Japanese architect Keiji Ashizawa has created the interior for a skincare clinic in Tokyo, using textiles and custom-made furniture to make it feel more residential than medical.

The Aloop Clinic & Lab, which provides "skin cure and care", is located in the city's upscale Ginza area and run by Japanese beauty company POLA. Ashizawa wanted to give it an interior that would feel peaceful, while also representing the brand.

"As a clinic that uses medical technology to deal with beauty, we thought that the space should have sincerity, calmness, and beauty in order to create a comfortable time for customers to feel at ease," Ashizawa told Dezeen.

"In addition, considering that this is a completely new business for the POLA beauty brand, we felt that it was necessary to create a space that would enhance the brand."

To do so, Ashizawa looked at the design of the 210-square-metre clinic like he would if he were designing a residential space, giving it a calm, minimalist interior.

"Although it is a clinic, I considered the space to be similar to a hotel or a living space," he said. "Therefore, I used materials that I use in designing living spaces and hotels."

"The walls are plaster and the floor is a wool rug from Hotta Carpet," he added. "The sofa and furniture at the characteristic entrance are made of Kvadrat wool textile to create a pleasant texture."

The architect used a clean, simple colour palette throughout the space, with white-painted walls contrasting against wooden panelling and wooden doors.

"Wood was used for doors, furniture and details because we wanted to create a residential calm rather than a clinic," Ashizawa said. "We felt that a bright and healthy atmosphere was necessary."

"The extensive use of wood was to create a residential atmosphere, and we wanted the space to be as far away from a typical clinic as possible," he added.

His studio worked together with wooden furniture brand Karimoku to design the custom-made sofas for the space, which welcome customers as they enter the clinic.

"Of particular importance to this project were the custom sofas," Ashizawa said.

"We asked Karimoku, with whom we communicate on a daily basis for furniture development and wood projects, to work with us on the development of the furniture."

He compared his collaboration with the brand to that of mid-century modern Finnish architect Alvar Aalto and furniture brand Artek.

"For me, Karimoku has become an indispensable partner in thinking about space, just as Aalto is for Artek," he explained.

By creating the sofas with rounded edges, Ashizawa aimed for them to "gently envelop" customers after their treatments.

"The mere fact that something looks hard or painful makes the body tense, so we thought it would be desirable to eliminate such things," he said.

"However, in order to maintain a comfortable sense of tension in the room, delicate details of metal and wood were used to achieve a balance."

Small sculptures were dotted throughout the Aloop clinic, including in the treatment rooms.

Ashizawa has previously designed an interior with a similar colour palette for the Hiroo Residence in Tokyo, and also used plenty of wood for his and Norm Architects minimalist Trunk Hotel design.

The photography is by Tomooki Kengaku.

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British practice Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios has been appointed to lead the architectural design for the redevelopment of Liverpool's International Slavery Museum and Maritime Museum.

The redevelopment is a part of the larger Waterfront Transformation Project and was originally supposed to be led by British studio Adjaye Associates.

However, the studio was dropped from the project in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against its founder David Adjaye.

The architectural design of the £58 million redevelopment will now be led by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (FCBS).

It will centre on the Dr Martin Luther King Jr building, which will become the new entrance to the International Slavery Museum, and the Hartley Pavilion.

This will be redesigned to have better circulation and "enhanced" commercial facilities, the museum said.

"FCBS are excited and humbled by the invitation to join the NML team and to lead the architectural transformation of these museums," FCBS partner Kossy Nnachetta, who will lead the redevelopment, said.

"We understand that there is huge responsibility to help create a platform to tell this story, long whispered, yet still awaiting the space to fully express itself; and all the potent, deep-seated emotions it can elicit," she added.

"We hope to help create something bold and yet beautiful. The result of 'many hands' working together with the museums and communities in Liverpool."

The exhibition design for the museums will continue to be led by Ralph Appelbaum Associates, which was appointed in 2022 at the same time as Adjaye Associates.

The International Slavery Museum, which is dedicated to the history of enslaved people, the transatlantic slave trade and contemporary slavery, is currently contained within the Maritime Museum but will be expanded into the Dr Martin Luther King Jr building.

Turning this into the new entrance will create "not only improved visitor orientation and an inspiring welcome, but also a stronger sense of purpose and identity for the museum," the museums said.

FCBS' redevelopment will be led by Nnachetta, supported by Geoff Rich and Peter Clegg. The firm completed the original masterplan for National Museums Liverpool, the public body responsible for the museums, in 2019.

"To be bringing two such visionary designers [FCBS and Ralph Appelbaum Associates] with international reputations to the project represents the bold ambition and thinking behind it," National Museums director Laura Pye said.

"We are delighted they're keen to embrace this as a co-production project which we feel will create something truly ground-breaking," she added.

“There has never been a more important time to address the legacies of the transatlantic slavery and the redevelopment of the International Slavery Museum symbolises our, and our region's, commitment to confronting the significant role the city played in British imperialism."

The museum redevelopment was one of a number of projects that Adjaye Associates was dropped or stepped down from following accusations of sexual assault by Adjaye.

"National Museums Liverpool has taken the decision to terminate the contract with Adjaye Associates (AA)," a spokesperson for the museum told Dezeen at the time.

"We would like to thank the AA team who have worked hard to bring the International Slavery Museum and Maritime Museum transformation project to a developed design stage," it added.

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The use of robots and AI is a "new form of colonialism" that will lead to a resurgence of Arts and Crafts, according to trend forecaster Li Edelkoort.

Edelkoort has been a trend forecaster since she was 21 and says the discipline has "informed every single step of my life".

During an on-stage interview with Dezeen deputy editor Cajsa Carlson at Downtown Design during Dubai Design Week, Edelkoort explained that she is currently thinking about the return of Arts and Crafts, the 19th-century movement mostly associated with British designer William Morris.

"I'm craving fantasy – I don't know where it comes from, but it's there," she said. "I'm craving almost childish initiatives and design, I'm craving colour, I'm craving painting, motif and ornamental finishes."

"It's been building up for a few years," she added. "I really believe in the return of Arts and Crafts, as it has been described by William Morris. And I think it might also be our future."

Edelkoort predicts society will soon have "universal allowance of money"

Edelkoort anticipates that in the next few years, we will look more to our inner child – a trend she claims she's already seen evidence of.

"As a kid, you always want to use cardboard to make a new building, or a box becomes your house," she said. "And sure enough, Max Lamb recently made an exhibition of cardboard furniture."

"That's how trends work – he's maybe not going back to childhood, but I use this way of thinking and then we come together on a similar idea."

The Dutch trend forecaster was also influenced by Morris' book News from Nowhere, which envisions a future society where money is allocated in a different way to a capitalist system.

"There's no stealing, there's no judge, there's no prison, there's no marriage so there is no divorce – there's money, but there's not a monetary system," she said.

Edelkoort believes this could become a reality in just a decade.

"It's more like the universal allowance of money, which will come to us very soon, I think in 10 years from now," she said. "That will allow us to develop our own world, because the work will be done by artificial intelligence."

AI and robots will lead to the "age of the amateur"

The rise of AI and robots will also mean we need to rethink the reason for our existence since it will no longer be tied to work, she says.

"You see that people with money are using AI and robots like their new slaves, it's a new form of colonialism," she said. "And we have to share the money that is made by the bots."

"We will have to give [people] a reason for being here," she added. "[Otherwise], a baby will be born without a future and no reason to be born, because there's no way there's going to be work – if we define the future as work, which we do."

But she believes that if a future in which robots and AI do all the work comes to pass, creativity can help us find reasons to live.

"I think we will create an Arts and Crafts world next to this billionaire world and they will sort of coexist," she said. "I call it the 'age of the amateur'".

"What is new is what's coming from the Global South"

As well as looking at long-term societal changes, Edelkoort's work focuses on more contemporary trends. Her latest book, Proud South, looks at fashion, photography and art from the Global South.

In Dubai, which she described as "the platform of the Global South", the trend forecaster explained why we should be looking to designs from the southern parts of the planet.

"In the North, it's very boring because people keep designing the same thing," she said. "They already have a cupboard full of the same thing. Sometimes you buy something and come home and say, oh shit, I already have that – you forgot."

"What is new is the South, what is coming from the Global South. That's why I made a book called Proud South, which is celebrating what is happening in the regions in the southern part of the planet."

Rather than being about specific designers and design movements, her focus is on broader influences.

"It's really more of a vision, I would say, than individual brands or people," she explained. "It's to do things from the heart, from the origin, from the tribe, sometimes from the indigenous culture, from whatever inference you can pick up in the South, and how do you translate that into, in this case, fashion and photography."

A second book in the series will look at design and craft, and Edelkoort hopes the books will help create "happiness" for people in other regions of the world.

"There are a lot of health problems, mental health problems, with young people especially," she said.

"I think the South is giving us solutions as a form of intrinsic happiness, which is translated in colour, in motif and in the destination of fashion and photography. And it has a power which we have lost."

"There is this possibility for a change"

As well as Proud South, Edelkoort is working on a trend book about Paris, a city that she says "is fascinating because it hasn't changed and everything else changed."

"In Paris, people don't like to change – French people hate change, they love tradition," she said.

She is also focusing on the World Hope Forum, which she founded together with Philip Fimmano with Dezeen as a media partner to be a "holistic global platform for the exchange and expansion of knowledge, innovation".

The idea came to her after doing a talk with Dezeen during the coronavirus pandemic.

"I did this talk with Dezeen, and it was seen by more than a million people," she said. "So I was like 'wow, what is happening now – if there is this impact of what I think and say, maybe I can reach people to create a better world.'"

The World Hope Forum aims to reach people with good news, rather than the negative news stories that Edelkoort feels we're constantly being fed. Its YouTube channel showcases hopeful films under different themes.

"We have bundled hopeful scenarios: making money, making people happy, being better for the planet, being better for the future," Edelkoort explained.

"When you see them adding up, it really becomes notable, and you can feel in your soul that there is this possibility for change."

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Fashion retailer Aro Archive's pastel-hued east London store was designed by founder Ariana Waiata Sheehan to evoke "a sense of otherworldliness".

The store, located in Shoreditch, replaces the brand's previous, more industrial store on nearby Broadway Market and was intended to have a frivolous feel.

The interior has "a sense of otherworldliness, escapism and fun," Waiata Sheehan explains, comparing it to "a mixture between a mushroom trip and going to visit someone's rich aunty who runs a gallery".

"We've always had very neutral industrial spaces," she told Dezeen. |But you can get an industrial Zara these days, so time to switch it up and go full personality, which has been scary but so worth it."

Located inside a five-storey former Victorian warehouse, Aro Archive, which sells pre-owned clothing by avant-garde designers, was organised so that each floor has a different colour.

Monochrome pastel pink, blue and white hues decorate the different levels, which also feature a wide range of reclaimed and recycled materials, furniture and artworks.

"The pink floor is supposed to feel very warm, womb-like and enclosed," Waiata Sheehan said. "The blue floor is more light and otherworldly. And the two white floors are very ethereal and calm."

White duvet covers by fashion house Maison Martin Margiela were used to create curtains for the changing rooms, while interior pillars are made from reclaimed 1990s metal lamp posts that the designer sourced from a scrapyard in Preston.

"The building and surrounding area feel very London, so we did want to bring in a sense of that for example with the lamp posts, metal works and details, bright neon lights and so forth," Waiata Sheehan said.

She sourced a number of unusual furnishings for the Aro Archive store, including an industrial control station from a paper-manufacturing plant that is now used as a till.

"The industrial paper control station I've been watching on eBay for nearly 4 years, waiting for a time I had the space to buy it," Waiata Sheehan explained. "I wanted something different to the normal till, they're all so boring and square."

The store also has another large metal till and metal drawers that originally came from a 1980s Mary Quant store and were rescued from a squat in Hackney Wick.

Waiata Sheehan also sourced several smaller pieces for the boutique, where customers can purchase everything down to the artwork, furniture and accessories.

"I do all the buying so everything is here because I love it in some way," she explained. "But in terms of favourite pieces in store right now?"

"For fashion, it's the Rick Owens orange shearling gimp mask gilet, for objects the Shirin Guild ceramic incense holders and for furniture the wobbly glass table with magazine racks."

Waiata Sheehan hopes the Aro Archive boutique will feel like a home away from home and help to create a community feel in the area.

"I think Shoreditch is lacking a sense of community and I wanted to work that into the space," she said. "The feeling of a chaotic family home and a feeling of togetherness."

Other London stores with notable interior design recently covered on Dezeen include Swedish fashion brand Toteme's newly-opened Mayfair store and a Coach pop-up store at Selfridges that had fixtures made from recyclable materials.

The photography is by John Munro.

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Architecture studio Hassell has designed the conceptual Lunar Habitat Master Plan, a scalable system of inflatable pods that could be partly constructed from moon materials and 3D-printed on site.

Designed for the European Space Agency's Discovery program, the settlement would be designed to house 144 people and comprise residential spaces as well as sports arenas, restaurants and large greenhouses.

Hassell described the Lunar Habitat Master Plan as "the next step in the creation of the first permanent human settlement on the moon".

"Access to space is getting cheaper every year, so over the next two decades space travel will evolve hugely," Hassell's global head of design Xavier de Kestelier said.

"The moon is an extremely hostile place to live. With no atmosphere, humans need novel infrastructure to access water and oxygen whilst being subjected to high degrees of radiation," he added.

"We need to start planning for how larger communities can not just survive, but also thrive and live on the moon."

Hassell's moon base would be built from modular components that would include inflatable pods covered in 3D-printed lunar soil to shield their inhabitants from lethal levels of radiation.

"Shipping anything to the moon will always be costly, so we therefore decided to create the habitats out of inflatable modules which would be light and compact," De Kestelier said.

"Inflatable habitats on the moon might sound like science fiction, but these types of inflatable membranes are already being tested on the International Space Station."

It would be constructed using hexagon-shaped interlocking building blocks, a design that was informed by tetrapods, which are used in wave-dissipating structures to enforce seawalls and prevent erosion.

Satellite panels would be brought from Earth and installed at even intervals.

Hassell added that the fact that the moon base masterplan is scalable means it's also more sustainable.

"Hassell's scalable habitat system considers innovative interlocking mechanisms that allow for greater flexibility when building, so that the embodied energy contained in the hexapods can be reconfigured to reflect the size of future settlements – providing a flexible and sustainable solution," the studio said.

The lunar base was designed to be built near the edge of the Shackleton Crater at the South Lunar Pole, as the crater has the potential to hold frozen water.

The Lunar Habitat Master Plan could be used by national agencies such as NASA, ESA and Jaxa, as well as by commercial space companies, and was unveiled on stage today at the ESA's Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands.

It follows another concept for inflatable moon buildings, the Moon Village by architect studio SOM. Danish studio BIG has also planned to create 3D-printed moon buildings for its Project Olympus with 3D-printed building company ICON.

Images are courtesy of Imigo unless otherwise stated.

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Activist collective BP or not BP? has called on architects not to work on the British Museum's recently announced redevelopment masterplan as it will be funded by oil company BP.

In an Instagram post on Friday, the organisation, which seeks to end oil sponsorship of culture, said: "Architects: we invite you to pledge not to work with the British Museum until their new partnership with BP is dropped."

"The British Museum recently accepted the biggest single corporate donation to the arts in the UK," it added.

"£50 million from oil giant BP, over the next ten years to 'help deliver the museum's redevelopment masterplan'. This donation, amidst an escalating climate crisis, has also been described as 'one of the biggest, most brazen greenwashing sponsorship deals the sector has ever seen.'"

 

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BP or not BP? urged architects to not apply for the job in an Instagram post

In December, the British Museum announced plans for an architectural competition to redevelop around 7,500 square metres of gallery space at its central London location, with applications set to open in spring.

This would be supported by the decade-long partnership with BP.

"A new multi-year partnership with BP will support the future transformation of the museum by contributing £50 million over 10 years," the museum said.

"The partnership will also help deliver on plans to maintain public access for generations to come. The museum is very grateful for BP's support at this early stage of the masterplan."

"Architects can't in good faith work with The British Museum"

However, BP or not BP?, said that working on the redevelopment would go against guidance from climate network Architects Declare on how to approach projects.

"Guidance from @architectsdeclare_uk encourages firms to approach projects by evaluating their contributions to mitigating climate breakdown," it stated.

"This redevelopment will do the opposite: allowing BP to continue its extraction and harm Global South communities across the world who face the worst impacts of the climate crisis."

"Architects can't in good faith work with The British Museum until this deal is dropped. Join us and tell the museum to #dropBP!" the organisation added.

Architects Declare also stated that it believed it would be consistent with its declaration for architects to turn down the job.

"UK Architects Declare is committed to moving the design of our built environment towards fully regenerative solutions to the planetary emergency," the organisation told Dezeen.

"As such, the AD Steering Group do believe it would be consistent with our Declaration's point 5 for architects to turn down this opportunity because of BP's sponsorship: 'Evaluate all new projects against the aspiration to contribute positively to mitigating climate breakdown, and encourage our clients to adopt this approach'."

"A number of companies have publicly declared they will not work on fossil fuel infrastructure and most of the big cultural institutions have now broken links with fossil fuel sponsorship," it added.

"It is particularly important that when some organisations show such leadership, they are supported by the broader industry."

British Museum "squarely on the wrong side of history"

BP or not BP? told Dezeen that it believes there are other sponsorship alternatives for the British Museum and that letting BP use its well-known London building for events "continues a neocolonial legacy of extractivism".

"Just as there are alternatives to fossil fuels, there are also alternatives to taking dirty sponsorship money from fossil fuel producers like BP," BP or not BP? member Francesca Willow said.

"The British Museum's decision to keep backing one of the architects of the climate crisis – for a further 10 years – has put the museum squarely on the wrong side of history," she continued.

"For years, BP has used the iconic museum building as the backdrop for lobbying politicians and burnishing its brand, continuing a neocolonial legacy of extractivism and oppression," she added. "Architects should refuse to play any part in BP's planet-wrecking agenda."

Museum disappointed by call for boycott

In response, the museum said that the campaign was "disappointing" as the redevelopment was aimed at creating a net-zero estate.

"The British Museum is in urgent need of renovation and the masterplan will be one of the most significant cultural redevelopments ever undertaken and private funding is essential," a spokesperson for the British Museum told Dezeen.

"It's disappointing campaign groups are calling for a boycott when we've said we will be looking at design proposals with a particular focus on sustainable and environmental expertise, working with us responsibly to create a net-zero estate," it added.

"We look forward to seeing submissions that aim to restore the highly significant and celebrated listed buildings on the site."

The architectural competition would look to introduce "contemporary architecture and innovative gallery displays" to the museum's "Western Range", which contains collections from Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.

Architects Declare has previously condemned architecture studios for refusing to stop designing airports.

The issue of sustainability in architecture was also highlighted by the climate action group Architects Climate Action Network in 2022, when it claimed that the Royal British Institute for Architects' Stirling Prize shortlist "promotes architecture that pollutes the planet".

The image is by Shutterstock.

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This week on Dezeen, we published photographs showing a skyscraper by Zaha Hadid Architects that is close to being completed on the world's most expensive site in Hong Kong.

Located in Hong Kong's Central Business District, The Henderson office building occupies what was reportedly the world's most expensive plot when it was purchased in 2017.

Photographs taken by Dezeen's design editor Jennifer Hahn show most of its curved glass facade panels are now in place.

We also took a look at 10 other skyscrapers by Zaha Hadid Architects that are currently in the works, including a twisted skyscraper in Malta and a shard-shaped crystalline skyscraper in Saudi Arabia.

In other skyscraper news, California architecture studio AO has put forward plans for a skyscraper in Oklahoma City that would be 533-metres high, making it the second-tallest in the US. The skyscraper, which has not yet been approved, would be part of a development called the Boardwalk at Bricktown.

A 43-storey skyscraper in Chicago was also unveiled this week. Designed by US firm Morris Adjmi Architects, The Row skyscraper has a "deeply expressive" facade that takes cues from the city's industrial past and the work of architect Mies van der Rohe.

Saudi Arabian mega-project Neom unveiled its latest design, Aquellum, an "upside-down skyscraper" that will be located inside a mountain range by the Gulf of Aquaba.

The building will be centred around a 100-metre-tall void above an "underwater open square" and will be designed by architecture studios LAVA and Name Architecture. It will contain hotel and retail spaces, as well as residential apartments and "innovative hubs".

In design news this week, electronics brand LG unveiled what it says is "the world's first wireless transparent OLED TV". Showcased at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the TV could be used as a subtle room divider while switched off.

Also on show at CES were industrial designer Marc Newson's smart artificial intelligence (AI) binoculars, designed for Swarovski Optik. The binoculars use AI to identify bird and animal species, overlaying species information on the image in front of them.

Eco-friendly design had a moment, with shoe brand Vivobarefoot and material science company Balena unveiling a prototype trainer that is 3D-printed from compostable materials. The "scan-to-print-to-soil" trainer was designed to be composted in an industrial facility.

Materials companies Circular Matters and StoneCycling also worked with biomaterials, using corn cobs to make a biodegradable interior cladding. CornWall was designed as a more sustainable alternative to plastic laminate or ceramic interior wall tiles.

Car Design News editor James McLachlan explored who entrepreneur Elon Musk's bulletproof Cybertruck is meant to appeal to in an opinion piece this week.

The Cybertruck encapsulates "a dystopian future vision where the United States is sliding into lawlessness," McLachlan says, though he also argues that an "understanding of the importance of design and manufacturing working together is Musk's genius."

Popular projects this week included a Menorcan holiday home encased in fluted concrete, a Washington DC residence with a gabled annexe and a Chilean holiday home with a rotated terrace.

Our latest lookbooks featured ten homes with net floors and ten interiors with mid-century modern furniture.

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Dezeen's features editor Nat Barker has been shortlisted for excellence in creative journalism at the 2024 Créateurs Design Awards, which will also see architect Frida Escobedo and designer Gaetano Pesce presented with awards.

Barker was shortlisted for the annual award alongside writers from Wallpaper, Galerie Magazine and The Grand Tourist for his feature: Will architects really lose their jobs to AI?

The piece, which explores whether artificial intelligence technology can truly replace architects, created a passionate debate in Dezeen's comments section.

Barker spoke to different architects and designers for the story to gather a wide range of opinions on the impact AI could have on design and architecture studios.

The Créateurs Design Awards (CDA) were founded in 2019 to "highlight extraordinary work in architecture, interior design, product design, photography, journalism and curation".

"Our mission is to recognize and uphold excellence in the design industry, to preserve design integrity and inspire future generations," CDA stated.

Last year, Dezeen's deputy editor Cajsa Carlson was nominated for the excellence in creative journalism award.

This year will also see Mexican architect Escobedo awarded the Prix Charlotte Perriand, which celebrates trailblazers in the field of architecture and design.

Escobedo, who started her eponymous studio in 2006, was named this year's winner in recognition of her "daring concepts" and for "ushering in a new era of architecture", said CDA.

"To find myself acknowledged by this remarkable jury is an honour that resonates deeply within me," said Escobedo. "It serves as a testament to the enduring legacy of Charlotte Perriand, a legacy I am humbled and overjoyed to perpetuate."

Designer and architect Pesce will be given the Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award at the event, which will take place in Paris, France, on January 20th.

A selection of his work from the 1960s and onwards was recently shown in a Los Angeles solo show. And at Milan design week last year, Pesce unveiled his first-ever handbag, designed for fashion brand Bottega Veneta.

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Stockholm studio Halleroed has designed fashion brand Toteme's flagship store in London, which features a sculpture by artist Carl Milles and a steel sofa by designer Marc Newson.

Halleroed designed the store, located on Mount Street in the upmarket Mayfair area, together with Toteme founders Elin Kling and Karl Lindman. The duo wanted its third flagship to feature nods to the brand's heritage.

"We like the idea of keeping certain elements that we find in our Swedish heritage," Lindman told Dezeen at the store's launch event.

"It can be by using certain vintage pieces, or like in [the brand's Mercer Street store] in New York, we had a collaboration with Svenskt Tenn," he added. "It's about lifting this notion of Scandinavian design or Swedish design."

Halleroed drew on the space itself when designing the interior, focussing on how the light falls.

"We were inspired by the space itself with beautiful original windows letting the daylight in," Halleored co-founder Ruxandra Halleroed told Dezeen.

"The upper part of the windows was partly hidden, which was a shame, so we redesigned the ceiling with a half vault towards the front to show the full height of the windows."

The design also references the work of Italian architect Carlo Scarpa as well as the Swedish Grace movement.

"We were also inspired by the Swedish Grace period – around 1920-30s – that has an elegant and pure design, something we think works well for Toteme as a brand," Halleroed co-founder Christian Halleroed told Dezeen.

"Also the work of Carlo Scarpa we find interesting, more as a mindset on how to work with details and textures to create a subtle elegance and luxury."

Kling and Lindman wanted to keep the feel of "very posh" Mount Street where the store is located, while also underlining the space's minimalist feel.

To do so, a lot of effort was put into the colour palette and different textured materials used for the flagship store.

"We worked with an off-white palette in different tones and different textures," Ruxandra Halleroed said.

"The textures are as important as colour and materials. For walls, we have a glossy, off-white stucco, ceiling in same colour but matte. The floor is in a beige, honed limestone with a so-called Opus pattern."

In the middle of the Toteme shop, Halleroed created a stone-clad cube that holds shelves, vitrines and niches filled with artworks.

"The volume in the middle is clad with the same limestone, but in three different textures: honed, bush hammered and spiked texture, combined with oxidised dark brass," Christian Halleroed said.

The store also features a square black volume in the back made from high-gloss stucco and dark brass.

To contrast the minimalist interior, the store is decorated with multiple artworks, including a sculpture by Milles and Newson's intricately woven steel Random Pak Twin sofa, which Lindman found online.

"He's a slave to auction houses," Kling told Dezeen.

"So he found it and sent it to me and I loved it, and we also have a Marc Newsom piece in every store," she added. "So we thought, 'this one's for the Mount Street store'. At that time we only had the signed contract, nothing else."

The two founders and Halleroed decided on the gypsum Milles sculpture for the Toteme store together, with Halleroed designing a custom niche to place it in that is made from black high-gloss stucco to contrast the pale artwork.

Halleroed also added vintage Swedish Grace furniture to the store, including armchairs and a coffee table by furniture designer Otto Schulz, a daybed and a mirror in pewter made for the Stockholm Exhibition 1930.

The studio has designed a number of other store interiors, including a Paris boutique for French brand L/Uniform and an Acne Studios store in Chengdu that aimed to combine the futuristic and primitive.

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Mega-project Neom has unveiled Aquellum, which was designed by architecture studios LAVA and Name Architecture inside a mountain and will be centred around an "underwater open square".

Described by LAVA founder Alexander Rieck as an "ultra-luxury upside-down skyscraper," the building will contain hotel and retail spaces as well as residential apartments and "innovative hubs". It will be located along the Gulf of Aqaba coastline in Saudi Arabia.

It will feature a floating marina that will be located in the sea next to the mountain range and will be the first point of access for visitors.

To enter Aquellum itself, visitors will go on a "specially designed vessel" that will travel on a hidden underground canal. This will open up into what the studios describe as an "underwater open square".

"Aquelleum is an ultra-luxury upside-down skyscraper," Rieck said. "The facade's facing inwards instead of facing outwards."

"Things are inside-out and upside-down," he continued. "Normally architecture is focused to the outside."

The building will be centred around a 100-metre-tall central void that rises from the underwater square and is surrounded by a courtyard with walkable paths.

Visuals show a large, open concrete building with geometrically shaped balconies protruding from the walls, as well as deep cutouts that will house terraces and patios, ponds and indoor waterfalls.

"It becomes this sort of magic cube around which everything plays out," Name Architecture founder Nathalie Rozencwajg said.

The only exterior part of the building, the roof, will contain a space described as a cloud garden. Renders show planted pathways arranged above the void, with the water below visible through gaps in the ground.

The different levels of the skyscraper will be connected by the boulevard, a path that winds its way through the courtyard.

Aquellum will also feature a space named The Generator, which will be dedicated to research labs.

"It's an experiential space that will change you forever," Rozencwajg said. "It's a metaverse that you can physically experience."

"You have residences, you have hotels, cinemas, museums and The Generator, which is this research lab that will attract creators to come and interact and new ideas to emerge," she continued.

Aquellum is the latest Neom project to be unveiled in the Gulf of Aqaba and follows on from luxury hotel trio Leyja, hexagonal-pillar hotel Siranna, jagged skyscrapers Epicon, the Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura-designed Utamo, and coastal yacthing town Norlana.

The projects are the latest to be announced as part of Neom, which is one of the world's largest and most controversial developments and includes plans for a 170-kilometre-long city called The Line.

It has been criticised on human rights grounds, including by human rights organisation ALQST which reported that three men were sentenced to death after being "forcibly evicted" from the Neom site.

Last year experts from the UN Human Rights Council expressed "alarm" over the imminent executions. Saudi Arabia responded to the UN by denying abuses had taken place.

The visuals and video are courtesy of Neom.

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Pieces by designers Charles and Ray Eames and Isamu Noguchi are on show in this lookbook, which features homes with eye-catching mid-century modern furniture.

Mid-century furniture, which often has simple lines and a sculptural feel, adds a modernist touch to these homes, which range from period properties to newly built and renovated houses.

Among the interiors showcased in this lookbook are iconic architect Le Corbusier's own home and a residence in London's upmarket Mayfair area that has been filled with mid-century modern and art deco details.

This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen's archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring perforated brick-walls, budget home interiors and immersive saunas in peaceful settings.

Zero House, UK, by Ben Garrett and Rae Morris

Owners Ben Garrett and Rae Morris updated Zero House, which was informed by Californian Case Study Houses, themselves in a way that would honour its mid-century roots.

The living room features a striking floor-to-ceiling fireplace clad in tiles, as well as a number of furniture pieces in warm colours. Among them is a classic Eames office chair in a dark-brown leather colour that matches the wooden panelling that decorates the room.

Find out more about Zero House ›

Hudson Woods home, US, by Magdalena Keck

Located in upstate New York, this holiday home has an interior that fuses Danish and Japanese design. A dinner table and chairs by designer Finn Juhl are among the Danish pieces used in the house, where they look both functional and elegant.

A simple lamp with a gold-coloured shade above the table adds a decorative touch and matches the brass fastenings at the backs of the chairs.

Find out more about the Hudson Woods home ›

Radikal Klassisk, Spain, by Puntofilipino 

The interior of this Spanish apartment in a former bank building has a moody, interesting colour palette and features richly textured materials including terrazzo, clay-rendered walls and marble tiles.

In contrast, the furniture is streamlined and unfussy, including a sculptural lounge chair by Danish designer Hans J Wegner in the living room.

Find out more about the Radikal Klassisk ›

City Beach House, Australia, by Design Theory

American artist and designer Noguchi's iconic coffee table, made from a heavy glass tabletop that rests on two undulating wooden legs, has pride of place in the living room of City Beach House.

The interior, created by Australian studio Design Theory, responds to the design and natural material palette of the house itself, which is from the 1960s.

Find out more about City Beach House ›

Hallen, Sweden, by Åsa Hjort Architects

This newly built home in the southern Swedish region of Österlen has a blocky geometric design and large windows that provide views out across the Baltic Sea.

An Eames lounge chair adds a comfortable resting space in one of the rooms, where its dark hues contrast against sheer white curtains and pale wood flooring.

Find out more about Hallen ›

Moore House, US, by Woods + Dangaran

A pair of vintage globe-shaped pendants by Dutch designer Frank Ligtelijn light up the bathroom in this 1960s California home designed by architect Craig Ellwood.

The bathroom also features a dark Emperador marble countertop and a wall clad in Japanese porcelain tiles.

Find out more about Moore House ›

Mayfair residence, UK, by Child Studio

The "Pernilla" lounge chair by Swedish designer Bruno Mathsson is among the many mid-century modern furniture pieces on show in this London apartment.

Local practice Child Studio told Dezeen that the spacious lounge that houses the chair was informed by the grand salon in fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent's Paris home.

Find out more about the Mayfair residence ›

Studio apartment, France, by Le Corbusier

Le Corbusier's apartment in his Immeuble Molitor apartment building in Paris, where he lived for more than three decades, reopened to the public in 2018.

Visitors to the modernist flat can admire mid-century modern furniture pieces including a black leather edition of the designer's signature LC2 lounge chair, which sits next to a cowhide rug at the entrance of the apartment.

Find out more about Le Corbusier's apartment ›

This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen's archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring perforated brick-walls, budget home interiors and immersive saunas in peaceful settings.

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Interior design in 2024 will have a focus on individualism and see a backlash to the rise in AI design while colours will be informed by global warming, interior designers across the globe told Dezeen.

While the trend for locally sourced materials and sustainable biomaterials looks set to become more pronounced, designers also believe that interiors will move away from the earthy hues and soft shapes seen during the pandemic years.

However, the maximalist trend predicted by many to take off in 2023 appears to have given way to a more individualist take on interiors, with a focus on simplicity recalling the designs of US fashion pioneer Halston.

"I'm seeing a growing interest in post-industrial aesthetic and quiet refinement," said Becky Carter, founder of the eponymous US studio.

"Maximalism now seems out of touch," she added. "Even the womb-like softness of the 1970s inspiration we've seen so much of is starting to feel heavy and overdone."

"There's a refreshing air to Halston-esque modernity: simple, unfussy materials, elegantly arranged, detailed, but without excess."

"We foresee a shift in direction"

Yohei Terui and Hiromu Yuyama from Japanese studio I IN also believe we will see a move away from earthy hues in interiors.

"Over the past couple of years, the theme has revolved around earthy colour and simplicity through the use of natural materials," the duo told Dezeen.

"However, we foresee a shift in direction, trending towards a more 'decorative' approach, in contrast to the previous style," they added.

"We believe that this shift is driven by the prevailing desire of self-expression and individuality in today's culture."

New Delhi-based interior designer Iram Sultan echoed the preference for more individual designs, saying we will see: "Emotional design, personalized spaces, a fresh approach towards materials, finishes and textures, and interiors that are easy, warm, comfortable and sustainable."

Interiors to focus on "real places" rather than AI-generated designs

The rise in artificial intelligence (AI) in 2022 and 2023 was also on people's minds, with several designers mentioning a backlash against digital designs.

"Memorable and customised spaces that are not Pinterest- and AI-generated will be preferable, as the race against interior design and AI technology grows," said UK-based designer Tola Ojuolape.

In 2024, interior design will be more about creating tangible spaces, according to London-based Oskar Kohnen Studio.

"We want to see less digital dream houses of pandemic years, and go back to real places," studio founder Oskar Kohnen said. "Forward-thinking conceptual interiors that create long-term value rather than effects."

Julien Sebban of French studio Uchronia agreed, saying: "The biggest trend will be very textured materials, cosy and comforting such as shearling or thick wool. As people need an antidote to digital they need to feel the physical world."

2024 may see "resurgence of the arts and crafts style"

When it comes to material trends for 2024, designers are choosing to work with natural and local materials.

"For me, natural materials with a strong connection to their placement have a profound bond with today's design," said Pedro Ramírez de Aguilar, co-founder of Mexican studio RA!

"I believe materials such as wood and natural plasters play a crucial role in creating a sense of grounding."

Danish studio Spacon & X partner Malene Hvidt argued that the materials used also affect the colours chosen for interiors, saying: "We also try to use colours that emphasise the natural appearance of the material itself, such as treating wood with tinted linseed to preserve the pattern of the grain."

This sentiment was echoed by Tim Greer, director at Australian studio TZG. "I'm hoping that we will see more natural materials with fewer complex and unsustainable finishes," he said.

"I think the drive towards sustainability will see the use of more natural materials and a resurgence of the arts and crafts style," Sultan added.

"There is a genuine return to solid bold colours"

The colours of our interiors next year will range from pale fresh hues, such as pistachio, to stronger shades.

"Palette-wise, I feel there is a genuine return to solid bold colours – be it a punch of emerald green, mustard yellow or Yves Klein-blue to provoke the visual energy. The expression of materiality and tactility is also a key focus for my studio this coming year," said Hong Kong designer André Fu.

"Customers are thriving for experiences to express their own personality and values – this has led to a greater awareness for the role design plays in the realms of hospitality."

"I'm loving seeing light, lemon-lime yellow being utilized. I also think pistachio has yet to peak," said Carter, while Ojuolape believes in "rich, pigmented and plaster colours".

"The colour and material trends will be very warm colours and more specifically orange as we need joy and to warm things up," said Sebban. "With global warming more important than ever, that will be the colour we get used to."

"Embrace a bold departure from the ordinary as the world adopts warm, earthy tones inspired by landscapes and eclectic hues drawn from various cultural expressions, all crafted with sustainably sourced materials," added Nigeria-based designer Titi Ogufere.

Biophilia will continue to "be a staple"

The designers Dezeen spoke to all said they were taking the subject of sustainability seriously. There is a need to create "lasting design," said US-based designer Giancarlo Valle.

"Sustainability cannot be separated from the world of building," he argued. "The most sustainable thing one can do as a designer is to create something that someone will not want to take down after a short period of time."

Spacon & X's Hvidt added that customers are also increasingly demanding when it comes to sustainability.

"Sustainability is fast becoming a key consideration when it comes to interior design," she said.

"Studios such as ours are always looking for new ways to become increasingly responsible – this is also what clients are expecting as we collectively become more aware of our impact on the planet, especially for future generations."

This focus is seen in the use of plants and trees indoors as well as outdoors to create biophilic designs – interiors that are more connected to the natural environment.

"Biophilia will continue to be a staple in the design aesthetic as well as beautiful, natural and healthy surface finishes," said Ojuolape.

"The biophilic movement will remain strong," agreed Sultan.

"In the future, 'high-end' may mean local artisan work" 

Ogufere added that sustainable design will draw on local communities.

"Sustainability takes a global stage, with collaborative projects empowering local communities and embracing circular design principles, reflecting a collective commitment to environmentally conscious practices worldwide," she said.

"Personally, I believe that sustainability is about building with a local hand, using local materials to create a profound sense of community and reduce carbon emissions," agreed RA!'s Ramírez de Aguilar.

"Architects are becoming more aware of their immediate context and are losing the fear of only using 'high-end materials.' In the near future, 'high-end' may mean local artisan work."

Finally, designers were also planning to include technology in their interiors next year.

"Technology will be used to enhance the quality of living," said Sultan.

Terui and Yayama from I IN, who see textiles as a strong trend next year, said: "Collaboration between the interior design and fashion industries can contribute to the development of new technology which in turn allows innovative spaces to be created."

Fu believes this can also help make projects more sustainable, saying: "I think considerations for sustainability is an integral aspect of my design approach, it's all an organic and subconscious act – from the selection of materials to the integration of technology into the design without undermining the overall experience in mind."

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A bench made from ancient rock salt, a carved stone bar and custom-made aluminium furniture were used by Studio Gameiro for the interior of Portuguese restaurant Austa.

Located in the town of Almancil, Portugal, the studio drew on the craftsmanship of the surrounding Algarve region when designing the interior of the Austa restaurant and coffee shop, which also has a shoppable pantry.

"The inspiration behind the design of Austa was a fascinating journey rooted in the rich heritage and craftsmanship of a much underrated – and still unknown – area in the Algarve region of Portugal," studio founder João Gameiro told Dezeen.

"It has an extraordinary tradition in expertly crafted objects, from ceramics to weaving, iron and copper works, and even salt extraction, which ended up playing an absolute central role in the project."

Studio Gameiro used tactile materials for the restaurant, cladding its walls in soft lime stucco in earthy beige and tan hues.

Much of the furniture was custom-built, including a four-metre-long bench and a collection of bespoke plinths made out of locally mined rock salt.

"We learnt that right underneath our feet, in Loulé, there was a rock salt mine, 230 metres deep into the Earth, with 230-million-years-old salt," Gameiro said.

"We had to do something with this incredible material and convinced the Loulé mine to collaborate with us to transform some of their leftover pieces into building blocks, and then 'puzzling' them out to form a completely original object," he continued.

"These blocks were carved in the same dimensions of the terracotta tiles used in several complementary projects, and arranged in a specific manner, extending the formal reference of the geometry patterns found in the local terracotta kilns."

The resulting bench was constructed from 230 geometric blocks made from the rock salt, which Gameiro said are "almost as strong as stone".

"In essence, the Austa project not only carries a story of design and craftsmanship but also embraces the strength and endurance of materials deeply rooted in the Algarve's geological history," Gameiro said. "Digging down to showcase something unique out in the open."

Austa's founders Emma and David Campus and Studio Gameiro also worked with local artisans to create custom-made furniture for the store. This includes wooden stools informed by Portuguese cafe chairs, as well as locally made aluminium chairs.

Stone was used for the main bar in the restaurant in another reference to the history of the Algarve.

"The central bar showcases intricately carved moleanos stone blocks, a nod to the region's mining heritage, complementing the light hues of the space," Gameiro said.

"Bespoke designed fixed equipment, including bathroom sinks, echoes the dimensions of terracotta tiles, paying tribute to the sea's colours and textures."

Copper and other metals were chosen for decorative and practical accessories.

"Our research on local craftsmanship led us to incorporate copper, gold and silver, echoing techniques dating back to the Roman and Arab periods," Gameiro said.

"Inspired by the art of making copper saucepans (still amply used nowadays), a nine-piece series of copper light pendants was designed to create a moody light feature, celebrating heritage, memory, and expertise, and the serendipity of all involved."

Austa and Studio Gameiro will also release a limited collection of the furniture designed for the restaurant that will be available for purchase, making it a shoppable interior.

Other notable interior projects in Portugal include an Algarve boutique hotel with vintage furnishings and a home with an interior that was informed by theatre spaces.

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Architecture studios Jan Henrik Jansen Arkitekter and Studio Marshall Blecher have designed Vollerup Atrium House, a travertine holiday home that is defined by its central atrium.

Located in a pine-and-oak meadow by the coast in Sjælland, Denmark, the summerhouse was designed for a Danish couple and their family and clad in travertine.

"The site is on an exposed and windswept stretch of Danish coastline and the monolithic atrium provides a solid and unyielding refuge from the elements," Marshall Blecher, founder of the eponymous studio, told Dezeen.

"It has been designed to be a generational house and the client wanted something that would last the test of time and age gracefully."

The studio chose travertine because of how the material will change as it ages.

"We chose to use porous Italian travertine largely because of how it ages," Blecher said. "The surface is unreflective, it changes colour slightly over time and softens."

The 120-square-metre home comprises a main building, which measures 90 square metres and was designed as a "continuous pavilion-like space".

This contains a sleeping area, lounge, and dining and kitchen area.

Vollerup Atrium House also has a 30-square-metre guest wing, which has two additional guest rooms and can be closed off when not in use.

In addition, the home has a hidden garage and a covered terrace.

The volumes were arranged around the central atrium, which was designed to be a flexible space that could offer protection from the Danish weather when needed.

The stone-clad atrium features a wooden floor and houses trees and a reflection pond, around which the owners and visitors can relax on sun loungers.

Inside Vollerup Atrium House, the two studios used oak to line the walls, creating a peaceful atmosphere.

"Oak was chosen because it is a local Danish material and the rich honey tone of the oiled oak provides some warmth to contrast with the stone," Blecher said.

A raised ceiling "lantern" holds clerestory windows that provide the interior with extra light. The two studios also lined the rooms on one side of the house with glass to let in additional light.

"The clerestory windows are operated electronically, they provide passive cross ventilation and southern sun directly into the living areas," Blecher explained.

To help save space, Jan Henrik Jansen Arkitekter and Studio Marshall Blecher designed special built-in furniture for the holiday home.

"The house is quite small and by designing custom built in furniture we were able to optimise the small spaces," Blecher said.

"The table, for example, is designed to work with the island bench which provides a backrest for diners sitting on the long bench. And the bed in the master bedroom has a headrest which doubles as a work desk."

Studio Marshall Blecher and Jan Henrik Jansen Arkitekter have previously designed a weathering-steel clad home on the Danish island of Fyn and a crofters cottage in Germany that was shortlisted for a Dezeen Award in 2022.

The photography is by José Campos unless otherwise stated.

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Continuing our 2023 review, we revisit the most popular lookbooks of the year – from minimalist bedrooms and biophilic homes to marble-lined bathrooms and kitchens with tiled worktops.

This year, the most-read lookbooks included wood-panelled dining rooms, homes with space-saving pocket doors and rooms with beautiful and practical bookshelves.

Read on to discover 10 of our most popular lookbooks of 2023:

Eight homes with beautiful and practical bookshelves

This lookbook for booklovers was our most-read lookbook this year. It showcased homes where designers have created stylish bookshelves – both wall-mounted and built-in.

Among the projects on show is an apartment in Madrid, Spain, which was designed by Spanish studio Zooco Estudio and features white shelving units that span two floors and provide plenty of space to store reading materials.

See more homes with beautiful bookshelves ›

Eight kitchens with tiled worktops that are pretty but practical

There's plenty of kitchen inspiration to be found in this lookbook, which explored kitchens with tiled worktops.

Among the examples is a New York apartment that features a kitchen island covered in oxblood-coloured tiles (above), as well as a pastel-hued Belgian kitchen and a colourful Spanish kitchen in a former motorcycle workshop.

See more kitchens with tiled worktops ›

Eight calming bedrooms with minimalist interiors

The bedrooms in this lookbook range from a Mexican bedroom with a concrete bed to a cosy space in a former girls' school in Puglia, all in a colour palette that mainly features beige, gray, and warm brown hues.

To create soothing, calming bedroom spaces, walls were left bare and the amount of artworks and personal items were kept to a minimum in these projects.

See more calming bedroooms ›

Ten modern homes with interiors informed by biophilic design

Biophilic design, which aims to create spaces in which humans are more connected to nature, has been a trend this year and looks set to continue its ascent in 2024.

Homes with indoor trees, aquaponic systems with live fish, green roofs and verdant courtyards filled with plants are among the biophilic interior design examples in this lookbook.

See more homes with biophilic design ›

Ten residential interiors that make the most of narrow spaces

Narrow interior layouts can be hard to decorate, but this roundup gave plenty of examples of how to work with tight living areas, kitchens wedged into corridors and interiors in skinny Japanese houses.

Tips include adding split-level floors, using built-in furniture to add visual depth and using glass doors to allow more light to penetrate the house.

See more residential interiors with narrow spaces ›

Eight tidy kitchens with slick storage solutions

This lookbook presented eight well-organised kitchens, where smart storage solutions help to hide clutter and create a more pleasant cooking experience. The projects, which range from compact apartments to home extensions, use hooks, nooks, racks, shelves, cubby holes and display units to make the best use of space.

Featured kitchens include the above example from London, which uses multifunctional plywood partitions with arched openings and alcoves for storing belongings.

See more tidy kitchens ›

Ten earthy bedrooms that use natural colour to create a restful environment

Dreamy bedrooms from Mexico to Thailand were showcased in this lookbook, which gathers interiors that use earthy colour palettes and natural materials to evoke a sense of calm and tranquility.

Earthy browns, neutral beige and tan colours are complemented by terracotta and green hues to create bedrooms with a peaceful atmosphere, while materials include stone, timber, linen, clay accents and limewash finishes.

See more earthy bedrooms in neutral colours ›

Ten bathrooms where marble lines the walls

Carrera and Verde Aver marble, as well as similar natural stones such as travertine and quartzite, decorate these 10 bathrooms.

Whether it's a renovated 1920s Stockholm apartment clad in Swedish Ekeberg marble, or a bathroom in an art-deco building covered in green Verde Aver marble (above), this lookbook showcases how the durable material can be used to create elegant interiors.

See more marble-lined bathrooms ›

Ten homes with space-saving pocket doors that disappear into the walls

Pocket doors – sliding doors that are designed to slot into a wall cavity so they can stay hidden from view – were the subject of this lookbook, which was one of the most popular of last year.

The solution is especially useful for rooms where there isn't enough space for a door to open outwards and for locations where it makes sense for the door to integrate into surrounding joinery.

See more homes with pocket doors ›

Eight welcoming wood-panelled dining rooms

The cosiness of a wood-panelled dining room was the focus of this lookbook, which collected eight examples of homes where wood took centre stage.

Among the examples is this house in Chile, above, which features an open-plan kitchen and dining room with a vaulted ceiling that is clad in laminated pine.

See more wood-panelled dining rooms ›

2023 review

This article is part of Dezeen's roundup of the biggest and best news and projects in architecture, design, interior design and technology from 2023.

The post Dezeen's top 10 lookbooks of 2023 appeared first on Dezeen.

A 64-metre-high entrance clad in staggered stone blocks will lead to Utamo, a "theatre of the future" in Saudi Arabia that has been announced as mega-project Neom's latest destination.

Designed by Spanish studio Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura, the Utamo events space will be accessed by walking up a landscaped coastal path that the studio described as "very romantic".

This will lead to a "single, monumental door" set into a cliffside that reaches a height of 64 metres and is surrounded by blocks of rectangular stones.

"Utamo, like a film, needs a dramatic ascension, then a turning point," said architect Ricardo Emilio Bofill, the son of late architect and studio founder Ricardo Bofill.

"As we approach this big door, you realise that there's something much more special inside," he added.

"You go through a space that becomes narrower and narrower and then all of a sudden, it explodes into another world that immerses you in art and performance, augmented by the most incredible technology."

Located on a mountain by the Gulf of Aqaba coastline, the Utamo events space will be set above a garden promenade featuring more than 50 different shrubs, flowers and herbs.

Inside the grand hall, which will have a capacity of 2,600 people, Utamo will hold immersive artistic installations and performances.

"Utamo is going to be one of the most unique venues in the world," Bofill said. "A theatre of the future where the greatest artists come together. It's an exclusive experience where the imagination knows no bounds."

Utamo, which is the eighth Neom destination to be revealed, will also house VIP lounges and signature restaurants.

A video shows the main hall used as a performance space that reaches the full height of the building and appears to open up to give visitors a view of the ocean.

Described as a space where "reality and the digital realm converge," Utamo will allow guests to become a part of the performance, according to Neom.

"Advanced audio-visual systems will captivate guests with sensory experiences, enveloping them in audio-visual wonder as they become part of the performance itself," Neom said.

The Utamo announcement follows that of Siranna, a hexagonal-pillar hotel, at the end of November. Earlier that month, Neom also revealed plans for Epicon, a luxury resort that will feature two jagged skyscrapers by 10Design.

In total, the Neom project will contain 10 destinations. These will also include an octagon-shaped port city named Oxagon, the mirrored mega-city The Line and an island resort called Sindalah.

The mega-project has been criticised on human rights grounds, including by human rights organisation ALQST that reported that three men were sentenced to death after being "forcibly evicted" from the Neom site.

It is one of the top architecture and design controversies of the year 2023.

Images and video are courtesy of Neom.

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This week on Dezeen, we revealed the winners of the inaugural Dezeen Awards China in the architecture, interiors, design and Designers of the Year categories.

The winners were crowned at an awards ceremony at The Sukhothai hotel in Shanghai. The Haikou Jiangdong Huandao Experimental School was named the Dezeen Awards China 2023 architecture project of the year, while ToSummer Beijing Flagship Store took home the interiors award.

China's design project of the year went to the Combo Bench and Obisidan Chair. Designers of the Year winners included Open Architecture, Mario Tsai Studio and AIM Architecture.

In London, the proposed MSG Sphere continued to create conversations. Helen Barrett explored both sides of the debate in her piece Does London need the Sphere?

It was also revealed that MSG is considering building a Sphere in Hanam, South Korea, which would function as a music arena for K-pop artists. The Sphere could become part of the proposed K-Star World, which would also feature a theme park and a K-culture and video industrial complex dedicated to K-pop (Korean pop).

This week, Australia announced a ban on engineered stone due to the risk of silicosis. The material, which is valued as a durable and affordable alternative to natural stone for kitchen benchtops, can be dangerous when it is cut as it releases a fine silica dust into the air.

"This prohibition will ensure future generations of workers are protected from silicosis associated with working with engineered stone," said minister for training and workforce development, water, and industrial relations Simone McGurk.

David Lake and Ted Flato of Texas studio Lake Flato Architects won the AIA Gold Medal 2024. The studio won the award, which is considered one of the most prestigious awards in architecture, for its engagement with "controversial environmental and socio-political issues".

An eight-person jury said the architects won for their ability to make "sustainability exciting in a way few other architects have accomplished".

In design news, Dutch design brand Moooi launched a pair of rugs based on artworks by Alf Bärbel Wit Peters, aged eight. The young designer created two rugs for the company.

"The details, lines, strokes, choices, shapes and rhythms in his art echo the freedom of Basquiat, Appel, Kline, Miró, Haring and Kandinsky, bearing a unique style," Moooi said.

For our Year in Review this week, Rima Sabina Aouf looked at the top 10 product designs of 2023. These included an airless basketball, a phone charger for rough sleepers and and glasses that instantly change prescription.

Features editor Nat Barker summarised 10 architecture and design controversies this year, including the Sphere planning battle, the I NY revamp and 15-minute city conspiracy theories.

Popular projects this week included a "desert modernism" extension in London, a skinny hotel in Vietnam and a house in Japan built as one big room.

This week on Dezeen

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week's top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don't miss anything.

The post This week we revealed the Dezeen Awards China 2023 winners appeared first on Dezeen.

Japanese studio Unemori Architects has used cypress wood to create Father & Son House, an extension constructed above and around a self-built annexe in Saitama.

The old building, a two-storey annexe, workshop and warehouse built by the carpenter father of the current owner, was also renovated as part of the project.

Unemori Architects converted the 151-square-metre building, which had already been remodelled and enlarged at least four times, into a home for the son and his family.

This enabled the owner to remain close to his mother, who lives in the main house on the plot.

Unemori Architects had originally planned to integrate the extension with the existing structure, but this wasn't possible due to the way it had been self-built.

Instead, the studio "planned a new independent structure outside the existing structure," Unemori Architects team member Keita Komori told Dezeen.

The studio used cypress to clad the extension, which comprises a wooden roof and exterior walls that cover the old wood-and-steel building.

Unemori Architects deliberately chose the wood as it matches the existing structure.

"This plywood has a clear grain but few knots and is clean, blending in with the existing wood," Komori said.

"We planned it so that many woods, old and new, are directly visible. We aimed to create a house where the old and the new complement each other without conflict."

The extension added 25 square metres to the home, creating a larger bedroom on the second floor alongside another bedroom, a workspace and storage space.

"While the new construction is structurally independent, a slight force (such as vertical force) is also transferred to the existing part, and a small space like a gap is created between the existing and the new construction," the studio explained.

The beams and rafters of the old house have been kept inside the extension, creating an interior where the skeleton of the former exterior remains visible. Large windows let the light in.

On the ground floor, which has the same footprint as before, Father & Son House has living and dining spaces as well as storage space.

The studio also covered an existing 38-square-metre terrace to create an indoor-outdoor space that can be used as an extra room.

Previous projects by Unemori Architects include a "park-like" health and childcare centre and a blocky house on a "tiny plot" in Tokyo.

The photography is by Atelier Vincent Hecht.

Project credits:

Architecture and furniture: Unemori Architects
Structural engineers: HSC
General constructor: Siguma construction firm
Furniture contractor: Stille

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The company behind MSG Sphere Las Vegas is reportedly planning to build a 120-metre-high spherical music venue that would host performances by K-pop artists in Hanam, South Korea.

MSG, the owner of venues including Madison Square Garden, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the city of Hanam, located just east of Seoul. If built, the project would mark the first Sphere in Asia.

Construction could begin in 2025

According to the newspaper The Korea Economic Daily, Hanam is planning to open a 900,000 square-metre K-Star World that could include the spherical music venue.

It would also feature a film studio, a theme park and a K-culture and video industrial complex dedicated to K-pop (Korean pop), reported Korean newspaper The Chosun Ilbo.

MSG's sister company Sphere Entertainment wants to start construction on the K-pop Sphere in 2025, said newspaper Korea JoongAng Daily, which described the project as the "K-pop Sphere".

It would be the tallest sphere so far, at 120 metres high and 160 metres wide.

Korea JoongAng Daily added it would normally take 42 months to "conduct a feasibility study to review the potential lifting of development restrictions and to go through other administrative procedures", but the South Korean government has vowed to fast-track the process. This would reduce it to 21 months.

"The government will fast-track licensing and other administrative procedures to reduce the period to 21 months to help [the company] carry out the project as planned," a ministry official told the newspaper.

A Hanam city official told The Korea Economic Daily that the establishment of the MSG Sphere and K Star World is expected to take three to four years.

According to the newspaper, the entire K-Star World project would cost an estimated 2.5 trillion won (£1.5 billion) and the Sphere would cost an additional three trillion won (£1.8 billion), a third of which would be financed by Sphere's owner MSG Company.

Project follows on from Las Vegas and London

Sphere Entertainment had said that it planned to focus on "many forward-thinking cities" for its next sphere-shaped venues after its design for London's Stratford neighbourhood was rejected by mayor Sadiq Khan.

The UK levelling up minister, Michael Gove, subsequently prohibited the local planning authority from blocking the application.

However, a spokesperson for Sphere Entertainment stated it "cannot continue to participate in a process that can be so easily undermined by political winds".

"As we said previously, we will focus on the many forward-thinking cities," the spokesperson added.

The company's MSG Sphere Las Vegas (main image) opened in October with bespoke artworks by designer Es Devlin and artist John Gerrard.

Before its unveiling, social media videos showed the sphere covered in swirling lava visuals.

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Palestinian textile designer Areen has created Flowing Threads, a pink-and-red pavilion made from silk fabric that she unravelled by hand to showcase the threads that make up the textile.

The pavilion has an undulating shape and was among the design installations at this year's Dubai Design Week, where it was shown against the backdrop of the glass-and-steel buildings in the city's Design District and the surrounding desert.

Flowing Threads was made from pink silk fabric that was strung between metal poles and unravelled to unveil the red inner threads, a process that took the Dubai-based designer five months.

While the fabric remains whole at the top and bottom, the central section is made up of sheer threads, which move in the wind to eye-catching effect.

"I really tried to reshape the function of the fabric," Areen, who runs the art and design studio By Areen, told Dezeen. "In 2014, I started my research on how textile can make social change."

"I like the idea of taking out the threads from the fabric because it is the reverse process of creating the fabric, and I wanted to show how the reverse process of creating the fabric still shows how the fabric is complete," she added.

By unravelling the silk she can "show how the fabric can get a new function," Areen said.

Flowing Threads could be used as room dividers or as decorative screens and was the result of Areen's thoughts about how humans connect with our surroundings.

"The fabric itself is a microcosm, representing an individual's existence within the larger universe," the designer explained.

"Just as the fabric consists of interconnected threads, humans are interconnected with the fabric of the universe, forming part of a cosmic tapestry."

Flowing Threads was commissioned by Dubai Design Week and D3 and was among a number of innovative pavilions shown at Dubai Design Week.

Nearby, Abdalla Almulla showed his Of Palm pavilion, which is made entirely of palm tree materials and featured pillars made from tree trunks.

The design week in the United Arab Emirates also showcased several pavilions made from biomaterials, including a tea house made from food waste and another constructed from sugar cane that was turned into a bioplastic.

The photography is courtesy of Dubai Design Week.

Dezeen was a media partner of Dubai Design Week, which took place from 7 to 12 November. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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This week on Dezeen, a polycarbonate London home modelled on a riad was named the Royal Institute of British Architects' House of the Year for 2023.

The House of the Year prize – which is awarded annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) to the best one-off, architect-designed house in the UK – went to Green House in Tottenham, London.

The home was designed by architecture studio Hayhurst & Co, which slotted it into a tight site in an alleyway. The "green oasis" features plenty of greenery and has a facade with sliding polycarbonate screens.

Colour specialist Pantone announced a subtle orangey hue called Peach Fuzz as its colour of the year this week. According to Pantone, the pale hue was chosen to express a yearning for community and cosiness during uncertain times.

"Peach Fuzz is a compassionate and nurturing soft peach shade whose heartfelt kindness and all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body and soul," said the institute's vice president Laurie Pressman.

Miami art week began this week and we reported on a number of projects being shown as part of the design event. In the Miami Design District, Tesla unveiled its angular stainless-steel Cybertruck. The controversial design is now available in showrooms.

Another car design seen at the event was designer Marjan van Aubel's "interpretation" of an electric Lexus model created using a series of multicoloured, illuminated photovoltaic sheets.

Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Frank Gehry showcased handbags designed for fashion house Louis Vuitton in Miami, including bags that were informed by his Guggenheim Museum and Museum of Pop Culture.

This week also saw Dezeen's digital editor Rupert Bickersteth interview French shoe designer Christian Louboutin about his work.

The designer shared his belief that it's "fine to be useless," adding: "You sort of have to be perseverant. And when you are believing in something, you have to go for it."

We also featured the designer's latest project, a 13-room boutique hotel in Portugal that was "designed at the scale of the hand".

In architecture news, this week saw the unveiling of Japanese architect Shigeru Ban's design for the Infinite Maldives resort, which will feature rows of timber houses on the water that will surround landscaped gardens.

Architecture studio Foster + Partners also revealed one of its upcoming designs, a mixed-use development in Miami, Florida, that will reference the state's "vernacular architecture" and be located on the Lincoln Road shopping street.

In an opinion piece this week, artist and designer Freyja Sewell argued that the pod has become a standard part of open-plan interior landscapes, something she believes can be tied to our need for privacy.

"After all, privacy has become an even more elusive and rare condition, with pervasive CCTV, the rise of open-plan offices and the pressure to record and share almost every moment through the ubiquitous camera phone," Sewell said.

Popular project stories on Dezeen this week included a community centre in India disguised as "ancient ruins", a renovation of a London home that was designed to create a "country house in miniature" and a duo of sculptural pavilions in the Chilean countryside.

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Dezeen's co-CEOs Benedict Hobson and Wai Shin Li have been named leaders of the year for media and the digital industries at The Drum Awards 2023.

The annual awards programme, which is organised by publisher The Drum, recognises the best work around the world by media and marketing companies.

Hobson and Li won the Media Leader of the Year and Digital Industries Leader of the Year prizes, with the judges praising the duo's "clear strategic vision" for Dezeen and commending them for having "risen through some exceptional challenges and delivered incredible results".

They also stated that Hobson and Li had "achieved a huge amount in a trying period" and were "not afraid to change how things have been done to be more progressive, current and agenda-setting".

Hobson and Li were appointed as co-CEOs of Dezeen in November last year following the sudden and unexpected death of Dezeen's founder Marcus Fairs. They had previously held the roles of chief content officer and chief revenue officer respectively.

The two prizes at The Drum Awards are the latest in a string of recent accolades for Dezeen.

Dezeen received two honours last month when our editor Tom Ravenscroft was highly commended at the British Society of Magazine Editor (BSME) Awards and our architecture editor Lizzie Crook was highly commended at the International Building Press (IBP) Awards.

In June, Dezeen's editorial team was named Team of the Year at the Professional Publishers Association (PPA)'s annual awards.

The judges said: "Dezeen's editorial team produces highly creative content, displays superb teamwork in and the face of the most trying of circumstances pulled together to produce record-breaking traffic and revenue growth."

Ravenscroft also won Editor of the Year at the Association of Online Publishers' annual awards ceremony earlier this year.

"Tom was the standout visionary in this category and it's clear that he's been able to use that strong vision to energise his team during a potentially difficult and challenging time for the business," said the judges.

Last year, Dezeen was named best business publication at PPA Independent Publisher Awards and named editorial brand of the year by the International Building Press.

The BSME also posthumously honoured Fairs with a lifetime achievement award following his death.

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MoMA curator Paola Antonelli believes humans will go extinct, quite possibly as a result of climate change, but is "very positive" about how designers can help to slow the decline, she tells Dezeen in this interview.

The Museum of Modern Art curator is the author of several books including Design Emergency (co-written with Alice Rawsthorn), and runs the Instagram account of the same name that explores how design can help build a better future in the face of serious global issues.

Among the exhibitions she has curated is Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival, which showcased architecture and design projects from the last 30 years that explore our fractured relationship with the planet.

To Antonelli, the vital importance of focusing on these issues is obvious.

"When one has a pulse and a brain, one can not be aware of the climate emergency and not be concerned and tempted to do whatever one can, whatever is possible," she told Dezeen.

"Design is a force for any kind of change that needs to happen"

Antonelli believes that design is well-placed to play a leading role in the global effort to solve or mitigate issues relating to climate change.

"Design is a force for any kind of change that needs to happen," she said. "It's a force for propaganda, for changing people's behaviour, for re-addressing issues, for changing products so that they can become more attuned to needs."

"It is like an octopus that has different tentacles and can touch multiple point pressures in the ecosystems that make up our life."

"When it comes to the climate emergency, design can take on many different roles," she added.

"I don't feel that design by itself can change or save the world – that is always a utopia, and it's unrealistic – but I find that it is a fundamental part of any team effort, and all efforts have to be team efforts at this point to change the status quo."

One way in which designers can work towards slowing the climate emergency is by creating products which, rather than using materials that contribute to the pollution of the planet, focus on upcycling, re-use and using waste instead of new materials.

MoMA exhibition explores design's impact on the ecosystem

This is the theme of Antonelli's latest exhibition at MoMA, Life Cycles: The Materials of Contemporary Design, which explores "the regenerative power of design", examining how design can be elegant and innovative while still respecting the ecosystem.

Among the pieces on show are works by Mexican designer Fernando Laposse, who has created a marquetry material from the husks of heirloom corn species, and by designer Mae-Ling Lokko, who has a company in Ghana that creates building products from mushroom mycelium and coconut shells.

"[Lokko's work] is about agricultural waste, but very localised to where it is, and I see many designers behaving that way," Antonelli remarked.

In that vain, she believes designers should look to how people in their local environment have dealt with disastrous natural events in the past to help prepare for a future in which they will become more frequent.

"When you're dealing with a disaster, it's usually is a disaster that happens near you, so you could learn a lot from how things are done near you," Antonelli explained.

"Floods have happened for centuries and they might be more frequent now, but cities and regions of the world have been dealing with them for a really long time," she added.

"So they might have some structures already in place that need to be either relearned or deepened."

This is already underway, Antonelli believes, with designers and architects increasingly "studying the local".

"That is happening at many different levels," she said. "There are architects and landscape designers that are really trying to understand Native and First Peoples approach to land, respect, land-use or land non-use."

"Global technological efforts are important, but without that attention to local realities they will be simplifying, or at least overlooking, many important aspects."

Coronavirus pandemic "gave us a feeling of what clean skies could be"

She argues the coronavirus pandemic also underlined how quickly things can change and that we can have an impact on the climate and how it behaves.

"The pandemic brought everything to a stop and gave us a feeling of what clean skies could be – I mean, we rapidly forgot about it, but there was still this moment of stunned recognition of the fact that skies can be blue if we all stop using cars for a few days," Antonelli said.

And with much of the world currently in turmoil, whether from the climate emergency or other human-driven disasters and wars, she thinks there is more of a willingness to take these questions seriously.

"There are so many tragedies that are happening in the world right now, there's no respite, but I feel like it brings everybody more on an alert kind of attitude," she said.

"So I feel that the climate emergency is considered with more seriousness because it undergirds many of the other crises."

"Our task is to leave the planet in a better condition"

While Antonelli doesn't think humans can design our way out of our own extinction, she believes design can play an important role in slowing the decline.

"Slowing the decline is very, very positive; I am very positive," Antonelli said.

"Even though – as I was saying at the time of Broken Nature – I believe we will become extinct, we have a little bit of control on the when and a lot of control on the how," she added.

"I'm optimistic that we can be dignified, responsible, and compassionate towards other people, towards other species and towards the planet."

"And that is our task. Our task is not to live forever. Our task is to leave the planet in a better condition than we found it, or at least as good as possible."

The exhibition photography is courtesy of MoMA.

Dezeen In Depth
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Next year's edition of British tradeshow London Design Fair has been cancelled, as the organisers said it had difficulties in serving the "very broad spectrum of companies exhibiting at the fair effectively".

London Design Fair was the last major standalone design tradeshow to take place in London after Design London, previously 100% Design, merged with Clerkenwell Design Week earlier this year.

The tradeshow was due to take place at the Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, east London, in September 2024 but has been postponed "for the immediate future", its organisers said.

Fair "leaves a legacy of creativity"

"The event has always been a highlight of the design year, with incredible engagement from the community, including over 100,000 followers on social media, and 13,000 people coming to the show this year," said managing director of diversified communications Carsten Holm.

"However, we have found it increasingly difficult to serve the very broad spectrum of companies exhibiting at the fair effectively and reconcile the high expectations for an event of this quality, with the commercial support from the industry."

"London Design Fair leaves a legacy of creativity, innovation, and community," Holm continued.

"The decision to postpone reflects the commitment to delivering an event that not only meets but exceeds the high standards set by the diverse and dynamic design community."

Cancellation comes after first post-Covid edition

London Design Fair returned this year after a three-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic, which saw it cancelled along with numerous other events.

The fair took place as part of this year's London Design Festival and included an exhibition by design studio 2LG called You Can Sith With Us, which showcased work by emerging designers.

In an opinion piece about the London Design Festival, Dezeen editorial director Max Fraser found some of the exhibitors to be of "questionable quality".

"On my visit, the experience of meandering through the aisles felt rather lacklustre and predictable," Fraser said. "Exhibitors, some of questionable quality, were confined within the standard booth format and illuminated with stark, cold light."

Other projects at this year's London Design Festival included designer Rio Kobayashi's first solo show and a bench reimagined as a giant game of Oware.

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Czech architecture studio Chybik + Kristof has designed a mixed-use tower with cascading floors clad in red concrete for the New Boulevard in Tirana, Albania.

The 83-metre-high tower, which will be mainly residential but also house retail and office spaces, will have a cascading shape that narrows as it rises.

The shape and layout of the 17,500-square-metre building will form green terraces for several apartments on each floor. Chybik + Kristof will also incorporate shaded loggias.

These loggias will feature in all of the apartments and be built with aluminium window frames. As well as providing daylight, they will help to "bring optimal thermal coverage to the entirety of the apartment" and protect the apartments from overheating, the studio said.

The tower will be located in the Culture Hub area on the Albanian capital Tirana's New Boulevard, which forms part of a new masterplan for the city that is a collaboration between the city's private and public sectors.

It is set to be one of the first realised buildings in the scheme. Other buildings planned for the neighbourhood are an opera house, an amphitheatre, an art gallery and a cultural centre.

Chybik + Kristof's tower will be built on private land for a private investor but have the "active participation of the city of Tirana," a spokesperson for the city said.

"The winning project for the multifunctional tower at the New Boulevard of Tirana marks a milestone in our city's architectural landscape, as it is a result of the first private international competition amongst nearly 20 future competitions in this particular area," said Frida Pashako, the general director of urban planning and development at the municipality of Tirana.

"This project showcases an extraordinary fusion of innovative design and visionary urban planning," Pashako added.

"The proposal stands out by its thoughtful consideration of the street corner of the project, integrating with the urban fabric while establishing an inviting and dynamic connection. It shows an appreciation for the site's context and the rapid development unfolding around it."

Chybik + Kristof's proposal beat designs from studios including Coop Himmelb(l)au, Bovenbouw Architectuur, XDGA and Atelier Martel.

The studio also recently unveiled a steel-framed pavilion dedicated to the "father of genetics" and designed a reversible market from reclaimed materials.

Also in Tirana, Dutch studio MVRDV's redesign of the Pyramid of Tirana recently reopened and Stefano Boeri designed a coronavirus-resilient neighbourhood.

Renders are courtesy of Chybik + Kristof.

Project credits:

Lead architect: Ondrej Chybik, Michal Kristof
Design team: Jiri Vala, Jiri Richter, Radek Satora, Ondrej Svancara, Ondrej Mundl, Ilya Lebedev, Lukas Kvasnica, Martyna Bobinska, Magdalena Czopka, Antonin Hampl, Martin Holy, Martin Iglesias
Structural engineer: SDS Group shpk, Bollinger + Grohmann
Landscape architect: Marko & The Placemakers
Local consultant: Studioarch4
Sustainable design specialist: Clearly Efficient
Structural engineer: SDS Group shpk, Bollinger + Grohmann
Collaboration: Marko&Placemakers, Clearly Efficient, Studioarch4, SDS Group shpk

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Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has designed Infinite Maldives, a "resort residence" in the Maldives that will feature gardens and rows of houses on the water made from timber and locally sourced materials.

The five-hectare resort will be located within the Malé Atoll and designed to "embrace the Maldivian vernacular," Shigeru Ban Architects said.

It will comprise 44 villas set on a beach and over the water, connected by a long wooden boardwalk. The houses will surround four gardens by landscape architect Michael Desvigne and be built using timber and locally sourced materials.

Ban designed the Infinite Maldives resort to blend in with the surrounding Indian Ocean.

Renders show double rows of houses facing each other across a long wooden boardwalk that leads to a plot of land with an amorphous central building.

"What makes Infinite Maldives unique is that the resort blends in with the sea and the green nature in an 'infinite' manner," Ban said.

"To minimise the amount of transport and energy for construction and material production, we use various innovative pre-fabrication methods and focus on applying lightweight materials as well as recycled materials," he added.

Ban also said the project would be a "true act of sustainability" because of its harmonious relationship with its surroundings.

"In contrast to many developments selling 'sustainability' just as a label in the commercial sense, our aim is to create a place where people can relax mentally and physically, in harmony with the environment, taking in all its value," the architect said.

"This makes the project a true act of sustainability," he continued.

Infinite Maldives is being designed for Sri Lankan developer Crystal Property Group and will have a spa, fitness centre and wellness facilities. It will also have private spaces for the resort's residents, with each house complete with its own infinity pool and outdoor lounging spaces.

"We are proud to be delivering the first resort residence and one-of-a-kind opportunity in the Maldives, which is a huge milestone for the country and a great achievement for us," said Crystal Property Group CEO Reza Magdon Ismail.

"This is an extraordinary project located in a very special part of the world and alongside its home, we believe Infinite Maldives will truly stand as a testament to the wonders of all the island has to offer," he added.

Elsewhere, Ban recently brought his Paper Log House to Morocco in the wake of the country's devastating earthquake. Earlier this year, he spoke to Dezeen about why he always "avoids designing something fashionable".

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For our review of 2023, we take a look back at the year's 10 most interesting home interiors and invite our readers to pick their favourite.

With more than 500 interior stories published on Dezeen in 2023 so far, there is a wide variety of beautiful and unusual homes to choose from.

Among the 10 most interesting we've published are a lodge in South Africa, an apartment in Spain's Torres Blancas tower and a tiny Scottish flat.

The winner will be announced in a post on Dezeen on 28 December.

Read on for this year's home interior highlights, then vote here or by using the form at the bottom of the article.

Domūs Houthaven apartment, The Netherlands, by Shift Architecture Urbanism

This home in Amsterdam residential complex Domūs Houthaven features a bedroom cupboard with built-in shelves and under-bed drawers. It can be closed off from the living space with folding doors made from perforated steel.

Shift Architecture Urbanism used striking colour-blocked modular units in pastel hues to give the apartment a playful feel. The home also has untreated concrete ceilings and pale laminate floors that contrast with the colourful furnishings.

Vote for Domūs Houthaven apartment ›

Casa Tres Árboles, Mexico, by Direccion

"Monastic sanctuaries" inspired this weekend home in Mexico's Valle de Bravo, which was designed to celebrate light and shadows. Natural materials and an earthy colour palette were used throughout.

Mexican studio Direccion, which designed the interior, removed a number of walls and adjusted the split-level floor to connect the home's social spaces and open it up more. Artworks and artisan craft pieces were dotted throughout the house.

Vote for Casa Tres Árboles ›

House by the Sea, UK, by Of Architecture

Designed for an artist and a surfer, House by the Sea is located by the sea in Newquay, Cornwall, and has an understated colour palette of off-white and grey hues.

Its sitting area has expansive sliding windows that directly overlook Newquay's picturesque Pentire Steps beach. A long L-shaped sofa was dressed in beige marl fabric, while a classic Eames lounge chair offers another space for relaxation.

Walls were mostly kept clear, while green plants were scattered throughout the space to liven up the minimalist spaces.

Vote for House by the Sea ›

Torres Blancas apartment, Spain, by Studio Noju

This two-storey apartment in the curvy Torres Blancas apartment in Madrid was renovated by local firm Studio Noju to remain "in constant dialogue" with the original apartment design.

The studio added terraces with curved floor-to-ceiling glazing and slatted crimson shutters, as well as gleaming sea-green floor tiles. Curves were used throughout the interior in a nod to the facade of the tower, which has cylindrical, bulbous balconies.

Vote for the Torres Blancas apartment ›

City Beach house, Australia, by Design Theory

This 1960s house in the City Beach suburb of Perth was given an update by interiors studio Design Theory.

"The brief was, on the surface, simple: to update the home while keeping its considerable mid-century charm," said the studio.

The resulting home features warm, earthy materials, including Forbo Marmoleum flooring, exposed brick in terracotta tones and native Blackbutt timber. The furniture and decorations also reference the house's mid-century modern origins.

Vote for City Beach house ›

Tembo Tembo Lodge, South Africa, by Studio Asaï

Tembo Tembo Lodge, which won home interior of the year at Dezeen Awards 2023, is a family lodge made from rammed earth and located close to the Kruger National Park.

Designed by Paris-based Studio Asaï, the living room features a "bush"-green sofa to evoke the colour of the foliage outside the house, as well as a stone table decorated with stone vases and a selection of small side tables in dark wood and steel.

Vote for Tembo Tembo Lodge ›

10K House, Spain, by Takk

Russian Matryoshka dolls, which are stacked inside each other, informed the interior of this apartment in Barcelona that was designed with a material budget of just 10,000 euros.

Spanish studio Takk designed the home to be as sustainable as possible, nestling rooms inside one another to maximise insulation. The bedroom was raised on white recycled table legs and clad in gridded frames of medium-density fibreboard (MDF) that are enveloped by slabs of local sheep's wool.

Vote for 10K House ›

Glasgow apartment, Scotland, by Lee Ivett, Simon Harlow and Duncan Blackmore

Designed by its owner, developer Duncan Blackmore, together with architect Lee Ivett and designer Simon Harlow, this flat in Glasgow's Govanhill area measures just 25 square metres.

It was designed without any freestanding furniture. The designers removed internal walls and raised its existing structural openings closer to the ceiling, before inserting a number of 3D-volumes with built-in functions.

"The main space is entirely unprogrammed and uncluttered and has almost nothing in it," Blackmore told Dezeen.

Vote for Glasgow apartment ›

Dumbo loft, USA, by Crystal Sinclair Designs

An eye-catching book-lined mezzanine was among the solutions created by Crystal Sinclair Designs for this loft apartment in Brooklyn, which was renovated in a way that would expose its concrete shell.

The studio also created a bedroom behind a glass partition for the home and filled it with furnishings intended to introduce European flair against the industrial backdrop. In the living space, wooden furniture adds an organic touch and contrasts with the concrete walls and white floor.

Vote for Dumbo loft ›

Hiroo Residence, Japan, by Keiji Ashizawa

Architect and designer Keiji Ashizawa filled the Hiroo Residence in central Tokyo with wood, using the material for furniture pieces as well as panelling and artworks.

To underline how light-filled the open-plan flat is, he used muted, subtle tones of grey and beige instead of bright white. The 200-square-metre apartment, which overlooks the Arisugawanomiya Memorial Park, also features decorative stone sculptures and Shaker-informed furniture.

Vote for Hiroo Residence ›

2023 review

This article is part of Dezeen's roundup of the biggest and best news and projects in architecture, design, interior design and technology from 2023.

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Interior architect Martin Brudnizki has used Italian maiolica tiles and bespoke furniture from India to give London's Broadwick Soho hotel an eclectic look.

The eight-floor hotel was designed by Martin Brudnizki Design Studio (MBDS) to evoke the history of Soho – the London neighbourhood that surrounds it.

"Inspired by 'gritty glamour' and the diverse history of Soho, MBDS's design influences range from 1970s disco pop elements to British eccentricity," studio founder Martin Brudnizki told Dezeen.

The hotel was also influenced by "the strong women who frequented Soho during the 1960s and 70s such as Mary Fedden, Molly Parkin and Muriel Belcher."

Broadwick Soho is comprised of  57 rooms, which Brudnizki decorated in opulent colours and patterns. For the downstairs Italian restaurant, Dear Jackie, Brudnizki sourced materials and accessories that nod to its cuisine.

"A split-level restaurant, the communal dining takes centre stage with long counter-style tables featuring 1970s Formica tops and Memphis-inspired chandeliers suspended from coral lacquered ceilings," he said.

"The bar features maiolica tiles in traditional southern Italian patterns," Brudnizki added. "This compliments the maiolica wall covering adorned with Sicilian folk motifs of grapes and flowers."

The handpainted ceramic tiles for the bar were developed by the studio itself together with a family business in Sicily.

In some of the guestrooms, walls were decorated with marbled wallpaper with a pattern of tigers and elephants. The elephant was chosen as a symbol for the hotel and was also turned into mini bars in the hotel's suites.

"A huge amount of bespoke pieces were designed by the studio and produced by talented craftspeople across the world," Brudnizki said.

"The wonderful elephant mini bars in the suites were designed by the studio and crafted in India," he added.

"We actually travelled to India to work with the craftspeople directly, ensuring each detail was as we envisioned."

The studio also sourced a number of vintage pieces for the hotel, including a 1970s Murano glass chandelier that hangs from the ceiling of The Nook – Broadwick Soho's residents-only ground-floor lounge.

MBDS also commissioned new Murano glass lamps that are scattered throughout the space.

"All of the Murano glass lights throughout the property have been made and developed by local artisans in the Venice region," Brudnizki said.

"Lastly, there is a collection of antiques throughout the hotel that have been sourced from independent Italian and British antique dealers, auction houses and shops."

Broadwick Soho's rooftop dining bar – named Flute after a 19th-century flute maker on Broadwick Street – is an example of how Brudnizki played with multiple colours and patterns to create a space that he describes as combining "cocooned comfort with maximalist glamour".

Here, saturated green and pink pastel colours contrast gleaming marble and brass details, while contemporary art decorates the walls.

The overall aim of the project was to create a hotel that would suit the context and history of Soho.

"We were conscious of ensuring that what we were designing felt authentic and true to the Soho context and neighbourhood," Brudnizki concluded.

"It has such a strong and important cultural history, we were conscious we needed to draw this out and bring it to the forefront of our design concept."

Previous London projects designed by Brudnizki, who was one of the judges for Dezeen Awards 2023, include a mythology-informed restaurant and the redesign of members' club Annabel's.

The photography is by James McDonald.

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Dezeen's editor Tom Ravenscroft and architecture editor Lizzie Crook have been highly commended for their work at the UK's British Society of Magazine Editors Awards and the International Building Press Awards.

Ravenscroft, who was shortlisted in three categories, was highly commended in the Editor of the Year – Independent category at this year's British Society of Magazines (BSME) Awards.

"At a challenging time for the magazine, Tom has taken forward Dezeen with insightful investigations and great new innovations," the BSME judges said.

Also at this year's BSME awards former Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful, who will take up the role of global creative and cultural advisor at the publication next year, was awarded the Mark Boxer lifetime achievement award. The prize was last year posthumously awarded to Dezeen founder Marcus Fairs, who passed away in June 2022.

At the International Building Press (IBP) awards, Crook was highly commended in the architectural journalist category of the year.

"For the Architectural Journalist of the Year category, the judges would first like to highly commend Lizzie Crook for her balanced but impactful and highly relevant journalism," the judges said.

"They felt Lizzie took on key issues for the sector with aplomb, avoiding the echo chamber of more mainstream views, whilst also offering insights and reportage on global concerns, brought back to the built environment."

Crook had been competing against journalists from Architects' Journal and RIBA Journal as well as against Ravenscroft, who was also on the shortlist.

The two awards follow Dezeen's editorial team being named Team of the Year at the prestigious Professional Publishers Association (PPA)'s annual awards in June of this year.

"Dezeen's editorial team produces highly creative content, displays superb team work in and the face of the most trying of circumstances pulled together to produce record-breaking traffic and revenue growth," said the judges.

Ravenscroft also won Editor of the Year at the Association of Online Publishers' annual awards ceremony earlier this year.

Dezeen's co-CEOs, Hobson and Li, were also recently nominated in the Media Leader of the Year category at the Media Week Awards.

Last year, the Dezeen editorial team was named editorial brand of the year by the IBP.

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For our latest lookbook, we've collected eight window seats in homes across the world including clever custom-made solutions in wood and concrete.

By installing a window seat, interior designers don't just add extra seating to a room, they also create a peaceful space that can be used for contemplation and relaxation.

Whether it functions as a small nook for reading, a sofa for socialising or even as a daybed, these projects showcase how the built-in furniture piece has been used in homes from Denmark to China.

This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen's archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring interiors created on a budget, immersive saunas and light-filled kitchens.

Nicolai Paris, France, by NOA

This Network of Architecture-designed Marais apartment inside a converted hotel has been outfitted with a selection of custom-made oak furniture. In the living room, a stylish built-in window seat was designed to function as both seating and storage space.

Its curved shape was enhanced by the addition of black-leather cushions and pillows, which contrast the unadorned white walls and the bleached oak parquet with its decorative chevron pattern.

Find out more about Nicolai Paris ›

Villa Wienberg, Denmark, by Wienberg Architects and Friis & Moltke

Together with studio Friis & Moltke, Danish architects Mette and Martin Wienberg gave this 1940s cottage an overhaul to turn it into a home for their own family.

The house has wooden panelling throughout and in the living space, the material was also used to form a low-slung window seat that functions as a bench around the room. Cosy pillows and a sheepskin add comfort.

Find out more about Ell House ›

Maison Jericho, France, by Olivia Fauvelle Architecture

This outbuilding in Marseille was refurbished and extended by French studio Olivia Fauvelle Architecture. In the living room, a concrete window seat was added to help create a connection between the indoors and outdoors.

It overlooks a tiled terrace with a pool and is topped with a leather daybed to create a restful space. A wood-burning stove hangs above the window seat, adding warmth to the room.

Find out more about Maison Jericho ›

Puppeteers House, Portugal, by REDO Architects

REDO Architects was inspired by stage sets when designing Puppeteers House in Sintra, Portugal, which features wooden joinery constructions intended to evoke theatrical scenography.

This includes a curved wooden bench that functions as a window seat on the first-floor landing, where it is matched by wooden panelling.

"We used a precise quarter of a circle as a tool – like a compass – in different radii, orientations, combinations and materialities," REDO Architects founder Diogo Figueiredo told Dezeen.

Find out more about Puppeteers House ›

Ell House, Canada, by Ravi Handa Architect and AAmp Studio

The built-in window seat in the Ell House holiday home in Wellington provides its owners with a picturesque view of Lake Ontario.

The exterior of the house was clad in cedar that was charred using the Japanese yakisugi method while the interior features contrasting light oak millwork.

The same wood was also used to form a window seat in the bedroom, which features clean lines and has a cushion for additional comfort.

Find out more about Ell House ›

Muswell Hill home, UK, by Architecture for London

British studio Architecture for London designed this home in north London for its founder Ben Ridley. Located in an Edwardian house that hadn't been renovated for almost 40 years, it was designed to be energy-saving and constructed using natural materials.

A cosy window seat made from grey limestone can be found in the kitchen, where it connects to a storage cabinet made from pale oak.

Find out more about Muswell Hill home ›

U-Shape Room, China, by Atelier Tao + C

U-shaped window seats are more unusual than rectangular ones. But in this Chinese home, the architects had little choice as the building is dominated by a huge, rounded bay window.

Studio Atelier Tao+C added a curved plywood seat that also has storage spaces. It matches a two-storey plywood volume that houses all the functional rooms of the apartment.

Find out more about U-Shape Room ›

The Yellow House in the Apple Garden, Norway, by Familien Kvistad

This renovated 1950s house in Oslo was given a colourful interior by locally based duo Familien Kvistad and also features "an abundance of wood".

While window seats are usually placed under large windows, here the designers chose to add one underneath the smaller, rectangular kitchen window. The long bench is made from ash and has practical storage space hidden underneath a dark green cushion seat.

Find out more about The Yellow House ›

This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen's archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring interiors created on a budget, immersive saunas and light-filled kitchens.

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Architect Tariq Khayyat has designed The Fold, a sculptural housing development in Dubai that features curved facades and aims to create a "communal oasis" behind a main road.

The Fold, which comprises 28 terraced townhouses, is located along the large Al Wasl Road in Dubai's Jumeirah district and was designed to have a more organic feel than neighbouring developments.

"We wanted to plant a tulip field on the Al Wasl Road," Tariq Khayyat Design Partners founder Khayyat told Dezeen.

"So when you drive along, suddenly you have this tulip field. Each base has a single-stem tulip."

Tariq Khayyat Design Partners (TKDP) used glass-reinforced plastic (GRP) to create a twisting, abstract "tulip" shape on each facade, which gives the buildings a sculptural look.

"The bespoke 12-metre double-curved GRP components of the villas' envelope are not a mere aesthetic addition, yet serve as connecting points coherently adjoining the volumes, giving continuity to the overall ensemble," the studio said.

The homes all have three to four bedrooms and back onto each other along a 200-metre plot of land, a layout that also affected the studio's design decisions.

"We stepped the buildings so there's a bit of privacy as well, there's balconies," Khayyat said.

"We had to work closely with the contractors on the interfaces because the white part of the facade is GRP. The brown at the back is glass fibre-reinforced concrete (GRC) and the louvres are powder-coated aluminium."

TKDP also aimed to create the shape of the development as a "linear spine".

"It's repetitive but if you come during the day at certain times, the shading casting on the tulips is beautiful," Khayyat said.

To Khayyat, it was important for The Fold to become its own, quieter space behind the busy Al Wasl Road.

"For any piece of architecture, we are placemakers; as architects, we have a responsibility," he explained. "So we wanted to make this project as a kind of communal oasis apart from the main road."

The intention was also to create a different kind of architecture than that, which people often associate with Dubai.

"I think people are sick of going vertical in Dubai and skyscrapers," Khayyat said. "I think people are looking for a bit of an experience and identity."

The client was initially worried that the renders would be unrealistic but Khayyat says the end result ended up being very close to the original visuals.

"The client was scared – rightly," Khayyat said. "They're beautiful renders but quite often architects do fantastic renders and then you see the final quality..."

"The best compliment I received when I presented this project to potential clients was when they asked me 'So, where are the actual photos?' and I said 'These are the actual photos'."

The Fold was unveiled during Dubai Design Week, which also featured a number of biomaterial installations, including this year's Abwab pavilion Of Palm by Abdalla Almulla.

The photography is by Luke Hayes.

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Danish studio Cobe has completed The Opera Park, a "much-needed green oasis" in Copenhagen's inner harbour that features six gardens and a flower-shaped greenhouse.

Described by Cobe as a "lush, green park island", the 21,500-square-metre landscape occupies a green lawn on a former industrial site adjacent to The Royal Danish Opera.

The Opera Park, which opened on the island in October, features six different gardens: the North American forest, the Danish oak forest, the Nordic forest, the Oriental garden, the English garden and the subtropical garden.

The subtropical garden is located inside a flower-shaped central greenhouse, which also houses a cafe and the entrance to an underground car park that can hold 300 cars.

"The Opera Park is a place where nature comes first amidst Copenhagen's bustling urban development," Cobe founder Dan Stubbergaard said.

"With its six gardens, winding paths and carefully crafted viewpoints, the project seizes elements of Copenhagen's historical, romantic gardens to tackle today's challenges such as decline in biodiversity and water management," he added.

"Designed for recreation, relaxation and contemplation, the park provides the city with a much-needed green oasis," continued Stubbergaard.

"As you stroll through the park, you get the feeling of having left the city and being immersed in nature, almost forgetting you are in the middle of the dense city center."

More than 600 trees, 40,000 bulb plants and 80,000 herbaceous bushes and perennials are planted on the garden island, including 223 unique local and exotic plants.

The aim was to include a wide variety of species to encourage birds and insects to find shelter and food in The Opera Park.

Cobe's landscape design is intended as a nod to the nearby opera.

"Like an opera stage, the park is a composed landscape with a foreground, a middle ground and a background," Stubbergaard explained.

"The 80,000 plants and 600 trees are placed to naturally create a scenic setting facing the harbor," he added. "The terrain and trees are tallest where they create the background, and lowest in the foreground towards the harbor."

Visitors to the park can walk across to The Royal Danish Opera house, which is located on an adjacent island, via a landscaped bridge with a covered walkway. This is designed by Cobe as an "organically shaped glass structure" and features a hovering roof.

The Opera Park also holds a reflecting pool, a water lily pond and a fountain. Underground water reservoirs are designed to store rainwater that can be used to irrigate the greenhouse.

Cobe designed the park with an elevated terrain to protect it from flooding in the case of heavy rainfall or if the water levels in the harbour increase significantly. It also features rain beds to manage rainwater runoff, while the greenhouse and landscaped bridge have green roofs to capture rainwater.

The park and its buildings are powered by solar panels on the roof of the nearby opera building roof.

The Opera Park is the latest project to be designed for Copenhagen's harbour.

Danish architecture studio BIG recently announced that its own office is nearing completion in the harbour and the city is planning to build an artificial island, Lynetteholm, in the harbour to protect it from rising water.

The photography is by Francisco Tirado.

Project credits: 

Architect and landscape architect: Cobe
Engineers: Vita, Via Trafik, DBI and Lüchninger Meyer Hermansen
Contractors: Hansson og Knudsen, Bauer, Redtz Glas og Façade, HSM Industri, GK Danmark, Bravida Danmark, Høyrup & Clemmesen, KONE, Phønix Tag, Jakon, Areo, Terrazzo.dk, Raadvad Maleren, Snedkerierne, OKNygaard, Palmproject Europe, Scanview Systems, Zurface, Retail Reflexions, Vector Foiltech

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The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has refused a planning application for the Populous-designed spherical music venue MSG Sphere London, as it would have caused "unacceptable harm to hundreds of residents".

Khan directed the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) to refuse the planning application for the MSG Sphere London because of its "unacceptable" negative impact on residents in Stratford, east London, where it was set to be built.

"London is open to investment from around the world and Sadiq wants to see more world-class, ambitious, innovative entertainment venues in our city," a spokesperson for the mayor of London told Dezeen.

"But as part of looking at the planning application for the MSG Sphere, the mayor has seen independent evidence that shows the current proposals would result in an unacceptable negative impact on local residents."

"Significant concerns" about size of MSG Sphere London

The Greater London Authority (GLA) had commissioned an expert review by global engineering firm WSP, which it said "identified significant errors and omissions in the applicant's assessment."

A note from the report stated that the illuminated sphere, together with artificial lighting within the development, would have "significant adverse effects" for those living in nearby buildings.

"Officers identified unacceptable harm to hundreds of residents, including in the amenity of at least 33 homes in the New Garden Quarter residential development; 28 homes in the Legacy Tower/Stratford Central; and 177 student rooms in the Unite student accommodation building," it said.

The note also stated there were "significant concerns" about the MSG Sphere's height, massing and bulk. It was also concerned that due to its high energy usage, the building would not be sustainable.

The proposed development "would result in a bulky, unduly dominant and incongruous form of development, which would fail to respect the character and appearance of this part of the town centre and the site's wider setting," the report stated.

"In addition, the proposed design concept is a highly energy intensive use, does not achieve a high sustainability standard, and does not constitute good and sustainable design."

Sphere Entertainment to concentrate on "forward-thinking cities"

A spokesperson for the MSG Sphere operator Sphere Entertainment told Dezeen that the company is disappointed in the decision.

"While we are disappointed in London's decision, there are many forward-thinking cities that are eager to bring this technology to their communities," the spokesperson said. "We will concentrate on those."

The LLDC will now wait for the UK secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities Michael Gove's decision on whether or not he will call in the application.

The MSG Sphere in Stratford would be 90 metres tall and 120 metres wide and was set to be designed by architecture studio Populous. Its application was previously placed on hold by Gove, who issued an Article 31 holding directive for the project in February.

The proposal had received criticism when it was first proposed, with 852 objections submitted in opposition to the project. In total, 355 responses were received supporting the proposal, which was designed for the organisation that runs New York's Madison Square Garden (MSG).

It would be the second MSG Sphere to be built and follow the MSG Sphere Las Vegas, which was recently shown covered in swirling lava visuals ahead of its opening.

The image is courtesy of Madison Square Garden Company.

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Saudi Arabian mega project Neom has revealed its latest region, Epicon, a tourist destination on the Gulf of Aqaba that will feature two jagged skyscrapers by 10 Design.

Set to be built on the Gulf of Aqaba coast in northwestern Saudi Arabia, Epicon is the sixth of Neom's planned 10 regions to be announced.

It will be designed by architecture studio 10 Design and comprise two jagged towers, one measuring 225 and the other 275 metres, which will contain 41 hotel and luxury residences.

The steel-clad skyscrapers are visualised as being interconnected by horizontal levels that hold an outdoor pool, among other spaces.

The region will also be home to the Epicon resort, which will have 120 rooms as well as 45 beach villas. Among the amenities on offer will be a beach club, spa and restaurants.

"Designed as a gateway to the future, Epicon provides an opportunity to escape the stresses of the everyday," Neom said.

"Whether relaxing at the beach club, visiting the spa for bespoke wellness treatments, exploring the surrounding nature, participating in one of the many watersports on offer, or dining at destination restaurants for an unforgettable culinary experience, Epicon has been conceived to meet the full array of guest and resident needs."

The resort will also have a library and a gym as well as pools, lounges and workspaces.

Epicon was created by 10Design

The unveiling of Epicon follows the announcement of Neom's fifth region, Leyja, which will also house high-end boutique hotels and include designs by Shaun Killa, Mario Cucinella and Chris van Duijn.

The Neom project will contain 10 regions in total, including the controversial The Line project – a linear mega-city that will be 170 kilometres long. It will also include an octagon-shaped port city named Oxagon, the mirrored mega-city The Line and an island resort called Sindalah.

However, the project has been criticised on human rights grounds, including by human rights organisation ALQST which reported that three men were sentenced to death after being "forcibly evicted" from the Neom site.

Earlier this year experts from the UN Human Rights Council expressed "alarm" over the imminent executions. Saudi Arabia responded to the UN by denying abuses had taken place.

In an opinion piece for Dezeen about The Line mega project, Dana Cuff wondered "Why would architects let themselves be so vitiated?"

The images are courtesy of Neom.

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Danish design studio Spacon & X has carved a cave out of cardboard and installed a bare tree in the Lynk & Co car showroom in Düsseldorf, Germany.

The studio aimed for the 400-square-metre space to have more of an impact than the cars on show.

"The overall design is in intentional contrast to your average car dealership, with the spatial design as a louder experience than the actual product – the car," Spacon & X founding partner Svend Jacob Pedersen told Dezeen.

"The spatial design is hyper-eclectic, with a new immersive spatial experience waiting to ambush you around each corner."

Lynk & Co describes its showrooms as "clubs" from which members can buy, lease or borrow a car, and the Düsseldorf space was designed not to look like a traditional showroom from the exterior.

Instead, purple lights, clothes on hangers and a corner with a colourful sofa makes the car dealership resemble a lifestyle store.

Once inside, customers are met by an unusual, cave-like space.

"The cave space is made of multiple plys of laser-cut sheets of cardboard," Pedersen said.

One car is always on display inside the dealership. This sits next to the cardboard cave, and is partly hidden behind a light chain curtain.

Spacon & X worked with multiple different materials, including bare wood and aluminium, to create the Lynk & Co space.

"With the very eclectic direction of the space, a wide palette of materials have been brought into play," Pedersen explained.

"To highlight a few – cardboard has been used for the cave, to create an unexpected balance between the immersive and organic expression of the cave and a very familiar, inexpensive material like cardboard," he added.

"We have used aluminium chain curtains to create a light transparent frame around the car on display."

The studio also created an organic feel for the Lynk & Co meeting room, which has an all-wood interior with a pale tree at its centre.

"Another material to highlight is the all-raw pine meeting room with an actual tree stripped of the bark, underlining our appreciation of raw untreated materiality," Pedersen said.

For the main space, Spacon & X designed a "melting" corner, with a streetlight that has bent over and chairs that appear to float into a puddle on the floor.

The showroom's "disco" bathroom has a bright-red colour palette with an op-art style black-and-white patterned floor that resembles an interior in a David Lynch film, while a fitting room has been filled with large gold baubles that appear to sprout from a wall.

"Our spatial expression creates a tapestry of diverse scenarios within the Düsseldorf store, from serene conversations to otherworldly caves," the studio said.

"We seamlessly blend contrasting elements, from warm wooden meeting rooms to rough concrete displays, and from melting furniture lounges to dazzling champagne fitting rooms."

Spacon & X has previously designed the interior for restaurant Noma's burger spinoff POPL and created a kiosk-like design library for its own Copenhagen HQ.

The photography is courtesy of Lynk & Co.

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Emirati architect Abdalla Almulla made the Of Palm pavilion at Dubai Design Week by using all parts of the palm tree, including ceilings constructed from woven leaf mats and palm-wood furniture.

The architect was commissioned to create this year's Abwab pavilion, which is named after the Arabic word for "doors" and is the central installation at the annual Dubai Design Week festival.

He aimed for Of Palm, which was made from local palm trees, to draw attention to how sustainable architecture and design can help humanity find solutions to mitigate climate change.

The resulting pavilion was almost entirely made out of wood and palm fronds, with bark-clad trunks acting as pillars to support a ceiling made from patterned palm frond mats.

"In some parts, we had to use reinforcement," Almulla told Dezeen. "But other than that it is entirely made out of palm wood."

Darker wood panelling made from the tree was used to create furniture pieces for the circular pavilion including stools and display cases.

"The flooring is also made out of the wood and the furniture as well," Almulla added. "We just stained it in different colours so it can 'pop' around the pavilion."

As well as wanting to use a sustainable material, the designer also chose to make the pavilion out of palm trees because of their ubiquitousness in the United Arab Emirates.

The country has been using parts of the tree for shelter, food and energy for centuries.

"I think it's important in various ways because of the way it was used in architecture to build houses, for food, for fuel and many other things like creating ropes," Almulla said.

"I like this notion of using one source to create many things," he added. "And that's what I wanted to recreate here, to think: how can we take that but with today's tools, how can we repurpose it in different ways?"

While the pavilion is temporary and will be taken down now that Dubai Design Week has come to an end, Almulla hopes that the work that went into the installation can be built on in future projects.

"This was an initial research and experimentation with this material, at least for the furniture part, and whatever we have learned this time around we'll take and develop more, for sure," he concluded.

Of Palm was just one of several pavilions made from biomaterials at this year's Dubai Design Festival, including a teahouse made from food waste.

Also in Dubai, local studio Roar has created a showroom for rug brand Jaipur Rugs that features Escher-esque stepwells.

Dezeen was a media partner of Dubai Design Week, which took place from 7 to 12 November. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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This week on Dezeen, the architecture, interiors, design and Designers of the Year shortlists for the 2023 Dezeen Awards China were unveiled.

In the architecture category, 34 studios including AIM Architecture and Heatherwick Studio will battle for first place, with projects including a Tibetan museum (above, by And Studio), while the interiors shortlist of 28 studios features projects by FOG Architecture, UNStudio and more.

Seventeen studios made the design shortlist, including Sunon, Yann Design Studio and Leapx Design, while Mario Tsai, OPEN Architecture and Ziin Life are among the 18 firms competing to be named one of the Designers of the Year.

Two different design events took place in the United Arab Emirates this week, starting with Dubai Design Week where we rounded up five innovative installations made from biomaterials.

In nearby Sharjah, Dezeen editor Tom Ravenscroft reported live from the preview of the second edition of the Sharjah Architecture Triennale.

He also interviewed its curator, architect Tosin Oshinowo, about how the event aims to show the positives of architecture created using scarce resources.

Our Designing for Disaster series continued this week, with disasters expert Ilan Kelman sharing advice for designers and architects on averting catastrophe.

The series also featured an interview with Arup's Dima Zogheib on how to curb deadly heatwaves and a conversation with Mehmet Kalyoncu, the architect coordinating efforts to rebuild following the Turkey-Syria earthquake.

Two architecture roundups caught readers' attention this week. Architect Thomas Heatherwick selected 10 "humanised" buildings for Dezeen, including designs by Peter Barber and Ricardo Bofill, following his book on "humanised" architecture.

The organisers of the Where in the World is Tashkent conference chose 10 significant Soviet modernist buildings in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan.

In design news, the five winners of the 2023 Earthshot Prize were revealed. Among them were GRST, for its water-soluble binder for EV batteries, and S4S Technologies, which aims to provide female small-hold farmers in rural India with solar-powered conduction dryers.

At Designart Tokyo, designers used neglected materials including tatami-resin, driftwood and textile waste to create furniture, sculpture and lighting.

Popular projects this week included a cedar-clad home in Los Angeles, a Hungarian summer house and a glazed extension to a cottage in the shadow of a castle.

Our latest lookbooks featured furry walls that beg to be touched and sculptural wooden staircases.

This week on Dezeen

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week's top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don't miss anything.

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Japanese architect Tadao Ando has unveiled the design for Il Teatro at Aljada, a cylindrical performing arts centre in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, that will overlook a sunken water feature.

The performing arts centre, which is being created for developer Arada as part of its masterplan for the mixed-use Aljada development, will be made from concrete in line with Ando's signature style.

Measuring 24,155 square metres, Il Teatro at Aljada will contain a 2,000-seat auditorium, a boutique restaurant and a gallery, and host shows including theatre, opera, dance, art exhibitions, festivals and films.

The cylindrical building will be topped by a stacked, disc-shaped roof, with a smaller outbuilding featuring the same design.

Ando has designed Il Teatro at Aljada to be spread over two levels, with the lower level partly sunk into the ground.

A large arched opening will overlook a sunken water feature forming part of a two-level cultural plaza. This will let visitors enter the arts centre via concrete walkways leading across the water pools.

"Il Teatro at Aljada will leave a lasting, intergenerational impact through its emphasis on culture and art," Ando said.

"I have designed the central structure of the building to be round like the Earth as I wanted to create a new world inside it that will attract not only local people but visitors from around the globe."

The building, which is set to be completed in 2027, will be located on the main access road of the Naseej district that is being built as part of Aljada. It will be surrounded by greenery, with parks on both sides.

"Il Teatro at Aljada represents an impressive new attraction for Sharjah and the wider UAE and adds significantly to the list of museums, galleries, entertainment venues and other cultural spaces for which Sharjah is already well-known," Arada's vice chairman Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed bin Talal said.

"We're extremely proud to be working with Tadao Ando, who has a long record of designing exceptional public spaces that enthral and engage their visitors, and we look forward to working with him to bring his vision to life," he added.

The masterplan for Naseej comprises 19 buildings in total, including a hotel and a branded apartments complex. The wider Aljada project will be located close to Sharjah airport and also feature a cultural hub by Zaha Hadid Architects.

Il Teatro at Aljada will be Ando's second design in the United Arab Emirates. The architect has also designed another project for Arada, the Armani Beach Residences at Palm Jumeirah.

Other recent projects and events in Sharjah include an ice factory that has been converted into and arts venue and the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, which is currently taking place in the emirate and from which Dezeen is reporting live.

The images are courtesy of Arada.

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The latest edition of Dubai Design Week has launched with a series of biomaterial installations, including a teahouse made from food waste and a light installation made from loofahs.

Located in the purpose-bulti Design District in Dubai's desert, the annual design week showcases projects by a cohort of local and international designers.

This year, there was a noticeable trend for the many temporary installations that dot the festival area to be constructed from biomaterials – materials derived from living organisms such as plants, animals and fungi.

These ranged from common ones, including wood and paper, to more experimental materials.

While some were created purely as a piece of decorative design, most were intended to function as an example of how biomaterials can be used to create more sustainable, functional structures.

Read on for a roundup of five installations made from biomaterials at Dubai Design Week 2023:

Arabi-An Tea House by Mitsubishi Jisho Design

Designed by Japanese studio Mitsubishi Jisho Design, the Arabi-An Tea House was made using local food waste and aims to bring people together by hosting tea ceremonies in the purpose-built structure.

Constructed out of paper and food waste, the pavilion features joint connectors made from tea and grapes. These organic materials were dried, turned into a powder and then heat-pressed into moulds made in collaboration with a Japanese metal-alloy crafter.

"We collect waste from factories, food they can't sell, and it is ground into powder," co-designer De Yuan Kang told press at the launch of the installation.

"One thing that we want to emphasise is that we have not added any other materials to this, it's just pure food waste."

The pavilion is the latest in a series by Mitsubishi Jisho Design after showcasing a food-waste teahouse in Venice called Veneti-An. The studio aims to eventually use the technique to create larger or more permanent structures.

"This is a very good opportunity because we do it on a smaller scale to test things that can be done on a bigger scale next time," Kang said.

Pulp Fractions by Tee Vee Eff

Plenty of visitors stopped to look at and touch the colourful Pulp Fractions installation by Tee Vee Eff, which is made from discarded paper and cardboard.

The design aims to draw attention to the fact that packaging makes up more than one-third of our waste, according to the studio, which used mainly delivery boxes and paper bags to create the installation.

These waste materials were pressed and dried, turning them into a material that the studio says is both lightweight and durable. This was then shaped into stackable, bright-red modules using a custom mould and finally placed on top of one another to create a playful open pavilion.

"The modules contain grooves, protrusions and extrusions that allow them to be stacked," Tee Vee Eff said. "Thus a new sculptural form is created that is both symbolic in its message as well as functional, offering respite in the public realm."

The Future Will Be Sown by Made in Earth Collective

Based in Bangalore and along the Kaveri belt in India, Made in Earth Collective's installation at Dubai Design Week is an example of how everyday organic materials can find new use.

The light installation – the only non-pavilion on this list – is made from dried loofah and gives the common material a decorative feel. The designers sourced the tropical fruit, which can also be dried and turned into a sponge for washing, after it was dried and its seeds removed but before it was composted.

The dried loofahs were sown together, creating large light panels that showcase the rough-hewn texture of the plant. These are complemented by minimalist wooden benches made from coconut wood with a natural decorative pattern.

The collective, which normally works with stone, has recently been branching out into other biomaterials.

"We have been on a journey to explore beyond those minerals and look at materials which can be regenerated, which can be grown, and which can be used to create spaces," engineer Jeremie Gaudin said.

Made in Earth Collective collaborates with local villagers and is currently working in the region of the Deccan Plateau in southern India but hopes to expand the project.

"We've started making connections only in southern India for now, because that's how much we have been able to cover, but the whole of India has incredible potential material that is just waiting to be explored," architect Shruthi Ramakrishna told Dezeen.

Naseej by AlZaina Lootah and Sahil Rattha Singh

The Naseej pavilion – Arabic for "to weave" – has a ziggurat shape that was informed by Emirati craftsmanship and draws on traditional weaving patterns from the area, as well as the "elegant geometry of palm tree leaves", its designers said.

Created by Emirati designer AlZaina Lootah together with Indian architect Sahil Rattha Singh, the structure is comprised of multiple pieces of reused and recycled wood and was designed as a space for contemplation.

It is dismantlable and reusable to minimise waste.

"Naseej is produced in a manner which, once dismantled, allows all the material to be upcycled for future use, ensuring that the pavilion leaves no trace behind," the designers said.

The Altostrata – Therme Pavilion by Arthur Mamou-Mani

London-based designer Arthur Mamou-Mani took his Therme Pavilion, originally designed for the Sibiu International Theatre Festival in the medieval town of Sibiu in Romania, to experience the desert sand at Dubai's Design District.

The pavilion is made from sugar cane that was fermented into lactic acid in order to create polylactic acid (PLA) – a bioplastic that Mamou-Mani 3D-printed into walls for the pavilion.

He aimed to test how the material, which biodegrades when industrially composted, would react to different climates. Mamou-Mani believes it could be the future of plastic, eventually replacing the plastic used for water bottles and other single-use products.

"I first discovered it through 3D printing because it has a low melting temperature, like 200 degrees, but actually, it's a really great material," he told Dezeen.

"If it was used for water bottles, it wouldn't have Bisphenol A," he added. "When you burn it, it's not carcinogenic, and it doesn't leave microplastics in you. So the more I dig into it, the more I see a potential to replace plastic."

The photography is courtesy of Dubai Design Week unless otherwise stated.

Dezeen is a media partner of Dubai Design Week, which takes place from 7 to 12 November. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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Stockholm design studio Crème Atelier has created the Soft Serve lamp, which is 3D-printed to resemble "swirly ice cream" and comes in sorbet colours.

The light, which has been shortlisted in the lighting design category of Dezeen Awards 2023, draws on pastries and other desserts.

"We find that baked goods and desserts have very captivating shapes and forms," Crème Atelier co-founder Jacqueline Kessidis told Dezeen.

"We were very intrigued by the creamy organic shapes of meringue and soft serve ice cream," she added. "Soft serve lamp is inspired by the swirly ice creams and we like to compare the 3D printer with an ice cream machine."

The Soft Serve lamp was made from a bioplastic made from recycled food packaging, which is then 3D-printed to create the swirling shapes.

The lamps are made to order and this production method is both quicker and more sustainable than mass-production, according to Kessidis.

"Our starting point was to find a sustainable material and thats how we found our way to 3D printing as a production method," she said.

"The biggest advantage is definitely the fact that you can go from an idea to holding the physical object in your hand just hours later."

The method also enables the brand to produce the lights itself in its Stockholm studio.

"3D printing enables us to have our own local production and be very agile," Kessidis added.

"But most importantly, it's very beneficial from a sustainability viewpoint – avoiding the negative environmental impact that comes with mass production such as material spill and excess overseas shipping."

The Soft Serve lamp, which can be had in both a ceiling and a table lamp version, comes in a variety of colours informed by ice cream, including pastel pinks and blues and a vibrant yellow.

"Our first collection was focused on soothing color shades inspired by ice cream flavors such as Vanilla Bean, Wild Strawberry and Matcha," Kessidis said.

"Later on we added some more vibrant hues inspired by sorbet," she added. "Each lamp also comes with a warm white light source which gives it this very calming light."

Other innovative lamps on Dezeen include a modern lava lamp designed by Sabine Marcelis and Camille Walala and a lamp made from air-raid shells from the Ukraine war.

The photography is by Alexandra Svärdh and Bosse Lind.

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Architecture studio Foster + Partners has revealed a masterplan for an urban centre near Hangzhou in China, which will be based around a skyscraper-flanked spine.

Based in Yuhang, one of 10 urban districts in Hangzhou, the masterplan will be laid out around a central axis that the studio described as a "leafy spine". It will be located alongside the "infinity loop" skyscraper being designed by Danish studio BIG for OPPO.

"The masterplan is organised around a 2.5-kilometre central axis that runs the full length of the site, from north to south," Foster + Partners head of urban design Bruno Moser said.

"The axis intersects with different bodies of water, generating five distinctive zones with unique characteristics. Each zone celebrates the city's relationship with water in its various forms, from streams and lakes to canals and wetlands."

The central axis will be flanked by towers and terminate in a series of pavilions extending above a lake.

The masterplan also includes cultural venues such as galleries, an exhibition hall and a public library, which will be located along the axis. Renders also show a new stadium.

The studio aimed to create a "busy urban centre with a dynamic skyline" by increasing the building density around public transport hubs and stepping up the size of buildings towards the central axis.

Transport solutions for the city will include shared micromobility, autonomous pods, shuttles, and water transport options as well as more traditional infrastructure.

The Hangzhou centre will also comprise residential buildings as well as offices, sports facilities, nurseries and a sports centre.

According to the studio, the masterplan is low-carbon and will include sustainable strategies such as rainwater reuse and passive massive.

"We are delighted to have won the competition to design a new centre for Hangzhou, a beautiful city with nature at its heart," Foster + Partners head of studio Gerard Evenden said.

"Our design stemmed from extensive public consultation – and is all about developing a sustainable new urban quarter, which establishes new connections with nature and makes it a part of people’s everyday lives," he added.

Foster + Partner also recently revealed that it is creating the post-earthquake masterplan for Hatay in Turkey together with Danish studio BIG.

In 2022, the studio unveiled its first masterplan in Vietnam, a design for a new city in Ho Chi Minh City.

The images are courtesy of Foster + Partners.

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Sportswear brand Nike has launched the Nike Swoosh 1 trainer, a colourful Flyknit shoe for young children that is made from 80 per cent recycled materials and designed to feel like "cruising around barefoot".

The shoe, which is being released globally, was constructed to "help support our earliest walkers", Nike said.

"Promoting natural gait development is crucial for early walkers," the brand added.

"Research shows that our lifelong gait pattern begins to solidify as early as five to six months after we learn to walk. Our feet need to bend, flex, grip and splay in order to develop how they're naturally intended to."

Nike Swoosh 1 features the brand's seamless Flyknit upper, which aims to support small feet, with an outsole made from thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) that was constructed to be grippy and provide traction and durability when walking.

It was made from 80 per cent recycled materials, according to the brand, and has a colourful design with a deep blue outsole and an upper covered in dappled blue, yellow and red hues.

Bright red was also used as an accent colour, while the brand's signature swoosh logo was rendered in an oversized childlike style in a blue hue that matches the sole.

The shoe, which also comes in a black-and-white version, is closed using practical Velcro tabs.

The seamless knitted upper means the Nike Swoosh 1 is very flexible, which the brand says makes it suitable for young children.

"The shoe can bend in all directions, helping to provide kids the mobility they need to mimic the feeling of cruising around barefoot," Nike said.

"Fun fact: Babies have more nerve endings concentrated in their feet than in any other part of their body."

The Nike Swoosh 1 is the first-ever Nike Kids shoe to receive the American Podiatric Medical Association's Seal of Acceptance, which is granted to products that encourage good foot health.

The trainer, which was designed for children aged nine to 36 months, also has a wide toe box to let toes naturally splay and flex.

Other unusual Nike designs include the glueless ISPA Link trainers, which can be easily disassembled, and the hands-free GO FlyEase sneakers, which were designed for the user to just step into.

The photography is courtesy of Nike.

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Dutch studio Barde vanVoltt has used rippled mirrored glass, boulders and pebbles to create the interior of Calico Club, a retail store located in a century-old farmhouse in the Netherlands.

The studio aimed to combine Dutch heritage with Japanese tradition to create an "unexpected" but never overwhelming interior for the store, which is located in the village of Nistelrode.

"The main objective was to pay respect to the monumental 100-year-old farmhouse that Calico Club moved into," Barde vanVoltt co-founder Valérie Boerma told Dezeen.

"The challenge was to find ways to add materials we could remove easily to keep the original state of the construction as it was," she added.

Boerma and her co-founder Bart van Seggelen added several organic details to the space, which has been divided into different sections.

"The floor plan is shaped like a Japanese zen garden and its traditional elements of rock, water, and plants have been interpreted in more modern and abstract ways," Van Seggelen explained.

On polished concrete flooring, the studio placed whitewashed boulders that are used as retail displays and created elevated pebble islands above which garments are hung.

Barde vanVoltt also designed matching islands made from walnut wood. The same warm wood is also used for the fitting rooms, cabinets and counters.

Materiality is an important aspect of the project, with rippled mirrored glass added in a nod to the water features that are often included in zen gardens.

"Rippled mirrored glass and silver colour was to create contrast and depth," Boerma said.

"The rippled glass keeps changing from wherever you look at it, this added an extra layer to the space, much like water, that is always changing," she added.

The aim was for the interior to "nourish creative flow, harmony and support it with a screen-free store policy to create calm in an unpredictable world," the studio said.

At the back of the store, a tree sits inside a round glass bench behind a metal wall divider.

"Encased in a circular glass bench, the tree and the fashion collection opposite is given its moment thanks to a sheet of curved, rolled metal to separate it from the fitting rooms," Van Seggelen said.

"And at the front of the store, customers are shown the best of the collection with floating glass display cylinders filled with hay."

The pared-back designs and shiny materials inside the store contrast against its exterior, a rustic red-brick farmhouse.

"With every project we do, we feel the responsibility to search for high quality, natural materials that are produced in a sustainable way," Boerma said.

"These materials and heritage come with earthy tones and it suited well with our Japanese reference," Van Seggelen added.

Calico Club has been shortlisted in the retail interior (large) category of Dezeen Awards 2023.

Previous projects by Barde vanVoltt include a former garage in Amsterdam that was transformed into a family home.

Other recent projects in the Netherlands include an underground house and a wood-lined home in Zwaag.

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Norwegian studio Snøhetta drew on textiles and tailoring for its design of the Airside skyscraper, which has opened at the old Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong.

The project is formed of five interconnected glazed buildings in a stepped arrangement, with the lowest volumes located next to the Kai Tak river.

These lower volumes form Airside's base and merge with two towers, the tallest measuring 213 metres.

Snøhetta also designed landscaped plazas and roof terraces for Airside, which sits above the Kai Tak MTR station in the district that formerly held Kai Tak, Hong Kong's international airport from 1925 to 1998.

Inside, the lower buildings house 60,000 square metres of retail space, while the tower holds 100,000 square metres of office space.

The project's design is informed by Hong Kong's legacy of textile manufacturing and draws on different aspects of tailoring.

Airside's shape is formed of chamfered edges in reference to textile cutting, while the fluted glass that covers part of the facade is a nod to fabric draping.

"The building negotiates scales ranging from the urban to the human," said Snøhetta partner Robert Greenwood.

"It shapes a meaningful, inviting, and vibrant public realm for the thousands of people that will pass through it each day while bringing a new icon to the skyline and a focal point for the district," Greenwood continued.

Airside has received a LEED Platinum certificate and is the first private development in Hong Kong to receive five of the highest green building certifications, according to Snøhetta.

Inside, a retail atrium has spandrels decorated with a custom-designed woven textile that was made from upcycled plastic bottles.

Snøhetta aimed to create "inviting pedestrian landscapes" by using undulating and folding shapes throughout the interior, which features sloping walkways and multiple plazas.

Airside, which opened in September, has more than 1,350 square metres of photovoltaic panels on its roof and also links to the Kai Tak District Cooling System, which uses chilled seawater from a central plant for climate control.

It also features urban farms and a landscape design with a focus on native species, as well as water features that help against the urban heat-island effect.

Other recent projects by Snøhetta include an extension for the Norwegian-American museum in Iowa and an elliptical planetarium in France.

The photography is by Kevin Mak.

Project credits:

Architect: Snøhetta
Executive architect: Ronald Lu & Partners (Hong Kong) Limited
Landscape architect: Snøhetta
Structural, geotechnical and civil engineer: Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong Limited
Building services engineer: Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong Limited / J. Roger Preston Limited
Executive landscape architect: Urbis Limited
Quantity surveyor: Arcadis Hong Kong Limited
Building sustainability engineer: Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong Limited
Facade & BMU engineer: Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong Limited
Lighting designer: Lighting Planners Associates (HK) Limited
Main contractor: Hip Hing Construction Company Limited

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Our latest lookbook focuses on quiet luxury and features projects including a French hotel and a Swedish Grace apartment that exemplify the trend for discrete, yet sumptuous interiors.

Classic, hardwearing materials and simple, neutral colour palettes characterise these eight quiet luxury interiors, which convey an elegant feeling without being over-the-top.

Gleaming marble decorates bathrooms and hallways, while polished wood and soft, tactile textiles add an exquisite touch to bedrooms and living rooms.

To create these quiet luxury interiors, designers have focused on the contrast and texture of different materials and added details such as sprigs of flowers and timeless designer furniture pieces.

This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen's archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring airy loft conversions, kitchen islands with waterfall countertops and art-filled living rooms.

Clermont residence, India, by FADD Studio

This multi-generational home in Bangalore, India, is a prime example of how the right material choice can make an apartment feel sophisticated without needing to splurge on many additional features.

Designer FADD Studio clad the bathroom in veiny marble for a striking effect, underlined by the contrast with the dark wood floor of one of the six bedrooms.

Find out more about Clermont residence ›

Republique apartment, France, by Hauvette & Madani

While this Paris apartment has a striking wine-red kitchen, the rest of the colour palette was kept neutral, but clever material use has given it a decidedly upmarket feel.

In the dining room, chromed cantilevered dining chairs have been combined with a marble table. A lustrous herringbone parquet floor adds a natural feel, while a playful modern chandelier in smoke-coloured glass completes the interior.

Find out more about Republique apartment ›

Regina Experimental, France, by Dorothée Meilichzon

Located in a Belle Epoque-era hotel in the French seaside town of Biarritz, the Regina Experimental hotel has a number of luxurious touches.

In this bathroom, combining the colour of the doorframe and shelving with tiles in the same hue creates a coherent, stylish interior.

Fluted panelling at the top of the walls, classic porcelain sinks and shell-shaped soap holders add a nautical vibe.

Find out more about Regina Experimental ›

Habitat 100, Sweden, by Note Design Studio

A calm hallway with patterned marble floors welcomes visitors into Habitat 100 in Stockholm, which was designed to resemble the original interior of the 1920s apartment.

Note Design Studio also used greyed wood and stained oak to create a quietly luxurious feel inside the flat, which is located in a building built during the Swedish Grace era, a romantic, refined style movement.

Find out more about Habitat 100 ›

Mayfair residence, UK, by Child Studio

The interior of this Mayfair house was informed by fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent's home and features a number of custom-made pieces.

These are combined with mid-century modern furniture, including a glassware cabinet and coffee table in dark, glossy wood. A marble side table and a brass wall sconce add more interesting material contrasts.

Find out more about Mayfair residence ›

Twentieth House, US, by Woods + Dangaran

Twentieth House, a three-storey home in California, features a bedroom with a material mix that conveys a sense of restrained elegance.

Soft brown velvet seating along with a rug colour match the panelled wooden wall, creating a cohesive and relaxing interior. A modern chandelier adds a frivolous touch.

Find out more about Twentieth House ›

Dumbo loft, US, by Crystal Sinclair Designs

Interiors studio Crystal Sinclair Designs renovated this loft apartment in Brooklyn's Dumbo neighbourhood (above and main image) to retain its industrial look while adding some "European flair".

The result is a home that feels both cosy and elegant, with a practical mezzanine floor and stylish details, including a rough-hewn vase and a classic mushroom-shaped Artemide Nessino table lamp.

Find out more about Dumbo loft ›

Fisherman's Cottage, Australia, by Studio Prineas

This former fisherman's cottage in Sydney was extended with a concrete tower. Inside the home, a mirrored bathroom feels both industrial and upmarket at the same time.

Veined green marble was used for the deep bath, while minimalist white sinks and chrome taps add a modernist touch.

Find out more about Fisherman's Cottage ›

This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen's archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring airy loft conversions, kitchen islands with waterfall countertops and art-filled living rooms.

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Production designer Jack Fisk built a railway station from scratch and researched historic documents to recreate early 20th-century Oklahoma in his sets for Martin Scorsese's new film Killers of the Flower Moon.

Fisk has worked in the film industry for more than 50 years and collaborated with a number of big-name directors, including Roger and Gene Korman, Brian de Palma and Terrence Malick, for whom he built a house for the film Days of Heaven in less than four weeks.

Killers of the Flower Moon marks the first time Fisk has worked with Scorsese, who reached out to the designer because of his experience of building outdoor sets.

"It was exciting when he called me on this project – my experience has been, since Days of Heaven, building sets out on location," Fisk told Dezeen on a video call from Los Angeles, which he was visiting to attend the premiere of Killers of the Flower Moon.

"He wanted to tell the story. He wanted to shoot it in Oklahoma, he wanted it wide, big, like a Western."

Killers of the Flower Moon is based on the true story of how members of the Native American Osage Nation were systematically murdered in the 1920s after oil was discovered on their land, making them very wealthy but also making them targets.

It was shot in Oklahoma, with the city of Pawhuska in Osage County turned into Fairfax, where much of the story takes place.

Fisk, who had worked on another film in Pawhuska years earlier, already knew some of the background about the Osage Nation.

"I started investigating, and I went back to some of the first treaties around 1808 and 1825 and saw how the Osage were taken advantage of by our government, to move them around, to open land for European settlers," he said.

Fisk also investigated the backgrounds of the film's characters in order to build sets that would be historically accurate, including that of the central character Mollie Burkhart, played by Lily Gladstone.

"I wanted to figure out where Mollie lived in 1920," he explained. "Nobody knew, there was no record. But then I started going through the county records, and by the time the film started shooting, I found four of her houses."

Two of those were recreated in the film, including a house in Fairfax that Burkhart buys with her husband Ernest, played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

To recreate the town, Fisk looked at photographs from the time as well as fire insurance maps that stated what materials the buildings were made of.

"I was able to lay out the whole town, every building, for different years and how they evolved," he said.

"They gave us two blocks of decrepit buildings in Pawhuska that we could use for our town, and I started to try to integrate as much of the information I learned about Fairfax into these two blocks," Fisk added.

"At the end of the road, we put up a blue screen for CGI and when we were done, we were able to paint the prairie going off the town – today there are a lot more trees than there were back in 1920s."

An integral part of the Killers of the Flower Moon set was the Fairfax train station, which Fisk built from scratch.

"The train station was torn down, but I had some beautiful pictures of it," he said. "I found plans for that station in some old books about the Santa Fe Railroad and we were able to recreate it in a lot in Pawhuska."

"We put in 1,600 feet of train track," he added. "We built the train station to the plans of the original, and we brought in a steam locomotive and three Pullman cars from Arkansas and put them on the track."

Fisk also tore out the ceiling of an old appliance store, revealing clerestory windows and turning it into the light-filled pool hall and barber shop that is one of the film's central sets.

"I remembered, as a kid, getting my hair cut in the pool hall in a little town in the Midwest," Fisk said. "I said to Marty [Scorcese] that we could combine the pool hall and the barber shop – he loved the idea, and it became a really interesting set."

"All the people in there planning to get the Osage money looked out the window to see the Osage world going by, they knew who had money and who had lost it, and it was a great place for them to conspire."

The designer also painted about 40 houses to shoot one of the neighbourhoods in Fairfax. All the houses were originally white, the most common colour in the US after world war two, and didn't fit the colours from the 1920s colour charts that Fisk had bought from eBay.

"We told the house owners 'we'd like to paint two sides of your house in one of these colours, and when we're done shooting, we'll come back and either paint the other two sides the same colour, or we'll paint those two sides back to white'," Fisk said.

After filming was wrapped, only one house decided to go back to white.

For one of Mollie's houses, Fisk chose a yellow colour found in another of the buildings used for the film.

"I found that yellow in the Masonic Lodge, behind a wall," Fisk said. "There were some boards that colour and I took one to the painters and said, 'this would be a good colour for Mollie's house'."

It is these kinds of discoveries, based on research, that Fisk appreciates most about his work.

"It's an investigation, but it's exciting," he said. "You feel sort of like a detective, and you can't really design things until you get you get the knowledge of the research."

As well as the house in the city, Fisk and his team built Mollie's house in the Osage settlement town of Gray Horse and its surrounding environments.

"We built a piece of the Osage reservation, which she was looking at, and we built the cemetery, which was important because there were so many people ending up in the cemetery," he said.

Fisk also built an oil derrick from scratch, using the same plans for an 1896 derrick that he had used for Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood.

More oil derricks were added using CGI to create the right atmosphere for film character William Hale's ranch, which was also surrounded by cattle to give it the feel of a Western.

"Marty is from New York City, so he went crazy when he saw the prairie and cattle, he got so excited – it was like a kid in a candy store," Fisk said. "He wore those cows out!"

The team ended up building around 40 sets for Killers of the Flower Moon, which Fisk believes adds to the final result.

"It takes a different mindset to build in the environment, but I think the reward is that you really get a sense of time and place," he said.

Other recent films with impressive worldbuilding include Wes Anderson's Asteroid City and Greta Gerwig's Barbie.

The photography is courtesy of Apple TV+. Killers of the Flower Moon will be released in cinemas on 20 October. 

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Architecture studio Rever & Drage has created a stone jetty that slopes into the water of the Sundshopen lake as the latest viewpoint on one of Norway's national scenic routes.

The studio updated the previously under used and poorly maintained bathing spot on the Norwegian Scenic Route Helgelandskysten in the north east of the country, to create an intriguing visitor attraction that is served by an aluminium toilet with a "modern aesthetic".

Rever & Drage was informed by traditional sloping jetties to create the structure, which is both decorative and aims to provide a variety of functions.

"A jetty, or vorr in Norwegian – which means protecting – was traditionally built along the coast of Norway near the boathouses, to protect the boats from waves," Rever & Drage architect Tom Auger told Dezeen.

"At the same time, the fixed sloping deck lets you embark and disembark boats regardless of tides," he continued.

"At Sundshopen the jetty is multifunctional as recreation, exploring the water, fishing, diving, kayaking, getting out to deep water and more, as well as being an important motif on the beach."

The jetty was constructed from a timber framework, with pine used for the framing in the parts that would remain mostly dry and unbarked aspen in the parts that will be covered by the lake water.

The timber framework was filled with smaller stones, with 20-centimetre thick slate slabs, which were sourced from a local quarry, placed on top to form the walkway.

At the end of the jetty, larger stones jut out from the water, creating an eye-catching detail that can be used for jumping off.

"The bigger stones at the end, where the deep water begins, are both used for sitting and for jumping or diving out in the water and function as a barrier for younger kids," Auger said.

"The bigger stones are also visible as a motif at the end of the perspective as you approach the beach through the woods," he added.

As well as the jetty, the studio created a toilet building. Made from sandblasted aluminium, the block sits at the entrance to the beach and has a monolithic feel that .

"Aluminum was chosen for the construction of the toilet building for its modern aesthetic and durability," Auger explained. "The aluminium cladding is sandblasted with chalk to give it an even and clean expression."

"This expression is especially important at the start of the pathway to make people curious about what lies behind," he added.

The studio also created five benches from pine heartwood with milled grooves mounted on steel structures with triangular profiles. The refreshed area has become popular with visitors, according to the studio.

"The area opened just before summer and it seems to be well-received by both the local population and visitors," Auger said.

"The upgrades to the area and the addition of modern amenities like the toilet building, have made it an attractive destination for swimming, fishing, kayaking, picnics and local gatherings."

Other recent projects by Rever & Drage include a timber holiday cabin and a triangular toilet for another of Norway's Scenic Routes.

The photography is by Tom Auger.

Project credits:

Architects: Rever & Drage
Landscape: Rever & Drage AS feat. Eirik Dalland, Grindaker AS
Design team: Tom Auger, Martin Beverfjord, Eirik Lilledrange
Built by: OK Kristoffersen, Idar Flostrand, Torbjørn Prytz, Steinar Jørgensen

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Architecture studio Arsenit has designed Piil, a modular wood-and-steel holiday home elevated above the ground at the edge of a forest in Estonia.

The cantilevered house, which the studio describes as a treehouse, was made from steel and metal and was designed to balance on one leg above a wooden terrace.

It features a large cantilever that elevates the living spaces 4.25 metres above ground and creates a sheltered outdoor space.

Piil was informed by Estonia's observation towers, which are often placed in scenic locations, and assembled on-site.

"The architectural brief was for elevated accommodation — so at the start of the project four design options were explored, with only one involving a cantilever and the 'one-leg' approach, a sort of wild-card 'dream big' idea," Arsenit founder Arseni Timofejev told Dezeen.

"Further studies suggested this approach was not only feasible, but also had two key advantages: it reduced ground-level presence to a minimum, and allowed Piil to 'grow' taller by extending the 'leg' up by several levels — to elevate the accommodation further into the tree branches!"

The studio chose to construct the 19-square-metre building from a metal frame with timber cladding to create an organic feel alongside the nearby woodland.

"Using steel as the load-bearing truss-like-carcass minimised the building size – important for transporting modules – helped achieve a cantilevered structure, resulted in a system of modules for quick assembly on site, and could be done by the client, a metal manufacturer, in-house," Timofejev explained.

"At the same time, the aim of the project is to celebrate an escape into nature, so wood was a natural choice — that's why all the steel elements are painted black, to fade into the background and make the wood the main character."

Untreated, thermally modified pine by Estonian company Thermory was used for the exterior of the one-bedroom house.

"Over time, the pine cladding will weather gracefully to a silver-grey, helping the building blend in with its context," Timofejev said.

Inside, the building was "conceived as a large piece of joinery". Finished in white-washed oak, with vertical timber panelling to also reference treehouses, it has one main space with views out to the forest.

From the main sleeping area a staircase leads up to a mesh mezzanine that was designed as a space for Piil's visitors to relax and read with a view of the forest.

Piil, which was constructed off-site, was designed as a private retreat. It is the first of four similar buildings that are planned for the site, which will be rented out.

According to the architect, its modular design made it cheaper and safer to construct that traditional structures.

"The project is designed around the principle of modular pre-fabrication, with all the elements created off-site and quickly assembled in the scenic natural spot," Timofejev said.

"This approach results in a safer and more efficient working environment, reduces material waste, minimises cost and construction time."

Other recent projects in Estonia include a holiday home that references a surrounding forest and a cruise terminal building topped by a promenade.

The photography and video is by Yifan Liu.

Project credits:

Client and contractor: Levstal Group
Architect and lead designer: Arsenit
Structural engineers: SD Engineers, AVC Projekt OÜ
M&E consultants: AS Infragate Eesti, ICEkonsult OÜ, Pat-Pat Projekt OÜ
Joinery: ITB Interior OÜ

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Saudi Arabia's Neom project has announced Leyja, its fifth region, which will feature a mirrored hotel by Shaun Killa, a rock-shaped hotel by Mario Cucinella and a stepped cliffside hotel by Chris van Duijn.

The Leyja region will be located in an ancient valley that starts at the Gulf of Aqaba coast and is overhung by 400-metre-tall mountains.

Three architects have been tapped to design "luxury high-end boutique hotels" for the region, each with 40 rooms and suites, Neom said.

These will be placed along a route that follows the shape of the valley, beginning with the Adventure hotel designed by van Duijn, who is a partner at Dutch studio OMA.

The hotel will comprise a series of stepped volumes that cling to the rockside, forming cantilevered terraces and swimming pools.

Among its offerings will be a sky lounge, a wellness spa and a sky pool.

"Neom is founded on a very sustainable approach," van Duijn said in a video showcasing Leyja. "It's energy-neutral. It's carbon-neutral. The world needs to see how we can develop positive solutions for us to live in."

"Every building that is designed will be designed in respect and in balance with nature and the landscape," he added.

The Adventure hotel will be followed by the Oasis hotel, designed by Italian architect Cucinella as a cluster of geometric formations rising from the rock.

It will feature a mineral garden and hanging gardens, as well as an observation deck and a rooftop pool.

"In the last century, architecture was against nature, no?" Cucinella said. "Polluting cities, polluting people, polluting the air."

"Our work is to find again this friendship with nature," he added. "To design a building is a journey, from the dreams to the reality is the most difficult part."

Killa, of architecture studio Killa Design, will be creating Leyja's final offering, the Wellness hotel. It will comprise two vertical mirrored volumes facing each other and will have an entire floor dedicated to wellness.

Rooftop pools will crown the mirrored buildings.

"One of the greatest challenges is creating beautiful buildings that change emotion, that are timeless and sustainable," Killa said.

"It's our responsibility to build as such a light touch in the wadi that it's almost like a footprint hasn't landed."

Guests at Leyja's three hotels will be able to explore a 73-kilometre hiking trail to the Trojena ski resort, which is also being built as part of the wider Neom project, and take part in mountain and adventure sports.

According to Neom, 95 per cent of Leyja will be preserved for nature.

Neom will eventually have 10 regions in total, encompassing an area of around 10,200 square miles. It is the most high-profile and largest of the "giga projects" currently being developed in Saudi Arabia.

Four other regions have so far been unveiled. As well as Trojena, Neom will include an octagon-shaped port city named Oxagon, the mirrored mega-city The Line and an island resort called Sindalah.

The Neom project has been widely criticised on human rights grounds. Last year, human rights organisation ALQST reported that three men were sentenced to death after being "forcibly evicted" from the Neom site, while earlier this year experts from the UN Human Rights Council expressed "alarm" over the imminent executions.

Saudi Arabia responded to the UN by denying abuses had taken place.

In an opinion piece for Dezeen about The Line mega project, Dana Cuff wondered "Why would architects let themselves be so vitiated?"

The images and video are courtesy of Neom.

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Dezeen's editor Tom Ravenscroft has been shortlisted for a trio of British Society of Magazine Editors Awards, while its co-CEOs Benedict Hobson and Wai Shin Li are nominated for a Media Week Award.

Ravenscroft has been shortlisted in three categories at this year's British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME) awards.

He is in the running against publications including Wired, Which? and Science Focus to win Editor of the Year in the independent, specialist and business-to-business (B2B) categories.

Dezeen's co-CEOs, Hobson and Li, are also in the running to win an award after being nominated in the Media Leader of the Year category at the Media Week Awards. They are up against executives at companies including The Independent newspaper and Starcom media agency.

The four nominations come in a successful year for Dezeen, which has already seen its editorial team named Team of the Year at the Professional Publishers Association's annual awards.

"Dezeen's editorial team produces highly creative content, displays superb teamwork and in the face of the most trying of circumstances pulled together to produce record-breaking traffic and revenue growth," said the judges at the time.

Earlier this year, Ravenscroft was also named Editor of the Year at the Association of Online Publishers' annual awards ceremony.

"Tom was the standout visionary in this category and it's clear that he's been able to use that strong vision to energise his team during a potentially difficult and challenging time for the business," said the AOP judges.

At last year's BSME Awards, Dezeen founder Marcus Fairs was posthumously honoured with a lifetime achievement award for his "massive contribution to magazine journalism" following his death in June 2022.

Dezeen has won several times at the BSME Awards and its sister programme the BSME Talent Awards in the past. Dezeen Studio was named best video team at BSME Talent Awards 2021, while Fairs was named specialist editor of the year and independent editor of the year in 2021.

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