristled when they were referred to as 'props') to striking glass works made in Marseille during his artist residency at CIRVA (Centre International de Recherche sur le Verre et les Arts Plastiques) that spanned 1994 to 2005.

Nomad in the Hamptons

For most exhibiting galleries, 'site specific' was the prevailing ethos. Cairo's Le Lab was given a room anchored by a massive wooden table that Wilson designed for, and built within, the space. 'This table will never leave this room. It’s here for good,' said Russell Piccione, who curated the presentation, titled 'Through a Collector’s Eye', with gallery founder Rasheed Kamel. 'Knowing that it was going to be in our room influenced a lot of decisions: materiality, surface, and depth, a certain soulfulness.'

Among the works orbiting the table were Ibriham El-Salahi’s Pain Relief Drawings, etched on scrap paper during the African artist’s 2016-18 incarceration in Khartoum, and a steel-framed louvered wall work by Betil Dagdelen, described by Piccione as 'a contemporary Turkish painter who happens to work in fibre'.

The centre’s serene sunken art library hosted Abby Bangser’s Object & Thing, which celebrated material experimentation and the collecting impulse with works that included a special Watermill edition of 'Disco Vision' upcycled-LaserDisc lamps by Christian Wassmann, who designed the library’s original shelves.

On the other side of the space, amid volumes dedicated to matters anthropological, theatrical, and sartorial, was the unmistakable work of Gaetano Pesce. Presented by Kalei NYC in collaboration with the designer’s estate, the forms of the colourful resin chair and jumbo throne were inspired by the frankincense trees native to Oman. More Pesce was on view in the centre’s kitchen, reimagined as a joyful haven for Italian Radical Design and spritzed regularly with a fragrance from Amouage – a precursor to the scent-embedded Pesce pieces slated to launch soon.

Other highlights included Tabayer jewellery, with finessed gold forms inspired by modernist sculpture and inlaid with otherworldly morsels of chrysoprase, blue chalcedony, and red jasper. At the Maison Gerard nook, Ayala Serfaty’s patinated bronze console, part of her new ‘Janus’ series, had the lightness of a lily pad and the organic intricacy of multiplying cells.

Aurèce Vettier (an art project founded in 2019 by Paul Mouginot and presented at Nomad by the Spaceless Gallery of New York and Paris) deploys algorithms to inform the creation of forms ranging from an Aubusson tapestry to a tree-like outdoor sculpture that evoked a glitchy mash-up of Claude Lalanne and Ingo Maurer. New York-based jewellery designer Ippolita Rostagno joined forces with Piotrek Panszczyk Burke on an installation of wearable nuggets of eroded gold, harvested from the Yukon using placer mining. 'Please touch them!' they encouraged.

Corporate partners were intelligently integrated. Sisley Paris tapped French-born artist Sydney Albertini, based in nearby Amagansett, for an installation of lively and large-scale botanical compositions that lined the walls of the centre’s dining room, while Giorgio Armani, a longtime Wilson collaborator, explored the connections between art, design, and craftsmanship with the help of commissioned works by New York-based artists Ariel Dearie and Jonathan Kline. Curated by Abby Bangser and inspired by the natural setting of The Watermill Center, the Armani presentation placed the new works in conversation with Armani/Casa pieces in Murano glass and Limoges porcelain.

Kline, a basket maker whose chosen medium is black ash, created a suite of wall-mounted open-weave grids using the inner layers of the tree, which are distinguished by their intriguing grain and irregular contour. His process shares elements prized by Wilson: slowness, contemplation, and the endless possibilities unlocked by the meeting of vertical and horizontal. 'With basket weaving, there’s a lot of time between concept and realisation. You often don’t really know where it’s going,' said Kline. 'Baskets kind of grow more than you create them. They give you time to ponder.'

A place to ponder when entering, exiting, or traversing the Knee building was created by 'Rooted Movements'. Developed with Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism, the presentation brought together the work of Emirati artists Afra Al Dhaheri, Zuhoor Al Sayegh, and Azza Al Qubaisi. 'Our objective is always to link the destinations where we go around the world, and it was important for us to bring a presence from the Middle East,' said Bellavance-Lecompte, who in 2011 founded Carwan in Beirut as the first contemporary design gallery in the Middle East.

Al Dhaheri, a native of Abu Dhabi and a 2023 participant in The Watermill Center’s flagship International Summer Program, created cotton rope installations that cascaded in banded, hair-like bundles from the industrial catwalk, their deliberately untwisted ends frizzled and pooled on the cool stone floor. The suspensions created arches to walk under, directing movement through a space infused with fragrant incense. Recalled Al Dhaheri, 'It’s like Bob used to say, “Interesting things happen when people cross paths”.’

Art deco architecture is as much a part of South Beach as sandy beaches and dancing on tables. The Delano Miami Beach has stood tall inside the same iconic building since 1947. After a six-year full-scale renovation, led by Elastic Architects, the latest reincarnation of the once hard-partying hotel – one of the most exciting recent hotel openings – brings its iconic luxury footprint back to Miami Beach with plenty of glamour and a more modern mindset that, while still convivial, puts wellness ever-so-slightly above late-night antics.

Wallpaper* checks in at Delano Miami Beach

What’s on your doorstep?

Located on Collins Avenue, the Delano sits in the middle of a stretch that’s seen the old guard flip – with The Shelborne by Proper opening last year and revamps of The Raleigh and the Shore Club (which soon fly the Auberge flag) coming down the pipeline. It’s also in a prime beachfront position, providing direct access to the Miami Beach Boardwalk and the Delano’s serviced beach area.

Who is behind the design?

The Delano is one of Miami’s most emblematic hotels. When it first opened, the sign read ‘nothing finer’. It also advertised air conditioning – a big deal back in the day; thankfully, now standard across the balmy Florida city.

Hotelier Ian Schrager, in collaboration with designer Philippe Starck, reignited the historic hotel into a sleek, scene-driven South Beach destination in 1995 and operated it for 25 years. The latest iteration, nay transformation, turned back the clock in some ways, honouring the hotel’s legacy, while also bringing it into the present. The design and management teams worked closely with the City of Miami Historic Preservation Division to stay on task. Aesthetically, there’s plenty to appeal to history buffs, from the terracotta floors emblazoned with the original emblem to the scene-stealing lobby, which shows off soaring columns and billowing fabric.

Despite its deep roots – and thoughtful choices that pay homage to its glam past – the Delano feels refreshingly on the pulse, thanks to its airy palette and impressive collection of works by Miami artists – including a mythical glazed stoneware relief by Nina Surel, oil paintings by Natalie Galindo and striking botanic sculptures by Alissa Alfonso that adorn the walls outside of Rose Bar.

The main pool area is now flanked by loungers and umbrellas, accented with lemon print underneath and playful fringe, plus a row of cabanas for VIP poolside hangs. Rooms are bright with crisp linens, light wood flooring and rugs evoking the soft sands below and large, ocean-facing windows. The dining concepts channel other vibe-driven destinations: the dynamic energy of Osaka, languid summers on Italy’s Mediterranean coastline.

The room to book

The Delano Miami Beach features 171 rooms and suites, decorated with crisp tonal hues, curved furnishings and oversized windows for gazing at the beach or the city skyline. For the ultimate in space and scenery, the swank 2,824 sq ft ocean-view penthouse offers unobstructed panoramas of the sandy shoreline and Atlantic waves from the three ensuite bedrooms, living and dining spaces and terrace.

If you’d rather soak in the social buzz, the two-storey poolside bungalows are the epitome of a Miami Beach holiday. Located just steps from the pool, each boasts a covered patio that effectively doubles as a cabana, allowing guests to enjoy food and beverage service without ever leaving the shade.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

It’s not a secret that Miami Beach is chock-a-block with great spots to eat and drink – a trio of them happen to reside at Delano Miami Beach, the result of a partnership with Paris Society, marking the group’s first restaurants in the United States. Gigi Rigolatto – a chic Italian eatery with outposts in Saint-Tropez, Paris, Dubai, Rome and Bodrum – brings its effortless elegance and coastal Italian cuisine to South Beach. Designed by Hugo Toro, the first-floor space, which extends from the air-conditioned dining room to the covered terrace, gleams with the sun-dappled warmth of plaster walls, carved wooden panels, archways and yellow Sienna marble. Signature dishes include seabream carpaccio, tomato salad, linguine alle vongole and grilled octopus.

On the fourth floor, at Mimi Kakushi, Elastic Architects and Pirajean Lees utilise wooden screens, textures, and hand-painted walls to transport Delano Members Club and hotel guests to Osaka, blending art deco-influenced design with modern dining. There’s an open sushi counter where chefs craft nigiri by hand as well as a menu of shareable Japanese plates such as tuna tartare topped with caviar, Wagyu and foie gras gyoza and miso black cod. The cocktail program, inspired by Sessue Hayakawa, celebrates the Japanese silent film star’s many on-screen characters through cinematic tipples and nonalcoholic options.

For a nightcap, the Rose Bar, just off the lobby, is back in all its glam glory, whether you belly up to the dusky-lit Rosso Lepanto marble bar for a Rose Old Fashioned or sip a Floral Negroni on one of the low-slung sofas that spill out into the lounge.

Where to switch off

Back in the Ian Schrager days, the basement was a nightclub. The glow-up, which taps into Miami’s wellness-oriented lifestyle rather than dance-till-dawn nights, replaces that more debaucherous after-dark fixture with a forthcoming wellbeing wing. There’s also a chic gym kitted out with tonal Technogym equipment and a fitness studio. Beachfront yoga sessions are also available to guests.

The verdict

Delano Miami Beach is a chic, grown-up – much-needed and welcome – addition to the South Beach scene. It’s a place where you can indulge in rosé by the pool, cocktails and late-night sushi. But there’s also a quieter emphasis on wellness. Guests might just as easily turn in early rather than stay out till dawn and rise for morning yoga. The service is friendly, warm, and young. Not inexperienced by any stretch, just vibrant and youthful. The Delano employs people who can match the fun, sunny energy of South Beach.

Book Delano Miami Beach, 1685 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, FL 33139, United States. Rates: from $650