To Hide a Few Pillars, ROAR Accidentally Designed an Entire Showroom's Architectural Language
In the old Empire Mills warehouse in Mumbai, ROAR set out simply to conceal some structural columns, only to see a set of cubic volumes grow into a fractal system running through the whole space, framing the display of Jaipur Rugs' hand-woven carpets.
Seven Minutes of Moon Blocking Sun: Björk Threw a Songless Party in the Icelandic Wilds Outside Reykjavik
During Europe's August 12 solar eclipse, Björk threw the Echolalia party just outside Reykjavik. The music stopped for seven minutes, the crowd chanted "Free Palestine," and someone even proposed in the dark.
Ocean Photographer of the Year Finalists Announced: Conservation Category Deliberately Split Into "Hope" and "Impact"
Oceanographic magazine and Blancpain have unveiled the finalists for their annual Ocean Photographer of the Year awards, with the conservation category split into two distinct sub-categories: Hope and Impact. Winners will be revealed in September.
From Posters to Cardboard Chains: Nasher Museum Unpacks America's History of Dissent in Five Languages
Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art's new exhibition "Turn the volume up!" brings together photography, prints, and sculpture—from the Civil Rights Movement to anti-war posters—showing how artists have used different materials to make their voices heard. The show opens August 27.
He Tattooed an AK-47 on His Own Leg: Why Gun Tattoos Suddenly Got Cool
From plaid-print pistols to a self-inked AK-47, gun tattoos are sparking conflicted conversations across Instagram. Three tattoo artists' work and words break down this trend of aestheticizing firearms.
Aalto's Buildings Just Made World Heritage Status—So Why Might Finland Lock Them Up?
Unesco has named 13 Alvar Aalto buildings World Heritage sites, sparking national celebration in Finland. But questions over restoration budgets, public access and preservation rules are turning that honour into a heavy burden.
Using the Four Seasons as a Floor Plan: The Rooms at Zayed National Museum Change with the Weather
Agata Kurzela Studio led the interior design for Zayed National Museum, arranging meeting spaces according to the traditional Al Durour calendar and bringing in numerous Emirati designers to craft rugs, lighting, and furniture—letting the architecture itself narrate the story of time.
When Earth Stops Being Habitable: This NYC Group Show Swaps Escape Bags for Myth and Memory
603 Arts Foundation's inaugural exhibition "The Cataclysm of Binary Star Systems" runs through August 29 at Nunu Fine Art in New York, bringing together artists from Asia, Latin America and their diasporas to explore one question through astronomical mythology: what would humanity carry if forced to start over.
Copenhagen Fashion Week Turns 20: Drag in an Underground Reservoir, a Skate Park Rager
Copenhagen Fashion Week just turned 20, and across 34 shows, what stuck wasn't scale — it was contrast. One show staged drag as body politics inside a subterranean water reservoir; another threw open a skate park to random passersby to watch and jump in. Collina Strada also made its European debut here.
Frank Kunert Pulled the Tiny People Out of His Models — And That's When the Architecture Started Lying
German photographer Frank Kunert hand-builds his scenes at scales from 1:12 to 1:43, but early on he made a call to strip out the figurines — letting a staircase, or an apartment wedged under an overpass, tell the story on its own.
This Hokkaido House Was Designed as One Giant Window Into the Forest
Architect Yosuke Tomiya's Morimado House in Hokkaido — its name literally translating to "forest window" — uses split-level circulation and an arched opening to turn the backyard forest into scenery you can't help but run into every day.
How an Invisible House Won Over a Council: Inside Lumion Pro's Role in a London Firm's 3-Year Planning Battle
Agora Architects' fully subterranean home The Wilderness spent three years stuck in planning purgatory. What finally turned the tide was Lumion Pro's seasonal lighting and terrain simulation—a tool that ended up quietly reshaping the studio's entire design workflow.
Paola Pivi: When Everything Gets Recorded, Where Does Play Go?
From a secondhand vacuum cleaner in a Milan warehouse to a wooden clog thrown across a childhood apartment complex, Paola Pivi's essay for designboom asks a pointed question: in an age of total surveillance, how much freedom is left in play?
Old Clothes, Steel Cage, No Glue: A Fashion-Trained Architect "Welds" Building Material With a Hacked 3D Printer
Taylor Leung swapped a 3D printer's extruder for five heated metal needles, using no adhesive at all to melt down fast fashion's discarded polyester garments into a porous material—then turned it into chairs, walls, columns, and eventually a full-scale shed.
From Jerzy to Jorge: A Name Change, Two Homes of Modernism
Polish architect Jorge Zalszupin escaped the Holocaust and drifted through France before settling in Brazil, where he took a new name upon gaining citizenship and fused European rationalism with tropical woodgrain in his furniture designs—work now set to be exhibited in Milan in 2026.
A Park With No Grass: DeRoche Projects Is Growing an Edible Public Garden in Accra
DeRoche Projects has broken ground on the Backyard Community Garden in Accra, Ghana, swapping out lawns and imported paving for rammed earth, crushed palm kernel shells, and edible plantings—slated for completion in 2027.
Cracked Mirrors, Shifting Metal: Rikky Hype's Kyiv Flagship Turns Instability Into Retail Language
Designed by Temp Project, the Rikky Hype flagship in Kyiv builds a 160-square-meter space out of raw plaster, cork, and gasoline-toned metal — where mirrors are used to distort and fracture, not just reflect.
OODA's DUAS Towers: One Round, One Square, Same Stone Logic
OODA has designed a pair of 98-meter towers for Vlorë, the coastal city in southern Albania, drawing on local Tomorri white marble and traditional carpet patterns — one round, one square, both built from the same structural grammar.
Nine Voices from Recycled PLA: Ninefold Turns 3D-Printing Scrap into a Sound Field That Shifts as You Walk Through It
An architect, a percussionist-composer, and a materials researcher teamed up to 3D-print nine resonant forms from discarded lab PLA — each tuned to a different frequency, so the soundscape you hear shifts depending on where you stand.
A Studio Got a New Brake Press—So the Designer Folded an Aluminum Canoe With It
When Rhizome studio in France's Morvan region brought in a new brake press, designer Guillaume Bloget didn't wait around for a use case. He just started folding—and ended up with an aluminum canoe that needs no internal frame, its structure held entirely by the fold lines themselves.
The House With a Sinking Kitchen: How Arakawa and Gins Tried to Outbuild Death
In a house called Bioscleave House in East Hampton, the kitchen sinks into the ground and the floors ripple like untamed terrain. Its designers believed keeping the body in a state of constant alertness could slow aging — and maybe even push back against death itself.
Do Ho Suh Doesn't Sew Houses — He Stitches the Paths Your Hands Remember
From Seoul to London, he stitches light switches, radiators, and stair railings into translucent polyester fabric at exact scale. For Do Ho Suh, architectural memory was never about the size of a whole house — it's about the one motion your body repeats every single day.
Bhoon+ House in Bangkok: A Roof That Bends to Let a Shared Tree Grow Through
anonym studio builds a new home on a 376-square-meter former lawn in Bangkok, carving a notch into the roof to let a courtyard tree grow right through the structure—while keeping a visual connection to the original house next door.
Sealed for 50 Years, Now Reopened: Hiroshi Sugimoto Reconnects the Lost Underground Passage at the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden
After a four-year, $68 million renovation, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. reopens on October 31. This time, Hiroshi Sugimoto didn't just handle the design—he reopened an underground passage that had been sealed for half a century.