Design studio Raw Edges has created Sense of Surface, a 3D-printed installation exploring the interplay between light and textured surfaces that was shown at trade show IMM Cologne.

Sense of Surface consisted of a semi-transparent printed curtain and four 3D-printed "volumetric spheres" that were design to appeared as if they were floating freely in the space.

"The installation is a captivating exploration of the interplay between light and textured surfaces, created specifically for IMM Cologne 2024," said Raw Edges.

The installation's 3D structures, which were hung from above, were constructed using a Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) printer that fused together layers of polymer power.

Once printed, the pieces were joined into three-dimensional volumetric shapes on-site "almost like a tailor's work", according to Raw Edges co-founder Shay Alkalay.

The installation responded to IMM Cologne's 2024 theme The Sensuality of Surfaces and examined how a flat surface can be transformed into a "complex and three-dimensional body".

"For a long time we have been fascinated by the relationship between 2D graphic patterns and three-dimensional forms," Alkalay told Dezeen.

"It can be seen in our wood-dyed Endgrain collection, where we turn flat graphic surfaces into three-dimensional objects and enjoy the distortions and how they affect each other."

Lighting levels were manipulated throughout the space, altering the 3D structures' appearance.

"We started to play with the idea of see-through surfaces, patterned structures and transparency and to see how light can interact with it," Raw Edges told Dezeen.

"We were interested in exploring how three-dimensional structures can feel transparent in a space when there is no light, but become more diffused and opaque when illuminated. "

Alongside the sculptural forms, a curtain was made from Apollo – a semi-transparent textile created from German textile brand Rökona.

The pattern was 3D printed onto the fabric using pigment ink developed by printing brand Kornit.

"The result is a see-through printed surface that beckons visitors to step into the installation, creating an immersive and interactive experience," said Raw-Edges.

Raw Edges designed Sense of Surface in a bid to create an area of tranquillity for visitors to enjoy while experiencing the trade show.

"It is an immersive installation that was there to let visitors take a break from the busy fair and to step into a different environment that allows you quietly to focus on the way light can interact with the surfaces," said Raw Edges.

Raw Edges was launched in 2007 by Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay to transform everyday objects into playful and inventive furniture, product, interior and installation designs.

IMM Cologne took place from 14 to 18 January 2024. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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Dutch studio AMO emphasised the "paradoxical dichotomy" between office interiors and the natural world for the Prada Autumn Winter 2024 menswear show, which featured a plexiglass runway above grass and streams.

AMO, the research and creative studio of architecture office OMA, created the scenography for the 14 January show at the Rem Koolhaas-designed Fondazione Prada during Milan Fashion Week.

The arts centre's Deposito space was covered with forest-like swathes of real grass interspersed with rocks, pebbles, leaves and running water to emulate natural streams.

In stark contrast, AMO constructed a clear plexiglass runway mounted onto a gridded structure that was positioned above the unmanicured grass.

"The studio created a set design juxtaposing an office interior with a natural landscape," said Prada, which is headquartered in Milan.

Uniform rows of familiar black swivel chairs snaked across the geometric runway, providing seating for the guests and creating pathways for the models.

Embedded in the ceiling, office-style strip lighting was reflected across the plexiglass in rigid patterns, while mist was released into the space for an atmospheric effect.

On the edges of the set, AMO installed walls formed from recognisably corporate blue panels, often found in office environments.

One section, where guests entered the runway, featured whole booths created with the panels, complete with large desks, swivel chairs and desktop computers emblazoned with the Prada logo on their otherwise blank screens.

Presented by the fashion house's co-creative directors, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, the show's looks echoed the contrasting scenography.

Classic suit-and-tie pairings finished in neutral textiles were combined with more vibrant pieces such as swimming caps and goggle-like sunglasses crafted as a nod to the outdoors.

"This collection is about something basic – the emotional instinct to remain attached to something we know, the cycles of nature," said Prada.

"There is a simple assertion, of a deep and essential human need to connect with the world around us," continued the brand.

"Demonstrating the paradoxical dichotomy between two coexisting worlds [offices and nature], this show explores fundamental truths of humanity, our natural instincts and our emotional needs."

Longtime-collaborators AMO and Prada have been creating catwalks together at Fondazione Prada since 2004, including the brand's previous Autumn Winter menswear show, which took place below a retractable ceiling that moved to reveal a series of art deco chandeliers.

More recently, the studio also designed the scenography for Prada's Spring Summer 2024 menswear show – an aluminium-clad space with slime falling from the ceiling to form liquid walls.

The photography and video are courtesy of Prada.

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The Transhumances III exhibition will see designers Andres Monnier, Morghen Studio, Elsa Foulon and Laura Pasquino present a selection of works they created in ancient cave dwellings in Cappadocia, Turkey.

The works on show, from a chandelier made out of a tree to candleholders crafted from local stone, will be showcased in a series of caves where the designers undertook their residency.

Organised by design gallery Philia, formerly known as Galerie Philia, the residency encouraged the designers to craft works inspired by the UNESCO World Heritage site in collaboration with local artisans.

Titled Transhumances III, the residency took place across 10 days in November, and was the third in a series organised by Philia that takes designers to destinations with a rich craft heritage.

"I've loved Cappadocia for a long time – it's really a region of pottery and ceramics," said Ygaël Attali, director and co-founder of Philia.

He chose the Taşkonaklar hotel in Uçhisar as the location, which operates a series of studios for artist residencies within ancient caves carved into the cliffside.

Mexican designer Monnier, known for his monumental candle holders and fire pits crafted from slabs of raw stone, worked in collaboration with local stonemasons in Cappadocia.

He made new sculptural candle holders from red onyx offcuts quarried in the region, alongside a travertine side table and black stone candelabra.

Monnier's works took inspiration from the surrounding landscape, including the unique vertical rock formations known as "fairy chimneys", and one of the mountains he passed regularly during his residency. "Cappadocia has beautiful, beautiful stones," he said.

Installed in the dark caves and topped with burning candles and incense, Monnier's works – with titles including Spiritus and Laberinto – were designed to have a ritualistic presence.

Ceramic designers Pasquino and Foulon crafted vessels and sculptural lighting respectively. As such, they both engaged in the pottery traditions of the region, working with a local potter and regional clay to translate Cappadocia's craft techniques into their own works.

Named Landforms of the Red River, Pasquino's large, spherical, hand-built vases in warm terracotta hues were made using red clay and crushed stones from a local river.

"I'm really into textures," Pasquino said, adding that she wanted the surface of her vessels to be rough, recalling both the river bed and the roughly hewn stone walls of the caves she undertook her residency in.

The Dutch designer researched the techniques and tools of local potters to learn from and apply in her work. She had never worked with terracotta before – preferring porcelain and stoneware – but since her residency, she has grown to appreciate the "powerful" effect of the material, she said.

Foulon worked with a local white clay to create a series of pebble-like table lamps, named Troglodyte Glows, that emit a warm glow from within.

The French designer was drawn to the way that light in Cappadocia "changes constantly" and impacts the colours and details of the landscape, as well as the unique quality of sunlight spilling into caves. She added a yellow underglaze in her lights to create the effect of a golden glow.

Both Foulon and Pasquino helped another of the residency's designers, Rodolfo Viola of Milan-based Morghen Studio, to work with ceramic for the first time.

The Milan-based studio creates statement sculptural lighting, mostly using brass. But to make a large-scale lighting piece in 10 days, Viola had to use a different material.

"I wanted to make a chandelier but didn't know how to go big in only a few days," he told Dezeen. "I thought it would be nice to source something from nature."

He found a tree on a local walk, charred it, and added fired ceramic "petals" covered in black ink around LED lights on its branches, attached with twine.

After creating the dramatic black chandelier in one of the caves, he installed it by hanging the tree upside-down from the cave ceiling; there, it appears almost like exposed subterranean roots.

"Having just a week to come up with something is a perfect exercise for designers," Viola said. "You don't have time to overthink. I had to learn a new material in a few days."

Together, the collection of objects are both made from and presented in the unique landscape of Cappadocia. Exhibiting them locally was vital for Attali, who wanted to avoid the carbon-heavy shipping so prevalent in the collectible design market.

Instead of importing materials and exporting works, the designers on the nomadic residency work with local materials, exhibit locally, and sell locally. "It shows that we can do things differently," said Attali.

The photography is courtesy of Maison Mouton Noir and Philia.

Transhumances III will run from 15 February to 16 March 2024 at A.R.C Taskonaklar. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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Creative team Luna Luna has re-installed a "forgotten" art theme park in a Los Angeles production studio that includes a Ferris wheel by Jean-Michel Basquiat, a carousel by Keith Haring and work by artists David Hockney, Kenny Scharf and more.

Created by artist André Heller, the original fair took place in 1987 in a Hamburg park. Today's Luna Luna: Forgotten Fantasy iteration displays the rides and attractions as an exhibit, with some interactive elements and performers dispersed throughout.

Located at production studio Ace Mission Studios, today's Luna Luna adopts the moniker of its successor and is organized by a collective of the same name.

To enter the exhibition, guests pass by a recreation of a spikey red inflatable dome by Heller – which previously housed a cafe – into a corridor that displays the original fair on video.

Visitors then pass into two large warehouse spaces divided by an archway by artist Sonia Delaunay that reads "Luna Luna" in lights.

"The team's concept for the exhibition layout was to reference and celebrate the key characteristics, dynamic atmosphere, and formal relationships, between the artworks within Luna Luna's 1987 debut in Hamburg, while acknowledging that its new home within a Los Angeles soundstage is starkly different from the grass and mud of a tree-lined German park," director of spatial design Charles Dorrance-King told Dezeen.

"[The exhibition] required a modified approach that still spoke to the spirit of '87, such as utilizing Sonia Delaunay's archway not as an entrance to the park, but instead as a gateway between two adjacent warehouses. The first space highlights the spectacle, and the second focuses on the story of Luna Luna."

The first space contains a colourful swing ride by Kenny Scharf, which is spray-painted with cartoon figures, patterns and shapes reminiscent of the television the artist watched as a child.

Surrounding works also include a carousel by Keith Haring, painted with the artist's characteristic line drawings, including a self-portrait.

Seats made of the dancing figures were created for visitors to ride during the 1987 fair. Today, the rides operate and run during the exhibit, but are not ride-able for visitors.

Another carousel by artist Arik Brauer sits nearby, which features seats of fantastical creatures "straight out of one his mystical dreams", including a butterfly, a wolf, a mermaid and an anthropomorphic hand. A song written, produced and performed by Brauer's daughter, Timna was also integrated into the ride.

David Hockney's Enchanted Tree was also installed in the space, a circular pavilion with geometric trees painted on its exterior panels.

Visitors then pass into the next room, which contains a painted Ferris wheel by Jean-Michael Basquiat, accompanied by a custom music composition by musician Miles Davis, called Tutu, a pavilion by Salvador Dalí, and a glass labyrinth covered in Roy Lichtenstein-painted panels.

"We took into account the reflection of the Lichtenstein facade and glowing wheel of the illuminated Basquiat arrayed along the mirrored facade of the Dali, and the placement of the GilSing flags, which were wrapped around the perimeter of the exhibition as in the original park," said Dorrance-King.

Basquiat's Ferris wheel was painted in a cream colour and adorned with his recurrent illustrations and writing that speak to race, music and anatomy.

A wedding chapel by André Heller is also included nearby. Created by two abstract figures holding a heart between them, the chapel was a place where visitors of today's exhibition and the 1987 fair can marry "whatever or whomever" they please.

"Heller imagined Luna Luna as a 'total artwork' that combined visual art, music, theatre, design, circus arts and performance, and explained that the park aimed to recover public space for art and imagination," said the team.

Following its successful 1987 debut in Germany, the fair and its subsequent works fell into legal battles and were stored away in shipping containers in Texas.

In 2022, reports broke that Drake and his creative business venture DreamCrew invested an estimated $100 million for the entire fair, with plans to restore the rides for access to the public.

Today's Luna Luna exhibition took over a year to restore and reassemble.

"They've spent over a year caring for these works, rebuilding each ride and attraction bolt by bolt after they came out of the shipping containers in pieces – they know every inch of these works,"  said curatorial director Lumi Tan of the assembly team.

"Each attraction takes a small army to install: because of this, the installation and placement of the works were not just a curatorial choice, but one made in close collaboration with our spatial design and studio team. There is no such thing as a small tweak with works at this scale!"

Other recent design-related exhibitions throughout the US include an Alcova show displayed in a Miami motel and an exploration of Es Devlin's career in New York.

The photography is by Jeff McLane and Joshua and Charles White.

Luna Luna: A Forgotton Fantasy will take place at Ace Mission Studios in Los Angeles through Spring 2024.  See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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Dutch street artist Frankey has linked the upper floors of two Amsterdam buildings with a structure designed to look like one of the city's historic canal bridges.

Frankey, whose real name is Frank de Ruwe, installed his cartoonish Canal Skybridge between a pair of buildings on Rokin, a major street in central Amsterdam.

Located 10 metres above the ground, the bridge was topped by dark green railings and a traditional crown lantern set on a wonky angle.

"Taking cues from comics where realism isn't a constraint, I have created the world's tallest canal bridge," he said.

Canal Skybridge was commissioned by Dutch fintech organisation Adyen, to link the company's headquarters building with more of its offices in the building next door.

Even though the bridge is not accessible to the public, Frankey wanted to create a design that would spark joy.

When people use the bridge, it becomes clear that the passageway is not over the top of the vaulted form, but via a transparent glass walkway that runs underneath.

"This bridge stands as a connection, but also as an interface between humour and wonder," the artist said.

Frankey is renowned in Amsterdam for his playful street art installations, which often include cartoon characters or pop culture references.

He has created over 500 interventions in the city, with recent examples including a Goofy figure performing acrobatics around a streetlamp and a pair of vents turned into a portrait of Kanye West.

Canal Skybridge is one of Frankey's most ambitious projects to date and signals his ambition to move into the world of architecture.

It took three years to bring the project to life, with help from a team of engineers and construction experts.

The design was structured by a steel frame, encased in a water-based acrylic resin. This outer section was cast in 3D-printed moulds to create the shape of the bridge.

The railings and street lamp were produced using 3D printing.

The details continue inside the buildings, to maintain the illusion of a real stone bridge, yet the structure's modern engineering details are also on show.

Steel cables extend out on both sides and are held in place by giant bolts, each printed with a relief of Frankey's face.

Other recent installations around Amsterdam's canals include a 12-metre-long 3D-printed bridge and a hotel that occupies former bridge keeper's houses.

The photography is by Kees Hummel.

Project credits

Client: Adyen
Design: Frankey
Contractor: Van Wijnen
Architectural advisor: Boltt
Design and development advisor: Friso Dijkstra
Steel construction: Vic Obdam
Custom parts: 3D Next Level
Composite and moulding: NedCam
Structural concept: IPV Delft

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Italian studio Robocoop has created a temporary facade to blend into its historic surroundings and hide ongoing construction on a palace courtyard restoration in Rome.

Robocoop designed a facade of arches, columns and sculpture and printed it onto a PVC plastic banner, stretching it across scaffolding measuring ten metres tall and 11 metres wide.

It was created for the Special Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Rome, which commissioned Robocoop to create artwork to hide the construction site caused by the restoration of courtyard facades at Palazzo Mattei di Giove.

Studio founders Lorenzo Zandri and Luca Pozzati described the project, named BassoRilievo, as "a deliberate intention to construct an illusionary infill facade".

Originally designed by Italian architect Carlo Maderno in 1598, the palace courtyard was built as an open-air lapidarium to display ancient Roman reliefs and sculptures.

Robocoop's temporary facade took elements of the palace walls, as well as cues from the Santa Susanna church in Rome and contemporary architects, including Carlo Scarpa, Luigi Moretti, and Amin Taha, to create a fragmented yet familiar appearance.

"Some of the elements of this fictional facade are homages to these architects, reinterpreting the idea of collage using some of these archetypal forms from iconic projects," Zandri and Pozzati told Dezeen.

Zandri and Pozzati described the facade as an illusionary installation made with architectural precision, aiming to create a printed sheet of plastic that appears like solid architecture.

"Our recent project at Palazzo Mattei di Giove blends installation art with ephemeral architecture," they said.

"We use detailed measurements and proportional design, creating the illusion of a tangible structure with large prints on plastic," Zandri and Pozzati continued.

"This challenges perceptions, inviting contemplation and connection between the artwork and the surrounding context."

Both with backgrounds in architecture, Zandri and Pozzati founded Robocoop in 2012 as an experimental design studio primarily working in urban art. The duo is based between Rome and London.

Elsewhere in Rome, Milan-based designer Patricia Urquiola converted a palazzo into a hotel and spa, and architecture studio Buero Wagner installed an adaptable black timber pavilion in the grounds of Villa Massimo.

The photography is by Robocoop.

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Examples of practical and playful paper packaging were presented at this exhibition curated by designer Makoto Umebara as part of the Takeo Paper Show in Tokyo, Japan.

The exhibition was organised by Takeo Co, a specialist paper trading company established in 1899.

Since 1965, Takeo has presented an annual showcase of paper that explores the material's meaning and value through collaborations with leading designers.

This 49th edition of the Takeo Paper Show occupied two floors of the Kanda Square Hall exhibition venue near the company's Mihoncho Honten store.

Titled 'Packaging: Function and Laughter', the exhibition was divided into two main sections, with simple scenography by graphic designer Kenya Hara helping to differentiate each part.

The first section focused on the functional possibilities of paper, as well as examining how its use is evolving in response to technological advancements in areas such as printing and transportation.

"In today's world, in which new light is being directed to paper as a material, not only as a substitute for plastic, this exhibition asks that we pay attention to, what forms will emerge from these organic fibres, and what new value is created," said Takeo Co.

Curator Umebara selected projects by 13 designers and studios that highlighted innovative uses for paper in packaging, including a series of mechanical paper sculptures by graphic designer Masaya Ishikawa and artist and engineer Hiroaki Nakaji.

"These individuals understand the true value of paper and appreciate its unique sensory properties," the organisers added.

"Their proposals for packaging, both containers and wrapping, have been thoroughly considered on a practical level."

Other projects featured in the 'Function' section included graphic designer Agata Yamaguchi's piece resembling a bunch of flowers made using simple cardboard tubes set on paper straw stems.

Satoshi Yoshiizumi's studio Takt Project created a series of objects that transform from flat templates to three-dimensional forms when the paper is dampened.

One side of the paper is coated using a UV silk screen process that doesn't react to humidity, while the uncoated side causes the paper to bend and form predetermined shapes.

Nomena's playful food packaging features faceted forms that nest together to create simple orthogonal shapes. Each constituent element contains its own item, such as tea bags, chocolates or bags of juice.

The exhibition's second section, called 'Laughter', examined the emotional appeal of paper and how it can be used to produce creative and engaging containers and packaging.

Umebara selected 100 projects to feature in this part of the show, such as a set of novelty tea bags featuring paper holders printed with pictures of the British royal family.

Alongside the exhibition, Takeo Paper Show also presented a display focusing on paper as a sustainable material, including details of circular manufacturing processes and the importance of forest management.

The company also produced a book containing images of all the packaging examples displayed in the exhibition, along with input from Hara and Umebara and discussions about the relationship between people and paper.

Japanese designers are behind some of the most innovative examples of paper-based products in recent years, including a range of recyclable soap dispensers by Nendo that look like milk cartons and Kai's plastic-free disposable razor informed by origami.

Packaging: Function and Laughter was on show from 13 to 22 October 2023 as part of the Takeo Paper Show. See Dezeen Events Guide for more architecture and design events around the world.

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As part of our 2023 review, we've selected the top 10 installations from this year's design and art festivals, from a pavilion made from palm trees to a light sculpture in a cathedral.

The design calendar was back to full strength in 2023 following three years of pandemic-related disruptions, and Dezeen was in attendance at many of the major design and architecture weeks and festivals across the globe.

Below, we pick out the most noteworthy installations from our coverage of the must-sees at 10 major events this year.

For an up-to-date list of design and architecture events happening around the world, check out Dezeen Events Guide.

Aura, London Design Festival, by Pablo Valbuena

As part of the 2023 edition of London Design Festival, Spanish artist Pablo Valbuena created the Aura installation in Christopher Wren's St Paul's Cathedral.

The installation responds to noises made in the space, including the talking of visitors and music made by choirs, represented by a pulsating light under the church's dome.

Dezeen editorial director Max Fraser described the site-specific installation as "mesmerising".

Find out more about Aura ›

100 Links: Architecture and land, in and out of the Americas, Chicago Architecture Biennial, by The Buell Center and AD–WO

Using surveyor chains, this exhibition on display at the Chicago Cultural Center for the Chicago Architecture Biennial was made to represent structural techniques used during the North American colonial period.

The installation is suspended from the ceiling of the centre and features books reflecting the piece's themes, which visitors are encouraged to take from the space.

Find out more about 100 Links: Architecture and land, in and out of the Americas ›

Before the Future, Venice Architecture Biennale, by Iryna Miroshnykova and Oleksii Petrov

Architects Iryna Miroshnykova and Oleksii Petrov created an installation designed to reflect experiences of seeking safety from war for Ukraine's pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale.

The pavilion featured a grassy maze and the conversion of a hall into a small, bunker-like room intended to create a feeling of claustrophobia.

Find out more about Before the Future here ›

Of Palm, Dubai Design Week, by Abdalla Almulla

For Dubai Design Week, architect Abdalla Almulla created the Of Palm pavilion from local bark and fronds from palm trees featuring a ceiling, pillars, stools, display cases and flooring.

The pavilion explores sustainable design, addressing how local, organic materials can be used to create shelter, equipment, food and fuel.

Find out more about Of Palm ›

Human Nature, 3 Days of Design, by Natural Material Studio 

Human Nature debuted at art gallery Copenhagen Contemporary during 3 Days of Design, comprising of seating and draped textiles made from biomaterials.

Designed by Natural Material Studio, the handcrafted installation uses 150 square metres of material, dyed with chalk and clay to create white and green hues.

Find out more about Human Nature ›

Pavilions at NYCxDesign by llLab and Michael Bennett

Chinese studio llLab and Studio Kër designer Michael Bennett partnered to create pavilions for NYCxDesign made from cross-laminated timber and bamboo.

The pavilions were designed to serve as a "sacred space" and explore sustainable, durable building practices.

Find out more about the pavilions here ›

Momentum, Milan design week, by MAD

Beijing architecture practice MAD installed a 12.5-metre-tall cube at the University of Milan for the city's 2023 design week.

The cube was made using plastic polymer ETFE and iron, reflecting light during the day and emitting it at night using artificial sources from L&L Luce&Light.

Find out more about Momentum ›

A Subtle Alchemy, Miami art week, by Dan Lam

Located at art museum Wynwood Walls in Miami, this metal and styrofoam sculpture is layered in automobile paint to create a colour-changing iridescent effect.

The installation, which was part of the Miami art week programme, features four legs and a dripping shape reflected in the marks created by the paint.

Find out more about A Subtle Alchemy ›

Jabal: 9 Ash Cleansing Temple, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, by Yussef Agbo-Ola

Jabal: 9 Ash Cleansing Temple is a fabric, tent-like temple that was showcased in a classroom at the Al Qasimia School during the second Sharjah Architecture Triennial.

The fabric used by architect Yussef Agbo-Ola to create the piece was knitted together using jute, hemp and cotton yarns, aiming to address sustainability and biodiversity in the city of Sharjah.

Find out more about Jabal: 9 Ash Cleansing Temple ›

BitCube, Burning Man, by Colin O'Donnell

Designer Colin O'Donnell created the BitCube structure for Nevada-based arts festival Burning Man, made from 224 standard IBC water containers.

The installation serves as a light display, with each cube acting as a single pixel to create varying patterns, and the inside of the cube is accessible for visitors to explore through a side doorway.

Find out more about BitCube ›

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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Milan-based design exhibition Alcova has launched its Miami edition at Miami art week, meant to create a space for independent and experimental design studios at the annual event.

The exhibition took place at the Selina Gold Dust Motel in the north of Miami during the annual city-wide art festival.

More than 50 designers were showcased in solo and group shows in the motel, a three-storey structure with open-air causeways wrapped around a central pool, where the exhibition hosted talks and social space during the daytime.

According to Alcova founders Joseph Grima and Valentina Ciuffi, the institution saw a gap in the programming during art week that it could fill. Miami was Alcova's first international exhibition.

"It was surprising to us – like something was missing," Ciuffi told Dezeen.

Alcova addressed a need for "more design to happen" in the city, she said, adding that they wanted the exhibition to also be "complimentary" to the other design offerings.

"We wanted to do something different from what everybody else was doing," added Grima. "And of course when you're doing something different there's very little precedent to base yourself on."

The pair also said that, although different from its usual heterogeneous spaces, the repeated scale of the motel room format resulted in "beautiful surprises" as the designers decorated their own spaces.

Chief among the concerns of the curators was to present an "alchemic reaction" between the designers involved. The exhibitions were grouped into several themes, which included Material Experimentation, Emergent Designers and New Way of Living with Colors.

"It's not as homologous even as Design Miami itself; it is a branching out into different fields of investigation of design," said Grima. "But nevertheless [the exhibitors were] bound together by this idea of looking for something, of research."

The curators selected several designers working with innovative materials, such as Slovakian studio Crafting Plastics! bio-based plastic decor objects and solar-reactive dividers. This theme was also the subject of a talk during the exhibition, in which Dezeen took part.

Danish outfit Natural Material Studio – led by the inaugural winner of Dezeen's Bentley Lighthouse Award, Bonnie Hvillum – showcased lighting with screens made from bio-polymers.

Belgium studio JOV, meanwhile, collaborated with Studio Mary Lennox to present a mushroom-shaped rug made out of wool, which was surrounded in the installation by shelves of live mushroom cultures.

Designer Rich Aybar included a line of amber rubber furniture that was laid against a backdrop of the same blankets in which he shipped his pieces.

Netherlands-based Studio Loop Loop took the prompt of research-based material design strategies even further, providing insights into its innovative use of aluminium via a table with components and a pattern roller.

This was overhung by a chandelier surrounded by metal flaps dyed with the studio's natural dyes, which it has begun cultivating itself.

Important to the curators was also a focus on emergent designers, particularly those from the western hemisphere.

"There is no one similar to Alcova in the US," said Ciuffi. "It is very difficult for them to find a space and to come to Milan is more difficult for them."

Among these exhibitors was a group show organised by Brooklyn-based studio Forma Rosa, which included works by that studio as well as Californians NJ Roseti, Caleb Ferris, Tristan Louis Marsh, Wallpaper Projects and Sam Klemick.

Also among the Californian designers present was Objects for Objects, which created a series of furniture made with the multicolour pillars of trophies.

One of the most visually stimulating rooms was a metallic gold-lined room by CYKIK that featured a record with a sleeve that turned into a chair.

Among the works under the heading of New Way of Living With Color was a series of furniture with bases that made them appear to be dripping by Unform Studio.

At least one larger institutional player was involved in the curation: MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art, which curated a series of smaller rooms with singular objects by designers such as Kostas Lambridis and Objects of Common Interest.

The Alcova team took a direct hand in creating spaces in a room called Alcova Project Space.

This space showed a collection of design objects under the heading Digital Ornamentalism and featured works by Ryan Decker and Hanna Lim, among others.

"Informed by extremely heterogeneous visual influences, the works presented here strike us for an aesthetic language that seemingly attempts to transmute the digital obsession of recent years back into material form," said Alcova.

Several market-ready furniture designs were also present, including works by Studio Jialun Xiong, Bieke Casteleyn and Dean Norton.

Grima and Ciuffi, who also hosted dance parties at the hotel's canal-side club throughout the week, said that they were pleased with the turnout and response from the crowd.

"It was really about resetting the atmosphere and the energy and about seeing that the kind of work that we're interested in is of interest to the Miami crowd," said Grima.

"So yeah, so I think that was super, super encouraging."

Other design exhibitions during Miami art week included Design Miami and a series of outdoor installations at the Miami Design District.

The photography is by Piergiorgio Sorgetti

Alcova took place at the Selina Gold Dust Motel in Miami from 4-10 December 2023. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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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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Brazilian artist Sallisa Rosa has installed a large-scale ceramic landscape with figurines and hanging orbs for Art Basel Miami Beach.

Called the Topography of Memory, the piece includes over 100 clay towers and suspended spheres cast in a warm amber glow from the walls and immersed in mist.

Commissioned by Audemars Piguet Contemporary and guest curated by Thiago de Paula Souza the work marks Rosa's first solo exhibit in the United States and her largest all-ceramic piece.

"Rosa, like many Brazilians of her generation, faces questions and confusion in trying to piece together her own ancestry,"  said the team.

"The fading memory of her grandmother, a core figure in bringing together the threads that make up her fragmented family history, is one of the main inspirations for Topography of Memory."

"With this commission, Rosa aims to explore our collective ways of remembering, drawing a connection between the erosion of the earth and the erosion of memory."

The work consists of ceramic towers and spheres of various sizes dispersed throughout a central room at Collins Park Rotunda in Miami Beach, a satellite location from the fair's primary location at the nearby convention centre.

Some spheres sit on the ground, while others float above, suspended from the ceiling.

The towers sit together in groups of twos or threes, or individually, each ending in a small, hand-shaped point.

Rosa, who often works with clay in pursuit of exploring human connection to earth, believes the material stores memory.

The installation's various pieces were made from clay sourced by hand from around Rio de Janeiro and fired in an underground pit, furthering the materials' connection to the earth.

The ceramic towers are representative of stalagmites, while the orbs above recall a planetarium.

Together, they pay homage to the "underground world and the infinite cosmos".

Sallisa Rosa is based in Rio de Janeiro and Amsterdam. She works across photography, video, performance and installations.

The photography is courtesy Audemars Piguet.

Topography of Memory is on view from 5-17 December 2023 at Collins Park Rotunda in Miami, US as part of Art Basel Miami Beach. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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Designer Marjan van Aubel has created an "interpretation" of an electric Lexus model using a series of multicoloured, illuminated photovoltaic sheets for Miami art week.

Located at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA Miami) and created in collaboration with Lexus and spatial experience design studio Random Studio, the installation generates power to contribute to an integrated audio and visual display.

The installation's title – 8 Minutes and 20 Seconds – references the time the sun's light takes to reach the earth's surface, as an homage to the star.

It consists of translucent polyethene terephthalate (PET) plastic sheets suspended from an overhead canopy, printed with succeeding sections of a car profile atop a white bamboo base. Four white, steel circles representative of wheels surround the sides.

The bamboo base of the installation covers a battery and is representative of the electric platform of the Lexus LF-ZC, a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) model which is currently under development.

Aubel told Dezeen her intention was not to create a fully solar-powered installation but rather to display the potential of how photovoltaic materials might be integrated into design and art.

"It was the idea that solar can be aesthetically integrated in a new way," Aubel told Dezeen. "The idea that it can be beautiful, hopeful and it's not only a technology but it should be intertwined in our daily life much more."

A panel of organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells are integrated at the bottom of each sheet, while the surrounding blue-hued shape is non-active.

Aubel has previously worked with OPVs in installations like her solar tapestry RA.

The third-generation solar technology works by printing light-absorbing ink in thin layers onto PET plastic, covering nanoparticles of titanium oxide that convert the captured sunlight into electricity.

It creates a flexible, translucent and coloured material.

In Aubel's installation, power generated from the OPV sheets during daylight hours is stored in the battery hidden in its base, contributing to an integrated light and audio display that plays ambient car noises and music.

At night, multicoloured lights from the installation's base illuminate the sheets, changing them from cooler hues in the day to warm reds at night.

The interactive, animated display was created using motion sensors.

"When you approach the installation, it recognizes your presence," said Aubel. "And it notices you're there so it gives you an electric sort of animation, like a ripple effect, and to me, it sounds kind of like it's a living car."

Aubel admitted she doesn't know the percentage of power that the OPV sheets contribute to the animated effects, and that it's not "fully self powering" but that wasn't the intent.

"Miami is a very nice platform to do this," said Aubel. "We see a lot of art, a lot of design, but I go to these solar panel fairs, and I just see numbers and payback time and stuff like that."

"The bridge between those worlds for me is difficult to make, so you have to speak to both worlds. We're not gonna change the world by numbers. We need to change our mentality."

Marjan van Aubel studio recently created a pavilion shaped like a giant beach chair and topped with multicoloured solar panels in collaboration with V8 Architects for Dutch Design Week 2022.

The photography is by Steve Benisty.

8 Minutes and 20 Seconds is on display at the ICA Miami in Miami, US from 6-17 Dec 2023. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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UK-based designer Lara Bohinc has unveiled a series of bulbous furniture and decorative objects for public use at the Miami Design District during the city's art week.

Called Utopia, Bohinc's collection comprises four different clusters of sculptural forms, placed both in the Miami Design District and outside of the Design/ Miami fair in Miami Beach.

The pieces are ergonomic, taking the shape of chairs, benches and tables with bulbous forms rendered in cork and then finished with pastel colours. Among the designs is an egg-shaped object with hollow insides meant to be a play-place for children, surrounded by two pink benches arrayed in front of a Balenciaga storefront.

A series of hundreds of birdhouses, also egg-shaped, were hung from the trees throughout the Design District.

Another ring of seating was placed around an expressive sculpture with a slightly humanoid figure. It was placed in front of the district's famous geodesic dome by modernist architect and thinker Richard Buckminster Fuller.

The juxtaposition seems fitting given the utopian impulse of Fuller and the explicit utopian themes of Bohinc's installation and she told Dezeen that she picked the spot – a feature of winning the design competition that decides the commission each – for that reason and for its "organic" appearance.

Bohinc aimed to work with this natural form, working in dialogue with the form of Fuller's work.

"His project was the direct inspiration for the piece," she said.

"It's called fly-eye dome, but to me, it looks like a cell multiplying and overtaking the square and – and I thought, what if those cells kept multiplying?"

In line with the "natural" theme, it was also important for Bohinc that she used organic materials. The structures were constructed using blocks of cork pasted together and supported by steel frames, fabricated by a family-run studio in Portugal.

The pieces were then painted with a water-resistant paint used for outdoor furniture.

"It's a natural material," Bohinc said. "That was very important for me, because it's really about nature, and life and cells and organism and growth, and this kind of lifeforce."

A reusable material was also important because the installation is temporary. Bohinc wanted to create work that would engage with the public and noted that even just a few days after the installation she noticed people interacting and even carving into the work.

"The site itself is very important," she said. "The site inspired it and the colours were inspired directly from the buildings around it."

Bohinc, who was born in Slovenia, displayed pieces with similar forms but made with wool at Milan's design week in 2022. Utopia is among several large-scale installations on show during Miami art week 2023; we rounded up 10 of the most interesting here.

Miami art week takes place from 6 to 19 December in Miami, US. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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A hundred mushroom-shaped stools encircle an incubator for growing different fungi species as part of this bio-art installation in Buenos Aires.

The Fungi Kingdom – Urban Farm installation was created by architects Julio Oropel and Jose Luis Zacarias Otiñano inside the historic Tiro Federal Argentino, built in 1937.

Responding to the rationalist stone architecture of the building's Central Hall, particularly its circular ceiling feature, the designers laid out a fungi-themed display comprising multiple connected elements.

In the centre, directly below the ceiling feature, a thick fluted column supports an elevated disk in which a variety of mushrooms grow.

"Black Pearl species, pink and golden Gargoyles, Pioppino and Ganoderma Lucidum grow inside the circular aerial structure in an environment governed by light and moisture," said the architects.

The sides of the disk are transparent so that visitors can peer inside, and the lighting within the structure emits a soft glow.

Branching from the central tower across the granite floor are white metal tendrils that represent mushroom mycelium – the connective tissue through which the organisms feed, communicate and reproduce.

From each of these lines sprout identical white concrete Yembé stools that resemble minimalist toadstools, forming five concentric rings around the room.

Together, the series of stools create "a space for contemplation" to consider how human beings are connected to the objects and the spaces that surround us, according to the architects.

"[The project] is a conceptual statement dealing with ecological and evolutionary thinking about life, living beings and the fungi kingdom," they said. "It aims to explore a world where human activity, art, culture and action are mutually dependent and thereby benefiting all ecosystems health."

Beside a nearby staircase, more metal plates form a square upon which four larger, white concrete podiums are placed at each corner.

These tables display organic sculptures by Florencia Echevarria, with delicate forms that mimic fungal growths.

Once the exhibition ends, the central metal installation will be moved to a children's playground.

Many designers have used fungi in some form in their work – from ideas for packaging and fashion, to furniture and even architecture.

The benefits of mycelium as a strong, biodegradable material with multiple potential applications continue to be explored, and Oropel and Zacarias Otiñano see this project as an extension of that work.

"We, designers, argue and redefine the human environment ecology," said the duo. "The role performed by bio-art is paramount in this transition to post-Anthropocene era, wherein man is no longer the centre but dwells in symbiosis with nature, culture and technology."

The photography is by Adela Aldama.

Fungi Kingdom – Urban Farm was created for the 39th edition of the Casa FOA architecture and design exhibition, which ran from 15 September to 16 October 2023. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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Design studio Spacon & X created a runway installation for Danish fashion brand Stine Goya, centred by six towers of sand that collapsed as models walked by.

The show was held during last year's Copenhagen Fashion Week to present Stine Goya's Whisper Loud clothing collection, and its runway has since been shortlisted in the installation design category of the 2023 Dezeen Awards.

Spacon & X had previously worked with the brand on the set design of its Autumn Winter 2022 show, for which it erected huge screens that digitally displayed different elements of nature.

For the Whisper Loud show, the studio instead wanted there to be a "physical manifestation" of the natural world – so it decided to put 20 tonnes of sand to use.

The sand was taken from a small town north of Copenhagen called Hundested, having already been used in its annual sand sculpture festival.

It was then sent to TAP1 – the venue which hosted the Stine Goya show – and compacted into wooden boxes to form large, square blocks.

These blocks of sand were stacked into tall towers, with each block separated by a small layer of cornstarch dyed shocking pink with biodegradable food colouring.

A total of six towers were made and placed atop heaps of sand in the middle of the runway.

The piles of loose sand concealed wooden platforms that could be set to vibrate via remote controls backstage.

These were activated as the models began walking, breaking down the towers and revealing their bright-pink interior to the crowd.

"The audience did not know it was about to happen, so it was set to inspire a reaction and a conversation," explained the studio.

After the show, the sand was re-donated to TAP1, where it will be used for outdoor landscaping.

Spacon & X's set for Stine Goya's Whisper Loud show will compete against four other installations at this year's Dezeen Awards.

This includes the Falling Hours pavilion by BIAD, which is built out of blocks of ice, and Muoto's Ball Theatre – a shiny, hemispherical stage designed to "reawaken our desires for utopia".

The photography is by Hedda Rysstad.

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Fashion brand Louis Vuitton has unveiled a Christmas tree made from stacked travel cases at Claridge's hotel in Mayfair, London.

Created as the hotel's annual Christmas tree installation, the 5.2-metre-high display is formed of 15 chrome trunks arranged to create the silhouette of a tree and reflect Claridge's art deco interiors.

Set in the hotel's black and white marbled lobby, the installation was framed within a pair of stacked Malles Vestiaire wardrobe trunks.

The tree was topped with a model of the Louis Vuitton family home in Asnières, while 21 different versions of Louis Vuitton's Vivienne mascots, including a version of Father Christmas, decorate the tree.

"We are excited to unveil the Claridge's Christmas Tree 2023 by our legendary friends at Louis Vuitton," said Claridge's general manager Paul Jackson.

"Christmas is the most magical time for us here at the hotel and we look forward to welcoming guests and seeing visitors immerse themselves in Louis Vuitton's world."

The installation is also a nod to the historic connection between the brand and the hotel. Louis Vuitton himself was the personal layetier – a person responsible for packing valuable items – for the wife of Napoleon III, Eugénie de Montijo, whose winter residence was Claridge's during the 1850s.

Vuitton would have packed De Montijo's trunks personally, and when the brand opened its first London store it was located near to the hotel.

Last year we rounded up 10 of the most imagative and unusual trees created in the festive season. These included a tree suspended upside-down from the ceiling and an exhibition in a country home of unconventional Christmas tree designs.

The photography is courtesy of Claridge's and Louis Vuitton.

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Architects from the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design used a cable membrane structure and bricks of river ice to create this installation in Qinhuangdao, China, which has been shortlisted for a 2023 Dezeen Award.

A team from BIAD, led by architects Xiyan Yang, Guanjia Li and Chenzhi Yan, designed and built the Falling Hours pavilion to offer visitors a ceremonial way of marking the turn of the year.

During 2022's New Year's Eve celebrations, passersby were invited to collect sand from the beach in the coastal community of Aranya, where the installation was constructed.

This sand was poured through a hole on top of the structure, accumulating in its conical membrane roof, which effectively functioned as a huge hourglass.

At midnight, participants pulled on a ribbon to open this funnel, prompting the sand to rain onto the floor, while visitors wrote their wishes for the new year on the hourglass membrane.

The project drew on a similar roofing system to the one that BIAD helped to engineer for Foster + Partners' Lusail Stadium in Qatar.

But in this case, it consisted of a circular steel structure with a diameter of six metres and a height of three metres, supported by a tensioned cable and membrane roof designed to bear the weight of two tonnes of sand.

The cable membrane structure resembled a conical hourglass, with its forces anchored in a ring beam around the perimeter and a pressurised spar at the centre.

"The centre of the hourglass is a pressurised gusset that holds up the roof and at the same time holds up the membrane at the lower end of the spokes," said the project team.

The lower part of the membrane consisted of a semi-transparent PTFE mesh laminate, while the roof covering the upper part of the spokes was made using an ETFE plastic that allowed light to enter the interior.

Expert ice sculptors from the Harbin Ice Festival in Heilongjiang province created an outer wall around the steel framework using river ice that was clear enough to be partially see-through.

The installation's timing coincided with Qinhuangdao's coldest season and the ice wall was designed to last for around a month before gradually melting in the warming sun.

Sand from the beach was used to fill the hourglass and was returned to the beach as part of the ceremony. BIAD says the steel structure was recycled and the membrane was used as an exhibit to preserve the memory of this one-off event.

Falling Hours has been shortlisted in the installation design category of this year's Dezeen Awards alongside the French pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale and a showcase of repaired objects at London's V&A.

All photographs are courtesy of BIAD.

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Snaking "rivers" of embedded lighting flow through the alleyways of a development in Oslo in the Delta installation by local studio Void, which incorporates motion-detecting sensors to create ripples of illumination as people walk past.

Located in an area of Tullinløkka currently being developed by real estate company Entra, Delta was created to be both a light sculpture and a wayfinding device that would encourage visitors to explore the new neighbourhood.

Running through cobbled alleyways, the lighting strips converge at a concrete "waterfall" in the centre of the site, which traverses a level change via a series of curved steps and a ramp informed by the smooth rocks of Norway's coastline.

This provides wheelchair access through the neighbourhood, as well as a stepped seating space for impromptu gatherings and events.

"The main goal was to attract people into the narrow lanes and the courtyard of the quarter and to explore and discover what the inner area has to offer in terms of restaurants and nightlife," Void CEO Mikkel Lehne told Dezeen.

"The lights lead the public into the space, help them find their way through, as well as bringing a sense of warmth and safety," he added.

To create Delta, aluminium profiles lined with acrylic glass were set flush with the paving and concrete, into which flexible, waterproof LED strips were then inserted.

Each four-centimetre-long segment of the lighting strips is individually controllable in terms of both motion and colour, and is connected to 24 motion-sensing cameras that detect the presence of visitors in order to create "waves" of light.

While ordinarily the lights are intended to create an "unobtrusive backdrop" of warm white, they can also be programmed for special events, such as in a light show choreographed by artists Bendik Baksaas, Kristoffer Eikrem and Fredrik Høyer to mark the installation's opening.

"The general setting is a warm white light that interacts with the public as they move through and around the quarter," Lehne said.

"The lights are full colour, and can be changed and animated to countless different settings – during Pride Month, for instance, a full rainbow flows through the installation," he added.

"The idea is part of our philosophy at Void – to engage with people’s movement and presence and let our installations be influenced by them."

Delta was recently shortlisted in the architectural lighting design category of Dezeen Awards 2023.

Other shortlisted projects include the media facade of the Novartis Pavilion in Basel by iart, and the interiors of the Fabrique des Lumières Amsterdam by D/Dock.

The photography is by Einar Aslaksen. 

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Production designer Ruth De Jong has installed a house modelled on her set design for Jordan Peele's film Nope at the Chicago Architecture Biennial as part of a series of installations exploring horror and architecture.

The installation is a life-size recreation of the facade and front porch of a ranch home featured prominently in the movie and explores "architecture's cinematic function as a character of its own," according to biennial curators The Floating Museum.

It consists of a facade facing a large screen depicting a looped landscape scene from the horror movie, in which a UFO descends upon a family ranch.

De Jong covered the house in a monochromatic white, save for red movie blood placed in buckets on the front steps.

The installation was placed on the third floor of the Chicago Cultural Center, where many of the biennial exhibitions were placed.

"Set designers think about imagined architecture versus the actual architecture," said the Floating Museum.

"Horror and beauty are both aesthetic paradigms that attune your mind, and for Jordan Peele horror is not just the monster underneath the stairs or in the wall, but structural – which is why it doesn't have a time of day and does not have a limited space."

The unfinished facade plays on set design, in which architectural elements like houses or apartments are often incomplete and the viewer's tendency to subconsciously fill in the gaps.

"Our minds actually finish out the architecture," said the team.

The installation is part of a series that explores the horror of property ownership and expropriation. In an adjacent room, The Buell Center and architecture studio AD–WO created an installation called 100 Links: Architecture and land, in and out of the Americas.

100 Links features a canopy of surveyor chains that were used in the divvying up of land in the Americas, suspended from the ceiling and surrounded by troughs holding books that explore ideas of architecture and the methods of land expropriation.

Ruth De Jong is a production designer who has previously worked on movies such as Oppenheimer (2023, dir. Christopher Nolan) Us (2019, dir. Jordan Peele), and TwinPeaks (2017, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost).

Other installations on view at this year's Chicago Architecture Biennial include an array of works in the postmodern Thompson Center and a spiral of bio-bricks made of algae by SOM.

De Jong's installation will be on view from 1 November to 11 February at The Chicago Architecture Biennial. For more events, exhibitions and talks in architecture and design around the world visit the Dezeen Events Guide.

The photography is by Tom Harris. 

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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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A wooden pavilion shaped by dehydration and banners made from found urban objects are on show at Chicago's James R Thompson Center for the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

The Floating Museum, an art collective and curator for the fifth Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB 5), collaborated with stakeholders of the iconic, Helmut Jahn-designed structure to array a series of works in the space.

Large- and small-scale installations were placed inside the building, in its massive circular atrium, as well as outside, connecting the streetscape with the building, which was recently purchased by technology company Google.

A dialogue around public space

"We were interested in this atrium as a shifting space, from public to private – but it will still remain a public space," said Floating Museum co-founder Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford.

With the train connections and history of amenities, the atrium of the building will remain open to the public as it converts from governmental to corporate ownership.

"There's interest in starting a forum for discussion and dialogue around this space and what public means," added Hulsebos-Spofford.

Outside the building, Boston studio Stoss Landscape Urbanism arranged a series of sculpted tree stumps and burlap sacks filled with plants into seating areas.

Called Tree Cycles, the installation was designed to highlight "natural urban processes" through the decay and decomposition of natural materials.

It sat in contrast with the glass-clad Thompson Center, a contrast that continued with the first installation inside the building, a wooden architectural pavilion by ITECH masters program at the University of Stuttgart.

The Hygroshell Research Pavilion is a "self-constructing-timber building system". Its arched form is achieved through computational processes that calculate the way that flat-packed wood elements will bend after they are exposed to the environment.

Elsewhere in the atrium, the curators placed large banner-like textile pieces by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama. Using reclaimed materials, the artist stitched together massive tapestries that were then draped from the sides of the atrium.

The tapestries rely heavily on the burlap sack, an essential material in the transportation of global goods that reference the "history of resource extraction in Ghana," according to Hulesbos-Spofford.

Chicago-based practice Studio Inference placed a metallic band shell within the atrium, which will serve as a place for talks and lectures.

Two creative institutions from outside of the city made contributions to the exhibition. NPR Music recreated its well-known Tiny Desk Concert set up – a desk surrounded by a bookshelf covered with books and other paraphernalia from the music industry.

It is the first time the institution has allowed its iconic desk to be recreated outside of its Washington DC studios and is in line with the overarching theme of the biennial, This Is a Rehearsal.

Also present was a pop-up gallery by the New York-based organisation Storefront for Art and Architecture. The group took over a store once occupied by cell phone provider Sprint.

The Thompson Center was purchased from the government by Google in 2022. Located in Chicago's downtown core, the structure opened in 1985 and for years provided office space for government institutions, as well as a food court and train connection for the public.

According to Capri Investment Group, the developer renovating the structure, there are plans to pare the building back to its structure before reconfiguring it for Google's use.

The CAB 5 exhibition is taking place while the building still maintains much of its original cladding and construction.

"It seemed like a no-brainer to leverage this moment in time to do something in the Thompson Center to achieve, something spectacular, but it wasn't just about putting a few pieces and we want to really activate the space," said Capri Investment Group chief design officer Joel Putnam.

"So we're focused on trying to have events and ongoing discussions, lectures"

The exhibitions at the Thompson Center are just one aspect of the biennial's programming, which is taking place at institutions across the city.

The photography is by Cory Dewald.

The Chicago Architecture Biennial is on from 21 September 2021 to 11 February 2024. For more events, exhibitions and talks in architecture and design around the world visit the Dezeen Events Guide.

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An exhibition showcasing designs by French designers and Mexican artisans as well as a retrospective on local studio EWE's work were on show during Mexico City's annual design festival.

With official programming as well as exhibitions at satellite galleries, stores and workshops, Design Week Mexico showcased the best furniture and decor design from across Mexico and the world for its 15th year.

The festival is based around a continuing set of programming organised by the leaders of the festival, Andrea Caesarman, Emilio Cabrero and Marco Coello, long-time friends and founders of local studio C Cubica Arquitectos.

The studio year kicked off this year's events, which run for varying times but are focused in early November, at its newly opened office block and gallery in the San Miguel Chapultepec neighbourhood.

This year's festival saw the continuation of the core exhibitions, with many other galleries and workshops across the city hitching their wagons to the festivities.

The core exhibitions included a yearly furniture design showcase called Inédito as well as Design House, the much-lauded event where 20 local makers partner with large brands to completely build out the interiors of a home in just one month's time.

Other galleries, such as Mexico City stalwart EWE and the electric Orginario opened up their locations for showcases.

Much of the work highlighted the strong relationship between designers and craftspeople working with local materials like wood and stone.

"It's exciting to experience a design culture that's exploring contemporary ideas and approaches while from a deep tradition of artisanship and craft," New York-based designer Joseph Vidich, who was visiting the fair, told Dezeen.

"The results of which are rich investigations of form and material through the precise and novel use of traditional techniques."

While the programming showcased the aesthetics of the country, talks such as a conversation between intellectual designers facilitated by Odile Hainaut and Claire Pijoulat of Manhattan's ICFF/Wanted Design festival also took place.

"Having the opportunity to meet many great talents from different countries makes the world feel smaller," said Guatemalan designer Esteban Paredes, who took part in the talk.

"It definitely opens a window to create interesting relationships and collaborations between designers from Latin America and the rest of the world."

Read on for Dezeen's picks of this year's best exhibitions.

Design House by Design Week Mexico 

This yearly showcase saw the transformation of an ageing home in the hilly, mansion-lined neighbourhood of Lomas into a multi-faceted design showcase. Not only were the interiors completely transformed in the styles of the individual teams, but the exteriors were too, with a sculptural terrace by Mood Estudio.

Other standouts in the three-storey home included a shop with bright colours and central shelving by local studio De la Cerda Estudio, a tranquil, wood-and-stoned line area by outfit Estudio Claudina Flores and gallery Covarrubias Collection, both of Guadalajara, as well as a spa-inspired room by Espacio Tangible.

Well-established outfits like Moltenic&C and Breuer Studio were among the companies that brought the vision of the home to life.

Los Acompañantes by Mughal and Rocca Luis César

Mexican designer Andrés Gutierrez hosted an exhibition at his shop Originario in the city's Roma neighbourhood. Called Los Acompañantes, it foregrounded a collaboration between Mexican artist Rocca Luis César and rug company Mughal.

The series of geometric rugs were placed on the walls and floors of the two-storey space and the entirety of the gallery was painted in shades of blues and oranges to reflect the textile's dominant colour schemes.

Gutierrez also hand-picked a selection of design objects and crafts to accompany the exhibition as it weaves through the spaces of the gallery.

Inédito by Design Week Mexico

The week's yearly showcase of Mexican furniture and decor filled the hall of a modern structure called Espacio CDMX in Chapultepec Park. A selection of emerging and established designers were placed alongside innovative projects from students from local schools.

Work from French designers such as the sinuous bamboo furniture of Aurelie Hoegy and the waste fabric brick of FabBRICK were included, highlighting 2023's collaboration with that country.

The furniture included by participants encapsulated a wide range of materials, from stone to fabrics, metals and plastics, showing the diversity of styles and processes at play.

Archivo Personal by Andrea Soler and Taina Campos

Part of the Diseña Colectiva series, Archivo Personal was an exhibition hosted at Laguna, a textile factory in the city's Doctores neighbourhood converted into an arts and community space. The exhibition, which was accompanied by a series of workshops, placed the work of women designers next to artwork by "dissident" practices.

Curated by local designers Andrea Soler and Taina Campos, the works filled the cavernous space. Included among the objects was a maximalist cupboard by local design studio Comité de Proyectos and a woven wooden chair by Perla Castañon. An installation of graphic design highlighting issues women's and LGBTQ+ issues was included.

In the space's courtyard, gridded dividers were turned into a community poll called Mi Calle, Nuestra Calle (My Street, Our Street) where visitors could vote on what they would like to see in their community – for example, clean streets or public space – with multi-coloured clothespins arrayed in a grid.

Retrospective by EWE

Founded by Age Salajõe, and designers Manuel Bañó and Héctor Esrawe, EWE has been a powerhouse on the Mexico City design scene since 2017. During this year's design week, the studio opened up its Roma location for a retrospective that looked at the processes and iterations of the studio's design objects.

EWE's commitment to artisanal processes can be seen in its monumental stone forms, its blown glass lamps as well as in a series of milking stools.

The stools, based on a traditional design, followed a variety of iterations, from wood to cast objects and even the moulds from past collections were showcased, highlighting the processual, yet innovative, nature of the work.

Visión and Tradición by Design Week Mexico and Mobilier National

Design Week Mexico partnered with the French Institute and France's furniture association Mobilier National to host an exhibition highlighting an initiative that paired French and Mexican designers with craftspeople from the Mexican state of Queretaro. The result was a series of objects that combined traditional techniques with contemporary design language.

Located on a pedestal in the entry building of the city's Museum of Anthropology, the exhibition celebrated the collaborations, which were arranged on tables and surrounded by documentation of the collaborations.

Standouts from the exhibition were a wood-and-glass coffee table created by French designer Sammy Bernoussi with Mexican artisan Uriel López López as well as a massive wicker sculpture created by Mexican designer Sebastián Ángeles and artisan Martín Cruz González.

Bernoussi told Dezeen that he used Google translate to communicate with López to plan the work after having meals with the artisan to understand the dining traditions of the region.

Bomboti by MYT+GLVDK

Mexican architecture studio MYT+GLVDK showcased an exhibition at its freshly opened concept store in the Polanco neighbourhood, Bomboti. Drawing from hundreds of design and art objects used throughout the architecture studio's work, the exhibition included graphics explaining the work.

Every space in the two-storey gallery was filled with art and design objects, from the stone sculptures of local designer Rebeca Cors to the glasswork and ceramics of Perla Valtiera.

More conceptual design was also shown alongside the handcrafted, such as upcycled plastic objects from local studio Bolsón.

Diseño Contenido by Design Week Mexico

Located at Parque Lincoln in the city's Polanco neighbourhood, Design Contenido saw dozens of studios and galleries fill shipping containers with work, creating a pop-up design space. Each studio had a single shipping container and only had a few hours to set up, placing objects, information and installations within the narrow spaces.

Works on show ranged from the wicker design objects of the local studio Hiato to the brutalist furniture of Mesawa. By far the most intensive installation was set up by lighting designer David Pompa's studio.

Showcasing a collection inspired by volcanic stone, the studio's container featured a narrow entrance where visitors could walk in and view the lights arrayed around mounds of rock.

Fall Group Show by Angulo Cero

Design gallery Angulo Cero opened up its newly opened location in a house in the city's Lomas neighbourhood. The exhibition saw a variety of works from local design studios such as Abel Zavala and ADHOC.

The works were arrayed in a white-walled space, spread throughout the first two storeys of the gallery. Rugs by Balmaceda Studio were arranged in many of the spaces, as the design studio shares the home as its office. Also included in the exhibition were works by artists Daniel Berman and Jesús Pedraglio.

Té Ahorita by Su Wu and Bettina Kiehnle

At Salon Rosetta, above the renowned Rosetta restaurant in Roma, curators Su Wu and Bettina Kiehnle selected more than 100 tableware objects from Mexican designers. Based on an exhibition curated earlier in the year by Wu at Studio IMA, the exhibition focused on dining rituals and the use of objects in them.

Working with Rosetta chef Elena Reygadas, the curators arranged the objects by designers such as Maxine Álvarez and Patricio Campillo on contemporary furniture. The exhibition included a daily tea service as well as a shop where visitors can purchase objects.

Design Week Mexico is on from 10 October to 4 November 2023. For more events, talks and installations in architecture and design, visit the Dezeen Events Guide. 

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Design collective Dutch Invertuals created an installation that encourages visitors to find beauty in the simple things at this year's Dutch Design Week.

The Flow fountain allows visitors to follow a single glittering drop of water as it traverses various terrains, each devised by a different designer and finished almost entirely in wool, which is a natural water repellant.

Much like a Rube Goldberg machine, the installation was designed to perform a simple task in an overly complicated way, slowing the droplets' descent towards the ground so they can be traced by the human eye.

In this way, the project hopes to draw visitors' attention away from their screens and the dopamine-driven feedback loops of social media to help them be more mindful and present in the moment.

"Everyone has become a junkie for dopamine," explained Remco van de Craats, one of the designers behind the project and a longtime collaborator of Dutch Invertuals with his studio EDHV.

"To break away from that, we're trying to say look: there's beauty all around us, even in a simple drop of water."

Flow was conceived as a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art as proposed by the Bauhaus school – and is the result of a collaboration between EDHV and designers Béla Bezold, Ralf Gloudeman and Teresa Fernández-Pello.

The project formed a marked departure for Dutch Invertuals, which has historically taken Dutch Design Week as an opportunity to host big group shows on topics from overconsumption to the design process and the shape of the circle.

"We felt that it was not appropriate to do another show with all these pedestals with projects and products in a world that is clearly changing," Van de Craats told Dezeen.

"We tried to focus on a small group of designers this time to really create an experience, something that you will remember, a small thing that brings a smile to your face," he added.

"We were looking for something that could mesmerise. And, of course, one of the super overlooked things in life is water."

To start the flow of water, the fountain requires visitors to pull a small blue trigger reminiscent of the kind found on a spray bottle.

Designed by Bezold, this mechanism sends water shooting up from a small tank and out of a nozzle to cover a clear plastic dome, mounted high above the heads of visitors using metal tripods.

"His work is really about experience," Van de Craats explained. "We wanted people to be able to kind of stand under the water."

As the droplets accumulate, they start to run down the sides of the dome and down along a leaf-shaped canopy that, much like the rest of the fountain, is made of wool.

"The funny thing is, we were really looking for this water-repelling effect and we tried many materials and coatings," Van de Craats said. "And then, in the end, it was just wool."

Instead of sinking into the fabric, wool's natural hydrophobic properties cause the water to bead up on the surface of the textile, suspended in place like shiny barbles until enough drops accumulate to form a small stream.

To funnel this steam, EDHV's sections of the fountain were designed as simple chutes, sometimes forming a straight line, sometimes curving or zigzagging but always upholstered in pink or yellow wool.

"We basically said, let us just do the connecting parts," Van de Craats said. "We wanted to make simple shapes and see how water reacts to that."

The segments created by Fernández-Pello, on the other hand, were designed to resemble "ritual objects" and are formed from thicker pieces of wool felt engraved with intricate channels.

Here, the water moves much slower and many droplets must accumulate to generate any amount of momentum.

Gloudeman contributed only one section, a row of angular geometric forms reminiscent of leaves or miniature canyons.

Ultimately, the drops fall onto a hot plate, where they evaporate into steam to enter back into the Earth's water cycle, where they will eventually go on to form clouds and rain.

For Van de Craats, Flow was an opportunity to bring fun and playfulness back to the design process, although the project also brought its own set of difficulties.

"It's quite challenging to focus as a designer on creating an experience or on finding a certain essence and trying to lift that out because designers are so conditioned to come up with solutions or products," he said.

"This is not a solution to anything, it's just getting people to look at something and realise its beauty."

The photography is by Ronald Smis for Dutch Invertuals.

Flow is on display as part of Dutch Design Week 2023 from 21 to 29 October. See Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.

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Rotterdam's Nieuwe Instituut museum is rethinking the archetypal gift shop with a pop-up at Dutch Design Week, designed to encourage more ethical, resource-conscious consumption.

Instead of offering a straightforward exchange of wares for money, New Store 1.0 gives patrons the opportunity to trade their urine for a piece of Piss Soap and encourages them to place their phones on specially designed fixtures to provide lighting for the venue once the sun goes down.

Taking over Residency for the People – a hybrid restaurant and artist residency in Eindhoven – the pop-up also serves up two different versions of the same seabass dish, one made using wild locally caught fish and the other using fish that was industrially farmed and imported.

The pop-up is the first of two trial runs for the New Store, aimed at helping Rotterdam's Nieuwe Instituut work out how to design its own museum shop to prioritise positive social and environmental impact over mere financial gain.

In collaboration with the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) and research consultancy The Seeking State, the second trial will take place at next year's Milan design week, with the aim to open the first dedicated shop in the museum's Rotterdam location in 2025.

"It all started out with the idea that we don't have a museum shop per se," Nieuwe Instituut's programme manager Nadia Troeman told Dezeen. "A museum shop, as we know, has books and trinkets and gadgets. And it's not really doing well for the planet or the environment."

"So we were like, how can we make the act of consuming better? How can we consume differently to help not just ourselves but the environment as well?"

For the Dutch Design Week (DDW) pop-up, Nieuwe Instituut found the three featured projects by Dutch designers Arthur Guilleminot, Brogen Berwick and Arnout Meijer via an open call.

The aim was to help the designers trial their ideas for how the exchange of goods could be less extractive and transactional in a real-world scenario.

"The project is part of a broader institutional agenda of ours to become more of a testing ground," explained the museum's director Aric Chen. "It's part of rethinking the role of cultural institutions as being places that can do more than host debates, discussions and presentations."

"So our aim is to take some of these projects that try to think about how we can do less damage, take them out of the graduation shows, take them out of the museum galleries, take them out of the biennales and put them into the real world, with real consumers, audiences and real people to see what we can learn from it," he continued.

Guilleminot used the opportunity to expand his ongoing Piss Soap project, with a poster in the venue's toilet inviting visitors to donate their pee by relieving themselves into designated cups and discreetly placing them on a newly added shelf outside the bathroom window.

This can then be exchanged for a piece of soap, made using urine donated by previous participants and other waste materials from human activities such as used cooking oil.

The soap takes three months to cure and is entirely odourless, helping to break up dirt and grease thanks to the urine's high ammonia content.

The aim of the project is to find a new application for an underutilised waste material and engage people in a kind of circular urine economy.

"The idea was to revive the ancient tradition of using pee to make soap, which was done for many centuries, including in ancient Rome," said Guilleminot.

"Could I make a modern product using this ingredient and, in the meantime, also change our feelings of disgust about our golden organic liquid?"

Those having dinner at the New Store can choose between two iterations of the same fish dish.

The first uses wild seabass that was caught locally by fishers Jan and Barbara Geertsema-Rodenburg in Lauwersoog while the other was farmed in Turkey and imported by seafood market G&B Yerseke.

Devised by Berwick, who is a design researcher and "occasional fisherwoman", the project challenges diners to ask themselves whether they are willing to pay the higher price associated with locally caught fish in exchange for its environmental benefits.

"With the fish, they get a receipt of transparency," Troeman added. "And one is obviously longer than the other."

Diners were also asked to provide their own illumination as the sun goes down, in a bid to make them aware of our overconsumption of energy and the adverse effects our light pollution has on the natural rhythms of other animals.

For this purpose, Meijer designed two wall-mounted fixtures inside the New Store that have no internal light source and are simply composed of discarded glass shards topped with wooden shelves made from old beams.

If they require more light, guests have to place their phone on this ledge with the flashlight on, funnelling light onto the glass shard through a narrow slit in the wood.

This reflects and refracts light around the space while revealing various crescent moon shapes engraved into the glass in a nod to the circadian rhythm.

"It's really about our dependence on the constant supply of energy," Troeman said. "Can we embrace the dark and hence be more environmentally friendly? It has benefits for everyone and everything."

Exploring more circular forms of exchange was also on the agenda at last year's Dutch Design Week, when designer Fides Lapidaire encouraged visitors to trade their own poo for "shit sandwiches" topped with vegetables that were fertilised with human waste.

The photography is by Jeph Francissen unless otherwise stated.

Dutch Design Week 2023 is taking over Eindhoven from 21 to 29 October. See Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.

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A "sacred space" made from CLT panels and a cloud canopy made from strips of woven bamboo are among the pavilions being shown at New York City's Design Pavilion event.

Created by Shanghai-based studio llLab and designer Michael Bennett of Studio Kër, the two pavilions display sustainable building materials and techniques. The structures are on show for Design Pavilion, an event by NYCxDesign, part of the programming for the city's yearly architecture festival, Archtober.

"This is about materials," said NYCxDesign executive director and founder of Design Pavilion, Ilene Shaw. "They're both about materials. They're about strong, durable, sustainable architectural building materials."

Located in Gavensvoort Plaza in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, the exhibitions sit side by side.

llLab's Bamboo Cloud pavilion is a continuation of a previous project installed in the city of Guilin, China, where the studio created a series of canopies and inhabitable pods using strips of woven bamboo for shelter from rain.

In New York City, the pavilion takes a similar form, consisting of two amorphous "clouds" of bamboo supported by structural columns that run into silver-coated, organically shaped benches at each base.

"While still retaining the beauty of a handcrafted basket with its woven structure, the installation breaks the conventional boundaries of the material by boldly showcasing its strength," said the team.

"Composed of bamboo strips woven into a porous surface, the pavilion naturally uses its internal force for form finding and eventually stabilizes as a hollow space, which is structurally resilient with the potential to be used at building scale."

The uppermost structures were created with a hand-woven technique used by local populations in China, which the llLab team learned in order to create and assemble the pavilion.

llLab founding partner Hanxiao Liu told Dezeen the general shapes of the bamboo forms were created by local weavers "who understand bamboo".

Liu explained that while in Guilin, the pavilion was intended to connect people with nature, the Design Pavilion exhibition introduces passersby to the materiality of bamboo and provides a community space for its New York City neighbourhood.

"The most important thing is to make the neighbourhood enjoy the space," Liu said. "To make people feel the thing itself."

llLab worked with the lighting design studio L'Observatorie International to illuminate the pavilion at night, which is lit from underneath with a warm glow.

For the Public Display pavilion, designer Michael Bennett created a community space using large-scale cross-laminated timber panels.

One panel creates a structural wall, while the other rests against it at a gentle angle. A semi-circle of wooden chairs faces the vertical panel and a bench was installed on the other side, beneath the sloping CLT.

Thin, rectangular cut-outs were interspersed throughout the structure, with a large, central opening cut into the angeled panel.

"[It's] an opportunity to take the material and show it in its purest form," Bennett told Dezeen. "Not to do too much with it, is the idea. I could shred it and make something crazy, or I can show it in a way that's just enough so people can feel sacred space and also to get to interact with the material."

The installation also explores community and sacred spaces as a place of refuge, with nods to environments like a church.

"Can you be in a space that's surrounded by calamity but still feel a sense of clarity?" asked Bennett. "That's something I think about a lot."

Also part of the Design Pavilion exhibition is a series of animated digital portraits projected onto the four sides of the World Trade Center Podium, which spans 200 feet (60 metres).

Conceptualized by artist Marjorie Guyon as part of the ongoing I Was Here project, with video and animation co-created by Marc Aptakin, Roy Husdell, and Yoel Meneses of Yes We Are Mad, the animations depict "ancestor spirit portraits".

"When I was three, I took the ferry and climbed to the very top of Lady Liberty to see the land and sea through her eyes," said Guyon.

"Like the Statue of Liberty, the Ancestor Spirit Portraits of the I Was Here project are iconic – their presence allowing our city, our country, and our world to see through their sacred, ancient eyes,"

Design Pavilion is part of the NYCxDesign programming, which hosts the NYCxDesign Festival in May.

For the festival this past year, local designer Jean displayed birdhouses, seating and other public architecture at the Naval Cemetery Landscape and salvaged furniture found in New York's public parks were displayed in an abandoned Chinatown building for an exhibition by Marta Gallery.

The photography is by Jennifer Trahan unless otherwise stated.

Bamboo Cloud and Public Display will be on show at Ganesvoort Plaza in NYC from 12 to 19 October, with I Was Here running through 22 October. For more exhibitions, talks and events during New York's design week, visit Dezeen's dedicated NYCxDesign guide.

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Promotion: French Impressionism meets the artificial intelligence age in Jardins d'Été, a new series of works by artist Quayola that is being presented in collaboration with electronics brand LG OLED at London's Frieze art fair.

The Jardins d'Été series explores the tension between the real and the artificial with its algorithmically generated videos and prints of flowers, rendered in a style that references the loose, painterly style of the French Impressionists, including Claude Monet.

The dataset for the works is based on a real-life French garden, the garden of the Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire, heightening the connection to the 19th-century art movement.

Like the eyes of those artists, as they observed these botanical settings and began to innovate towards total abstraction as a way of communicating colour and light, in Quayola's work, the eye of the machine – its ultra-high-definition cameras and custom software – is given the same starting point.

In particular, the datasets focused on images of the flowers as they moved in the wind at night, with Quayola interested in exploring the similarities between the generative process in both nature and algorithms, as well as their differences.

"The human, emotional outlook on the natural world is replaced by the more rigorous and objective scan of the machine, that 'sees' and 'recognises' nature through software specially programmed to decompose and analyse its components," said Quayola. "Analysis and debugging visualisations are juxtaposed to videos of a pictorial nature generated by computational algorithms."

"Painting becomes analytic," Quayola continued. "The natural world and its impressions are not reproduced but re-elaborated, re-codified."

Quayola blends computer programming and classical art, using technology to explore pictorial and sculptural traditions. In his work, the machine's "thinking" or "forma mentis" – known as form of mind – becomes a painting, explained the artist.

"The composition's dynamics, brushstrokes, rhythms and movements are the expression of the software's architecture programmed by the artist," said Quayola. "The algorithms generate organic processes in a fascinating similarity between the natural and computational worlds."

At Frieze, Jardins d'Été is being presented on LG OLED's 4K "digital canvases", a style of screen specially made for digital art, with Quayola explaining that their brilliance and perfect blacks served to bring the work to life.

The South Korean company has an art division titled LG OLED Art that focuses on collaborations with artists and supporting boundary-pushing artworks that blend tradition with technology.

"We are pleased to engage in a captivating collaboration with a talented artist like Quayola," said LG Home Entertainment Company Brand Communication Division vice president Kate Oh. "Together, we aim to redefine artistic boundaries, blending art and technology in ways that captivate and inspire audiences, as showcased in our exhibitions and collaborative efforts."

"LG OLED will uphold the motto, 'We Inspire Art' supporting artists in unlocking their creative potential and giving inspiration for the evolution of digital art," she continued.

The Jardins d'Été digital artworks are being presented at Frieze within a display decorated with real plants and flowers, creating an immersive environment that further provokes visitors to consider the boundaries between what's real and what's artificial.

To learn more about the collaboration, visit the LG OLED Art website.

Frieze London takes place from 11 to 15 October 2023 in London. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen as part of a partnership with LG OLED. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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To mark POOR Collective winning London's Emerging Design Medal, co-founder Shawn Adams rounds up eight must-know projects by the social enterprise, focused on involving young people in the regeneration of their communities.

POOR Collective, which is an acronym for power out of restriction, is a social-impact design studio that aims to engage young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in overhauling London's public spaces through co-design workshops.

Working in collaboration with local schools and councils, the ultimate aim is to create more democratic spaces while imparting participants with valuable design skills and giving them a sense of agency and pride in their local area.

Co-design should be mutually beneficial

"A lot of people talk about co-design but then, especially with young people, they assume that they have to take the reins a little bit," said Adams, who co-founded POOR Collective together with Larry Botchway, Ben Spry and Matt Harvey-Agyemang.

"They just kind of have the young people along for the ride or give them a fake sense of free will when they already know what they're going to design," he added.

"But for us, it's about genuinely listening to them, platforming their voices and then incorporating their thoughts and feelings into the final design."

In this way, the studio hopes to move away from more one-sided notions of participatory design, which often functions as a purely extractive process, mining people for ideas and inspiration on how to make a space more inclusive, sustainable, functional and so on.

Instead, POOR Collective hopes to foster a more reciprocal approach that actually leaves participants with transferrable design and business skills.

"For us, it's about seeing things as a two-way street," Adams explained on a recent episode of Dezeen's Climate Salon podcast. "It's very easy to say okay, we're going to engage with the local community, we're going to speak to some young people."

"But it's not as simple as just asking the young people for advice or answers," he added. "If we want young people to show us what a more sustainable space looks like to them, and a space that they would maintain, we would need to show them how to draw that space."

"If we are wanting to genuinely engage with people, we need to upskill them first."

Design medal rewards contribution to capital

To this end, POOR Collective is also collaborating with industry partners from The Office Group to Morrow + Lorraine to offer paid opportunities for getting hands-on experience in the notoriously impenetrable worlds of architecture or design.

In recognition of the impact these efforts have had on the capital and its design scene, the team recently received the Emerging Design Medal at this year's London Design Festival.

Here, Adams walks us through eight formative projects from the studio, ranging from game tables and public pavilions to internship programmes designed to gain disadvantaged young people a foothold in the industry.

Carney's Mural, 2020

For its first-ever project, POOR Collective collaborated with Carney's Community, a charity in southwest London that works to keep disadvantaged young people off the streets by engaging them in meaningful activities from boxing and cooking to running a local bike repair shop.

Tasked with reviving a drab, neglected wall outside Carney's boxing gym in Wandsworth, the group worked with kids from the charity over their autumn half-term to design and paint a mural rather than parachuting in an external designer.

"The fact that it's been a few years and no one's drawn over it, there's been no graffiti, I think it speaks volumes," Adams said. "Because it shows that obviously there's a desire for this kind of thing, people respect it in the area."

"To be able to walk past it every day and say, I contributed to that, I think it's powerful," he continued. "And that's one of the main points of the work that we do at POOR, is giving people the power to say this is something that I created, even if they don't see themselves as a designer."

Bringing Home to The Unknown, 2021

When POOR Collective was brought in by RIBA to give workshops on architecture at the Mayesbrook Park School in Becontree, the lessons were meant to be entirely theoretical.

But the studio promptly changed the brief to allow the pupils – who had been expelled from mainstream schools due to poor behaviour or learning difficulties – to instead create a real, tangible piece of public architecture.

The outcome is a pavilion that was installed in Regent's Park for a month, incorporating benches and canopies to create an inclusive social space that young people could call their own.

"A lot of young people don't have spaces that they think belong to them," Adams said. "The whole point of design is to be able to take an idea and then make that idea tangible and bring it into the real world."

"If we teach them all the skills but then they can't see how that kind of training translates to something physical, I think it can feel quite superficial," he continued. "So with all of our projects, it's about having a tangible output."

Build The Way internship, 2021

Together with London architecture firm GPAD, POOR Collective developed a pilot internship programme in 2021 that gave one pupil the chance to get paid work experience in a real architecture office, supported by intensive mentoring over the course of a year.

"Three of us are architects and we see the difficulties in young people getting into the architecture profession, especially if you're not from a middle-class or upper-middle-class family," Adams said.

"There are a lot of barriers to getting into architecture, especially financial barriers," he added. "So we wanted to create a programme, where one young person would get the opportunity to actually work in an architecture office because we had just not seen that at the time."

Since the initial round in 2021, the programme has expanded to take in four interns at four different practices – including HÛT, ShedKM and Morrow + Lorraine – and also comes with an official EPQ qualification that can help them meet universities' entry requirements.

Makers & Mentors, 2022

As part of this six-week mentorship programme, POOR Collective paired three university students with three established designers – Sebastian Cox, Andu Masebo and Matteo Fogale.

Under their guidance, the young people each developed one piece of furniture for The Office Group's Black & White Building in Shoreditch.

"The mentorship element is super, super important," Adams said. "You need that mentorship to understand the industry, how to go about things, how to conduct yourself."

"Otherwise, we've seen people being given an opportunity, they take the opportunity with both hands, they do really well but because they're not given any guidance, once that programme elapses, then they're kind of back out in the cold and they don't know what to do next," he continued.

"A lot of students leave university and they don't quite know what opportunities are out there. Especially in the design industry, it's not that straightforward."

Beneath The Surface, 2022

As part of The World Reimagined project, raising awareness about the transatlantic slave trade and its ongoing legacy, POOR Collective helped to design one of 103 globe sculptures that were displayed in busy thoroughfares in cities around the UK including London's Trafalgar Square.

Co-designed together with locals in Camden, the illustration celebrates the accomplishments of some of the borough's most notable Black residents including activist Athian Akec and Dr Beryl Gilroy – a prolific Caribbean author and one of the first black headteachers in the UK.

"We worked with Camden Council to develop a design that would go on a globe that spoke to black identity in Camden and key figures and key moments in Camden's black history that shaped the actual borough," Adams said.

"I think a lot of people see Camden as this tourist attraction but there's a lot of rich history around that."

Bexleyheath High Street For All, 2023

Supported by funding from the Mayor of London, this project saw POOR Collective work with architecture firm We Made That and locals in Bexleyheath to revitalise the suburb's high street.

Intergenerational workshops saw pupils from several different schools work together with retirees to figure out how the planning of the area could be improved to better suit residents of all ages.

Together, they designed colourful flags and wayfinding to brighten up Bexleyheath High Street, alongside benches and game tables to encourage lingering and socialising.

"The high street was super dense, especially when the school kids would come out," Adams said. "So they were saying if they had these gaming stations, then people would hang out in different areas of the high street and it wouldn't be super dense around where the bus stops are."

Another arm of the project, the Youth Enterprise Programme, worked with the pupils to design and sell T-shirts, tote bags and playing cards in a bid to impart both design and entrepreneurship skills.

Mitcham Colour-Way, 2023

Another mural project saw POOR Collective make over an alleyway in Mitcham, the southwest London suburb where three of the studio's founders grew up.

"It's an alleyway that we use quite often but it was quite rundown and people treated it quite badly," Adams said. "So we just kind of decided that we should do something. It was nice to give it a bit of vibrancy."

The design itself was conceived and realised through co-design workshops with students from the Royal College of Art (RCA) – where POOR Collective was first formed – together with young people from different parts of London.

It integrates abstract outlines of Mitcham's greenspaces alongside motifs of lavender and cricket stumps, in a nod to the fact that the area is a historic producer of lavender and home to what is thought to be the oldest cricket ground still in use today.

Powershift, 2023

POOR Collective took this year's London Design Festival as an opportunity to give a broader platform to a roster of young and emerging talent, in an exhibition put together as a joint effort by all the participants.

Among the projects featured was Giles Nartey's game-board bench, a textile wall hanging by Shanice Palmer that was woven in collaboration with different community groups and a hoover by Edit Collective that can only be operated by three people, as a comment on women's unpaid domestic labour.

"When Brompton Design District and Jane Withers Studio approached us and said they had a space and would we be interested in doing an exhibition, the first thing that came to mind was to platform young and emerging designers," Adams said.

"The majority of the people in the space haven't showcased their work outside of student exhibitions."

The top image is by Tobi Sobowale.

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The diversity of nature informed the latest exhibition at London's Kew Gardens, which features a garden designed to "break the binary" and a "deeply queer" textile pattern by designer Adam Nathaniel Furman.

Queer Nature, which is on show inside the botanical garden's Victorian glasshouse Temperate House, is comprised of four different installations.

At the centre of the building, American artist Jeffrey Gibson presented his largest UK commission to date, called House of Spirits, which was hung from the glass ceiling and designed to catch the light.

The colourful fabric features botanical illustrations as well as writing informed by "Gibson's own perspectives on queerness and nature", according to Kew.

Gibson drew on New York's ballroom scene as well as the work and life of artist and gay rights activist Derek Jarman when creating the installation.

In an adjacent room, garden designer Patrick Featherstone installed Breaking the Binary, a temporary garden display created together with the Kew Youth Forum.

The installation saw the designer change the layout of the room to accommodate curving flowerbeds, in which he planted a collection of species that reproduce in ways that challenge the traditional way of categorising plants as male and female.

"There's lots of variety in the way that plants reproduce and their gender is also quite complicated," Featherstone told Dezeen.

"So if nature is going to be used in this human metaphor, then it's worth scrutinising further and seeing the diversity there is."

"What's natural and what's scientific are both phrases that can be questionable and have been weaponised against queer communities," he added.

"By debunking that sort of attitude, by looking at what nature and science really are, you realise that's not an argument against something."

Featherstone also commissioned transgender illustrators to create information boards as part of the installation, which he believes is extra relevant at a time when trans people are often discriminated against.

"Queer people have often been told that they are unnatural, but I think that gender nonconforming people are often told that it's unscientific to say that you're one thing or that you're self-identifying," Featherstone said.

"And I think that's where we need to look at what science is. It's not just facts, it's politics, too. And I think that it's really helpful for trans people to have some symbolism and metaphors in their life."

Queer Nature also features Queer Voices, an installation by London-based designer Furman, who created an "immersive space" inside two octangular greenhouses in Temperate House.

The structure was made by hanging five-metre-long fabric pieces from the ceiling. These were printed with a pattern that features multiple plants, including ones that reference queer history such as the green carnation worn by writer Oscar Wilde.

Other plants include lavender, pansies, violets and carnations.

"I wanted the pattern to be deeply British and deeply queer all at once," Furman said. "Queer life has always been present in design history, but sometimes it has had to lurk beneath the surface. There's a radicality in that."

The installation also featured video interviews with LGBTQ+ scientists and horticulturists, historians, artists, writers and more.

Kew Gardens also commissioned artists LiLi K Bright and Ama Josephine Budge Johnstone to create Reverberations, two spoken word pieces that are played throughout Temperate House.

The exhibition, which is on show throughout October, will also feature events including cabaret, drag performances and talks.

"I think it's really nice to draw attention to nature because it's a very forgiving, interesting and diverse thing that we can take inspiration from, rather than being focused on what society wants us to do," Featherstone concluded.

"I think there's a lot of strengths to be taken from looking at nature."

Other recent projects that focus on the LGBTQ+ community include a "queer monument" designed by Furman to celebrate the Commonwealth Games and an atlas of 90 LGBTQ+ spaces from around the world.

The photography is courtesy of Kew Gardens unless otherwise stated.

Queer Nature is on show at Kew Gardens from 30 September to 29 October 2023. For more exhibitions, events and talks in architecture and design, visit Dezeen Events Guide.

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A group of students from the University of Applied Arts has won Vienna Design Week's Social Design Award with a project aimed at involving citizens in the design of their urban spaces using the city's own waste materials.

As part of the Urban Networks project, the Membran collective rescued discarded tarps from construction sites across Vienna and built a machine that turns strips of the waste material into sturdy ropes.

For the duration of the festival, this was set up on the Praterstern – one of the city's busiest interchanges passed by 150,000 people every day – to involve passersby in making the ropes and knitting them together to create temporary seating for the square.

The resulting street furniture creates a new space for community engagement and interaction, without having to bring in new virgin materials.

"Two-thirds of all waste in Austria comes from construction sites, so it's a big waste stream," said Frida Teller, who founded Membran together with Julia Hahnl, Tobi Kauer and Julia Habarda.

"So we were thinking about how we can actually use the materials that are thrown away to reconstruct the city in a more democratic way, designed by the people who pass by."

To create the DIY rope-making machine, Membran took apart old wooden pallets and used them to form two carts, between which the strips of tarp can be stretched by attaching them to long eye bolts on either side.

A battery-powered drill is used to spin these bolts into place, effectively twisting the tarps into long cords, six at a time. Three of these cords are then spun together to create one sturdy rope, using the same technique helped by a guide wood.

The whole process takes around 10 to 15 minutes and was designed to allow easy participation and transport so the machine can be set up in different public places.

Curious pedestrians were recruited to both create the ropes and turn them into large nets using a macramé knotting technique, bringing different people together to create each hammock seat.

"We're here every day for three hours and lots of people come and join," Teller told Dezeen. "A few minutes ago, a guy who was here three days ago came and he brought his friend so they could try it together."

"Some stay for two or three hours because they really like the process," she added. "We also have some connections with the bus drivers. This is their final stop so they always stop by and invite us for coffee."

The project is part of Vienna Design Week's ongoing Stadtarbeit initiative, which every year for the last ten years has supported projects focused on involving everyday citizens in the design process.

Also on show at the festival headquarters, Urban Networks was one of three projects realised as part of the VDW's 2023 edition and was crowned the winner of the annual Social Design Prize sponsored by Erste Bank.

Now that Vienna Design Week has drawn to a close, Membran is planning to donate the seats to community gardens and bring the project to different public spaces.

"Ideally, we would do more projects like this in different places with different people," Teller said. "But it can be difficult to get the city's approval because public space is so regulated."

Elsewhere at Vienna Design Week, The Series exhibition collated work by 22 independent designers to explore the idiosyncrasies of small-batch production.

Previous editions of the festival have featured tableware made from food waste and a touch-responsive clock that tells the time with shadows.

The photography is Marcella Ruiz Cruz and Tobias Kauer.

Urban Networks was on display as part of Vienna Design Week 2023 from 22 September to 1 October. See Dezeen Events Guide for all the latest information you need to know to attend the event, as well as a list of other architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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Woven spinning chairs by Héctor Esrawe and Ignacio Cadena, and a hidden stage with entrances made from portable toilets were some of the highlights of FORMAT Festival in Arkansas.

FORMAT, which stands for For Music + Art + Technology, integrated a number of interactive installations directly into the festival grounds alongside the Momentary gallery in Bentonville.

Produced by C3 Presents and TRIADIC, the second iteration of the three-day festival was the first to take place at this location the city that is home to the headquarters of Walton Global, which owns shopping chain Walmart.

A variety of sculptural work from international and local designers were chosen to fill the manicured grounds outside of the gallery.

"We never wanted to just be decorative, but we wanted to really be an integral part of the festival landscape," said the TRIADIC team, which curated the installations and includes Elizabeth Edelman, Roya Sachs and Mafalda Millies.

"We really are able to give a platform to art and music and have them collaborate."

Esrawe + Cadena, a collaboration between Mexican designers Eraswe and Cadena, staged a series of spinning objects with platforms for spinning, covered in colourful nylon straps.

Called Los Trompos (Spinning Tops) the work was first exhibited in Atlanta and has since travelled around the country. It is based on the spinning tops commonly used as playthings by children, according to the designers.

Sydney-based design studio Atelier Sisu installed its Evanescent sculpture, a series of large plastic bubbles with iridescent sides that can be walked under.

To ensure local contributions, the TRIADIC team held an open contest for people in the surrounding area to design the entrance gate for the festival. This year's winner was an arch made up of discarded bicycle wheels by Zach Springer that spin and light up at night.

The sculptural walkway was intended to represent the region's position as a mountain biking destination.

Other large-scale installations included billboards with chalk-facing sides where visitors could record "complaints" by activist group Guerrilla Girls as well as a mobile photography lab that took portraits of visitors, printed them on large-format paper and then wheat-pasted them on plywood walls across the grounds.

New York installation artists Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman created a stage for the festival clad in the fronts of portable toilets. Through two entrances, one could walk through the portable toilet doors and enter a "psychedelic speakeasy" with six rooms and a dome structure in the middle where small concerts were performed.

Other stages and structures included a "disco barn" designed specially for the event as well as a large Quonset hut with open-ended sides that formed a marketplace for clothing and other goods.

The integration of the more standard music festival elements and installations with the gallery structure on the property was indicative of close ties between the different arts institutions in the city.

The Momentary is an extension of the Safdie Architects-designed Crystal Bridges Museum just a few miles away, which was founded by Alice Walton, daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton.

"We take immense pride in the dynamic, cutting-edge work that is being done here, in arts and culture and beyond," said Momentary interim director Jill Wagar.

"We're all working together toward a common goal, underscored by the drive to create exceptional, inspiring, and accessible experiences."

The greater area has seen a flurry of infrastructure in the past decades, and one resident told Dezeen that the building reminded him of the "Sims City" in its speed and placement.

Marlon Blackwell Architects, based in nearby Fayetteville, has designed a number of structures for the city's Thaden School, a private arts-oriented school backed by the Walton Foundation.

Other installations in the city include an architecture exhibition at Crystal Bridges called Architecture at Home, which featured experimental housing prototypes from a variety of international studios, such as Mexico City's PPAA.

Top photo is by Ismael Quintanilla III.

FORMAT Festival ran from 22 to 24 September 2023 in Bentonville, Arkansas. For more international events, installations and talks in architecture and design visit the Dezeen Events Guide. 

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Geodesic domes containing projections of AI-rendered images depicting  "ideal eco futures" feature at the Earth Edition exhibition held in California.

Called Earth Edition: A Festival of Eco-Consciousness, the ten-day event was located at the California Institute of Art's (CalArts) campus in Santa Clarita and sought to "shift the tone of the conversation around the climate crisis" with AI technology, large-scale immersive installations and climate-oriented work by over 40 individual artists.

The event was organised by Visions2030, a "future-oriented initiative that engages the creative imagination".

"It's really about an un-school," Visions2030 founder Carey Lovelace told Dezeen. "Where you can come in and unlearn everything you that you've learned to sort of see a vision of the future."

"The whole point is to stimulate people's dreams and open up these new avenues of what's possible."

Three interconnected geodesic domes, created in collaboration with design studio Minds Over Matter, stood at the centre of the fair, ranging in size from 30 to 50 feet (9 to 15 metres) in diameter.

The first two domes contained digital projections created by Minds Over Matter, while the last contained a more traditional gallery space.

In the first, benches encircled a spherical projection intended to evoke a campfire.

In the second, visitors sat underneath a projection of colourful visuals cast onto the ceiling which were accompanied by "meditative sound baths".

Visitors were then encouraged to create an image of an idealized eco-future with AI technology in the third dome, using an interactive platform installed on tablets.

These images were then projected onto a digitized gallery within the same space for guests to examine.

Artwork and interactive installations from over 40 artists explored world-building and sustainability and were installed elsewhere around the campus and in two large gallery spaces.

Curated by Vera Petukhova, highlights from the Futuring (Art for Building New Worlds) exhibition included Ain't No Green Without Brown by artist Ruben Ochoa in collaboration with Cam La.

It featured "living sculptures" designed to bring attention to the oft-ignored contributions of Latinx agricultural workers through a collection of farmworkers' clothing strewn about a small site.

Within the pants, hoodies and sleeves, Ochoa nested small planting beds in order to transform the clothing into a "living system".

For Sproutime is Now, performance artist Leslie Labowitz Starus created a mixed-media installation of layers of soils, seeds, grass clippings and picket-sign-styled messaging which centres the sales of organic foods.

The artist also hosted the EcoExpo on a campus patio, a "green marketplace" that showcased local agricultural and activist groups through plant installations as a way to spark "generative conversations".

The fair also featured the Zukunft Garten (A Solarpunk Experience) by hacker and futurist John Threat, a theatre space outfitted with plants by Latinx With Plants that hosted talks, DJ sets and "unlearning" workshops.

The space tapped into so-called solarpunk culture through a combination of digital experiences and plants installed on walls, floors and the ceiling.

"Cyberpunk is future-oriented, dystopian," said Lovelace. "Solarpunk is utopian. It poses the question, 'What if nature and technology could meet and create a wonderful world?'"

At the Indigenous Deep Knowledge Circle created by CalArts faculty member Chad S Hamill (čnaq'ymi), guests were encouraged to reconsider their relationship with the earth through installations by local artists that highlight the traditional knowledge of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians.

"Often when dealing with climate, we are presented with catastrophizing language," said Lovelace. "At the same time, there is an unprecedented rise in climate anxiety among younger generations."

"With an alternative, more optimistic tenor to the eco-discourse, we hope to contribute to guiding the climate action movement into a more vibrant form."

Other recent climate-focused exhibitions include Prowl Studio's Beacon exhibition in San Francisco which explored sustainable materials and technology and a MoMA exhibition focused on exposing the public to new strains of thinking regarding architecture and environmentalism.

The photography is courtesy of Earth Edition.

Earth Edition was on show at the California Institute of the Arts from 15 September to 24 September 2023. For more exhibitions, events and talks in architecture and design, visit Dezeen Events Guide.

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Promotion: Italian wellness brand Effe has launched a number of new saunas for 2023, including the Aladdin sauna and the Natural modular cubicle, which is available as a sauna, hammam or infrared sauna.

Aladdin was designed by long-time Effe collaborator Rodolfo Dordoni, who passed away last month, and Michele Angelini.

The design is characterised by its minimalist aesthetic and a mirrored fascia running around the bottom of the sauna, both internally and externally.

"The name conjures up images of flying carpets and the idea of weightlessness, the inspiration behind the sauna which has been designed to become a discreet, understated addition to the home," said the brand.

Aladdin's benches are made from only two pieces of wood, which are available in either light-striped oak or darker wenge.

The sauna is available in two standard sizes or – as with all Effe products – can be made to measure and comes with an option for an additional internal platform covered in grès porcelain reminiscent of a flying carpet.

Designed by Marco Williams Fagioli, the Natural collection of modular spas all share the same heat-treated aspen cladding and toughened-glass front wall but differ inside to enable either a sauna, hammam or infrared sauna experience.

"The Natural collection combines three wellbeing rituals – the hammam, sauna and infrared sauna – and all the benefits their heat offers in one single design," said Effe.

"The transparency of the glass ensures light floods into the sauna, it lets you connect with your surroundings and eliminates any feeling of being enclosed."

Inside the Natural sauna are a high two-person bench and a lower moveable seat with a laminated grès porcelain top, while a backlit satin-finish glass panel in the side wall helps make the space feel larger.

A three-kilowatt heater brings the sauna up to temperature.

The interior of the hammam version is clad in grès porcelain for a cosy, textural feel. Steam is generated by an Effe Nuvola Smart Power unit housed under the bench.

Colour therapy comes as standard, as does a shower built into the wall, with fittings available in chrome, matte black or matte gunpowder grey finishes.

The Natural infrared sauna, which uses infrared rays to penetrate the skin and warm the body at a lower temperature than a conventional sauna in order to relax muscles and tendons, has a bench positioned to receive direct heat from the lamps.

Both the Aladdin sauna and the Natural collection result from Effe's ongoing research into home spas.

A major study by The Anti-Inflammaging Company (A-I) commissioned by Effe identified the most effective ways to use heat therapy to treat low-grade chronic inflammation, which has been linked to as many as 50 per cent of premature deaths worldwide.

Based on the study, the free My Effe app, recently developed by the company, provides users with personalised tips for reducing inflammation. Effe says that the app is the result of its pursuit to enhance its products' wellness effectiveness.

Formerly named Effegibi, Effe describes its mission as transforming the spa into a contemporary piece of Italian-designed furniture suitable for multiple rooms in the home.

To view more about the brand, visit its website.

Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen for Effe as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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L'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude's last work, is being recycled by Parley for the Oceans, which will turn it into tents and sun shades for use during the 2024 Olympics and other events in Paris.

In 2021, L'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped saw the monument on Paris's Champs-Élysées shrouded in 25,000 square metres of silvery fabric tied in place with 7,000 metres of red rope.

Both fabric and rope were made of woven polypropylene, a type of thermoplastic, and intended to be recycled — a vision that is now being realised by the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation in collaboration with environmental organisation Parley for the Oceans.

The organisation has already processed the materials and is now in the design and production phase.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has confirmed the tents and shade structures created will be used in major events including the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which the city is hosting next year.

"A constant commitment of Christo and Jeanne-Claude was to reuse, upcycle and recycle all materials used in their projects," said L'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped project director Vladimir Yavachev.

"I can think of nothing more fitting than recycling this artwork for future use in Paris, a city so influential on the lives and work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude," he added.

Parley for the Oceans founder and CEO Cyrill Gutsch said it was meaningful to be giving a second life to an installation that he had seen as "a flag of rebellion" and "an encouragement that seemingly impossible ideas can become a reality".

"The ropes, the fabric of the artwork are testament of the true superpower we humans possess: imagination," said Gutsch.

"We will create tent structures that are designed to protect human life against dangerous heat waves," he added. "And to supercharge our hearts and our minds for the epic challenge ahead of us."

"I know it for sure, together we can create a new economy where harmful, toxic and exploitative business practices are a relic of the past."

The wood and steel from the substructure of L'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped have already been reused by the organisation Les Charpentiers de Paris and the companies ArcelorMittal and Derichebourg Environnement.

It is two years since the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation unveiled L'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped, a posthumous work for both artists.

Christo passed away in 2020 and Jeanne-Claude in 2009, but the pair had conceptualised the project together in 1961. The artists and their foundation consider all of their public projects and indoor installations as collaborative works by both Christo and Jeanne-Claude.

L'Arc de Triomphe Wrapped had been scheduled to go ahead in 2020, but was postponed to 2021 after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

After Christo's death, the project was finalised by his team along with the Centre des Monuments Nationaux, Centre Pompidou and the City of Paris.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are most well-known for "wrapping" famous buildings and landscapes in their massive-scale artworks.

While some critics have attacked the waste or environmental interference of their projects, the artists' foundation maintains that they recycled most materials and left sites in the state they found them in, or better.

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Japanese studio Kengo Kuma and Associates has teamed up with Canadian playground design company Earthscape to create a playground structure made of interconnected logs.

Named Moku-Yama, which translates to "wooden mountain" in Japanese, the structure is made of clusters of "sustainable" timber logs grouped together vertically to form interactive peaks and valleys.

"Moku-Yama blurs the lines between art and play," said the team. "It is an open-ended and non-prescriptive form that enables a multitude of individual and social play experiences."

"From climbing to perching; from drop jumping to hiding; it affords play over, under, and around the structure."

Kengo Kuma and Associates (KKAA) and Earthscape collaborated to produce the structure in three different sizes, with each module formed by a different arrangement of logs that reach ten feet (3 metres) tall at the maximum peak.

The smallest has a footprint of 22 feet by 30 feet (6 metres by 9 metres), with a single peak, while the largest spans 35 feet (11 metres) and contains undulating "pods" of logs.

Each structure is supported by several structural posts, with groups of logs affixed to them to create varying levels.

The tops of the logs can be traversed by foot, while the space underneath resembles wooden stalactites and is also intended for play.

Towards the edge of the structure, individual logs planted in the ground create access points to the centre.

"The repetition of the cylindrical logs contrasts with the irregular and non-symmetrical overall shape," said the team.  "Moku-Yama logs appear to float and the near-invisible construction adds to the sense of awe when it is experienced from every angle."

Turned Alaskan yellow cedar was used for the design and according to the team, will not be stained to showcase the natural wood.

Moku-Yama was specifically designed for children, although "the architectural aesthetic will also captivate teens and adults who oftentimes feel excluded from play and public spaces," said the team.

"The distinction between playgrounds and architecture is less obvious than one might think," said KKAA partner Balázs Bognar.

"We engage projects based on their contribution to society, not necessarily on size, prestige, or profit. Cultural impact is the foremost factor that gets us excited. Playgrounds are architecture, at children's scale."

The model was set up in Ontario but can be purchased internationally.

KKAA recently created washi paper and tree bark accessories for Fendi and a staggered housing complex on a Japanese hillside that one Dezeen commenter found "unsettling".

Recently, Dezeen rounded up a series of innovative playground structures built around the world including a playground built around a former warehouse in China.

The photography is courtesy of Earthscape.

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New Red Order has opened an exhibition in an empty lot in Queens that invites visitors to become "accomplices" in decolonization through a series of installations.

The World's UnFair exhibition contains sculptures, signage, audio and video installations and animatronics dispersed throughout an undeveloped site located next to the borough's elevated train tracks.

New Red Order, which styles itself as a "public secret society", centred the multimedia installations around calls to return ancestral lands to Indigenous peoples and for guests to engage in the process of decolonization.

"In its most conservative sense, decolonization is a reversal of roles – and we're not here for that bag," said New Red Order (NRO). "The other end of the spectrum presents more liberatory pathways of borderless, property-less, nation-less imaginings."

"It's not about kicking everyone out of what's currently called America – it's about forging new forms of kinship and reciprocity that are centred on the land, and its original inhabitants while calling everyone into that process. You can have a place. But first things first: Give it Back."

An animatronic tree and beaver, called Dexter and Sinister, crafted by puppet creator Axtell Expressions and local fabricators The Factory NYC were installed at the centre of the fair.

Placed on a stump, the oversized beaver measures five feet (1.5 metres) in height and was outfitted with fur, large digitized eyes, clawed paws and a slightly open mouth with large beaver teeth.

"The beaver is the animal, besides humans, that perhaps most profoundly alters its environment, and which early settlers saw as a means to capital and property, including New York's pioneer fur trade dealer turned early real estate mogul John Jay Astor," said the team.

The beaver's head swivels to engage with the adjacent tree, a sixteen-foot-tall sculpture modelled after the "wise old tree" archetype.

A human-like face was placed at the centre of the trunk, which runs into a series of exposed roots. Three LED TVs, a cellular tower and a satellite dish were installed in the branches of the tree.

Through an audio loop, the two animatronics engaged in a discussion about land and "the origins of private property".

Above, the screens played a video installation featuring a group of elected officials, non-profit leaders and others who have voluntarily given land back to Indigenous peoples.

Nearby, the Fort Freedumb sculpture features an additional film installation mounted within a cheval-de-frise and encircled by a white picket fence and pointed logs.

"These boundary-making materials signal their use to both forcibly establish property lines and to reject them," said the team.

Spread throughout the grounds, satiric signs modelled on traditional development signage like construction fence notices referenced land ownership and gentrification, replacing standard copy with calls to action.

A central fair booth acted as a recruitment installation for visitors to enroll in direct action steps to further fight for Indigenous sovereignty.

"Through disarming humour, NRO plays with the desire to consume and co-opt indigeneity, not to call you out but to call all of us into their movement," said curator Diya Vij of Creative Time, which organised the event.

"If you answer the call, you will enter a transformative process, simultaneously world-breaking and world-making, that insists on the expansion of Indigenous futures."

New Red Order is facilitated by artist Jackson Polys and filmmakers Adam Khalil and Zack Khalil. The collective was also involved in the Counterpublic public art festival in St Louis, where it installed a billboard above a repatriated site.

The photography is by Cesarin Mateo. 

The World's Unfair is on show in Long Island City, Queens from 15 September to 15 October 2023. For more exhibitions, events and talks in architecture and design, visit Dezeen Events Guide.

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Montreal-based designer Thom Fougere has created a small collection of ring-shaped benches cut from a single plate of steel and installed in the woods outside of Winnipeg.

Nesting Loops is a permanent installation consisting of seven benches placed along a hiking trail in Victoria Beach, Manitoba for passersby to rest and connect with nature.

"I'm deeply interested in our connection to nature and how to elevates life's subtleties, which nature grants us but often goes unnoticed," said Fougere.

"The design of this installation aims to do just that, offering visitors the opportunity to connect with their surroundings and unplug in a secluded natural environment while using materials efficiently."

The benches were cut from a half-inch thick plate of steel measuring eight feet by eight feet (2.4 metres by 2.4 metres).

Fougere cut the benches in four concentric rings, with each piece measuring 14 inches wide (35 centimetres) at its seating surface.

The pattern means that the benches can "nest", with each growing smaller in diameter and the last being a solid circle

Four small circular stools were also cut from each corner of the plate, which maximised the use of the material and cut down on waste.

To create bases, Fougere affixed several steel tubes to the bottom of each ring and just one to the smaller central circle and additional stools.

The collection of benches was then installed on its woodland site, just a few feet from one another.

The widest of the benches encircles a young tree, while others sit on moss and leaves.

"The subdued sand-blasted aluminium surface passively captures the dappling of light through the surrounding forest canopy, creating a dynamic interplay between the installation and its natural surroundings," said the team.

The project was created for the international design competition, Benchmark, which is organized by Storefront Manitoba and the Winnipeg Trails Association.

Each year, a designer is selected to reimagine the bench for permanent installation along local Winnipeg trails and beyond.

Fougere designed Nesting Loops as a memorial to the late David Penner, former executive director of local design NGO Storefront Manitoba.

Thom Fougere is a Montreal-based designer who once served as creative director of Canadian design company EQ3. In 2021, he established his design studio, Thom Fougere Studio.

Other recent bench design includes Pews and Perches' playful brick seating along London's Royal Docks and Vestre's fossil-free steel bench.

The photography is by Thom Fougere.

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Architecture studio Zeller & Moye has collaborated with artist Katie Paterson to create Mirage, a massive sculpture made from glass cylinders for technology company Apple's campus in California.

The sculpture was placed in an olive grove near the visitor's centre at Apple Park, the main campus for the company.

To create Mirage, Zeller & Moye worked with Scottish artist Katie Paterson to weave hundreds of cast glass cylinders through the olive grove, creating a path through the forest.

"Visitors experience Mirage by walking along columns that reveal stories of the world's deserts," said Zeller & Moye co-founder Christoph Zeller. "The sculpture unfolds piece by piece, through gradually shifting color, surface texture and material consistencies."

The team worked with both material scientists and traditional glassmakers to create the columns, each of which stands more than six feet (1.8 metres) above the ground.

Sand was collected from a variety of different deserts from around the world, allowing for a variety of textures and patterns to be represented in each piece.

The artwork was meant to represent global collaboration by using materials from multiple different sites.

"Mirage is a global artwork," said the team.

"In the spirit of cooperation, sand was sustainably collected, in partnership with UNESCO, geologists and communities across the world's desert regions," it added.

"The artwork celebrates each of the lands from which it is created, and the people who nurture, conserve, and sustain these lands."

Mirage derives its name from the effect that the glass gives off when hit by light. Because it is arranged among the trees, the glass "appears to subtly melt" into the surrounding groves.

The team claims that it had to "invent" methods of glass working to achieve the scale of the project.

It was meant to add to the experience of procession through the grove, across the campus, as well as serve as a gathering place for visitors and for employees.

"The spatial composition activates the existing park landscape by creating an unexpected social and contemplative gathering place for visitors and staff to relax, to lay down on the grass, to have a picnic or to play," said Zeller & Moye co-founder Ingrid Moye.

Apple Park was designed by UK studio Foster + Partners. It is known for its visitor's center and for the Steve Jobs Theater, both of which feature pavilion-like structures with glass walls and thin cantilevered roofing.

Zeller & Moye has offices in Berlin and Mexico City. The studio has created works at a number of scales, including earthquake-resistant housing in Mexico City.

The photography is by Iwan Baan.

Project credits:

Architects: Zeller & Moye / Ingrid Moye, Christoph Zeller (principals), Francesco Baggio, Damjan Brundic, Francesco Spadini, Yang Zhong (team)
Artist: Katie Paterson (principal)
Art consultancy: Artsource Consulting
Art gallery: James Cohan Art Gallery
Local architect: HGA
Contractor: Holder Construction
Structural engineers: Eckersley O’Callaghan
Lighting consultants: ISP Design
Landscape designer: Olin Studio
Civil engineer: Kier+Wright
Electrical engineers: Cupertino Electric
Geotechnical engineering investigation: BAGG Engineers
Scientific specialists: Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft / TU Delft ReStruct Group | TU Delft
Waterproofing specialists: Morrison Hershfield
Glass manufacturer: John Lewis Glass, Inc.
Steel manufacturer: VCG Global
Sand mix: East Bay Batch and Color

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An oversized chalice and a light show constructed from water containers were among more than 400 art installations at this year's Burning Man festival. Here are 11 of the most interesting.

This year's theme of Animalia aimed to pay homage to the animal kingdom and human's role within it. Dezeen has rounded up the most architecturally intriguing of the installations that were placed among the DIY sculptures of robots, birds and flying horses.

The annual festival was met with controversy this year, as a coalition of climate protesters pushed back against the festival's consumerism and destruction of its desert site, despite the festival purporting a "leave no trace" policy.

While protestors blockaded the entryway to the event, creating even longer waiting times to get into the festival, a bout of heavy rain created delays on the way out, forcing some burners to leave early and the delay of the burning of the event's central effigy.

Read on to see 11 of this year's installations.

The Hive by Tim Bremner

For the Burning Man festival, the central "man" pavilion serves as both an effigy and a central plaza. This year's pedestal for the man, designed by Oakland-based artist Tim Bremner, took the form of a hive, with interlocking wooden hexagons stacked on top of one another.

"Like a proper bee colony, we burners all have our roles and exist in a beautifully designed place," said Bremner.

"This year the theme lines up nicely with what we've always been… one big-ass dusty beehive of applied creativity."

Temple of the Heart by Ela Madej and Reed Finlay 

This year's official temple was designed in the image of "an upside-down desert flower with a stem pointing up into the sky".

The all-wood, lattice structure by Ela Madej and Reed Finlay was created using CNC machines and took over two weeks to assemble once its pieces arrived at the Burning Man site.

Created to be a place of meditation and mourning, the temple was burned during the last hours of this year's event.

Chalice to Eleusis by Hunter Leggitt, Jonathan Berry and House of Fābl

The Chalice to Eleusis sculpture was designed in the image of a kykeon – a psychoactive drink that was used during celebrations of an ancient Greek cult.

The oversized sculpture was built to look like a cup freshly unburied from the sand, exposing Eleusinian knowledge.

"Encased underground and locked away in hidden libraries for nearly two thousand years, the mysteries of our cultural roots are now finally being exposed," said the team.

Heartburst by (OU) Officeuntitled

More than 880 bamboo poles shipped from Malaysia were used to create this rectangular gateway by (OU) Officeuntitled co-founders Benjamin Anderson, Christian Robert and Shawn Gehle.

According to the team, the material was chosen for its "grounding" qualities. They estimated that the poles used for the sculpture had a carbon sink of -7.5 metric tons of CO2 – the equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of a US household.

The Reactor Project by Assaf Allouche

Constructed from stripes of wood and lined with LED lights, the Reactor Project acted as space for burners to rest and connect.

"It is a vessel which enables beautiful minds to encounter and react with each other – simply having fun and spreading positive reaction," said the team.

Build a Seat 2.0 by Mo Osunbor 

The Build a Seat project showcased a number of wooden seats designed by a collective of Black artists placed around an oversized table.

The pieces were interactive, with the helix-shaped base of the table doubling as a spiral stair to the top.

Masterpiece #999 by Benjamin Rowe

Described as a "specture in the dust", Masterpiece stood twice as high as a human.

The most recent project from designer Benjamin Rowe, the wooden sculpture is "the latest in a long line of projects exploring the potential for simple materials to communicate geometrically artistic messages".

Chapel of Babel by Michael Garlington

Covered in black and white portraiture photography by Michael Garlington, the Chapel of Babel was a wooden structure built of multiple, hexagonal levels.

The photography was printed onto panels and then affixed to the structure's side.

"The human element in the portraiture, animals, flowers, insects, and leaves, will convey that we all belong here and will hold room for everyone in all versions and reiterations of their expression," said the team.

Blastoff by Weld Queen 

Blastoff was built upon a small airstrip sculpture established during Burning Man 2019.

Placed adjacent to a line-up of pre-existing airplane seats, the tower resembled an airplane vertically blasting off into the sky, while its tail provided shelter from the heat.

BitCube by Colin O' Donnell

BitCube by designer Colin O' Donnell was made of 224 standard IBC water containers stacked to form a large cube, which guests entered through a doorway to one side.

Each cube acted as a single pixel in a colourful light display, which made-up projections ranging from abstract shapes to minimalist representations of life.

Love Pods by Josephine Declerck 

The Love Pods by Josephine Declerck were obelisk-shaped wooden structures guests could enter through a circular door. Inside, a colourful light display offered a place for rest, safety and intimacy for Burners.

All photography is by Gurpreet Chawla unless otherwise stated.

Burning Man took place from Sunday, 27 August to Monday, 4 September in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world

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As London Design Festival returns for another year, we have selected some of the key installations and exhibitions to see as part of the 2023 edition.

Taking place from 16 to 24 September, London Design Festival 2023 will host hundreds of events across 13 districts in the city.

Included in the programme are exhibitions, workshops, talks, tours, product launches, open studios, showrooms and trade fairs.

Dezeen Events Guide has launched a digital guide to the 2023 edition of London Design Festival, with key information about some of the best events.

Read on for our roundup of highlights from the programme:

Aura by Pablo Valbuena

Spanish artist Pablo Valbuena has created site-specific projections for London's iconic St Paul's Cathedral, informed by the noises of the building – including speech and music.

The installation, titled Aura, uses a pulsating light to represent sound waves to explore rituals and ceremonies.

The exhibition forms part of the Wren 300 programme, commemorating the fact that 2023 marks 300 years since the death of architect Christopher Wren, who designed the cathedral.

The Farm Shop by Marco Campardo, Guan Lee and Luca Lo Pinto

Designer Marco Campardo, architect Guan Lee and curator Luca Lo Pinto have teamed up to present Farm Shop, an exhibition showcasing dinnerware informed by Grymsdyke Farm in Buckinghamshire.

The collection was made by designers during a summer residency at the farm, with the makers encouraged to explore the relationship between inhabitants and the spaces they live in.

Material Matters

The Material Matters fair is returning for its second London Design Festival stint, exhibiting more than 40 brands across four days.

The fair explores innovative materials that can contribute to a circular economy, showcasing products made from food waste, paper, aluminium, rubber, porcelain and more.

Led by Material Matters podcast host Grant Gibson, the event will also host talks with designers including Bill Amberg, Sofia Hagen, Tanja Kirst, Priyanka Narula, Jack Brandsma and Michael Evesque.

Halo by Studio Waldemeyer

Also part of the Wren 300 initiative, Halo is a light installation taking place in another building designed by Christopher Wren, St Stephen Walbrook.

Designed by Studio Waldemeyer, the exhibition will feature a conical pendulum attached to the apex of the church.

The pendulum, which is embedded with lights, will swing around the altar that is temporarily home to a marble sculpture designed by British artist Henry Moore.

Mycelium Unearthed by Osmose Studio

Mycelium Unearthed is an exhibition exploring the role of mycelium – the root structure of fungi – in the design industry to create "ecological balance".

Hosted by regenerative design brand Osmose Studio, the exhibition will showcase wooden chairs by Welsh designer Dylan Glyn and clothing by Osmose Studio co-founder Aurelie Fontan.

The event includes workshops for visitors to create their own objects from mycelium.

Hana Mikoshi by Hayatsu Architects

Japanese studio Hayatsu Architects will present the Hana Mikoshi seating installation at the V&A Museum, featuring 50,000 sakura-shaped paper flowers handmade by makers in Japan.

The installation was informed by the Mino Matsuri festival, which takes place annually in the Gifu prefecture of Japan, inviting locals to create paper shrines.

The Lego Piece Garden

Danish toy manufacturer Lego is partnering with creative website It's Nice That to showcase an exhibition featuring the brand's Botanicals collection.

The Lego Piece Garden will comprise immersive installations that invite visitors to play with the collection, alongside artworks using the Adults Welcome collection made by local artists.

Manus Manum Lavat by Rio Kobayashi

Japanese designer Rio Kobayashi will be presenting his first solo show as part of this year's festival, occupying a space in the Grade II-listed Victorian townhouse of Cromwell Place in Brompton Design District.

Taking the form of a makeshift living room, the exhibition was designed to bring people together and showcases new collaborations by Kobayashi including a series of fish tables painted by artist James Hague and a convivial sofa designed with Flavia Brändle.

Nice to Meet You Again by Morag Myerscough

London-based artist Morag Myerscough is partnering with car manufacturer MINI to present a colourful, immersive installation at Shoreditch Electric Light Station.

Nice to Meet You Again aims to create a green urban environment within the venue, utilising every corner of the space.

Design to Wonderland by Shanghai Design Week

Shanghai Design Week is hosting a guest exhibition as part of LDF that explores Chinese design and branding, focusing on urban development and improving people's quality of life.

The exhibition will address the aesthetics of design in Chinese culture and sustainability efforts in the design and consumer goods industry.

London Design Festival 2023 takes place from 16-24 September 2023. See our London Design Festival 2023 guide on Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.

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New York-based artist Torkwase Dyson has designed a monolithic black structure for the Counterpublic art festival in St Louis to augment sound recordings from a ragtime composer.

Called Birds and Lava (Scott Joplin), the installation comprises a massive black-painted wood structure and was constructed in a park in the Old North St Louis neighbourhood.

The installation was informed by the ragtime music of American composer Scott Joplin, and a recording of his music was played on a loop in the space to create a multisensory experience.

Dyson said that the form of the installation was created based on "liberation from architecture and infrastructure of dispossession".

"I pull shape language from spaces, used or constructed, that refuse environments of oppression," Dyson told Dezeen.

"When I combine these geometries in my painting, drawings or sculptures, they become what I call Hyper Shapes. Hyper Shape compositions speak to confinement, freedom, modularity, mobility, improvisation, speed, scale and a certain stillness."

For Birds and Lava (Scott Joplin), Dyson took the form of the piano and its music as an organising principle for the design.

Elevated above a grassy field in a park surrounded by residential homes, the installation consisted of two large walls that frame a platform where small stools are arranged.

Each of the walls has a circle that has been cut out and pushed back, creating a passageway that augments the sound. A curved wall of slats was placed within the walls, framing the space.

"I focused on the intensity of seriality, through drawing generated orthogonal forms and then used trapezoids to produce a curvilinear grid," said Dyson. "My hypershapes grew into architecture inspired by Joplin’s mastery over the technology of the piano."

A recording of Joplin's music played in the space through a speaker powered by a solar generator.

The design was meant to create a clear listening experience and to create shadows throughout the day that would complement the sound.

"I wanted to communicate sonically the construction of things like line weight, density, speed, gravity, time, and texture," Dyson told Dezeen.

"With so many components, my aim was fusion between sound and architecture."

The installation was part of the second edition of Counterpublic, a tri-annual public art festival, with works arrayed throughout the city.

Organised around Jefferson Avenue, a primary thoroughfare, the programming highlighted the legacies of dispossession in the Missouran city and included art and performances at the site of a repatriated mound constructed by Indigenous people before colonisation.

Indigenous art collective New Red Order created a billboard over the site with graphics and text that said "Give it Back".

Also included were a series of renderings displayed at the site of the demolished Pruitt-Igoe housing projects by Chicago artist Tim Portlock, which reimagined the structures through the experiences of people who lived there.

In the city's downtown, near a recently constructed soccer stadium, artist Damon Davis created a series of pillars, the first in a work that will run through a mile to commerate Mill Creek Valley, a majority-Black neighbourhood that was demolished through mid-century urban renewal projects.

Dyson, who usually works in paints, also created a sculpture for 2023's Desert X art showcase in California.

Other recent installations informed by Black culture and thought in America are a "lava-like" installation by enFOLD Collective in Los Angeles and a scultpure by Lauren Halsey that showed a mix of Egyptian architectural forms with street art on top of the Met in New York.

The photography is by Chris Bauer.

Counterpublic ran from 15 April to 15 July. For more events, talks and exhibitions in architecture and design, visit the Dezeen Events Guide. 

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An interactive staircase by Mexico City-based Tatiana Bilbao Estudio and a canopy over an intersection by New York-based Practice for Architecture and Urbanism feature in the fourth Exhibit Columbus.

The annual event features art installations created by global designers, university professors and a local high school design team, exhibited throughout the city.

2023's Exhibit Columbus features installations celebrating the architectural legacy of the city, which is famous for its high concentration of modernist architecture, including a number of buildings by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen.

The theme, Public by Design, was chosen to prompt participants as to how collaborations between designers and communities can create more equitable and attractive cities.

Tatiana Bilbao Estudio encouraged guests to design public space by offering a "library of things" such as furniture, objects and sports equipment.

Objects such as chairs, baskets, tables, shovels, mats and soccer balls were encased in an oversized blue bookshelf that spans the entry to a local library and an adjoining oversized staircase of the same blue hue.

Participants can gather the objects to make a public space of their own in order to "express their desires and intentions".

At a major crossroads in the city's downtown, Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) created a white, ballooning canopy for civic engagement and celebratory purposes.

Capped at the same height as the neighbouring buildings, the canopy spans the intersection and draws from diverse forms – from the Pantheon in Athens to the wigwam, a dwelling typical to Indigenous people of what is now the eastern United States and Canada.

Lights were installed in each corner to cast a variety of colours on the underside of the canopy at night.

In nearby Mill Race Park, New York's Studio Zewde installed a sweeping red structure made of bamboo poles and crossbeams, shaped in a sloping semi-circle.

The spine-like installation was modelled after the hill opposite and placed in a festival field as an homage to the community's strong ties to the two topographical landmarks.

On the same site, PORT planted a band of native plants that follow the same arc as a community centre building in the park.

It is subdivided into 12 distinct plots of varying plant species that act as "rewilding experiments", some mown and others left to grow wild, bookmarked by lines of wildflowers.

Brightly coloured observation decks and survey poles were arranged along the edge of the project.

Also, a series of trellises and seating created by a team of high school students used moveable furniture to encourage guests to create a community space of their own, not unlike Bilbao's installation.

Made with 1,000 linear feet of steel tubing, the structure spans sixty-four feet and features brightly coloured awnings and Lego-like blocks for seating.

An installation created by full-time university professors Halina Steiner, Tameka Baba, Forbes Lipschitz and Shelby Doyle of The Ohio State University and Iowa State University College of Design encourages conversations about urban waterways with a brightly coloured model of subterranean water infrastructure.

A sound installation by Deborah Garcia of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was programmed to transform a building's structural rumblings into a therapeutic melody.

The curatorial team included designers and city officials. Exhibit Columbus will host an ongoing series of activities, installations and talks throughout the remainder of the exhibition.

In 2020, Dezeen teamed up with Exhibit Columbus to host four talks exploring the future of cities in the centre of the USA and in 2019, SO-IL wrapped 130 trees in a colourful hammock for the event.

The photography is by Hadley Fruits.

Exhibit Columbus will be on show throughout Columbus, Indiana until 26 November, 2023. For more exhibitions, events and talks in architecture and design, visit the Dezeen Events Guide.

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A huge tube of light forms a series of arches in this installation created by design studio Objects of Common Interest for this year's Italian Capital of Culture.

The neighbouring cities of Bergamo and Brescia are co-hosting the title of Italian Capital of Culture for 2023.

Lights On forms part of the programme for Bergamo, where it is installed in the city's Piazza della Libertà.

The installation consists of three elements. In addition to the snake-like lighting sculpture, Objects of Common Interest has also created seats made from marble offcuts and a platform topped by glowing boulders.

All three are designed to bring new life to the underused 1930s piazza.

"We wanted to resurrect this derelict public space and bring it back to its community," explained studio founders Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis.

The lighting sculpture is the main feature. Formed of both straight and curved modules, this glowing tube snakes around the space and weaves through the colonnade of the adjacent building.

This building, the Casa della Libertà, was once a headquarters for the National Fascist Party but is now abandoned.

By drawing people close to it, the sculpture seeks to create a new narrative for its grand architecture.

"We asked ourselves, how do you bring life back into a space that has been forgotten for so long, and that represents fragments of such a complicated history?" said Petaloti and Trampoukis.

Sensing that light was the answer, they decided to develop a giant version of the Tube Lights they designed in 2019.

"For centuries, light has been a medium that brings people together in a fundamental way," they said.

"Passers-by are drawn in and invited to watch the light sculpture transform as the sun goes down, illuminating the plaza within its glow."

The design is modular, meaning the sculpture could be taken apart and reconfigured for another location. The designers' aim was to create a piece that could have an extended life.

The duo applied a similarly resourceful approach to the other installations in the square.

Recycled tyres were used to create a platform, making it easier for people to access the fountain at the centre of the piazza.

It is adorned with colourful blocks of resin shaped like rocks, which glow thanks to lights contained within. The effect highlights Objects of Common Interest's expertise in resin, as seen in the recent project Poikilos.

For the seats, the designers sourced blocks of marble from local quarries. These offcuts, which would otherwise have gone to waste, are stacked in playful compositions.

"Reactivate, reuse and renew were the principles which drove our proposal, furthering our existing ethos that true change comes from re-appreciating and re-purposing that which we already possess," said the designers.

"All elements have been designed to have an afterlife, either as a whole or in parts, and each piece is able to be reassembled in a variety of clusters at different locations," they added.

The installation was unveiled in Bergamo in January and has since hosted various events and performances.

The photography is by FTfoto.

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New York-based studio Agency—Agency has collaborated with local studio SHEEEP to design stormwater gardens underneath an expressway in Toronto.

Located two blocks east of The Bentway park, a rehabilitated stretch of greenspace underneath Toronto's Gardiner Expressway, the Staging Grounds installation will funnel and cleanse rainwater from the expressway using a passive filtration system.

"It's a privilege working with The Bentway on Staging Grounds to think creatively about the city's infrastructure and to centre the design of water in the public's daily experience," said Agency—Agency director Tei Carpenter.

The installation will feature a system of re-routed downspouts that funnel stormwater and melted snow into circular planters located at the base of the expressway's support columns in order to mitigate local flooding.

An initial stormwater filter placed at the top of each planter will perform passive filtration before the water runs into a circular garden container below.

Native plants such as milkweed, Agastache and yarrow will further absorb excess water, as well as salt.

A secondary shallow overflow garden located at the base of the stormwater garden will collect additional run-off and be populated by volunteer species – plants that grow without deliberate planting.

Visitors will access the installation through a series of interconnected, elevated paths that span a 20,000-square-foot (1,858 square metres) site, which is a satellite laboratory of The Bentway, a 1-mile-long (1.75 kilometre) multi-use trail along Toronto's waterfront.

"We're really excited to share this project with the city and to see how an underutilized part of our infrastructure can be actively and passively used throughout the year," said SHEEEP founding director Reza Nik.

Urban design and landscape studio Public Work led the design of the park alongside design advisors Greenberg Consultants.

The first phase opened in 2018 and features year-round activities and public art commissions, including a 220-metre long ice skating path.

The Staging Grounds installation will remain on display until the city's Gardiner Expressway Rehabilitation Strategy commences in the area, which aims to keep the entire expressway safe and operable for traffic and pedestrians alike.

As of March 2021, phase two of The Bentway moved forward with a redesign of a wooden pedestrian footbridge.

Imagery is courtesy Agency—Agency and SHEEEP

Staging Grounds will be on display starting September 2023 until late 2025 in Toronto, Canada. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world. 

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References to the tar pits of Los Angeles and community well-being characterise Black – Still, a pavilion by local design studio enFOLD Collective at Craft Contemporary in LA.

Created through the initiatives of arts non-profit Materials & Applications, Black – Still comprises a 12-foot-tall black box clad in wood lath and mortar.

From the outside, the mortar appears to seep through the 2,000 pieces of black-painted lath that clad the exterior. The mortar is a reference to the nearby La Brea Tar pits in Los Angeles and how the geological substrata of the city "pushes through human-made infrastructure", an allusion to hidden forces.

On the inside of the open-air structure is a wall of black geotextile mesh and viewers are provided strips of fabric to tie onto it.

Created as a space for "community well-being", the structure is free and open to the public. It has misters and has been used to host events and programming since it opened in late May 2023.

Beyond its use, the designers wanted the structure to be a commentary on the colour black in the design industry, both in the way it is explicitly used as a colour and in terms of Blackness.

"While the inspiration to use the color black was first sparked by the concept of meditation and stillness, it was then reinforced by the presence of and our enchantment by tar," enFOLD Collective founders Dana McKinney White and Megan Echols told Dezeen.

"As Black women trained in the fields of architecture and urban planning, we have both felt the isolation of our identity throughout our education and careers," they continued.

"But this isolation is dwarfed by that of our community which has been historically disenfranchised by a design industry that often and explicitly weaponizes space against them."

The need for stillness was in part inspired by the busy site, the courtyard of the Craft Contemporary museum in central Los Angeles. The pavilion was wedged into a small enclosure between the complex's building, near a fence that separates it from the street.

At its base is a mound of recycled tire rubber mulch that works to separate the "calming" effect of the installation from the rest of the site.

"We wanted a project that would serve as a space of peace and reflection, and the courtyard posed a challenge of how to neutralize distractions, focus attention, and elevate calm," enFold Collective told Dezeen, adding that the "monolithic form" responds to the "idiosyncratic shapes".

On the other hand, the strange texture of the exterior was meant to create a pause.

EnFOLD Collective added that the pavilion was meant to provoke the way that black as a literal colour is used in the design industry, noting that many models and plans and walls are usually rendered in white.

"In the use of the color black, we are further able to challenge the color in its role throughout the design industries," enFOLD told Dezeen.

"These aesthetic decisions are steeped in a system that values purity and legibility. However, we wanted to challenge how we could shape a space of warmth, comfort, and peace through blackness, leveraging shadows, light, and the spectral rainbow captured in the mist."

Founded in 2021, the studio aims to "uplift the voices of underrepresented and under-resourced communities" through design. Black – Still is the duo's first major installation.

Other installations that examine racial diversity in the built environment include Los Angeles artist Lauren Halsey's monumental installation, which was shown on the rooftop of the Met in New York City, and combines elements of Egyptian culture and street art.

The photography is by Sam Wadieh. 

Project credits:

Architecture: enFOLD Collective
Commissioned by: Materials & Applications
Supported by: Craft Contemporary, The Graham Foundation, Black Reconstruction Collective, Pasadena Art Alliance, and Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs
Fabrication support: P31 Construction / Builder Bee

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Studio Jobs designer Job Smeets has designed Life on Mars, a window installation for fashion brand Hermès that will be on display in stores across France.

Named after the song by British artist David Bowie, the Life on Mars installation depicts the fictional colonisation of Mars by a set of characters with horse heads and their "space dog".

The sets, which nod to the climate crisis, feature a French frites shop on top of a volcano and a Mars Rover carrying an Hermès bag.

"Hermès interprets my ideas in its own incredible way from my drawings of this surreal utopia, or maybe you could call it a dystopia," Smeets said. "It's a textile outcome created with fabrics, leathers, sand, intricate stitching that only Hermès can produce."

"I believe the theme is about climate change, as well as utopian escapism and also about the current conversation of us leaving this planet to colonize Mars," he told Dezeen.

"Especially in the world we live in, it would be ignorant to create a perfect summer scene," he added. "Something throughout all my work is a serious subject tied up often in humour."

Job worked with Hermès' studio to create the 11 installations, which will be shown across 70 windows in 20 of the brand's stores in France.

All the objects were handmade by Hermès using the company's own leathers, wool and fabric.

To Smeets, Life on Mars was an interesting divergence from his regular work, which usually involves him and the Studio Job team crafting pieces using materials such as bronze, wood and metal.

"Through someone else's atelier, especially a fashion and luxury house, a whole new result is formed," he said. "It's really an honour to have my work crafted by Hermès."

The designer referenced some of his earlier pieces in the window installations, including the bubbling volcano structure he previously used in works including Train Crash Table.

This was among the sketches proposed by Smeets to Hermès when designing the windows, which ended up being a collaborative effort between the designer and the brand.

"I proposed some products in my sketches, like watches for the flasher, the bubbling shoes, the bag in the volcano," he said. "And of course, with the dog and the dining table, it was a straightforward choice."

The fashion brand was very open to suggestions for what could be placed in the windows, the designer said.

"It was a lovely collaboration with them as they were open to using anything in the windows with very few rules," Smeets explained.

"They had some great ideas. For example, based on my sketch, they proposed waved belts could work for the flying cake, topped with Hermès lipsticks as the candles."

"We played with packaging and typical Hermès artefacts and icons that were used, such as their pet accessories on our Mars dogs and the large horse collars inspired by the Hermès's own family collection and heritage," he added.

The Life on Mars collaboration marks the first time Smeets has worked with the fashion house, with another joint project already underway.

Life on Mars will be on display in Hermès windows across France throughout the summer.

Previous projects by Smeets for his Studio Job include a "surrealist take on classical church windows" and the studio's own maximalist headquarters in Antwerp.

The photography is by Alex Jonas.

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Architecture practice Studio Bark has collaborated with artist Michael Pinsky to create the wooden Making A Stand installation, which aims to explore material life cycles and "stand in solidarity with climate protestors".

Comprised of 127 six-metre-tall vertical wooden fins, the temporary installation was arranged in a grid around Leeds City Square's existing trees, street furniture and sculptures.

Making A Stand aims to encourage conversations around material life cycles and highlight the need for the construction industry to replace carbon-intensive materials, such as concrete and steel, with materials like timber.

The installation, which the studio described as a "sculptural forest", was made from Douglas fir timber, a type of wood commonly used in construction, which was taken from the UK forestry supply chain at a point between felling and stacking.

It is set to be repurposed when the installation is deconstructed at the end of the year.

"Each Douglas fir fin can even be traced back to the precise stump in the forest using a unique code, which will enable us to track the journey of its lifecycle for many years to come," Studio Bark director Wilf Meynell told Dezeen.

"The fins work together with a webbed canopy of steel wire ropes and steel struts to ensure minimal damage to the wood so that it can be repurposed at the end of the year," Meynell explained.

"These fins are not supported at the base but instead rely on an intricate network of tension wires and compression rods positioned at the tree canopy level," Pinsky told Dezeen.

"The canopy is made from five six-metre Douglas fir trusses with a lightweight polycarbonate roof. We plan to follow these materials into their future life, so we can measure the true impact of Making A Stand over its lifecycle," said Meynell.

The stark contrast between the natural and the man-made is highlighted through the visibility of both the rough texture of the bark and the cut edge of sawn timber on each of the wooden fins.

"Making A Stand sees the natural world and the urban realm collide, linked through the supply chain that connects one to the other," Meynell said.

"Leeds was [originally] a small fortified settlement within the ancient forest of Leodis," he added. "The river and timber were the two main resources that decided the settlement."

"Today, with the burgeoning of global supply chains, we have lost touch with where our materials and products come from," Meynell continued.

The installation also acts as a physical structure for pedestrians to interact with and a symbol of solidarity with climate change protestors.

"Making A Stand offers pedestrians a quiet place to pause, shelter and sit," said Meynell.

"We hope that some may take this time to contemplate the accelerating complexity of global supply chains, their impact on the natural environment and the role trees and forests have to play in replacing atmospheric carbon," he added.

"Beyond the pure physical presence in the square, we wanted to create an installation that would 'stand' in solidarity with climate protestors around the world, who are facing increasing state repression."

Other recent projects by Studio Bark featured on Dezeen include an accessible wooden house on a farmstead in Hampshire and a home extension in Essex built using a flat-pack U-build system.

The photography is by Ellen Christina Hancock and Tom Joy.

Making A Stand is on display from 15 June 2023 to January 2024 in Leeds City Square as part of Leeds 2023 Year of Culture. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world. 

Project credits:

Co-creators: Studio Bark and Michael Pinsky

Commissioners: Leeds 2023

Timber: Whitney Sawmills

Fabrication: Stage One Creative Services Ltd

Engineering support: Structure Workshop Ltd (concept) and Allt Environmental (fabrication)

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Belgian interior designer Kim Mupungilaï has created a series of furniture and decor items for an exhibition in New York City using digital and traditional techniques to explore ideas of identity and appropriation.

The exhibition, called HUE/AM/I-HUE/I/AM, features chairs, tables and bureaus constructed from a mix of wood, stone and fibre elements, presented at Superhouse Vitrine in Lower Manhattan.

It is the first full collection of furniture from Mupungilaï, who said a trip to New York City in 2018 prompted thinking about the forms and ideas of identity behind the work.

"I just started thinking about my own cultural landscape and background and upbringing and wanted to dig deeper," Mupungilaï told Dezeen.

"And that kind of prompted the idea of merging or exploring my two heritages," she continued.

"I'm half Belgian, half Congolese, and I grew up in Belgium, so I never really knew a lot about my Congolese side."

This exploration included a deep dive into the artisanal forms and materials commonly used in the African nation, especially "currency tools" a type of tool or weapon used for a variety of symbolic and practical purposes.

These formed the "base of abstract forms" that Mupungilaï then converted into the furniture in the collection.

The result is a diverse mix of sculptural pieces, all with a striking mix of materials, from a sloping wooden arm that branches off the bureau and terminates in a ballpoint embedded in a stone foot to a textile derived from the banana leaf, which stretches of the seat of a wooden bench.

Teak wood, the banana, the shape of stones and the rattan are all references to what she says are unique material resources of the region.

To create the sculptural forms, Mupungilaï tests out the designs first in 3D modelling programs and then has the pieces hand constructed by fabricators abroad.

The mix of the functional and sculptural makes sense both in terms of Mupungilaï's influences as well as within the specific scene in New York around Superhouse Vitrine, a space in Lower Manhattan's Chinatown. It consists of a single glass-lined room at the centre of the second floor of a shopping mall.

Founder Stephen Markos' said that he wants to showcase what he considers art with functionality.

"People always talk about the border between art and design," Markos told Dezeen. "I don't really even think it fits on the border," he continued, referencing the totality of designers he shows at the gallery.

"I think it really skews more toward the side of art than design. I've been really focused on functionality so here's where design comes in. It's really interesting when a work of art when you can sit on a work of art."

The conceptual nature of Mupungilaï's work was also an important factor in its presentation. Since the release of some of the early pieces from the collection, such as the room divider, the designer said she has been asked often about ideas of influence and appropriation and that her work represents a place of departure for conversations around these complex topics.

"I think for a lot of people, it's hard to understand to draw a line when – does something become cultural appropriation?" Mupungilaï explained.

"I mean, you can be inspired by culture, but when you start literally extracting things from a culture without crediting or acknowledging their arts, their culture or traditions, it becomes cultural appropriation, so there's a very fine line," she continued.

"I feel like it happens so often in design, but it's not spoken about at all, or very, very rarely."

Superhouse formed part of last year's Design Miami festival, where some early pieces of HUE/AM/I-HUE/I/AM were shown. Other recent exhibitions in New York City include one by Marta Gallery that showcased chairs made from salvaged materials in just three days.

The photography is by Luis Corzo.

HUE/AM/I-HUE/I/AM is on show at Superhouse Vitrine from 28 June to 19 August 2023. For more exhibitions, events and talk in architecture and design, visit Dezeen Events Guide.

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British artist Gerry Judah has created a sculpture with six soaring arms topped with classic Porsche models for the Goodwood Festival of Speed 2023.

Judah created the structure to commemorate Porsche's 75th anniversary with road and racing cars that represent milestones in the brand's history.

The steel sculpture features a dodecahedral core connected to three curved hoops and six straight arms that "embody a line of speed leading to the cars themselves," said Judah.

"The inspiration came from wanting to make a sculpture that would be celebratory," Judah said of the sculpture's form.

"Like setting off fireworks to enhance the joy of the piece."

Characteristic of Judah's previous sculptures for Goodwood, this year's model soars above the festival grounds at 28-metres-high and 26-metres-wide. Made of steel and weighing 40 tonnes, the structure is supported by a 290-tonne concrete foundation.

Similar to years prior, the steel structure is coated in white.

"White has always been used because of the amazing light which tends to enhance the shape and more so the details," said Judah

Attached to its longest arm is a Porsche 718 Formula 2, a single-seater sportscar representative of the model's successful debut in the 1960 Formula 2 season.

Just below, the Porsche 963 was suspended in colourful 75th-anniversary livery and its predecessor, the Blaupunkt 962, is completely inverted on a neighbouring spike.

Two generations of the Porsche 911 series were represented by the 992 Carrera, the most current model introduced in 2018, and the 997.2 Sports Classic, which showed off a ducktail spoiler.

The oldest model affixed to the structure is suspended closest to the ground. Manufactured between 1948 and 1965, the Porsche 365 established the rear-engined two-box coupés template used throughout the 911 series.

Judah has designed the central feature sculpture for the Goodwood Festival of Speed every year since 1997, with the exception of Unit 9's tensegrity sculpture in 2021.

The structure stands in front of the Goodwood House, an estate dedicated to motorsports, each year as the festival's central feature. The annual festival celebrates modern and historic racing cars and features a number of events, including stunt driving and demonstrations.

Judah's previous sculptures for the Goodwood Festival of Speed include a 31-metre-high loop showcasing the Aston Martin DBRI car and a celebration of race-car driver Bernie Ecclestone. 

The Goodwood Festival of Speed took place from 13 July to 16 July 2023 in West Sussex, England. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

The photography is by David Barbour.

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Artist Miya Ando has created an installation in New York City that uses 72 cloth banners to draw attention to the shift in traditional Japanese seasons created by climate change.

Titled Flower Atlas, the banners hang in New York City's Brookfield Place mall and depict an ancient Japanese calendar through unique floral motifs.

Each of the large-scale banners represents one of the 72 seasons in the Japanese Kō calendar, which was initially developed in the 7th century.

In contrast to the standard Western calendar, it responds more closely to the natural environment by breaking the 365-day year into seasons of around five days each.

The banners each depict a flower that blooms just one day a year during these "micro seasons".

"I was interested in creating an environment of walking through a calendar," said Ando.

"I imagined a skygarden, based on the ancient 24 and 72 seasons calendars wherein coloured petals represented flowers as days and one would be transported into an alternative, nature-based system of time."

Due to "human impact on climate" the Kō calendar no longer aligns with the seasons of today, explained the artist.

Ando explored this shift by proposing Flower Atlas as an alternative time-keeping record.

"It shows a yearning to have a harmonious relationship to nature," said Ando.

Suspended within a glass atrium, the banners were made of chiffon printed with ink, micronized silver, gold, mica, oil, or resin and hung on clear acrylic rods.

Measuring 58 x 49 x 182 feet, Flower Atlas spans the length of the Winter Garden in Brookfield Place and is meant to inspire conversation about "art and climate change".

Other climate-focused artworks include a regenerative arch in Houston, Texas and an installation of 3D-scanned Kenyan caves in a Denmark museum.

The photography is by Fadi Kheir.

Flower Atlas is on display at Brookfield Place until September 14. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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A French vineyard and sculpture park is showcasing the iconic furniture of late French designer Pierre Paulin inside a pavilion designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer.

The exhibition – Pierre Paulin Program: Des idées courbes, Des formes libres – is on show at the Château La Coste estate near Aix-en-Provence.

It sees some of Paulin's most celebrated designs, including the shell-like Alpha Club Chair and the distinctively folded Déclive chaise longue, used to furnish the Oscar Niemeyer Auditorium.

The building, which opened in early 2022, was the last project designed by Niemeyer before his death in 2012.

The staging creates a dialogue between the work of these two influential 20th-century figures.

"While Paulin and Niemeyer worked in different fields of design, it is evident through this exhibition that they both shared a deep appreciation for the expressive potential of curves," said the project team.

"Their creative outputs have had a significant impact on the world of design and architecture and, whether in furniture or buildings, their use of flowing, sculptural forms has brought life and energy to the spaces and objects they inhabit."

Developed with curator Lyna Ahanda, the exhibition centres around the Pierre Paulin Program, a concept for a residential furniture system that was developed by Paulin between 1969 and 1972 but was unrealised in his lifetime.

The system is based on the idea of dividing spaces using large-scale furniture pieces rather than wall partitions so that they can be easily reconfigured to suit occupant needs.

The key piece is Ensemble Dune, a sofa formed of upholstered modules made from foam, resin and fibreglass.

These are arranged in a large grid to create a kind of furniture landscape.

The design was originally envisioned for Herman Miller but never went into production.

In an interview shortly before his death in 2009, Paulin described it as his biggest professional regret. He believed this approach might replace traditional types of furniture.

The concept was finally made a reality in 2020 thanks to Paulin, Paulin, Paulin, a company set up by the designer's wife and business partner Maia Paulin, son Benjamin Paulin and daughter-in-law Alice Lemoine.

The work was first presented in Maison à Bordeaux – a seminal OMA-designed house commissioned by Lemoine's late father Jean-François Lemoine, where her mother Hélène still lives today.

But with the new exhibition, the designs are being opened up to a much wider audience.

Château La Coste has become a major tourist destination due to its impressive collection of art and architecture, which includes the Richard Rogers Drawing Gallery, Frank Gehry's 2008 Serpentine Pavilion and sculptures by Louise Bourgeois and Yoko Ono.

Other key pieces in the show include the Module shelving walls, the curved C sofas and chairs, and the Tapis-Siège seating.

At a time when the boundaries between home and workspace are increasingly blurring, the designs suggest how furniture might become more flexible and multi-functional.

"The production is based on the limitless potential of a dual layout based on a perfect grid configuration, where horizontal and vertical elements can be used as floors, seated elements and storage partitions, offering endless combinations of living spaces," said the project team.

Pierre Paulin Program: Des idées courbes, Des formes libres opened at Château La Coste on 29 May 2023 and continues until September. See Dezeen Events Guide for more architecture and design events around the world.

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