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Art
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.
A Danger Sign Shaped Like a Pyramid: Andy Medina's Cultural Hijack
Mexican artist Andy Medina's solo show "MEX I CAN" at John Doe Gallery in Los Angeles takes apart traffic signs, the Supreme logo, and F1 racing symbols one by one, then reassembles them—asking who really gets to define "Mexican-ness."
HOKA Tor Ultra Lo Retro Isn't Rushing It—Four Colorways Rolling Out Over Five Months
HOKA is bringing back the Tor Ultra Lo, built with nubuck leather, GORE-TEX, and a Vibram Megagrip outsole. Four colorways are set to drop across a stretched-out timeline from August through December, making this a slow-burn retro release rather than an all-at-once drop.
Specimens of Desire in Room 223: Photographer Lin Zhipeng Takes Over Saint Laurent Rive Droite Beijing
Under the moniker "No. 223," photographer Lin Zhipeng opens an exhibition at Saint Laurent Rive Droite Beijing, personally curated by Anthony Vaccarello. Timed just before Qixi Festival, the show explores fleeting, tender moments of romance through a series of intimate images. Runs through September 11.
Artek x Paul Smith Team Up for a Third Time on the Stool 60 — With a Secret Hiding Underneath
Artek and Paul Smith return for their third Stool 60 collaboration, pairing three-tone dyed birch legs with a hidden malachite green seat bottom that only reveals itself when flipped over.
teamLab Turns an Osaka Sunflower Field Into a Living Ecosystem — the Title Is the Only Clue
teamLab's latest work, "Life is the Small Sun Flickering in the Dark," transforms an Osaka sunflower field into an interactive ecosystem — and the title itself is the most honest explanation the piece offers.
Jil Sander Wraps Thonet's Tubular Steel Frames in One Silent Slab of Leather
The JS. THONET collection expands with the S 411 armchair and S 1070 table, as Jil Sander uses unbroken leather panels and minimal seaming to make this 1932 Bauhaus tubular steel structure look like a floating sculpture.
Spike Lee Returns to Brooklyn — This Time to Throw a Film Fest for His Hometown
Spike Lee has teamed up with Clara Wu Tsai to launch "Playback," a brand-new film festival hitting BAM this November, bringing screenings and block parties to retell Brooklyn's story.
Sable Elyse Smith Turns Prison Waiting-Room Chairs Into Children's Toys, Dismantling Institutional Violence One Object at a Time
Sable Elyse Smith's solo show "Clockwork" lands at The FLAG Art Foundation in New York, using neon, video, and sculpture to examine how incarceration and surveillance seep into everyday language and objects.
Spend HK$300, Stamp Your Own Name: MUJI's Leather Luggage Tag Workshop
MUJI's "Travel Companion" campaign puts the spotlight on a leather luggage tag workshop offering 15-minute letterpress stamping for qualifying purchases, touring six stores across three weekends in August — plus limited-edition stickers with luggage purchases.
Mooncake Meets Butterfly Puff: Yue Collection Marks 4 Years in Taiwan with Exclusive Mid-Autumn Boxes
Hong Kong bakery brand Yue Collection is launching three Taiwan-exclusive Mid-Autumn gift boxes, mixing mooncakes with butterfly puffs and cookies for the first time. The 18-piece box is bigger yet cheaper than the 6-piece one, with early-bird 5% off pre-orders running until August 30.
Pippa Pitches Illustrators on a Spotify-Style AI Royalty Deal — Only 4 Artists Have Signed On
Generative AI startup Pippa wants to replace unauthorized data scraping with royalty sharing. Subscriptions run up to $99.99/month, but artists are paid just $0.005 per image — and the underlying model is still built on scraped web data.
Checksy Choi's Eotieum: A Hanji Fishing Boat Docks Inside a Seoul Cold War Bunker That Never Lets Anyone Land
Taking her grandmother's escape boat from North Korea as its origin, artist Checksy Choi builds a breathing vessel of welded steel and hand-torn hanji paper inside a Cold War anti-tank bunker in Seoul—letting separation and longing remain unresolved, rather than rushing to patch memory whole.