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

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

Inside the Lego x Futura Ninjago collaboration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

lego.com

Ask many a skincare obsessive what their favourite brand is and chances are the response will be Biologique Recherche. Founded in the late 1970s by the biologist Yvan Allouche and physiotherapist Josette Allouche, Biologique Recherche has achieved its cult following and commercial success almost entirely through word of mouth, rarely engaging in traditional advertising or public promotion. But the brand has yet to become a household name, at least beyond its native France.

That, however, is about to change, thanks to the opening this week (8 September 2026) of the brand’s first flagship store in New York City. Located on 132 Greene Street in SoHo, the 2,500 sq ft space is the brand’s debut of its new, more public-facing identity. In the words of Wandjina Glasheen-Brown, SVP of global creative at Biologique Recherche, it’s a space that ‘is giving our reputation a voice, a vibe, and a physical grammar’.

Designed by London- and Berlin-based architecture studio Casper Mueller Kneer, ‘the Residence’ is the first boutique to bring Biologique Recherche’s new architectural concept to life. Inside, visitors will find a retail area for products; a space for the brand’s signature ‘Skin Instant’ diagnosis and expert consultation, allowing staff to create a personalised skincare routine for clients; and treatment rooms for both facials and body treatments.

‘Casper Mueller Kneer’s approach allowed us to explore the contrasts and contradictions that are central to Biologique Recherche,’ says Glasheen-Brown. ‘Precision and warmth, science and emotion, technical expertise and human touch – while also creating a dialogue between the maison’s Parisian heritage and the energy of New York. Together, we developed a new architectural language for the maison that feels contemporary and distinctive, without losing the unconventional spirit that has always been part of its identity.’

Upon entering the space, visitors are greeted by an ‘altar table’ where the products are displayed and which gives the serums, in Glasheen-Brown’s words, ‘a kind of sculptural authority, almost reliquary-like’, while a gold-leaf ceiling creates a warm, opulent aesthetic that contrasts with the clinical appearance of the glass-cylinder bottles. That clean, restrained look is picked up in the stainless-steel display area beyond, however, and, past that, the opulence returns with a blue marble bar inspired by the journey that the Seine takes through Paris.

Those who visit the treatment rooms will find themselves transitioning into a progressively more secluded environment, with the acoustics and atmosphere shifting to create a more intimate feel. Soft carpets underfoot are decorated with a design inspired by the Sistine Chapel ceiling, while the lighting and soundscapes in the treatment rooms are engineered to complement the rhythm of each treatment.

For Biologique Recherche, the New York space is an important moment for the brand, reflecting its move into a more public arena. That said, it is essential to all those behind it that the company retains the principles that have defined its approach since the 1970s.

‘Growth, for this maison, has to stay disciplined and highly selective. The things that built our reputation – professional expertise, the quality of our client relationships, and a genuinely personalised approach – are not negotiable as we scale exposure,’ says Glasheen-Brown. ‘What makes Biologique Recherche special was never scarcity for its own sake; it is the depth of methodology, of efficacy, and of the practitioner relationship. Our job now is to protect that depth while finally letting the maison show up with the confidence it's earned, on a global stage.’

Visit the store at 132 Greene Street, New York City, NY 10012, biologique-recherche.com/en-us

Shop Biologique Recherche

The white stucco church with a crucifix-topped bell tower on the corner of Lucile Avenue and Griffith Park Boulevard in Silver Lake has stood as a local landmark for almost a century. Originally constructed in 1931 as Bethany Presbyterian, the building was put to various uses before sadly spending the best part of the last decade vacant, bar a brief spell as an antiques market.

Now, Casetta, the California-based boutique hotel group that specialises in breathing new life into architecturally significant properties, have made it the sixth addition to their portfolio and pulled off a wholly remarkable act of resurrection. Not only is the gracefully refurbished and rechristened Hotel Lucile ideally located for exploring the east side of Los Angeles and beyond, but it’s also home to Sous Sous, a superlative restaurant set inside the church’s high-ceilinged nave with a menu that blends Southern French cuisine with Deep South flavour.

Wallpaper* checks into Hotel Lucile, Los Angeles

What’s on your doorstep?

Silver Lake has long been established as the trendy, creative heart of east Los Angeles, but strangely the neighbourhood has limited hotel options. The opening of Hotel Lucile may be bad news for the area’s AirBnb hosts, but it’s a winning development for anyone seeking an elegant stay within stumbling distance of Sunset Junction. Many of the city’s best and buzziest bars and restaurants, including the Seco, Bar Stella, Bacari and Night + Market Song, are all just moments away. Outdoor activity hubs such as Silver Lake Reservoir and Griffith Park are also close by, as is Barnsdall Art Park and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House. The hotel has teamed up with the Usal Outdoor Research Center to provide guests with a tailored field guide to local experiences.

Who is behind the design?

The Romanesque Revival-style church was designed by architect Scott Quintin in 1930 and built at a cost of around $75,000 (equivalent to just under $1.5 million in 2026). Casetta’s tasteful renovation was overseen by architecture and interior design studio Electric Bowery, led by Lucia Bartholomew and Cayley Lambur, who say they set out to celebrate the church’s ‘European sensibility’. The central nave of the building is now occupied by the restaurant, Sous Sous, with a food concept by The Butcher’s Daughter founder and creative director Heather Tierney.

The original wooden beams, vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows have all been lovingly preserved and are complemented by two large, impressive murals by the classically trained oil painter Erin Lynn Welsh. Each references the local landscape: The deep red mural above the chancel stage pays tribute to Altadena’s Eaton Canyon, which was devastated by wildfire in January 2025, while at the other end of the space is a verdant green scene inspired by the native flora of Elysian Park.

The room to book

Hotel Lucile’s 25 guest rooms are designed in a refined, minimalist style, featuring Parachute linens and Aesop bath amenities. The walls display original works by local Los Angeles artists, curated by the Rhett Baruch Gallery. Minibars are stocked with select products from the nearby Erewhon market, including sea salt popcorn, dark chocolate protein bites and Anytime organic vodka and gin. Wellness products such as a hydrating sheet mask and citrus-vanilla vitamin C gel are also available. The pick of the rooms is number 106, known as the Lucile Suite, which has a living room and its own private courtyard.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

The hotel’s restaurant Sous Sous dominates the main building, and seems destined to become a Silver Lake institution in its own right. In part, this is due to the sanctified ambience that remains in the beautifully renovated space, but it’s also down to the earthly delights being cooked up in the kitchen. Led by Chef Patrick Costa and bar director Lee Zaremba, the restaurant’s inspired mingling of Southern Californian ingredients, Southern French recipes and flavours drawn from the American South leads to some ingenious creations.

The Green Tomato Margarita is one such example, a crisp, refreshing twist on the classic cocktail served with a rim of espelette pepper and Old Bay seasoning. The hamachi crudo pulls off a similar trick, with Virginia peanuts and red pepper relish lending the yellowtail a Deep South tang. There’s also warm, crunchy country bread that seems to have appeared directly from a farmhouse in Provence, but the star of the show is the delicate rainbow trout served with a smoky, Cajun-style blackened polenta crust. Given the surroundings, it seems apt that Sous Sous does miraculous things with loaves and fishes.

Where to switch off

The spacious rooftop deck, which is reserved for guests only, offers panoramic views of Silver Lake. There’s also a pool tucked away in a sun-kissed grotto below street level, which may be too small for swimming laps but is just the right size for sipping cocktails.

What’s the verdict?

Hotel Lucile might have rested on the laurels provided by its prime Sunset Junction location, but thankfully it has loftier ambitions. The gorgeous stained glass windows and innovative menu at Sous Sous make it a restaurant worth proselytising about, while the hotel’s commitment to showcasing local artists on its walls suggests a sincere intention to restore this former church to the centre of its community. Silver Lake’s prayers have been answered.

Hotel Lucile is located at 1629 Griffith Park Blvd, Los Angeles, California 90026, United States

A weekend in the woods – or indeed, any kind of wilderness – has perennial appeal when it entails a stay in a contemporary or vintage cabin. The humble architectural cabin is as romanticised as it is versatile; it may adapt to different terrains, climates and levels of social battery, but its quirky, pared-back allure remains. Here, from a midcentury gem in Sonoma County to an off-grid red hut set in Irish turf and a treetop hideaway swallowed by the Ecuadorian forest, we’ve handpicked ten cabins for design lovers with a discerning eye and a fondness for a good old wooden refuge.

Book ten of the world’s best architect-designed cabin stays

Cedar + Skye, Sea Ranch Living, California, USA

Twenty-five feet separate the floor from the ceiling in Cedar + Skye’s living room – arguably an extravagant gesture in a cabin built for two. Architect Ralph Matheson designed the midcentury home within Sea Ranch, the northern Californian planned community established in the 1960s, and it now belongs to Sea Ranch Living, The Sea Ranch Lodge’s collection of 13 renovated modernist homes. Downstairs, glass walls surround a freestanding wood stove and a kitchen finished with white quartz, Italian appliances and cerulean glass. Meanwhile, the bedroom occupies an open loft, with an en-suite shower, compact workspace and a skylight trained on the treetops and night sky. Stays include access to Sea Ranch’s recreation centres, private beaches and 50-plus miles of hiking trails.

Cedar + Skye is located within Sea Ranch, Sonoma County, California, USA; rates vary by date

Cucu, WestMeath, Ireland

Cucu is the latest addition to Irish company Samsú’s roster of bijou off-grid cabins. An hour from Dublin, the 20 sq m off-grid shelter occupies 350 acres of County Westmeath countryside, its tapered red form punctured by a single circular window. Studio Bucky, led by Irish architect Alexander Buckeridge, oversaw the architecture, merging a compact timber shell with plywood walls, terracotta tiles and copper details. A custom roll-top copper bath calls for rest and relaxation, while a private sauna extends the bathing ritual outside. The analogue kit supplies a cassette player, film camera, journals, dumb phone and local map; there is also a king-sized bed, wood-burning stove and locally roasted coffee.

Cucu is located on the Meath–Westmeath border, Ireland. Rates: from €225

El Hormiguero, Mindo, Ecuador

From the road, El Hormiguero by Añanku Cabins is a charcoal-black triangle half-swallowed by the ferns of Ecuador’s Andean Chocó. Estudio 2850 and Janna Lasso Hadweh positioned the 24 sq m A-frame on nine steel legs, leaving roots and undergrowth undisturbed beneath its blackened timber, metal and glass shell. The roadside flank cleverly comprises the cabin’s services, including a semi-open shower screened by eucalyptus slats, while the south-west façade faces towards Mindo and the mountains beyond. Stairs, tables and partitions shift to accommodate different uses within the compact interior. Upstairs, a ridge skylight opens the bedroom to the sky and funnels daylight down to the lower level when fog settles over the forest. Birdwatching begins on the charred-timber balcony; waterfalls and butterfly farms are nearby, and central Mindo is a seven-minute walk away.

El Hormiguero is located in Mindo, Pichincha, Ecuador; rates vary by date

JR’s Eco Hut, Nangus, Australia

This solid, A-frame wooden structure, designed by Luke Stanley Architects and located in the rolling hills overlooking the bushlands of south-western Australia, resembles the top half of a Swiss chalet, emerging from a gravel bed. A celebration of off-grid living, the eco hut is intended as a place for dropping out and forgetting the rest of the world, a feat facilitated by panoramic views and congenial midcentury élan, thanks to Anthony Hunt Design’s luxuriously minimal treatment of its airy interior. Solar power runs the lights, gas heats the water, and cooking happens outdoors on a Weber barbecue and twin-burner stove. In winter, the wood-fired tub keeps guests outside after dark; in summer, it becomes a plunge pool. In the morning, expect cockatoos returning to roost and a regional-produce breakfast ready to cook.

JR’s Eco Hut is located at 1214 Nangus Rd, Nangus NSW 2722, Australia; rates vary by date

ÖÖD at Sûr Jumigny, France

Sûr Jumigny pairs two mirrored cabins with two rather older neighbours: a 350-year-old wine cellar and a historic dovecote. The Cave cabin has a private terrace above the cellar, while Pigeonnier turns the dovecote’s chalk-white interior into a cold post-sauna shower. Designed and built by Estonian cabin maker ÖÖD House, the structures stand in a wildflower meadow on an old manor estate at the edge of Champagne. Host Godfrey Hill led the interiors and landscape execution, marrying mirrored glass with limestone, long grass and the estate’s 19th-century buildings. Each cabin sleeps two, with a kitchenette, private terrace, sauna and outdoor shower. Naturally, champagne awaits on arrival.

ÖÖD by Sûr Jumigny, 1 Rue du Jeu de Paume, 02160 Jumigny, France; rates from: €220 per night

Pan Treetop Cabins, Finnskogen, Norway

Moominvalley appears to have taken a detour into Finnskogen, leaving three steep, black cabins among the pines. Norwegian architect Espen Surnevik also borrowed from North American A-frames and electricity pylons, raising each 40 sq m structure eight metres above the forest floor on four supports. The cabins occupy the rocky ground lightly and can be removed without leaving a permanent trace. Each sleeps four to six, with heated floors, a kitchen, fireplace and full-height glazing trained on the birch, spruce and pine outside. Elsewhere, reclaimed barn materials frame a hot tub inside the roofless House with Three Walls. Autumn days can be spent hiking, canoeing and tracking elk (or perhaps elves).

Pan Treetop Cabins is located at Gjesåsen, Åsnes, Finnskogen, Norway. Rates from: £407 per night

Scrubby Bay, New Zealand

Scattered across Banks Peninsula, a rocky Pacific headland of muscular ridges, private coves and grassy hills, Annandale’s collection of spacious villas is the work of architect Andrew Patterson of Pattersons. Of the collection, Scrubby Bay comes closest to the ideal of the New Zealand bach: the cedar-clad villa stretches along the beach, with three sea-view suites, an eight-bed bunk room, a deck with a fire pit and an outdoor spa. Arrival, naturally, is effected by helicopter or a panoramic 40-minute drive along cliff-top farm tracks.

Scrubby Bay is located at Pigeon Bay 7583, New Zealand; rates on request

Skyhawk, Vermont, USA

Skyhawk sits in the woods at the foot of Mount Ascutney, with a bike trail tracing the edge of the property. Catherine and VW Fowlkes of Fowlkes Studio redesigned the midcentury cabin as a four-bedroom retreat for eight, opening the upstairs ceiling to create a lofty gathering room. Original wall boards were reused between exposed joists; rubber floors, caged bulkhead lights and custom steel kitchen furniture add a utilitarian note. Bedrooms swap wardrobes for peg rails and open niches, while a former bedroom serves as a timber-lined boot room. Outside, new Accoya cladding is paired with a large deck, where a built-in bench screens the hot tub. There is no TV, but Mount Ascutney makes a strong case for hiking, snowshoeing and skiing.

Skyhawk is located in West Windsor, Vermont, United States. Rates from: $375 per night (two-night minimum)

Vipp Salaca River, Latvia

Vipp Salaca River arrived at its riverside plot one log at a time. The listed fisherman’s house, built in 1876, was dismantled and rebuilt on 180 stones in Salaca National Park, having once served travellers between Riga and Wolmar. Now part of Vipp’s guesthouse portfolio, the 110 sq m cabin has interiors by Julie Cloos Mølsgaard. Dark log walls and a grey-brown ceiling frame a black Vipp V1 kitchen, mirrored fireplace and open living area. Upstairs, the master bedroom – freestanding bathtub included – overlooks the room below; a twin bedroom faces the woods. A separate terrace holds a wood-fired hot tub with panoramic views. The Salaca River Valley is perfect for kayaking, salmon fishing, cross-country skiing, swimming and autumn mushroom hunting.

Vipp Salaca River is located within Salaca National Park, Latvia; rates from: €375 per night (two-night minimum)

Yamanakako 1st, Japan

Two hours from Tokyo beside Lake Yamanaka, Yamanakako 1st forms part of the Sanu 2nd Home’s nationwide network of bookable retreats. Its Bee cabins were designed by Kotaro Anzai of ADX Architects, who combined a mountain-like profile with the structural logic of a honeycomb. Digitally slit cedar bends into curved partitions around the sleeping and work areas, while a floor-to-ceiling window borrows the surrounding woodland as scenery. Domestic timber construction and raised foundations limit disturbance to the site, while vacuum glazing and substantial insulation prepare the cabin for Japan’s humid summers and snow-heavy winters. Each cabin sleeps four, and features a kitchen, workspace and terrace.

Yamanakako 1st is located at Lake Yamanaka, Yamanashi, Japan; sa-nu.com; rates vary by date

Another Fire Island architectural wonder is up for sale, this time in the distinctive form of Julio Kaufman’s Pyramid House at 443 Sail Walk. Just a few streets away from the recently marketed Horace Gifford-designed beach house on Ocean Drive, the Pyramid House is one of the more distinctive homes in a neighbourhood renowned for its architectural self-expression.

Explore Fire Island's Pyramid House, now for sale

The house was designed at the start of the 1960s by Kaufman, an architect who was born in Buenos Aires but came to the US to study architecture at Columbia in 1952. After building his own home on Fire Island in 1957, Kaufman was commissioned by one John Goodwin (a grandson of JP Morgan, no less) to design a private retreat. The pyramid shape came from Kaufman’s idiosyncratic approach – he wanted the living room at the centre of the house to have views of the whole island.

The original structure was raised up above the dunes on a rickety deck on a generous plot going down to the beach. In the decades that followed Sail Walk became more and more developed and the house required sturdier foundations. The original two-bedroom configuration was expanded and altered, whilst still retaining the dramatic silhouette – by then a familiar local landmark. The original Asian-inspired décor has been switched out for a more beach house friendly aesthetic.

In addition, the restored property now has an entire wall plane of steel and glass, dramatically improving on Kaufman’s original vision. The impressive views range across what are now the protected Fire Island National Seashore. Another bedroom was added, with the primary suite located on the lower level, which opens directly onto the pool with the dunes beyond.

There are also three small pyramid-shaped structures that add another two guest bedrooms and bathroom. In total, the Pyramid House offers 2,100 square feet of accommodation, arranged as private, self-contained complex. The agents note there is scope to update and expand still further, although it is being sold with central air conditioning and a refurbished pool.

It wasn’t Kaufman’s only major project in the area – he was also responsible for the new Pines Yacht Club and Botel, following a 1959 fire that destroyed the original, owned by former Ziegfeld girl, actress and producer Peggy Fears. Kaufman designed the replacement – a place for boat owners to moor up and stay for the night that became one of the island’s popular nightspots – despite losing an arm in a seaplane accident during the construction phase of both projects.

‘More than six decades after its creation, the Pyramid House remains remarkably private and unmistakably iconic - a landmark of Fire Island modernism ready for its next chapter,’ says agent Esteban Gomez.

The Pyramid House, Fire Island, NY, is for sale for $3,300,000, through Compass.com, listed by Esteban Gomez at @TheCreativesAgent

Earlier this week, Victoria Beckham revealed that her eponymous fashion and beauty line has made a profit for the first time in its 18-year history (she founded the label in 2008, and has hosted runway shows in Paris, New York and its native London). Those profits amounted to 7.3 million, something bolstered by her critically lauded beauty line, which launched in 2019. ‘We have all worked hard for a long time for this moment of profitability and growth,’ she told the Financial Times.

It feels an apt moment, then, for Beckham to open the doors to the brand’s second permanent home, an outpost in New York’s SoHo district. Designed as a companion to her 2014-opened London flagship on Mayfair’s Dover Street – a two-storey conversion in sleek planes of polished concrete by Farshid Moussavi Architects – the New York address was overseen by artist Alexander May and designer Ole Lund of LNP, drawing on the distinctive cast-iron, post-industrial architecture of the neighbourhood.

‘I really wanted the SoHo store to honour the building’s unique character and give the space a distinctly New York sensibility,’ Beckham tells Wallpaper*. ‘We did this by keeping some of the original features and drawing inspiration from the art deco world of Tamara de Lempicka.’ (De Lempicka, a Polish art deco artist known for her bold, stylised portraiture, inspired Beckham’s A/W 2026 collection shown at Paris Fashion Week earlier this year). ‘At the same time, it needed to feel unmistakably Victoria Beckham – warm, intimate and like an extension of the house.’

‘Our starting point was to create a distinctly New York expression of the Victoria Beckham world: precise and confident, but also intimate and welcoming,’ add May and Lund. ‘We preserved the original character of the SoHo building and introduced a disciplined palette of mineral tones, burgundy, marble, timber, lacquer and velvet, balancing the strength of the architecture with softer, more tactile elements.’ Beckham describes it as a clash of ‘masculine and feminine’, a juxtaposition which also runs through her runway collections.

Much of this mood is created through May and Lund’s curation of furnishing and textiles, which add a feeling of richness to the otherwise simple, wood-floored space. Velvet drapery and curtains, created in collaboration with The Shade Store, line the space’s entranceway, while bespoke sculptural, curving sofas were designed by Pierre Augustin Rose. Elsewhere, a pair of monolithic marble counters intersect the space, used to display accessories and beauty, while a Gio Ponti lantern hangs over the entranceway staircase. Paints draw on the palette of Dorset-based company Farrow & Ball.

The store’s opening coincides with New York Fashion Week, which begins next week (10-15 September) and will feature a number of other big-name retail launches, including a vast new Moncler store on Fifth Avenue and a new Acne Studios address in the West Village. They are part of a bricks-and-mortar luxury retail renaissance in the city, which is largely centred around Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, bolstered by ‘mega-flagships’ like the four-floor Peter Marino-designed House of Dior New York, which opened in 2025 on the corner of East 57th Street and Madison. In April, property company Savills placed New York as the top city for luxury retail openings for the first time since 2019.

‘New York is where I started my brand, showing my collections there for the first time in 2008, and it’s also where I launched my beauty business,’ says Beckham of the city, where she showed for a decade before shifting to London in 2018. ‘Today, my teams are based in London and New York, so to now have retail spaces in both cities feels incredibly special and exciting. They are two places that have truly become home to my brands.’

Victoria Beckham New York, 150 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012.

victoriabeckham.com

Multi-brand fashion boutique Lang has set up shop in Los Angeles’ new format Row DTLA complex. Founded by Kayla Wong, the mission-driven retail platform showcases gender-neutral apparel from Asian-founded brands and independent talents. Local architect Paul Chan brought down the scale of the raw, post-industrial space by creating a series of theatrical vignettes staged with custom furnishings and finishes that contrast, fuse – and ultimately transcend – references to Asian and North American culture.

‘The design grew from the shared experience Kayla and I have of growing up in Hong Kong and now living in Los Angeles, carrying a sense of being between two places at once,’ Chan says. ‘Our native home became the muse but the store is not a direct recreation. It’s an assemblage of fragments and memories transformed through their encounter with our adoptive city.’

To achieve fluidity across the 1,200 sq ft storefront, the studio eschewed fixed walls in favour of a layered curtain system that, as Chan puts it, ‘plays both a practical and atmospheric role’.

Areas can be enclosed to more dramatically emphasise the products but also open up for better circulation during large gatherings.

While primarily presenting fashions, Lang also serves as an non-prescriptive cultural venue for the community, playing host to exhibitions, talks and performances. Accommodating guests at such events, a semi-circular bench is upholstered in a fabric, developed in collaboration with Los Angeles textile studio Suay that recalls the red, white and blue woven utility bags usually found at hardware stores, construction sites and street markets throughout Hong Kong.

‘Rather than using the original plastic material, we translated its familiar palette of custom tie-dyed textile that also references Southern California surf culture,’ Chan adds. ‘The result reinterprets one cultural symbol through the visual language and material practices of another.’

Above the bench, he introduced four tiers of paper lanterns painted with colloquial Cantonese sayings. The installation helps to wrap but also illuminate this impromptu stage setting.

The overall design is a study in contrasts, which the architect describes as ‘gloss and grit, opulence and improvisation'. Mahogany shelving and moiré-patterned mauve surfaces are joined by hand-brushed and reflective metallic finishes. Bespoke furnishings tie everything together.

Take handmade washi paper surfaces topping display tables throughout. Though traditional in appearance, their surfaces are actually collaged together from upcycled paper collected across Asia and Latin America, including cotton rags from southern India; banana fibre from Thailand; Amate paper made by Otomí artisans in central Mexico; and Yucatán papers that combine age-old Mayan papermaking and Japanese washi techniques.

‘For me, these tables are a metaphor for Los Angeles and its Asian American communities,’ says Chan. ‘The individual cultures do not dissolve into one another; they remain distinct while continually overlapping, borrowing and influencing each other... They suggest that identity is never singular, it is layered, assembled and continually evolving' – a perfect analogy for the design of Lang itself.

Lang is located at Row DTLA, 777 S. Alameda Street, Building M2, Suite 132, Los Angeles, CA 90021

When Charles M Schulz first introduced Charlie Brown to the world in October 1950, the beloved cartoon character wore a plain white T-shirt. But Schulz realised Charlie Brown was missing something. ‘He didn’t bounce off the page,’ the American cartoonist later recounted. ‘So I gave him that little jagged stripe, and he’s had it ever since.’

Clothing quickly became visual shorthand for each character in the Peanuts comic-strip universe. Sally wore polka dots; Linus had stripes and his trusty security blanket; Peppermint Patty flaunted flip-flops. Even Snoopy, the beloved beagle, first appeared with a flower tucked into his collar.

‘Snoopy in Style’, a new exhibition opening today (2 September 2026) in New York, tells the story of Peanuts and its creator through fashion. Through archival material, fashion rarities, special commissions and experiential vignettes, the show highlights Peanuts’ enduring influence on fashion and pop culture.

That starts with Schulz himself. The Minnesota-born cartoonist – ‘Sparky’, as he was known to those close to him – was always a snazzy dresser, thanks to his father (a barber) and a proclivity for sweaters, courtesy of a clothing store called the Lions Den, local to Santa Rosa where he later moved. The exhibition features a selection of some of the best, courtesy of The Charles M Schulz Museum and Research Center, including a red-and-black argyle number and a flame-stitch crewneck.

As the popularity of the strip grew, so did Peanuts’ reach. San Francisco businesswoman Connie Boucher saw opportunity in Peanuts-themed merchandise. In partnership with Schulz, Boucher helped the comic strip grow from a fixture in the ‘funnies’ into Peanuts the brand. Peanuts-themed datebooks, plush dolls, clothing and more – a plethora of which is shown in ‘Snoopy in Style’ – flooded the market. Standouts include original 1960s-era wall calendars with psychedelic graphics; a rainbow of character-themed sweatshirts; and a Boy George-lookalike Snoopy.

As the decades rolled on, so too did the Peanuts cast’s style – especially Snoopy. At various points in the strip’s five-decade run, Snoopy flaunted alter-egos and styles that drew from the disco, prepster and grunge eras – a sartorial edge that earned him the moniker ‘Joe Cool’. Snoopy still inspires today. The exhibition’s pièce de résistance is a room full of plush Snoopys and Woodstocks, reimagined by some of America’s most talented fashion designers, from Christopher John Rogers to Bode and Willy Chavarria.

Apart from a wealth of Peanuts storytelling, ‘Snoopy in Style’ features plenty of fodder for the social media set, including Instagram-friendly vignettes, a central café peppered with Peanuts-sillouette chairs, a midcentury-inspired listening room, and even a gift shop curated by Colette founder Sarah Andelman.

But the best bits are ones that surprise, including a section dedicated to Schulz’s friendship with tennis superstar and activist Billie Jean King. Both supported Title IX, a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibited sex-based discrimination in schools, which helped open the door for female athletes everywhere. Two years later, in 1974, King founded the Women’s Sports Foundation and Schulz readily agreed to be a trustee. The Peanuts gang also came along for the ride, from Peppermint Patty criticising inequities in women’s sports, to Lucy quite literally serving as a poster child for King’s foundation. (‘Thank goodness for sports,’ the famously cantankerous cartoon character quipped. ‘If they didn’t exist, I don’t know what I’d do with my tremendous natural ability.’)

Whether you pop by between matches at the US Open or Fashion Week events, ‘Snoopy in Style’ makes one thing clear: you’re a good man, Charlie Brown.

‘Snoopy in Style’ is on view from 2-26 September 2026 at 25 Little West 12th St, New York, NY 10014

When pondering the more than 50-year career of filmmaker and artist David Lynch (1946-2025), lightness is not the first thing that comes to mind. Who can forget the haunting suburban scene of Dennis Hopper breathing psychotically into a clear plastic gas mask before groping Isabella Rossellini in the ground-breaking 1980s neo-noir mystery film Blue Velvet? The human cruelty bestowed upon The Elephant Man or the bleak industrial trappings of Eraserhead – which put Lynch on the map in the late 1970s, and left an indelible mark on the industry. But the light – and creative possibility – that he discovered in Los Angeles, where he lived for over five decades, with the picturesque sprawling city and its underbelly as his muse and inspiration, undoubtedly informed his work. For Lynch, the city was ‘a feeling as much as it is a place’, according to Pace, which opens a show of his photographs at its Los Angeles gallery on 19 September.

Titled ‘David Lynch: LA’, the exhibition bridges the emotional and physical landscape between the myths and mysteries of the city and its archetypes – the ingenue, the shapeshifter, the beauty, and darkness. The artist’s blurred reality and surrealist slant in films and television projects, referred to as ‘Lynchian’, are also evident in this collection of photographs that spotlight his distinctive artistic sensibility in a medium that bridges his significant contributions to painting and film.

Lynch is credited for bringing experimentalism to mainstream media in the late 20th century, and was bestowed with a slew of prizes, including an Honorary Academy Award, a BAFTA, the Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award for Mulholland Drive (2001), and the Palm d’Or for Wild at Heart (1990), along with a Golden Globe for his 1990s television series Twin Peaks.

Lynch, born in Missoula, Montana in 1946, moved to Los Angeles in 1972 as a fellow at The American Film Institute, where he set up a studio in the stables at the Greystone Mansion campus in Beverly Hills for four years. Over the years, Lynch also worked as an animator, an author, a furniture designer, and a musician. His talents spanned directing music videos for Moby and Nine Inch Nails, and commercials for Dior, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. His acting roles include playing film director John Ford in Steven Spielberg's drama film The Fabelmans, in 2022.

Because of all his moving-image accolades, many film fans don’t realise that Lynch actually wanted to be a painter. Before his move to LA, he was influenced by Francis Bacon while an art student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, when he began creating short films out of a desire to effect movement in his paintings.

‘David Lynch had an incredibly rich and sustained art practice that began in childhood, continued through art school in the 1960s, and remained an essential part of his life for nearly 60 years,’ says Genevieve Day, senior director at Pace in Los Angeles.

With past exhibitions from the artist spanning other globally recognised galleries in Tokyo, London, Paris, Milan and Moscow, Lynch joined Pace in 2022, marking his debut with the solo exhibition ‘Big Bongo Night’ in New York, featuring mixed-media sculptures, paintings, and a work on paper.

Now, it felt important for Pace to honour the commitment Lynch devoted to this practice, and to have this new show take place in his chosen home since 1972. ‘This exhibition, focusing specifically on Lynch’s photo-based work, is a prelude to a much broader retrospective that LACMA is in the early stages of preparing,’ says Day.

This continues the thread of Los Angeles, which became a defining presence in Lynch’s imagination. ‘It traces the atmospheric feeling of the city through his early 1979 black and white “portraits” of the distinctive architecture of Los Angeles, to his continued study of the nude, in which the female body becomes abstracted and visually topographical,’ says Day. ‘Later, he digitally manipulated his photographs, creating a contemporary odalisque – the reclining figure of art-historical tradition. The five large-scale colour photographs of women and smoke expand on this idea of the surreal, vivid in our imagination. Each work has a distinctive quality, but together reveal Lynch’s broader vision.’

As seen in the provocative red lips with a wafting cloud of smoke, Lynch captures these images as a moment of ecstasy. In stark contrast, smoke is also seen as a plume rising from a drab 1950s-style sofa with chintz floral drapery in the background. Ironically, Lynch was a lifelong chain smoker, and, already suffering from emphysema, he died in 2025 following evacuation during the devastating Southern California wildfires that swept through the city that same year.

In the many years that Pace has been involved with Lynch and his artwork – most recently with two 2026 group exhibitions in Berlin – there are still surprises to uncover. ‘Like the best artists, there is a mystery in his work that becomes both illuminating and more confounding the more closely you look,’ says Day. ‘He was a storyteller – some images are overt, while others are much more enigmatic, leaving space for the viewer to create their own narrative.

‘I hope people come away with a deeper understanding of David Lynch as a visual artist,’ adds Day. ‘His photography was only one aspect of his immense creative practice as an artist whose vision found expression across many different mediums.’

‘David Lynch: LA ’at Pace Los Angeles, 1201 South La Brea Avenue, 19 September – 24 October 2026

pacegallery.com

Sea Cove Drive seems like an appropriate address for a Pacific Ocean-facing home that gazes over Abalone Cove and Catalina Island in California. It is also the address for The Judge & Jeannie Anderson Residence, designed by architect Aaron G Green, which has just hit the market.

The Judge & Jeannie Anderson Residence by Aaron G Green for sale

The Anderson Residence was built by Green in 1959 and stands as one of the most notable works in his portfolio. Green worked closely with architect Frank Lloyd Wright and ran his own practice while serving as Wright's West Coast representative from 1951 until the great master died in 1959.

Although inspired by Wright’s teachings, Green’s Anderson Residence echoes his distinct, personal flair and is an intact example of his own brand of ‘organic modernism’. The property, which sits across 3.5 acres, was conceived to invite the outside in through a single, open and continuous space.

Stepping inside the newly listed $7,800,000 residence, the entryway is recessed, which highlights the home's V-shaped plan. Gabled rooflines jut outward in two directions, which draw the eye towards the surrounding vistas and contrast nicely against the peculiar geometric water pool.

A private bedroom is located to the left of the house with a wall of windows that frames the ocean, while more social spaces, including the living room, dining room, and kitchen, lie straight ahead. The architecture plays with openness and more intimate spaces. Unexpected additions include a private Japanese garden, which is overlooked by two guest bedrooms and baths.

In the living area, steps trace the contours of the land down to a sunken living room with built-in seating and architect-designed furniture. At the heart of the space is a stone fireplace, with adjacent corner glass walls.

In 2003, the property was expanded by architect Eric Lloyd Wright (grandson of the esteemed architect), who focused on the bath, a swimming pool update and a spa tub addition. Green also revisited the home with a plan to create two additional bedrooms and bathrooms with their own entryway. Even though this idea was never realised, its potential remains.

This is a Californian modernist gem that seamlessly tightropes between light, openness, and serene intimacy.

The Judge & Jeannie Anderson Residence by Aaron G Green is listed at $7,800,000. For more information, visit: moderncaliforniahouse.com

Wild Comfort is a new book that sets out to show that the age-old dream of a home in the wilderness needn’t mean compromising on creature comforts. With an introduction by Jim Olson of Olson Kundig (the book includes the practice’s Camp House project), the publication is presented as a compilation of remote but refined architectural design.

Browse the finest remote dwellings in ‘Wild Comfort’

In total, the book includes 30 projects from around the world, all of which are designed to induce some level of envy in the reader. Whether you’re after an island idyll (Peter Braithwaite Studio’s Armstrong Cottage in Ontario), a dwelling in the desert (The Periphery in Boulder, Colorado, by Locus Studio) or a house embedded in the woods (Gonzalo Bardach Arquitectura’s Forest House in Brazil), Wild Comfort has got you covered.

Projects come primarily from the USA, although there’s also a healthy spread from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Latvia and Mexico. Those itching to know more about the process of securing permission to build amidst such stunning surroundings could do with a little more detail – the projects mostly appear as if they have materialised fully formed on their site with little sense of how they got there. A floorplan or site plan or two wouldn’t go amiss, showing how some of these structures literally seem to be threaded through the trees or across rocky shores.

Featured studios include Dubbeldam Architecture + Design, Dekleva Gregorič Architects, Allied8 and Strang, along with excellent photography from the likes of Joe Fletcher and Fernando Guerra. Whether you have a secret valley, private pine forest or your own archipelago in need of a residence or two, Wild Comfort is a mighty fine place to start.

'Wild Comfort: Contemporary Homes in the Wilderness', Images Publishing, £40, ImagesPublishing.com, @Images_Publishing

Alaska Airlines has upgraded its nascent long-haul experience with the debut of an all-new International Business Class cabin aboard its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners. The exciting development is shared with Hawaiian Airlines, its sister carrier under Seattle-based Alaska Air Group.

Fly Alaska Airlines’ new International Business Class

Since joining the Oneworld Alliance in 2021, the West Coast carrier has expanded its reach to over 900 global destinations, with a special focus on Europe and East Asia. The new cabin made its debut on Alaska’s inaugural non-stop service from Seattle to Rome, with routes to Seoul Incheon and Tokyo Narita about to follow from its Pacific Northwest hub.

The 34-seat cabin adopts the original Adient Ascent design by Elevate Aircraft Seating, the joint venture between automotive seating specialist Adient and aerospace behemoth Boeing. Arranged in a 1-2-1 configuration, every suite transforms into a fully flat bed and has direct aisle access. Privacy doors, koa wood-patterned floors and wall panels bring warmth to the cabin, while white marble surfaces incorporate wireless charging alongside personal power outlets. An 18in HD screen, paired with noise-reducing LSTN Sound Co headphones, offers over 1,500 films and TV shows.

On the amenities front, premium bedding and kits have been conceived by American heritage brand Filson, known for its weatherproof utility gear. A mattress pad, sleeping pillow, lumbar cushion and oversized duvet, finished in a beige check that complements the cabin’s teal accents, prepare each suite for lights out. Meanwhile, the collectable amenity bag comes in two colours inspired by the West Coast and contains Salt & Stone’s aluminium-free skincare products and other travel essentials, such as socks and eye masks. Passengers also receive a bespoke reusable bottle developed with certified BPA-free brand PATH Water.

Food follows the route. Destination-led dishes include a full English breakfast on London services and gochujang chicken with traditional banchan en route to Incheon. A standout is Alaska’s Chef’s (Tray) Table entrée, created with award-winning Seattle chef Brady Ishiwata Williams and featuring his signature short rib, sourced from Washington’s Klingemann Farms. Drinks span West Coast and European wines, including labels from the Stag’s Leap area, alongside Louis Roederer Champagne, handcrafted cocktails, regional craft beers, mineral water and freshly brewed Stumptown coffee.

Equally tantalising is the fact that Starlink’s satellite service, billed as the fastest Wi-Fi in the sky, is due to arrive on the airline’s 787-9 Dreamliners in the coming months, offering gate-to-gate connectivity for Atmos Rewards members.

alaskaair.com

Based in the United States, Mattaforma is a young practice joining the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026, our newest round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios from around the world.

Who: Mattaforma

Mattaforma bridges the gap between nature and architecture, blending a research-based approach to design with a deep interest in and understanding of ecosystems and the world beyond human-made construction. Founded by Lindsey Wikstrom, who is also the author of Designing the Forest and Other Mass Timber Futures (Routledge, 2023), the practice scooped the coveted 2026 National Design Award for Emerging Designer from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

The architect explains: ‘When you build with living materials, the building gives something back: cleaner air, stored carbon, a connection to the natural world that changes how people enjoy life in a space. Architecture is one of the few disciplines that can make ecological intelligence physical, tangible, livable, intimately known; and one of the few disciplines that can have an incredible impact on our carbon footprint as a species by choosing regenerative materials.’

From plant-based components to spaces centred on wellbeing and passive energy approaches, Mattaforma focuses on environments that not only feel organic now, but also grow and adapt over time. ‘I am influenced by traditional localised building practices and building science, and inspired to mix that intelligence with contemporary typologies, new definitions of nature and native-ness, and new ways of being in the world,’ says Wikstrom.

What: Parkview Mountain House

Conceived as a creative retreat within nature, Parkview Mountain House was a commission for a house that serves an artists’ residency programme for Globizen, a city building company and community instigator. Winkstrom and her team were called upon to craft a house for the business’s first-ever artist-in-residence programme, where writers, artists and scholars come, spend time and work in the forested setting of this Park City, Utah site.

The sloped site is engulfed in Wasatch firs. Within this leafy setting, the architects conceived the residence as a slender timber tower containing stacked guest rooms and communal areas. Strategically placed window boxes become extended desks, where work and natural context can converge. Knotty cedar-board interiors and a structure made of lightweight timber that reduces embodied carbon while highlighting the wooded context reinforce the feeling of living among the trees.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

mattaforma.com

When it came to chronicling the contents of George Lucas’ monumental new architectural undertaking, the MAD-designed Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles (opening 22 September 2026 – see last year’s architectural preview), there was only ever one candidate for the publication. German art magnate and monograph master Taschen was assigned the task of assembling this mighty two-volume exploration of the museum’s expansive collection.

Lucas’ museum, set in a prime 13-acre site on LA’s Exposition Park, is home to all manner of materials and artworks that focus on visual storytelling, a display that ‘connects traditions of image-making across centuries, cultures, and mediums’. While the building itself requires 300,000 sq feet of exhibition space (designed by Ma Yansong of MAD with Stantec), the accompanying book is no less ambitious.

Introduced by Ryan Linkof, senior curator and head of film programmes at the LMNA (a former founding curator at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and curator at Los Angeles County Museum of Art), the book also includes texts by Lucas himself and fellow director Guillermo del Toro.

Both are longstanding adherents to storyboard-driven narratives about fantastical worlds and characters. The editor is Jessica Hundley, author of a number of books including studies of Dennis Hopper, Gram Parsons and David Lynch and Taschen’s The Library of Esoterica series.

The two volumes draw on an abundance of visual richness, covering every genre from sci-fi to Westerns, via children’s literature, fantasy art, and graphic novels. Key artists and themes are given plenty of space and room to breathe, with focuses on the work of painter and muralist Thomas Hart Benton, illustrator Jessie Willcox Smith, fantasy art pioneer Frank Frazetta, romantic classicist Maxfield Parrish, and all-American icon Norman Rockwell.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a copious amount of material drawn from the world-building of Lucas’ Star Wars series, including concept art and production paintings, costumes and vehicles, alongside things that obviously fall in del Toro’s wheelhouse, like Mexican horror comics.

Arranged thematically, the monograph is awash with classic imagery, inter-generational connections and examples of every form of media, from cave painting to digital art. It’s the ultimate takeaway from a museum that promises to deliver big in every way.

As well as the 6kg+ slip-cased Classic Edition shown here, there’ll also be a catalogue available in the company’s more compact 45 Edition format, with a smaller-still Piccolo edition for a more pocketable distillation of the collection.

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, edited by Jessica Hundley, Taschen $200 / £175 Taschen.com, @Taschen, LucasMuseum.org, @LucasMuseum

Nwankpa Design is a young practice that makes it into the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026, our latest annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Nwankpa Design

Based in Southern California, Nwankpa Design creates spaces rooted in bold elegance, paying particular attention to the human experience. Since its founding in 2016, the architecture and interiors firm has taken an immersive approach, from structure to furniture and custom details.

‘Our approach is immersive and deeply experiential, treating space as moments in a larger narrative that unfold as you move through it,’ shares Susan Nwankpa Gillespie, principal architect and founder of the firm. ‘The result is environments whose depth reveals itself gradually, feeling transformative to inhabit.’

The firm specialises in creating holistic residences, intending to craft beautiful spaces. ‘At the heart of everything we do is a desire to create more beauty in the world, a beauty that is living and meaningful. We are driven by the celebration of culture, the richness of heritage, and the extraordinary possibilities that emerge when tradition meets technology. Every project is an opportunity to expand expression and connection,’ says Nwankpa Gillespie.

While beauty is the heart of a project, culture and storytelling are its foundations, as the founder notes, ‘We are endlessly inspired by the visual languages of cultural heritage, patterns, craft, and memory held in material, all reinterpreted in a contemporary vocabulary.’

What: Textile House #2

In Inglewood, California, a dress was the source of inspiration for Textile House #2. An item Nwankpa Gillespie owned, its West African textiles and colourful prints were transplanted into an architectural form, uniting minimalism with bold patterns.

Its front facade mimics that of its neighbouring environment, with two pitched gables, with one framing a porch and the other a picture window. On closer inspection, the facade is an amalgamation of texture and drama. Exterior brick patterns take on a graphic quality, as the solid black offset brick contrasts with the soft grey mortar, similar to a woven textile.

Towards the rear facade, the house adopts a more modern language, with wider gables framing two distinct entrances to the residence’s living spaces and to the primary bedroom. The interior continues the brick pattern throughout the flooring, allowing spaces to seamlessly flow into one another, divided only by colour and materiality.

Parallels are drawn between fashion and architecture through lines and materials, creating a layered relationship between them, breaking the boundaries between architecture and other creative practices.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

nwankpadesign.com

Operating between the United States and Vietnam, Studio Khoa Vu is a young practice that makes it into the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026, our latest annual round-up of exciting emerging architecture studios.

Who: Studio Khoa Vu

Architect Khoa Vu founded his namesake practice in 2023, spanning architecture, interiors, and spatial installations. Studio Khoa Vu’s aim is to explore architecture as a ‘space between structure, atmosphere, object, and environment’. The practice operates between teaching, research, and built work, allowing ideas to move fluidly between experimentation and construction.

Khoa Vu grew up in Vietnam. Moving towards international work sparked an interest in how spatial traditions evolve through everyday life, weather, and material economies. Many of his projects begin by studying spatial heritage, such as overlooked building types and vernacular houses, and ask how these ideas might be reinterpreted today.

‘Working between the United States and Southeast Asia also offers a distinctive vantage point,’ says the architect. ‘The studio navigates rapidly changing urban conditions while remaining attentive to vernacular intelligence and cultural continuity.’

The biggest influence on the studio is the traditional houses in Southeast Asia, as they were developed over generations. This resulted in sophisticated responses to climate, and the material economy. Coupled with this, the practice works between architecture and art, creating projects that are culturally rooted, yet also balance contemporary exploration.

What: Lunar Cavern

Lunar Cavern in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam is a perfect example of a residence grounded in culture and climate. The studio worked alongside their musician-artist client to transform the 150-square-meter duplex residence.

The moon and its cycles were the main source of inspiration. The interior flows with smooth, curved plastered walls, which create a cave-like atmosphere. The residence, which is divided across two floors, also manifests itself in two distinct design identities.

Inspired by the bright side of the moon, the entrance hall and living area invite openness and light throughout. It is a gentle interplay of dynamic movement and height with fluid curvature and double-height spaces. The arched detailing draws the eye in, raising a magnifying glass to the rough-textured surfaces speckled with sunlight.

Upstairs, the dark side of the moon casts its shadowy influence. Up a spiralling staircase, visitors will discover a moody, Venetian-red studio space designed for deep creative work. The darkness offers comfort, rather than austerity, inviting creative introspection and an intimate retreat from the city. These carved openings layer light, shadow, and depth while framing selective views toward the Saigon River.

Why: Architects Directory 2026

When the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory was conceived in 2000, it was built as our bespoke international index of emerging architectural talent. Now in its 25th edition, our annual listing of promising practices from across the globe (now comprising over 500 alumni) champions the best and most promising young studios - a snapshot of talent showcasing inspiring work from all corners of the Earth with an emphasis on the residential realm.

This year’s anniversary survey includes 30 young studios (one for each of the 30 years of Wallpaper*), from Australia, Bahrain, Benin, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Ghana, Greece, France, Ivory Coast, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, India, Morocco, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Welcome to the promise, ideas and exciting architecture of the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2026.

khoavu.com

Paul R. Williams (1894-1980) was a Black American architect whose creativity and determination triumphed over deep-rooted racial prejudice. In a career that spanned six decades, he was astonishingly prolific, a master of historic styles and bold visions of the future. He was the first registered Black architect west of the Mississippi, and he used his position to advance civil rights.

Who was Paul R. Williams?

Paul Revere Williams was born in Los Angeles in 1894. He lost his parents to illness at the age of four and was later adopted into a new family. He went on to study at the Los Angeles School of Art and Design and at the Los Angeles branch of the New York Beaux-Arts Institute of Design Atelier. He worked for a spell as a landscape architect and also practised at other architectural offices following graduation. At the young age of 25, Williams independently won an architectural competition, which helped him, three years later, to set up his own firm.

He went on to become an 'architect to the stars,' as he was often referred to, designing homes for his era's Hollywood elite. His architectural work was also recognised within his profession, becoming the first Black member of the American Institute of Architects in 1923, and later winning the AIA Award of Merit for his design of the MCA Building in Beverly Hills in 1939.

He died at the age of 85 in 1980, and among his numerous accolades is an American Institute of Architects (AIA) Gold Medal, received posthumously in 2017.

Three shows on his work

Three major LA museums are celebrating the legacy of Paul R. Williams in the coming months, creating a bit of a moment to look back at the architect's legacy.

Why now? Recently, the Getty Research Institute and the University of Southern California School of Architecture have jointly acquired his archive, and each of the three exhibitions focuses on a different aspect of this trove of plans, sketches and photographs representing 1500 projects.

Paul R. Williams at the The Fisher Museum of Art

The Fisher Museum of Art on the USC campus leads off with 'An Architect Considered' (August 18- March 3, 2027), which focuses on 31 multi-unit housing projects, many of them for disadvantaged communities. Williams was long known as an architect working with celebrity royalty, counting Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, Frank Sinatra, and Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson among his clients. This survey explores a less familiar aspect of his work, and several artists have been invited to contribute a contemporary comment on the exhibits.

Paul R. Williams at the LA County Museum of Art

'Architect for Living' at the LA County Museum of Art runs from November 15 through May 31, 2027, and takes a much broader view. Houses and hotels, restaurants and schools, churches and casinos demonstrate Williams’ versatility and the impact he made on the urban scene in LA and beyond. Many of his buildings survive intact, notably the house he built for his family in the leafy mid-city neighbourhood of Lafayette Square.

It puts a fresh spin on modernist architecture, complementing its traditional neighbours without courting objections: a strategy of accommodation that carried Williams to success in everything he undertook. The house was recently restored by Escher GuneWardena Architecture for a new owner. As the pre-eminent LA restoration firm (whose portfolio includes the Eames House and Richard Neutra’s Lovell Health House), they did meticulous research and revealed a long-concealed palette of subtle colours within.

Paul R. Williams at the Getty Research Institute

The third show, 'Architecture Across the Color Line,' will be presented by the Getty Research Institute, December 15-March 14, 2027. As the title suggests, it emphasises Williams’ commitment to the Black community and the way it was excluded from many neighbourhoods and marginalised by its lack of access to loans. The architect became a director of a bank that helped finance several important projects, notably Case Study House 21 for Dr Bailey in the progressive 1950s development of Crestwood Hills.

Maristella Casciato, the Getty’s architecture curator, describes Williams as 'elegant, affable, charming and very successful; he appeared able to transcend de facto and de jure forms of racialised segregation and the constraints of white supremacy that were nationally pervasive.'

Paul R. Williams beyond the exhibits

In December, the Getty will publish 'I am an Architect: Paul R. Williams and his Archive', which offers a generous sampling of images and essays, though some of these lapse into academic jargon. We can hope that the Getty, which houses the archives of many other LA architects, will do more than it has to showcase them and raise public awareness of the region’s unique legacy of modernism.

5 works by Paul R. Williams

Paul R. Williams house (1952)

Williams designed a house for his family and himself in the neighbourhood of Lafayette Square in Los Angeles in 1952. The project adheres to modernist architecture principles, defined by light colours and clean lines. It is surrounded by a green garden; it was conceived as an urban sanctuary.

El Mirador Hotel (1962)

Set in the desert city of Palm Springs in California, El Mirador hotel was a remodel of an existing structure created on site a couple of decades earlier. Williams led a major modernisation at the property, which included modernist elements such as a shaded porte cochère entry, modern cabanas and a refreshed sun and swimming pool deck.

First African Methodist Episcopal Church of LA (1969)

A landmark project in Williams' career, the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of LA serves the oldest African American congregation in Los Angeles. The structure was designed in Late Modern style and opened its doors in 1969.

Pueblo del Rio Housing Project (1942)

Operating as part of a collaborative group titled Southeast Housing Architects, Williams worked on Pueblo del Rio, one of Los Angeles's most well-known historic public housing developments. The scheme was designed between 1940 and 1942 and was part of Williams' work for the city’s first Housing Commission, where he was appointed in 1933 (shortly after, he also served on the National Board of Municipal Housing).

Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company (1949)

The home of the largest Black-owned insurance company west of the Mississippi, Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, was designed by Williams in a Late Modern style of clear shapes and minimal decorative detail. Set in 1999 West Adams Boulevard, the building included a large auditorium, a civic plaza and lobby murals featuring moments of African-American history.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s rare that a designer gets to revisit their first major commission. For the influential Texan architect Ted Flato, the design of La Barroneña ranch house in 1985 was a first opportunity to materialise his site-specific, regionalist and sustainable approach to modern design, a working philosophy that would come to define Lake Flato, the prolific San Antonio-based firm he would go on to co-found.

When La Barroneña’s second-generation owners set out to make necessary improvements to the retreat in 2024, it was an obvious choice to rehire the architect that built it. For Flato and his team, the renovation wasn’t just a walk down memory lane but a chance to reaffirm the practice’s original guiding principles.

‘Returning to the very first project that established the values of our firm was also an opportunity to add a level of refinement that brings new depth, richness and renewal to the experience of living in the house,’ says Flato.

La Barroneña sits on 6,000 acres (2,428 hectares) of semi-arid brushland due east of Laredo, Texas, a property that’s been in Ed Lasater’s family for 120 years. As a child, he recalls his parents landing their small airplane on the ranch’s dirt runway and setting up camp during winter breaks. They were often joined by their extended family. ‘After years of “roughing it”, my mom decided she wanted to be able to sleep in a bed and take showers,’ Lasater recalls.

To design a new – and at least semi-enclosed – dwelling, Lasater’s father reached out to O’Neil Ford, a forefather of Texas modernism, for advice. Proponents of the movement set out to interpret the 20th-century style through a vernacular lens. Texas modernism prioritises durable, locally sourced materials and introduces layouts accommodating an indoor-outdoor lifestyle. Ford suggested a then-fledgling Flato.

Flato’s initial concept hewed closely to Texas modernist values, but overlaid with environmentally sensitive principles. Flato called his design a ‘big tent’ structure, one that was imagined to stand tall but blend in with a gnarled mesquite tree and the thorny undergrowth.

‘The house is more porch than house, with the majority of the space under a big shady roof,' Flato explains. ‘Screens keep bugs out, breezeways foster cross-ventilation, and the house is oriented to face the cool prevailing breezes coming off the nearby Gulf of Mexico.’

Inside, Flato kept the plan simple. Guests move around a semi-indoor, semi-outdoor entertaining space, enclosed by large glass doors that seamlessly fold into thick stucco walls, and two perpendicular bedroom wings. Each houses two en suite bedrooms protected from milder winter weather by sliding barn doors. Though 5,036 sq ft in size, the house requires very little air conditioning. Today we know those strategies as ‘passive design’, an approach Flato was seminal in deploying.

Lasater and his wife Ellie took over ownership of the property in 2012. Over the past 14 years, they’ve added a pool, pickleball court and the Lake Flato-designed Porch House. The last brought La Barroneña’s sleeping capacity up from 8 to 14; almost enough room for all those cousins still flying in for short breaks. ‘The house was still working as designed, as evidenced by regular use over 40 years [by] groups ranging in number from two to over 70,’ Lasater says.

When the Lasaters started having such a full house, the kitchen became overwhelmed. There wasn’t a clear distinction between the prep and clean-up area. This centralised space needed to be rearranged but still tied in with everything around it.

‘The house has been a focal point for me and my extended family’, Lasater adds. ‘We felt strongly that any changes could not alter the original feel and function. We needed very thoughtful adjustments in a space where adding square footage was not an option and knew that Lake Flato would have the restraint to adjust and tweak without changing what we love about the house.’

Lake Flato associate partner Vicki Yuan and senior interiors associate Pamela Dailey were tasked with the sensitive, mostly cosmetic revamp, opting for a light, integrative approach. ‘The renovation was about enhancing the interiors, offering a more comfortable environment during inclement weather, and creating a modern, multi-use kitchen for both daily meals and large gatherings,’ says Yuan.

New finishes such as engineered stone countertops and textural zellige tile backsplashes were introduced to accentuate the tone and texture of the existing brick-on-sand floors, timber cabinetry and shiplapped accent walls.

In addition to the subtle architectural interventions, the architects selected new furnishings to add another layer of softness and comfort. Staying true to the original look and feel of the space, these pieces were sourced for their formal simplicity, textural quality and earth-tone colour palette. It seems as if they’ve always been here, but don’t appear dated. A storage closet was converted into an additional dining nook, adding more seating. This cosy corner works well when it's just Ed and Ellie but also when their grown-up children and other family members are here for a stay.

‘The result was a much-needed update to the core and other spaces while keeping the spirit and feel of the house intact,’ says Lasater.

Of course, ‘Ted blessed all of the changes’, he adds.

730 Stanyan Street in San Francisco is OMA’s New York’s first foray into affordable housing, but there’s nothing remotely cut-rate about its appearance.

This clever and deftly articulated building opened in late July, fronting the eastern end of Golden Gate Park in Haight-Ashbury. Glass fibre reinforced concrete (GFRC), a light-weight precast cement composite, makes for an elegant and thrifty envelope for a sinuous building that provides 160 vitally-needed affordable housing units for San Francisco, the most expensive urban rental market in the United States.

Other firms have amply demonstrated that affordable housing needn’t forsake design distinction in recent years: Lorcan O’Herlihy, Brooks Scarpa Huber Architects and Michael Maltzan in California; and Grimshaw, David Adjaye and, soon, even Herzog and de Meuron in New York. With 730 Stanyan, OMA has joined their ranks with style.

The city purchased a grimy McDonald's on the site in 2017, intending to use the lot for affordable housing. Two nonprofits, the Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC) and the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Center (TNDC), applied to develop the site. Each has developed numerous projects in the city; the former houses over 5,000 tenants in their buildings, the latter more than 6,800. The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development suggested that the two organisations join forces for the project.

Bo Han, associate director of housing development for the Chinatown CDC had been greatly impressed by OMA and San Francisco firm YA Studio’s 2019 collaboration on the Avery Tower at the city’s Transbay development. She encouraged the two practices to collaborate in a submission, which beat out 16 competitors. Most firms selected are local; this was a rare win for a team located largely outside the Bay area.

‘We wanted somebody who really understands urban context and could make the needed gesture to make this building fit well into the site, but also something that didn't look like typical affordable housing,’ she says.

The financing for affordable housing projects in San Francisco is complex. The city provides predevelopment funding, with contributions from city, state, federal and other sources making up the rest of the project. 730 Stanyan failed to win state support but former mayor London Breed, who was previously district supervisor for the site, assisted in obtaining additional city funding. The city owns the site; the project has been granted a 75 year lease with a 24 year option to extend.

Paul Wang, associate principal at YA Studio, explains their role as ‘local community outreach, obtaining entitlements and navigating the City’s complicated permitting process, solving code related issues, documenting and overseeing the construction of the building.’

YA had worked on a number of affordable housing projects previously, but OMA was new to the game. Han, of the Chinatown CDC, explains, ‘when OMA and YA Studio put their fee proposal together, Jason Long cut his hourly fee by one-third, yet the design team gave it all throughout the entire design process.’

One of OMA’s struggles was simply to fit in as many units as possible, yet avoiding a domineering form in the process. ‘We could have done an eight-storey wraparound building, but you would end up with a cold, big, unprogrammed outdoor space, and a lot of mass at the perimeter that would have felt very out of keeping with the neighbourhood,’ OMA principal Jason Long explains.

There were risks in other directions. The Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council, among others, objected to its height. ‘There was a lot of push from some people in the community to break this down into a more forced set of fake townhouses, or to bring colour into the project in a very dramatic way. We resisted both of those efforts and tried to use instead this idea of the facade articulation through the GFRC panels,’ Long adds.

The envelope is complex, roughly resembling an abstract W in plan, with additional portions carved out at various levels: there are four-story corner volumes in a display of deference to the neighborhood’s scale. Otherwise, most of the building’s height is concentrated at the site’s centre.

The facade is serrated and swoops with cantilevers providing repeat visual interest. ‘The GFRC panels are shaped as a kind of wave, which is a nod to bay windows, but also just gives us a tool to modulate the facade. It reflects the scale of the townhouses in the neighbourhood,’ Long explains. ‘Additionally we curved it to reflect the organic quality of the park’.

One neighbourly gesture is a scoop on the building’s north side to recess the facade to meet the street frontage of a Victorian neighbor.

The GFRC panels are mounted onto a steel frame, with windows and mechanical louvers integrated before placement. ‘As long as the modules are standardized it's actually very economical as a building skin system,’ Long says.

The designers did not have an opulent budget. ‘One of our concerns with the building was that it might end up feeling a little bit institutional,’ Long says.

One of their nimble methods of combatting this risk was simply making sharp use of space. The residential units are not especially large but living rooms were located to maximise corner windows and provide a sense of spaciousness. The lobby is airy and amply lit, located between the building’s front and internal courtyard (there’s another courtyard for a daycare on the ground floor). The lobby features characteristic OMA touches: rounded columns; a perforated metal ceiling; and a diagonal mailbox volume that becomes a bench facing parkwards.

Elevators open onto views of Golden Gate Park. Long says, ‘Every time you step out of the elevator you’re reoriented to the park. Everyone gets the park view every day.’ The fifth floor terraces offer additional green space. The laundry room is not located in a grim basement, but next to one of these terraces. Economical supergraphics nodding to late San Francisco design doyenne Barbara Stauffacher Solomon inject additional fun for the mere cost of paint.

The building’s outdoor spaces are also artful. There’s a merry-go-round and a climbing wall that might be mistaken for an art installation in the main courtyard. Landscaping by GLS Landscape Architecture is set low for stormwater management needs but the effect is adventurous. There are two murals on the building by local artists, a floral nod to the area’s hippie heyday facing the inside of the block by Sorell Raino-Tsui and a more abstracted composition by Jenifer Wofford along one facade.

In addition to the daycare centre, the building also includes retail space, which is rare for such projects but was intentional to continue Haight street’s retail corridor; the city’s legendary Amoeba Music is right next door.

The project is also achieving a great deal of good. Every unit was leased before it even opened. Thirty-two units were set aside for formerly-homeless residents and 32 units for Section 8 tenants. It contains a comparatively large number of three bedroom units for families. Eligibility for the remaining apartments was set at 60 percent of the area’s median income.

730 Stanyan marks the first entirely-affordable housing on San Francisco’s west side. The building might prove a model in other regards, ‘This project was the first 100 percent affordable development [in the city] to use precast-concrete as the primary façade system to reduce the overall construction schedule,’ Wang says.

Affordable housing is so necessary it almost doesn’t matter what it looks like; everyone wins when the result is this attractive.

When Donald Judd purchased an abandoned military base outside Marfa, Texas in the late 1970s, the artist saw beyond the site’s scarred landscape and trash-strewn buildings; he saw a place where art, architecture and the land could exist in perfect balance.

Judd identified a pair of long sheds, originally used to house trucks and artillery, to transform into twin galleries that would house an ambitious site-specific work, 100 untitled works in mill aluminum, a meditative installation of gleaming aluminum boxes. Judd encountered a problem, though: the buildings leaked. When standard patches didn’t work, Judd, who also designed furniture and buildings, rectified the issue by capping the historic structures with a secondary arched roof made from corrugated steel.

Forty years on, Judd’s Chinati Foundation is one of the most important sites for 20th-century art in the US, a fact that helped transform the sleepy desert town into a global art mecca. But the artillery shed roofs still leaked.

‘In a massive Texas rainstorm, we will sometimes put out 100 buckets inside of the building,’ says Stephen Martin, the foundation’s director of preservation and planning.

What’s more, sand and dust from the surrounding Chihuahua desert would blow into the building through crevices; and temperatures inside could soar to 115 degrees Fahrenheit, sweltering heat that cooked staff, guests – and even the artworks (conservators discovered that the extreme temperature variances caused the aluminum sculptures to move off of their precise grid formation).

‘I don't want to use the word “crisis,” but when there are large weather events, we're very concerned,’ Martin adds.

Circumstances are about to change for the artillery sheds. Following a capital campaign, the Chinati Foundation has announced that it will be delicately restoring the two buildings to suit Judd’s artistic vision while preserving them for the future.

‘The approach has been first to really understand what are the real issues and concerns with the building,’ explains Caitlin Murray, the foundation’s executive director, ‘but [also] really understanding how we preserve the experience of this work according to Judd's intentions.’

Chinati has enlisted a team of experts to a team, including architect Troy Schaum, whose practice restored another foundation site, The John Chamberlin Building, four years ago.

‘There are two inhabitants that we're designing this space for,’ Schaum notes: the artworks and visitors, 20,000 of which visit the site every year. He underscores the delicacy of the gleaming boxes that make up 100 untitled works in mill aluminum: ‘The aluminum is a 3003 aluminum alloy that was specially-made for this artwork, and it has no finish on it, so it's very delicate and it's irreplaceable in its current state if it gets damaged,’ Schaum says.

His firm’s architectural approach will be similarly delicate: an invisible film will be added to some 10,000 sq ft of windows to block out UVA and UVB rays; the design team will positively pressurise the building to help circulate air and prevent dust and grit from entering the building envelope; and the team, with the expertise of engineering firm TYLin, will be incorporating a new roof structure to address the leaks, improve drainage and even harvest rainwater.

‘It’s like a heist movie or something – we like sneak in, make changes and we leave,’ Schaum says. ‘You're not going to find our fingerprints.’

Chinati is also using the opportunity to renew the land itself, whose ecosystems had been damaged after years of military use. Landscape experts Maggie Tsang and Jim Martinez will be analysing the site to restore the soil, bring back native plant species, redirect rainwater and thwart grassfires. The design team will also work to improve accessibility to the site by creating wider pathways and incorporating ramps.

The artworks will also receive TLC. For the first time, the installation will be relocated to make way for analysis and conservation helmed by Alfred Lippincott, who originally fabricated the works in the 1980s; the Getty Conservation Institute; and Bogna Skwara, Chinati’s head of conservation.

Preservation works will begin later this year; the team expects the project will take between two and three years to complete. But it will be worth the wait: ‘This is one of the most significant preservation projects for Chinati in a generation,’ says Murray. ‘It's an incredible honour to get to work on this work of art in a really holistic way.’

Arizona, with its majestic landscapes, staggering biodiversity and arid climate, has long spurred the architectural imagination. Most famously, the Grand Canyon State was the longtime muse of Frank Lloyd Wright, who first travelled there in the 1920s before setting up Taliesin West, the desert outpost of his Wisconsin home and school, in 1937. ‘The saguaro is the greatest example of a skyscraper that was ever built,’ the architect insisted.

Nearly a century after Wright’s first visit, Arizona continues to inspire architects, eager to create light-on-the-land buildings that tame the region’s harsh conditions while framing the dramatic topography. It’s little wonder that the state became a proving ground for desert modernism. Residential architecture is where these principles especially shine – and luckily, we’ve been privileged to publish some of the most innovative Arizona homes. From a retreat made from humble concrete block to a stainless-steel-clad residence that reflects the cactus-studded terrain, these five innovative Arizona houses beat the heat and stir the soul.

An ‘elegantly austere’ oasis outside Phoenix

Architect Darren Petrucci, principal of the Scottsdale-based firm A-I-R likes to design residential projects around a single, big gesture. In the case of this Arizona house outside of Phoenix, that form was a ‘long, bent bar.’ That massing enables the home, constructed from concrete block and stucco, to perch on a ridge on the site to take advantage of dramatic views to Camelback Mountain in the distance. The exterior is pale, to allow the intense sun to reflect back. But Petrucci and his team kept the interiors dark, to minimise reflections and keep the rooms cool. 'The analogy I typically give a client is a football player putting black under his eyes to reduce glare,’ the architect said. A series of austere indoor/outdoor spaces – including a pristine swimming pool – further prove that life in this home is quite literally made in the shade.

A concrete-block build for a multi-generational family

To look at this sleek Phoenix, Arizona house, you’d never guess that it began its life as an ordinary 1970s suburban home. But local architect Benjamin Hall cleverly expanded and reconfigured the structure to house a multi-generational dwelling using a surprising material: concrete masonry units. What resulted was a minimalist 1,700 sq ft addition, that is as cost-effective as it is insulated from the harsh Arizona climate. 'We had been looking to downsize, but never found what we wanted,' the client told us. 'So we did it by building.'

A scene-stealing retreat overlooking Tucson

Scenic designer Scott Pask has designed sets for blockbuster plays like the Book of Mormon – so it’s no surprise that his Arizona desert home, located outside Tucson, brings the drama. He found the brick modernist residence, designed by architect Jerry Thayer in the 1960s, in 2013, and enlisted architect Graydon Yearick to modernise it. The improvements included lightening the interior, incorporating more windows and ripping up retro carpet. Pask also spent three years upgrading the landscape to be in keeping with the client and to be more resilient in the event of a wildfire. He planted cacti, prickly pear, yucca and agave – plants that perfectly melt into the views of the mountain foothills beyond.

A saguaro-studded escape in Cave Creek

Cave Creek, Arizona, located outside of Phoenix, is filled with Old West lore, including the discovery of gold there in the 1870s. The owners of this dramatic home also struck gold, thanks to Phoenix-based firm Wendell Burnette Architects. The house is all planes and plinths, moves that allowed the architects to conceal mechanicals and create ample indoor/outdoor space. The overhanging canopy is clad in stainless steel, a material that reflects the saguaro-dotted desert landscape and views of Continental Mountain.

An midcentury modern-inspired apartment complex in Phoenix

This residential complex in Phoenix, designed by US400 firm Johnston Marklee, isn't technically a house, but it still exemplifies design principals that are uniquely Arizonan. Developed by Ray, the residential real estate company founded by Dasha Zhukova Niarchos, the building has more than 400 apartments. The modernist-inspired tower exterior is made of eye-catching green glass and metal, a move that at once evokes cacti and makes the building a banner in the cityscape. New York-based firm Parts and Labor Design took care of the interiors, which maintain the same mid-century vibes with a decidedly desert-y palette of terra-cotta hues, timber furnishings and plaster finishes. 'There’s a unique energy here shaped by the desert,’ Zhukova Niarchos told us.

The White House ballroom battle entered a new phase today. After a federal appeals court ruled last week that construction on the 90,000 sq ft expansion must stop, President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to allow the project to move ahead.

'This case involves an extraordinary and unlawful injunction that will halt the ongoing construction of the integrated military complex, including a totally secure ballroom space, at the East Wing of the White House, which is vitally required by national security,' US Solicitor General John Sauer argued in a filing with the high court.

The ballroom project has been a lightening rod for controversy since President Trump unveiled the concept a year ago, for both its design and its $400 million price tag, to be funded by private donations.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit that seeks to protect historically-significant sites across the US, brought suit against the plans in December 2025, arguing that the project required approval from Congress to move forward. Following months of legal back-and-forth, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit moved to block work on the project, upholding an earlier decision by a lower court.

‘Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence,’ the court wrote. ‘The President has no – and claims no – constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people.’

The Trump administration's petition with the Supreme Court, however – the nation's highest court – marks a significant escalation in the ongoing skirmish. The National Trust has until noon on 18 August to respond.

'Each court reviewing this case has ruled that construction of the Ballroom is unlawful,' the National Trust said in a statement. 'Each court has seriously and carefully considered the Administration’s asserted national security concerns. And each court has ruled that while underground bunker construction can continue, Ballroom construction must stop.'

The Trump administration, however, says it may be too late to halt the project. The Supreme Court filing noted that the building's superstructure is 65 percent complete, 'with millions of pounds of steel procured, tens of thousands of cubic yards of concrete poured and miles of conduit laid...Given those developments, the injunction promises chaos in service of nothing.'

Construction photos included in the filing show the extent of the work, which includes towering concrete shear walls. New renderings also depict what the complex will ultimately look like. The Neoclassical structure is designed by local firm Shalom Baranes Associates and will include a ballroom with gilded ornamental ceilings; a colonnaded exterior with 'magnificent Corinthian columns'; and decorative gold presidential seals on the facade.

The filing also touted the design's security features, which will include a droneport, a bunker five-storeys deep; and materials that are 'missile-resistant,' 'droneproof' and 'bullet, ballistic and blast-proof.'

According to a 2024 report from the American Institute of Architects (AIA), almost a quarter of all US architecture firms are concentrated in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. And while that number represents a minority of practices, there’s no denying that work coming out of those offices – ‘spiraling museums’ and ‘dizzying opera houses,’ per former AIA CEO Robert Ivy – tends to hog most of the limelight.

A recent book encourages architecture fans to look beyond these predictable centres of gravity. Out There, New Architecture Across America, a collaboration between Ivy, noted editor and critic Cathleen McGuigan and seasoned educator Peter MacKeith, spotlights 50 oft-overlooked practices positively impacting small towns and regional capitals across the US. These tenacious studios find clever ways to address the specific historical, environmental and material resource conditions of their surroundings; they’re united by a commitment to addressing issues unique to their regions, be it a housing crisis or social inequity.

‘Our primary criterion was that their work be place-based – not in a simple vernacular fashion, but as an innovative response to their communities and landscapes,’ says McGuigan. ‘Most of the architects we included deliberately established their practices outside the large coastal cities, designing projects that reflect their varied locales rather than following generic global trends.’

By uncovering these common threads, the compendium weaves a variegated tapestry of American architecture, reflecting the country’s sheer size, cultural diversity, and geographic variation.

The book’s title was inspired by a landmark 2001 issue of Architectural Record magazine, where Ivy was then-editor-in-chief, titled 'Out There: Architecture Outside the Centers of Fashion.' For that edition, Ivy and his team came across a vast swath of work being produced at every scale and across every building typology. As he puts it, London-based company Merrell Publishers urged him to put together a ‘big book’ based on that research.

He asked McGuigan (also a former editor-in-chief of Architectural Record) and MacKeith (the former dean of University of Arkansas’ Fay Jones School of Architecture) to lend their expertise. ‘What we realised, as we collected and assessed hundreds of submissions, was that we were participating in a review of the state of architectural practice writ large in the United States,’ says Ivy.

Take Belinda Stewart Architects, a small practice in Europa, Mississippi (population: 2,119). The firm operates with a mission rooted in the power of small towns, through projects such as the historically-sensitive Muddy Waters addition of the Delta Blues Museum or the restoration of many civic buildings and civil rights monuments.

‘Some of us chose Eupora because we wanted a place where we could walk to the grocery store and raise a family; others came to pursue their profession in its purest form with a deep commitment to design, preservation, and sustainability,’ says firm founder Belinda Stewart.

Others within the book's 50-firm cohort have put down roots in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts; the shores of Washington State’s Puget Sound; Texas Hill Country outside of Austin; and the Montana Rockies.

For some, the calculated choice of operating beyond the affluent markets in and around major metropolises can also come with challenges. But that comes with opportunities, says Kai Salmela, co-principal of Minneapolis-based Salmela Architect: ‘We design for a wide range of clients and budgets, but the majority of our residential projects fall around $800,000 which means getting the most out of every design decision and using every material to its fullest,’ the architect says.

The regional commitment also shapes the firm's architectural approach. ‘Designing in remote parts of Minnesota and the western Great Lakes region also means confronting one of the most difficult climates,' Salmela says. 'With temperatures swinging between -30°F to 100°F, there are five-foot frost depths, brutal freeze-thaw cycles and heavy snow loads.’ It’s for these reasons that the firm blends modernist and Scandinavian influences in aptly named projects such as Bauhaus Farms and Tre Søstre.

US400 firm DUST Architects works in a vastly different context – the American Southwest high desert – but the work has similar considerations. According to co-principal Cade Manning Hayes, the firm's residential projects are ‘volcanic geology cast into architecture.’ Constructed using locally-sourced natural materials, these sturdy structures shield their inhabitants from extreme weather and extreme temperature fluctuations.

To deal with these conditions, it makes sense that the firm borrows from the long proven local vernacular. ‘We talk a lot about the idea that our architecture is strangely familiar,’ Manning Hayes explains. ‘It’s the transcendent simplicity of the Taos Pueblo and the relics of earthenware construction found between California and Texas’. It just so happens that this approach is also ideal when it comes to shaping these homes as observational apertures, framing views of the striking surroundings.

All of these approaches exemplify what MacKeith calls 'out-thereness' – a quality that transcends place. For him, focusing on the local can, in fact, foster a global perspective, enabling 'a recognition of others’ strengths elsewhere in the world.’

Set to be built just outside of Lawrence, Kansas, this new tornado- and fire-resistant project is more than a typical private ‘home’; it is an Earthship residence. ‘Earthships’ were conceived from one man’s vision for the future of housing. Michael E Reynolds founded the unorthodox utopian Earthship community, first in Taos, New Mexico, in the early 1970s, 'intending to create homes that don’t use fossil fuels or generate waste,' Beatrice Galilee reported for Wallpaper* in 2024. Now the community has expanded to more than 60 off-grid, fully independent, self-sustaining homes in Taos and up to 3,000 across the world.

‘I call it soft development,’ Reynolds previously told Wallpaper*. ‘They have a soft look because they’re also logically encountering the phenomena of the Earth. At the same time, you’ve got your own power, your own water, and your own sewage. You’re secure in the future.'

Explore the new Earthship residence design

The new proposal is conceived as a 'tornado- and fire-resistant Refuge Earthship'. It will include two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Embedded in its design are four ferro-cement vaults, which are thin-shell structural roofing elements made from cement mortar applied over layers of fine steel wire mesh and rods. These have been engineered to withstand fire and extreme winds.

The new residence, designed by Reynolds, will be constructed using ‘garbage’, including up to 1,000 tyres to form the structural columns, 16,000 used aluminum cans, and 1,000 old cardboard boxes. These materials are being collected locally, and donations are gladly accepted.

Earthship Biotecture – the name of Reynolds’ organisation as well as this approach to off-grid architecture – follows six principles covering basic human needs: building with natural and repurposed materials; heating and cooling through thermal mass; using wind and solar energy to create electricity; harvesting and filtering rainwater to provide drinking and wash water; containing and treating its own wastewater without external contamination; and producing its own food in an integrated greenhouse.

Construction will begin on the new building in September, with a dedicated Earthship crew including 25 students from across the world.

Says Reynolds: ‘We are very excited for the construction of this fire- and tornado-resistant Earthship in Kansas. The current state of the world makes this type of building not only necessary but essential to an incredible amount of people in and outside the US. I probably should not say this, but I cannot wait for the building to go through an actual tornado.’

earthship.com

Hot on the heels of recent residential projects in the UAE and Brazil, Pininfarina has announced its first foray into single-family houses with a new US project launched at Monterey Car Week 2026. The multi-faceted design agency, now led by CEO Paolo Dellachà, covers a huge spread of industrial and architectural design, so the new American venture is a natural next step.

Explore Pininfarina's first US foray

Dubbed the Collection Sei Design by Pininfarina and overseen by the company’s chief architectural officer Samuele Sordi, each of the six fully furnished estate designs is intended as a complete package, shaped, built, furnished and decorated by the Italian studio. All you have to do is bring the site – a plot of 20,000 sq ft minimum is required.

The project has come about via a partnership with luxury homebuilder Manny Angelo Varas and MV Group USA. Although each villa is unique, they each measure around 8,000 sq ft and have a shared aesthetic, particularly in the use of curved balconies, covered terraces, and sliding screens. The intention is clearly to ensnare the attention of those who obsess over the bespoke process, whether in a house, a car or a yacht.

The studio hopes that the famed Pininfarina script logo will be enough to carry interested buyers through to completion, with each property offered at a turnkey cost of $16,950,000 (excluding the price of the land, of course). The initial renders show the houses in a variety of locations, but it’s the Miami-adjacent plots that look the most convincing, with the curved balconies acting as a suitable foil for superyachts, not just supercars.

Dellachà tied the launch into the 60th anniversary of favourite Pininfarina design, the Alfa Romeo Duetto – also hugely popular in the USA. ‘We are proud to unveil this remarkable project as we celebrate the anniversary of the Duetto, one of Alfa Romeo's most iconic cars, a timeless symbol that has inspired generations of Americans,’ the CEO said. ‘Created with Manny Angelo Varas, Collection Sei Design by Pininfarina is driven by the same vision. Set in extraordinary locations, the six villas will embody the highest expression of elegance, combining timeless design with exceptional craftsmanship. Just as the Duetto became an icon of Italian style, this collection aspires to set a new benchmark for luxury living in the United States.’

Pininfarina’s Sordi describes the project as ‘not simply a luxury home, but a collectable residence – one that elevates the rituals of everyday life.’ As well as deploying familiar architectural tropes such as ‘dissolving the boundaries between architecture and landscape’, the six houses are sleek and modern without being especially avant-garde or progressive. For the right buyer, they’ll be just the ticket.

Pininfarina.it

America in the early 1900s was in a state of flux. A slow transition away from the country’s agricultural foundations and a movement towards an industrial, modern world were triggering seismic changes.

Thanks to parallel developments in photography, it is a cultural shift heavily documented, and one that's at the heart of Dulwich Picture Gallery’s new exhibition, ‘Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography’ (until 4 October 2026). Beginning in the early 20th century, when – thanks to the camera becoming a more affordable purchase for families – photography was becoming more democratic, the exhibition unites 38 of the era’s leading photographers, who capture the USA’s tumultuous volatility.

Tracing a chronological path through the century, the exhibition begins with Alfred Stieglitz’s The Steerage, an image that captured the sharp inequalities of class through the divide on an ocean liner. The reverberations from the Wall Street Crash in 1929 can be felt in important works by Dorothea Lange and Margaret Bourke‑White, who documented the devastating effects of mass unemployment and the debilitating poverty of the Great Depression that followed.

The physical space of the city takes shape in a multitude of ways, with photographers including Berenice Abbott, Arthur Leipzig and Ed Ruscha considering the architecture of the city itself, from the skyline to how the forms of the buildings and open spaces adapted to accommodate new demands in work and leisure. On the streets, Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander turn their lens to people creating new ways to live, while Peter Hujar documents the communities ravaged by AIDS.

‘American photography offers one of the most vivid and influential records of the modern city,’ says Alexander Moore, exhibition curator and creative producer at Dulwich Picture Gallery. ‘By bringing this remarkable collection to London, we invite audiences to reflect on how the rhythms, challenges and possibilities of urban life continue to echo through our own – a century of human stories told with extraordinary immediacy and invention.’

‘Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography’ is at Dulwich Picture Gallery until 4 October 2026. Presented in partnership with Savings Bank Foundation DNB and created in collaboration with Lillehammer Art Museum

One afternoon in 1969, a group of shaggy-haired rock musicians took the stage during a music festival held on Monmouth University’s campus in West Long Branch, New Jersey. The band, a local Jersey Shore act called Child, was fronted by a 20-year-old named Bruce Springsteen. What ensued was a ‘wild, mind-bending show’, the student newspaper reported – so raucous, in fact, that neighbours complained about the noise.

Springsteen, of course, went on to achieve international superstardom and is considered one of the most influential American musicians alive today, with 20 Grammys, a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and ​​a National Medal of Arts from President Joe Biden. But echoes of that early performance still reverberate around Monmouth University, thanks to a new museum and research centre dedicated to preserving Springsteen’s legacy and sharing the ever-evolving story of American music.

Designed by New York-based firm CookFox Architects, The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music is about narrative, inside and out. Architect Rick Cook didn’t count himself as a big fan of ‘The Boss’ before taking on the project. But gradually, he fell under the singer-songwriter’s spell: ‘I actually fell in love with Bruce as a great American storyteller. That I understood, because architecture is storytelling,’ Cook says.

The building, located on the eastern corner of Monmouth University's campus (just a mile from the humble blue bungalow where Springsteen composed ‘Born to Run’), appears as a brawny, two-storey rectilinear box that, once the landscape is grown in, will hover amid a swaying meadow. While the massing is simple, Springsteen lore pervades the building, from the weathering-steel louvres that evoke the musician’s working-class roots, to a tree alongside the museum’s entrance that nods to a majestic Copper Beech that stood at Springsteen’s childhood home in Freehold, New Jersey. Most notably, a plank ramp leading to the front entrance forms an analogue of the Asbury Park boardwalk, where Springsteen first emerged on the local music scene. ‘How do you design a building that honours Bruce and American music? Obviously, start with a boardwalk,’ Cook says.

Like Springsteen, the museum collection had humble origins – one shaped by the Jersey Shore. The collection sprang from the Bruce Springsteen Archives, a repository of fan-collected items and ephemera related to Springsteen and his backing musicians, the E Street Band. At first, the 15,000-piece collection was stored at the Asbury Park Public Library; in 2011, Monmouth University acquired the collection and stored it in a small house on its campus. But as the collection grew (some items were even stored in the bathtub), it was clear that it needed a more appropriate home.

That’s when Bob Santelli, a Monmouth alum and veteran music journalist who’s helped curate the museum at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Grammy Museum and many others, stepped in as executive director. ‘The thought [had been] that Bruce’s memorabilia and archives would go to the Smithsonian or the Library of Congress. And the idea was no, it’s going to stay in New Jersey,’ Santelli says, who began covering Springsteen in 1973 as a cub music reporter. ‘He is so synonymous with the state of New Jersey – no one is as synonymous with their respective state as Bruce.’

There was only one thing left to do: ask the Boss for his blessing. Springsteen was hesitant about having a museum devoted to his legacy, but when the remit evolved to include the history of American music more broadly, he gave the project the green light.

The Boss also has thoughts about the building, according to Cook: when the architect showed Springsteen an initial design presentation, the musician offered just one word of feedback: ‘Badass.’

When visitors enter the museum, they encounter an airy atrium constructed of heavy timber, another nod to New Jersey’s historic factories and mills. The ground floor includes a gift shop and information desk, in addition to a theatre and galleries.

The theatre comprises one of the building’s boldest design moves. Fronted entirely by glass, the state-of-the-art auditorium can host films, lectures and, of course, musical performances. Little design details speak to Springsteen – flooring made from end-cut wood, and seats clad in a blue-jean fabric – ‘a little bit literal’, Cook jokes. Over in the gift shop, display cases, sporting merch including jewellery, posters and replica E Street Kings tank tops, are made from the stage flooring used in Springsteen on Broadway.

After watching an orientation video in the auditorium, visitors are directed to the galleries on the building’s south end, whose displays celebrate the evolution of the American musical canon. Via a series of interpretive vitrines, guests can get up close and personal with treasures ranging from Frank Sinatra’s shoes to Prince’s guitar and a Lady Gaga costume. A special exhibition, ‘Chimes of Freedom: Protest, Patriotism and the Power of Song’, spotlights music’s ability to spur change – items on display include the lyrics for Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ and Springsteen’s ‘Streets of Minneapolis’.

Upstairs, the Springsteen pilgrimage truly begins. The second floor is dedicated almost entirely to Springsteen and E Street Band history, with displays ranging from a recreation of Springsteen’s Rumson, New Jersey living room to a listening room that replicates live concerts. The objects on display are enough to bring any Boss fan to their knees, and include Springsteen’s first-ever song, written in 1967 when he was a teen; Grammy awards; an album of press clippings maintained by the artist’s mother; and the iconic blue jeans and white T-shirt worn on the cover of Born in the USA.

A separate area contains the museum’s research center, which includes spaces for study, listening and storage for archival materials. Visitors can make an appointment to view pieces from the collection, which now consists of more than 30,000 items.

‘You can get plenty of information on the Internet,’ Santelli says, but the museum aims to provide something else – a tangible connection to history. The director anticipates the museum will draw die-hard Springsteen aficionados and music connoisseurs alike. But he’s most interested in the impact the centre will have on people outside the music orbit.

‘We’re in a tourist area so we’re going to get Mr and Mrs Smith on a crappy day at the beach,’ Santelli says. ‘They may not be Bruce fans, but the idea is to give them a sense of Bruce's importance not just to New Jersey but to America.’

Cook, the architect, is one of those converts. ‘Music exists in a moment in time. Architects deal with things in space, physical things, but music is that magic that happens,’ he says. ‘Bruce is a magic act.'

Heatherwick Studio has unveiled its new design Stateside, which sees the transformation of a forgotten civic space in Louisville, Kentucky. The open area, titled Belvedere, is located downtown, nestled between the city’s commercial centre and the Ohio River.

Off the back of opening London’s Olympia this July (2026), the UK architecture firm has been busy fine-tuning Belvedere’s details, aiming to create welcoming public spaces that will include spacious pavilion-style structures and vast amounts of planting.

Heatherwick Studio unveils plans for Belvedere civic space in Kentucky

Elevated above a main road, the site spans approximately four American football pitches. The new design transplants outdoor gathering into the city, inviting people to meet friends, host community events, and watch performances near the waterfront.

The defining feature of the proposal is the Firefly Pavilion. The striking structure is designed for everyday use throughout the year but also acts as a platform to host events.

Belvedere originally opened in 1973 and slowly weathered, eventually appearing disjointed from the city. The firm worked closely with the community to hear their insights, which informed the project's development. Construction of Belvedere is expected to begin this autumn, with a grand opening anticipated in 2030.

‘For more than 50 years, the Belvedere has been a stage for public life in Louisville. But over time it’s become barren and disconnected from the energy of the city around it. My studio’s design is about restoring the buzz and sense of connection of its early years by creating a greener, more welcoming urban heart, where everyday life can take place: from chance encounters and children's play to festivals, performances and community celebrations,’ says Thomas Heatherwick, founder and design director of Heatherwick Studio.

‘Our goal is for the newly reimagined Belvedere to reflect Louisville’s unique character, and bring people together again across generations, backgrounds and interests, and go on to become a place that local people proudly call their own.’

heatherwick.com

On the Kona Coast of Hawaii Island, Seattle-based architecture firm Olson Kundig and San Francisco-based interior studio Leverone Design have completed a house set directly into a lava field, its hard volcanic ground softened at every turn by what's been built on top of it.

The clients are a pair of California-based professionals, parents to two college-age daughters, who conceived the property as a vacation home destined to become their primary retreat once the girls have left for good. Family was central to the brief from the outset: a house sized for a full table, and built to expand and contract with the household's rhythms, whether that means a quiet week for two or a home full of friends.

Tour a dreamy Hawaii house made for downtime

The couple came to Olson Kundig having admired the firm's Hale Lana residence, also on the ‘Big Island’, drawn to its restraint and approach to volume. Principal/Owner & Founder Tom Kundig recalls that the clients 'were interested in a residence composed of a series of high-design pavilions rather than a single volume', an ambition that shaped the project's orientation and circulation from the first sketches.

'Ultimately,' he says, 'the goal was not to impose on the landscape, but to create a framework through which it could be experienced.'

That framework depends on a roof whose horizontal line appears to hover on slender columns across long spans, its structural complexity hidden entirely from view. Achieving that reduction, Kundig admits, made the roof 'one of the project's most technically demanding elements', requiring close work with engineers to erase every trace of effort from the finished form.

Beneath that roof, board-formed concrete, larch and basalt stone extend the lava field's palette into the house itself, while slate-clad cedar volumes hold the more private, utilitarian rooms. It fell to Matthew Leverone, founder of Leverone Design, to decide how a family might actually live inside those rooms.

The clients already knew his work: a previous project of his on Maui had shown them Leverone could soften bold architecture without diminishing it, and here that meant furniture with 'sensuous shapes and soft textures' set against the house's clean lines – a wood-framed sling chair with a leather back and wool bouclé cushions, raw teak coffee tables shaped like seed pods, woven raffia left with its structure exposed.

In the primary bedroom, concrete walls and a larch ceiling create, in Leverone's words, 'a sheltering environment – like a natural cave open to ocean views'. His one spatial addition was an upholstered wall opposite the glass façade, which he calls 'a gentle gesture that doesn't shy away from the monolithic presence but instead stands with the same dignified character as the architecture itself'.

Elsewhere, Leverone traded wall-to-wall closets in the guest rooms for freestanding wardrobes in bleached larch, steel and leather – a calculated move that opens up the rooms while keeping every inch of storage the brief required. The same instinct guided the art collection throughout the house: a Paul Kremer painting in tropical blues and oranges greets visitors from the media room, and a Pedro Reyes sculpture, commissioned directly from the artist and set on the entrance axis, anchors the whole sequence with what Leverone calls its 'modernised Easter Island' stillness.

In the end, the house works because two creative sensibilities dovetailed here. Kundig set the terms with the roof, and Leverone filled in the rooms below, both working with élan and from the same instinct – reduce whatever isn't essential, then make sure what's left is warm enough to live with.

olsonkundig.com

leveronedesign.com

Majestic places can easily become etched in our memory. Some spots are so beautiful that they may even inspire a Grammy-winning song, as is the case with Mendocino, California – the inspiration behind Willie Nelson and Lee Ann Womack 2002 rendition of 'Mendocino County Line.'

The lyrics speak to fading love. But they also evoke the idyllic coastal region’s lasting beauty. And that’s the reason why entrepreneurs Nadia Oka and Michael Topolovac selected a 53-acre plot of land there on which to build a retreat for their young family.

For the job, the couple tapped architect Mark Jensen. 'They have reverence for the land and wanted to do something really special up there, so I was immediately compelled,' Jensen, principal of the San Francisco-based firm Jensen Architects, says.

That 'really special' something is a linear glass, steel and cast concrete-structure that is as intentional in its modesty as it is balanced amongst the old-growth oaks in the surrounding woodland ecosystem. Set on a rolling hilltop at the northwest edge of the Russian River watershed, the 2,025 sq ft two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom home – with its clean, geometric modernist lines – feels more like an extension of the land than a juxtaposition to it.

'One of the unique things that really informed a lot about this home is the fact that they ended up building it mostly themselves,' explains Jensen. 'Michael's an engineer [and] built himself a welding shop up there and actually made all the custom storefront windows and pivot doors and cut all the metal cladding panels – it’s really insane how much work they did.'

That significant amount of work, as it turns out, wasn’t initially part of the plan, Michael, who was trained as a product designer and engineer, says. But as they spent more time at the site as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the family fostered 'a very deep engagement with the process and build' alongside the architects. He even modeled the entire house in OnShape (a 3D cloud-native CAD program) to help work through the various design elements he would undertake.

The overall design – one of three or four that Jensen presented to his clients – is rooted in the late British geographer Jay Appleton’s half-century-old 'prospect-refuge' notion of aesthetics that satisfy the innate desires for opportunity (prospect) and safety (refuge).

'I read Appleton’s [1975 book] The Experience of Landscape many years ago, and that theory has always resonated with me,' Jensen shares. He offers a cinematic metaphor for the approach: 'In all the classic Western movies, when you go into the saloon you sit with your back to the wall looking toward the door, otherwise the gunslinger’s going to come in and surprise you.' He continues, 'I think we’re just hardwired to want that kind of protection around us – and then to look out at that panorama!'

Composed of a board-formed concrete expanse, a steel skeleton and massive sheets of shaded glass, the home has 'some definite heroic structural moves,' per Jensen – including the dramatic, cantilevered roof. 'The entire roof is detached from the concrete wall, so you get a continuous skylight,' he explains. 'I have to say, you don’t often get balanced light in that way – and in the middle of the day when the light grazes the concrete, the texture of the board form really shows up.'

Aside from the thoughtful aesthetics of the project, sustainability and fire safety – given the area’s history of wildfires – were paramount from the start, so no combustible materials were used on the roof or exterior walls, including for the soffit underneath the roof that is composed of a Wildland-Urban Interface certified wood. The house also relies on solar power for electricity, and passive design techniques to minimise energy demands.

The most important resiliency measure is on the property itself: 'The brush has been cleared a fair distance around the house, and there are sprinkler systems and a second water tank so there’s capacity for firefighting,' the architect says.

No surprise, the architect's favourite spot in the house comes down to the prospect-refuge concept. He points to an open breezeway that divides the home's public and private wings: It’s an exterior space that allows you to look across from the pool all the way through the house and out to the western view framed by the walls which, arguably, makes it even more special – it’s a space they use a lot that blurs the boundaries between inside and out.'

As for the homeowners, it’s the future of the house that has made the whole project worthwhile. 'At almost every juncture, I would look at the material choices and the design approach, through the prism of "this is a life-of-the-house solution" for generations [of our family] to come,' explains Michael. 'It is the spirit of that – bringing this project to life with such permanence for those closest to us – which has been so deeply rewarding.'

President Donald Trump’s plan to build a 90,000 square-foot, privately-funded ballroom next to the White House has been mired in political and legal quagmire. That still hasn’t shut down work on the sprawling structure, which has been steadily rising from the ground since it broke ground last autumn.

But a federal appeals court ruled Friday that construction on the ballroom site cannot continue without direct congressional approval. The 2-1 decision, handed down by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, upheld an earlier decision by a district court to block work on the project.

‘Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence,’ the court wrote. ‘The President has no – and claims no – constitutionally assigned authority over that property, which is designed and maintained for the use of all Presidents, current and future, and for the American people.’

The decision marks another chapter in an ongoing lawsuit brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit that advocates for historic buildings and sites across the US, against the National Parks Service, the federal agency that oversees the White House and its grounds.

‘This is a great day for our country and for the American people's right to voice their opinions about the historic places they cherish, including the White House,’ said National Trust president and CEO Brent Leggs in a statement. ‘From the beginning, our position has been clear and consistent: the law states that only Congress can authorize the construction of a ballroom at the White House.’

‘This decision is particularly meaningful as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and advocate for renewed protections for historic preservation,’ Leggs added.

The defendants have 14 days to decide whether to appeal the decision.

President Trump, however, was clear about next steps. ‘We will be immediately appealing to the United States Supreme Court,’ he wrote on Truth Social – indicating that the ballroom battle is far from over.

Making his furniture design debut, media personality Tan France unveils a new 18-piece collection for Castlery including furniture, lighting and accessories. As a celebrity approaching a design collaboration, France was aware of the challenges the project posed: 'I didn’t want to (...) select items from an already-designed collection and put my name on it,' he tells Wallpaper*. Instead, the Queer Eye star got designing, his South Asian and British heritage firmly in mind as he drew from the places and aesthetics that have shaped his early years.

'Living between cultures and countries has taught me that home isn’t just somewhere you live, it’s something you create, wherever you are,' he says to introduce the collection, which includes highlights such as a blown glass table lamp in three colours, and a sofa imagined as a centrepiece based on everyday comfort.

Here, France tells Wallpaper* how interior design and identity are inextricably linked.

7 Questions with Tan France

Wallpaper*: When did you first become aware of the concept of design within the context of a home or interior?

Tan France: When I was a teen, I finally got my own room (an attic bedroom) and was allowed to decorate it however I wanted. I had a weekend job and had saved some money, so I spent what I had on making the room look like a cohesive space. Seems simple enough, but it was a completely foreign concept to my family, at the time, to decorate for both function and aesthetics.

W*: Do you have any memories of your childhood home?

TF: Yes, I had a home that blended western and eastern cultures. I didn’t realize the significance at the time, but when it came to designing my home in Salt Lake City, I knew I wanted to do a hybrid of British and South Asian, to make it feel like home.

W*: What is your approach to your own home?

TF: My approach to designing my home, and my collection, is the same. I want items that feel familiar but with a unique touch. I want to feel that the vibe has come from one, unwavering lens. For my home, I wanted to have everything one would have in a home like this, but with design details that represented my past, and my life with my American husband.

W*: This is your first furniture collaboration: what was important for you to convey with this launch?

TF: Firstly, I wanted to actually design. I didn’t want to do a celebrity collection, where I select items from an already designed collection and put my name on it. I wanted to show (...) that I had a unique perspective and that what is created could only be designed by someone from my background and cultures. Start to finish. Secondly, I wanted to convey a sense of it being for you, too. Even though the items all have a (very gentle) South Asian and British touch, it can work for those of you who are neither of those things but still want unique pieces.

W*: Your family’s culture and heritage have been important in shaping you: how does this reflect in your design choices, and how has this influenced this collection?

TF: The scalloped details from South Asia and England really influenced the collection. It's something that I saw dotted around my house, but also around the UK on what were traditional English buildings. That was the main inspiration behind the collection. I wanted the collection to feel so singular. One that could truly have only been created by me, so using my two cultural touch points felt like the right jumping off point.

W*: What are key pieces that are important to you, or that encapsulate the spirit of the collection, and why?

TF: It's really hard to choose, as I designed only items that are all important to me. However, I am obsessed with my lamp. I think it's the perfect balance of play and sophistication to bring newness to any space. And I'm crazy about my sofa. I think the wooden details make it feel so darn unique. I have the lamps in my home already and love them. I also have the side table which I think is stunning.

W*: Do you have any of these in your own home, and how do you use them?

TF: Yes, I have the large mirror, with the scalloped detail, in my guest house, as I wanted to infuse a little more detail to that space. I have the lamps dotted around the house, in my living room, kitchen and bedroom. And the side tables now flank my guest bedroom bed. I will be receiving the rest of my collection next week and I’ll be using every darn piece. I can’t wait!

Channeling wabi-sabi style, Matchaful’s new Ritual Bar in Brooklyn offers tea drinkers a moment of zen in a bustling city. In the expanded space, carved from an apartment building near the Williamsburg café, curious minds can take pause to learn about the craft of Japanese tea through guided tastings, matcha whisking ceremonies and more. As these intentional experiences unfold, the intimate atmosphere keeps guests grounded in the present.

‘We realised most people never get the chance to hear the stories behind what they're drinking or learn how it's traditionally prepared,’ Matchaful founder Hannah Habes tells Wallpaper*. ‘The Ritual Bar gives us the opportunity to bring those stories to life.’

Habes enlisted Now or Never (NoN) Studio, a Brooklyn-based interior architecture and design firm, to seamlessly expand the original café, which first opened in 2024 and is one of the brand’s many locations in New York.

The Ritual Bar marks the expansion’s crown jewel. With seating for eight, the cosy space features paper pendant lights by Troy Lighting that produce a soft glow and textured limewash walls that absorb sound. Natural maple and oak wood warm up the space, from the custom bar stools to floating shelves that display ceramics made by local artisans. The green-veined counter, made of Cipollino Verde marble, further mirrors nature.

‘We were drawn to natural materials and textures that feel warm, calming and timeless because we wanted the space to reflect the same care that goes into the teas we source,’ says Habes.

Beyond the Ritual Bar – where walk-ins can also grab a seat across from a tea educator and order from a season menu when reservation-based classes aren’t in session – the café now includes a larger outdoor space. The landscaped patio beckons visitors to settle in during warmer months. A matcha grinder room, where customers can view the traditional stone matcha grinding technique in action from behind a glass window, will also open inside of the café later this year.

Throughout the café, minimal decor leaves room ‘for the guest to notice’ everything, says NoN Studio founder Jamie McGlinchey, from ‘the shadow of daylight’ and ‘the grain of the wood’ to the tea-making processes occurring around them. ‘The design prioritises presence, ritual and ambiance over decoration, allowing the experience and the act of making matcha to remain the focus,’ she says.

‘Above all, we want people to feel welcome,’ Habes adds. ‘Our hope is that wherever someone spends time, they leave feeling more connected.’

Matchaful is located at 92 Berry St, Brooklyn, NY 11249

Darren Petrucci considers each commission within the specifics of its place and within the context of his architecture practice. A recently completed Arizona home outside Phoenix is another entry in his ever-evolving approach to desert-based design.

In addition to considering responsive materiality set within arid conditions, 'recurring sensibilities happen in my work,' Petrucci explains. 'One of them is that the house is iconic in some form - something memorable or totalising.' In this particular case, 'the iconic form is a long, bent bar. We maximised the horizontal distance the lot could accommodate to capture that view and become a ridge line across the hill. Then the walls shift and move to adjust to the context.’

Tour this powerfully minimalist Arizona home

The strikingly contemporary home, dubbed the Shifted Horizon House and built for a family of four, faces landmark Camelback Mountain. Previous projects Petrucci completed with his firm, A-I-R (Architecture-Infrastructure-Research), also sit within view. 'We were hiking and realised we could perfectly frame Camelback Mountain,' recalls Petrucci, who is also a professor in the Design School at Arizona State University, of the site.

What developed was a split-level home with a plan in the aforementioned shape. The brief called for a home that would be ‘elegantly austere and really clean' in every respect - from the angular massing to the light switches, which eschew any digital functionality in favour of analogue tactility. Volumes constructed of concrete masonry unit (CMU) 'emerging out of the desert' interlock with a mass of stucco built without control joints, Petrucci says about the challenge.

The effort became an opportunity to explore the interplay of darker surfaces awash in the Arizona sun. 'The light is so intense that when you make a darker interior, it emphasises the interior and the light,' Petrucci says. 'The analogy I typically give a client is a football player putting black under his eyes to reduce glare.'

Dynamic indoor-outdoor spaces were achieved using materials including dark polished concrete flooring, grey-hued CMU block, and stucco — the latter of which A-I-R typically keeps to a minimum. The block itself is a conventional, standardised material, but its double-score profile, applied with careful customisation, 'creates this textured, fabric-like pattern on the wall,' Petrucci adds. 'It's all about the detail,' so he collaborated with builder Jason Smith of Identity Construction to additionally score certain blocks at the corners to repeat the pattern, making the material 'feel more monolithic.’

The stucco is a key element in absorbing and transforming natural light. 'It can look blue-purple, or warmer,' Petrucci says, referencing the Japanese neutral chromatic concept of rikyu, which here serves as a bridge to shift with the changing sky and a link to the ground. In the primary spaces, many of the materials and finishes are one and the same.

A devotee of John Lautner, Petrucci has long been fascinated with the organic modernism pioneer’s theorising about the foundational spatial concepts of the 'canopy' and the 'cave.' The Shifted Horizon House integrates a third element. 'With every project there's a piece that's carved, and something that becomes the heat shield—and in between is "the court." It's like a courtyard inside the building.'

The residence's 15-foot-high central space, illuminated by clerestory windows, feels like a pavilion, with floor-to-ceiling glass panels that fully pocket to connect to the outdoors. 'You can think of the whole thing as a cave, a solid that's been carved out, but there are moments when you feel like the roof is a canopy,' he observes.

Other details and gestures establish scale and considerate touch points. A handrail transitions into the powder-room door handle, for instance, and nine-foot-tall, wood-lined walls add warmth to the multifunctional great room. 'It has a brutalist feel to it in many ways, but the curves and the wood ribbon that runs through the house are intended to bring a softer, more supple feeling,' Petrucci notes.

The 'wet edge' pool appears like a reflecting pool, with a hot tub border that disappears beneath the waterline, and the property features desert-appropriate landscape design by Phoenix-based Kris Floor of Floor Associates. The dramatic, double-sized, carved-out fireplace, built of CMU, continues a datum line in concert with the kitchen island and television. These decisions operate holistically on multiple levels, creating a testbed for ideas about desert living. 'It organises everything. Because of that alignment, I believe you relax. It keeps you grounded,' Petrucci says.

theairsite.com

There are cities that appear in films, and then there is New York, which has a way of making films appear inside it. A24’s On Location in New York City is built around that premise: a movie lover’s guide to 179 places across the five boroughs that have conquered the silver screen and are still open to this day. Much like our own Wallpaper* Travel Guide series, the volume exudes the charm of pre-internet travel publishing.

There are maps, categories, addresses, telephone numbers, symbols (for cash only, adults only, open late, landmark, and so forth) and an index of all the locations and films mentioned, making it easy to navigate. This is New York, scene by scene.

A24 turns New York into a cinephile itinerary

Celine Song, whose Past Lives (2023) and Materialists (2025) both star the city as itself, opens the tome with a love letter to New York City and to the film crews who make shooting there possible. ‘I love New York. I am in love,’ she writes. ‘I love the parks and the restaurants and the stores and the piers and the sidewalks and the piles of trash and the corners that turn gold with the sunset once a day.’ For Song, the city is ‘ugly, brutal, messy’ as much as it is beautiful, and that is precisely why filmmakers keep returning to it.

The guide spans six categories. Entertainment & Sightseeing covers the city’s monuments, museums, cinemas and theatres, from big-ticket New York fixtures such as the Empire State Building, Radio City Music Hall and Grand Central Terminal – where Terry Gilliam staged 1,000 extras waltzing beneath the concourse’s celestial ceiling for The Fisher King (1991) – to more particular inclusions, such as the Judd Foundation, whose SoHo interiors Adrian Lyne used in 9½ Weeks (1986).

The Shopping section turns the city into a retail set: department stores, bookshops, toy stores, tattoo parlours and diamond dealers. Toy shop FAO Schwarz is the obvious pilgrimage, with Tom Hanks’ giant ‘Walking Piano’ from Big (1988) still in residence after the store’s move to Rockefeller Plaza; the Diamond District brings the more frantic cadence of Uncut Gems (2019), all upstairs rooms and handshake deals. Bergdorf Goodman, meanwhile, gets its own mythology: ‘Unlike Saks Fifth Avenue, Bloomingdale’s and Printemps,’ the book notes, ‘there is only one Bergdorf’s, and it can only be experienced in New York.’

The Eating chapter gives restaurants their due as New York cinema’s great supporting characters. For pop-culture pilgrims, Bubby’s in Tribeca appears in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) as the workplace of Andy’s boyfriend Nate, while Raoul’s in SoHo brings oysters, steak frites and Valentine’s Day melodrama via Sex and the City: The Movie (2008). A must-visit for its pastrami on rye as much as its cinematic credentials, Katz’s Delicatessen made cameos in three films released in 2007 alone, and has its own sign – ‘Where Harry met Sally… hope you have what she had!’ – hanging above the table where Meg Ryan performed the sultry scene. There is also a section for that most democratic of New York film props: the hot dog cart.

For those seeking to extend the night, Nightlife takes the guide to a darker and after-hours territory, moving from old pubs and hotel bars to club rooms built for bad decisions. Basement in Queens, seen in Babygirl (2024), is a concrete techno club beneath Knockdown Center, with a no-photo policy. Sitting on a corner across the street from Tompkins Square Park, 7B (known locally as Horseshoe Bar, for its U-shaped counter, or Vazac’s, from its past as a Polish catering hall) offers the kind of timeless, grimy ambience that is hard to resist.

Parks & Recreation opens up the city’s green spaces, skating rinks, pools, ballfields and strange pockets of leisure. Naturally, Central Park gets the full treatment as New York’s great outdoor set. The book closes with Photo Opportunities: a section for striking the pose where the movies already did. There is the operational Tribeca firehouse from Ghostbusters (1984), Mick Dundee’s lamppost on Fifth Avenue, the Queensboro Bridge view from Manhattan (1979), Times Square as emptied at great expense for Vanilla Sky (2001), and the Statue of Liberty, because even disaster movies need an icon.

As Song puts it, ‘New York City is probably the most photographed city in the world, and for good reason. It is a stunner! Ever-changing, always perfect, endlessly-inspiring, one hell of a city.’

‘On Location in New York City’, available for $36 via A24 or for £28 via Mack Books

The opaque, geometric concrete volumes of this new Miami house belie the dramatic expression and spatial generosity of its interiors. Welcome to Cherokee House, a project named after the Miami Beach street it sits on, which inspired the intention to pay tribute to the people whose rich cultural heritage, artistry, and enduring legacy the street name represents. The luxurious home was designed by Colombian Karlos Perez (whose own Medellin House is an ode to tropical modernism) and his practice StudioKP2, in collaboration with Corradi Group.

Discover a new Miami house by StudioKP2

In the case of this Miami house, Perez pulled out all the stops to craft a building that feels rich, layered and contemporary. 'The overall feeling I want this home to invoke is admiration and awe. I want it to be a surprising and exciting experience to walk through it. I always aim for epic artistry, something brand new that the visitor hasn’t seen before. The house offers exceptional privacy while maintaining an open, airy feel, thanks to its expansive living spaces,' he explains.

Mass, materiality and light play a key role in defining the home's mood and atmosphere. The composition comprises two primary, blocky concrete elements and a third, lighter, glazed one, which connects the two. Wood, stainless steel and stone dominate, proposing an exterior and interior that flow together effortlessly and as one.

Meanwhile, even though the street facade may feel mysterious, with few openings, and the entrance sequence feels compressed, once through it and inside, the home doesn't feel insular at all – swathes of glazing connect the living areas with a green, surrounding garden throughout.

The living room and kitchen, in particular, flow together as one open, inviting space. This is also Perez's own favourite spot in the property: 'It’s designed to bring people together and inspire meaningful moments with family and friends. The seamless connection to the outdoors creates a relaxed, airy atmosphere where the interior and exterior blend effortlessly.'

Responding to Miami's subtropical climate, the home makes the most of its terraces and indoor/outdoor living opportunities, which include shaded open-air living spaces and a spacious swimming pool.

Spanning two main levels, the Miami house has its ground floor entirely dedicated to the entertaining and social parts of the home, while upstairs are three bedrooms (one of which is the primary suite with its own walk-in wardrobe). Meanwhile, the circulation core becomes an event in itself, taking the shape of a wide, sculptural staircase.

The result speaks for itself – and the feedback Perez has already received is gratifyingly aligned to his original design intention, he says: 'Several neighbours have come up and affirmed the amazement I wished to invoke. One of them said it’s a true masterpiece that stands out from all other houses in Miami Beach. I feel like my mission is completed when I’ve caused an emotional impact, even if it’s negative. I want our projects to invoke some kind of reaction, make you feel some type of way, preferably inspired.'

studiokp2.com

Bankruptcy auctions are not sentimental affairs. A company is divided into its constituent parts, bidders compete for the pieces they want, and the court’s task is to extract as much value as possible for its stakeholders. When recipe and cookware company Food52 entered bankruptcy earlier this year, the fate of its three brands – its flagship digital media platform Food52, Portland-based homeware manufacturer Schoolhouse and heritage Scandinavian tabletop and homeware brand Dansk – was decided over the course of a day.

The most compelling component, Dansk, came last. 'It was the caboose in the auction,' recalls Mark Masiello, founder of Form Portfolios, a Rhode Island and Copenhagen-based company that owns, manages, and preserves the legacies of historic and contemporary designers and architects. ‘We didn’t really have a sense until the very, very end that we were going to be successful.'

For Masiello, however, the acquisition was personal. Form Portfolios had spent several years working with the family of Dansk’s co-founder and principal designer, Jens Quistgaard, to protect and elevate his legacy. 'From my very first meeting with Mark, I realised his vision for Form Portfolios transcended business,' says Quistgaard’s daughter, Henriette. 'It was a deeply personal calling to honour my father’s legacy. That initial conversation established a level of trust and a shared commitment to protecting my father’s work and the integrity of his designs.'

Building brands and safeguarding legacies

Running a design company is an unlikely second act for Masiello. After a 25‑year stint in private equity, he retired at 44 and set up Form Portfolios in 2017. He describes those first decades as working ‘on one side of [his] brain’, and the last ten years as activating the other: applying the tools and discipline of his previous life to the more intuitive business of design – something he has found ‘tremendously satisfying’. That outsider’s perspective, he believes, is precisely what allowed him to see how designers and their families needed help managing rights, building brands and safeguarding legacies.

Masiello had not told Henriette or her sister-in-law Therese that he intended to bid for Dansk; knowing how anxious they were about its future, he did not want to raise their hopes. The following Saturday, he called with the good news. 'They said, “Did you buy Dansk?” I said yes, and there were tears,' he remembers. 'There’s a business side to what we do, but even more important is the legacy of the designers we work with – and the human side.'

Dansk: a beloved design brand

What Form Portfolios had acquired was not simply a collection of cookware, tableware and intellectual property, but stewardship of a brand unusually heavy with emotion. Founded in 1954 by American entrepreneurs Ted and Martha Nierenberg with the young Quistgaard, Dansk helped introduce Scandinavian modernism to American homes. 'Dansk represents a pivotal chapter in modern American design by demonstrating that everyday objects can be both highly functional and beautifully designed,’ says Emmanuel Plat, director of merchandising, retail at MoMA. Its enduring influence, he adds, is reflected in its presence in the museum’s collection, 'where it stands alongside other works that have shaped the history of modern design'.

During the second half of the 20th century, Quistgaard’s objects for Dansk became embedded in everyday life: the brightly coloured casserole with its crossed handle, beautiful enough to be carried directly from stove to table; the sleek stainless-steel flatware with teak handles and cheeseboards with built-in knives. 'If your memory were a photograph,' says Masiello, 'in many memories, Dansk is in that photograph.'

In its heyday, Dansk was available in Europe and beloved in Japan, but North America was its stronghold, where it was available at every major retailer and had 45 dedicated stores across the country. ‘For many Americans, Dansk was their first introduction to Scandinavian design,’ says Masiello. ‘The idea that you could combine form, functionality, simplicity and intelligence in a single object was new.’

That emotional familiarity may help Dansk reach a new generation increasingly drawn to objects with a history. Masiello describes it as part of a broader return to the analogue: a renewed appetite for vinyl, vintage design and tactile things made to endure. Yet he is clear that Dansk cannot survive on nostalgia alone.

Sebastian Brauer, head of design at Crate & Barrel, sees its longevity as the product of a philosophy rather than an aesthetic moment. 'Dansk has endured because it has always understood that good design doesn’t chase trends – it becomes part of people’s everyday rituals,' he says. 'Its pieces are modern without feeling cold, functional without sacrificing beauty, and approachable enough to be used every day rather than just admired.'

Those qualities appear particularly relevant amid today's culture of fast furniture, disposable objects and hollow digital experiences. 'Today’s customer is increasingly looking for objects with authenticity, permanence and a clear point of view,' Brauer continues. 'Dansk stands out for its honest materials, thoughtful craftsmanship and timeless Scandinavian design language and heritage.'

Dansk returns to Copenhagen

Acutely aware of the emotional weight that this brand carries, Masiello's plan for Dansk is to restore its 'original formula'. In its early years, Dansk was an American company headquartered on the US East Coast, with its creative heart firmly rooted in Copenhagen. After Quistgaard retired, that balance shifted and creative control migrated to the US – a change Masiello believes weakened the brand, and one he is now determined to reverse. As part of Form Portfolios, Dansk's Copenhagen-centred creative model will be restored, relaunching beloved classics alongside archival and new designs. 'This is a designer who created 10,000 designs,' says Masiello. 'Four thousand of them were at Dansk. The brand played a huge role in changing how Americans live their lives – how they cook, how they entertain, how they dine.'

Unlike Form’s work on collections such as Eames Lighting – where it creates the collection and leaves partners like Cassina to tell the story – with Dansk the company is taking on a fully direct-to-consumer role, owning both the products and the storytelling. The relaunch includes building a dedicated team and direct-to-consumer channel at Dansk.com while re-establishing as many original manufacturing partnerships as possible and global retail partnerships – many have already reached out, Masiello confirms.

'That's exciting, and it's new for us,' he says of the direct-to-consumer dynamic. 'We are uniquely positioned to return to the original formula – we have a creative studio based here in Copenhagen, and relationships with 20 Scandinavian designers right now, and we hope a number of them will become part of Dansk as well.'

Beyond the archive

One such partnership is already underway to address 'a surprising hole' in the Dansk collection. Historically, the brand has focused on cookware and tabletop objects, but never ventured into textiles. Enter 86-year-old Danish textile designer Kim Naver, who will create a new collection of tabletop textiles for Dansk. A defining figure in Danish textile art, Naver has spent more than six decades creating everything from domestic fabrics and rugs to monumental architectural tapestries, combining structural clarity with a sensitivity to colour and material.

The collaboration was announced during 3 Days of Design 2026 with ‘Kim Naver: Dansk Moderne’, a retrospective staged at Form Portfolios’ Copenhagen studio. Bringing together textiles, drawings and archival material from across her career, the exhibition offered a reminder of Naver’s influence – and positioned her as the first contemporary designer to contribute to Dansk’s next chapter. 'The fact that she has agreed to design a collection for Dansk speaks to the power and heritage of the brand,' says Masiello.

Naver’s involvement offers an early indication of how Form intends to balance continuity with change. Her work is deeply rooted in the Danish craft tradition yet unmistakably her own – making the collaboration feel less like an exercise in nostalgia than a continuation of Dansk’s original purpose: bringing the best of Scandinavian design into everyday homes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The quilters of Gee’s Bend, a remote community in Alabama’s Black Belt region, have been practising their craft for over a century. Rooted initially in survival – quilts were stitched together from old work clothes, fabric scraps and flour sacks to keep warm in unheated homes – the practice has been continued by generations of Black women, who have used quilts as sites of ‘history, memory and kinship’, as Diana Budds wrote when she visited Gee’s Bend for Wallpaper* in 2025.

Indeed, Gee’s Bend, which is named after Joseph Gee, a plantation owner and enslaver who bought 6,000 acres of land in the area in 1816, has become a site of significant activism in the 20th century. With the quilting practice beginning during slavery – Dinah Miller, who was captured in West Africa as a teenager and brought to Alabama in 1860, is often considered the mother of the movement – Gee’s Bend was later purchased, in 1937, by the American government, allowing inhabitants to buy back land through low-interest loans. Martin Luther King visited during the Civil Rights Movement, in 1965, after ferry services were cut off to prevent inhabitants from voting, while in 1966, the Freedom Quilting Bee was established, a cooperative that allowed participants to pool profits following commissions from stores such as Bloomingdale’s.

Artist in Residence: Ralph Lauren x Gee’s Bend

‘Whatever we are thinking about or what's going on in our lives, we typically put it into the quilt, sometimes not even knowing it,’ Loretta Pettway Bennett, a quilter, told Budds. ‘I tell people, it's in my blood. It's a part of my DNA. And I see it in my granddaughter, even though she’s four years old. When she was three, I started her threading needles.’

Now, a new project from Ralph Lauren sees the Gee’s Bend quilters become the latest participants in the American fashion house’s ‘Artist in Residence’ programme. Uniting with Loretta Pettway Bennett and Claudia Pettway Charley of Gee’s Bend, the project centres on two original quilts created by the textile artists, reimagined across clothing and home accessories, including a jacket, a version of the Polo Play Bag, pillows and hand-painted ceramics. Each features the original quilts’ bold, improvisational motifs, which are imbued with symbolic meaning by the artists (Pettway Bennett’s recurring red triangles, for example, represent her sons). Befitting the art of quilting, the apparel – constructed largely from denim, a historic workwear fabric – utilises upcycled Ralph Lauren fabrics.

The ‘Artist in Residence’ programme is part of a wider initiative from Ralph Lauren titled ‘Design With Intent’, designed to ‘expand its portrayal of America and to evolve from inspiration to collaboration with communities that have historically inspired Ralph Lauren’s designs’, as the brand describes. Previous iterations include collaborations with Naiomi Glasses (Diné/Navajo), Zefren-M (Diné/Navajo), Jocy and Trae Little Sky (Oceti Sakowin) of TÓPA, spotlighting traditional indigenous craft.

Ralph Lauren x Gee's Bend collection is available globally on Ralph Lauren’s website and in selected stores. Five per cent of the purchase price will go to the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a Montgomery, Alabama-based initiative dedicated to social justice.

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

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

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

In Amagansett with Yabu Pushelberg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

W*: When do you usually visit?

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

W*: How did you put the interiors together?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

W*: Do you have a favourite view? 

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

GY: Especially with the doors slid completely open.

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

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

yabupushelberg.com

Since 1950, the Dallas Museum of Art has quietly been building a collection of contemporary jewellery. Many of the pieces, spanning various mediums, have rarely been seen, something that has now been addressed with a major exhibition presenting more than 350 wearable artworks.

‘Constellations: Contemporary Jewelry from the Dallas Museum of Art’, on show at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Virginia, is now displaying what amounts to one of the USA’s most significant jewellery collections. Encompassing hundreds of pieces from over 230 artists, from 41 countries, the collection speaks to the breadth of creativity among artists focusing exclusively on a wearable medium.

‘More than a survey of contemporary jewelry, “Constellations” celebrates artists’ ability to expand the boundaries of wearable art through innovation and creativity,’ says Mark A Castro, director of curatorial affairs at the Chrysler Museum.

Works here are occasionally playful, from crowns of gold that appear to be cardboard, to an embrace of unusual materials such as photographs, wire and plastic. There are brooches shaped like toast, rings of nylon and a composting collar, created from egg box cartons. The jewellery artwork, divided into four themes – Zones of the Body, Archetypes, Signals and Play – invites visitors to trace the history of jewellery as an eclectic form of artistic expression.

Adds Castro: ‘The exhibition invites audiences to embrace the full range of the medium’s potential – to engage serious issues while also fostering playfulness and delight.’

‘Constellations: Contemporary Jewelry from the Dallas Museum of Art’ is on view at the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, until 3 January 2027

chrysler.org

Ron Zuckerman has never once bought a painting to match a sofa. He has never hired a designer to tell him where a photograph should hang, and never acquired a piece because its value would appreciate. For 45 years, he simply stood in front of a photograph and if he felt some kind of a connection, he bought it. One at a time, on a fundraiser's salary.

The result is that his home – a flat in San Francisco's Castro district – feels more like an archive. Built in 1889, the flat's building announces itself with confident proportions, high ceilings, long corridors and a succession of small rooms that, when lined with art, highlight a seemingly vast amount of wall space. From the entry stairwell to the guest bedroom, from the kitchen to the den, just about every surface holds something that chronicles facets and moments of queer life across the 20th and early 21st centuries.

The collection ranges from the serious to the whimsical, encompassing everything from a 1950s physique card and icons painted by Zuckerman’s late partner Nick to a photogravure that turns out to be a sex ad and a plate with a man being given a wedgie (a work by Benjamin Fredrickson, a photographer known for shooting subject matter that is often considered taboo). The collection spans studios in Brooklyn and the Instagram era, Mapplethorpe and Mississippi, the AIDS epidemic, and whatever comes after that. It is not a survey; it is an assembled history, both personal and queer-specific, that announces itself from the first step.

‘The show starts at the door,' says Zuckerman. And he means it literally. As you enter, you encounter three photographs by Luke Smalley, known for capturing images of athletic young men, often with a 1920s prep-school aesthetic. This is followed by an introduction to photographer Danny Fitzgerald (who also worked under the moniker ‘Les Demi Dieux'), the artist most represented in Zuckerman's collection.

The first image he ever bought, he recounts, was by Marsha Burns, a Seattle photographer who caught an androgynous young man with his socks rolled to his ankles, the shadow falling in the most striking way. Zuckerman saw it in a local gallery in 1980, paid $200, and took it home. He fell in love with the image and had no plan for how and where he would display it. That instinct, and unbothered by the lack of a plan, has governed every purchase since.

Although the subjects of the art are invariably male, female artists can also be found at various waypoints across the space, seen, for example, in Lissa Rivera's Beautiful Boy series. The gaze in this collection is not monolithic. Further diving into the space, we come across Nan Goldin's photograph of her nephew, Simon on the Subway, acquired at a Gay Men's Health Crisis benefit for $500. It is worth considerably more now.

What followed, in the early years, are artefacts from the downtown New York post-Stonewall scene: those such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar and Stanley Stellar. Zuckerman had read about them before he could afford them and reading made him want to look, and looking made him want to own. In the years he has been collecting, his biggest regret was trading in a Mapplethorpe photograph of a man in an autoerotic act, which visitors found too explicit, for a print by Helen Levitt.

‘They'd be talking to me and they'd see it on the wall, and then they'd have this look of disgust on their face. I thought, maybe it's too much.' No disrespect to Levitt, though, whom he calls ‘a great street photographer'.

His first Peter Hujar, bought in 1986 from the Gracie Mansion Gallery during Hujar's first-ever solo exhibition, was paid off in instalments. He still has the typed invoices, with each payment recorded in ink. Last September, at a Fraenkel Gallery recreation of that same show, he reconnected with Gracie Mansion, who is now an art consultant, and showed her the invoice. To his surprise and delight, she pulled out her own copy. Her ledger also had the payments made out to Hujar directly, cheque numbers and all.

Then he discovered that, before Stonewall, there had been another world entirely, seen in the art of George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus and Jared French, physique photographers working out of Brooklyn and the Midwest. The prints are studies in a very specific masculine beauty. He began collecting those, too. The ‘collector gene', he calls it, without apology.

There are also the pieces that operate more as artefacts than decoration. Among the collection of portraits in the living room are two artworks that tell a story. Above the sofa hangs Icarian Angel, by the late San Francisco artist Daniel Goldstein. At first, it looks like an abstract photographic print, a spectral figure emerging from a tawny surface. As Zuckerman begins to explain, it takes a moment to absorb the context. The photograph features a leather bench cover from the Muscle System, the renowned gay gym on San Francisco's Market Street. The shot reveals the imprinted outlines of human figures left by the sweat of men who exercised there. A substantial proportion of them, Zuckerman estimates, possibly half, died during the AIDS epidemic. Goldstein called the series Reliquaries, which stems from the Latin word reliquiae, meaning ‘remains of a martyr'. Poignantly, the piece was a gift he gave himself the year after his partner died.

Across the room is a work by Kyle Meyer called Interwoven, a photograph of a gay man in Eswatini (where homosexuality is illegal) wearing a traditional woman's headdress. The photograph has been cut into strips and woven together with the actual headdress the subject wore during the portrait shoot. Meyer came to San Francisco for an art fair and visited Zuckerman's flat. Later, a specialist framer assembled it while on the phone with Meyer the entire time. The work has the effect of serving to conceal the wearer's identity while also revealing it at the same time. Both pieces work well in the space which, he says, is done ‘instinctively'. Both leave traces on materials and what the body inscribes, as well as what gets preserved when the body is gone or endangered.

Meanwhile, in the bedroom, there is a brief departure from the nearly endless array of male physique on display throughout the rest of the home – an enormous c.1740 map of Paris and its environs, which Zuckerman acquired from a former donor to the Quaker charity he fundraised for early in his career.

Zuckerman says he serves as a ‘yenta’, (Yiddish for ‘busy body') or connector, fostering a community by linking artists including JD Raenbeau, Bill Hayes and Stanley Stellar to galleries, most notably Clamp Art. His move from collecting black-and-white photography to contemporary painting was, in fact, inspired by his discovery of Raenbeau, a Long Island art teacher with a painterly approach, whose vibrant Jean-Honoré Fragonard-inflected canvases depict his husband in the garden with a raw, sexually charged explicitness that is somehow both tender and matter of fact. When the LA opening of one of Raenbeau's shows needed two more pieces to complete the exhibit at the last minute, Zuckerman flew over with the paintings in his carry-on luggage.

Today, he is a licensed psychotherapist, who, by his account, charges half the going rate because he would rather see ‘artists and dancers than tech workers who can afford the difference'. The two roles – of collector and therapist – are not as separate as they might seem. The artists he collects tend to become people he has lunch with and whose break-ups he talks them through. ‘They're my boys,' he says with the affection and tenderness of someone who has watched a community flourish, experience extended loss, bury its dead and persevere. The flat reflects all of it. The longing, the loss and the continuation of beauty. This is what it means to collect within a history you have also lived through.

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

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

Read more

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

Read more

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

Read more

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

Read more

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

Read more

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 (the project was first reworked in 2000 and subsequently again in 2014).

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 and its existing 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 dark grey by previous owners. 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 primary bedroom is panelled in ipe tropical hardwood (this was preserved, as it was introduced during an earlier refresh), and the same cladding has now been extended to the library. The whole 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.