German designer Sebastian Herkner believes there are fewer opportunities for young designers to work with furniture brands today than when he was first starting out in the industry.

Herkner told Dezeen that brands are less willing to take a chance on an unproven talent than in the past, making it harder than ever for younger designers to get a foot in the door.

"I wouldn't want to be a young designer today," he said.

"When I was young, brands like Cappellini and Moroso were always looking for young talents," he continued. "But now, a lot of brands are only working with established names or designers already in their portfolio."

Herkner spoke to Dezeen during an event hosted by Italian brand Poltrona Frau. He has just launched his first products with the brand – the Stock'n Roll bedside tables and the Nymph table lamps.

The designer said that brands typically reach out to him to initiate a collaboration, based on his existing reputation.

Based in Offenbach, near Frankfurt, Herkner's studio has developed furniture, lighting and homeware products for producers including &Tradition, La Manufacture, Thonet and Pulpo.

"It has been more than 15 years since I started my business," he said. "Now I'm established, brands know me. So the starting point for a conversation is much easier."

Brands are "not really looking for new ideas"

One of the biggest challenges for unestablished designers, according to Herkner, is that global political and economic uncertainty has led design brands to become less averse to taking risks.

"Because of the unique situation at the moment, first with Covid, then everything else going on in the world, a lot of companies think it's better to put their efforts and belief in established designers rather than young designers," he suggested.

"They are not really looking for new ideas and I think that's a problem for the young generation."

Herkner believes that Salone Satellite – the section of the Salone del Mobile furniture fair dedicated to young designers – is still one of the best ways for new talent to gain recognition.

He exhibited at Satellite three times, in 2009, 2010 and 2011. This led to a collaboration with De Vorm, which put his Clip Chair into production in 2011, but most notably caught the attention of Moroso creative director, Patrizia Moroso.

Moroso launched its first collection designed by Herkner, the woven Bask baskets, bowls and tables, in 2012. The woven Banjooli furniture was launched the following year, followed by the Pipe collection in 2015.

Salone Satellite "still one of the best platforms"

"Salone Satellite is still one of the best platforms for young designers, but they still need the trust from brands to start a conversation," Herkner said.

"Brands need to be brave enough to start with someone who is not known at all."

Herkner believes there is another option available to young designers today that was less viable in the past – many are launching their own brands and producing products themselves.

This can be a good way to gain exposure, said the designer, but it comes with challenges.

"It's great to see these new brands popping up, but you need to have the finances to develop prototypes," he said. "Maybe that's the only way forward that young designers see at the moment."

Herkner's studio launched several new products in Milan this year. Others included the Petal pendants for Rakumba Lighting, the Sinya and Stolac tables for Zanat, and a new straw marquetry version of his Bell Table for Classicon.

The designer was also recently a mentor for the second RIMOWA Design Prize, a competition championing student designers in Germany.

His advice to young designers is to look for opportunities for repeat exposure, either by participating in exhibitions like Satellite several times or by getting your work published on platforms like Dezeen.

"You need companies to keep seeing your name, your face, so they start to follow you," he added.

The portrait of Sebastian Herkner is courtesy of Studio Sebastian Herkner.

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The transition from print to online journalism has led to "chaos" within architecture criticism that has upsides as well as downsides, author Paul Goldberger tells Dezeen in this exclusive interview.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Goldberger served as the in-house architecture critic for The New York Times in the 1970s and '80s during the zenith of postmodernism.

He spoke to Dezeen about the changing priorities within architecture discourse in recent decades, including a greater focus on social responsibility.

"There is a greater willingness to deal with issues and to deal with architecture as a symbol of social inequity," he said.

As an example, he pointed to the conversation surrounding recently built skyscrapers on the Manhattan street colloquially known as Billionaire's Row.

"If you look at the 57th Street supertall towers, while there are aesthetic differences from one to the other – and some are better than others and more successful as works of architecture – that whole discussion, while it's not invalid, is incomplete," Goldberger told Dezeen.

"It has to be set within the context of the fact that every one of them is a powerful symbol of profound social inequalities that are becoming more and more marked in this society," he continued.

"Those buildings are more and more conspicuous as physical objects, and I think that overrides the aesthetic differences."

Goldberger links this shift in values to the waning of so-called starchitecture culture – where individual architects become famous for their work – and the growing consideration of social and environmental issues in architecture.

He cited an addendum in a new edition of his influential 2009 book Why Architecture Matters that delves into social responsibility and architecture as an example of this shift.

Obsession with starchitects "exaggerated"

However, Goldberger believes that starchitecture and socially responsible architecture are not mutually exclusive – warning against considering these terms in "absolutes".

"We are in a period where there's a much greater understanding of social responsibility and the need of architecture and architects to do different things," he said.

"I think our culture was far too much in thrall of celebrity and built up starchitects beyond reason, and now we are probably putting them down or trying to avoid them beyond reason."

He suggests the idea that architects themselves have sought celebrity status has been overstated.

"I think the obsession with starchitects was always somewhat exaggerated – never as all-consuming as the media might have had it – and that was not completely architect-driven so much as driven by the culture's broader focus on celebrity," he said.

Goldberger traces the starchitect tradition back to hugely influential American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

"The greatest bullshit artist in the history of architecture was Frank Lloyd Wright – he also happened to have been one of the greatest architects who has ever lived," said Goldberger.

"[Wright] fabricated parts of his own history – he was very gifted at exploiting the media," he continued.

"The vehicles people have at their disposal to play those games evolve and change. It's not entirely new, it's just that the tools change."

"Nobody has the authority"

Architecture criticism has undergone a major shift during Goldberger's career as journalism has increasingly moved online.

The resulting proliferation of voices, especially on social media, has led to a cacophony of architectural discourse much different to the mid-to-late 20th century, he said.

"I was at The New York Times in the day when it had a kind of hegemony over journalism and also over the world," Goldberger recalled.

"We were critical to what happened in the city. The New York Times would have an opinion about almost anything, and everybody would pay attention."

The transition away from individual critical voices having a major influence has had positive impacts and not-so-positive impacts, he argued.

"I don't think anything directs the public discourse now," he said. "There's a lot of shouting and not a lot of clarity."

"In some ways that's healthy. It creates a sort of chaos and it levels the playing field – almost anybody can be on it. If certain established organs of journalism had too much authority once, now, kind of nobody has the authority."

But while the more democratised critical landscape has enabled historically under-represented people to participate, Goldberger is uncertain about whether social-media-dominated debate is leading to useful conversations.

"Everybody's happy to try to kick the ball in some direction or another, but we're not really having serious discussions about serious issues in terms of planning and architecture and design," he said.

"The most urgent issue is not what people build, but how much they're building; there's too much. The critical issue is land preservation and growth."

Goldberger has written widely about the importance of criticism in the work of preservation, and believes there can be a balance between a chorus of voices and rigorous critique on these kinds of issues.

"Like the slow food movement, there's absolutely a need for a slow reading movement," he said.

"I know the audience is smaller, but I think [criticism] is real and serious – not every building is worth that, plenty of buildings are just fine to talk about on X, because they're not worth more than 280 characters, but other things are."

"I don't want to sound like a Luddite," he said. "Because, like all of us, I spend a lot of my life online – so I'm not sitting here yearning for the day when print was all there was."

"But I don't want us to be in a day where it doesn't exist at all."

The main photo is by Michael Lionstar.

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Kelly Wearstler is often hailed as contemporary interior design's most recognisable name. In this interview, she tells Dezeen about crafting her textured and eclectic style.

American interior designer Wearstler has been dressing rooms since her mid-twenties, rising to become one of the discipline's most significant names.

"I'm obsessed with nuance," she told Dezeen. "I view design as boundless and undefined, but if I had to choose a single word to describe my approach it would be 'mixology'."

High-end interior design has been dominated by minimalism and sleekness in recent years, but Wearstler's projects are known for their eclectic grandeur.

Her studio is responsible for the interiors at a slew of luxury hotels, including four locations across North America for the Proper Hotel Group.

For example, she created an Austin branch with a sculptural oak staircase that doubles as a ziggurat of plinths for individual ceramic pots. Meanwhile, The Downtown LA Proper features 136 unique types of vintage or custom-made tile.

"Luxury is more of a feeling than a specific quality"

"To me, luxury is more of a feeling than a specific, tangible quality," Wearstler said. "It's all about texture and sensation, but also storytelling and considered curation."

"The most luxurious spaces bring together unique objects that each have their own history, essence and character, and encourage an elegant conversation between them," she added.

"A technique I always like to use when pursuing a sense of luxury is mixing vintage and antique items with more contemporary pieces. The history and character that come with vintage furniture help to create a 'luxurious' experience."

This approach is also reflected in Wearstler's residential and retail projects, which she tends to fill with unlikely combinations of pieces – a habit she traces back to visiting antique shows and auctions with her mother, who was an antique dealer, as a young girl.

Among these projects is the designer's own 1950s beachfront cottage in Malibu, California, furnished with objects chosen to be "hand-crafted, rustic and raw".

Wearstler also replaced the home's existing shag carpet with seagrass as a nod to the surrounding coastal setting.

"My design philosophy is rooted in a firm commitment to juxtaposition and contrast, whether this be in relation to textures and colourways, materials or even eras in time," said Wearstler.

"For me, contrast is what brings a sense of soul to a space. It creates interest, lets the space take on a life of its own and imbues it with a feeling of genuine authenticity."

"AI has exponentially enriched our creative process"

Wearstler says her design philosophy was partly shaped by working in the film industry early on in her career.

Before forming her eponymous studio in California in 1995, she worked in various roles including set decoration and art direction – an experience she claims shaped her appreciation of the "emotion and atmosphere" of a space.

"My time working as a set designer definitely impacted my approach to interior design," Wearstler told Dezeen.

"Working on film sets taught me the importance of dramatic intent, and that's remained a key element of my work throughout my career."

Despite her penchant for vintage pieces, Wearstler stressed the importance of rising to contemporary challenges – not least artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on design.

Wearstler's studio has been using generative AI – which she calls an "ally" – since 2021, citing image-generating platforms including DALL-E and Midjourney as tools to generate ideas.

The same year, the designer created a virtual garage, playfully imagined as a home for basketball player LeBron James's electric Hummer, decked out with renderings of Wearstler-designed furniture including the studio's Echo bench and Monolith side table.

"Many people see the introduction of AI as a challenge, but I think of it as one of the greatest tools for growth," said Wearstler. "AI has exponentially enriched our creative process."

"As designers, it's our responsibility to push the boundaries of our craft and to create spaces that elegantly and artistically reflect the world around us," she added. "AI is a vital tool in allowing us to do this in new and extraordinary ways."

Wearstler has published six books and with 2.2 million Instagram followers, she is often considered interior design's most recognisable name.

"I think my work stands out because I follow my gut," she reflected. "Whether I'm designing a hotel, a private residence or a product, I give its emotional and physical attributes equal consideration."

"Most importantly, I strive to bring my clients and customers joy through my designs. I'm not sure if that's what makes me the 'most recognisable name', but if you design with the person who will be living in a space, or with a light fixture or chair, in mind, your work will resonate."

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People of colour and women working as architects are often actively discouraged from following their design instincts, FAME Collective founder Tumpa Husna-Yasmin Fellows tells Dezeen in this interview.

Fellows, an educator at London's Central Saint Martins university and co-founder of Our Building Design, argued that some architects in senior positions limit design responsibility to themselves and undervalue the skills of people from diverse backgrounds.

"It's very much about ego and who represents the design or the brand," Fellows said. "Women are usually not given that experience or responsibility and even if they are, they're not given the right kind of recognition."

"It's really good for business to have a diversity of skills and talents, otherwise you just get one kind of design. That's where architects can have conflicting opinions because those in power want to hold on to their one way of designing."

Fellows is the founder of architecture community organisation Female Architects of Minority Ethnic (FAME) Collective. The group recently launched an exhibition that aims to present the experiences of minority ethnic women in architecture academia and professional practice.

Hosted in the library of the Royal Institute of British Architects' (RIBA) London headquarters, the exhibition draws upon lived experiences and data collected by FAME Collective as part of a research project titled "Exposing the barriers in architecture from a FAME perspective".

The RIBA-funded research aimed to highlight the adversities faced by minority ethnic women in architecture and hold institutions accountable.

Fellows explained that there are "barriers" people face along the path to becoming an architect in the UK that are common to many, but have a greater impact on women and minorities.

As part of the FAME Collective research, multiple minority-ethnic women came forward to say they are withheld from designing in practice, according to Fellows.

"We've heard from women who are really established practitioners in big practices talking about this idea of who gets to design, because it's very much dominated by people at the top and they're usually men," she explained. "The act of designing is a privilege and power that is political in the context of architecture."

"Even if some women are allowed to design, they're not allowed to have the recognition because the design is taken and presented by a male director."

"If they design with lots of colours, or design representing their cultural heritage, they are told that that isn't the way architects should be or the language is not acceptable," Fellows said.

She believes this is detrimental to architecture studios and that they should embrace the wide range of design talents and styles that come from employing people from diverse backgrounds.

"We're not celebrating the diversity of the skills within the practice of architecture," she said.

Fellows believes this discouragement is also present in architecture education, as multiple minority-ethnic architecture students came forward to say they were advised against incorporating parts of their heritage in their projects.

She claimed that students often lack academic support to engage in topics related to their cultural heritage.

"One of the barriers that we keep hearing about is architecture education needing to be decolonised, transformed or expanded, and there should be alternatives to the way it's been taught," said Fellows.

"For example, some of our participants have described that when they tried to do a design project that was responding to their cultural heritage or a discourse they're interested in that reflects their identity, they were discouraged or the tutors and academic staff were not knowledgeable or interested enough to support them with it."

FAME Collective's research found that the number of Black and Asian students falls between each qualification stage, with white men forming the large majority of registered architects.

"One of the most striking data we found was that between Part One and Two, and Two and Three, Black and Asian students completely drop out in huge numbers," said Fellows.

"For Part Three, we looked at the registered architects – 83 per cent are white and 71 per cent are men, so it's very much dominated by white men."

FAME Collective contributed to the Architects Registration Board (ARB)'s plans to introduce an alternate route to the current three-part structure to becoming an architect, aiming to minimise the financial burden on students.

It would involve scrapping the current requirement of an ARB-accredited bachelor's degree (Part One) and permitting students with relevant degrees or professional experience to continue on the path to becoming registered architects in the UK.

Fellows believes this more flexible structure, which the ARB plans to fully carry out by September 2027, will help diversify the profession and allow people to earn in practice while completing their training.

"The work that we've done with the ARB has informed the recent policy change of how to become an architect," said Fellows.

"It reduces the financial burden for some students because that is also another huge barrier for people we spoke to – it's not just gender and race, it's also class and your financial situation."

Fellows argued that while institutional discrimination towards ethnic minority women is experienced across many professions, architecture has a particularly strong culture of white men being respected as figureheads over people from different backgrounds.

"As a society, we've gone a bit backwards," she said. "We still respect and celebrate the white man figure as the architect."

"It's a societal change as well as an attitude and cultural change that is needed for things to happen."

In order to enact change in the industry, people in leading positions in architecture firms should attend diversity events and learn from those affected by discrimination, said Fellows.

She suggested that institutions like the RIBA could do more to ensure equality and diversity in architecture.

"RIBA would be an excellent organisation to enforce at least one managerial member of a practice to attend this type of event at least once a year and pledge to come back to tell us what changes you have made to remove the barriers for underrepresented architects," said Fellows.

"There's lots of ways RIBA could help with this and I guess they are trying to, but I don't think the right people are in the room to engage in the conversations."

"There should be an exchange and a dialogue between people who are being affected and people who are able to make changes," she added.

While she emphasised that FAME Collective's work needs to reach people in power in order to have a significant impact on the architecture profession, Fellows also hopes the group's exhibition is a space where minority ethnic women feel welcomed and represented.

FAME Collective plans to tour the exhibition and is seeking venues outside of London to reach as many people as possible.

"Although we finished our research project formally, our work unfortunately keeps going on," said Fellows. "We have to continue until things change."

"[The exhibition] is about encouraging a diverse group of women, people like myself, and making a welcoming space where they can see themselves represented in the work and also see some of their barriers being amplified and heard in a platform such as the RIBA."

"We want to raise awareness of the situation that we are still facing in architecture, of the lack of diversity and absence of women and people of colour."

The photography is by Sarah Daoudi and Jim Stephenson unless otherwise stated.

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Architect Kate Macintosh is known for designing council housing, but in this Social Housing Revival interview she argues that a better way to address the UK's housing-affordability crisis would be a tax on land values.

Retired Scottish architect Macintosh is celebrated for her work on publicly owned buildings, particularly two 1970s social-housing schemes in south London – Dawson's Heights and Macintosh Court.

But despite that legacy, she is cautious about championing a return to building social housing at the vast scales it was delivered in post-war Britain.

"We have a housing market with an economy attached"

"We have a problem of enormous disparities of wealth, unaffordability and neglect of the existing housing stock, and it's getting worse all the time," she told Dezeen.

"My fear is if you put all your hopes on returning to the system we had during the Trente Glorieuses, as the French call it – the 30 years during which local-government housing flourished – it will take so long to build up the trust and the wealth of experience and confidence."

Instead, Macintosh advocates for a tax on land values aimed at severing the link between housing and profit by tempering perpetual price rises and curbing developer speculation.

"I'm a great believer in land-value taxation," she said. "Our whole economy is completely reliant on inflation in housing, which is basically inflation in land."

"The value of the British housing stock is estimated to be four times that of the national economy. We have a housing market with an economy attached."

Macintosh, who received the Jane Drew Prize for women in architecture in 2021, is angry about the inequalities in contemporary British society.

She frequently cites statistics about homelessness, empty homes and privatisation of public land, while railing against the super rich, volume housebuilders and the Labour leader – "don't talk to me about Starmer", she said.

Her home is festooned with Extinction Rebellion and anti-Brexit stickers, as well as a poster calling for an electoral system based on proportional representation.

"I struggle to keep my flame of hope alive," she admitted. "And I'm sure I'm representative of a great many thinking people of my age and younger."

"I think that social bonding and a sense of belonging and mutual recognition is the key to a healthy society and a balanced mental outlook," she added. "This increasing isolation that people feel – it's so sad, so miserable."

"It's all being driven, since Thatcher, by this 'everything is a commodity' [mentality]. I feel as though I've come from another universe."

Dawson's Heights "was small fry"

Macintosh was encouraged into a career in architecture by her father, an engineer who worked on social housing across Scotland.

"He was a socialist," she said. "And so he was motivated by this burning wish to try and raise the general level of life expectancies and possibilities of self-realisation for everybody."

After qualifying she was initially most interested in creating theatres – her first job was working on early designs for Denys Lasdun's brutalist Royal National Theatre.

"For my thesis subject I'd done an opera house for Edinburgh – a wildly, improbably ambitious scheme, which involved demolishing a grade I-listed building just below the castle," she recalled.

"I showed this to Denys Lasdun when I went for an interview. When I said I didn't really like it anymore, he said 'don't worry, you didn't get to build it'."

Her move into housing was driven by a desire to get more practical experience, with London boroughs at that time under intense pressure to build new estates.

She landed a job at Southwark Council, where she was allocated "this stupendous site to get on with" – later to become Dawson's Heights.

While it seems remarkable today that an architect of just 26 was entrusted with the development of nearly 300 homes, Macintosh points out that Dawson's Heights was a relatively small project compared to the council's other sites at the Heygate, Aylesbury and North Peckham estates.

"This was small fry really in terms of what Southwark was doing," she said. "It just sailed through planning no problem at all."

Those three larger estates have all since undergone redevelopment, but Dawson's Heights remains a major landmark on the south London skyline, its distinctive outline crowning one of the area's highest points.

Built between 1964 and 1972, her design for Dawson's Heights was picked in favour of an earlier proposal for three tower blocks on the site – in Macintosh's words, "three sore thumbs".

"One of the things I deliberately did with the ziggurat formation was to reduce the scale towards the extremities so that it related to the surrounding buildings to try and integrate with the pre-existing urban grain," she said.

A key feature of the estate is its pixelated form, a departure from the monolithic slab blocks that were more common at the time.

"The heavy modelling came about as my wish to express the individual dwelling within a cohesive totality, so that you give recognition to the particular family, and it's not just a bureaucratic, efficient assembly of dwellings," Macintosh explained.

"But at the same time, there's a cohesion so that people can feel there's a definite identity to this as a group of dwellings," she continued.

"My ideal was that a child could take a friend into that central space and say, 'that balcony up there on the fourth floor, six along – that's my home'."

"Gentle brutalism"

Macintosh's style has been described as "gentle brutalism".

Her ideas, she says, were partly informed by the 1957 study Family and Kinship in East London – "almost required reading for architects at that time" – which argued that moving people from slum terraces into newly built council estates were risking elements of community life being lost.

Most of London's council-estate projects in the post-war period were controlled by quantity surveyors, Macintosh claims, favouring prefabricated construction methods that were low on cost but compromised on architectural character.

"Industrialised building systems tend to result in designs that are generated by the technology, rather than the main generator being the human experience of what it's going to be like to live there," she said.

"There was a line thinking in that post-war era of a tabula rasa; 'we're going to create a new and totally different way of living'," she continued.

"And that's a sort of disease really. You can never eradicate the past, you shouldn't try. It's with us, it's alive today, you've got to incorporate, grow out of it."

Fifty years after it was completed, Macintosh is pleased with how Dawson's Heights is holding up.

"The tenant community seems to be cohesive and harmonious and there doesn't seem to be any splits or antagonisms between leaseholders and those who are tenants," she said. "There's a good community feeling there."

During the Covid pandemic, for example, when people across the UK were encouraged to step outside their front doors to publicly applaud health workers every Thursday evening, residents from the two blocks would compete to see which could make the most noise.

Her other social-housing project has endured a more troubled recent history. Originally known simply as 269 Leigham Court Road but renamed Macintosh Court following a residents' campaign, it is a 44-home sheltered-housing complex in Streatham.

An early experiment in modular construction, the site consists of low-rise concrete blocks arranged around a series of enclosed gardens.

In 2014 Lambeth Council revealed plans to sell off 269 Leigham Court Road for redevelopment – but relented following fierce opposition from residents and a successful campaign to get the estate grade-II listed.

The council then embarked on a botched repair and refurbishment project that led to leaks in residents' homes and involved large pipes being installed over the roofs and walls of the buildings.

Preservation groups the Twentieth Century Society and Docomomo were outraged, claiming that the works were done in contravention of listed-building laws.

Residents eventually won compensation from the council over the debacle, but were more recently hit with a £2,000-a-year rise in energy bills.

Macintosh is furious. "I feel immensely sad about Macintosh Court," she said. "Sometimes it disturbs my sleep."

Look at what's holding up this heavy water pipe, a 2 inch piece of wood!! Pure bodgery by the cowboy builders that Lambeth send here. The roof plans that Lambeth sent the contractors who made the folding rail did not show the water pipes, so it doesent fold properly, CLOWNS.
, pic.twitter.com/Z0sGdkOGeE

— Macintosh Court Residents Association. SW16 (@court_sw16) July 19, 2023

"I have tried every which way I could think of to help the residents, and quite irrationally I always feel a sense of guilt that I am so impotent to help them," she added.

"Because there they are, the elderly and the frail. They placed their lives in the trust of Lambeth and Lambeth have betrayed them. It's so utterly illogical what they've done – pure vandalism."

Macintosh retains a keen interest in contemporary housing design, singling out Mikhail Riches, Karakusevic Carson Architects, Archio and Peter Barber Architects for praise.

What these studios do particularly well, she says, is to mitigate car dominance.

"The number-one problem with housing design today is control of the motorcar," she said. "The motorcar is the enemy of social cohesion. That's one of the main criteria for me – you must subdue and control the car."

The main photo is by Michael Franke.

Social Housing Revival

This article is part of Dezeen's Social Housing Revival series exploring the new wave of quality social housing being built around the world, and asking whether a return to social house-building at scale can help solve affordability issues and homelessness in our major cities.

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Increasing numbers of people in social housing are living in inhospitable conditions because they are unable to afford even basic furniture and flooring, Dezeen reports as part of our Social Housing Revival series.

In the UK, social-rented homes are usually handed over to new residents in a sparse state – lacking basic elements of decoration and furnishings, as well as essential appliances.

As the cost of living continues to rise and the availability of crisis-support services diminishes, a growing number of people are unable to afford to furnish these homes, meaning they are sometimes forced to live in a harsh environment for months at a time.

"For the families who we work with, the point that is most distressing is the void condition – the homes are given and [social landlords] don't bother painting the walls, and there's absolutely no flooring down," said Emily Wheeler, founder and CEO of Furnishing Futures.

"Most people over time can manage to get some furniture together that's gifted to them from the local church or friends or family or whatever, but it costs thousands and thousands of pounds to put flooring down, even in a one-bedroom flat."

London charity Furnishing Futures was recently established to address the issue among women fleeing domestic abuse, creating interiors to a high standard using furniture donated from brands.

Domestic-abuse survivors and people leaving care or who were previously homeless are particularly at risk of furniture poverty since they are less likely to have items to bring with them.

Wheeler said Furnishing Futures is seeing increasing demand for its services as more people come under financial pressure.

"Initially we were only working with women who were in receipt of benefits or experiencing severe poverty or destitution," explained Wheeler.

"But now we're working with families who are using the food bank but the woman is a midwife, or she's a teaching assistant, or she is a teacher, and that is new."

Sometimes the conditions the charity witnesses are shocking, Wheeler told Dezeen.

"People are experiencing real hardship," she said. "We've frequently come across people who have no food, no clothes, no shoes for their children."

"The kids are sleeping on a blanket on a concrete floor – there's nothing in the flat whatsoever," she continued. "And those people might even be working as care assistants, or teaching assistants. So it's really, really difficult at the moment for people."

According to the campaigning charity End Furniture Poverty, more than six million people in the UK lack access to essential furniture, furnishings and appliances – including 26 per cent of those living in social housing.

Only two per cent of social-rented homes in the UK are let as furnished or partly furnished, the charity's research has found.

Wheeler is a trained interior designer who formerly worked in child safeguarding.

She was prompted to set up Furnishing Futures after discovering that many women in social housing who had left dangerous homes were driven back to their abuser by poor living conditions.

"When women were placed in new housing after having escaped really high-risk situations, they sometimes felt that they had no choice but to return because they couldn't look after their children in those conditions – there'd be no fridge, no cooker, no washing machine, no bed, no curtains on the windows," she explained.

"People are expected to go to those places at a time of great trauma and distress, and recover, but those places are often not conducive to that because of the design and the environment."

The charity overhauled 36 homes in 2023, helping 99 women and children. It takes a design-led approach with an emphasis on finishing interiors to a high standard.

"We professionally design them and they look like beautiful homes – they look like show homes when they're finished," Wheeler said.

"And the reason we do that is because it's really important that the women feel that they have a beautiful home and they feel safe there, that they feel for the first time that someone really cares about them," she added.

"It also supports the healing and the recovery journey for those women."

To help ensure quality, the charity only works with new or as-new furniture. It works with brands to source items that would otherwise be sent to landfill – usually press samples or items used at trade shows, in showrooms or on shoots.

Donating partners include Soho Home, BoConcept, Romo Fabrics and House of Hackney.

Wheeler is keen for Furnishing Futures to expand beyond London but the charity is currently held back by limited warehouse capacity and funding.

"If we had more money and more space we could help more people, it's as simple as that, really," she said.

The charity continues to seek donations from brands, particularly for bedroom furniture and pieces for children.

As well as calling for social-housing providers to let their properties in a better state, Wheeler believes the design industry could be doing more to help people facing furniture poverty.

"I do think that where the industry could catch up a little bit is working with organisations like ours," she said.

For example, charities are unable to take furniture lacking a fire tag – which tend to be removed – so imprinting this information onto the items themselves would make more usable.

In addition, donating excess items as an alternative to sample sales could be a way to reduce waste with much greater social impact, she suggests.

"There's probably millions of people across the country living without basic items and yet there's massive overproduction, but the waste isn't necessarily coming to people who actually need it," Wheeler said.

"There are things that the industry could be doing that will create a huge social impact very easily."

The photography is courtesy of Furnishing Futures unless otherwise stated.

Social Housing Revival

This article is part of Dezeen's Social Housing Revival series exploring the new wave of quality social housing being built around the world, and asking whether a return to social house-building at scale can help solve affordability issues and homelessness in our major cities.

The post Children in social housing "sleeping on a blanket on a concrete floor" appeared first on Dezeen.

Public housing is an essential part of the solution to the housing crisis in the US, California politician Alex Lee tells Dezeen in this interview conducted as part of our Social Housing Revival series.

California State Assembly member Lee is one of a small number of voices leading calls for a new social-housing programme to alleviate America's severe housing-affordability problems.

US "allergy to government programmes" blocks social housing

"I think, broadly speaking, the world is suffering a crisis of affordable housing," Lee told Dezeen.

"California is probably the epicentre of the American housing crisis that is sweeping the entire nation – but uniquely in America and in California we lack one of the very specific tools to address a housing crisis," he said.

"That is through social housing, through a public developer, through government intervention and creating more affordable housing options."

Lee, a Democrat whose district covers the Bay Area cities of Milpitas and Fremont, wants to see California copy governments in Europe and Asia in directly funding the development of below-market housing at scale.

"What we're really talking about is public sector-led development that is housing for everyone," he said.

"It remains one of these very pivotal strategies where we can really leverage our state resources to directly house a lot of people, but yet we still do not have that right now," he added.

"So that's why I think it's our missing tool in the toolbox to solve our housing crisis."

This is not currently a mainstream political view in the US, where very little public housing has been built since the 1980s, while hundreds of thousands of homes have been demolished.

There are currently approximately 970,000 units of public housing nationwide – around 0.7 per cent of the country's total housing stock, compared to around 17 per cent in the UK – and the concept remains a fringe element of the housing-policy debate.

"I would attribute that to a long-standing tradition of being allergic to government programmes," said Lee. "Our country for a long time has very much recoiled at anything that remotely sounds socialist."

"This idea that the government shouldn't be doing certain things is one of these weird, subconscious beliefs that a lot of Americans have," he continued.

"If we tried to create public libraries, public schools, and social security today, it would probably be labelled as some great Marxist scheme."

"More people are coming around to the idea"

Nevertheless, Lee believes that support for the idea of a government-led social housing programme is growing. Fellow left-wing Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar have been making similar arguments at a national level.

"I think more people are coming around to the idea that the current system of housing we have is fundamentally broken," Lee said.

"Anyone who says that just doing a little bit of that and a little bit of this fix to it is, I think, completely wrong."

Lee is doubtful that it will be possible to increase housing supply sufficiently to improve affordability through the market alone – where the profit motive means there is little incentive to bring rents and house prices down.

"The free market is working as intended today, where sky-high rent prices and housing prices are driving people away from their home communities – that's the market at work," he said.

"Without an intervention of the public sector, which we want through social housing, there cannot be a solution entirely to the housing crisis."

An alternative solution that currently has stronger political support is expanding the availability of housing vouchers, which subsidise qualifying low-income families to rent a private home.

But Lee is equally sceptical about this approach.

"The housing voucher system is the way in which America perverted and destroyed its public-housing system," he argued.

"In the end it's just a voucher for the landlord. There's a lot of things in America where we take taxpayer money and just give it to someone more powerful – in this sense landlords – and it doesn't work."

"Having social housing as an actual actor, a provider of housing, is way better."

Lee is currently chair of the California State Assembly's select committee on social housing, as well as chair of the committee on human services.

For the past four years in a row, he has tabled legislation that would establish a California Housing Authority to begin developing affordable homes.

Last year the bill gained enough support among assembly members to make it to the state governor's desk where it was vetoed – but last month, Lee again formally proposed The Social Housing Act. Similar proposals have recently been put forward in New York.

Unlike America's public-housing programmes of the past that were for the very poorest, Lee wants to see homes built for people on a range of incomes.

"The idea is the government is in the driver's seat and the housing itself is intended for as wide an audience of the population as possible," he explained.

Public housing "sabotaged" in US

He references Vienna, where nearly 60 per cent of the population lives in some form of social housing.

"With [US] public housing we've very much intended it only for poor people and we kind of trap them in these places without proper investment or mixed-income communities," said Lee.

Lee blames that approach, combined with the policies of successive conservative politicians, for the social problems that have often blighted public housing in America and remain a factor in its unpopularity.

"Public housing has a stigma to it in this country, it's undeniable," he said. "The reason public housing has so much stigma isn't because of public housing in and of itself, it's the things that a lot of politicians did to it, and sabotaged it."

"If you look at the history of public housing in America, it was undermined by the conservatives and, frankly, by racist people, from the very beginning, and that only manifested over time where new sources of funding for maintenance and all that stuff was disinvested."

"America has a very dark history of anti-collective solutions and government solutions, and also [being] very anti-people of colour."

Architecture has an important role to play in overcoming negative sentiment around social housing, Lee argued.

"Oftentimes people will be anxious about a lot of things, but really it comes down to how tall, how ugly, how big the building ultimately is," he said.

"So I think the physical expression of a building often comforts the community a lot more than they're willing to consciously admit," he continued.

"I've seen a lot of times where Americans have a deep-seated stigma or mindset when it comes to public housing, and they see the Singaporean and Viennese examples – and even some modern American examples – of affordable housing, and they typically change their mind."

The main photo is courtesy of the California State Assembly.

Social Housing Revival

This article is part of Dezeen's Social Housing Revival series exploring the new wave of quality social housing being built around the world, and asking whether a return to social house-building at scale can help solve affordability issues and homelessness in our major cities.

The post Social housing is America's "missing tool" to solve housing crisis says Alex Lee appeared first on Dezeen.

Brutalism, septic tanks and a rejection of the sci-fi status quo informed the set design of the film Dune: Part Two, production designer Patrice Vermette tells Dezeen in this interview featuring exclusive images.

Vermette worked on both parts of the movie Dune, an adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 novel realised by director Denis Villeneuve.

The second film continues to explore the book's themes of colonialism, environmentalism and religion as its warring factions battle for control over the resource-rich desert planet of Arrakis.

Villeneuve and Vermette – who also worked together on Villeneuve's science fiction movie Arrival – focused on creating a rich and original visual language for the Dune films, which are set thousands of years in the future.

"What's fascinating about the book, for the design aspect of it, is that it doesn't give you all the answers," Vermette told Dezeen.

While Herbert gave detailed descriptions of the conditions of each planet, he wasn't as descriptive when it came to what specific locations looked like, leaving plenty of room for imagination.

"It gives you just the right amount of pieces of the puzzle to help you understand what the realities of those planets are," said Vermette.

The designer said that with such detailed descriptions of site conditions, he found he was putting himself "in the position of the architect or the founder of that place" in order to meet a brief outlined by Herbert.

For Arrakis's capital city of Arrakeen, the design team knew there were winds of 180 kilometres per hour, unbearable heat, giant sandworms that are drawn to vibration in the desert sands, and that the Atreides' residence there is the largest ever made by humankind.

In response, the team created building facades imagined at an angle for the winds to sweep over, with thick rock walls to keep them cool, and the whole city is situated in a rocky valley between mountains that offers protection from the elements – as well as any monsters underfoot.

The buildings were also given a brutalist aesthetic, in reference to the way in which Soviet architecture was used "as a show of force" in regions it colonised.

Herbert's story takes inspiration from the Middle East, and different factions in it are often interpreted as representing the USSR and Western powers as they sought control of its oil.

"There's a conversation between the natural elements and what the different cultures are about, and you need to have a reflection on that to be able to start designing," said Vermette.

After the success of Part One – which earned six Oscars, including best production design for Vermette – the creative team had licence to go even bigger for Part Two.

Forty per cent more sets were built, and some 35,000 square metres of soundstages were used in Budapest in addition to several football fields worth of backlots and desert locations in Abu Dhabi and Jordan.

Among the most memorable new settings in Part Two is Giedi Prime, the industrial homeworld of House Harkonnen, which appeared minimally in Part One.

The Harkonnens – a brutal family line incensed at having been removed from control in Arrakis – are depicted in the film using dark and grotesque imagery, including a mountainous leader who bathes in viscous black oil.

"I was excited about the Harkonnens," said Vermette. "Denis always imagined a world that is repulsive."

Villeneuve requested a world that was "black and plastic" for the Harkonnens, and the oil became an additional textural element because of its relationship to plastic.

"It came from how Frank Herbert's book talked about overexploitation of the natural resources of Giedi Prime," said Vermette.

The inspiration Vermette needed to flesh out the Harkonnen homeworld for Part Two came when he passed a field full of black moulded plastic septic tanks while driving outside Montreal, where he is based.

It made sense to him that given the Harkonnens' character, that's where they would live. This aesthetic of black moulded plastic, combined with giant rib formations reminiscent of being in the belly of a whale and references to spiders and ticks, came to embody the buildings and machinery of the Harkonnens.

Septic tanks may be an unlikely starting point for an architectural language, but it's an example of how Villeneuve's vision can produce original results.

"The great thing about working with Denis is that he doesn't accept the status quo, which I love – meaning if we've seen it before, it's not interesting for him," said Vermette.

Giedi Prime is also home to the biggest set for Dune: Part Two: a battle arena similar to a triangle-shaped Colosseum, which was filmed with infrared cameras and desaturated to evoke the otherworldly look of being under the planet's black sun.

It was built using a technique the creative team had pioneered on the Dune movies for big sets, where only a relatively small part necessary for close-up and medium shots is built in detail – in this case, the arena's entrance.

The rest of the arena was completed with fabric-wrapped wooden frames representing the volumes of the building, which were then detailed with computer-generated imagery (CGI) in post-production.

The process aimed to block out natural light falling into the space and across actors' bodies in the same way that the walls or beams of the building would.

Otherwise, this alignment of light and shadow can be difficult to get right in post-production and becomes a telltale sign that visual effects have been used.

Although this approach was time-consuming, restricting filming to just a couple of hours a day when the sun was in the right place and keeping Vermette and his team constantly watching how shadows were cast, it enabled them to achieve the photorealistic look that they desired.

A final touch to the arena scene and the unnerving world of the Harkonnens are fireworks that appear like ink spatters rather than explosions.

"About 30 versions" of these fireworks were invented, according to Vermette, including one based on the structure of cancer cells, before the final design was chosen.

"It's a splotch of ink dropping on a glass surface," said Vermette. "It's like oil; it blends into the same type of aesthetics."

In contrast to the Harkonnens, another new world introduced in Dune: Part Two shows harmony with nature – even though that nature is the harsh and water-scarce planet of Arrakis.

This is the world of the Fremen, who live in "sietches" built into the rock. The descriptions of the Fremen in the book have been interpreted as referencing Arab cultures, particularly that of the nomadic Bedouin.

But for the film, Vermette said, "we did not want to borrow cultural elements from one culture in particular, because I don't think it would have been right".

Although the Middle Eastern references remain the strongest, they are combined with elements from the Mayans and the Aztecs – other cultures from the Global South that have faced colonisation, which Vermette says was intended to broaden this thematic exploration.

A third new world, Kaitain, the seat of the empire, was the only one to make use of a work of existing architecture: architect Carlo Scarpa's post-modernist Brion Tomb, a burial ground and garden in the mountains of Italy where concrete is sculpted with intersecting planes and geometric cutaways.

The Dune: Part Two team was the first to get permission to film there, although Vermette had already used Scarpa's work as an inspiration for settings in the first movie.

"On Part One, I was inspired by his architectural language for both Arrakeen and [Atreides home planet] Caladan," said Vermette. "But it makes sense that the aesthetics of the imperial planet influence the rest of the other planets."

"It's just like in real life. It dictates what's the taste, what's fashionable," said Vermette.

It's an example of how the film employs brutalism in a nuanced way – in some places stark and others poetic. Vermette particularly borrowed from Brazilian brutalism, which he says is "more sophisticated", as well as Scarpa's work.

"I've got a particular love for Scarpa, because I think it's his own world," said Vermette. "Maybe someone can say it's brutalism, but it's not really at the same time. It's really unique and distinct."

Photos courtesy of Warner Bros Entertainment Inc.

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Architects are often wrongly blamed for past failures in social housing, Mikhail Riches co-founder Annalie Riches says in this Social Housing Revival interview.

Riches set out in her career to design great social housing, in a bid to challenge what she saw as a prevailing notion that architects "can't do housing".

However, she confesses to taking issue with the term "social housing" itself.

"I really hate the word 'social' housing," she told Dezeen. "The word implies there's a problem."

"I think of it just as housing. I wouldn't design it any differently whether it was private – to me, it's housing."

Founded together with David Mikhail in 2015, her London-based studio designed the celebrated, Stirling Prize-winning council-housing development Goldsmith Street.

The precursor studio to Mikhail Riches established in 2005, Riches Hawley Mikhail Architects, was founded expressly to specialise in social housing, Riches said.

"I was probably the driving force for it," she admitted. "I've always wanted to get involved in housing."

"I point to Margaret Thatcher"

Riches' interest in social housing stems from a fascination with Sheffield's Park Hill, acquired while she was studying for an architecture degree in the city.

Completed in 1961, Park Hill is a brutalist former council-housing estate. Now Europe's largest listed building, in the late 1980s it was in a state of decline with its "streets in the sky" accused of attracting anti-social behaviour.

"I was a student at Sheffield and Park Hill was like a really big building in that city and was considered to be failing," she recalled.

"And at that time there was this idea that architects couldn't do housing. I think they were blamed for a lot of the failures of those large housing schemes, and I think that made a big impact on me."

That blame, Riches argues, is unfair.

"It's a lot more complex, the failure of those buildings – it's really easy to blame the architects and the design of them," she said.

"I point to Margaret Thatcher – job losses, decline of the steel industry, unemployment, a loss of hope and confidence in the state, and then a lack of funding to maintain it."

Mikhail Riches was appointed architect on the second phase of a refurbishment of Park Hill led by developer Urban Splash, in a competition Riches was "desperate to win".

As well as improving the energy efficiency of the buildings, the architects made subtle interventions such as adding colourful panels to the facade – picking up on the fact that many residents had painted their balconies.

There were, Riches acknowledges, some issues with Park Hill's design that meant that "once it was on the decline, it was quite good for bad behaviour" – and the studio tried to address those, introducing street-facing glazing to make the public areas more visible.

"It's just an awesome building," she said. "The aspiration of it is extraordinary. It came from a time where architects were involved in trying to solve problems."

Today, she argues, architects' ability to solve problems has been significantly curtailed, as they are sidelined in decisions about project budgets, costs and procurement.

"The power has been taken away," she said. "No one really talks to architects, I don't think. We're not trusted, and people think that we just cost a load of money and add fripperies to things."

Goldsmith Street "had to bend rules"

One rare project where the architects were trusted was Goldsmith Street, Mikhail Riches' council-housing project for Norwich City Council completed in 2019.

Comprising 105 Passivhaus homes in a streets-based layout, it is the only social-housing scheme to have won the Stirling Prize – awarded to the UK's best new building – in the competition's 26-year history.

Riches says she did not anticipate the project's impact during the design process.

"You never think that kind of thing is going to happen," she said. "It was only when I went to the site and it was quite built that I was like, 'actually, this looks quite good'."

The impact on residents has also been profound. Mikhail Riches has received reports of tenants who have managed to pay off debts and seen marked improvements to their health since moving in.

One resident sent the studio a letter detailing how since coming to Goldsmith Street, she is no longer reliant on food banks and has been able to entertain guests for the first time in years.

"It had us all in tears," said Riches. "It's made such a big difference to her life."

In order to deliver the required density on the site without resorting to apartment blocks, the studio had to find ways around certain planning rules, particularly those restricting the overlooking of neighbours.

"To achieve what we achieved, we had to – not break rules – but we had to bend them," said Riches.

The solution was to mimic the layout of nearby Victorian streets with rear alleyways – albeit with a much wider gap between the buildings – tweaked so that all first-floor habitable rooms faced the same direction.

Unusually, and crucially, on Goldsmith Street Mikhail Riches was contracted directly with the council as the client, as opposed to the more commonly used design-and-build set-up, where the architect is sub-contracted to a main contractor.

That gave the studio much greater leverage to try new things and negotiate with third-party agencies during the project.

"I think there is inevitably a loss of quality with design-and-build," said Riches. "There are some we've had to walk away from because you don't have any power in that process."

Mikhail Riches is now working on a series of projects for York City Council that takes a similar approach to Goldsmith Street, but which Riches says is "even more ambitious" on sustainability and biodiversity.

"We're wilfully just doing the same old stuff"

However, while Riches had harboured hopes that the success of Goldsmith Street would spark a flurry of equally ambitious social-housing projects around the country, that has not yet been the case.

"Actually it was quite a low-cost project, it wasn't expensive," she said. "And I thought, 'well, now everyone's going to be doing this – we've shown it can be done'. But it's not that easy."

Aside from restrictive planning policies that are "not helping to deliver quality", Riches points to increasing difficulty for architects working on council-housing projects as cash-strapped town halls demand more work for less money.

"It's just becoming untenable for practices our size, which is such a shame because that was what we really wanted to do – we wanted to deliver social housing with local authorities," she said.

"But it's getting to a point now where it feels like a race to the bottom."

The main barrier to delivering more, better social housing in the UK, Riches contends, is a lack of political will.

"We've had a series of governments that haven't wanted to work out how to do this," she said. "It feels like we're wilfully just doing the same old stuff without even thinking about it."

There are a growing number of architects wanting to make a difference, she said, but they have limited influence.

"There's a lot of good architects wanting to build good housing, which when I started doing housing wasn't really the case," she said.

"So I think design quality for housing is massively on the up, but the problem is most housing built in this country isn't by those architects."

"It's very difficult to work out how to be proactive and to actually change the debate. If you do something, and it's out there, and you can show it's done, and it's not been a big deal to do it – that's maybe the biggest power we've got at the moment."

The photography is by Tim Crocker unless otherwise stated.

Social Housing Revival

This article is part of Dezeen's Social Housing Revival series exploring the new wave of quality social housing being built around the world, and asking whether a return to social house-building at scale can help solve affordability issues and homelessness in our major cities.

The post "I really hate the word 'social' housing" says Annalie Riches appeared first on Dezeen.

Swiss furniture brand Vitra will prioritise reducing the environmental impact of its existing lines through material innovation, CEO Nora Fehlbaum tells Dezeen in this interview.

One of the industry's best known and most influential manufacturers, Vitra's collections include iconic pieces such as Eames plastic shell chairs and Panton chairs.

Like its peers, the brand is under increasing pressure to reduce the ecological footprint of its operations in the face of worsening climate change.

Speaking to Dezeen at the Vitra Campus in Weil Am Rhein, Germany, Fehlbaum suggested that the company's heritage as a high-end, design-focused furniture brand is inherently aligned with sustainability.

"Vitra's greatest contribution to sustainability is its products with an above-average service life, which omit everything superfluous," she told Dezeen.

"Our roots in modern design would allow nothing else."

However, she claimed Vitra is "doing everything we can with all the means we have" to become more sustainable.

"Everybody at Vitra has understood our environmental mission," she said. "We don't have a sustainability officer – everybody has taken it as their own."

Vitra's stated goal is to be "a net-positive company based on all the indicators of its ecological footprint by 2030".

It has a long way to go, with the company's most recent sustainability report published in 2022 stating that its total emissions for the year were equivalent to nearly 141,000 tonnes of CO2.

Eames shell chairs now made from recycled plastic

The brand's sustainability strategy is chiefly focused on its popular existing products, Fehlbaum said.

"We have the biggest impact if we change the products that we sell the most of already, rather than inventing one single sustainable product," she argued.

"At Vitra, a product is never final, but continues to evolve."

As of January this year, the shells of the Eames plastic chairs manufactured by Vitra are now made exclusively from recycled post-consumer plastic.

"[The Eames shell chair] is probably the most iconic, most copied chair out there – and it won't be available in virgin material," said Fehlbaum.

The switch means the shells have a speckled finish that differs from the originals, but Fehlbaum is satisfied with this "recycled aesthetic".

"It's a different aesthetic, and of course we hope the consumer gets used to – and maybe even comes to love – this new aesthetic," she said.

"That's a risk that we're taking and that we're willing to take."

It follows earlier switches of products and parts from virgin to recycled plastic, starting with Barber Osgerby's Tip Ton chair in 2020.

A number of accessories like Arik Levy's Toolbox and Konstantin Grcic's Locker Box have since followed. The entire HAL chair family, designed by Jasper Morrison, now also have their shells manufactured using recycled plastic.

The recycled plastic is taken from household recycling obtained through the German garbage collection programme Gelber Sack (Yellow Bag).

"Utilising this raw material instead of petroleum-based primary plastics generates fewer climate-damaging emissions and less primary energy consumption," Fehlbaum claimed.

The role of recycling in solving the world's plastic pollution crisis is contested among designers.

Some, including designer Richard Hutten and Belgian curator Jan Boelen, argue that big brands are using recycling to create an illusion of change while continuing to use virgin plastics.

Others, among them the CEO of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Andrew Morlet, argue that durable, recyclable plastics can form part of a circular economy.

Many recycled plastic products involve the use of some virgin plastic or additive substances that then complicate or inhibit their own recyclability.

Vitra said its RE product, used for the Eames shells, does not contain any virgin plastic and can be fully recycled at the end of the product's life thanks to the use of technical fillers, like glass fibres, rather than any additives that prevent onwards recycling.

Another sustainability initiative is Vitra's Circle Stores, which sell used furniture and accessories by Vitra and Artek, such as sample products and exhibition pieces, with prices depending on the condition of the products.

All products are tested for functionality and repaired if necessary so that a renewed product warranty can be granted.

The first Circle Store opened in Amsterdam in 2017 in response to questions from customers about second-hand Vitra products, with a second in Brussels.

A third recently "moved" from Frankfurt and opened in an adapted space at the Álvaro Siza-designed Vitra Campus factory building, with a service and repair area where customers can bring their products to receive a new lease of life.

"With the Circle Store, we can offer our environmentally conscious clients an even more environmentally conscious choice: namely that of a second-hand product," said Fehlbaum.

Absence in Milan "really wasn't such a huge deal"

The brand has also taken steps to rewild parts of the Vitra Campus. The Piet Oudolf garden was completed in 2020 and Vitra is working with Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets on a masterplan plan for fewer roads and more native trees on the site.

Fehlbaum acknowledges that some may be sceptical about the sustainability work it is doing within the context of widespread greenwashing.

"It's impossible to get through this jungle of messaging," she said.

"How do we talk about it to make sure that it is clear how thoroughly and authentically we're really tackling this?"

Some other furniture brands have also reduced their presence at design fairs amid concerns about the significant emissions associated with shipping products around the world for temporary showstands.

Vitra has historically had a significant presence in Milan during the Italian city's annual design week in April, but was noticeably absent in 2023.

However, Fehlbaum said that although she was asked about this a lot "it really wasn't such a huge deal".

"For us, it makes a lot of sense to use what we already have," she said.

"We have the Vitra Campus and it's not so far from Milan. We prefer to use and invest in something that can be around for five or 10 years rather than spending a lot of energy and resources on something that after five days we're going to have to break down."

It is yet to be seen if the brand will return to Milan design week this year.

"The way we think about it [showing at design fairs like Milan] is never black or white," Fehlbaum explained.

"There might be a moment where we say Milan is exactly the right place at the right moment to talk about something, and then maybe we'll be there."

Vitra was founded in 1950 by Nora Fehlbaum's grandparents Willi and Erika Fehlbaum and has since grown to become one of the industry's leading names.

Nora Fehlbaum succeeded her uncle, Rolf Fehlbaum, as CEO in 2016 and identifies improving the brand's sustainability as her key mission.

"There is still a long way to go before reaching our environmental goals," she acknowledged. "Things need to be tested, mistakes must be made, and in the process the company might sometimes overlook an important aspect or underestimate the impact of an activity."

This is now a central part of the brand's function as an industry leader, Fehlbaum suggests.

"The designer landscape has changed. In the past, it was a lot about iconic design and breaking the mould, building your own brand and your studio – new things – and now, the students that are graduating come with their own environmental mission," she said.

"I see our role, together with these people and with the right suppliers and innovative companies, to find solutions that are, for lack of a better term, sustainable in the longer term."

Other interviews recently published on Dezeen include the Kvadrat CEO saying sustainability is "not making our lives easier" and Iittala creative director Janni Vepsäläinen sharing her goal to help the brand "remain culturally relevant for another 100 years".

The photography is courtesy of Vitra unless otherwise stated.

Dezeen In Depth
If you enjoy reading Dezeen's interviews, opinions and features, subscribe to Dezeen In Depth. Sent on the last Friday of each month, this newsletter provides a single place to read about the design and architecture stories behind the headlines. 

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Architects with creative flair are needed to overcome stigmas around social housing, urges Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind in this Social Housing Revival interview.

"More good architects should get involved in social housing," Libeskind told Dezeen. "We need creativity to overcome the social-housing stigma and we need architects who can invent new ways to create housing that is decent, has dignity, is beautiful and sustainable within the budgets allowed."

"If you're an architect that engages with the issue of housing in a creative way, then you're a much-needed solution to a problem."

Libeskind, whose eponymous studio completed a social housing project in New York last year, believes that creating better quality low-cost housing is one of the most urgent issues facing the world today.

He argued that many contemporary social-housing projects are designed by copying failed examples from the past that do not adequately meet people's needs.

"Too much of what we call 'social housing' is just formulaic from another era," he said. "It's popped out automatically in a typology that isn't very close to the human spirit."

Because of this habit of regurgitating a perceived typology of social housing, some architects are hesitant to attach themselves to the projects, Libeskind claims.

"I think the minute you say those words 'social housing' people think, 'I don't want to be involved in this, let somebody else do it'," he suggested.

"And yet it's the most pressing problem: to create better housing for people to lift the neighbourhoods that really need help to become better and safer. It's key to the survival of cities and it's not only in one place – it's all over the world."

"A wonderful privilege" to live in social housing

Now one of America's most prominent architects, Libeskind's views on social housing stem from his experience living in a New York City housing cooperative in the late 1950s and early 1960s when he was a teenager.

After leaving his birth country, Poland, in 1957, Libeskind and his family moved to Israel and then to New York in 1959, where they lived in the Amalgamated Housing Cooperative in the Bronx.

Founded in 1927 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers union, it was the first housing development to be built in the US under limited equity rules – a home-ownership model where residents purchase a share in the development, granting them the right to occupy one of the housing units.

Libeskind described how the public and social gathering space in the Bronx cooperative gave him a positive view of social housing and informed his approach to design.

"I always say, what a wonderful privilege it was to live there," he said. "It taught me a lot."

"The housing was walk-up apartments with no air conditioning, but it had a social life with nice public spaces with green trees where people could congregate on hot evenings, rooms for lectures, and places where people would gather together for a performance."

"It had kind of a sense of culture to it," Libeskind continued. "It wasn't windows and walls and staircases, it had a sense of a community and that really had a big impact on my view of the beauty of social housing."

Libeskind completed a social housing project in Long Island, New York, last year and has another under construction in Brooklyn. The architect explained that he designed these projects by "thinking about the people first".

"People need security, a beautiful place to gather together, and a place with a nice view even if their apartment is very small," Libeskind explained. "They need to have a connection to the people living on their floor and to people on the street."

"It all starts with people first and then thinking about how to shape the space according to the programmes."

Affordable housing "the centre of what we have to address"

Authorities in New York City are starting to contemplate social housing as aesthetically considered buildings for the first time in decades, Libeskind claims.

"The New York City public-housing authority is beginning to think about a new generation of social housing that would be something beautiful for people," he said.

"I think that's a change of perspective because for so many decades there was nothing done on the topic that was inspiring."

He believes the social housing under development today in New York is a welcome departure from the deteriorating and stigmatised subsidised housing built for low-income households in the past, colloquially known as "the projects".

Many of these housing projects were built to poor quality standards and disconnected from the city, meaning they succumbed to class and racial segregation.

"There has been improvement in New York where people are trying to create social housing that is no longer what they used to call 'the projects', and are beginning to realise that to create a great city you need to concentrate on affordable housing," Libeskind said.

"People are realising that affordable housing is no longer just a footnote," he continued.

"It is the centre of what we have to address as architects, authorities, lawmakers and politicians because, without it, we don't have good cities, we will have cities that are very segregated with ghettos of the rich and ghettos of the poor."

To Libeskind, the good social housing can improve people's quality of life and influence how they treat their environment, which impacts both the residents and people living in the wider neighbourhood and city.

"Design has a lot to do with making housing a place that people really want to live and take care of," he said.

"By creating high-quality housing that people can afford to live in, you can address not just one of the hundreds of people that you're building the building for, but the entire neighbourhood will change," he continued.

"The character of the street, safety and sense of belonging in the neighbourhood – it's a synergy of all these dimensions that comes together when one really thinks of investing in social housing."

Although architects have a part to play in improving the state of public housing in the US, Libeskind acknowledged that the main responsibility lies with government authorities and people commissioning the projects.

"It's not just an architectural problem," he said. "Architects have a kind of limited role in it and really, it's a problem of politics and law."

"We have to encourage politicians to take a different stance when it comes to social housing, not just a nod of the head to some buildings being built, but understand that this is a central feature of our time – we have to provide beautiful housing at affordable prices and create integrated neighbourhoods that are linked to the city."

The top portrait of Libeskind is by Stefan Ruiz. The photography of the New York social housing block is by Inessa Binenbaum.

Social Housing Revival

This article is part of Dezeen's Social Housing Revival series exploring the new wave of quality social housing being built around the world, and asking whether a return to social house-building at scale can help solve affordability issues and homelessness in our major cities.

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Making a built environment that works for everyone will require the end of profit- and ownership-obsession in the industry, argues New York-based architect and researcher Emanuel Admassu in this interview.

Admassu is a co-founder of art and architecture practice AD-WO and an assistant professor at Columbia University, where his research focuses on the entangled relationship between spatial justice and land ownership and value.

He believes that in order to deliver more equitable buildings and public spaces, a complete rethink of the economic and legal structure surrounding architecture is needed.

"I think we can centre spatial justice within the practice of architecture by finding a set of concepts and ideas that help us think about space-making differently," Admassu told Dezeen.

"We have to really confront the legal formations that foreclose any other way of making space or sharing space."

"Dismantling that value system is going to take a lot of work"

Admassu, who works in New York, Addis Ababa and Melbourne, acknowledges the scale of the task he is proposing.

"Whether you go to Addis Ababa, or Dar Salaam or New York, the assumption is: you buy that lot, you build on that lot, and you continue to generate some capital, right?"

"So redirecting that or dismantling that value system is going to take a lot of work."

As a starting point, he believes in experimenting with new mechanisms for delivering buildings that challenge the status quo but can still work within it.

"We have to keep inventing other tools, and those tools have to operate within a world that is already enclosed," he said.

For example, he points to shared or community land and others ways of "collectively stewarding land".

The very concept of land ownership itself is problematic, Admassu contends.

"The displacement or the dispossession of indigenous communities starts by measuring the land and absorbing that land into a particular worldview that says land is something that has to be owned," he said.

"For us, the intervention really begins there – by really thinking about measuring, because measuring in the history of architecture has been deployed in order to divide and own."

Instead, Admassu is interested in how the concept of "immeasurability" can deliver architecture projects that are more "about sharing the planet than they are about owning the planet".

He refers to urban marketplaces that are often formed by "spatial negotiations" – and therefore more difficult to portray in the form of conventional plans and sections – as an example of immeasurable sites.

Admassu's investigation into these topics is reflected both in the work of his studio AD-WO, founded in 2015 alongside Jen Wood, and his teaching at GSAPP, Columbia University, which he says are mutually informed by one another.

After moving to the US from Addis Ababa at the age of 15, Admassu studied architecture at Southern Polytechnic State University in Georgia.

He grew particularly interested in the more theoretical aspects of architecture and how they related to his own lived experience, which eventually led him to a thesis exploring urban marketplaces in Africa while studying Advanced Architectural Research at Columbia University.

He now maintains an ongoing research project specifically investigating two urban marketplaces, in Dar es Salaam and Addis Ababa.

"Based on my lived experience and moving through the marketplace in Addis, I knew these were incredibly sophisticated spaces that had their own value systems, and ways of organising things and negotiating space," he said.

Admassu explains that the project grew from his frustration around how "dominant architectural discourse was only able to look at cities in Africa, or maybe even broadly cities in the Global South, as informal spaces".

Instead, Admassu identifies these places as "subversive spaces" that serve as examples of his vision for a built environment not focused on ownership and capital.

"There are tools within these marketplaces that help us imagine a world after property," he said.

These "tools", he explained, chiefly concern the conditional agreements between merchants and city officials over the use of space in the markets.

Global North architectural concepts "just get plopped into Addis Ababa"

Admassu's research has also explored the role of traditional fenced zones or compounds in Addis Ababa – known locally as Ghebbi.

These zones differ from developments in other climates and social contexts that have hard-lined definitions between indoor and outdoor, and public and private.

Instead, the Ghebbi are "porous environments", Admassu explained, penetrated by both residents of the compound as well as neighbours, friends and relatives – reflecting a central part of Ethiopian community culture.

Admassu wants to see these concepts adopted in more of the modern buildings springing up around Addis.

"Unfortunately, like any city in the Global South, there are a set of references that come from elsewhere that just basically get plopped into sites in Addis Ababa."

AD-WO highlighted this topic through an installation titled Ghebbi at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023.

Previously, the studio has also featured in an exhibition at MOMA titled Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, exploring themes of spatial justice in Atlanta.

"That quickly led us to an investigation of property, and how property continues to foreclose various ways of being together, and various ways of imagining cities differently," he said.

The aim, he explained, was to ask, "what would it mean to really imagine architecture after property, or to disentangle architecture from property?"

"It's a question that evades easy solutions."

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Conserving Tashkent's modernist architecture is a way of boosting the city's international profile, Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation chair Gayane Umerova tells Dezeen in this interview.

The Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation is leading the preservation of more than 20 impressive Soviet-era modernist buildings in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

"The foundation was set up for cultural diplomacy"

The conservation effort forms part a strategy led by president Shavkat Mirziyoyev to build awareness of the central Asian country's cultural assets beyond the tourist hotspots of Bukhara and Samarkand.

"The foundation was set up for cultural diplomacy in a way, because we were formed by the president's initiative in 2017," Umerova told Dezeen.

"At the time, the president realised that there wasn't a lot of information about Uzbekistan culture overseas, and it was mainly connected to the historical cities – Bukhara and Samarkand."

The Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, which is part of the government, was established following Mirziyoyev's election in 2016 with the aim of protecting and promoting the country's art and culture.

However, the organisation only took a serious interest in Tashkent's modernist architecture after the iconic House of Cinema was threatened with demolition.

"The foundation was not formed to secure or protect any building or heritage – we started with an arts and culture agenda," explained Umerova.

"But, at this time [around 2017] a vast number of investors were coming to the country and there were developers that started a building boom," she continued.

"We found out from our team and from the people around us that a building was about to be demolished which was quite iconic – the House of Cinema."

"People were really feeling that something wrong was happening"

Although the foundation did not succeed in saving the cinema, which was demolished in early 2018, the discussion around it led to a renewed, government-backed interest in Tashkent's Soviet-era modernism.

"People were really feeling that something wrong was happening, but at the time, it was already [too] late to save this building," said Umerova.

"We didn't really feel empowered to do it, because we were not really part of this system, we were not used to construction, and didn't have the mechanisms to do anything."

Following the demolition, the foundation set about establishing the systems and mechanisms needed to protect the city's other, potentially under-threat, modernist buildings.

This led to the Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI research and preservation project, led by Milan-based architecture studio Grace, academic Boris Chukhovich, the Politecnico di Milano and Laboratorio Permanente.

The team carried out a survey of the city's Soviet modernist buildings and has selected 24 key buildings that will be conserved.

Tashkent's modernist architecture was the focus of the recent Where in the World is Tashkent conference, with Dezeen rounding up 10 key buildings following the event.

"We used to be the capital of Central Asia"

As Tashkent was one of the most populated and significant cities within the former Soviet Union, it contains numerous municipal, cultural and residential buildings from the communist era.

"We used to be the capital of Central Asia when we used to be Soviet and this is why there are a lot of cultural institutions, said Umerova.

"[The] majority of these buildings are modernist. It was seen as a very cultural city, and I think we've lost that for the past 30 years."

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tashkent has become less prominent in the region – and the foundation hopes it can use the modernist buildings as part of a "rebranding" effort for the city.

"We are not a tourism entity," explained Umerova. "But for us it's important to that the country is known overseas, and this is basically how cultural diplomacy and soft power all come together."

"So as more people know about these buildings, then the conditions are good for people to visit, it's a benefit for us."

"It's important for us to create awareness"

The foundation has control over many of the 24 buildings that have designated for conservation, either through direct ownership or indirectly, in the case of those owned by other government bodies.

It is creating a strategy to reuse these buildings as well as influencing the development of the structures that are privately owned.

As part of this plan it is exploring a UNESCO listing bid for a selection of the city's modernist buildings.

"It's important for us to create awareness and UNESCO is the best, basically, for that," Umerova said.

The photography is by Alexey Narodizkiy. The portrait is by ACDF.

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With 100 designers from the Middle East and North Africa, Design Doha is showcasing emerging regional designers, says Rana Beiruti, who is curator of the biennial's Arab Design Now exhibition.

Launched by art and culture institution Qatar Museums, the first edition of Design Doha will open in the Qatari capital this Saturday.

Central to the biennial is its main exhibition, Arab Design Now, which was curated by Jordan-based Beiruti, who previously co-founded and directed Amman Design Week.

The contemporary exhibition will feature a diverse offering of work from 74 participants – individual designers and collectives – including collectible design and installations that reflect on the current design scene in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region.

Qatar is having a "big boom"

Beiruti said that following the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar, the country has been experiencing a "big boom".

"I think it's [Qatar's] moment now to create the infrastructure and the spaces for younger designers, particularly emerging designers, to learn, grow and start producing work," said Beiruti.

"The biennial serves that purpose as a learning experience. Biennials are an important platform where designers and artists can create outside of certain constraints or certain financial constraints," she continued.

"I think Doha is hoping to position itself as a regional home for design – not just for local designers."

While this will be the first edition of Design Doha, Qatar and the surrounding MENA region has a long and rich history of design and architecture, emphasised the curator.

"There's this big question all the time about what is the identity of Arab design and I think that it's not disconnected from the global condition of design, the global design world," said Beiruti.

"It's not something separate from it or different from it. It's very much connected to what's happening on the global stage."

Beiruti described Arab Design Now as a "museum-grade" selection of design, which explores what it means to create in the MENA region today – the guiding force behind the exhibition.

"I don't know how you make a divide between design and craft"

The curator said that the show will look at the different aesthetic approaches and ways that people think about design from across the region, but also "map the commonalities" that exist between countries.

In particular, Beiruti explained that the exhibition will feature a series of overarching themes – specifically craftsmanship.

"Personally, I don't know how you make a divide between design and craft," she said. "I find they're so intertwined."

"I feel like there's little design I'm interested in that isn't basically contemporary craft," added the curator.

Beiruti also cited "a love for the land and respect for materials" as a focus of the exhibition participants.

Among the vast array of work, the curator said to expect pieces from Samer Selbak, a Palestinian artist who works with sponge as a material, as well as Jordanian-Palestinian architect Abeer Seikaly, who has designed a chandelier using weaving techniques that she learned from working with Bedouin tribes in Jordan.

"What's interesting is that even if practices and technologies have evolved, there's a certain set of values that I feel like people still carry and they're values that are common in our culture," said Beiruti, reflecting on the work that will be on display.

"Values of the collective, of collaboration, of co-creation."

"And so a lot of the works are done in collaboration with craftspeople. And those people are equally recognised in the production of the piece," she continued.

"So I would definitely say that craft is very central in this exhibition. There's a lot of upcycling as well – people who are using old discarded marble slabs and stone [to create work]."

"The designers have gone all out"

After the official Design Doha event draws to a close on 28 February, various exhibitions will be on display in the city until early August, including Arab Design Now.

"The designers have really gone all out, and there are pieces that are really monumental, so I think having them on display for only four or five days is possibly not enough to create the right level of engagement," acknowledged Beiruti.

Considering the potential outcome of Design Doha, the curator said that she hopes it will positively influence designers – especially a younger generation – and visitors alike.

"If it inspires other designers in a specific way, or gets people to think about how they are producing and how they are consuming differently, then I feel like it will be very successful."

The photography is courtesy of Design Doha.

Design Doha takes place from 24 to 5 August 2024 in Doha, Qatar. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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London-based start-up Nothing is trying to upend the consumer-tech industry. In this interview, the company's design director, Adam Bates, discusses how.

Since being founded by Chinese-Swedish entrepreneur Carl Pei three years ago, Nothing has moved at breakneck speed, releasing three wireless earbuds and two smartphones – with a third set to launch next month.

Counting iPod designer Tony Fadell and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman among an illustrious list of investors, the company's stated aim is to "make tech fun again".

"We're a bit bored"

Having joined Nothing as design director in early 2022 after spending 14 years at Dyson, Bates is tasked with ensuring that the brand's products deliver on that ambition.

"I think it's in a lot of our bones that there are some things that aren't right about these products," said Bates, referring to the current offering of smartphones from mainstream brands.

"And also that we're a bit bored," he added.

Bates suggests that the current state of monotony within the smartphone industry can be traced back to 2007 and the seismic launch of the original Apple iPhone.

"The iPhone in 2007 was a new format," he told Dezeen. "There were touchscreen phones before but the way they designed the interface – really we're still with that now."

"When something like that happens and then it catches and it gets traction, other people start doing it as well."

Prior to 2007, the mobile-phone industry had seen extensive innovation to varying degrees of success, as manufacturers released products that flipped, slid or twisted open, were ultra-thin or reimagined the keypad.

But the advent of the iPhone sparked a fierce game of catch-up within the industry that led to design experimentation becoming a casualty, Bates contends.

"It was a bit lost and uninspired and then came the iPhone, which was this massive step-change, and everyone focused on Apple and that format, and in the process of doing that a whole industry was built that was quite rigid," he said.

"Maybe in that process of trying to get there, people forgot about thinking of new ideas, and then also customers maybe stopped wanting new ideas."

Seventeen years and 36 iPhone iterations later, Nothing argues that the magic has worn off and that it's time for new ideas to make a comeback.

"There's a bit of trusting our gut instinct"

Designed with extensive input from Nothing founding partner Teenage Engineering, a Swedish tech studio, the brand's Phone (1), launched in 2022, sought to break away from the sleek slab aesthetic of most smartphones.

Picking up on the design language of Nothing's first product, the Ear (1) earbuds, it featured a transparent back displaying its inner components and a light-up "glyph interface".

Hundreds of distinctively arranged LEDs illuminate to create patterns that indicate notifications from apps, incoming calls or charging status when the phone is face-down.

The phone was included in Time Magazine's Best Inventions of 2022 list.

Released a year later, the second-generation Phone (2) focused on refinements such as a more ergonomic pillowed-glass back and extra glyph functions, as well as updates to Nothing's designed-in-house, monochromatic operating system.

Only another eight months on and the brand will soon launch the Phone (2a), touted as a low-cost alternative to the Phone (2).

Ear (1)'s successor, the Ear (2) and Ear (stick) – which is defined by a cylindrical twist-to-open case – complete the Nothing range of products, not including those produced by its sub-brand, CMF.

Bates explains how Nothing is attempting to ensure its designs stand out from the crowd.

"I guess for us to try and break out of it, we've got to trust ourselves as people that are interested in technology, that are creative, that care about the products that we use," he said.

"There's a bit of trusting our gut instinct of what excites us and what excited us in the past, because data is not going to lead us there – data is going to lead us to the same place as everyone else."

"Design hasn't got better"

Nothing's design aesthetic has a retro-futuristic element to it, referencing multiple tech designs from previous decades that broke the mould at the time – particularly Apple's transparent products in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

"There is a conscious element to that," Bates acknowledged. "When Apple was on such a roll surprising you every time, I guess there might be a nostalgia for that feeling, and maybe the visual language comes from that feeling."

The company's studio in King's Cross, London, is filled with all manner of old-school tech, from Gameboy Colors to Casio piano keyboards.

"Design hasn't got better now, it's always been really good," said Bates.

"So there's definitely a natural thing, which is to look at something from the 1970s with the same seriousness as something on some Instagram feed of new renders that people are putting out."

Bates confesses to being fascinated by companies that manage to sustain prolonged periods of design innovation.

"There's these golden eras in companies and they've got quite a lot in common with each other when you look at them," he said.

"Some people just manage to keep doing it – Nintendo just keep doing it, they have a flop and then they come back again, so they've got some magic which passes on through generations."

One such company is Dyson, where Bates was formerly head of design and product experience working on products including the feted Supersonic hairdryer.

"It did become more corporate as time went on, but it always operated quite a lot like a start-up," he recalled.

"A thing to bring with you from there is: challenge everything, don't take anything for granted, don't trust anything unless you've seen it with your own eyes and you've tested it yourself."

But while he says Dyson was "an amazing education", he argues there is a limit to what he can import to the design team at Nothing.

"Dyson was good at innovation and good at new ideas, so I can bring my experience there and see how that works here," he said.

"But at the same time, could they do a phone with exactly their approach? There are things that you just can't mess with, and Dyson just mess with everything."

One important point of difference between Dyson and Nothing is the pace of development. Including research, the Supersonic took five years in all, the Phone (1) just 10 months.

Now with six products in existence including two generations of its main lines, Bates says Nothing has no intention of slowing down.

"I think the general trend is going to speed up," he said.

That touches on a common current criticism of the tech industry: that unnecessarily tight release cycles have stifled innovation and experimentation.

So how will Nothing ensure that its products stay "fun" when moving at such a speed?

Bates is hopeful that the company's strong cultural focus on design will ensure that it continues to test boundaries.

"We're not just here to make money – loads of companies make money," he said. "Some of the designers I've been able to hire are some of the best in the business and could probably work anywhere."

"They've chosen to work here because they want to do something different, so we have to hold each other to account I guess."

"If you're not in the game you can't do anything"

Just how far the Nothing will push the envelope is an open question – its phones stick with the scrollable, rectangular LED screen zeitgeist that has dominated since the iPhone, and the brand has not yet indicated plans to move away from this format.

Another major challenge for the smartphone industry is sustainability. According to Deloitte, the devices generate 146 million tons of CO2 each year worldwide, mostly linked to the extraction of the many precious minerals they contain.

Nothing has taken some steps to reduce the environmental impact of its products. For instance, Phone (2) uses recycled aluminium, plastic, tin, copper and steel, renewable energy in its assembly plant and plastic-free packaging.

Its packaging displays the lifecycle carbon of products, with Phone (2) carrying a footprint of 53.45 kilograms CO2 or equivalent emissions – eight per cent less than the Phone (1).

In comparison, ethical smartphone company Fairphone's fourth-generation phone's lifecycle carbon emissions were 43 kilograms, while the least-polluting version of the iPhone 15 generates 66 kilograms.

"The repairability thing is clearly the way to go," said Bates, referring to a push from campaigners and some regulators for tech brands to prolong their products' lifespans.

"Maybe there are Nothing products in the future where you can touch the battery, and you can take the battery out, and we're back to those days where you take the rear cover off."

However, he indicated that these sorts of changes could be some way off yet as the brand continues to find its feet.

"If you're not in the game you can't do anything. If you do too much too soon, or if you kind of pin yourself to something, we will not survive, and then we're all just at the mercy of Apple, Samsung, Oppo, Google."

The photography is courtesy of Nothing unless otherwise stated.

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Designers Michael and Martellus Bennett are brothers who both used to play in the NFL, but in this interview they reveal that their creative approaches are vastly different.

The pair enjoyed successful, decade-long careers as football players in the National Football League (NFL), each with a Super Bowl win under his belt.

But after retirement from the sport in 2018 and 2020 respectively, Martellus Bennett and Michael Bennett both decided to take up design.

Martellus Bennett now practices from his studios The Imagination Agency and TOMONOSHi! i+d LaB in Houston, while Michael Bennett's Studio Kër is based in Hawaii.

The younger brother but the first to enter design, Martellus Bennett is relaxed about his famous sporting days continuing to follow him in his practice.

"When people try to say you're a football player, to them you're always a football player because they have to find you in that space," he told Dezeen.

"It's not my job to change their mind of how they see me."

He had already been animating, writing and making music with alternative hip-hop group Moonshine Kids on the side during his football career – so says the transition into full-time creative work happened quickly.

"I've never not made things," he said. "Football was like my plan B."

Michael Bennett traces his and his brother's creative instincts back to visits to see their grandfather in Louisiana during childhood summers.

"We'd go to Louisiana every summer, and we didn't realise we were creating," said Michael Bennett. "We were building and taking things apart, putting things together, watching my grandpa weld."

"You don't realize that's a part of your DNA and how that impacts your life as an adult," he reflected.

Differently to his brother, Michael Bennett's journey into design began with political activism – most notably his 2017 memoir Things That Make White People Uncomfortable.

His explorations of the history of racial injustice in America led Michael Bennett to become increasingly interested in the design of spaces.

"I was always working in this 2D realm of politics and I just really wanted to move into space," he said.

"You start looking at Booker T Washington and the things that he was doing when thinking about space and that kind of led down the path of 'let's try interior design school'."

Michael Bennett's design work continues to speak to themes of race, identity and politics.

For example, he recently debuted the sculptural furniture collection We Gotta Get Back to the Crib in collaboration with the late designer Imhotep Blot, featuring pieces made using wood, stone, and fibreglass, plus lamps shrouded in goat skin.

Displayed at Rebuild Foundation in Chicago, the collection examined "the identity and experiences of African Americans and the diaspora, in parallel to themes of intersectionality and the complex living conditions of Black people in America today", according to a statement.

A homage to Bennett and Blot's shared Senegalese and Haitian roots, as well as their upbringings in the US South, the pieces were designed in "joyous opposition to the dominance of Western domestic typologies".

"I think this idea of moving into space as political activism is an important thing because then it becomes about designing the things that we want to exist in the world," said Michael Bennett.

"Design is truly resistance because when you're designing something, it becomes a system," he added. "It becomes a living repository – we create things that become relics, and those relics can be references and then the people behind us will create better things."

In contrast, Martellus Bennett resists overt political and racial categorisation in his work, instead taking an approach that prioritises playfulness.

"Anytime I think about design, I avoid the resistance," he said. "My activism goes to the right to play and the right to be creative and the right to empower everyone's imagination."

"Being Black and creative, you get forced to use your art as part of the resistance," he added. "I rebelled against that."

"At this stage of my life, my ultimate goal is to make the world a more playful place," said Martellus Bennett. "As we play together, we humanize each other."

Martellus Bennett's work spans furniture design, music, children's-book writing and animation, including working with Disney on an upcoming animated version of his book series Hey A J and collaborating with GT Bicycles on a model outfitted with his colourful hand illustrations (pictured top).

He also recently displayed the exhibition KOKORO at the Reeves Art + Design gallery in Houston, combining audio, sculpture and illustration to tell the story of a young girl navigating the "crises and rebirth" of her neighbourhood.

The brothers' design differences extend to their own perceptions of their work and practice.

Martellus Bennett is keen to avoid labels of any kind.

"I don't limit myself, because once you define something, it has to be that," he said.

Michael Bennett, on the other hand, is more relaxed about applying a name to his approach.

"I like to think of myself as a spatial designer," he said. "Whether it's creating forms or installations or creating architecture, it’'s really dealing with and diving into space."

He is increasingly expanding into architecture, studying the discipline at the University of Hawaii and displaying a pavilion made of cross-laminated timber (CLT) at last year's NYCxDesign.

Not everything about the Bennett brothers' design philosophies is different, however. For both, storytelling is firmly at the heart.

"The Eurocentric way of thinking about design is looking at something and saying, 'form leads to function' or 'function leads to form'," said Michael Bennett.

"For me, it's about narrative. There’s something that needs to exist because I need to tell the story."

For Martellus Bennett, the urge to encourage imagination and playfulness is also fundamentally about telling stories.

"Adults project their ideologies onto children," he said. "And children spend the rest of their lives trying to break through the ideologies that were projected onto them."

"So if we're going to write these stories, let's enhance the child and not enhance ideologies, and give them the tools and the opportunity to become who they want to become."

The brothers are open to collaborating in future – although for now, are content to continue developing their individual narratives further.

"I thought it was important for Michael to come out and establish his own language," said Martellus Bennett.

"The only way to understand your own language is to speak it as often as possible. And the more you understand it, the more you can apply it to different conversations."

"We're really trying to dive into our own philosophies and become strong in our narrative," added his brother. "So that when we do create, you can see the merge with the language."

The photography is courtesy of Michael Bennett and Martellus Bennett unless otherwise stated.

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The Stone Collective is aiming to weaken concrete and steel's hold on the architecture industry. As part of our Stone Age 2.0 series, the newly formed group explains its ambition.

"There is a lack of exposure to stone projects by contemporary architects everywhere," said spokesperson Pierre Bidaud, member of The Stone Collective.

"It's a bit political," he told Dezeen. "The steel and concrete industries are dominating because they are well organised and lobbying. The Stone Collective's ambition is to change that."

Launched in January, The Stone Collective is a group of stone professionals "pioneering stone as the 21st-century's low carbon, load-bearing material".

Its six founding members are specialist stone companies, including Albion Stone, Hutton Stone and The Stonemasonry Company, which is led by Bidaud. The others are Lundhs Real Stone, Paye Stonework and Polycor Inc.

"Stone has exactly the same potential as wood"

Stone is strong, plentiful and fireproof and, as a natural material and carbon store, its embodied energy – emissions associated with bringing buildings into being – is inherently low.

Because of this, the collective wants to reposition it as a viable alternative to concrete and steel, which are energy-intensive, man-made materials that currently dominate the industry.

There is growing interest in natural, low-carbon materials, such as stone, due to the industry's vast carbon footprint, which reportedly accounts for 39 per cent of global carbon emissions. This has led to a surge in the popularity of timber in the past two decades – a movement that The Stone Collective believe can be emulated with stone.

Through its work, the group is particularly motivated to showcase how stone can be used in place of steel and concrete for small-scale projects such as housing.

"It's come to light that there is an urgent need to find sustainable and scalable alternatives to concrete and steel in building housing," Bidaud explained.

"Stone has exactly the same potential as wood and cross-laminated timber, except that it's even better than wood at recycling," said Bidaud.

Knowledge and understanding "holding the industry back"

An added benefit of stone, Bidaud said, is that it is that it can be used in place of concrete.

"What we are proposing is a simple switch from concrete to stone," said Bidaud. "Stone and concrete behave the same in compression and in many other way."

"Modern technology and resources are making this possible," he continued. "People always ask about the supply chain and the volume of stone – it's all there."

While the group believes there is enough stone available to make this transition, it said a lack of awareness is a barrier to achieving it.

"Knowledge, understanding and a lack of relevant code are holding the industry back," Bidaud said.

"I was talking to some architects and engineers recently who said they were only taught about concrete and steel at university."

"We want the stone movement to grow"

To reverse this, The Stone Collective's plans for the year include attendance at Footprint – a UK property event – where it will lead a series of talks spotlighting structural stone. It is also writing a book and intending to collaborate with schools of architecture.

Meanwhile, the group is opening its doors to other stone champions to stand with them and support the initiative.

"In theory, anyone that wants to use stone in its full capacity can join the collective," said Bidaud. "Architects, engineers, academics, researchers, sustainable leads, we want the stone movement to grow."

Another collective calling on architects to embrace stone as a structural material is the Natural Materials Group of the Architects Climate Action Network. One of its coordinators, Aurore Baulier, spoke to Dezeen as part of Stone Age 2.0 series and called on architects to embrace the material.

"Swapping traditional materials – or materials that are traditional now – for stone can be done," she told Dezeen.

Baulier is one of several stone experts that Dezeen has spoke to for its Stone Age 2.0 series. While the majority are optimistic about the use of stone, architect Natalia Petkova is more cautious.

"I would caution against claims of stone being a revolutionary sustainable material," she told Dezeen. "The virtue of solid stone construction is case-specific and depends on where the stone comes from and how it is employed."

Stone Age 2.0

This article is part of Dezeen's Stone Age 2.0 series, which explores the potential of stone to be a viable, low-carbon, modern structural material.

The post "We are proposing a simple switch from concrete to stone" says The Stone Collective appeared first on Dezeen.

Harnessing stone as a structural material can make architecture more enjoyable to both build and inhabit argues Tristram Carfrae, an Arup engineer working on the Sagrada Familia, in this Stone Age 2.0 interview.

Carfrae, who is a deputy chair of engineering firm Arup, believes that the potential of stone in architecture lies far beyond what it is typically reduced to in modern design – an opulent surface material.

"Stone has become a luxury cladding material, whether used as a rainscreen, or as floor tiling," Carfrae told Dezeen.

"We need to reposition stone back from a luxury material to a utilitarian one – which also happens to be beautiful," he explained.

"We have to start demonstrating stone's potential."

Stone is "plentiful, natural, low carbon and beautiful"

Dezeen spoke to Carfrae as part of Stone Age 2.0, a series exploring the material's potential as a durable, low-carbon alternative to steel and concrete. For him, there are many benefits to reintroducing stone in construction, with the most obvious stemming from its qualities as a natural material.

"The main benefit of structural stone is that it is a plentiful, natural, low carbon and beautiful material," said Carfrae.

"It can also transform the construction process and result in a structure that combines natural materials, traditional craftsmanship and digitally driven manufacturing to provide a building that people can better relate to, that provides greater pleasure and wellbeing."

This belief is one that Carfrae is demonstrating first-hand at the Sagrada Familia, where his team at Arup has been helping engineer the world-famous project conceived by architect Antoni Gaudi.

His team was invited by La Sagrada Familia Foundation to help speed up the construction and reduce the weight of one of its many colossal elements – the tower of the Virgin Mary – all "while remaining true to Gaudi's vision".

"The basilica is, of course, mainly constructed from stone in the form of monumental masonry, much the same way as all large churches and cathedrals," he explained.

"But the foundation was keen to speed up construction and needed to reduce the weight of one of the main towers, the Mary Tower, which is supported by the crypt built for a much smaller church designed by Francesco Villar, before Gaudi was appointed."

Stone construction no longer a "neighbourhood nuisance"

To achieve this, Arup utilised modern construction techniques to develop a construction system based on prefabricated stone panels.

"Together with the Sagrada architects and builders and 2BMFG engineers, we jointly devised a concept using prefabricated, post-tensioned stone panels that could be mass-produced offsite and then quickly assembled on site," Carfrae explained.

By using these reinforced stone panels instead of traditional masonry blocks, the thickness of each component was reduced from approximately 1,200 millimetres to 300 millimetres, ensuring the tower was "within the weight-bearing capacity of the foundations of the original crypt".

"This manufacturing and assembly process also increased the speed of construction while freeing up the main tower crane for other duties for most of the time," said Carfrae.

"The Mary Tower construction was so successful, that the process was subsequently adopted for all the main towers, with five of the six now completed."

Carfrae said the process of using structural stone in this way was enhanced with the use of digital, building information modelling (BIM) models, which "the Sagrada design team pioneered more than 20 years ago".

BIM models have enabled the build team to cut stones using computer-controlled, diamond-tipped band saws, leaving only the surface finishes to the craftsman, speeding construction.

"The exposed faces of each stone are still hand-finished by loving craftsmen to create an aesthetic that has evoked pleasure, and enhanced wellbeing, for centuries," Carfrae said.

"Construction is thereby transformed from a dirty, noisy, labour-intensive neighbourhood nuisance to an act of theatre – enormous accurately made components being quietly and safely lifted into place by a handful of people."

"We need more prototypes"

According to Carfrae, advances in stone construction pioneered at the Sagrada Familia demonstrate how stone can be effectively reintroduced to modern architecture.

Particularly, he hopes it will draw attention to how stone's natural compressive strength can be exploited and enhanced through measures such as post-tensioning.

"If we can properly use [stone's] compression strength, which is typically greater than concrete, while designing for alternative tension paths, for example using post-tensioning, then we can return to it being used as a structural material."

"As well as reducing the carbon intensity of the usual steel and concrete construction,
building using post-tensioned stone panels could be faster, cheaper, lighter and more durable."

Carfrae has been a trailblazer in stone construction for many years, with his earliest exploration of the material being at the Pavilion of the Future for the Seville Expo in 1992, for which he worked with Peter Rice at Arup and with David Mackay of studio MBM Arquitectes.

More recently, he worked on the Wurrunguri sculpture by Chris Booth in Sydney's Botanical Gardens.

However, while projects like these are impressive feats of engineering he believes more ordinary examples of structural stone are required to encourage its uptake in the industry.

"There have been some startling examples, such as Philip Block's Armadillo Vault at the Venice Biennalle, and the work at Sagrada, but we need more prototypes and examples of stone being used in an ordinary context," he reflected.

"The industry won't transform overnight, or even in a decade, but we can still make a start."

Alongside a lack of examples, Carfrae said a barrier to its uptake is the "ongoing debate about how sustainable stone really is". Yet, he believes it can be used responsibly.

"It is, after all, not a renewable resource, but it is very plentiful," he explained.

"The amount of natural material quarried from the ground is about the same as for concrete, but without the energy-intensive process of transforming that material into useful structural product," continued Carfrae.

"All the quarrying, shaping and assembly of stone can be done by electric machines powered by renewables."

Stone should "be considered alongside other materials"

He added that by using techniques such as post-tensioning to reduce the required weight of structural stone components, as demonstrated by the Sagrada Familia, we will be "using far less of it than we did historically".

Using stone as part of a hybrid structure in this way also reflects what he envisages as the most appropriate way for the material to reenter the toolkit of architects and builders.

In fact, he hopes that hybrid structures will also become a go-to method for construction in the future of modern architecture.

"I think that stone – and timber and other forms of masonry – should re-enter the structural lexicon and be considered alongside other materials," he explained.

"Material selection should be made project by project, depending on context and the desired outcomes," he continued.

"But always remember that stone, especially when quarried and manufactured using electrical equipment can be very low carbon, and extremely beautiful."

This concept echoes the views of architect Aurore Baulier, another proponent of structural stone who has spoken to Dezeen for its Stone Age 2.0 series.

"Just because you can do a solid wall in stone doesn't mean you should be doing it," Baulier told Dezeen. "A better combination is to start actually having hybrid structures with timber and stone."

Engineer Steve Webb agreed. In an opinion piece written for Stone Age 2.0, he said "stone makes sense, but it is not a silver bullet".

The photography is courtesy of the Sagrada Familia Foundation unless stated otherwise.

Stone Age 2.0

This article is part of Dezeen's Stone Age 2.0 series, which explores the potential of stone to be a viable, low-carbon, modern structural material.

The post Sagrada Familia shows stone "can return to being used as a structural material" appeared first on Dezeen.

The sustainability of structural stone is dependent on how and where it is quarried and its reputation as an infinite material is misleading, warns Slovak-British architect Natalia Petkova in this Stone Age 2.0 interview.

"I would caution against claims of stone being a revolutionary sustainable material – we miss the opportunity to think critically when we reduce materials to 'good' and 'bad' ones," she told Dezeen.

"The virtue of solid stone construction is case-specific and depends on where the stone comes from and how it is employed."

Petkova is an architect and researcher who recently completed a PhD thesis exploring the structural use of stone in projects under construction in Spain, Switzerland and the UK, which is awaiting publication.

Dezeen spoke to her as part of its Stone Age 2.0 series, which is investigating the potential of the material as a viable, low-carbon, modern structural material.

Transportation of stone can offset carbon benefits

Petkova cautioned against claims that stone is a "limitless material" that can readily be extracted from the Earth's crust and transported to construction sites. Instead, she believes accessibility to stone at a given site should be considered before using it.

"In an absolute sense, that's true, but in reality, there are many limitations to its actual access," said Petkova.

"Sometimes the appropriate stone is not locally available with respect to a given construction site."

One of the main reasons stone is considered a sustainable building option is because it is a natural material that requires minimal processing from being extracted from the ground to being used in construction, minimising its carbon footprint.

However, Petkova claimed that any carbon cost benefit achieved by using stone might be lost if it is transported from a quarry by truck further than 200 kilometres, referencing a thesis by sustainability expert Dimitra Ioannidou.

"We will see a lot more buildings being made from solid stone"

She added that the number of new quarries that could be opened to make stone accessible to more construction sites is limited, for reasons such as potential impact on local communities.

"Recent research carried out at ETH Zurich suggests that if stone is transported by truck beyond 200 kilometres, it might no longer make sense to employ it structurally in terms of carbon reduction," Petkova explained.

"There are also political and anthropogenic limitations with people not wanting to have new quarries popping up in residential areas. These attitudes can of course evolve but it’s not a given."

For stone to become a leading structural material, Petkova believes architects and engineers need to learn to look beyond what is "convenient".

Yet, even with a full embrace of stone in the architecture industry, she is doubtful it can overtake go-to materials such as concrete, steel and timber in popularity.

"I do think we will see a lot more buildings being made from solid stone, but I don't think it's anywhere near replacing concrete or steel construction, or even timber," said Petkova.

"Its success will depend on the capacity of diverse actors involved in the production of the built environment to really question their professional habits and to adapt these to stone."

"Stone arguably imposes itself on design more than other materials"

While mass-produced materials come in predictable, standardised formats, the nature of stone is that there is variation in what is extracted. Because of this, Petkova said stone cannot follow a designed form like other materials can – the form of a building has to be designed to suit the stone provided.

"If it's subjected to the logic of industrial or synthetic materials like concrete, stone will always be less convenient and risk being replaced," she explained.

"Stone arguably imposes itself on design more than other, notably synthetic, materials do," she continued.

"The idea of form following a given material challenges modernist approaches to building, which consisted of materials following form at all costs, be that financial or environmental."

According to Petkova, dependence on uniform, highly processed building materials in the industry today is leading to a large amount of stone being wasted. In many quarries a stone that varies too much in colour or veining is discarded, she explained.

Rather than seeing imperfections as a hindrance, Petkova encourages the variability of stone to be embraced and seen as an opportunity to question our reliance on the modularity of other materials.

"The idea that you can entirely control what your building will look like falls apart with stone," she said.

"It challenges us to reevaluate the pertinence of some of the expectations we have of industry-produced building materials, such as the absence of variation, or the notion of an aesthetic defect," she continued.

"There is a relationship to regularity and predictability that we've become accustomed to with steel and concrete – not only have they been constantly available, but they also come as we draw them."

Architects should draw on "long history of stone construction"

Petkova believes a close relationship between architects and quarry owners could help achieve this and encourage them to design truly sustainable stone buildings.

"There's a clear benefit of being in direct contact with a quarry from an early stage in the design process," she said.

Petkova argued there is also a lot to be learned from the past, rather than looking forward at ways to modify stone through measures such as prefabrication and reinforcement.

"It's worth mentioning the potential of stone to challenge our approach to innovation is still overwhelmingly focused on novelty," she criticised.

"During my fieldwork, on several occasions, I've observed engineers treating stone as matter to be engineered as if the limits of materials necessarily need to be pushed," she reflected.

"I think a lot of the research around reinforcing stone today is exciting, but also see immense potential in drawing on the long history of stone construction and optimising structures through form," she said.

This echoes the views of Steve Webb, who believes that the built environment needs to draw influence from the pre-fossil fuel era of building with stone to reduce the industry's carbon impact.

"To reverse our recent habits, we need to learn from our low-carbon past, while not returning to it," he wrote in an opinion piece for Dezeen's Stone Age 2.0 series.

The portrait is courtesy of Petkova.

Stone Age 2.0

This article is part of Dezeen's Stone Age 2.0 series, which explores the potential of stone to be a viable, low-carbon, modern structural material.

The post "I would caution against claims of stone being a revolutionary sustainable material" says Natalia Petkova appeared first on Dezeen.

ACAN Natural Materials Group co-ordinator Aurore Baulier calls on architects to embrace stone's natural qualities and reintroduce the material into their toolkits in this Stone Age 2.0 interview.

"Obviously, you can shape concrete into all these fancy forms, but if you're clever with stone, you can do incredible stuff," Baulier told Dezeen.

"Stone can be used for foundations, but also as a superstructure," she continued. "A beam can actually be stone instead of steel, minimising its carbon footprint."

"Swapping traditional materials – or materials that are traditional now – for stone can be done."

Baulier, who is the director of London studio Atelier Baulier, spoke to Dezeen as part of our Stone Age 2.0 series, which is exploring the material's potential to be a modern construction material.

She advocates for the use of structural stone as part of Architects Climate Action Network (ACAN), where she coordinates the Natural Materials Group.

The group is calling for an industry-wide shift to natural building materials, such as stone, to help minimise the industry's carbon footprint and wider environmental impact.

According to Baulier, the use of stone in construction has similar benefits to timber, another biomaterial that is being revived as a structural material.

Stone should be harnessed for its strength

A key benefit of stone, unlike the majority of building materials, is that it can be used for construction in its natural state. At the end of a building's useful life, it can also be repurposed or simply returned to the ground.

"You just dig the bed and just slice the stone or cut into the blocks you need," explained Baulier.

"If you don't need the stone anymore, it's just returned to the earth, and that's it," she continued. "If it's done responsibly then it can just be returned as a part of nature."

Another advantage of stone is that it has a naturally high compressive strength. Combined with its moisture resistance, this ensures its durability and potential to "age gracefully" as a construction material – as demonstrated by long-lasting Roman ruins.

To contextualise this, Baulier highlighted the energy-intensive process of making concrete, which requires stone, fresh water and sand.

"To make concrete, you take a stone like Portland stone that has a compressive strength of about 200 Newtons per millimetre square, you crush it, you burn it, you do all these processes that are really energy-intensive, and you end up with the material that is about 40 Newtons per millimetre square," Baulier explained.

This gives rise to a material that is "about 20 per cent of the strength" of stone – a fact Baulier described as "mad".

Stone "lost its purpose"

Baulier largely blames a lack of awareness about structural stone for its absence in the industry today – something she is battling first-hand in her own work as an architect.

"I haven't been able to specify stones as a structural material myself yet, but it's definitely something I've been looking into," she said.

"You need the right team, and then you need a structural engineer on board, you need a client on board, and then you need builders on board. It's a whole team. It takes time."

She explained this lack of awareness has also led to a misconception that stone is an expensive building material – a fallacy that has been reinforced by the way it is most commonly used today.

"What is really interesting is that stone is seen as a very expensive material because of over the last 70 years or 100 years, it came away from being a load-bearing material to veneer on a building," she said.

Additionally, it is often manufactured to "remove any so-called imperfection", driving up costs.

"If you use everything and embrace the so-called imperfection, then it becomes a very cost-effective material," she explained.

"It's just lost its purpose, it's not decorative," she explained. "It's a really diverse material and really strong, so it should be used for what it is."

"Also, it's much more sustainable to use all the stone available rather than selecting and discarding."

To help raise awareness of the value of stone beyond ornament, Baulier and ACAN's Natural Materials Group coordinated a video with experts on the material. This forms part of a wider video series led by ACAN where experts share insights into natural materials.

Simultaneously, the team is developing a booklet with "typical architectural details" for more specific natural materials, such as stone, intending to give "confidence to architects, builders and homeowners to use them".

"As we see more and more stone and natural materials out there, I think people get a bit more interested and excited and have more confidence. So it's all about awareness," Baulier said.

"[Stone] suits all scales," she continued. "Everywhere in the world, people have been building small stone sheds and giant stone houses, I think it's a very versatile material."

"Instead of having a steel beam, why don't we have a stone beam? It's an incredible feature."

Using stone in hybrid structures "even more sustainable"

A form of stone construction Baulier is advocating for is stone "bricks". She believes these can be used in place of regular clay bricks, which require a more energy-intensive manufacturing process.

"Some quarries have started developing a brick that is literally a stone brick the size of a clay brick, so it's a really easy shift for people to actually move from away from a clay, which requires a lot of processing and fire and is energy-intensive," she explained.

"Obviously, you still have the mortar issue, which is most of the time cement because it dries faster, but if everyone were to move from clay brick to stone brick, that would be a really good way to start cutting the carbon emissions in the built environment."

Yet, for her, the most exciting and resourceful way to reintroduce stone into the toolkits of contemporary architects and builders is in tandem with timber as a hybrid structure.

"We need to build in this in the world but we have to make sure we don't use too much material," Baulier explained.

"Just because you can do a solid wall in stone doesn't mean you should be doing it," added Baulier. "A better combination is to start actually having hybrid structures with timber and stone."

For example, she said a lightweight timber structure could be married with stone foundations and slabs. According to Baulier, this is among the most sustainable ways to use stone and is a reflection of what she believes is the right approach to sustainable construction in general – using a mix of materials in moderation, harnessing them for their unique benefits.

"We can develop a new language, a new vernacular," Baulier reflected. "If we do a bit of hybrid, then we can become even more sustainable and have more resilient structures because we use the properties of both [timber and stone]," Baulier explained.

"I think there's a new language invented there. And I think that's really exciting."

The portrait of Baulier is by Jim Stephenson.

Stone Age 2.0

This article is part of Dezeen's Stone Age 2.0 series, which explores the potential of stone to be a viable, low-carbon, modern structural material.

The post Architects "can develop a new language" with structural stone says Aurore Baulier appeared first on Dezeen.

A lack of care over design decisions made in public spaces is a key source of inequity in America, New York designer Little Wing Lee tells Dezeen in this interview.

Lee, an interior designer based in Brooklyn, believes that poor design decisions in the public sphere reinforce a cycle of inequity in the built environment.

"When I think about aesthetic justice, my mind first goes to public spaces," she told Dezeen.

"I think about urban planning, urban design, landscape architecture, public housing – we all see that there is this inequity in the consideration given to public works or how public monies are being spent."

"What leadership role can we take?"

Lee said that even the most basic design decisions, such as the temperature of light, are aspects of this lack of consideration, noting that sometimes the choices are not "even about money" but rather a lack of care.

"These decisions are treated as less-than because the people affected have less agency," she said.

"As designers, we know that the negative emotional responses to these choices are universal, but in these instances that is simply overlooked."

Lee, who was a judge for the 2023 Dezeen Awards, wants designers to be more proactive in challenging these issues.

"I would like to see this be a question considered by the broader design community," she said.

"What leadership role can we take to ask this question of our policymakers, our own communities, perhaps even our clients?"

To this end, Lee formed Black Folks in Design (BFiD) in 2017, an organisation that facilitates meetings between architects and designers to talk about problems faced by minorities in the design industry.

Born in New England, Lee lived in Hawaii as a youth and studied at the Pratt Institute and Harvard before setting up shop in Brooklyn where she runs her design practice, Studio & Projects.

Working in interior and object design, Lee first had the idea for BFiD after working on the exhibition design for the Smithsonian Museum of African American History in Washington DC.

"That was such an amazing experience – to be at the table with 20-plus Black designers working on this incredible and beautiful project," she said.

"Black Folks in Design was born out of my desire to create this community of Black designers across all disciplines and, obviously, to share resources and ideas but then to also commiserate and laugh about crazy experiences that we've had working in the design world."

Through network-building, Lee believes that opportunities and resources can be more easily shared between members and among minority communities in general.

She is currently in the process of turning BFiD into an official non-profit, which she said will make fundraising easier and help to organise initiatives such as bringing North American designers to Lagos to interact and share ideas with the designers there.

"As we move Black Folks in Design forward, we can give Black designers some of that flexibility of travel and time," she said.

Lee came up during the maker movement of the 2000s and 2010s – the movement oriented around small studies working in spaces previously inhabited by industrial spaces in Brooklyn.

The movement had a major impact on design globally, and the experience impacted Lee's view of design's ability to reshape inequity, she explained.

"It was a very specific and important time in New York design," she said. "That moment gave everyone a push of confidence."

"More and more people understand the power of design"

"There has been a change in the past 20 years and more people understand the power of design, certainly in how it helps business and the private sector," she continued.

"I think that awareness is also expressed in the public sector, but often these projects have not been evenly distributed, or are inadequately expressed in areas that would benefit the most from them."

In her design work and network building, which Lee views as part of a single practice, a variety of traditions, demographics and approaches to design have informed her thinking.

"Your life is so much more enriched when you have a community of different types of people," she said.

Lee has curated two shows under the BFiD umbrella.

The first was at the Ace Hotel Brooklyn in 2022, and the second, called SPOTLIGHT II, was staged with local gallery Verso, first on Long Island and then in Tribeca.

Lee said that the goal was "to highlight the range of approaches and visions of Black designers working today" while showing various material approaches to craft traditions and historical production techniques.

"As I built the show it was inspiring to see the threads between these pieces reveal themselves," said Lee.

"Most heartening, perhaps, was to discover and build the community between so many of us, which is ultimately the goal of BFiD."

Lee's work with Studio & Projects has also touched on craft traditions. Her recent project, ECHOIC, is a line of textiles that takes influences from West African traditions.

The photography is by Kelly Marshall.

Dezeen In Depth
If you enjoy reading Dezeen's interviews, opinions and features, subscribe to Dezeen In Depth. Sent on the last Friday of each month, this newsletter provides a single place to read about the design and architecture stories behind the headlines.

The post Designers must challenge "aesthetic injustice" in public spaces says Little Wing Lee appeared first on Dezeen.

Finnish brand Iittala's reinvention aims to build on its founding identity of "experimental, boundary-pushing" design, says its creative director in this interview with Dezeen.

Finnish designer Janni Vepsäläinen, who joined Iittala last year from fashion brand JW Anderson, aims to make sure the brand stays relevant and innovative, something she believes is in its DNA.

"[My] creative vision is built on the founding identity of the brand," she told Dezeen. "I'm really looking into its founding identity, which is this experimental, boundary-pushing, challenging-the-status-quo type of design thinking."

The company was founded in 1881 and is best known for its glassware, which Vepsäläinen remembers from being a child.

"We had Iittala glasses in my home and it was the kind of thing that would be passed down generation after generation," she said.

"What inspired me about the brand is that very few brands have that kind of stance in people's lives, it's really part of the journey and closes the generation gap in terms of products travelling from mother to daughter."

As an example of the innovative ethos she wants to continue, she mentioned architect Aino Aalto's pressed Bölgeblick glassware for Iittala. Launched in 1932, the pressed glassware has a pattern informed by circles in water.

"If you look at the designs of that time, it's little cups with gold rims and floral patterns, Vepsäläinen said. "And then you have this, which is so in your face, it's such a ballsy move."

For her own debut at Iittala, which is launching its "new era" during Stockholm Design Week, Vepsäläinen is unveiling a collection named Play.

The brand is also showcasing a series of playable, glass instruments made by experimental sound and visual artist Damsel Elysium.

"I knew I wanted to do a project that was exploring the glass as more of a showpiece for the collection," Vepsäläinen explained.

"I felt strongly that I wanted to collaborate with another creative, but it was clear to me that I wanted it to be somebody who doesn't come from the traditional design background," she added.

"It was important to disrupt the status quo a bit in terms of the design language."

The resulting products included glass horns, some over two metres long. These were used for a performance during the brand's launch event in Stockholm, which took place inside the KTH Reactor Hall, the site of Sweden's first nuclear reactor.

"Creating those glass instruments with them was an amazing project," Vepsäläinen said. "And I think that really encapsulates all of that creative energy that I'm trying to push forward."

Play, the first collection to be launched under Vepsäläinen, was informed by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto's quote "Don't forget to Play".

It features tableware and glassware but also textiles and candles, with a colour palette informed by the south of France.

"One of my first tasks, which comes from my fashion background, was that I wanted to build a collection. And I think that's something that we're going to be taking forward, bringing a new lifestyle collection every six months," Vepsäläinen said.

"We need that discipline and I think we need to have a clear cycle that we can commit to."

While the six-monthly production cycle has often been criticised when it comes to fashion brands, Vepsäläinen believes that it has validity for a brand like Iittala, which has traditionally had very long production lead times.

"It leans back into the topic of staying relevant," Vepsäläinen said. "It's not so much about needing to push more product into the market, but more about creating a discipline."

As Iittala has a portfolio that is heavy on Scandinavian design classics, she thinks it is important to balance these with new releases.

"My challenge is, how do keep that relevant today and how do I inject the newness into the brand while still keeping the core alive and interesting and bring a bit of novelty into that?" she said.

"You have to make everything come together and look like one brand."

She hopes to give Iittala elements of "something avant garde and slightly unexpected".

The brand, like many heritage design and fashion brands, also wants to attract a younger demographic.

"We want to speak to a younger target audience as well – it's not a secret that any brand at this time, and anytime, needs to consider how to remain relevant to its time," Vepsäläinen said.

"How do we exist in 100 years time? If [a brand] has been around since 1881, that already presents a challenge – how do you remain culturally relevant for another 100 years?" she added.

For Vepsäläinen, taking on the challenge of renewing a brand that people have a strong connection to felt slightly daunting.

"I'm very sensitive to that and I'm very aware that not everybody's gonna like it – it will cause a bit of a stir no matter what I do because we're touching this national treasure," she said.

"But I always go back to my intuition and the fact that the creative vision is very much built on the founding identity of the brand," she continued.

"The founding identity of creating long-lasting products hasn't gone anywhere; we still take that challenge that we want to create products that are objects that last generation after generation, both aesthetically and physically."

Together with the new product launches, Iittala has also revealed an updated visual identity, with a logo (main image) that draws from two historical logos and has a colour that references the glassware that the brand is best known for.

"Everything comes from the idea of the free-flowing glass; the yellow colour is the colour of the melted glass when it comes from the furnace," Vepsäläinen explained.

The brand is also updating its retail stores, beginning with its Helsinki flagship in September of this year.

It was one of several launches at this year's Stockholm Design Week, which also included Finnish brand Vaarni's collaboration with British designer Faye Toogood and Danish brand Normann Copenhagen's hemp and eelgrass chairs.

The photography is courtesy of Iittala.

Stockholm Design Week takes place in Stockholm from 5-11 February. See Dezeen Events Guide's Stockholm Design Week 2024 guide for information about exhibitions and events taking place throughout the week.

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French architect Ludwig Godefroy discusses how working in Mexico has helped him to develop his concrete-heavy style in this exclusive interview.

Hailing from Normandy in northern France, Godefroy opened his eponymous studio in Mexico City in 2011 and has since become known for his distinctive brutalist-style buildings that are often punctuated by geometric openings and passageways.

"Now I don't even know how to do architecture in France because it's been almost 20 years since I left my country," he told Dezeen. "I would consider myself much more of a Mexican architect now."

"It's given me a lot of freedom, because in France they would consider me as the Mexican and in Mexico they're considering me as the French," he added. "And I'm like, 'Well, consider whatever you want.' I'm in between, so I don't have to belong anymore."

Godefroy traces his affinity for brutalism back to a youth spent playing in abandoned second world war bunkers in the small fishing village where he grew up.

"I got very into brutalist [architecture] because of my sensibility for concrete, because of my childhood – those bunkers," he said.

His interest in the style was further cemented by studying the work of highly influential Swiss-French modernist Le Corbusier, who was a major focus of the curriculum during his architecture courses in Paris.

"I really like the fact that it's a very simple and honest architecture, without finishing," Godefroy said.

He explained that his projects, such as the Casa TO hotel in surf town Puerto Escondido, often reference the cavernous language of both bunkers and pyramids – a throughline he discovered between his birth country France and his new home in Mexico.

Having worked for studios in New York, Barcelona and Rotterdam, he settled in Mexico City in 2006.

"I wanted to live in a big city and I wanted to learn Spanish," he recalled.

Upon moving to Mexico, Godefroy became fascinated by the temples and pyramids of pre-Hispanic architecture found throughout the country.

"Finally, I could find a bridge between my two countries"

"I never saw pyramids before arriving in Mexico," he said. "I find very similar the bunkers of Normandy and the pyramids and temples of pre-Hispanic architecture that you find in Mexico."

"And it started to make sense to me. Finally, I could find a bridge between my two countries."

Mexico's warm climate further allowed him to explore the brutalist style and experiment with cutaways and voids.

"I discovered new opportunities in architecture, something that you could not do in France, because we have a very strong winter so you have to protect yourself from the cold," he said. "You cannot imagine an open house. Totally impossible."

"When I discovered all of this, it was like, 'Oh, that's exactly what I want to do in my life.'"

Now, Godefroy says he is keen to continue honing his particular version of contemporary brutalism.

"You have to choose at some point: do you want to be this kind of architect doing a little bit of everything – do a project made out of wood, made out of stone, aluminium and concrete depending on what you want to do at this precise moment?"

"Or do you want to follow a line and try to develop this, and try to get your architecture more mature from one project to another, try to get deeper into your style?"

"I think I'm trying to do this, I have to confess. But at the same time, you never know."

He believes that growing up in a fishing village has also influenced his own particular style and its close ties to the "honesty" of brutalism.

"I'm sure that something which is important is that I'm coming from a fisherman village," he said. "What I've learned from fishermen: they're very simple people. When they do something, it has to have a meaning. It's always very simple and very honest."

"This is why I like to integrate vernacular details in my architecture, because I'm coming from this culture of being simple. It's like when you are born in a small village, you do not pretend to be someone else."

Godefroy, who works primarily with concrete and wood, said that working in the Mexican countryside, in places like the Alférez region and Zicatela Beach, has informed his choice of materials as it keeps construction simple for local workers.

"I prefer to work in the countryside. I want the local workers. If I work in Oaxaca, I want the workers to be from Oaxaca; if I work in the Yucatán, I want them to be from Yucatán. I have to keep it simple because they are just like regular workers, they're not specialised workers."

"I got rid of what I started to consider unnecessary," he explained. "That's why I didn’t want to work any more with leather – if you're in a village and ask a worker to do leather on the wall, they would not know how to do it, the same with copper."

Godefroy explained that working with concrete provides "freedom" on-site, allowing him to adjust the final 20 per cent of a design as he and his team build.

"You have this opportunity in Mexico that we still have a very good balance between the price of the materials and the price of the labourers," he said.

"We don't have to work in everything prefabricated and shorten as much as possible time on the construction site."

"When you open this door, then you also open the possibility to work with a lot of stonework, to work on-site, to make more structural architecture."

For Godefroy, buildings having a sculptural quality is highly important.

"This is something I really like – the fact that architecture is sculptural, architecture is playing with light and shadow," he said.

"Architecture is playing with emotion. For me, architecture is not about resolving a floor plan – a real-estate builder can do that as good as an architect."

"The only thing a real-estate builder normally is not doing as good as an architect is putting emotion inside of a building."

"Obviously, when we talk about sustainability, concrete has a very bad reputation"

Godefroy addressed the criticism concrete receives as a material, which contributes up to 8 per cent of total global CO2 emissions, making it the most polluting building material worldwide.

He claimed that using wood has a similar environmental impact, especially as it relates to tree harvesting practices around the world.

"Obviously, when we talk about sustainability, concrete has a very bad reputation," said Godefroy. "We all think that it's a very dirty material. And everybody would think wood is the best. I don't think it's a good material and it's not sustainable – it's the same."

"The way we produce wood now is in a very industrial way. In Mexico, for example, they're cutting trees in an illegal way, which means they don't have any management. This is also something that would happen in countries like Brazil and Indonesia. The tropical woods, they're coming from those countries where it's impossible to really trace and control the origin of the wood."

He also believes concrete is more durable over time as opposed to wood, and requires less maintenance.

"Concrete has a very long life with a very low maintenance," he added. "Yes, the very first day on the table, if you compare me to another kind of construction, concrete would be the dirtiest one. But then after 30 years – low maintenance. The fact that I'm not using chemicals every year to protect my concrete, then in 30 years, we should talk again."

Ultimately, the architect believes earth is the only true sustainable material.

"I think the only way to be sustainable is to take the material from the ground, on your land," he said. "So I would say probably the only sustainable material is earth, if you have it."

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Kvadrat CEO Anders Byriel discusses why the Danish textile producer is deliberately tackling sustainability "the hard way" in this exclusive interview.

The company sees itself as having a history of corporate responsibility – but Byriel said he was taken aback after it signed up to the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTI) on reducing emissions in 2019.

"When we measured our footprint I [was] surprised – I thought we were close to net-zero," he told Dezeen.

Far from being net-zero, the brand found it was actually emitting 2,364 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year from direct company operations.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg. A staggering 98 per cent of Kvadrat's emissions occur in its supply chain – known as scope three emissions – outside of its direct control.

One major contributor to the company's direct (scope one and two) emissions is the company fleet of vehicles. Kvadrat therefore has decided to replace all fossil-fuel based and even hybrid company cars in Denmark to an all-electric fleet in 2024.

It is also considering adopting the same standard in countries with well-established electric-vehicle infrastructure as it seeks to halve its direct emissions by 2026.

Meanwhile, the company's biggest sustainability challenge is persuading its suppliers to follow suit.

Crucially, the SBTI does not allow for carbon offsetting, so emissions targets must be achieved principally through direct reduction.

"It's the hard way," said Byriel. "But we want to be the undisputed leader in sustainability."

"If you don't measure your footprint scientifically, how can you measure your goal anyway?" he added.

Kvadrat has also recently committed to the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), a global standard that seeks to measure and reduce the environmental impact of products and services transparently.

"As a company with a history of using clean and responsible materials and manufacturing, following these new standards, is still eye-opening for me," said Byriel.

"It comes with pains but we all need to transform"

He took wool as an example of the surprising things to emerge from Kvadrat's deep dive into its environmental footprint.

"Wool is a wonder material that we are very close to – it lasts three times longer than a man-made material, it's grown in nature," he said.

"But if you calculate the footprint of the textile against that of recycled polyester, it does not perform that well due to the footprint generated by transport and the sheep."

"So we have to adapt one-third of our wool production using hydropower to reduce the overall footprint of wool, so that it can compete with recycled polyester."

Taking sustainability seriously comes with challenges, Byriel acknowledged.

"It's not making our lives easier because it makes our product more expensive," he said. "It comes with pains but we all need to transform."

However, the company hopes that by getting ahead of the curve it will be left in a stronger position if and when governments start regulating to reduce the industry's environmental impact.

"Due to all these things that we have done for many years, when the regulation eventually catches up we would already be compliant with that – we don't have to do anything to change," said Byriel.

Kvadrat has committed to spending 80 per cent of its investment over the next five years on sustainability-related projects, including material innovations and developing machines to aid re- and up-cycling.

As part of that work, it is on a mission to replace all man-made plastic in its products with recycled plastic.

In October, it launched a new textile developed in collaboration with 2023 Dezeen Awards winner Patricia Urquiola that it claims is the world's first recycled polyester upholstery textile made from 100 percent ocean-bound plastic waste.

Named Sport, the new textile was created through four years of research together with Tide, a Switzerland-based company that specialises in building a global supply chain for premium second-life materials made from ocean-bound plastic waste.

"It's made out of 100 per cent ocean plastic, which is a big achievement, as the ocean-plastic-made textiles out there usually only contain 10 to 15 percent ocean plastic," Byriel said.

Speaking to Dezeen during Design Republic's Festival of Design in Shanghai, where Sport was on display in an exhibition, Byriel claimed that ocean-plastic polyester textiles often incorporate plastic collected up to 50 kilometres from the coastline.

As a result, the plastic has already started to disintegrate so the textiles typically have to integrate either virgin polyester or polyester recycled from other post-consumer plastic sources.

Biomaterial textiles and recycling factory

The plastic used to manufacture Sport, on the other hand, is mostly collected less than 10 kilometres away from the coastline of remote islands in Thailand.

"We collect good-quality plastic to make yarn from," explained Byriel.

"The dissolving process only comes with the mechanical movement of the waves and the exposure of the sun, so once it's been taken out of the ocean and made into textile, it's safe to use just like every other plastic product we live with everyday."

Kvadrat is also working on bio-based materials, including a leather alternative made out of hemp and food-waste polyesters, with the first product due for release in two years' time.

Meanwhile, it has set up a 20,000 square-metre factory to take back waste materials from clients and turn them into new products.

"This is the result of a six-year technology development," said Byriel.

"For example, we can take back old uniforms and press them with our machines to make a tabletop," he continued.

"When the tabletop is at the end of its lifecycle, we can take it back again and create something new – this is an endless loop."

The images are courtesy of Kvadrat unless stated otherwise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"There is this possibility for a change"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Architecture studios in Central Europe have been chronically overlooked, claims Chybik + Kristof co-founder Ondřej Chybík in this interview.

Chybík, who says his own studio is the largest in the Czech Republic, is on a mission to put architecture from his home country – as well as Slovakia, Poland and Hungary – firmly on the global design map.

"No-one can name anybody" from Central European architecture scene

"If I go somewhere and I talk about Czech architecture or Central European architecture, almost no-one can name anybody," he told Dezeen.

"I think there is a huge opportunity to show off a bit," he added. "I'd like to work on that for the next decade – not just to promote our studio, but to explain what our generation is about to the general public all around the world."

To that end, Chybik + Kristof will next month open an office in London, sharing a space with local studio Haptic.

That is partly because Chybik + Kristof has become a big fish in a small pond at home, he explains, but also to raise the international profile of its peer group.

"The true motivation was to offer the opinion of our generation to other territories – our right to be a voice in the contemporary architecture discussion," Chybík said.

In an attempt to contribute to that discussion, Chybik + Kristof is accompanying the opening of its London outpost with the launch of its inaugural monograph, titled Crafting Character.

The book spotlights in detail 14 of the studio's projects, organised around eight themes that it considers important to contemporary architecture including adaptive reuse, affordability and materiality.

"The profession is changing"

Chybík explained that the book's central concept picks up on the changing nature of the architecture profession in a world where the built environment is beset with issues, chiefly sustainability and affordability.

"We believe that buildings should have a certain character, but not in one direction," he said.

"Previous generations of architects were very proud of their very strong formal style. I think that's not the case today, because the profession is changing from making design into solving problems – the architectural form should represent the quality of the solution."

As a result, he argues, the idea of studios maintaining a trademark house style that they apply to all projects is losing relevance.

"Each project is different, and I believe that there's no common architectural language for such diverse topics – that's very fundamental."

"I think we should still care about the beauty, about proportions, about materiality, and those classical aspects of architecture," he added.

"But on the other hand, or on top of it, we should also be aware that there are other issues we have to take into consideration."

"We were competing against each other"

Chybík traces his own interest in architecture back to childhood memories of visiting the Faculty of Architecture at Brno University of Technology, where his father was a professor.

"I saw the corridors full of sketches and models, and architecture students smoking in the corridors with long hair, and it impressed me a lot," he recalled. "Since then I knew that I wanted to be an architect."

Later studying architecture at Brno himself, he was successful in landing several student competitions – working up a healthy rivalry with classmate Michal Kristof.

"We were not working together, we were competing against each other," explained Chybík. "It motivated me a lot, because there was some young Slovak guy doing the same competitions as me, and we got a certain monopoly in student competitions within the country."

In 2010, soon after graduating, the pair were talking in a Venice bar during the architecture biennale in the early hours of the morning when they decided to open a studio together.

Having been established later that year, Chybik + Kristof now employs 60 people, including, Chybík claims, more architects than any other Czech firm.

But Chybík says Chybik + Kristof is just one of a number of architecture studios in the region doing noteworthy work.

"Particularly in my country, there's something very interesting happening, because we are not the unicorns," he said.

"We are maybe the largest, but there's lots of like 30-40 people architecture studios – I can count like 10, maybe, 15 this size," he added. "It's becoming a hotspot of contemporary architecture, in my opinion."

Unique historical perspectives

In the Czech Republic, Chybík namechecks Mjölk Architekti, Bod Architekti and OVA, as well as the Center for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning in Prague.

Then there is Gut Gut, Plural and Sadovsky & Architects in Slovakia and Hungary's Archikon and Paradigma Ariadné.

A wave of Czech architecture studios were founded during the 1990s as the country underwent rapid transformation following the fall of the Iron Curtain, appointing themselves the moniker "the Golden Eagles".

Though this generation of architects rose to prominence within the Czech Republic, a language barrier meant they struggled to promote their work abroad, according to Chybík.

"So I'm very happy that my generation is able to communicate and is also willing to present their projects internationally," he said.

"If I open Dezeen today, I can see lots of Czech architecture firms publishing their projects, and many of them are my age."

Now, the region's unusual recent history – from communism to the capitalism of the 1990s – in combination with a significant need for new infrastructure, means Chybík believes it is fertile ground for new modes of architectural exploration.

He points, for instance, to Chybik + Kristof's transformation of a brutalist bus station (pictured top) constructed in the 1980s under communism but already in a dilapidated state due to a lack of investment by its private owner, as well as its project to build an ice-hockey arena in Jihlava.

"There are always tools to achieve a positive perception among users"

Meanwhile, he cites the studio's Lahofer Winery as the very epitome of Chybik + Kristof's "crafting character" concept.

Completed in 2020, it features an undulating roof bearing a publicly accessible amphitheatre that was not part of the brief.

"The amphitheatre is a magnificent tool, not just for the promotion of the brand of the winery, but to bring people together and to let them enjoy a cultural event every Saturday in the middle of vineyards," said Chybík.

"Even though the winery has this very contemporary architectural language and I was afraid about if the community will take it or not, they're always telling me that they experience lots of great moments in this particular place, it's great," he added.

"There are always tools to achieve such a positive perception [among] the users of architecture."

This type of approach, Chybík argues, is key to making the building industry more sustainable – though he resists using that term himself.

"The average age of a commercial building in Europe is around 40 years, and that's something that is extremely unsustainable," he said.

"I think one of the major [reasons] why we demolish those buildings is that they are lacking a character, and they are not flexible enough for future transformation."

"Our mission is to create buildings people like and will maintain," he added.

"I don't want to say sustainable – I hate this word, it's overused. I don't want to be another architect talking about sustainability. Every building we design should be designed in this way."

The photography is by Alex shoots buildings unless otherwise stated.

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Former Ferrari-designer Lowie Vermeersch has created a new type of micro vehicle intended to push traditional cars off the road. In this interview, he discusses new start-up Komma and his vision for the future of mobility.

"I always say, moving an 80-kilo person with 2.5 tonnes of material is not something we should consider as the best we can do, especially in an urban environment," said Vermeersch.

The Granstudio founder has previously overseen the design of the Ferrari FF and 458 Italia while design director at Pininfarina and led work on the Maserati Birdcage 75th concept car.

His latest project – Komma, invented together with Punkt founder and CEO Petter Neby – has a much smaller footprint. A covered, electric two-seater vehicle with car-like seats but a narrow width like a motorcycle, it is designed to take up less space on the roads and use less material to manufacture.

"Just making cars electric is not fully answering what is needed," Vermeersch told Dezeen. "We also need to be looking at how we can use less resources."

Neby and Vermeersch intend to do more with Komma than only manufacture vehicles, however; they plan to use the company to advocate for a shift in mobility away from the car and towards other, diverse modes of transport.

They hope that Komma can influence urban design in the 21st century in a similar way to how cars shaped cities in the 20th century, this time not with highways and suburbs but features that promote sustainability and wellbeing.

Startup seeks to "ignite a change in urban mobility"

Komma began life in late 2019, after Neby approached Vermeersch with "a need that he had lived himself, for a type of vehicle that he felt was missing", Vermeersch said.

The design and development were handled by Vermeersch's team at Granstudio, the transport-focused design studio he founded in 2010, while entrepreneur Neby brought experience in minimalist electronics from his company Punkt, whose devices include a dumbphone designed by Jasper Morrison.

The Komma car – which comes in two models, one fully closed and one open at the sides – is designed to carry one or two people as well as a small amount of cargo, such as shopping, on trips around the city or suburbs.

The company claims the vehicle covers 90 per cent of car-use needs while requiring only 30 per cent of the material resources and energy, and that it can bring pleasure back to the daily drive.

The narrow maximum width of 90 centimetres is, says Vermeersch, particularly key to the transformative potential of the vehicle.

"We always looked at: what will be the consequence if you have mass adoption of this kind of vehicle, and is that consequence positive?" said the designer.

"That's why we worked so hard on making a vehicle that is only half of a car width – which is narrower than a motorcycle – because only then can you ignite a change in urban mobility."

"At a certain point, a city could decide to just paint one extra line in the middle of the street that could become dedicated to such kinds of vehicles," he argued. "Whereas most of the microcar offerings, which are wider, do not have that potential because they need to behave like cars and need to move together with cars."

Push for change in mobility about being "true to what in essence cars stood for"

Vermeersch and Neby plan to be active in shaping the future of mobility through Komma. They see vehicle design and urban design as feeding into each other, and believe that if a new, nimble vehicle archetype emerges, it could enable cities to gradually reduce the road space and parking given to cars and allocate more room to pedestrians and community activities.

Vermeersch says the company will try to partner with local governments and infrastructure and mobility companies to develop pilot projects in this space, claiming the Komma is a good fit for car share schemes, taxi services and private ownership alike.

While it may seem like blasphemy for a car-lover to actively pursue a reduction in their manufacture and use, Vermeersch contends that his position is about honouring the idea behind the invention rather than being "stuck to the object" itself.

"If you want to be true to what in essence cars stood for, they stood for a sort of individual freedom of mobility," he said. "And I think everybody would agree that a car being stuck in a traffic jam is not living up to that."

Future vision for transport needs to have "human pleasure at its heart"

Vermeersch insists he is not anti-cars. He believes they will, and should, continue to play a role in the transport ecosystem, albeit a reduced one.

"For me, the future of cars is as part of a more diverse mobility spectrum, whereas until now, the car has been rather dominating the spectrum," he said. "The problems that we have with cars are not so much in the car itself but how we use it and where we use it."

"I think the car will still be in the future the best and most ecological solution for many, many uses," he continued. "And with 'car', I mean a kind of improved future car, so electric is definitely one step of it. I'd also like to see cars developing more lightness."

Vermeersch is also keen to shift the discourse away from being either "for or against" cars, which he sees as feeding into a culture war where freedom is pitched in opposition to over-consumption.

"The search for a better way of living is not helped if we take these absolute positions," said Vermeersch. "It's as if the car is the origin for all the bad things that's going on. That's not true."

Rather, he thinks we should see the move away from cars in cities as a "positive story" of the evolution of mobility.

"For me, in that picture of a more diverse mobility spectrum there's also place for having the cars that you really have fun with," he said. "And maybe it's not the car you own; maybe it's the car that you use on the weekend or share."

"Any scenario that we think about the future, if it will not have human pleasure at its heart, it's destined to fail. I think that's the part that keeps me connected to what people are passionate about with cars."

Designers must "look beyond the archetype of cars"

Komma hopes to release its vehicle by the end of 2025 targeting Europe as well as the USA and Canada as its first markets.

It will have a top speed of 130 kilometres per hour, equivalent to some of Europe's highest road-speed limits, and include car-like active safety features such as anti-lock brakes, airbags and anti-collision controls.

For the battery, there will be the option of either a single 7.5 kilowatt-hour or twin 15 kilowatt-hour module – both much smaller than in a standard-sized electric car but giving an expected range of up to 200 kilometres, similar to an electric Mini Cooper.

Vermeersch says that Granstudio designed the vehicle from the ground up to take advantage of the "geometric freedom" offered by electric drivetrains, which allow the engine to be virtually hidden inside the wheel rather than shaping the layout of the vehicle.

To add the desired element of pleasurability to the driving experience, there is torque vectoring on the wheels for improved grip, and the semi-open version of Komma has been given motorcycle-like handling, with a handlebar for steering and a tilt mechanism on the wheels.

"Knowing so well how cars are made also allows you to see new opportunities when new technologies come," said Vermeersch. "I think what is needed is more people looking into solutions who are, on one hand, broad-minded enough to look beyond the archetype of cars, but on the other hand, have enough knowledge of them to also understand how you can do that."

"There's fantastic things happening within the car business, and there's fantastic ideas about mobility at the broader scale, the urban scale, but they have a hard time overlapping," he continued. "Komma and also Granstudio for me is really about that."

The photography and images are courtesy of Komma.

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When textile company Byborre launched a digital platform, the aim was to be a disruptor like Airbnb or Uber. In an interview three years on, founder Borre Akkersdijk says it was "too big a jump" for an industry resistant to change.

Akkersdijk hoped that Byborre Create, billed as "a Photoshop for textiles", would kickstart a digital revolution by enabling fashion and furniture manufacturers to source their fabrics more responsibly.

With the textile industry producing 92 million tonnes of waste every year, he thought that brands would welcome a free-to-use tool that made the process more transparent.

Instead, the Dutch designer and entrepreneur found brands unwilling to deviate from what they were used to.

"We wanted to change the textile industry but it wasn't ready for it," Akkersdijk told Dezeen.

"We made the process easier, faster and more responsible, all at the same price. What we didn't anticipate was for the conversation to stop, just because it's not the normal routine."

"The industry is broken"

Byborre made its name as a fashion label, but after the launch of Create – named product of the year at the Dutch Design Awards in 2021 – it stopped releasing clothing collections and rebranded as a mission-driven innovation company.

Now, the company's sole focus is to make the textile industry fairer and more sustainable with the use of digitisation.

"The industry is broken; it has scaled to a size that we cannot comprehend," Akkersdijk said.

"Digitisation is the only way to [fix it]," he continued.

"I want to digitise the textile industry so that there is less overproduction and more balance. I want everybody who makes products using textiles to have access to a fully transparent supply chain."

When Dezeen interviewed Akkersdijk in 2021, he said the aim of Create was to start the ball rolling on this process.

The open-source platform provides free access to the pioneering 3D-knitting technology on which Byborre built its reputation, as well as the company's wide-ranging supplier network.

This makes it possible for users to easily create bespoke textiles and find the most efficient and eco-friendly way of producing them – but Create has failed to have the impact Akkersdijk had hoped for.

Now he understands that this shift was too radical for furniture manufacturers, who rarely design or produce their textiles.

Most source their fabrics from multinational textile producers, which gives them less control over the material supply chain or the production volumes.

"Everybody in the business is so used to selecting from existing textiles without understanding the consequences of doing that, and it results in so much overproduction," said Akkersdijk.

"We gave them the innovation to change. But because the system is already set, the heels just went into the sand."

"I never set out to compete"

In response, Byborre has had no choice but to adopt a more traditional approach.

In November 2022, the brand launched a ready-to-order textile collection of its own, aimed at the interiors market. The collection currently includes 19 designs, available in 147 variants that are all fully customisable.

Akkersdijk said the aim was not to take business away from other textile brands, but rather to demonstrate how the system could be improved by introducing on-demand production.

It led to collaborations with furniture brands including Fogia and Lapalma, but also created friction with textile brands.

"There are so many great textile companies; I never set out to compete with them," Akkersdijk said.

"I just wanted them to change for the better. But I realised the only way to do that was to compete with them."

Akkersdijk had envisioned that other textile producers would join the Create platform, allowing it to evolve into a complete ecosystem for sourcing responsible textiles.

So far, he said he has been mostly met with either resistance or confusion.

He claims that one brand he approached thought he was looking for a buyout. He accuses another of actively blocking partner companies from working with Byborre.

"I want us all to move together, but that's not how it is seen," he said.

Many of the major textile producers, meanwhile, are working on in-house digitisation. Akkersdijk likens the situation to the early days of satellite navigation in the car industry.

"All the big car companies built their own navigation systems, but today everybody just uses Google Maps," he said.

"Why didn't the car companies just work together with Google? Why did they think they had to do it themselves? And that is a bit like what the textile industry is doing right now."

"Small stepping stones" towards change

Akkersdijk trained as a designer, studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and Design Academy Eindhoven before going on to work in the Paris studio of trend forecaster Li Edelkoort.

He co-founded Byborre with former business partner Arnoud Haverlag in 2015, on the back of a series of high-profile collaborations with brands including Nike, Moncler and Louis Vuitton.

In February 2023, the company secured €16.9million in Series B funding from a consortium of investors that include Invest-NL, VP Capital, SHIFT Invest and Amsterdams Klimaat en Energiefonds (AKEF).

The brand has unveiled numerous fashion collaborations in recent months, with brands including Ace & Tate, Palace, NN.07, Diemme and Albino & Preto.

However Akkersdijk is particularly focused on interiors, where the lifespan of products is typically much longer and customers are more accustomed to paying for high-quality textiles.

"If you look at the markets where textile is used best, it's not fashion," he said.

"We're not neglecting the fashion world, but when we started growing the business it became contradicting to what we wanted to do. For the average garment, you talk about use in terms of days of use, while for a sofa it's years."

The company staged the exhibition The Elephant in the Room at Milan design week in April and Dutch Design Week in October, to give insight into the impact of material supply chains.

Byborre has also hosted workshops that introduce emerging and established designers to the Create platform, in the hope they might become brand ambassadors.

Akkersdijk still believes change is possible, but understands that it can only be achieved with "small stepping stones".

"If I had anticipated all the obstacles we have faced, I would have never dared to start," said Akkersdijk.

"It gives me hope and energy every time I hear that somebody has used our textiles because it is a little step closer to changing the status quo."

The photography is courtesy of Byborre.

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AIA Gold Medal winners Ted Flato and David Lake share their views on how "architecture is being driven forward by a response to climate" in this exclusive interview.

Flato and Lake of Lake Flato Architects argue that in order to address the social and environmental issues of our time, architects must focus on regionalism to make buildings more sustainable and enjoyable for all species.

"We've moved beyond just the need for shelter, now's the time to shelter all species and think about the natural realm," David Lake told Dezeen.

"Architecture should intrinsically make us more connected to the natural realm; that goal is just something we live and breathe – and we love what we do."

Lake and co-medalist Ted Flato founded their studio, Lake Flato Architects, in San Antonio, Texas in 1984.

They have since completed projects ranging from stadiums to residences in 45 American states as well as in Mexico and the Caribbean.

The pair met after architecture school in the late 1970s as employees in the office of American architect O'Neil Ford, whose work attracted both men for its "regional modernism".

"When we both got out of architecture school in the late 70s, post-modernism was what was going on," Flato told Dezeen.

"And O'Neil's approach to modern regionalism was something that was all about craft and how one built; it was a great counterpoint to some of the popular things that were going on at the time."

Lake and Flato have continued this tradition, working closely with clients and institutions to create work that responds to and helps the environment – a philosophy spurred by both men's appreciation of the highly varied environment of the state of Texas, their home.

Indicative of this work are pavilions constructed in Texas to help protect and promote the health of watersheds.

The first, in Decatur, Texas was the first Living Building Challenge-certified project in the state. It implemented a complex water collection and treatment system in a relatively simple structure.

Lake said that this land-based approach should be applied as widely as possible, focusing on the unique needs of people, plants and animals in each.

"We need to move away from that international-style approach to architecture and think about how architecture is very much being driven forward by a response to climate," said Lake. 

"When you respond to climate, when you use local resources, when you craft and merge both the art and architecture with the science of engineering, resource conservation and high-performance buildings that yields an architecture that isn't driven by form. It's driven by purpose, is driven by resilience."

Flato said that while a focus on locality is important, it's also important for architects to get out of their regions and be exposed to other conditions.

He added that a focus on longevity and output can be applied to a variety of situations and that architects can gain perspective by working in these different conditions.

Lake Flato has expanded on these environmental concerns, with projects that make buildings comfortable and sustainable in difficult environments.

In 2013, Flato led the charge on an expansive addition to the campus at Arizona State University that increased density and added landscaped elements to help students brave the heat. Lake said that this is still one of the studio's "best projects".

"Not only did we do an adaptive reuse of an old Air Force Base, but we made a place there in Arizona, where it's harsh; Ted managed to make everybody comfortable outdoors and convince the owners that all the corridors should be outdoors," Lake said.

"That's part of what we do. We try to find pathways that connect people to their place, and also think about the future," he added.

Beyond dealing with ecosystems, the studio has also engaged in work that engages the flow of goods and services over a wider supply chain.

Notably, the studio worked with climate organisation the Rocky Mountain Institute to make a series of grocery store chains H-E-B in Texas and Mexico more energy efficient in both operation and in their supply chain.

The studio has also worked on large-scale projects, such as an NBA stadium in San Antonio, which they said was an interesting project in that it proved they could scale up their regionally oriented, sustainable approach.

"One of the really exciting aspects of the work we get to do is just the range of work that we get to work on the range of places and programs," said Flato.

"Ultimately we're problem solvers and we like to have new and interesting problems."

Lake and Flato both said they were honoured to receive the AIA Gold Medal, the highest award bestowed by the American Institute of Architects.

The duo was awarded the 2024 AIA Gold Medal for their engagement with "controversial environmental and socio-political issues".

"We felt that in the beginning that buildings could make people more connected to the environment," said Lake.  "What an honor to have our peers recognize our 40 years of effort to do that."

Other projects by Lake Flato include residences such as a Corten-steel-clad house in Texas that was designed to "sit lightly on the land", an education center in Mississippi built on a site destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and a house with 3D-printed elements in Austin.

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Louis Vitton, Dior and Tiffany & Co owner LVMH is aiming to become more sustainable – but not because customers are demanding it, explains the CEO of the luxury goods company's North America arm, Anish Melwani, in this exclusive interview.

"Sustainability is something we do not because we think our customers care – we do it because it is existential to our business, on top of being the right thing to do for society," Melwani told Dezeen.

"We know that today the average customer doesn't care terribly much about sustainability," he continued. "They say they do, but when you actually get down to the brass tacks, we don't have people walking into our stores today and asking us, 'Hey, is this done sustainably?' – well, at least not many."

Climate change an "existential" threat

The world's largest luxury conglomerate, Paris-based LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) owns 75 brands including many of the world's biggest names in the fashion, alcohol and watches and jewellery industries.

Melwani explained that although sustainability is not currently a driver for sales, he believes that attitudes are changing and that it will become a concern for a growing number customers of LVMH brands.

"We believe that over time, more and more of our customers, as generations progress, will care more about this – they will ask questions, be it in the stores or through online channels – they'll start demanding it," he said.

"And we think that'll be good for us. But we're going to do it anyway."

LVMH is aiming to improve the sustainability of both its stores and supply chain, with fashion reportedly responsible for eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Melwani, climate change poses an "existential" threat to LVMH, as many of the products created by its brands rely on natural materials. He cited the impact of the growing number of wildfires on its wine businesses.

"[We want to] future proof in many ways," said Melwani. "It's future proofing from a customer perspective, but also future proofing from a practical perspective."

"From a manufacturing perspective, we're vertically integrated," he continued. "If we don't grow grapes in Champagne, we can't make any more Champagne. The French government is not about to expand the limits of the region of Champagne."

"One of the challenges is that we are renters"

Melwani was speaking to Dezeen following the launch of a partnership between the company and Miami Design District that is aiming to reduce the environmental impact of its stores within the district, as part of an ongoing strategy to improve the sustainability of its 5,600 global stores.

The initiative will see its stores in Miami powered by solar by 2025. Melwani said that "all the pieces [had] come together" on the project, but that LVMH faces challenges at the majority of its stores, where the properties are rented.

"One of the challenges is that we are renters – we are tenants in most of our stores – we don't actually purchase our energy directly," he said. "We've been purchasing green energy in the parts of the world where we own the building, and we are able to purchase right from utility."

"We've been doing that for a while," he continued, "But in the vast majority of our stores we are tenants and so it requires this coordination and commitment by the landlord, as well as frankly, having a utility provider that has the right programmes to make this all work."

The company aims to start replicating the Miami partnership with its other landlords in the US and has begun similar initiatives in China and the Middle East.

Melwani added that sustainability was becoming part of the company's messaging, although its brands are not pushing the agenda on their customers.

"The first thing is we believe that attitudes will change over time, and secondly, much the way that we have beautiful art and design in our stores, it's an element of storytelling that becomes part of the brand," he explained.

"Some customers care about the art that they see and ask questions about it and we're able to talk about that – why is that particular art or that artist in that store?" he continued.

"If people ask us about our sustainability methods, we will be able to tell them that this is what we do. But you know, luxury is kind of a fun retail experience. And no one wants to be lectured. No one finds a lecture to be fun."

Earlier this month, British fashion designer Stella McCartney and LVMH presented a market of sustainable material innovations at climate conference COP28. The market showcased 15 innovators that provide plant-based alternatives to plastic, animal leather and fur, as well as regenerative alternatives to traditional fibres.

"The fashion industry accounts for eight per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions," McCartney said. "We need to get creative and innovative with alternatives, moving beyond the limited materials that the industry has been working with traditionally."

"If we can work collaboratively with these goals, we can actually begin doing business in a way that regenerates our planet instead of only taking from it."

The photo is courtesy of LVMH.

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With a major retrospective now on show at MAD Brussels, Spanish designer Jaime Hayon tells Dezeen how his "serious fun" style has helped him jump between fine art and industrial design in this interview.

Hayon presents over 350 works in the Nuevo Nouveau exhibition, with paintings and sculptures on display as well as the design objects and installations he is famous for.

Hayon started his career as an artist trying to prove he could also work as a designer, but said it is now often the other way around.

He believes the key to doing both is developing a uniquely recognisable style.

"I believe that if you have a concept and a style, you can do anything you want," he told Dezeen.

"If I'm making an oil painting or I'm making an object, I don't make a division in my brain. The world makes a division for my work, not me."

Hayon's signature style is set in a world of fantasy characters and creatures. These are expressed in free-flowing lines and vivid colours.

Examples of this in Nuevo Nouveau include the now-familiar Green Chicken rocking horse, the yeti-like Happy Susto vases and a series of huge tapestries that look like decorated masks.

"I'm building characters from out of my imagination," Hayon said.

"The forms, the organic elements, the colour – that has all become a language that people now recognise."

Despite the playful aesthetic, Hayon said there is meaning or function in everything he produces.

"I play with serious fun," he said. "It's serious because it's made by the best artisans and manufacturers, but it's also trying to be nice to you."

He points to a recent design for Danish brand &Tradition, the stainless-steel Momento Jug, as an example.

"To me, it's a character," he said. "It looks like a pelican."

"But it's also a very serious industrial design object," he continued. "We made so many prototypes to get the right balance, so it never spills a drop of water."

Nuevo Nouveau marks the first time Hayon's work has been shown in Belgium.

The exhibition forms part of a city-wide programme of events marking the 130th anniversary of the art nouveau movement, which is believed to have been founded in Brussels.

MAD Brussels' creative director Dieter Van Den Storm said that Hayon's approach, particularly its combination of art and design, is akin to the spirit of art nouveau.

"We were looking for somebody who would embody the essence of the art nouveau movement today," Van Den Storm told Dezeen.

"Jaime Hayon is that kind of designer. From sketches and paintings to furniture and accessories, but also unique pieces, interior design and installations, it is hard to imagine everything in this exhibition comes from one designer/artist."

Hayon set up his studio in 2001. One of his most successful early projects was Mediterranean Digital Baroque, a limited-edition series of characterful cactus-inspired totems created for David Gill Galleries.

He said that, back then, he was struggling to be taken seriously as a designer.

"I was getting featured in art magazines, but I was frustrated because I wanted to create products," he said.

A turning point came when he began collaborating with Spanish brand BD Barcelona. In 2006, they unveiled the Showtime furniture collection, with pieces including the popular Multileg tables and cabinets.

"People said I was a clown," Hayon reflected. "But I made a serious point. The collection was a success and after that, big companies wanted to work with me."

"There were always two sides to me," he added. "I dressed up and did a lot of crazy shit. I wanted to have fun but, at the same time, there was a discipline."

This discipline, according to Hayon, is an obsession with detail and craft.

Despite working across all kinds of materials – the list includes glass, ceramics, wood, textiles, metal and plastic – his ambition is always to be as inventive as possible.

"I try to use classic materials but give them a twist," he suggested.

Hayon hopes the exhibition will help people understand him better.

His favourite room in the show is a small gallery between two larger rooms. It contains 20 glass objects, including the animal-inspired Faunacrystopolis crystal vases, displayed opposite a painting that features the same colours and characters.

"In that moment, you understand who I am," Hayon said.

"I am someone who sees everything as an opportunity to make something unique and special," he explained.

"In every space I create, whether it's The Standard Hotel in Bangkok or a little house in the Mediterranean, every detail is an excuse to experiment and go crazy."

The photography is by Sam Gilbert.

Nuevo Nouveau is on show at MAD Brussels in Belgium from 22 September 2023 until 27 January 2024. See Dezeen Events Guide for more architecture and design events around the world.

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Following the opening of his first hotel in Portugal, French designer Christian Louboutin, famous for his red-soled shoes, discusses creativity and sustainability in this exclusive interview.

"The secret to good design – and it's a very basic answer – is to be true to yourself," Louboutin told Dezeen. "You can take advice from people but at the end, someone has to be the boss: someone has to decide. At one point, someone has to decide to stay true [to the original idea]."

Best known for his shoe design, Louboutin's career spans more than 40 years, across which he has remained true to his creative impulses.

"The most important thing is that it looks good"

These impulses have been most recently expressed in his latest venture, Vermelho – an opulent 13-room boutique hotel in the quiet Portuguese village of Melides, south of Lisbon, which he designed in collaboration with architect Madalena Caiado.

Louboutin cites the hotel as an example of always staying true to himself. He recounts telling the team "let's have a lot of chimneys – the kind that you see on the roofs in the south of Portugal – because it's very nice".

The architects tried, and found it difficult, to connect all the chimneys through to fireplaces in the rooms so that they would function as flues.

"I just want the roof with the chimneys," Louboutin told them. "We don't need working chimneys. It doesn't matter if they don't go where they should go – it's okay if it doesn't work!"

The team were concerned that purely ornamental chimneys, where form did not follow function, were problematic because "they are not useful", Louboutin recalls.

"But they're absolutely the most beautiful thing," he contended. "The most important thing is that it looks good. That's the most important thing at the end of the day."

"I could feel that I was a bit alone at the beginning going 'more chimneys! more chimneys!' – because they were really, completely useless. But it's fine to be useless, totally fine."

"You don't have to be useful all the time," the designer added. "The chimneys were definitely a decision that I took by myself. You sort of have to be perseverant. And when you are believing in something, you have to go for it."

"When you do something that you love, you will have never wasted your time"

Louboutin left home at the precocious age of 12, going on to design women's shoes for Charles Jourdan, Roger Vivier and Yves Saint Laurent before founding his own company in 1991.

The eponymous firm has since grown to a $2.7 billion business that incorporates the design of leather goods, pet accessories, perfume and beauty products.

Despite his enormous success – or perhaps because of it – Louboutin continues to seek pleasure in creative projects.

"When you do something that you love, even if it doesn't work, even if it's useless, as long as you have pleasure doing it and it pleases you, you will have never wasted your time," he said.

"If you do something that you don't really love, but you think 'oh it's better like this, it's more comfortable, it's more useful' and you don't really like it, at the end the level of satisfaction – yours and probably other people's – is way lower," he added.

"But also if it doesn't work, then you really have wasted your time."

While these principles have guided his design practice, the business landscape since the early '90s has changed significantly.

Louboutin, who turned 60 in January this year, continues to navigate them successfully. For instance, the brand has nearly 17 million followers on Instagram.

"Everything has definitely changed due to social media," the designer said. "When I first started, every brand name had a face which corresponded to the brand name. Yves Saint Laurent wore glasses and he was called Yves Saint Laurent. Givenchy had a person behind it called Hubert de Givenchy."

"The names are just the brands now," he went on. "It's a different ballgame, completely. I don't say if it's good or bad or whatever, I have no time for judging – but it's completely different and the sense of freedom has kind of disappeared."

Something else that has changed over the decades is the conversation around sustainability.

The Christian Louboutin business now has a whole department dedicated to sustainability, which he says attempts to look at "everything: how it's made, where it is made, where it's coming from, have people involved been well treated, et cetera – which is all important – but also discussing how to work in a better way".

"Sustainability is not only for products but is also to do with people," he added. "Sustainability comes back to respect."

Louboutin feels strongly that social sustainability and supporting creative industries in their indigenous setting is just as much a part of sustainability as the eco-credentials of materials and the supply chain.

"When there is a part of a shoe which features some carving that is made in a very specific place – let's say by artisans of a special region – in this instance, I always refuse to copy that savoir faire and go to a country which could, and in a cheaper way, copy it."

Louboutin has a track record of valuing craft and the handmade.

Caiado, the Portuguese architect who co-designed the Vermelho hotel, told Dezeen how, especially during the construction phase, Louboutin "brought a more tactile way of thinking – almost as if the hotel was designed at the scale of the hand of those who built it".

"Artisanship is really a very important part of the culture of countries – it speaks about people, about the culture or a part of a country, and it's a necessity to keep it alive," emphasised Louboutin.

"You cannot use artisanship by reproducing it elsewhere. Why? Because if you take the essence of artisanship from a specific place, and you give it to another place, to make it cheaper (which is the only real reason), you are basically starting to eat – and to destroy, a bit – the ecosystem of a region or country. Sustainability goes all the way to protecting artisanship."

"You may not like colours, but you still like red"

Over the years Louboutin has had to protect his own artisanship – and there have been several instances of litigation to prevent trademark infringement on his signature red sole.

But while it has become the designer's calling card, Louboutin does not feel the iconic red sole has pigeonholed his creative output or opportunities.

"Every creative project in itself is an exciting thing," he explained. "I don't have a projection of what I should do. Projects with me are pretty organic – there is no business plan."

Louboutin has never limited himself to shoe design – and while the colour red has become his signature, he insists it is not because of the success he found with it but because of his abiding passion for the hue that he continues to use it across his projects.

Vermelho, the name of the recently-opened hotel, is also the word for red in Portuguese.

"Red is a transition. It's such an emotional colour, but also it's not necessarily linked to colour. You may not like colours, but you still like red," Louboutin enthused.

"If I had to go back and choose another colour, I would still choose red. If I have to stick to one as an identity, I will still keep my red."

The lead image is by Jose Castellar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MoMA exhibition explores design's impact on the ecosystem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The exhibition photography is courtesy of MoMA.

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Mexico is experiencing a "renaissance" in architecture and design because of its embrace and promotion of artisanal practices, says designer Héctor Esrawe in this exclusive interview.

According to Esrawe, who runs a studio in Mexico City, the last 10 years have seen Mexican creativity being taken more seriously at home and abroad.

"There is this renaissance where all the creative activities have evolved, and the standard that we can create now in Mexico is being expressed and accepted worldwide," he told Dezeen.

Esrawe pointed to increasing interest in Mexico's various cultures and artisanal traditions by the architecture and design community as the key element in the success of the country, which just last month held its 15th annual design week.

"We started to look inward, we started to value and appreciate what we were made up of," said Esrawe.

"We started to relate to our ancestors, to our narratives, and understand the vastness and richness and skills that we have as a culture, and I think that eventually became contagious."

Esrawe is one of a handful of architects and designers at the forefront of a new wave of Mexican design. He is known for his sculptural architectural and design work that incorporates artisanally crafted materials such as wood, bronze and stone.

An important aspect of Mexico's design renaissance, according to Esrawe, has been supporting handmade objects and artisanal processes in the country without falling into the trap of mass-producing cultural objects for consumption.

He said that artisans such as stone workers or wood carvers are often "put on a pedestal" but expected to conform to the needs of mass production.

Instead, Esrawe argues that the collaborations between designers and these groups, which have fed into his own practice, should push everyone towards new forms and provide artisans with a platform to get the best results.

"We should create a dialogue in a horizontal way, and create a platform that allows for the artisan to express and create those collaborations – it's extremely rich and powerful," he said.

"I see [collaboration] in a positive way," he added. "I see more experimentation. I see new languages appearing."

Collaborating with artisans comes with challenges that must be respected, he acknowledged.

"There's a risk on the side that has to do with the ambition of more and faster," he continued, adding that designers need to understand that working with materials like metal and stone in small-batch operations takes time.

Esrawe said he has also struggled with a conception among Mexicans that things produced natively should be cheaper.

He recalled that when he opened his gallery in the early 2000s people would ask why the work was so expensive, with greater value typically placed on objects from countries like Italy.

"There was this conception that we were only labourers and not so creative and didn't have the power to become something that could challenge another culture, which was more 'stylish'," he explained.

However, two moments marked turning points for Esrawe's own perception of the potential of Mexican design and architecture.

The first was the ascendency of chef Enrique Olvera's restaurant Pujol. For the first time, the best restaurant in Mexico was by a Mexican chef.

"This has been a transformation that started happening in parallel in many activities, in many activities that you can perceive as unrelated like food, but then in others that are more connected, like art, fashion, architecture and design," he said.

The second was his experience of an exhibition in Finland.

"For me, it was completely new to see in the same gallery an artist, a designer, and an artisan exhibited together," he said.

"That was not common for me. That was not common in Mexico. So in a way that shaped my understanding of how it should be."

Since then, Mexico City has become a hotspot for design and last year, Masa, a collective run by Esrawe and designers Age Saloe and Brian Thoreen, put on a show featuring contemporary and historical Mexican art and design underneath the Rockefeller Center in New York City.

Esrawe said that this wide recognition has been accompanied by an influx of designers into the city, all wanting to explore the potential of production in Mexico.

"It became more attractive," he said.

"Many other artists from all over the world have moved to Mexico, understanding that those [production] possibilities are disappearing in many cultures," he continued, referencing again the wide array of artisans and craftspeople in the country.

"You cannot even think of that in the States, for example."

Esrawe has in recent years further dedicated himself to the principles of smaller production and artisanship.

He recently closed his factory, limiting production to focus more on architecture projects and smaller-batch design items.

"I decided to do this because I fully believe in it," he explained.

"I believe sometimes you need to burn the ships in order to really practice your principles, or your aspirations or what you believe."

Esrawe Studio recently collaborated with Productora on a Mexico hotel outfitted with planes of green tile and Cadena on spinning, woven chairs at FORMAT festival in Arkansas.

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The strength and availability of bamboo give it the potential to be as dominant in construction as concrete and steel, argues Atelier One engineer Chris Matthews in this interview.

"This idea that we have a sheet of rigid, extremely polished buildings, built from all kinds of steel and concrete, it has to change," Matthews told Dezeen.

"Bamboo has a real part to play as a low-carbon material, and it needs to be part of the toolkit that we have moving forward," he continued. "It's going to be a major player."

"The speed of growth is amazing"

Matthews spoke to Dezeen from the London office of British engineering firm Atelier One, where he is an associate director specialising in structural bamboo.

Bamboo is an extremely fast-growing species of giant grass that grows abundantly, quickly and cheaply around the world. Atelier One believes so much in its potential to become a dominant construction material that it has a team dedicated to its use in architecture.

While wood takes approximately 30 years to grow before being harvested as structural timber, a bamboo culm takes just three years.

"The speed of growth is amazing," Matthews explained. "And the other wonderful thing is that you can grow bamboo on degraded land," he continued.

"Land that wouldn't otherwise be being used, you can actually regenerate using bamboo."

Another key property of bamboo is that it is incredibly strong. In fact, its strength is comparable to aluminium, Matthews said.

"People always say it's as strong as steel – it's not as strong as steel, it's close to aluminium," Matthews said. "It is also actually stronger than concrete," he continued.

"So in terms of structures, there's no reason why you can't use it."

Locking carbon in buildings "the way forward"

Yet for Matthews, one of the characteristics of bamboo that makes it most attractive for the future of architecture is that it is an effective carbon store.

Similarly to timber, it sequesters carbon as it grows. There is even ongoing research to suggest that the material stores more carbon than timber, Matthews highlighted.

"There's no kind of definitive paper on this yet because it's such a hard thing to measure, but some papers say it's between two and six times as much [sequestered carbon]," he said.

"It's a great way of taking carbon out of the environment and making sure it doesn't get re-released."

As with many other advocates of sustainable materials, Matthews believes that the architecture and construction industries must urgently turn focus to the use of biomaterials such as bamboo to design buildings that sequester carbon, rather than expel it.

"In general, the idea of bio-based materials where we are capturing carbon and locking it up in a building, that has to be the way forward," he said.

"So instead of thinking of a building as something that we have to use up our carbon budget to make, we're instead thinking of the building as a way of locking up some carbon over the lifetime of the building," he added. "I hope more and more of that will happen."

Atelier One now testing structural limits of bamboo

Atelier One's interest in bamboo was sparked by its founder Neil Thomas' involvement in The Arc, a bamboo gymnasium at the Green School Bali designed by architecture studio Ibuku.

The sculptural building, which was highly commended in the 2021 Dezeen Awards, is distinguished by its complex double-curved roof made entirely from tensioned bamboo.

"The school has shown that, whereas bamboo was once seen as a 'poor man's timber', actually, the beauty of the structures that result really is amazing," reflected Matthews.

He argued that it also demonstrates it is possible to overcome the main disadvantage of the material, which has previously been a susceptibility to insect and fungal attacks, which in turn reduces its longevity.

This is achieved by ensuring the bamboo is not exposed directly to the sun, water or the ground. The bamboo is also treated to remove starch to help prevent these attacks, said Matthews.

"The issue has been that [bamboo is] prone to fungal attack and insect attack," he said. "You've now got a material that not only has this amazing speed and strength, but it's also able to have longevity as well."

Today, Atelier One's focus is primarily on maximising the strength and structural capabilities of bamboo, specifically through 3D-printed connections to link culms together.

"So you've got this amazingly strong material and now what we're trying to play with is how you actually get the full strength out of it," Matthews said. "It's all about the connections."

"We've started playing with 3D-printed connectors to link pieces of bamboo and get a longer piece of fabric. Once you start playing with the shapes, there's no end to the possibilities."

Laminated bamboo "seems to be performing better than timber"

The team is also exploring the potential of laminated bamboo – engineered bamboo products typically formed of layers of bamboo glued, stacked and pressed together.

According to Matthews, laminated bamboo can be used in the same ways as cross-laminated timber (CLT) but actually outperforms it in terms of strength.

"You don't just have to use the crops whole and unprocessed, there is a whole industry of laminated bamboo," Matthews said.

"Laminated bamboo actually seems to be performing better than timber, and also just like timber you can encapsulate it, so you put plasterboard on if you need to, it can be used as part of a build-up."

"People are doing it, it's early days, but the properties are amazing," he added. "And it's really starting to take hold."

Among the varieties of engineered bamboo are scrimber, cross-laminated timber-bamboo (CLTB) and a type of radial laminated bamboo called Radlam.

The latter is Atelier One's favourite, Matthews said, as it is processed in a way that retains all the layers of a bamboo culm, reducing waste and maximising strength.

"The reason we like this is because you get the whole culm, so the whole thickness of the bamboo – you're not wasting material as you process it," he said.

"And also, by not passing off the outer skin, you're getting the full strength," he continued. "It's three times stronger than standard timber, so the properties are amazing."

Another advocate for bamboo is Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia. In an interview with Dezeen, he described the material as the "green steel of the 21st century".

"I think bamboo and laminated bamboo will replace other materials and become the 'green steel' of the 21st century," said Nghia.

"I hope many architects realise the potential of the material and build with bamboo more and more."

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Designers need to participate in the development of AI or face having the future world designed without them, warns Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky in this exclusive interview.

Speaking to Dezeen at the River Cafe in London, Chesky, who graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), warned that history may be repeating itself as designers fail to embrace the potential of artificial intelligence (AI).

Designers "came to digital very late" he recalled, predicting that if they are also late to embrace the changing world of AI "the world will be designed without them".

"Designers gave away a lot of their power"

"My recollection in the 1990s is that a lot of the most prestigious design jobs weren't in the internet, they weren't web designers, they were print – people came to digital design very late," Chesky told Dezeen.

"A consequence of the best designers not going to the internet or into web design till very late was that people designed a world without them," he continued.

"I think designers gave away a lot of their power during the development of the internet by not participating."

Chesky warned that if designers do not adapt to and adopt AI, then they will end up being "subordinate" to engineers, mirroring what happened on the internet where the majority of websites are created by "product managers" not designers.

"It's gonna happen," he said. "So either you can be part of the change, or the world can be designed without you and then you have to fit into that change. And you're going to be a subordinate."

AI is "unstoppable"

Online rental website Airbnb was founded by Chesky with Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Gebbia in 2007. Since then it has grown to become the world's largest short-term rental website, with 1.5 billion stays booked through the site. Currently there are seven million listings on the site in almost every country in the world.

Chesky believes that AI is set to have an impact on everyone and that companies need to consider what that impact will be.

"My lesson to everyone with AI is it might have a negative near-term effect on your business," he said. "It might not, I don't know. But unless you think it's going to get uninvented, if you think there's gonna be more AI in the future than now, then the genie is out of the bottle."

"I'm not here to say it's a good thing – I think it's on balance good, but my opinion about whether it's going to be good or bad, kind of irrelevant, because it's unstoppable."

"My general advice is to participate in it"

He believes that the inevitability of AI's impact means that design graduates should embrace the emerging technology.

"I think AI can either displace a lot of creatives or it can empower a lot of creatives," he said.

"As a RISD graduate running a tech company, I would implore creative people, journalists, writers, people that identify as technologists, RISD graduates, Royal College of Art graduates... if you think AI's here to stay and you think it's going to be more important – and how could you say none of that's true – then my general advice is to participate in it."

As well as benefiting those people's careers, Chesky argues that designers and creatives becoming more involved with AI could lessen the negative potential impacts of the technology.

"By having large numbers of designers and creatives involved in the development of AI, and AI-centred products, the potential negative impacts of the technology could be reduced," he said.

"The best chance is for the most creative people, the humanistic people [to be] in charge, participate in what appears to be an inevitable revolution," he said.

"And that will probably also limit the downside of that revolution. Do we really want only some types of people participating in the future and design the future? Or do you want all these people, especially the creative community to participate?"

"Wary of fetishization of technology"

Chesky explained that Airbnb was slowly adopting AI as he believes that it can be used as a tool to rethink what the company is doing. However, he doesn't want the company to jump on the AI bandwagon, and will only be adopting the technology where it can be useful to its customers.

"I think one of the best ways to keep your balance in the technology world is to keep moving, to be on the leading edge, and we will be with AI," he said.

"But, I am also wary of fetishization of technology, so we have not done a lot and not rushed to ship out things just to be on the bandwagon. I only want to adopt technology that is useful and helpful to people."

Following its rapid growth, Airbnb is currently in its "second-album problem" phase, said Chesky. He explained that the company is aiming to launch a second product in the near future with the aim of replicating the success of multi-time entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

"The sheer number of entrepreneurs that have one idea, they do one thing, it's incredibly successful, but they struggle to do a second thing, is numerous," he said.

"Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos – there's a reason they're so famous. Steve Jobs six, seven times; Jeff Bezos, with Amazon retail prime and AWS, Elon with his multitude of companies," he continued. "I'm part of that next generation on."

"There's one more phase for Airbnb"

Chesky explained that he will dedicate his future time at Airbnb to reinventing the company with the launch of a new product or idea that will rival the original home-letting idea.

"There's one more phase for Airbnb, it's probably what I spend the rest of my time at Airbnb doing, which is reinventing ourselves like all the great companies have done."

However, before this can happen, Airbnb needs to improve its core offering, explained Chesky. It has been trying to manage expectations amid a wave of new users on the platform following the pandemic.

"I want people to be in love with the Airbnb service so as to want new things from us," he said. "And there is a lot of love for Airbnb, but if I'm being critical, there have been a lot of complaints, especially when we got really popular because of the pandemic."

"A lot of new people tried us and those people have expectations," he continued. "They want the uniqueness of Airbnb and the reliability of hotel and that's hard to do in 100,000 cities."

Airbnb to launch product that is "going to surprise you"

The company has been working on "perfecting" its service to build the basis for a new launch.

We've been really focused this last year on really perfecting our service," he said. "Hopefully we will kind of turn the corner and people will say 'wow, they really improved their service, it's really great'. Is it perfect? No, probably never be perfect, but it's really better than other platforms."

Chesky was coy about the upcoming product release, but hinted that it would be a service based on people meeting and going to events together.

The product is set to be launched at an event that's "going to surprise you" in a manner similar to Apple's much-anticipated, past product launches.

"I'm very interested in business ideas that go beyond booking your house on a short-term basis. And I think about like how with our assets we have today, we have this system of trust, we have identities, we have profiles, you've verified more than 100 million profiles, we have a two-sided reputation system," he said.

"We knew about you, we learned about what you wanted in life and we get to kind of potentially match you to people and places experiences all over the world – that's kind of the conceptual space that we're playing."

The photo is courtesy of Airbnb.

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The Las Vegas Sphere could set a new standard for tour design much like the iPhone did for mobile phones, set designer Es Devlin tells Dezeen in this interview.

Devlin started her career in London's theatre scene of the 1990s before going on to conceive some of the most recognisable sets in the history of modern touring – from Kanye West's floating stages to Beyoncé's record-breaking Rennaisance world tour.

Her projects have ramped up in scale over the last three decades, culminating most recently in her contribution to U2's viral opening performance at the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas, which is billed as the world's largest spherical structure.

But no matter how big a venue or how monumental her stage design, Devlin says her work is not primarily about creating a spectacle.

Instead, she argues that tour design, since its inception, has been almost entirely about recapturing the feeling of closeness that audiences were first able to experience when watching giant acts like The Beatles and Elvis Presley on their TV.

"The reason that tour design came about on a mass scale was because singers had always sung, records had begun to be sold but the TV was what arrived in the 1950s," Devlin told Dezeen. "And it was this sense of intimacy in your own bedroom, in your own sitting room that a TV brought to an audience."

"The last 60 years has been about trying to emulate, through 75 or 17 or three trucks full of stuff – of speakers and screens and pyrotechnics and lighting – the intimacy that you achieve by sitting and watching the TV."

The Sphere is the "ne plus ultra" of tour design

With its giant 15,000-square-metre wraparound screen hiding nearly 160,000 speakers, Devlin argues Madison Square Garden's Sphere venue in Las Vegas is the closest that stage design has come to capturing this ideal.

"It has, in a way, done the final magic trick, which is to put the screen and the speaker as one unit," Devlin said. "So you do not see any speakers, you just see an almost infinite acreage of screen, in which the speakers are embedded."

"You're almost inside a film and the band are accompanying that film, and the band are augmented within that film through live relay."

Plans to erect a sister venue to the Sphere in London were recently put on ice after local councils, members of parliament and a 2,000-strong petition voiced concerns over the fact that its glowing LED exterior would prove disruptive to the local area.

But Devlin believes that at least the interior set-up pioneered by the Vegas venue could set a new standard for tour design, much like the iPhone did for mobiles.

"It's almost the iPhone-ification – in terms of a Jony Ive, ne plus ultra of phone design that then thereafter all phones will kind of emulate – it's almost that applied to tour design," Devlin said.

An Atlas of Es Devlin

Devlin spoke to Dezeen to mark the launch of her debut monograph, a 900-page tome titled An Atlas of Es Devlin that looks back at the last three decades of her career and took nearly seven years to complete.

The book compiles some 122 different projects, from her early work at London's National Theatre to designing catwalks for Louis Vuitton and Saint Laurent, two different Olympic ceremonies, various operas, a Superbowl halftime show and installations for the Tate Modern and the V&A.

"It's a small object compared to a stadium," Devlin said. "But the amount of energy myself and my team have put into it is as huge as any stadium show we've done."

"It's a black hole, in the way that it has contained a reverse Big Bang of everything we've done for 30 years, condensed into this one book."

The projects are presented first chronologically, through sketches and models from her archive, and later thematically through glossy photographs that reveal repeating forms and colours throughout her oeuvre.

"Every early version of this book felt kind of exhausting," she admits. "It was too many projects. It looked kind of interesting, maybe even kind of impressive because there was so much variety."

"But it didn't quite add up to a thesis or a nourishing read. It took a lot of time to find a form that might offer some kind of useful communication to a reader."

"We urgently need ritual"

Ultimately, Devlin hopes that accumulating her genre-bending work in one place will stand as a testament to the fact that designers today do not need to pick just one lane.

Instead, she says, they can and should be more "chameleon-like and amphibious", working across disciplines to serve as a model for how societal divides can be bridged.

"The more connectivity we have between art forms, the further we're likely to progress in these urgent conversations about understanding each other's point of view," Devlin said.

"Because you could argue that the crises we face now with what's going on in the Middle East, what's going on with our climate, what's going on with social inequity and the cost of living crisis, all of these could be said to stem from a lack of ability to see through the eyes of others. And that's what theatre has always been about – empathy."

Cultural gatherings, whether they are intimate plays or giant stadium concerts, have a unique ability to bring people together, she argues.

But so far, this function has largely been held back by seeing entertainment primarily as an industry, which is valued by the amount of money it generates rather than its larger societal impact.

"We urgently need ritual and we need ritual that isn't monetised," Devlin said.

"At the moment, we're feeling the pain of seeing the worst of what humans can do to each other," she said. "But if you can gather a group of human beings and invite them to all sing the same song, invite them to all feel the same thing, the best of humans comes out."

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On the heels of taking home this year's Pulitzer Prize for illustrated reporting, journalist Mona Chalabi discusses the pitfalls of visualising skewed data and the Israel-Hamas conflict in this exclusive interview.

In the technical, male-dominated world of data journalism, Chalabi is known for "rehumanising" statistics through her hand-drawn illustrations, making abstract numbers tangible and digestible for the general public.

Often, her infographics paint a picture of hidden social injustices, tackling everything from housing inequality and its effects on mental health to the unfathomable wealth gap between Jeff Bezos and the average person, which she visualised for the New York Times.

Earlier this year, this very illustration earned Chalabi the world's most prestigious journalism award, a Pulitzer Prize, in what she describes as a "very, very weird but mostly joyous" experience.

"Fundamental asymmetry" in Israel-Palestine coverage

The Pulitzer Prize was announced in May, but the ceremony itself didn't take place until five months later on 19 October, when the world's headlines were dominated by the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.

"The world has changed since May," Chalabi told Dezeen. "But I was surprised that, for something that felt so joyous, actually the ceremony itself felt quite sad. It didn't feel good."

"I just kept on thinking about Palestinian journalists right now," she added. "It was so incongruous knowing that I was dressed up and I have colleagues in Palestine who are literally getting bombed."

Israel declared war on Hamas on 7 October after militants carried out an attack in Israel that killed at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took over 200 hostages. Since then, Israel has responded with thousands of airstrikes against Hamas in Gaza.

According to the health ministry in Gaza, more than 11,000 people have been killed in the strikes so far. Most of those killed are women and children, as well as at least 42 journalists.

Many of Chalabi's latest illustrations address the conflict, including a series based on data collected by UC Berkeley researcher Holly Jackson, which suggests there is disproportionate coverage of Israeli deaths compared to Palestinian ones in major US publications and a marked difference in the language used to describe those deaths.

"There is just a fundamental asymmetry there," Chalabi said. "It's causing me to have this big meta-crisis about journalism, about the ways that actually very often we are reporting using the voices that are able to speak the loudest and I don't know how we fundamentally address that."

Illustrations can be "as accurate as any computer graph"

Chalabi is only the second person ever to win a Pulitzer for illustrated reporting and commentary, which last year replaced the long-standing category of editorial cartooning.

This pivot, she believes, is a reflection of how news outlets are increasingly using graphics and illustrations as part of their regular reporting.

"I really welcome the fact that the Pulitzer board has adjusted those categories to keep up with the way that journalism is shifting," said Chalabi, who has been the Guardian's data editor since 2015.

"When I first started doing this, everyone was just like: what a load of bullshit," she continued. "Everyone else was building these really complicated data interactives and that was seen as the cutting edge and the fact that I was drawing it was seen as feminine. It was seen as innocuous."

In fact, Chalabi says all of her graphs and charts are millimetre-accurate – even if they are shaped like penises to illustrate the overwhelming percentage of men working in different tech companies.

"The thing that a lot of people don't realise is I'm creating these charts in Excel, in Google Sheets, rarely but sometimes in R," she explained.

"And then I load the charts into Photoshop and digitally alter all of my hands-on illustrations to line up pixel-for-pixel with the computer-generated graphics, so they're as accurate as any computer graph that you're going to see anywhere else."

Data won't save the world

By combining digital accuracy with graphics that are hand-drawn using pencils, felt tips and ink, Chalabi hopes to remind viewers that data is collected by humans and is therefore fallible.

"I don't have this data-is-going-to-solve-the-world mentality," she said. "Very often, data replicates the existing systems of power."

"The existing systems of power say there are two sexes, female and male, so for the vast majority of datasets that I'm looking at, that's all I can break the data down by."

"Until the systems of power recognise different categories, the data I'm reporting on is also flawed," she added.

In a bid to account for these biases, and any biases of her own, Chalabi is transparent about her sources and often includes disclaimers about her own decision-making process and about any gaps or uncertainties in the data.

"I try to produce journalism where I'm explaining my methods to you," she said. "If I can do this, you can do this, too. And it's a very democratising experience, it's very egalitarian."

Nuance and transparency can hinder instant comprehension

In an ideal scenario, she is able to integrate this background information into the illustrations themselves, as evidenced by her graphics on anti-Asian hate crimes and the ethnic cleansing of Uygurs in China.

But at other times, context is relegated to the caption to ensure the graphic is as grabby as possible.

"What I have found is literally every single word that you add to an image reduces engagement, reduces people's willingness or ability to absorb the information," Chalabi said.

"So there is a tension there. How can you be accurate and get it right without alienating people by putting up too much information? That's a really, really hard balance."

Often, this need to ensure quick and easy comprehension is also at war with the illustrator's desire to avoid stereotypical depictions that could reinforce existing biases.

"When you're looking for fast comprehension, very often you're relying on people's existing visual semantic connections," she explained. "Let me take the example of men and women."

"We are so used to seeing a silhouette of somebody in a dress and somebody in trousers and we're like: man, woman," she added. "It's fast comprehension, even if it's utter bullshit."

"So how do you come up with a more nuanced, smarter way of saying man and woman that isn't bewildering?"

Chalabi has previously created illustrations to take people's minds off the coronavirus pandemic and was among a number of graphic designers and creatives who shared illustrations supporting the Black Lives Matter movement after the killing of George Floyd.

The top image is by Mary Kang.

Comments have been turned off on this story due to the sensitive nature of some of the subject matter. 

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The Sharjah Architecture Triennial aims to show the positives of architecture created using scarce resources, says its curator Nigerian architect Tosin Oshinowo in this interview.

Titled The Beauty of Impermanence: An Architecture of Adaptability, the triennial focuses on the innovations and strategies of re-use and re-appropriation often driven by scarcity in the Global South.

"The triennial is looking at the under-celebrated building innovations and designs that tend to still exist within the Global South and that result from conditions of scarcity," Oshinowo told Dezeen.

"There's also re-teaching, or reminding people in the Global South, that what we may not have considered as valuable or essential or even positive, actually has been," she continued.

"So it's also making the Global South realise and re-evaluate itself and optimistically position that we're not in a bad place."

"I'm ultimately looking at what lessons we can learn"

Many of the installations, which have been designed by studios including Cave Bureau, Wallmakers, Asif Khan, 51-1 Arquitectos and Formafantasma, focus on architecture that was designed utilising the locally available materials and skills that constrained building practices.

However, Oshinowo was keen to find people working within contemporary situations where wider lessons can be learnt.

The majority of the participants are from the Global South with around 30 per cent from Africa, 30 per cent from South America and 15 per cent from the Gulf region.

"What's been really exciting is finding people whose work resonates around these things, but who are existing within a modern context," she said.

"I'm ultimately looking at what lessons we can learn from these circumstances, particularly as a lot of the locations where these practices exist are also able to work better with the environment – when you work with limited resources you can coexist in balance with ecology."

"We need to rethink what we consider as progress"

Along with those in the Global South re-assessing the value of local processes, Oshinowo believes that we should reconsider what we think of as progress.

And that those in the Global North can also learn from the examples in the triennial.

"I think it's important for us to now question what is what is seen as progress," she said.

"Everyone's model is this Global North attainment – this is how it's done, this is how we need to develop, this is how we need to live, this is how we need to dress – but why this reference, this single reference? Maybe then we need to rethink what we consider as progress."

"We need to think, what can we learn from these southern regions?" she continued. "How can we be in better balance with our environments?"

Through the installations, she hopes visitors to the triennial will rethink how they currently practice and see the potential of operating in a variety of ways.

"There are two things that I would really like people to take away," she said. "One – to see the diversity of solutions that can exist or do exists, and functioning and thriving in specific locations."

"And, I would like people to take away an awareness of the challenges that our current model of progress and consumption and the implication has on the climate," she continued. "Within that, I hope people see the possibilities of how, as individuals and practitioners, we could potentially have a change of mindsets and how we practice and how we train."

"We wanted to very obviously include architecture"

To convey this message, Oshinowo aimed to make the triennial as accessible as possible by including numerous, full-scale works built especially for the event, believing that "only architects read text".

Asked if Zaha Hadid Architects principal Patrik Schumacher, who was very critical about the content of this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, would be happy with what is included in the event, she said there was a conscious effort to include actual examples of architecture.

"We wanted to very obviously include architecture and very obviously include architecture that is about experimentation," she said.

"The mediums that we are using to share information are about experience," she continued. "There's no project here that is pinned up drawings – we have quite a few installations, we do have some films, but we also have built projects and built projects that are about experience."

She believes that this approach will mean that the triennial and its exhibits will be broadly understood by visitors and locals from Sharjah and the UAE.

For anyone who's not an architect, the experience of being in the exhibit, how it makes you feel, what you see, how your senses are evoked, is very important, because that's what you remember," she explained.

"If a 15-year-old comes to this exhibition, there will be certain things that they will see that they will say, I really like Yussef Agbo-ola's work – it's a temple, which is in celebration of ecology and the natural environment."

"We've created the problem, but we also part of the solution"

Overall she hopes that the triennial will send a positive message by drawing attention to practices that may offer some solutions to the climate crisis.

"Apparently, this year is the hottest in human history – so, you know, it's not great, and it's based on all the decisions that we all make," she said.

"So I hope that by seeing some of the possibilities and solutions that exist and understanding the wider narratives that are based on limits where people are able to function and thrive, people can leave with an optimism – we've created the problem, but we are also part of the solution."

The second Sharjah Architecture Triennial was originally scheduled to take place in 2022 but, like numerous design events, was delayed as a result of Covid-19 uncertainty. It follows the inaugural event in 2019 that saw installations from Marina Tabassum and Cooking Sections.

The photography is by Tom Ravenscroft.

Sharjah Architecture Triennial 2023 takes place from 11 November 2023 to 10 March 2024 at various locations across Sharjah. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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The increasing need to protect cities from environmental hazards is a chance to transform communities for the better, says Rebuild By Design managing director Amy Chester in this interview for our Designing for Disaster series.

Rebuild by Design began in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in New York as a competition run by the US government to instigate projects that would ready the region for future extreme weather events.

A decade later, the now independent nonprofit works with municipalities around the world on climate resilience and is sought after for the community-rooted approach that it pioneered in the Hurricane Sandy Design Competition.

"We don't come with any answers"

The organisation's collaborative working process, which engages a wide range of stakeholders, is "definitely a big piece" of what makes Rebuild by Design unique, says Chester, who has been managing the organisation from the beginning.

"The second one is that we don't come with any answers," she added. "We come with questions and we research everything together."

In the Hurricane Sandy Design Competition, that meant that entrants didn't pitch a project or a vision. Instead, they pitched themselves as teams of professionals from various backgrounds.

From 150 international applicants, 10 groups were chosen to participate in a collaborative research phase, which involved touring the Sandy-affected region, meeting affected people and eventually presenting multiple concepts for interventions that could make a difference in the face of future climate events like flooding and hurricanes. Selected architecture firms included OMA, BIG and WXY.

Ten of their concepts, one per team, were selected by a jury for funding and gradually developed into fully fleshed-out projects, again using collaborative approaches like workshops and community outreach events.

"We kind of turned transparency on its head by inviting those most involved to the table from the very beginning, to actually create the table together," said Chester.

Collaboration and transparency are not just buzzwords for Chester. She advocates for more genuine candour in communication between governments and their citizens in the face of climate change.

"Every single city has to understand what their own risks are and really have conversations with the population about how much risk are we willing to take on," she said. "You can completely fortify your city and say, 'We don't want any risk', or you can say 'hey, you know what, it's okay if we flood six inches, or two inches, or a foot, or whatever it might be'."

"Then you can design your adaptation practices to meet that risk," she continued. "If you don't have those conversations out in the open, then communities just feel that their government will protect them 100 per cent and they're floored anytime that there's a climate event and something happens to their homes and their livelihoods."

Best climate-resilience projects "help us on wet days and dry days"

Projects to have come out of Rebuild by Design include Scape's 2023 Obel Award-winning Living Breakwaters coastal defence system, which helps calm the water around Staten Island while fostering marine life, and BIG's Big U, a horseshoe of raised parkland, floodwalls, berms and sewer system upgrades encircling lower Manhattan.

For Chester, the most important climate-resilience projects are situated on a community level not an individual building level, and improve public space as much as they protect people from the elements.

"If we're doing it on a community scale that means that everybody is participating, everybody is excited about the outcome, and you are creating interventions that aren't only for climate change — they can also be enhancements to public space," said Chester.

Her favourite example of a place that has done this well is the city of Hoboken, across the river from New York City in New Jersey.

There, the Rebuild by Design-funded project titled Resist, Delay, Store and Discharge, by OMA, complements the city's plans to build a series of interconnected resiliency parks to store stormwater, three of which are now open and the last of which is under construction.

The interventions have not only helped alleviate flooding in the city, which is mostly built on a flood plain, but they have delivered on community requests for infrastructure like safer pedestrian crossings and bike lanes. The improvements are credited with cutting the pedestrian death toll down to zero for four years running.

"Ten years ago, I would have never said that a landscape architect is on the frontlines of climate change, but they really are," said Chester. "And so are architects."

"It's really about leveraging the opportunity that we have at this moment to rethink our communities and do it in a way that will help us on wet days and dry days and everything in between."

Most current building still "something that we're going to have to fix later"

Chester still sees many flaws in planning and design for disaster prevention. There's a failure to consider heatwaves — what Chester calls "the silent killer from climate" — as a natural hazard in the US, which means mitigation is underfunded, while too many developments are being built without measures to protect them from events like flooding, because they're not seen as being at risk.

Homes in recognised floodplains are built to set standards, said Chester, but those standards are based on the frequency and intensity of events in the past, not predictions of what is to come in the future. And homes outside of those areas may have no adaptations, even though they are vulnerable.

"When we aren't creating something that is thinking about the future, we are creating something that we're going to have to fix later," Chester said. "Already 50 per cent of all floods happen outside of a floodplain."

On the positive side, she considers that the last two years have brought a change in how disaster relief and prevention is understood in the USA, with a shared understanding that events are on the increase.

"There's just something about the past two years that feels very, very different," said Chester, citing the passing of the Environmental Bond Act by voters in New York in 2022, making US$4.2 billion in funding available for climate-resilience projects, as a key moment.

And although she is worried that recent rhetoric from the UK government "that decarbonisation costs too much", marked by a U-turn on net-zero targets, is about to be replicated across the Atlantic, for now she considers there is unity in the US on at least the question of adaptation.

"Republicans may use the word weather and Democrats may use the word climate, but we're talking about the same thing," she said. "Everybody's communities are suffering and everyone is experiencing it."

The photography is courtesy of Rebuild by Design.

Designing for Disaster

This article is part of Dezeen's Designing for Disaster series, which explores the ways that design can help prevent, mitigate and recover from natural hazards as climate change makes extreme weather events increasingly common.

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The coordinator of the mammoth Great Green Wall project to heal land in Africa's Sahel region, Elvis Paul Tangem, calls for help from landscape architects in this interview conducted as part of Dezeen's Designing for Disaster series.

One of the world's most ambitious climate initiatives, the Great Green Wall is targeting around 780 million hectares of degraded land – an area roughly the size of Australia.

"We're talking about a massive, massive, massive endeavour, but it's the only way we can do it," Tangem told Dezeen. "There's no option to that. If we don't do it at that massive scale, it's not going to have the impact."

"Africa is suffering a lot"

The Sahel stretches right across Africa just below the Sahara desert, from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east.

It is on the frontline of the impacts of climate change despite contributing only a miniscule proportion of the world's emissions.

Once rich in biodiversity and vegetation, the region is now prone to persistent and severe droughts as well as flash flooding. The Horn of Africa, for example, has been suffering its worst drought in 40 years since 2020.

Increasingly extreme weather conditions are making it impossible to farm in many parts of the region, where an estimated 135 million depend on degraded lands for their livelihoods.

As a result large numbers of people are leaving in search of a better life in the Global North.

"The impact of climate change on this region has been seriously under-appreciated," said Tangem, who is coordinator for the Great Green Wall Initiative at the African Union Commission.

"The whole narrative is about the Sahel not being capable of taking care of itself. Nobody's talking about the root causes of these things, which is about the extreme weather conditions that is pushing what we have today," he continued.

"Africa is suffering a lot and the Great Green Wall is trying to provide a long-term solution for these challenges."

Governments in the Sahel began attempting to salvage land following a string of severe droughts during the 1970s, before climate change was widely understood.

"But they were doing that in silos," Tangem said. "And when you work in silos for things to do with climatic challenges, it becomes very difficult."

In 2007, the African Union launched the Great Green Wall initiative to be a unified, multi-state response to increasing desertification across the region, with 11 main national partners.

"There was an urgent need to develop a kind of pan-African, broad-base sustainable land-management initiative," explained Tangem, whose own background is in ecology and conservation.

As its name suggests, the Great Green Wall was initially conceived as a continuous belt of trees running from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea, only 15 kilometres wide but almost 8,000 kilometres long.

It was later reimagined as a vast series of reforestation, land-management and water-conservation projects across the Sahel intended to increase biodiversity and rainfall and reduce poverty.

"The main goal is to ensure sustainable and stable drylands so that people can grow in their areas without having any reason to migrate," explained Tangem.

"People don't leave for the pleasure of leaving," he added. "The livelihoods of those people, their subsistence means, have been destroyed by climate change."

Region "very diverse and capricious"

At the official launch in 2007, the African Union set a target of restoring 100 million hectares of land by 2030 – sequestering an estimated 250 million tonnes of carbon and creating 10 million jobs.

The ambition still stands, but progress has been hampered by funding issues, waning political cooperation and violence in the region.

"You are dealing with a sector that is very diverse and very capricious – it can change at any time," said Tangem. "For instance, we were doing so well in Burkina Faso, we were doing pretty well in Mali, but now there are conflicts there."

"There's never a dull day because we have a lot of problems coming up as we solve problems."

A United Nations report published in 2020 found that 18 million hectares of land had been restored – only 18 per cent of the target, with only 4 million hectares in the initial target area.

There are not currently any architects, landscape architects or designers engaged on the initiative, but Tangem indicated that is something he would like to change.

"I think it's something that we have to start considering because design is very important to the work we are doing," he said.

"We are basically doing landscapes. It could be very important if we could have some advice from architects and engineers when we are doing these large projects."

Tangem cited landscape architects and engineers' experience of using technology to take precision measurements on very large sites as an example.

"We have projects where we want to restore a million, two million hectares of land, so it would be very interesting to talk to architects about how we could work together," he said.

With work underway on a new Great Green Wall strategy, help with managing resources at such a large scale would also be beneficial, Tangem added.

"By the sheer size of the ambitious nature of the Great Green Wall it's very difficult to follow every aspect of it, so that's a challenge," he said.

"This is really big, and it's dynamic – by providing solutions to one site, you might be creating a lot of problems for another site," he continued.

"But with all these challenges we have huge opportunities for collaboration, for sharing of best practices and things like that. So it's one day at a time."

Designing for Disaster

This article is part of Dezeen's Designing for Disaster series, which explores the ways that design can help prevent, mitigate and recover from natural hazards as climate change makes extreme weather events increasingly common.

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Cities should plant more trees to help prevent tens of thousands of annual deaths from extreme heat, Arup specialist Dima Zogheib tells Dezeen as part of our Designing for Disaster series.

Worsening heatwaves are emerging as the number-one climate-related killer, with an estimated 62,862 deaths associated with extreme heat across Europe in 2022, according to a study published in Nature Medicine.

Building consultancy Arup produced the Urban Heat Snapshot in August this year, demonstrating how city temperatures can vary dramatically between neighbourhoods and identifying where hotspots arise in the built environment.

Based on analysis of heat data in six major cities, it found that areas with large amounts of green space had significantly lower temperatures than those without – and therefore that increasing urban planting is one of the key ways to reduce heat-related deaths.

"Some of the very impactful actions are very simple such as tree planting, which has been demonstrated to reduce air temperature significantly and also reduce heat-induced mortality," said Arup nature positive design lead Zogheib, who helped lead on the research.

According to the European Commission, increasing tree coverage in European cities by 30 per cent could have prevented an estimated 2,644 heat-related deaths in 2022.

Zogheib explained that various open spaces in the built environment can be utilised to increase planting and cooling strategies, including roads and rooftops.

"More than 50 per cent of cities is actually open space if you include all the roads, streets and roofs, so these spaces have to play a role, whether it's in cooling cities, inviting biodiversity, or in supporting other resilience challenges," she told Dezeen.

"There are other actions that cities can take, like creating more permeable paving to cool spaces, provision of water fountains and drinking water fountains to keep people cool, and retrofitting buildings by putting in green roofs."

One of the ways to cool the built environment advocated by Arup is retrofitting roofs in London to curb the Urban Heat Island effect, the phenomenon where urbanised areas experience significantly higher temperatures than their rural surroundings.

Working with the Greater London Authority (GLA), the firm published a proposal in June to add reflective and photovoltaic roofs to existing buildings to reduce energy use and lower temperatures in and around buildings, ultimately aiming to improve the health and wellbeing of Londoners.

Research for the GLA proposal and the Urban Heat Snapshot was sourced from Arup's UHeat digital tool, which uses satellite imagery and open-source climate data to map air temperatures.

Air temperature was measured rather than surface temperature because it is closer to the temperature we feel, according to Zogheib.

The snapshot found that in the six city case studies, Cairo, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mumbai and New York City, temperatures can vary by up to eight degrees Celsius from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.

For each city, a 150 square-kilometre focus area was selected and data was collected for the hottest day in each city in 2022. The focus area was divided into 60,000 square-metre hexagonal blocks to map the differences in air temperatures for both day and night.

As well as temperatures, the UHeat tool modelled building heights, surface reflection, impervious surfaces, and green and blue infrastructure to build a picture of the impact of the built environment on urban heat.

By mapping where hotspots are in cities, Arup aimed to reveal where people can go for cool retreats and also areas where cooling interventions would be most beneficial.

Zogheib argued that as city temperatures rise, it will become increasingly important for everyone to have access to cool refuge.

"The aim of the tool was to raise awareness about the challenge of urban heat," she said. "It's also a call to action to designers, planners, local authorities and municipalities to really take action."

"Yes, this is a design issue, but also this is an equity issue," she stressed. "People who are the most vulnerable are hit by urban heat the most."

Urban heat is becoming an increasing problem as a result of climate change. The number of cities reaching temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius and above is expected to almost triple by 2050.

"We need to curb climate change – all of the climate impacts we are experiencing is because we haven't reduced emissions as much as we should have," said Zogheib. "We need to help cities adapt and we need to help people adapt to this changing climate."

She highlighted that increasing green space in cities is known to have other benefits as well as reducing air temperatures, such as increasing biodiversity and improving the wellbeing of residents.

"I think the opportunity is not just to use heat as an entry point, but to address multiple challenges and deliver co-benefits," said Zogheib.

"For example, if you introduce nature to cities in the form of trees, green roofs and permeable surfaces, this is an opportunity to cool temperatures but also have cities and buildings giving back to the urban environment."

Arup biodiversity and nature specialist Neil Harwood, who also contributed to the Urban Heat Snapshot, argued that built-environment organisations have a leadership role to play in tackling urban heat.

"We can collectively be a real driving force for positive action in this space, not only in our own projects but in influencing the customer base on how they think about some of these issues and deal with it in their day-to-day lives," he told Dezeen.

By looking at a range of cities with different climates in the snapshot, the Arup specialists hoped it would reveal different ways the built environment can adapt to concentrated areas of heat.

"The six cities are very different geographically, climatically and also very different in terms of urban form," said Zogheib. "We wanted to get a diversity of results."

As well as mapping the number of hotspots in cities, the tool can also be used to record changing temperatures after a cooling initiative has been implemented, such as how heat around a street changes after it is lined with trees.

"The failures that have occurred in recent decades in our attempts to deal with these crises have shown us that we need as many tools in our arsenal as possible in order to convince and persuade decision-makers of the benefits of action and change," said Harwood.

"We're seeing a real shift at the moment in terms of evidence-based decision-making. We're hopeful that these tools can be part of the broader suite of efforts to really underpin our decision-making with the right sets of information," he added.

The images are courtesy of Arup unless otherwise stated.

Designing for Disaster

This article is part of Dezeen's Designing for Disaster series, which explores the ways that design can help prevent, mitigate and recover from natural hazards as climate change makes extreme weather events increasingly common.

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Increasingly prevalent disasters mean collaboration and humility in architecture are more important than ever says Mehmet Kalyoncu, the architect coordinating efforts to rebuild following the Turkey-Syria earthquake.

"Our problems in the world are more complex than ever and we are in a time where we need teamwork," Kalyoncu told Dezeen.

"The era of starchitects is finished because the problems are much harder than one single person should carry," he said. "The new approach is going to be people working together."

Kalyoncu is a Turkish architect who serves as chair of the Turkey Design Council, a non-governmental organisation founded in 2015.

It is currently spearheading the rebuilding of the earthquake-ravaged Hatay province in southern Turkey.

The province was among those affected by the Turkey-Syria earthquake in February this year – a disaster that claimed at least 56,000 lives.

Turkey Design Council gathering "best brains in the world"

The Turkey Design Council has recently put together a consortium of 13 local and international companies spanning various disciplines to help rebuild Hatay.

Described by Kalyoncu as the "best brains in the world", the group consists of firms working across sectors including design, engineering, sustainability and heritage.

Among them are Danish architecture studio BIG, British engineering firm Buro Happold and British architecture studio Foster + Partners, which is leading the masterplan.

"After the devastating earthquake, unfortunately, placemaking and developing cities became the number one priority of Turkey," he said.

"As a non-governmental organisation, we felt great enthusiasm to involve ourselves and make this process as participatory as possible at local, national and international levels to create something really meaningful," he continued.

Kalyoncu said that international and cross-disciplinary collaboration, such as in this project, are vital for Turkey's recovery efforts due to the scale and complexity of the disaster.

"This is the most sophisticated urban problem in the world in this century," he said. "That's why we need the best brains. That's why we invited Foster and Partners, Buro Happold and Bjarke Ingels."

However, he believes that NGOs are the "driving force" when it comes to designing for disasters and suggested that architects have little power without them.

"An architect cannot make a social impact without involving other experts," Kalyoncu explained.

"The participation of non-governmental organisations is important," he continued. "I cannot say one single architect or one single architectural office can change something."

"We should listen more than we talk"

Increasing collaboration in architecture will require architects and designers to learn to practice with humility, he added, something he believes they will find to be a "challenge".

"Humility is, I think, very important," Kalyoncu explained.

"Working with designers is very hard," he continued. "Our approach is that the less area we occupy on the table, the more other people will come. We should listen more than we talk."

Turkey Design Council's project stemmed from discussions with Turkey's Ministry of Urbanisation and Ministry of Culture, which asked the organisation to help protect Hatay from future disasters and honour its history respectively.

The project is expected to take between five and 10 years to complete.

The rebuild will focus largely on the reconstruction of important sites such as places of worship and bathhouses, as well as an urban masterplan for the city of Antakya – the heart of the province.

With 80 per cent of Antakya destroyed during the earthquake, the team is relying on an archive of material documenting the city to guide the reconstruction.

"We don't want to make the new design, the new atmosphere, the new feeling very different from the old," said Kalyoncu.

"So we created an archive showing the cultural essence of Antakya," he explained. "There are many images, many stories and many videos taken with the people living there describing their city, how was it, how they felt, which areas they feel are important and make Antakya different than any other place in the world," he said.

"We don't want to design something that can be anywhere in the world."

Project aims to be a model for disaster recovery

In the wake of February's earthquake, it was widely reported that the scale of the disaster in Turkey was exacerbated by poor quality construction in the country resulting from a disregard for legislation.

At the time, the government issued more than 100 arrest warrants linked to buildings that were destroyed while Turkish architects called for urgent improvements to architectural education and practice.

To prevent history from repeating itself, Kalyoncu hopes that the project will set a precedent for high-quality earthquake-proof construction in the country outside of Hatay province.

"Hatay will be built back starting from the centre," he explained. "So if the centre will have good design, good planning, and really [align] with regulations, then the rest we hope will follow that."

While informing the post-earthquake rebuilding in Turkey, Kalyoncu hopes the project will also set an example for disaster recovery worldwide.

"There has never been an era that we lost so many cities in such a short time, we lost Beirut, we lost Aleppo and we are losing Gaza now. We lost them because of disasters," he added.

"That's why city planners, architects and people in the built environment, this field, it's our responsibility to build back."

In particular, he hopes the project and the consortium behind it will also highlight the value of international collaboration.

"Politicians, if you ask me, cannot do this without the support of international cooperative organisations," he said.

"So as Turkey Design Council, as a non-governmental organisation that has lived through a recent and the most challenging experience, we want to continue in other geographies of the world."

For now, many people displaced by the earthquake in Turkey remain living in temporary housing.

Among the organisations to help deliver this accommodation was Voluntary Architects' Network, the non-governmental organisation founded by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban in 1995.

The team used Ban's Paper Partition System, which makes use of cardboard tubes and fabric, to divide evacuation centres into private living spaces for survivors.

The images are courtesy of the Turkey Design Council unless otherwise stated.

Designing for Disaster

This article is part of Dezeen's Designing for Disaster series, which explores the ways that design can help prevent, mitigate and recover from natural hazards as climate change makes extreme weather events increasingly common.

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Emergency planner Lucy Easthope explains why she gets "chills at the back of the neck" when hearing that architects are working pro bono on disaster recovery in this interview conducted as part of Dezeen's Designing for Disaster series.

Easthope is the UK's leading disaster expert, having advised the government and the military on responses to every major disaster involving British citizens for the past two decades.

A professor at Durham University, she co-founded its After Disaster Network, and has also written two books on the subject of disasters, most recently When the Dust Settles.

"The death toll is often human-created"

Like many of her peers, Easthope is staunchly opposed to using the term "natural disasters" to describe the devastating effects of events like floods, wildfires and earthquakes.

"People have traditionally tended to categorise geographical and seismic and climate events as 'natural', but what we see is that the disaster itself is usually human-made," she told Dezeen.

"The tectonic plates will shift or the sea will surge, but the death toll is often human-created, because of decisions made politically or economically."

She draws little distinction between the main causes of the devastating Turkey-Syria earthquake earlier this year and the deadly Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017 – both, she argues, were disasters resulting primarily from corner-cutting within the construction industry.

Hurricane Katrina, meanwhile, is not a story about a weather event to Easthope, but about "systemic state-failing in terms of the catastrophic failure to upkeep the levees".

"Almost all of the deaths that I see are a failure of design," she said.

"I would go so far as to say that what 'natural disasters' have done over the years is simply cloak massive design failings. For me, it's very rarely in some way not a design failure."

One major part of the problem, Easthope contends, is a chronic human difficulty in thinking seriously about the worst that can happen.

"People kind of fundamentally stop themselves before they get to the reasonable worst-case scenario," she said.

"That's very much a failure of imagination. It impedes our planning, and it's one of the things that's impeding our design."

For designers in particular – for example, architects working on projects in places prone to flooding or wildfires – a testing mental balancing act is required.

"You can be incredibly imaginative and incredibly exciting and incredibly innovative and push the boundaries of 'failure is not an option', while simultaneously preparing for it to go very wrong," Easthope said.

"I think that's a real challenge in design, to hold both thoughts simultaneously."

Global North "arrogant" about risks

As climate change accelerates, there is wide consensus among meteorologists and emergency planners that extreme weather events are likely to become increasingly common and severe.

In Easthope's eyes, this means that planning for disaster is more important than ever.

"It's not pessimism, I think it's a healthy dose of realism – we will not solve this problem, we will have to find a way to live alongside it," she said.

That should be a concern for wealthy countries as well as poorer ones, Easthope argues, adding that the notion that the world's more developed economies are better prepared is a "myth".

Instead, she claims the Global North has much to learn from the Global South when it comes to disaster management.

"The only thing really that Britain and America and Europe do is we're much more arrogant about how well we're going to defeat this risk," she said.

"Basically, in the countries that this is happening to right now you either adapt or you die, and so they're doing things like managed retreat, they're rebuilding whole villages, they do turn their infrastructure design upside-down."

"We're seeing all kinds of things happening that I think are really brave and innovative."

She points to ongoing disagreements in California over the best way to deal with worsening wildfires while Indonesia energetically builds a new capital city in response to extreme land subsidence in Jakarta.

For designers and architects keen to aid the effort to mitigate and respond to impending climate-related disasters, Easthope has some stark messages.

"Sometimes you want them put off, bluntly," she said. "I very rarely want to see goodwill."

"When I hear, 'we've got a volunteer architecture firm and they're doing this pro bono' – chills at the back of the neck."

"I want you paid, I want you commissioned by the government, I want money from the reparations fund, I want your best effort, your best people."

By definition, disasters are highly difficult scenarios ridden with tough decisions and failure is likely to be catastrophic, so genuine expertise is vital.

Disasters "will always win"

If you are designing for disaster, Easthope cautions, you must be in it for the long haul.

Even well-intentioned projects can go awry – and for that reason, she is sceptical of competitions inviting the uninitiated to undertake disaster-related projects.

"Often when things go wrong it's people coming up with good ideas from the heart that are really lovely ideas, but have got this kind of hidden tail – and one of the areas most vulnerable to that is surely architecture and design," said Easthope.

"I think there's a responsibility here on the field for really probing critical thinking."

Readers may be reminded of the Make It Right Foundation fronted by Brad Pitt, which saw big-name architects design replacement homes in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

The charity settled with residents of the homes for $20.5 million last year over a litany of issues including leaks, black mould and unstable foundations.

Another common issue is a failure to work effectively with impacted communities in the aftermath.

"We see architects brought in to reimagine a place after it's been destroyed and with almost no exception those meetings go terribly," said Easthope.

"And architects will stumble through and they're nervous and they use words that become very toxic like 'regeneration' – they often will erase, when actually what the community wanted was to enhance things that to the outside world may look undervalued and unnecessary."

Another thing to consider is that, in the case of disaster planning and management, the solution is not always new and innovative.

Easthope confesses to "delighting in the mundane" and "keeping what works".

Finally, disaster-related design can be punishing work, she warns.

"Be prepared to watch your projects burn down and wash away," she said. "You're designing things for a world that is very unstable. You don't get to win with disasters – they will always win."

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Designing for Disaster

This article is part of Dezeen's Designing for Disaster series, which explores the ways that design can help prevent, mitigate and recover from natural hazards as climate change makes extreme weather events increasingly common.

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Known for a string of boundary-pushing projects, Japanese architect Junya Ishigami discusses his unusual approach to designing buildings in this exclusive interview.

Ishigami's surreal work often challenges fundamental ideas of what a building is – such as his mud-covered underground house and restaurant in Ube, which was one of the most popular projects published on Dezeen last year.

His other projects include a vast, sloping plaza covered by a chequered roof for the Kanagawa Institute of Technology and, more recently, a kilometre-long visitors' centre in China that appears to emerge eerily from a lake.

"We have to invent a lot, I think"

Delivering a keynote at the In Focus: Radical Repair conference hosted by The World Around and Fondation Cartier last month, Ishigami explained that his enduring focus is "to re-interpret the boundary between landscape and architecture".

Speaking to Dezeen after the event, Ishigami argued that architects need to be inventive and push at boundaries, particularly as the world becomes more fractured.

"In the 20th century, Corbusier or something – the modern architect – created one solution," he said. "In that era everyone believed the same future, I think."

"But now each person believes a different future and [has] a differing imagining of the good things, bad things," he continued,

"So maybe the role of the architect in this era is not to create one solution but to create a lot of different solutions. So that means we have to invent a lot, I think."

In particular, Ishigami emphasises the importance of creating architecture "from non-architecture things".

For his own projects, that means basing the design of the structure entirely around the site on which – or in which – it will stand.

"We get inspiration from the condition or the existing environment in each project," he said.

"For me architecture is not just man-made, and also architecture should be one of the elements of the scenery," he continued. "So the architecture itself is not important, but the importance is the relationship with the surroundings."

Many architects would argue that their buildings draw on the surrounding context, but Ishigami takes this concept to extremes.

Blurring lines between architecture and landscape

For instance, in a recently completed visitors-centre project in China not yet officially unveiled, the glassy walls of the long, narrow volumes allow the lake water to flow inside, making the structure part of the landscape itself.

His house and restaurant for chef Motonori Hirata similarly blurs the line between indoors and out.

To create the extraordinary building, a series of meticulously planned holes were dug into the ground and concrete poured in.

The structure was then excavated as if it were an ancient ruin. From completion, it carried the aura of a prehistoric cave.

"The important point is that it is in-between the man-made and nature," Ishigami said of the project.

Such an unconventional project required an unconventional design process. For example, the glazed walls that seal the building were not decided by drawings.

Instead, once the concrete structure was excavated it was scanned to produce a 3D digital model, with glass then cut by lasers to fit the openings between the irregularly shaped columns and roof.

Despite designing such unusual structures, Ishigami says he does not find conventional buildings boring.

"Not so much," he said. "Even if it looks a normal building, sometimes they are very special I think."

"I want to see a lot of different ways of thinking about architecture," he continued.

"So [with] the historical building, or local or vernacular building, there is a lot of information I don't know, so that is very inspiring."

And while he recognises the eccentricity of his own work, he does not think strangeness alone is enough.

"I don't want to make a very crazy kind of building," he continued. "I want to create a good balance with the surroundings."

"The surroundings are normally normal, so the important point is how we can fit the strange idea to the normal things."

After graduating from his masters in 2000, Ishigami spent four years at acclaimed Japanese architecture studio SANAA.

He established his own practice, Junya Ishigami + Associates in 2006, and quickly attracted international attention.

His glass-walled KAIT studio project led to Ishigami become the youngest-ever recipient of the Architectural Institute of Japan Prize, and he won the Golden Lion for best project at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010, as well as the inaugural Obel Award in 2019.

But Ishigami was also the subject of negative press that year surrounding his Serpentine Pavilion project.

A major row erupted after it emerged that his studio was advertising unpaid internships while working on the prestigious commission, with the Serpentine Gallery later demanding that all staff working on the pavilion be remunerated.

People "very hysterical about sustainability"

Four years on, he still winces when the subject is raised, and declines to answer a question about what he learned from the experience.

"It's very difficult to make an answer, because somebody [will] always criticise," he said.

Ishigami's work has always defied trends – including the current shift among other prominent Japanese architects such as Shigeru Ban and Sou Fujimoto to adopting more sustainable building materials.

He is somewhat cryptic when questioned about his own approach to lowering the carbon footprint of his projects.

"Sustainability is very important, but at the same time, I think the balance is also important," he said.

"So for example, sometimes in this situation with the weather changing, I think a lot of [people are] kind of very hysteric[al] about sustainability," he continued.

"If everybody [has] to follow sustainability, that does not create a lot of value… in that case I think the way will be very uniform."

"That's very risky, I think. So we have to prepare a lot of directions [for] the solutions, I think."

Photography by Junya Ishigami + Associates, unless stated.

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Production designer Jack Fisk built a railway station from scratch and researched historic documents to recreate early 20th-century Oklahoma in his sets for Martin Scorsese's new film Killers of the Flower Moon.

Fisk has worked in the film industry for more than 50 years and collaborated with a number of big-name directors, including Roger and Gene Korman, Brian de Palma and Terrence Malick, for whom he built a house for the film Days of Heaven in less than four weeks.

Killers of the Flower Moon marks the first time Fisk has worked with Scorsese, who reached out to the designer because of his experience of building outdoor sets.

"It was exciting when he called me on this project – my experience has been, since Days of Heaven, building sets out on location," Fisk told Dezeen on a video call from Los Angeles, which he was visiting to attend the premiere of Killers of the Flower Moon.

"He wanted to tell the story. He wanted to shoot it in Oklahoma, he wanted it wide, big, like a Western."

Killers of the Flower Moon is based on the true story of how members of the Native American Osage Nation were systematically murdered in the 1920s after oil was discovered on their land, making them very wealthy but also making them targets.

It was shot in Oklahoma, with the city of Pawhuska in Osage County turned into Fairfax, where much of the story takes place.

Fisk, who had worked on another film in Pawhuska years earlier, already knew some of the background about the Osage Nation.

"I started investigating, and I went back to some of the first treaties around 1808 and 1825 and saw how the Osage were taken advantage of by our government, to move them around, to open land for European settlers," he said.

Fisk also investigated the backgrounds of the film's characters in order to build sets that would be historically accurate, including that of the central character Mollie Burkhart, played by Lily Gladstone.

"I wanted to figure out where Mollie lived in 1920," he explained. "Nobody knew, there was no record. But then I started going through the county records, and by the time the film started shooting, I found four of her houses."

Two of those were recreated in the film, including a house in Fairfax that Burkhart buys with her husband Ernest, played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

To recreate the town, Fisk looked at photographs from the time as well as fire insurance maps that stated what materials the buildings were made of.

"I was able to lay out the whole town, every building, for different years and how they evolved," he said.

"They gave us two blocks of decrepit buildings in Pawhuska that we could use for our town, and I started to try to integrate as much of the information I learned about Fairfax into these two blocks," Fisk added.

"At the end of the road, we put up a blue screen for CGI and when we were done, we were able to paint the prairie going off the town – today there are a lot more trees than there were back in 1920s."

An integral part of the Killers of the Flower Moon set was the Fairfax train station, which Fisk built from scratch.

"The train station was torn down, but I had some beautiful pictures of it," he said. "I found plans for that station in some old books about the Santa Fe Railroad and we were able to recreate it in a lot in Pawhuska."

"We put in 1,600 feet of train track," he added. "We built the train station to the plans of the original, and we brought in a steam locomotive and three Pullman cars from Arkansas and put them on the track."

Fisk also tore out the ceiling of an old appliance store, revealing clerestory windows and turning it into the light-filled pool hall and barber shop that is one of the film's central sets.

"I remembered, as a kid, getting my hair cut in the pool hall in a little town in the Midwest," Fisk said. "I said to Marty [Scorcese] that we could combine the pool hall and the barber shop – he loved the idea, and it became a really interesting set."

"All the people in there planning to get the Osage money looked out the window to see the Osage world going by, they knew who had money and who had lost it, and it was a great place for them to conspire."

The designer also painted about 40 houses to shoot one of the neighbourhoods in Fairfax. All the houses were originally white, the most common colour in the US after world war two, and didn't fit the colours from the 1920s colour charts that Fisk had bought from eBay.

"We told the house owners 'we'd like to paint two sides of your house in one of these colours, and when we're done shooting, we'll come back and either paint the other two sides the same colour, or we'll paint those two sides back to white'," Fisk said.

After filming was wrapped, only one house decided to go back to white.

For one of Mollie's houses, Fisk chose a yellow colour found in another of the buildings used for the film.

"I found that yellow in the Masonic Lodge, behind a wall," Fisk said. "There were some boards that colour and I took one to the painters and said, 'this would be a good colour for Mollie's house'."

It is these kinds of discoveries, based on research, that Fisk appreciates most about his work.

"It's an investigation, but it's exciting," he said. "You feel sort of like a detective, and you can't really design things until you get you get the knowledge of the research."

As well as the house in the city, Fisk and his team built Mollie's house in the Osage settlement town of Gray Horse and its surrounding environments.

"We built a piece of the Osage reservation, which she was looking at, and we built the cemetery, which was important because there were so many people ending up in the cemetery," he said.

Fisk also built an oil derrick from scratch, using the same plans for an 1896 derrick that he had used for Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 film There Will Be Blood.

More oil derricks were added using CGI to create the right atmosphere for film character William Hale's ranch, which was also surrounded by cattle to give it the feel of a Western.

"Marty is from New York City, so he went crazy when he saw the prairie and cattle, he got so excited – it was like a kid in a candy store," Fisk said. "He wore those cows out!"

The team ended up building around 40 sets for Killers of the Flower Moon, which Fisk believes adds to the final result.

"It takes a different mindset to build in the environment, but I think the reward is that you really get a sense of time and place," he said.

Other recent films with impressive worldbuilding include Wes Anderson's Asteroid City and Greta Gerwig's Barbie.

The photography is courtesy of Apple TV+. Killers of the Flower Moon will be released in cinemas on 20 October. 

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Landscape architects must prioritise creating "sponge cities" in the face of increased flooding, Oberlander Prize-winner Kongjian Yu tells Dezeen in this interview.

Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu believes that landscape architects need to take the lead in transforming "grey infrastructure into green infrastructure" if our cities are to resist flooding caused by changing climates.

He spoke to Dezeen after winning the US-based Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize.

"We have to do better"

"As climate change makes floods and drought more frequent, the climate in the regions like Europe and some part of the US that used to have more predictable and mild climates become monsoon-like, changeable climates, just like in China," said Yu.

"The centuries-old grey infrastructure failed and will fail due to their non-resilience," he continued, pointing to the recent debilitating flooding in urban cores like New York City.

Yu's experiences of rapid development in his home country in the late 1990s informed his approach to landscape design.

"I saw how wrongly the urbanisation in China happened at the sacrifice of the healthy ecosystem of the wetland, the rivers and the spaces for water in 1996 to 1997," he said.

"I knew I could do better, and I knew we have to do better to reach a sustainable relationship between man and nature."

Yu and his studio Turenscape have been working for years to help convert urban centres in China from concrete-dominated landscapes into places where water can freely flow through the city and into integrated parks and restored waterways.

Sponge-city concept based on "ancient wisdom"

Yu calls his theoretical approach to flood mitigation "sponge cities". The theory was informed by Yu's experiences of flooding in the late '90s in China.

"Sponge city is a water-resilient city built on nature-based ecological infrastructure, which is called a green sponge," he explained.

"Its strategy is to retain water at the site, slow down water flow, and be adaptive to the force of water, which is totally opposite to the grey infrastructure that all industrial and modern cities are dependent on – big dams to accumulate water, channel rivers back to flush away floods, and building floods wall to keep out a flood."

"The sponge city is rooted in the ancient wisdom of monsoon climate adaptation and is nature-based, and therefore can be upgraded and be inspiring to solve the problems of global climate change."

Yu and his studio have put these theories into practice in projects like Sanya Dong'an Wetland Park in China and Benjakitti Forest Park in Thailand, both projects that saw the conversion of dump sites and polluted waterways in urban centres into conservatory and recreation sites.

Turenscape has completed hundreds of similar projects internationally and in 2014 the Chinese government officially adopted Yu's sponge city concept as a "guiding theory" for future urban construction and revitalisation.

Yu believes that landscape architects must play a "leading role" in continuing to pressure cities and nations into thinking about flood mitigation when constructing urban areas.

"That is why I will advocate Sponge Planet," he said.

"By doing that, landscape architecture can also include political and social advocacy and use political and administrative force."

The main photo is by Barrett Doherty, courtesy of The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

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UK designer Thomas Heatherwick is launching his Humanise campaign today. In this interview, the director of the team leading the initiative, Matt Bell, explains what it aims to achieve.

Named Humanise, the campaign aims to put into action the ideas outlined in Heatherwick's book Humanise, a Maker's Guide to Building Our World – including putting "an end to boring buildings".

"This campaign is trying to stem the tide and spark a public conversation about the way buildings make us feel," Bell told Dezeen.

"We're trying to change the mindset and values behind a 'blandemic' that's bad for our health, bad for society and bad for the planet."

"A lot of cities around the world have been engulfed in boring, soulless buildings," he continued. "That's not a niceness problem, it's a civic and public-health issue, as research from the field of neuro-aesthetics reveals how this impacts on our wellbeing."

"Our first task is to change awareness"

Bell explained that the campaign's initial task will be to encourage people to care more about the buildings around them and build the belief that they can contribute to improving the overall quality of the built environment.

"Humanise is asking why so many places feel joyless and depressing, how did this happen and how can we start creating more buildings that last and are loved?" he said.

"Our first task is to change awareness – make it personal, make people care, give people some sense of agency over what gets built."

The project will initially be funded by Heatherwick Studio, which has completed numerous buildings that are rarely described as dull, including an art gallery in Cape Town carved out of grain silos, a park supported on 132 concrete columns above the Hudson River and a shopping centre in Shanghai covered in 1,000 trees.

Although not dull, many of its projects have been controversial, including its proposed Garden Bridge in London.

"You have to inspire public demand"

"Heatherwick Studio is paying for a team of three people for the next two years to get things moving," explained Bell.

"But this initiative belongs to anyone who chooses to get involved. We're looking to draw in cities, companies and community organisations as equal partners and turn it into a movement that can champion radically more human buildings."

Bell believes that the key to changing how buildings appear and improving people's experience of buildings is to encourage the public to have stronger opinions on the built environment and believe that they can impact it.

"I've been campaigning for 30 years since my first job as a youth worker, on everything from social justice to the built environment," he said.

"What I now know is you have to inspire public demand. It's not enough to win the professional debate, and government policies come and go – usually having been ignored," he continued.

"The thing that works is a shift in the public consensus about what is acceptable. It's happened on pesticides, plastic, drink driving, and racism. Now we need it on building design."

"Ten million conversations" target

According to Bell the team will consider the project a success if the campaign starts "10 million conversations" and leads to clients regularly wanting to understand the impact their projects have on people not directly using their buildings.

"We've set a target of sparking 10 million conversations around the world," he said. "That will give us a barometer to gauge whether people are interested."

"We need to get the idea of emotion as a function embedded in the way that architecture is taught. And we have to establish the concept of a human premium and use this to help people justify the additional investment it always takes to create genuinely human buildings."

"Ultimately, success will be a time when clients routinely ask how your design is going to impact on the passers-by, and every building of any scale is interesting, regardless of its style," he added.

Along with the book, Heatherwick has also recently outlined his thoughts on the "blandemic" in a three-part series on BBC Radio 4 called Building Soul with Thomas Heatherwick.

On the show, he stated that Le Corbusier was responsible for architecture's "global blandemic".

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With their own lifestyle brand launching today, design duo Carl Philip Bernadotte – who is Prince Carl Philip of Sweden – and Oscar Kylberg tell Dezeen how public scrutiny has kept them on their toes.

Prince Carl Philip is the only son of King Carl XVI Gustaf, and fourth in line to the Swedish throne, so he and Kylberg have had to deal with the spotlight ever since founding their Stockholm-based studio, Bernadotte & Kylberg, in 2012.

In an exclusive interview, the pair said this has driven them to work harder.

"It has been like that from the beginning, for good and bad," said the prince. "We know that everything we do is going to be looked at more."

"In the first years, it took a lot of energy from us, but today it's something that is just there," added Kylberg.

"It's like having your own cheerleading squad, in a way. You don't want to drop the ball; you want to work hard to show that you're up to the expectations."

Bernadotte and Kylberg have worked across fashion, homeware and industrial design, for Scandinavian brands including Georg Jensen, Stelton, Hästens and Skultuna.

These brands all sit in the luxury sector, so would all have reason to play up the royal connection. Yet the designers said they have previously avoided making themselves a focal point.

"When we launch something with a brand, we don't want to be the main focus," said Bernadotte. "We want the product to be number one."

Now, with the launch of their eponymous brand, the designers are deliberately putting themselves front and centre for the first time.

Their first own-branded products are scarves and blankets embellished with the B&K logo. This will later expand into a wider collection of products for the home.

"We want to make a statement," Kylberg said. "These are our products and this is our brand, our name."

"We designed that logo in 2012 and we haven't really used it before now," added Bernadotte. "It actually works really well on textiles."

The Bernadotte & Kylberg founders spoke to Dezeen via Zoom from their Stockholm studio, a former saddle-making chamber in the Royal Stables. While Kylberg appeared the more confident and articulate spokesperson, both were friendly and engaging.

The pair said they had dreamed of launching a Bernadotte & Kylberg brand "from day one" but that they didn't feel the time was right before now.

They have had reason to tread carefully. Back in 2013, Bernadotte came under fire when a previously unnamed collaborator claimed authorship for a product bearing the prince's signature, following accusations of plagiarism.

A decade on, the pair don't employ any other designers to work alongside them.

"Our promise to our clients is that we do the design and we take responsibility for it," said Kylberg.

This approach has its challenges, particularly as Bernadotte has to balance his design practice with the royal duties that come with being the Duke of Värmland.

But the pair said they have built up "a very natural symbiosis" after working closely together for more than a decade.

"It's a balancing act, but we make it work," said Bernadotte. "Sometimes I have to be away, but I always have B and K in the back of my mind."

"I think we have a very intuitive way of working together," added Kylberg.

"We take turns rowing the boat and we have a really high [level of] respect for each other's opinions. Today, if I came up with a design idea, it would just feel weird if Carl Philip didn't put his ideas to it."

The duo have had some important successes in the years since unveiling their first collaborative product, a set of playful stoneware dishes launched by porcelain brand Gustavsberg in 2012.

In 2016, they developed an innovative wine glass for German manufacturer Zwiesel Kristallglas, featuring a glass sphere that cleverly allows the wine to aerate.

The pair have also created a suite for Sweden's Icehotel, featuring blocks of ice filled with wildflowers.

While most of this hotel is famously melted down and rebuilt every year, this suite has been in place since 2021 and is set to remain for the foreseeable future.

According to Kylberg, they are driven by curiosity rather than ambition.

"Because it's only the two of us, we can only do so many projects," he said. "If we have to choose, we always pick the ones where there are interesting questions to be answered or problems to be solved. I think that's because we are extremely curious and detail-orientated."

He said that all the products they have made so far are "things that we love and use ourselves".

"What we do is us," added Bernadotte. "We do things we like and hope others will be inspired by them too."

The portrait is by Dion Morgan Norman.

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British fashion designer Ozwald Boateng says there is "definitely an opportunity" to disrupt the furniture industry in the same way he shook up the tailoring traditions of London's Savile Row in this interview.

Boateng has worked with Italian brand Poltrona Frau on his first-ever furniture collection, which includes a rework of the traditional Chesterfield sofa.

The London-based designer told Dezeen there was "a lot of space" for a more diverse cultural aesthetic in the market.

"There is a creative language that needs to express more in this space," Boateng said.

"I have a cultural aesthetic, in terms of my African roots, from being born in the UK and from my experience on Savile Row," he added. "There is definitely an opportunity to express this aesthetic in furniture."

Boateng was born in 1967 to parents who immigrated from Ghana in the 1950s.

He made history in 1995 when, at the age of 28, he became the youngest and first Black tailor to open a store on Savile Row, the heartland of bespoke suit-making.

The designer quickly earned renown for his fresh take on classic menswear silhouettes, which attracted a much younger and more diverse demographic to Mayfair.

"Starting on a traditional base is always the key for me," Boateng said.

"It's about taking something traditional and finding a modern language in which to express it."

When Poltrona Frau invited Boateng to collaborate, he saw it as an opportunity to demonstrate how the same thinking could be applied to furniture, he recalled.

The Chesterfield is one of the most iconic British furniture designs of all time, with almost as much history as the three-piece suit.

Characterised by quilted leather upholstery and a low back, this couch was first developed in the mid-1700s for Lord Philip Stanhope, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield, to seat gentlemen guests without creasing their suits.

Poltrona Frau has produced its own version, Chester, ever since the company was established in 1912.

"I have been sitting on a version of this chair for as long as I can remember; it represents so much historically," said Boateng.

"I knew that if I could find a modern way to interpret it, it would be a win."

Boateng unveiled new versions of the Chester sofa, armchair, daybed and ottoman as part of a capsule collection presented during London Design Festival.

The designs are upholstered in a unique embossed leather that incorporates a highly intricate pattern.

It took Poltrona Frau's team six months to develop a hot embossing technique to produce this effect.

The process has to be carried out manually, using a press that sandwiches the leather between a smooth metal surface and a bakelite plate.

Boateng believes this level of innovation is essential to ensuring that designs like the Chesterfield stay relevant, but claims it is often lacking in the British manufacturing industry.

"I have always said that tradition has to evolve or it dies," he said.

"In the UK, we only produce a fraction of what we did when I was first starting out. That has a lot to do with not evolving skillsets. If you're not willing to change, it doesn't work."

Boateng said the key to evolving traditions is "understanding the rules, so you can understand how to bend them".

"It's about adding friction into the process," he said.

Boateng's version of Chester is a clear expression of his multicultural heritage.

The embossed pattern that features on the design is Tribal, one of the designer's signature textile designs, which is based on prints from traditional West African cloth.

The collection also includes a rework of one of Poltrona Frau's landmark designs, the 1930 Vanity Fair armchair, which sees the Tribal pattern digitally printed onto matt-effect velvet.

Boateng described the collection as "a layered proposition, because of what it represents".

However, the designer said that he is more motivated by the quality of the end product than what it stands for.

"I have been navigating perception my whole life," he said.

"I knew that if I could be on Savile Row, respecting the traditions but finding interesting ways to evolve them, it would be accepted and would open doors in terms of perception. It's the same with Poltrona Frau."

Ozwald Boateng x Poltrona Frau was on show from 16 to 24 September as part of London Design Festival. See Dezeen Events Guide for more architecture and design events around the world.

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The post "Tradition has to evolve or it dies" says Ozwald Boateng appeared first on Dezeen.