With a legacy dating back to 1829, Delvaux brings its historic savoirs and savoir faire to Hong Kong’s K11 Musea, combining them with local references that carry a hint of Belgian wit

In the plush VIC salon of Delvaux’s newest flagship store in Hong Kong, almost an entire wall is devoted to variations of the Brillant handbag, one of the maison’s most iconic creations. First introduced in 1958 to coincide with the Brussels World’s Fair, the first major fair after the Second World War, the design draws from modernist master Le Corbusier’s Philips Pavilion; here, its sharp structure and fluid roof lines are reinterpreted in the Brillant’s sharp-angled gussets. Subsequent editions over the years have kept the bag relevant, echoing Delvaux CEO Jean-Marc Loubier’s sentiments on heritage and modernity.

‘The timing of the launch of the Brillant is apt as it symbolised hope and confidence in the future, and continues to do so,’ says Loubier, who also oversees Delvaux’s interior design globally. At the recent ‘Brillant’ soirée for the flagship in Victoria Dockside, he describes the mixed-use complex as aligned with his ambitions for the brand. ‘K11 Musea is the next phase of luxury retail in Hong Kong,’ he says. ‘It allows connection to the skyline and rediscovery of shopping.’

Loubier continues to enthusiastically advocate for the brand’s dual nature of honouring traditions while looking to the future. To that end, every boutique is a creative bridge between its host and home cities. At the Hong Kong flagship, the bifurcated Art Deco facade’s geometric lines flow seamlessly into the interiors, where a selection of artworks and design elements interplay, evoking the layered elegance of a grand European estate. Sited near the Salisbury Road entrance, these two openings frame a distinct point of entry, inviting passers-by to experience the maison through a Hong Kong lens. One opens onto a deliberately meandering path through the boutique; the other offers a view of the bar, a recurring element across Delvaux interiors, each time reinterpreted in response to its setting.

Leading to the bar is a giltwood mirror clutched by a golden dragon by French master Gabriel Viardot. Loubier hand-picked the late 19th-century antique to underscore the connection between Europe and Asia, with Hong Kong standing at the crossroads of two cultures. ‘The dragon is important to Chinese culture,’ Loubier notes, with the mirror also significant for its heritage. ‘It was created during the cradle of luxury in the second half of the 19th century — a time when Delvaux flourished.’ The work reflects the maison’s enduring approach to decorative arts, where craft and utility are considered in equal measure.

Another standout example appears in the VIC salon, where a late 17th-century wool and silk tapestry, The Bridal Procession on Horseback, spans the wall behind the latest collection. Its rich details and naturalistic colours are echoed by the intricate craft of the iconic Brillant bags juxtaposed against it. ‘The tapestry is a marriage celebration and part of everyday life that Hong Kong people can relate to,’ says Loubier. ‘It’s also a window to the world.’

Drawing on Belgium’s modernist heritage, Loubier also embraces elements of surprise and wit to reflect values of family, playfulness and our inner lives. ‘Think of Surrealism and the art of René Magritte,’ he says. ‘Part of Belgian culture is the twist — the surprise, the double meaning. The idea of combining the beautiful and the useful is a reaction against industrialisation. We hope that these pieces will start dialogues; that exclusivity becomes inclusivity.’

At One Bangkok, a new Workplace Show Suite sheds the rigidity of the traditional office in favour of something more open and adaptable. Through layered zoning and spatially responsive furnishings, the space explores how the modern workplace can support fluid and distinctly human ways of working

The Workplace Show Suite at One Bangkok — set within Thailand’s most ambitious mixed-use development — opens with a premise rather than a prescription: that no two organisations work the same way, and the office should not pretend otherwise.

A collaboration between MillerKnoll, Chanintr and One Bangkok, the project is framed by three guiding principles — wellbeing, connection and change. Also known as Twenty and Above, the show suite responds with a flexible workplace framework composed of multiple formats that can be calibrated to reflect distinct working identities.

This thinking is expressed through a layered zoning strategy. Organised across three zones — a reception and executive meeting area, a contemporary hybrid workspace, and a flexible open-plan office — each environment carries its own tone and function, illustrating how varied workplace needs can coexist.

‘Each company has its own culture, its own style, its own needs in terms of function,’ says Chanintr Sirisant, CEO of Chanintr. ‘We’re really trying to show three different options that act as a toolkit, for customers to craft something that matches their own identity.’

Furniture plays a critical role in shaping this narrative. Drawing from across the MillerKnoll collective, including Herman Miller, Knoll, Muuto and NaughtOne, the space brings together multiple design languages to create environments that are human-centred and accommodating of different modes of working. In place of uniformity, it embraces a sense of authorship, enabling designers and organisations to compose spaces that reflect their own culture and style.

‘What guides our work at MillerKnoll is long-term research rather than short-term trends,’ says Praveen Muppidi, Senior Regional Director, South Asia and Southeast Asia at MillerKnoll. ‘Over decades we've studied how people actually use space — where friction occurs, where choice matters, and how environments influence wellbeing and performance.’

With this approach, the Show Suite does not disregard the fundamentals that make a workplace successful, but rather provides solutions in which these principles are not merely imposed objectives, but natural byproducts of spaces that simply work, and work well.

In Pak Chong District near Khao Yai, this home was designed as an extension to an existing family house, responding to changing routines and the need for a larger shared space. Elevated to align with the rooftop of the original house — now a guest house — the new building retains the panoramic mountain views, while the open ground below becomes a garden where the family’s cows can move freely. The arrangement recalls the traditional elevated Thai house, reinterpreted in a contemporary register.

At the centre of the home is an open living area that flows into the dining space and kitchen, extending outward to a continuous balcony. A double-layered facade of full-height glass and operable aluminium louvres in a wood-grain finish filters sunlight and heat, and can be closed when the family is away. Concrete forms a calm backdrop, while timber introduces warmth across the interiors. In the kitchen, an island in Green India stone anchors the space at the point of arrival.

Rather than express Thai identity through literal or nostalgic gestures, the home responds through climate, openness and the way the family lives within it. Named W House II, the project takes its cue from IDIN Architects’ founding principle — Integrating Design into Nature.

Images by DOF Sky|Ground

Adda Space Architecture has designed a home with a playful, retro-futuristic allure, tailored to the lifestyle of a couple and their four pets

​In a tranquil Shanghai suburb, Cheng Tang and Quan Zhou of Nanjing-based Adda Space Architecture encountered a brief that played to their preference for working outside convention: the redesign of a 70-square-metre apartment for a dual-career couple with full schedules, their greyhound Jojo and three cats. The scope prioritised spatial clarity and authenticity over overt status symbols, while still seeking a degree of camera-ready polish. ‘There wasn’t a need to design for immediate family expansion, child safety or multigenerational living. This gave us much more freedom to focus on their social hobbies, work-from-home needs and social life over a conventional layout,’ says Tang.

The project pares back the original two-bedroom plan, removing unnecessary partitions to open up a continuous flow between the foyer, living room, bathroom and kitchen. Here, the sink is folded into a dining island with high stools, making more efficient use of the footprint. Next to it, a built-in vanity sits just beyond the wet zone, maintaining a clear flow while ensuring the bathroom door doesn’t directly face the entry, in line with feng shui principles. The bedroom, living area and laundry occupy three corners, establishing separation and privacy. The fourth is Jojo’s room, a glass-enclosed volume converted from the former balcony that brings in plenty of natural light. ‘We opted to fully integrate it into the floor-plan rather than treat it as an improvised corner,’ says Tang, noting that the cats need not be jealous; they have their own dedicated climbing structures. The pets, then, informed the spatial logic as much as their owners, and the free-flowing plan also makes life easier for the resident robot cleaner.

A functional foyer accommodates coats and shoe changing beneath a backlit grid ceiling. ‘We drew on visions of future living from the 1950s to 1970s, taking cues from 2001: A Space Odyssey,’ explains Tang. Further details — portal-like thresholds, porthole mirrors and circular apertures — deepen the lexicon. Walls carry a mix of colours and textures, offset by stainless steel shelving. Underfoot, terrazzo tiles and marble mosaic set the tone, while Rojo Alicante and Rosso Levanto marble define the kitchen island and vanity, respectively. The guiding principles for materials were durability, scratch resistance and ease of maintenance. ‘In a way, the pets helped us to create a more aesthetic interior,’ Tang quips. Paired with marble, cabinetry in burl veneer introduces an extra note of old-world charm, aligning with one owner’s preferences.

Zhou and Tang held back bold gestures in the decor, allowing the couple’s own pieces to define the interior. ‘They have a wide range of hobbies, from mountain climbing and surfing to painting and photography, so we didn’t need to buy much,’ notes Tang. Still, a handful of playful interventions are threaded through the scheme, including a rocking horse sourced from an antique shop, non-functional wayfinding signs and a light box bearing Jojo’s name above her room. For Tang, this project and its distinct style reflect a rising mindset in China: ‘People are no longer interested in traditional layouts, fixed styles or symbols of status,’ he says. ‘They prefer function and comfort, and want their home to be a unique space that truly belongs to them.’

Text by Tomás Pinheiro
Images by Hao Zheng

This season favours breathable silhouettes and relaxed volume. Layers are light, versatile and designed to be worn alone or intuitively stacked throughout the day

01
Waa Studios, Vietnam

Waa, a Ho Chi Minh City-based label dedicated to gender-neutral accessories, continues its exploration of material and form this season. The label’s latest collection experiments with innovative leathers and weaving patterns, refreshing classic silhouettes across tote bags, mules and sandals — ideal for a short getaway to a warmer climate or for everyday use. waa-studios.com

02
Pillings, Japan

For Pillings’s latest collection, designer Ryota Murakami turns his attention to the overlooked routines of daily life. Drawing inspiration from the Japanese supermarket chain MyBasket, the collection leans into soft cottons, light knits and sheer layers. A delicate buttoned cardigan, punctuated with gathered rosette appliqués, brings texture and quiet charm to everyday dressing, and creased, ruched shoes add a subtle feminine note. pillings.jp

03
Harris Tapper, New Zealand

Flirty hems and softly draped silks give Harris Tapper’s SS26 collection a feminine yet playful edge. Drawing on layers that range from baby-soft cashmere to fluid, crumpled satin, pieces like the lightweight Eileen top pair naturally with the ruffled Onassis bag, equally at ease in daylight or under evening lights. harristapper.com

04
Le Ngok, Philippines

Le Ngok thrives on unpredictability. Carla Zhang’s label turns fabric into one-of-a-kind clothing and accessories shaped by chance and technique. In the Flowing Line jacket and pants, individually stitched lines trace the surface of the fabric, ensuring no two pieces are the same. The Oneness zipper bag is upcycled from deadstock zippers, transforming utilitarian materials into a bold statement piece. lengok.com

05
Hermès, France

Timekeeping gets a touch of Hermès flair with the H08 watch in titanium. A sunburst satin-brushed titanium bezel with mirror-polished chamfers frames the watch, complemented by a matching titanium bracelet for a sleek, minimalist silhouette. hermes.com

06
Alba Amicorum, England

From her Belgravia atelier, Darshana Shilpi Rouget, a former creative director for brands like Tiffany & Co. and Cartier, continues to reimagine the scarf as an intimate, wearable canvas with Alba Amicorum. Each one is handcrafted in Como, Italy, with delicate hand-rolled hems. The new series brings together a collection of artists, including Rouget herself, who expands her painterly explorations with Intonation 03, rendered in a wool-cashmere blend and earthy silk-screened tones. albaamicorum.com

07
Man-tle, Australia

Man-tle, led by Aida Kim and Larz Harry, unites Australian design with craftspeople from Japan and elsewhere. Known for seasonless, modern tailoring, the label collaborates with family-run factories in Japan and elsewhere to produce textiles built to last, with each piece designed to adapt to the wearer and develop character over time. The R0V1 Aurora Low, handmade in Upstate New York, is a Middle English monk-style flat, crafted from supple leather, set on a thick Vibram sole and finished with a solid black brass buckle. man-tle.com

08
Bottega Veneta, Italy

The Maxi Veneta is generously sized yet impeccably sculpted. Lambskin leather, woven in the brand’s signature intrecciato, drapes easily from the shoulder while retaining its shape. It’s a bag that fits all your holiday essentials without ever looking bulky. bottegaveneta.com

09
Studio Nicholson, England

Studio Nicholson doubles down on relaxed tailoring this season. The Colt top is shaped by workwear-inspired proportions, finished with an elongated tie collar and a generous drape that can be worn loose or tucked. Grounding the look, the unisex Barlow mule features a rounded toe and low stacked heel that adds polish to any look. studionicholson.com

10
Kaptain Sunshine, Japan

Founded by former fashion editor Shinsuke Kojima, Kaptain Sunshine takes its cues from vintage Americana to create everyday staples. This season pairs soft tailored shirts with crisp outerwear, all based around natural fibres. The pieces move effortlessly from summer leisure to city ensembles, rendered in calm shades of navy, grey, ink and sand. kaptainsunshine.com

11
Lulu Lutfi Labibi, Indonesia

Yogyakarta-based label Lulu Lutfi Labibi is known for reimagining Indonesian dress traditions through a contemporary lens. In its latest collection, a softened beskap, traditionally worn by men, anchors the offering, deconstructed and reworked across varied silhouettes, and joined by draped halter forms and lightly loosened tailoring that falls naturally on the female body. instagram.com/lululutfilabibi

12
Gia Studios, Vietnam

Gia Studios, led by Lam Gia Khang, brings a sense of luxury to minimalist dressing. Crafted in Vietnamese silk, the Elio Vietnamese silk waist-tie dress drapes fluidly with soft volume at the waist, while the Pino slub silk draped dress adopts a more architectural approach with its sculptural lapel and boxy cut. gia-studios.com

13
Aton, Japan

Built around relaxed silhouettes and precise cuts, Aton SS26 pairs lightweight trousers and jackets with a quiet authority, ideal for laid-back days. The standout Doro silk reversible jacket draws on sportswear heritage, with crisp silk taffeta on one side and supple nylon on the other. The silk is mud-dyed in Yunnan using a centuries-old technique — soaked in orchid roots, coated with iron-rich mud and sun-dried repeatedly to achieve its deep espresso brown tone. aton-tokyo.com

14
A Personal Uniform, Thailand

A Personal Uniform, led by Sorada Thaiwaranon, approaches clothing with quiet practicality, favouring architectural cuts, soft fabrics and adaptable silhouettes produced in limited quantities. This collection continues the studio’s approach, with pieces like the Brassai cocoon top and Anais cotton joggers crafted to slip effortlessly into the everyday rotation. apersonaluniform.com

15
Georg Jensen, Denmark

Danish house Georg Jensen has long been synonymous with sculptural jewellery tinged with playfulness. For its latest release, long-time collaborator Jacqueline Rabun expands three of the brand’s signature collections. The Offspring earrings, for instance, reinterpret the collection’s iconic egg motif, with a central hoop cradling detachable drops in graduating sizes. georgjensen.com

16
Margaret Howell, England

Relaxed tailoring meets small, clever details in Margaret Howell’s SS26 collection. The Short trench, for instance, is a lightweight outerwear piece made of Ventile, featuring raglan sleeves and a removable storm tab with a leather buckle fastening. margarethowell.co.uk

For a Hong Kong client whose profession is selling other people’s treasures, Via Architecture has designed a home calibrated to display his own — and to house a family at the same time

There’s a particular kind of room an auction house aspires to: enough light to read a label, enough hush to focus, enough neutrality that the object on the wall is the only thing asking for attention. It’s quite different from a domestic register. Children don’t eat breakfast in it. Nobody puts their feet on the coffee table.

The Auctioneer Home, designed by Hong Kong studio Via Architecture, argues that these two modes — the viewing room and the family room — can occupy the same footprint. The client is an auctioneer; the residence demanded space that could host both private life and gatherings of visiting collectors. Whether one register could really make space for the other is the question the project continually had to answer.

The downstairs rooms come closest to the auction-house mood. A pale beige sofa floats on a textured stone floor; a fireplace surrounded by architecturally lined render catches light at oblique angles; slatted timber screens, shot through with ribbons of mottled glass, filter the daylight. The Aqua Creations Sea of Galilee wall light at the entry — glowing through a sculptural fluted cutout — sets the atmosphere, leaving the rest of the room free to defer to whatever is brought in to be admired.

But there are a few homey tells. The swivel chair in animal-patterned upholstery doesn’t read as gallery furniture. The eight-seat marble dining table beneath Venicem’s Crown Suspension pendant is sized for a household, not a viewing. The kitchen, while lined in beige marble with grey veining, is created for working. These are the rooms where the family lives, and they sit inside the same envelope of restraint without quite being subsumed by it.

Upstairs the discipline loosens, introducing some more intriguing touches. The main bedroom suite is brightened by a sunburst-patterned headboard and textured wallpaper; the en suite bathroom, in beige marble with dual sinks, leans into an almost hotel-like theatre. The junior suite abandons the script entirely: orange-accented and youthful with an onyx-clad en suite. A third bathroom is defined by a green and white marble vanity, shot through with ripples of sea-glass emerald.

In balancing public and private, Via’s design scheme balances performance and relaxation, but even the former doesn’t sacrifice the comfort of home.

Text by Katherine Ring
Images by Victor Vieaux

Sydney architects, a Singaporean shophouse and a South American rodent: how cult Australian wellness brand Capybara Bathing brought its philosophy of radical slowness to Singapore

The name came from a video. Rebecca Qin, one of the Australian founders of Capybara Bathing, had seen clips of capybaras — the improbably serene South American rodents that go viral periodically — filmed sitting motionless in Japanese hot springs with little mandarins balanced on their heads. That stillness, that complete absence of urgency, was what she wanted people to feel. The name stuck.

Capybara opened its first international outpost in February, inside two adjoining heritage shophouses on a vibrant street in Singapore. The location was deliberate — on the fringe of the CBD, close enough to catch professionals spilling out of the business towers, but also drawing from the surrounding residential blocks and nearby hotels. Nicole Chew, who co-directs the Singapore branch alongside Benz Tangkunboriboon, has lived in the city for seven years. ‘Singapore is fast-paced,’ she says. ‘There’s high pressure and stress. We really feel the city needs an outlet.’

The 300-square-metre space was designed entirely in-house by co-founder Justin Lo and his Sydney-based architectural practice Studio Blek — the same team behind the original Surry Hills studio — with Chew and Tangkunboriboon, who both have architectural and construction backgrounds, managing the build. Lo describes the spatial concept as a sequence of compressions and releases: ‘There are these fragmented rooms within a big envelope. Inside those intimate spaces the materials are quite textural — you’re supposed to touch the wall tiles because they’re ceramic, they’re unglazed, they’re all coloured in a similar warm, reddish-brown tone.’ Step outside those rooms and the palette shifts — smoother micro-cement in a lighter beige, the contrast working on visitors subconsciously as they move between compression and relief.

The sequence begins before guests reach the water. ‘The moment you take your shoes off, you feel the floor beneath your feet,’ says Tangkunboriboon. ‘Then when we open the curtain, you get a glimpse of the bath house — but we direct you into the changing room first. It’s a slow surprise, slowly revealing the space.’ The mosaic Japanese tiles that curve along the pool walls were nearly sent back by the tiler who installed them, convinced they were defective. Tangkunboriboon insisted they stay. ‘Each tile has its own bend — but when it’s over a big span, all those imperfections, you kind of lose them.’ The brass fixtures will patina. The exposed ceiling, rather than being plastered over, has been left as found. ‘We’re showcasing the structure of the building and the history of Singapore shophouses,’ Lo says. ‘Not adding extra wasted materials for no reason.’

Locally sourced details fill the space: Mud Rock Ceramics contributed handmade basins, PluntCo handled the landscaping and staff uniforms were designed by Singaporean label Rye. The programming follows a recommended ritual through which the team walks first-timers on arrival, along with two house rules: no phones, and keep your voice low. This includes contrast bathing between warm to hot mineral pools and a cold plunge, a Nordic-inspired hot lounge with shaved ice and salt scrubs, guided movement and sound sessions.

Lo’s favourite spot in the house is the hot bench beside the skylight. ‘You’re sitting on a warm bench, a little bit wet, and the feeling is very soft — very easy on the body. Then when we bring in the flaked ice for the scrub, it’s a very gentle, very light approach to contrast therapy.’ The slowness, he says, is the point. Chew puts it plainly: ‘We’re basically trying to bring people in, slow them down and then hopefully they leave feeling better.’ It is, in the end, a simple idea. The capybara doesn't overthink it.

Text by Katherine Ring
Images by Dawn Tan Xinning

The monthly briefing from Design Anthology’s editors on the most interesting things to see, places to go and products to know

Vincent Van Duysen for Koyori
Tokyo
Chair

Belgian architect and designer Vincent Van Duysen and Tokyo-based furniture brand Koyori presented their first collection together at Salone del Mobile this month. What drew Van Duysen in was Koyori’s instinct to put the makers before the brand: ‘Rather than placing the brand at the centre, Koyori seemed to place the manufacturers, their skills and their histories first,’ he says. The resulting collection, named Hinode (‘Sunrise’), is produced in solid wood, each piece refined through extended iteration with the Japanese craftspeople making it. Images by Hiroshi Iwasaki

Sequence — A Listening Room by Kwangho Lee, Nuovo
Hong Kong
Exhibition

Korean designer Kwangho Lee fills Nuovo’s Central showroom with 20 chairs constructed from sponge pipes and nylon rope, coated in polyurethane — pieces that read somewhere between oversized knitwear and organic sculpture. Alongside them, his TCOC (The Colour of Copper) carpet collection for CC-Tapis, hand-knotted in Himalayan wool, silk and aloe fibre, translates copper’s oxidation and patina into a shifting, luminous palette. The show continues until 15 May.

Wall Light, Nave, So Koizumi Design
Shizuoka, Japan
Light

So Koizumi created this wall light for a specific room, within a villa by Ohmura Nakamura Atelier with a ceiling high enough to read as a church nave. The form is drawn from the building’s own roofline, recast as a volume that holds rather than throws light. It rotates on a structure that follows the geometry of the counter below, adjusting with use. Entirely site-specific, and entirely convincing for it. Image by Tomoyuki Kusunose

Collections for the Home, Hermès
Paris
Collection

The 2026 home collection from Hermès was shown at La Pelota in Milan, installed across a series of beech-wood and plaster volumes designed by the maison’s co-artistic director of home, Charlotte Macaux Perelman. The collection is built around multiple threads. The first is the Palladion d’Hermès line — a series of vases, a jug and a centrepiece in hand-hammered palladium-finish metal, produced by Studio Hermès and finished in horsehair, Swift calfskin, lizard, cassia wood or goatskin depending on the piece. The second is textiles — cashmere throws hand-woven in Nepal, resist-dyed, edged and assembled by embroidery stitch, including one piece by designer Hyunjee Jung worked in the traditional Korean bojagi method. The Stadium d’Hermès dining table by Barber & Osgerby, in Carrara Venato and Verde Alpi marble marquetry, forms the furniture offering.

Kiyola KF-20 and KF-25, Roland
Hamamatsu, Japan
Instrument

Roland’s Kiyola series sits at the intersection of instrument and furniture — digital pianos built in Japan through a collaboration with Karimoku, the premium wood furniture manufacturer whose craftspeople have been refining local woodworking techniques since 1940. Two new models extend the line: the KF-20, with gentle curves and a new celadon green finish; and the sharper, more angular KF-25, finished in smoked oak and styled along Japandi lines. Their US availability through the MoMA Design Store speaks to how Roland positions them.

Shang Bar by Kasa&Sama
Shanghai
Bar

The facade of Shang on Yongyuan Road — between Jing’an Temple and the Nanjing West Road business district — gives nothing away. Push open the right door and a three-metre-high pink one waits on the other side — a deliberate jolt before the concrete and stainless steel interior takes over. The circular bar counter is designed to dissolve the distance between bartender and guest; the ceiling above it rotates through artist installations. Heavy linen curtains at the back divide a lower-key sofa area for those who want to be in the room without being at the centre of it.

Matte Teabar by The Lab Saigon
Ho Chi Minh City
Cafe

Matte Teabar’s flagship occupies a century-old French villa down an alleyway in a residential Ho Chi Minh City neighbourhood, announced only by a small swinging cat sign — a nod to the roughly 20 cats that roam the surrounding streets. The Lab Saigon set low stools in loose clusters around the garden courtyard, referencing Vietnamese street coffee culture, while inside, stone and straw-mixed concrete sit against the original exposed brick and timber roof. In the annex, a dedicated tearoom hosts tastings and workshops under a custom pendant shaped like a chasen (bamboo tea whisk), its circle of light falling directly onto the table below.

SilverKris First Class Lounge, Terminal 2, Singapore Airlines
Singapore
Lounge

Singapore Airlines’ SilverKris First Class Lounge at Changi T2 reopened in November 2025 following a transformation by Ong&Ong, with environmental graphics by Immortal. A striking 20-metre batik installation lines the bridge approach; inside, the motif reappears more sparingly — etched into canopies, set behind curved alcoves — so it reads as texture rather than theme. The Signature Bar sits under a deliberately lowered ceiling in a 180-degree arc, while the nearby living and dining areas open out to full-height windows. A sloped ceiling in the kitchen, rather than being concealed, was kept and the services rerouted around it — a small decision that gives the room its most compelling architectural moment. Images courtesy of Singapore Airlines

Squares of Water by Jeff Siscar, Spruce Gallery
Manila
Exhibition

Jeff Siscar is an architect by training — a principal and co-founder of Celllo Design Collective — and the tension between that discipline and painting is exactly what his first solo show turns on. The paintings in Squares of Water use architectural forms as their starting point, then quietly undermine them. A solitary figure appears across the works, caught at the moment before action completes itself — poised at a ledge, a threshold, the edge of water. The title holds the tension: water resists containment; a square insists on it. Curated by Ric Gindap, the show runs until 8 May at Spruce Gallery.

Aster & Didim, Note Design Studio
Seoul
Furniture

Stockholm studio Note Design Studio launched two products at the Seoul Living Design Fair this year, each developed with a different Korean partner. Aster, made with Ago Lighting, is a modular pendant system that scales from a single cone-shaped element to a larger ceiling composition — the form is spare, the effect architectural. Didim, made with furniture brand Alloso, is a low modular sofa system drawn from Korea's traditional floor-based living culture — specifically the madang (courtyard) and maru (wooden platform) of the hanok — and reconfigured for contemporary open-plan interiors.

At Kaipuu on the Reef in Quanzhou, Signyan’s renovation decision to expose rather than conceal the ancient granite beneath the building turned out to be its making

Quanzhou isn’t mentioned much in conversations about Chinese design destinations, but that may be changing. The city — once the eastern terminus of the Maritime Silk Road, a place where Arab merchants, Portuguese traders and Fujian fishermen all left their mark — sits on the southern coast and has been shaped by centuries of trade and outside influence. Thirty minutes from the city centre, where the shoreline gives way to exposed granite reef, Kaipuu on the Reef has opened as the most ambitious hotel the region has seen.

Chongqing-based studio Signyan came to the project late. The building's structure was already complete when they were brought in to handle the interior renovation, furniture and artwork. The first thing they did was demolish walls.

‘The original architecture had actually enclosed the reef rock,’ says Signyan’s Fei Qi. The granite that continues the reef — granite that had been on the Fujian coast considerably longer than any hotel — had been wrapped and hidden. ‘We thought it was quite a gift from nature,’ says Qi. ‘We wanted to make it the focus, especially in the grand hall.’ The plaster was thus stripped back to expose the rock entirely. Walk into the lobby now and the reception desk stands out against a raw rock face, unpolished and unmediated. Stone columns and pale plaster walls are a deliberate counterpoint — what Qi describes as ‘a dialogue between nature and order’.

The 46-room hotel keeps to the same palette throughout — sand, grey, warm timber. ‘We used a lot of neutral and natural materials,’ says Qi. ‘Not too loud.’ Furniture and objects were selected in collaboration with a group of young Chinese designers, most of them working with the studio for the first time. Studio Kae produced a ceramic tea set whose rough, almost sand-blasted finish recalls the reef stone outside. Designer Hai Fu contributed cement spheres placed along softly shimmering paving in the corridors. Painter Ni Zhi Qi’s large canvases hang in the entrance hall, dark and raw at the edges. And the hotel’s signature scent was developed with Chinese fragrance brand Documents. ‘Quanzhou is a city with quite a lot of diversity,’ says Qi. ‘There are young local artists doing very creative work there, and we wanted to invite them into the project.’

A year after the hotel opened, a second building was completed on the same stretch of reef — the Healer Cafe, a three-storey white structure that sits closer to the water than the hotel itself. Its gridded perforations reference the lattice patterns found in Quanzhou’s traditional architecture, and shell fragments are pressed into the wall plaster. The ground floor opens directly onto the beach, the upper floor serves as a gallery and private dining space, and the level between moves from ceremonial to casual, all looking over a crescent bay where fishing boats still anchor. ‘The clients wanted to offer a space where people could be even closer to the sea,’ says Qi. On some evenings, guests light bonfires on the sand below.

Text by Katherine Ring
Images by Jonathan Leijonhufvud

Casey Brown Architecture’s Permanent Camping series has always asked the same question. At its third iteration — two Corten A-frames on a working sheep farm outside Orange — the answer is sharper than ever

Two Corten-clad A-frames sit on a working sheep farm outside Orange, low against the paddock. From a distance they could be farm sheds. Get closer and the geometry is more deliberate — sharply angled steel forms, prefabricated off-site and raised on legs above ground that freezes in winter and bakes in summer.

This is the third in Casey Brown Architecture’s Permanent Camping series, after earlier cabins in Mudgee and Berry. The brief has barely shifted: two people, a bed, a fireplace, a compact kitchen, a deck. The restraint is the idea. PC3, led by project architect Daniel Weber, asks what you actually need, then stops there.

The site is unforgiving — snow, bushfire risk, winds across open paddocks — so the structure is entirely steel, with no timber to rot, burn or feed termites. Inside, the logic flips. Oiled recycled ironbark covers the walls and ceiling, bespoke brass fittings catch the light, and custom steel details, painted orange by a local smash repair garage, provide a moment of levity. Circular skylights pierce the roof, tracking the sun through the day. At the rear, the plan narrows to a fully louvred bathroom where the landscape comes in on all sides.

Both cabins run entirely off-grid, serviced by an external box that holds batteries, tanks and firewood. The property owner and his son built much of the structure themselves, over years — every weld their own. That matters here. PC3 sits in a region filling up with retreats, and the fact that this one was made slowly, by hand, by people with skin in the game, is exactly what gives it its character.

Text by Katherine Ring
Images by Zella Casey Brown

After two decades of illuminating interiors, Melbourne-based Volker Haug is still chasing the curiosity and wonder that first drew him to the medium at the age of ten

Sculptural and luminous, Volker Haug’s lighting often takes geometric forms, softened by a sense of playfulness and whimsy that prevents the pieces from ever feeling rigid. The German-born, Melbourne-based designer attributes much of his distinctive approach to what he calls his ‘untrained eye’. Originally trained as a hairdresser, Haug has been fascinated by light since childhood, first experimenting at the age of ten, tinkering with lamps with the same restless curiosity that continues to fuel his work today.

‘What has stayed with me is that feeling of change, how a single switch can make a space feel calm, warm or dramatic,’he says.‘Light always felt natural to me, like a language I could understand without being taught. I’m still chasing the same feeling I had as a child, just more intentionally now.’

This year marks two decades since Haug founded his eponymous studio. That delicate tension between discipline and play remains central to his practice, now amplified by a larger team and greater resources that allow him to realise more ambitious projects without ever losing his signature mischief and spontaneity.

The OMG chandelier, composed of reclaimed industrial aluminium light shades, crushed and anodised into iridescent colour fields illustrates this perfectly. First conceived nearly 20 years ago and refined through countless iterations since, its largest expression was commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria and is now permanently installed at the Ian Potter Centre. The crushing was itself iterative: early experiments involved driving over the shades with a car, before Haug discovered the forms responded best to the focused force of a sledgehammer.

‘While the process is very violent,’ Haug admits with a laugh, ‘I think that’s probably what really fascinates me. It becomes the most beautiful, iridescent, soft-looking design.’ The resulting puckered, disc-like forms gather in dense constellations, their folded surfaces catching and refracting light like draped fabric.

This duality persists throughout Haug’s work. His Fleur pendant, a collaboration with Flack Studio, layers fibreglass segments between spun brass plates like petals gently cupped mid-bloom, glowing softly from within. Earlier pieces, such as the Index 11 pendant, layer geometric cuts with subtle irregularity; stitched brass and fibreglass shields tilt at varying angles, catching the light in unexpected ways.

Brass, in particular, has emerged as a signature material, valued for its ability to transform through polished, weathered and patinated finishes. Increasingly, the studio is also working with other mediums, from fibreglass to blown glass. A new series developed with Murano artisans, Pilz, was recently presented at the Melbourne Art Fair, building on a collaboration that first began more than five years ago with the Blown Glass Anton collection.

Despite these striking designs, for Haug, lighting must never dominate architecture. ‘There is no boundary between architecture, design and atmosphere,’ he says. ‘It’s a fine, unspoken balance — you have to feel when it’s right.’ Accordingly, at Hyde Melbourne, where the lighting was developed in close collaboration with architecture studio Kennedy Nolan and Haug’s long-time creative partner Adriana Hanna. ‘The forms are drawn directly from the building itself: the distinctive cut- out at the top became a quiet inspiration, letting the lighting feel like it belongs there rather than being an addition,’ he notes. Through a mix of patinated brass and powder-coated finishes, the pieces speak to Haug’s gift for reading a space and honouring the architect’s language, while infusing it with playfulness and a gentle human touch.

Yet, regardless of the scale or material, the magic, according to Haug, lies in his team. Alongside lighting, the studio’s practice extends across industrial design, furniture, objects, jewellery and interiors, shaped by a diverse group whose varied cultural references inform a distinctive design language — one that has produced some of Australia’s most striking lighting designs. 

Ideas develop through ongoing dialogue, drawing from travel, material exploration and lived experience, before being tested and refined in the workshop. ‘Everyone really brings something different to the table. If one person is missing, you feel it,’ he says. This collaborative spirit, which he nurtures both within the studio and externally, openly embraces friction and differing perspectives. ‘While we may have butted heads in the process,’ he admits, ‘the actual result is incredible. And that’s what we’re all proud of.’

Images by Pier Carthew and Annika Kafcaloudis

volkerhaug.com

For its third outing at Salone del Mobile in Milan, the brand unveiled its first piece of lighting — a limited-edition table lamp shaped from an enlarged version of its own aluminium packaging — inside an installation by Rodney Eggleston of March Studio at Santa Maria del Carmine

Aesop has spent nearly four decades lighting its stores like private rooms rather than retail floors, so the brand’s move into lighting design has a certain inevitability to it. At this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan, the brand launched Aposē: a limited-edition table lamp named after the French à poser (‘to place’), with floor and ceiling versions to follow.

The starting point was a tube of Aesop packaging — the slim aluminium cylinder that holds some of the brand’s formulations — scaled up and cut through. The resulting proportions are unusual: 50 centimetres across, 36 centimetres tall, a squat disc of a thing rather than the slender silhouette the category tends toward. The sandcast brass plinth comes out of a German family foundry working since 1874, where molten metal is poured at 900°C into sand moulds and emerges with a rough, weighted surface. The lightweight shell above it is lathed from a few millimetres of brass in Scorzè. The glass crown that caps the whole thing is mouth-blown in Veneto, acid-bathed to a soft frost, and diffuses light with a gentle warmth.

Three workshops, three materials, one small object. That it has taken Aesop this long to produce a lamp of its own — after decades of specifying other designers’ pieces in every store — is part of the interest.

The Aposē trio, including two prototypes of the forthcoming floor and ceiling versions, was unveiled within The Factory of Light, an installation by Melbourne architect Rodney Eggleston of March Studio set in the cloister of Santa Maria del Carmine. Eggleston has built the structure from reclaimed construction scaffolding and printed tarpaulins of the kind that shroud Milan’s restoration works, cutting and reassembling them into a half-invented version of the city. In the sacristy, a wave of 10,000 amber Aesop bottles runs the length of the carved-timber panelling, with the three prototypes catching on the glass.

There is a pleasing circularity in all of this. The bottles along the sacristy wall hold what the aluminium tubes once did; the lamp borrows its shape from the tube; and the light it casts, filtered through frosted glass, is the same warm, low register Aesop has been lighting its stores with since the beginning.

Text by Katherine Ring
Images courtesy of Aesop

Milan Design Week may still be the industry’s most influential stage, but as consumer brands continue to flood in, a harder truth emerges: the line between meaningful engagement and marketing theatre is wearing thin

Design is an inherently optimistic pursuit; it’s one of the things I love most about this industry. The other is its borderlessness, and last week’s Salone del Mobile in Milan offered a timely reminder of how open, multicultural and multilingual this sector is, intersecting with everything from politics to medicine to hospitality. Once a decorative trade, the design industry is now uniquely interconnected and attuned to the global economy in ways few others are.

But I spent much of the week fighting a cynical internal monologue as I listened to brands trying to extract meaning from the most vacuous of inventions. Sycophancy has replaced critical discourse, with vain and incoherent spectacles designed to maximise online impressions and little else. ‘Design’ is being widely misused to describe things that simply aren’t design. Conversations throughout the week confirmed this feeling was widely held, but those conversations largely took place in private, with few willing to criticise the companies they depend on for their livelihoods.

The problem isn’t scale, though. Big consumer brands thinking seriously about craft and design is healthy, and the view that corporate juggernauts — from cars to fashion to technology — are drowning out ‘real design’ misses the point. These are companies whose customers aren’t your typical design week-goers, and who wouldn’t necessarily consider what they consume ‘design’. They’ve likely found this industry through something familiar — a car, a watch, the frying pan in their kitchen. These consumers shouldn’t be treated as somehow lesser. The industry’s openness — the fact that it isn’t reserved for a well-to-do elite — is one of its strengths. The risk is that design becomes insular: designers making only for their peers and a narrow set of patrons, rather than the consumers ready to be shown why good design is a critical tool for the betterment of their world.

Fortunately, if you can dodge the undignified queues and QR codes, Milan still offers the best opportunity to discuss ideas like this with people from all corners of the globe, from household names to emerging practitioners trying to carve out a pocket-sized patch in a noisy city. One Singaporean designer told me he’d brought almost his entire company to Milan for the week, at significant expense, to invest in building a team of the best possible humans as machines quickly take on more repetitive tasks. That means seeing things, meeting people and asking serious questions, with curiosity and a healthy degree of scepticism.

‘We need to be critical, we need to ask questions,’ one curator told me. ‘We need to ask why.’ Milan Design Week, for better or worse, remains the dominant moment in the calendar. Much of what is shown has consumed vast human and material resources by the time it arrives on a pedestal on the other side of the world, usually for barely a week. To use those resources to make something new needs real justification, and commercial imperative alone isn’t enough.

For companies and brands, that means using your investment to help young or emerging designers grow their practices and reach new audiences. It doesn’t mean working with the same predictable names whose talent has already been validated. And it certainly doesn’t mean spending your budget on Hollywood celebrities with no connection to the work you do. Design was once hard to articulate or distinguish from art or craft, especially in emerging economies. It’s now widely known and engaged with — and a new cohort of consumers, paying attention to how good the world around them can and should be, is putting lazy companies on notice.

I’d expect — hope, even — that you’ll disagree with me. Debate is exactly what’s needed. There is no shortage of opinions shouted from the social media sidelines, but I encourage you to log off, open a bottle of wine and talk about it with your friends and colleagues. Ask tough questions of your clients and suppliers. Force your peers to justify what they’re doing. Then support those — yes, even the multinationals — that genuinely invest in design and craft as core principles, rather than as a marketing veneer. And, most importantly, avoid those who can’t tell the difference.

Jeremy Smart
Editor-in-Chief

In Singapore, a 1950s post-war house has been reimagined, while maintaining a sense of continuity. Long familiar to the homeowners, the house carried memories across generations and so, rather than rebuild, they asked Goy Architects to hold on to what mattered: the scale, the materials, the way the house sits low against the ground.

The architects worked with what was already there. Original mosaic tiles and metal grilles were preserved and reinterpreted, their patterns informing new brick screens and surfaces. These elements reflect a way of building shaped by care and craft, where materials carry the traces of time and use.

The biggest change is a courtyard, set between the original house and a new extension. It pulls light, air and greenery into the middle of the plan, so the house looks inward rather than out. Rooms open onto the garden, and daily life shifts with it.

More than an expansion, the house becomes a continuation of what it once was. It holds on to its past while making space for the present, where architecture is not defined by excess, but by an understanding that enough is enough.

Images by Khoo Guo Jie

Monocot nip-tucks a conserved structure for family life while the owners add their own personal touch with art, colour and timeless furniture

In the 1840s, Singapore’s colonial government created a secondary settlement in Geylang to disperse Malay villagers from the crowded Singapore River. By the 1930s, the lorongs (lanes) were lined with shophouses built by Chinese merchants and low-rise bungalows with Malay, European and Chinese influences.

This home for a couple and their young son occupies one of two such bungalows, which housed a luggage company in the mid-1980s before being segmented into four maisonettes during a redevelopment that added an eight-storey block at the front. The conversion, which won an Urban Redevelopment Authority Architectural Heritage Award, preserved the exterior’s Art Deco geometry, moulded capitals and stained-glass timber windows. 

In the living room, canvases by Singapore-based artist Andy Yang hang alongside lacquered works by Australian artist Nick Thomm. ‘He's a friend who plays in a band with some of our other friends,’ the husband says of Yang. Safari chairs from Carl Hansen & Søn and a Kriptonite shelving system packed with vinyl further underscore the owners’ interests and aesthetic leanings.

These personal touches make the house a home, and bring a modern spin to the colonial shell. Cabinets designed by Singaporean icon Nathan Yong — carried over from the owners’ previous home — mix with Vitra chairs and a Gubi Semi pendant in the dining area. ‘We’re not maximalists, but we’re also not minimalists,’ says the husband.

Working with old buildings sometimes necessitates hard decisions. Removing the former elderly residents’ chair lift, for instance, meant hacking into the existing decorative floor tiles. Notwithstanding this loss, the current cement flooring works well as a foil for the owner’s chromatic pieces, and painting the staircase’s ornate wrought iron balustrades dark green offers a similar temperance.

‘The owners wanted us to conserve and express the original structure as much as possible,’ says Mikael Teh of The Monocot Studio, who worked on the interiors. Removing the false ceilings both made space and revealed half-destroyed — yet charming — ceiling mouldings on the ground floor, and perfectly preserved ones upstairs. The kitchen’s footprint was enlarged and a portal opened to pass food to the dining room. Teh chose green terrazzo tiles to match the heritage windows’ tinted green glass and stainless steel kitchen. 

Shaving a little off the son’s bedroom created space for a larger wardrobe in the main bedroom. A standalone partition-cum-dresser gives the sleeping zone some segregation without divorcing it from three walls of stained-glass windows. Symmetry was preserved in this way alongside ‘backing for all their modern needs, such as charging points and lights,’ Teh explains. 

To ‘fulfil the husband’s request for pops of colour’, each bathroom uses a different shade of kit-kat tile. Teh had ideal collaborators in the owners, whose penchant for detail and design led them to source coloured fittings from assorted places — even bringing back from Japan the powder room’s Sanwa stainless steel sink in their luggage. The result is cohesion amid visceral delights, such as bountiful daylight through textured glass with floral patterns, time-patterned timber floors and the foliage of a curry tree filling the view from the dining table.  

Text by Luo Jingmei
Images by Studio Periphery  

Studio Urban Form + Objects has designed a new ancestral residence for a multigenerational family, addressing concerns of privacy and security while maintaining a dialogue with the facing village square

When an entrepreneur in Jodhpur approached Mumbai-based architects Studio Urban Form + Objects (UF+O) to design a home in their ancestral village of Rewatra in Rajasthan, the brief was shaped as much by memory as by necessity. ‘They were worried that while they visit often for festivals and weddings, the next generation of family members might not return and would start to lose their connection with their roots,’ says UF+O co-founder Prachi Parekh Vora.

Today, the village of fewer than 10,000 people is sparsely occupied, with many homes locked up as families have moved to larger cities in pursuit of business opportunities and more aspirational lifestyles. ‘Most youngsters don’t find the village exciting or comfortable, as traditional homes don’t offer the amenities or privacy they’re now used to. So our design for our client’s new home had to be both welcoming for a multigenerational family and responsive to its context,’ Parekh explains.

Set on a narrow plot measuring roughly 24 by nine metres, with shared boundaries on three sides, the home faces the village’s primary square: a lively social node that hosts a Jain temple, wedding processions and community gatherings. UF+O initially explored the idea of a central courtyard — a staple of the region’s vernacular homes which, along with a strong spatial hierarchy, helps mediate the hot, dry climate. They soon realised it wouldn’t function effectively on such a tight footprint.

Instead, the typical courtyard planning was reimagined as two open-to-sky linear spines running along the sides of the plot, protected by high walls for privacy and shading. These elongated voids bring generous daylight and natural ventilation into the adjoining rooms, reducing reliance on mechanical systems in an area that faces frequent power shortages.

Beyond climatic considerations, the architects had to safeguard the house against robberies and vandalism, as it remains under lock and key when the family is away. ‘In our discussions with the client, we realised that safety was a real concern, so we couldn’t have a home with windows looking out to the street,’ says UF+O co-founder Vineet J Vora. ‘And yet, we wanted to maintain a visual link to the village square. Our solution was a wall of glass bricks at the front — a first for Rewatra.’

From the outside, the home presents a monolithic face, its neutral tiled facade requiring minimal maintenance during the long stretches the family is away. But on evenings when the family is visiting, the glass emits a soft glow onto the street front, signalling that the home is occupied without revealing the living room behind it — cueing neighbours and well-wishers to drop by and returning a flicker of life to the square.

Text by Rupal Rathore
Images by Niveditaa Gupta

In Kyoto’s Nishijin district, a century-old machiya unfolds through shifting thresholds and materiality, where space, light and movement are shaped over decades in devotion to the ritual of tea

In a 100-year-old machiya in Nishijin, Kyoto’s historic weaving district, Jack Convery and his wife Hiromi have devoted more than four decades to chanoyu, the ceremonial practice of offering tea.

‘First you build the space,’ he says, ‘and then you invite people. The intention is to create a place for the joy of making and drinking tea.’ 

Convery arrived in Japan intending to stay six months. He had come, he says, to learn how to make a bowl of tea, having first begun to study chado with Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa at his home in Boulder, Colorado. This led him to Japan and to formal training under Hōunsai, the 15th-generation grand master of the Urasenke School of Tea. In Kyoto, he met Hiromi and together they acquired the house, built more than a century ago by a local carpenter for his family, its craft passing from one generation to the next. Many such machiya in the neighbourhood have since disappeared.

The tone is set at the entrance, where a hand-woven noren leads into a moss garden marked with a large, circular stone, once used for grinding rice.

The two-storey house has a long architectural lineage, carefully composed and grounded in centuries-old principles of proportion, restraint and attentiveness to natural materials. Expanded and contracted over the years to accommodate living and teaching, the series of spaces remains visually connected, with removable shoji and openings with views that shift in relation to one another. Convery describes it as ‘space beyond space beyond space’, a way of seeing that changes as screens slide open and sightlines reorient. From the genkan, where guests remove their shoes, the eye is drawn through the room at the centre of the house, and out through glass to the teahouse garden beyond. It was this east–west alignment that first caught Convery’s attention, and it has been carefully maintained and accentuated over the years.

Materiality is refined yet modest. A moon window has been added to the left of the entrance, and sections of frosted glass throughout have been replaced with paper, allowing both light and shade to filter into the interior. Wood and plaster are largely untreated, in keeping with the sukiya-zukuri architectural style that originated in the design of 16th-century teahouses. Two structural timber posts sit in deliberate contrast — one square-cut from a round trunk and smooth to the touch, the other left with a more textured surface. As light moves across them, subtle shifts in tone and grain are revealed.

The machiya layout supports both daily life and the practice and teaching of tea. One room with floor-to-ceiling windows opens to the garden, where flowers for chabana and tatehana are selected. Another is for daily meals and conversation. Further in, the open shelves of the host preparation area hold bowls, whisks and utensils arranged for practical use rather than display. Guests and students reach the tearoom via a smaller, formal garden with a rustic wooden bench for removing shoes before entering through a crawl door (nijiriguchi). Inside, the original room has been reduced to four and a half tatami mats, and the ceiling finely adjusted to be ten centimetres lower.

For Convery, tea unfolds through movement, and the rhythm of the transition between spaces guides without instructing. This is not a performance but a heightened form of attention, with adjustments essential to ensuring perfectly balanced proportions.

‘Guests bring all of their senses,’ he says. ‘And that is why the architectural form of the chashitsu provides more than just a setting. It embodies the artistic sensibility and cultural soul of tea.’

Text by Catherine Shaw
Images by Chester Ong

In a forest-cloaked setting, Fisher & Paykel’s Nature—Ritual exhibition at Milan Design Week 2026 draws on New Zealand’s landscape to frame the kitchen as a lived, everyday space shaped by routine

The kitchen is often where ease and familiarity take root, where movements shaped by habit feel instinctive. Tools respond to hands seamlessly, and routines gradually evolve into rituals. This understanding underpins Nature—Ritual, a large-scale exhibition by New Zealand’s Fisher & Paykel, set to be presented at EuroCucina 2026 during Milan Design Week this April.

The heritage brand’s participation at this edition of the world’s leading design week is conceived in collaboration with Alt Group creative director Dean Poole, who shaped the exhibition’s architectural and sculptural language, and Calvi Brambilla & Partners co-founder Fabio Calvi, who created the spatial composition and flow of the experience.

Installed within the halls of Fiera Milano Rho from 21−26 April, Nature—Ritual is envisioned as a serene Antipodean oasis. A forest-like installation, lush with native trees and foliage — a nod to New Zealand’s expansive landscapes — envelops the exhibition, leading visitors through a sequence of spatial, sensory and product encounters.

Within this interconnected space, Fisher & Paykel will unveil its latest product introductions. The State of the Art collection — a Red Dot Design Award-winning range of appliances spanning cooking, cooling, dishwashing, and wine and fabric care — features alongside the global launch of the refined, monochromatic Minimal Style line. The latter highlights the brand’s continued exploration of minimalist, integrated design, offering architects and designers greater liberty to create bespoke environments for cooking and fabric care.

Much like its concept-led Experience Centres in cities from North America to Asia Pacific, the exhibition’s aesthetic is firmly rooted in materiality drawn from New Zealand’s natural environment while evincing global influences. The use of basalt, a dark, fine-grained volcanic stone, references the island nation’s striking geological landscape. Carvings of tōtara wood — long valued for its durability and used in heritage craft — introduce warmth and tactility. Visitors can also find commissioned ceramic pieces by New Zealand artist Aaron Scythe, whose work reflects decades of studying and working in traditional Japanese pottery.

Beyond material expression, these elements come together to reflect a broader design philosophy that views nature not only as creative inspiration but as a framework for living. This perspective aligns with Fisher & Paykel’s long-standing focus on designing products that are durable, low-impact and intended to evolve alongside daily life.

Through Nature—Ritual, visitors are invited to immerse themselves in the experience, rather than merely observing it. By drawing a parallel between nature’s resilience and Fisher & Paykel’s human-centred design, the exhibition presents design not as spectacle, but as an ongoing dialogue between humans, objects and places.

fisherandpaykel.com

In a Hsinchu glass factory that has run for nearly half a century, Spring Pool, PiliWu Design and Seed SpaceLab make the case for what a factory thinks about when it stops just making

On an unremarkable street in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, a glass factory that has operated for nearly half a century is transforming into a site not just of production, but of thought. Long embedded in the industrial fabric of Taiwan, the ageing facility carries within it the rise and decline of the island’s glass manufacturing industry. But rather than fade with the offshoring of production, it has been reinterpreted by Spring Pool Glass, PiliWu Design, Seed SpaceLab and others as the SpringPool Original Factory, a hybrid space that’s equal parts working furnace and editorial project.

To understand the space, one must first situate Spring Pool Glass within Taiwan’s industrial landscape. As the country’s largest glass recycling and reprocessing company, its origins lie in discarded fragments. However, under the direction of second-generation leader T A Wu, the company has moved beyond the back end of recycling. Through its W Glass Project, launched in 2017, it collaborates with designers and artists to transform reclaimed glass into objects and architectural materials imbued with cultural value.

It’s within this broader shift that the decision to return to the company’s first factory took shape. More than its earliest production site, the building also holds Wu’s childhood memory. The challenge, then, was not simply how to redesign the space, but how to retain its temporal depth while allowing it to project forward. At the same time, Wu has observed a broader condition: Taiwan’s small and medium-sized manufacturers, long essential to global supply chains, have largely been perceived as executors rather than originators.

Against this backdrop, the SpringPool Original Factory is framed around a more fundamental proposition: ‘A factory might evolve beyond its hands and begin to develop a mind,’ says Wu. ‘Before glass becomes transparent, the shape of thought remains free.’ This idea anchors the entire design. In its molten, orange-red state, glass has yet to be defined. It exists in a moment suspended between formlessness and possibility. This condition becomes a metaphor for the mindset Spring Pool Glass seeks to cultivate, one that is open, indeterminate and generative.

In approaching the existing structure, design studio Seed SpaceLab resisted the impulse to overwrite. ‘We worked through a process of subtraction and retention. The design operates less as an addition and more as an act of editing, revealing what was already there,’ the team tells Design Anthology.

The factory is organised into zones, with lighting used as a primary narrative device. Colour temperature shifts from cool clarity to furnace-like warmth, before returning to a neutral state, mirroring the stages of glassmaking itself.

The journey begins at the Spring Pool Glass Studio, a retail-like entry that softens the threshold between public and industrial space. Here, a crisp 4,000K light defines the atmosphere, while a green-toned epoxy floor subtly evokes the reflective surface of water, a reference to the ‘pool’ in Spring Pool Glass.

Deeper inside, the sample and mould areas adopt a more restrained tone. Decades of accumulated metal moulds and glass samples are arranged with precision, while lighting is deliberately subdued. Attention is directed towards the materiality and temporality embedded in the objects themselves. 

At a finer scale, elements of the production process are reinterpreted into spatial systems. The blowpipe, a fundamental tool in glassmaking, is translated into a modular display structure. Heat-treated metal surfaces reveal natural gradients of colour, forming a recurring visual language across the space. These adaptable frameworks function both as display and as infrastructure, anticipating future change.

As the circulation ramps upwards, the spatial experience reaches its most charged moment. Lighting shifts into warm, amber tones, echoing the interior of a furnace. In the Idea Batching zone, suspended installations gather past collaborations with designers and brands, forming what reads as a physicalised ‘brain’, a site of accumulation, speculation and projection.

From above, visitors overlook the active production floor, where craftspeople manipulate molten glass with choreographed precision. Here, curated spatial experience and unfiltered labour coexist, collapsing the distance between making and meaning.

The sequence concludes in the Process of Manufacturing area. As the material enters the annealing phase, the lighting returns to a neutral and transparent state. What has passed through heat begins to stabilise. Ideas, likewise, settle into form. By the time visitors loop back to the beginning, their understanding of glass has subtly shifted. It is no longer a static material, but a process shaped by temperature, duration and human intervention.

Here, transparency is not a fixed outcome, but a process still unfolding.

Text by Michelle Kuo
Images by Youren Lin, courtesy of Spring Pool Glass

A century-old Higashiyama residence, renovated by Kooo Architects, becomes the first property under the Kiraku Tei villa brand — its interiors marked by Juraku plaster, hinoki and natural light

Imagine a narrow stone alley. Time-etched wooden facades. Blossoming trees in walled gardens. Hidden tearooms. A scenic Kyoto lane known as Ishibei Kōji is the beginning of the journey when visiting Kiraku Tei Kiyomizu — a private villa embedded deeply in its setting.

The house, renovated by Kooo Architects, balances a natural material palette of wood, stone, earth and tatami, alongside minimalist lines, bespoke furniture and modern lighting — plus a private chef’s counter, a hinoki bathtub and a serene garden at its heart.

An intimate sanctuary in the history-packed Higashiyama district of Kyoto, the property — believed to be at least a century old — is the debut opening for Kiraku Tei, a new private villa accommodation brand, offering immersive stays in the ancient city.

As Kooo co-founder Shinya Kojima puts it, ‘We aimed to create a space where the power of human craft and the beauty of natural materials can be felt within the small, intimate scale of a Kyoto townhouse.’

Ishibei Kōji is the atmospheric starting point of the design as well as the arrival experience. A stone wall and a wooden gate with a white noren curtain mark the threshold of the residence. Entering, shoes are slipped off and coats hung in a stone genkan entrance. Swathes of organically textured juraku plaster flow across walls and ceilings, immediately softening the atmosphere, alongside the minimal form of a kakehana hanging flower vase by artist Kouzo Takeuchi.

The interior is a gentle modern riff on traditional Kyoto townhouse aesthetics. Picture gently sculpted naguri wood flooring; a slightly raised tatami mat area with a low table and sunken chairs beneath a hanging oval lantern; a long organically edged chestnut wood counter running alongside a high-tech kitchen where private chefs rustle up dinner; and a relaxed living area, with low tables and sofas by Time & Style.

Connecting it all are cocooning sweeps of crafted plaster, as Kojima explains: ‘One of the most important elements is the earthen plasterwork executed entirely by skilled artisans. Rather than flattening the surface with a metal trowel, we intentionally preserved and emphasised the natural texture of the aggregate within the plaster. By allowing these subtle irregularities to remain, the surface captures light and creates delicate shadows.’

The heartbeat of the house is its internal tsubo-niwa garden, with its stones, moss and flowering trees beneath open sky, providing a meditative touch of nature as well as a source of natural light.

‘For us, the essence of this project lies in how to physically and beautifully maximise the limited and precious natural light,’ says Kojima. ‘By shaping the window frames with gentle curves, we sought to make the light entering from the garden more perceptible and expressive. The interior was designed so it would be perceived not as a sense of confinement, but rather as a form of comfort and intimacy. This transformation of spatial limitation into a positive sensory experience is the core of the project.’

The tactile plasterwork continues around a wooden staircase with a clean-lined rattan-wrapped handrail, rising beneath a circular window filtering light through paper and transitioning guests up to the first floor.

Upstairs, a bedroom blends traditional aesthetics with a modern edge — from the serene tokonoma alcove by the bed with artfully spotlit branches in a Shigaraki-yaki ceramic vase to low modern wood furniture by Tendo Mokko.

Traditional wooden saobuchi tenjo ceilings draw eyes towards windows, framing picture- perfect views of garden trees and alley rooftops, while the adjacent bathroom is home to green-tinged Towada stone, Kooo-designed wooden fixtures by Time & Style, plus — a centre-stage highlight — the clean-lined contemporary form of a large hinoki bathtub.

‘Crafted’, ‘shadow’ and ‘meditation’: these are the words Kooo use to sum up the essence of the house. Kojima adds: ‘The project is an exploration of how traditional spatial wisdom found in Kyoto townhouses can be reinterpreted through subtle architectural gestures, allowing natural light, texture and human scale to shape the emotional experience of the space.’

Text by Danielle Demetriou
Images by Iker Zuniga

At Jervois Apartments, an eight-residence apartment in Auckland considers how compact living can still feel generous, with Fisher & Paykel appliances embedded into the kitchen planning

Along one of Auckland’s main arterial routes, where the city begins to give way to its western suburbs, Jervois Apartments is one of the first architectural responses to recent rezoning that permits greater building height. In a neighbourhood long defined by timber villas and weatherboard houses, the project signals a confident shift towards a more intentional style of scaled urban living.

Its position along a ridgeline brings a sense of openness. From within the apartments, views extend in two directions: toward the Waitākere Ranges on one side and across the Waitematā Harbour on the other. Developed by Artifact Property and designed by Monk Mackenzie, the project eschews the anonymity of typical apartment blocks in favour of a more intimate scale. With just eight homes and no more than two per floor, the building creates a contained sense of community.

A rippling metal screen wraps the street‑facing facade, maintaining privacy while filtering light in shifting patterns throughout the day. Behind this screen, each apartment is arranged as a double-aspect dwelling organised around a central courtyard, which draws daylight and ventilation deep into the middle of the building. Living areas are oriented towards the north, while bedrooms are positioned along the more sheltered southern edge.

At the threshold of the building sits the project’s most distinct feature, which the team refers to as the wintergarden. This enclosed deck operates as a flexible intermediary space. Frameless glass panels can be fully opened during warmer months or closed in cooler seasons, creating a year-round extension of the living area.

The kitchen sits at the heart of the apartment, oriented to capture both light and expansive views. From the marble island, the living room and wintergarden open in one continuous, panoramic sweep — glass walls connecting indoors and out, further amplifying the sense of openness. Fisher & Paykel appliances are seamlessly integrated into dark-stained oak cabinetry, their minimal detailing blending into the background. Wall-mounted ovens and dishwasher units make for a more ergonomic layout, while a dual-zone wine fridge stands to one side, ready for both informal gatherings or slow evenings.

The result is an apartment that earns its views. Ridgeline outlooks over both the Ranges and the Harbour, a winter garden that performs across seasons, and a glass of something cold — the apartment feels as intuitive and generous as they come.

Images by Simon Wilson

fisherpaykel.com

When a Hong Kong couple asked Lim + Lu to house a lifetime of collecting — Chinese antiques, African objects, Southeast Asian heirlooms — the brief was simple: make it feel like home

For an interior designer, few commissions are as exhilarating — or as daunting — as the home of serious collectors. When the clients are a couple with homes across the globe and a deep affinity for Chinese antiques, plus heirlooms and objects spanning Africa to Southeast Asia, the challenges multiply: how do you create something cohesive without reducing their treasures to museum pieces? How do you honour that breadth without the whole thing collapsing into cliché?

‘Our work here was driven entirely by our clients’ collection,’ says Elaine Lu, co-founder and managing director of interdisciplinary Hong Kong practice Lim + Lu. ‘They wanted to honour local flavour, but they were also moving from a larger house into this smaller, more intimate space. The question became how to showcase these treasures without overwhelming the home.’

The project is a 200-square-metre apartment within a beloved 1958 building in Hong Kong’s Mid-Levels. It’s a structure Lim + Lu know intimately, having already completed three projects here. This familiarity gave the duo confidence to pursue the unit’s latent potential, enlarging the original windows to frame the surrounding treetops so that foliage filters light and seasons become part of the domestic landscape. ‘We love this old building and its green surroundings,’ says Lu.

That attention to context runs through the whole residence. The guiding principle was to let the architecture support the collection rather than compete with it. Natural materials set a calm yet warm foundation; black arched portals delineate the living and dining areas, their curved forms picking up the rounded door hardware found throughout — a low-key visual rhythm that guides the eye without demanding attention. 

At the entry, bespoke chinoiserie wallpaper and a custom marble console establish the register. In the living room, a sword passed down from the client’s grandfather now hangs above a Calacatta Viola fireplace. ‘Most family memories are created around fireplaces,’ Lu observes. ‘They ground the space.’ 

Nearby, a substantial antique Chinese console — one of the designer’s favourite pieces — initially gave her pause. ‘It holds such strong character,’ she recalls. ‘We had to highlight it without falling into cliché.’ The solution was to let it breathe, surrounded by negative space and natural light. And across the room, a glossy green lacquered hidden bar — the project’s most unexpected moment.

The main bedroom follows the same restrained logic: rattan finishes, custom rounded hardware and bespoke chinoiserie wallpaper, all animated by the clients’ art. Here, the palette softens further, inviting repose. The bathroom continues in Calacatta Viola marble, with a glass panel bearing the same chinoiserie motif. 

Across the hallway, the study looks out to a balcony where the city recedes behind greenery. The guest bathroom is a different proposition entirely — green terrazzo paired with emerald tiles, the mood more charged. ‘We wanted to be more daring here,’ Lu says. ‘Guest bathrooms reveal your less restrained side.’ The result is a space that feels both playful and considered — a counterpoint to the home’s quieter moments.

Text by Salomé Grouard
Images by Arek Lam

Occasionally for a designer, a project comes along that is so unique as to be quite extraordinary. In this case, the client brought a parcel of land of approximately 19,000 square metres in the heart of one of Bangkok’s historic neighbourhoods. ‘It’s unique not only for its size but also because it borders a large public park that’s been a part of the city's landscape for nearly forty years,’ says Ekaphap Duangkaew, principal of Bangkok design firm Ekar Architects.

The project was to be completed for a family of three generations: a couple with adult children and an older parent in need of care. The clients asked for both private spaces and communal zones, with a balance of practical functionality and an aesthetic that adhered to feng shui, all with the atmosphere of a countryside retreat.

‘They shared their life story and personal aspirations, asking us to help determine the kind of home that would best suit their evolving needs,’ Duangkaew says. ‘This home would be the next phase in their journey, a space designed for the later years of their life as parents. The goal was to create a dream home that would allow them to live like they did in their rural hometown by the sea, while still maintaining strong connections with their children.’

Ekar’s solution was to create nine buildings, including dwellings for different family members, a family pavilion, an open kitchen and a welcome terrace. The nearby park was a key pillar, says the designer. ‘The connection between the property and the park’s natural elements was central to our approach. We aimed to capture the essence of a countryside home by integrating the house into this vibrant ecological context.’ Splitting it out into smaller volumes means the structures don’t overpower the natural setting; each is carefully placed among the trees to create a sense of privacy and integration with the landscape.

While prefabricated steel was used for the structure, with echoes of traditional joinery, the primary material is the cedar that forms the roof and serves as a unifying element. The roof was designed to start low above the entrance and terrace, filtering the light and creating a transition from the bright outdoors to the softer indoor ambience. Moving through the space, the roofline gradually rises, following functional needs and allowing for natural light to enhance the connection with the outdoors. The sloping design was inspired by traditional Thai gable roofs, though simplified to be more minimal, and promotes ventilation through the main structures.

The pond was also one of the architects’ additions. ‘Initially, the property had no water features, but we suggested creating a large natural lake at the front of the house,’ says Duangkaew. ‘This would offer an open water view reminiscent of the client's childhood seaside home.’ The earth excavated in the process was used to create a hill that provides privacy and a visual landmark on approach. On the remaining land, the team created vegetable gardens and a chicken coop, allowing the family to grow their own food. Around the edges of the water, aquatic plants retain water and prevent soil erosion, while below the surface, fish and other water creatures attract birds and insects from the nearby public garden, enhancing the ecosystem and providing a genuine natural escape in the heart of a metropolis.

Text by Philip Annetta
Images by Ketsiree Wongwan 

Studio Rascal’s 107-square-metre HDB flat in Pasir Ris trades the standard cellular layout for open, connected living — held together by a single sliding door and three decades of exposed concrete

Arden Lukito and Limay Foo, the designers behind Studio Rascal, describe themselves as workaholics. They run their practice from their four-room flat in Pasir Ris, an eastern part of Singapore where the sea is a just short walk away. They call the apartment Lucky Tofu House — a name that started as a project file label, merging their surnames.

The 107-square-metre layout often catches visitors by surprise. ‘Everyone was very confused with our layout,’ Foo says. ‘They couldn’t find the door.’ The confusion comes from a large mirror and a single, continuous sliding panel that moves between the kitchen, a bookshelf and the study. This door is the centre of the couple’s day, allowing them to carve out a studio from the main bedroom while staying connected to the living room. At the bottom of the door, there’s a small glass peephole for their one-year-old daughter. ‘She’s always knocking on that peephole and asking to come in when Arden is in the kitchen,’ says Foo.

Lukito is the one who cooks, but he rarely stays in one place, a restlessness that defined the kitchen’s split design. A beverage counter faces the corridor window, which they’ve fitted with a vertically sliding panel — a detail many contractors refused to touch until the couple secured the building board’s blessing. ‘We always tell our friends: if design doesn’t work for us, we’ll probably sell coffee out of our house,’ Lukito jokes.

The home's aesthetic favours comfort and longevity, balancing warm, dark tones with tactile surfaces. The primary palette was inspired by the look of patinated bronze and red brick, and is accented by birch cabinetry. During demolition, the contractors uncovered the original 30-year-old concrete and sand wall, which the couple chose to leave beautifully exposed beside their bookshelf. Bronze sconces light the kitchen and study, holding a memory of the couple’s wedding day at Riders Cafe in Bukit Timah. The venue was demolished recently but before it closed, Lukito and Foo messaged the owners on Instagram to see if they could buy the lamps. ‘They were very kind. They sold them to us for about ten dollars each,’ Foo says.

The build had its messier moments. The couple spent weeks finding the right handmade red brick, only for the supplier’s workers to accidentally throw the entire batch away during a clean-up. Lukito ended up sourcing 20 different samples from other suppliers to find the exact maroon tone he needed. Even the neighbours were part of the process — apartment building construction is loud, and they kept the peace by buying everyone coffee and treats.

‘Every time we design for our clients, we put a lot of heart and soul into it, but at the end, we always have to say goodbye,’ Lukito reflects. ‘This time we get to live in our sketch in real life. It’s a very surreal kind of feeling that we still have today.’

Text by Katherine Ring
Images by Studio Periphery

From the streets of Tokyo to the vineyards of Champagne, Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata crafts whimsical, ephemeral architectural sculptures that cling to buildings and trees, offering a poetic commentary on freedom and impermanence

Like a human weaver bird, the Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata conjures up whimsical bivouacs, grafting timber planks and old bistro chairs to buildings and trees. He does so with such dexterity and poetic licence that a wary viewer might be forgiven for fearing his sculptures may simply scatter in the wind, like dandelion heads.

Born the son of a coal miner on the island of Hokkaido in post-Second World War Japan, the 72-year-old artist was a young darling of the Tokyo scene, studying painting and establishing his sculptural practice before a breakout participation at the Venice Biennale in 1982. Government grants and professorships saw him travel to New York and Paris to make art and teach, with the liberté of the Beaux-Arts de Paris nurturing his nomadic ways much more than the rigorous Japanese institutions of his youth. In New York, he made a pilgrimage to PS1 in the footsteps of Gordon Matta-Clark and encountered Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, whose influence coupled with the wider graffiti movement saw Kawamata experiment with ephemeral works on the streets of NYC. ‘There, I made a kind of fake homeless shelter on the street,’ he reminisces. ‘This was a starting point for me with cardboard and wrapping something. It was quite fragile — the kind of thing that in just ten minutes would’ve blown away.’

Signed by blue-chip gallerist Kamel Mennour in 2008, Kawamata’s long love affair with France and the French continues this year with a serial partnership with Ruinart, bringing the artist back to Reims, the commercial centre of Champagne. Consisting of a travelling rollout of temporary shows at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and at art fairs around the world, the collaboration culminates in a trio of permanent sculptures in the grounds of Maison Ruinart. ‘It’s a statement on fragility. I try to create moments that disturb the landscape or cityscape,’ Kawamata says, surrounded by his new ‘bonsai’ works in a show on Paris’s Left Bank. ‘When I create a piece on a tree or in the forest, that connects with nature. But my work began from the idea of taking natural materials and organic shapes in conversation with contemporary architecture. People have likened them to parasites.’ Or avalanches, as many described his viral 2024 intervention at Dover Street Market Paris — when hundreds of classical French dining chairs seemed to pour from a first-floor window of the Comme des Garçons-run concept store. ‘Kawakubo-san refused my first idea,’ he reveals. ‘I think she’s never just said, “OK!” She said that my work was more about sculptures that stick to the building — not an independent structure. So, I said, “Yes, OK,” and I changed it.’

Drawing from Kawamata’s own archetypes, the structures Nest, Observatory and Tree Hut for Ruinart don’t attempt to comment on their oenological surroundings. Instead, they are paradoxical additions to the landscape — neither architecture nor nature — crafted with the materials of the former and the spontaneity of the latter, destined to grey with age in the sun and the rain. A philosophical observer might attempt a metaphor for vintage champagne, yet Kawamata would likely have nothing of it. His pragmatism and humility belie the otherworldly allure of his creations, and their commentary on impermanence at a time when public art remains so tied up in monumental gestures. ‘It’s kind of endless,’ he muses. ‘My work is never finished, so if I need to continue, I can continue. If I want to stop, I stop — even if the installation is still kind of imperfect anyway. So, I think this is freer. The work is about freedom or possibility to change in any way, which is always quite interesting.’

Text by Dan Thawley
Images by Florie Berger, courtesy of Ruinart

Chanel has transformed a historic Shanghai power plant into a sanctuary for art and literature, marking a sophisticated new chapter in the house’s deep-rooted and cinematic connection to the Chinese landscape

In late 2024, Chanel released an attention-grabbing new promotional video featuring Tilda Swinton. In the short film, directed by German auteur Wim Wenders, the British actor pulls up in an iconic Citroën DS outside the Paris apartment of Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel.

Entering the home of the famed fashion house founder, Swinton gazes lengthily on a 19th-century lacquered Coromandel screen that showcases the historic daily life and landscapes of West Lake in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. Although she never managed to visit China, Chanel is quoted as saying, ‘I almost fainted with happiness the first time I saw a Coromandel in a Chinese shop.’

Long a patron of the arts, the company she founded has continued its love affair with China, and recently launched the new Espace Gabrielle Chanel, housed at Shanghai’s Power Station of Art. This monumental government-funded contemporary art centre was once known as the Nanshi Power Plant. Built in 1897, it provided the energy for some of China’s first electric lights and, a year later, illuminated the famous row of buildings on the Bund. From literally powering Shanghai, the hope is it's now generating a new enthusiasm for the arts, with its past and current similarity to the Tate Modern in London an obvious reference.

The Chanel collaboration at the Power Station of Art is part of the French fashion maison’s China-focused ‘Next Cultural Producer’ programme, which had its launch at the centre in 2021 with the goal of fostering creativity and innovation in contemporary Chinese creative fields. Chanel’s new project is yet another in a long line of international brand activations across China in recent years. In early 2025, in an event it labelled ‘Shell Toe Street’, Adidas took over a street front on Yongyuan Road in Shanghai’s charming former French Concession and created a traffic-stopping four-storey facade of oversized shoe boxes. Meanwhile in Guangzhou, Nike went with a more low-key approach, creating a pop-up soup stall with stylised swoosh-shaped spoons. Last September, outdoor clothing brand Arc’teryx sparked controversy when it set off a high-altitude fireworks display in the Tibetan Himalayas, a creation of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang called Ascending Dragon. But the most audacious of them all has to be The Louis, Louis Vuitton’s three-storey cruise ship ‘docked’ in central Shanghai, a unique concept store in of the upscale Taikoo Hui shopping mall.

Back to Chanel, the Power Station of Art was opened in 2012 following the building’s use as the Pavilion of Future during the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, which transformed this derelict but formerly thriving hub of warehouses and traders. The new Espace Gabrielle Chanel occupies the third floor of the imposing 41,000-square-metre, 27-meter-high building and will later add a 300-seat theatre. For now, though, there is the Power Station of Design, with an exhibition hall and pleasant riverside terrace, and — at its heart — the first public library devoted to contemporary art on the Chinese mainland.

The remarkable library is the work of acclaimed Japanese architect Kazunari Sakamoto, the principal of Tokyo-based Atelier and I, Kazunari Sakamoto Architectural Laboratory. The design is deceptively simple: a soothing blend of light wood, split by symmetrical levels of boxes that serve as both shelves and railings, and open stairs that traverse the space, punctuated by large white-painted girders that hark back to the building’s origins.

While some 10,000 books are available for public viewing, the collection consists of five times that number, spanning design, social science, architecture and art. Later, it will also house the Archive of Chinese Contemporary Art.

Gong Yan, director and artistic director of the Power Station of Art, said at the opening: ‘A century ago, Gabrielle Chanel broke through the constraints imposed on women by her era and opened new horizons in fashion. Espace Gabrielle Chanel is therefore a place that pays tribute to cultural pioneers and, at the same time, a space that continues to inspire new ways of living, new culture and new art.’ It’s a worthy initiative, if worth some ‘wait and see’: when Design Anthology contacted the library to confirm its opening hours, we were told it had closed following its soft opening for ‘internal adjustments and shelf maintenance’.

Text by Simon Ostheimer
Images courtesy of Chanel

From Tintin figurines to Ming Dynasty chairs, Oryza Design Studio weaves a homeowner’s eclectic treasures into a serene Kuala Lumpur apartment

The journey of designing this 160-square-metre apartment in Kuala Lumpur began in the homeowners’ former residence. Their diverse taste in art, objets and collectibles set the foundation for Malaysian interior practice Oryza Design Studio’s concept. ‘They have an eclectic collection that spans different cultures, from an extensive Chinese teacup collection to art prints and iconic figurines such as Tintin,’ says Noel Tan, who co-founded the practice with Wee Jing Sia. ‘That gave us a window into their personalities and inspired us to craft an East-meets-West home.’

Oryza’s approach is exemplified by the juxtaposition between the apartment’s study and kitchen, which contrast strongly while still ensuring that deep, warm tones percolate throughout. Anchored by a captivating Mandarin calligraphic piece by Malaysian artist Jameson Yap, the workspace draws from Chinese culture with a vintage wooden table, a Ming Dynasty-inspired chair and louvred sliding doors. The floating shelf — which houses some of the owners’ most collectable tea ceramics — rounds out the room with a back panel of square quartz tiles that allude to Chinese temple floors, alongside matching wooden detailing.

The kitchen is decked out with a striking jade-green marble island, subtle Italian quartz countertops that blend into the cabinetry, and an English-inspired Minster textured glass door that lets light in. Complementing the elegant palette is a stainless steel TV panel sprayed with a copper-like finish, which introduces an industrial edge to the living room. ‘We worked closely with a metal fabricator to create a custom hue and a unique texture that adds visual interest while harmonising with the walnut veneers,’ says Tan.

Though the common spaces are outstanding in their own right, it’s the corridor — an oft-overlooked transitory space — that ties the entire home together. ‘Because of the unit’s squarish layout, the spindly corridor reaches all the rooms, which led us to create a sense of ceremony here,’ says Tan. With spas and sanctums in mind, he made a splash in this liminal space between the private and public areas with a mosaic-patterned silver quartz stone, engendering a grounding effect. 

This touch is part of what sets a calming tone that loosens the body and mind, welcoming the visitor in conjunction with a monolithic custom ALPI-veneered seat, a small marbled niche and a globular overhead lamp that carve out a gentle space for recalibration.

The corridor’s outsized influence on the home is also reflected in the newly installed pillar in the main bedroom, which now anchors an elaborate clock. ‘It not only injects spatial depth drawn from the other end of the corridor but also acts as an additional element that plays with light and shadow,’ says Tan. The pillar’s waist-level opening has made space for a nightlight — an Oryza masterstroke that marries form and function. 

Other thoughtful details include a clothing rack for lightly worn clothing with an inbuilt mirror, integrated wardrobe lighting and a chunky door handle that draws the owners into the right state of mind as they retire for the night. It’s this very intuition that has guided Oryza Design Studio in weaving such varied influences into one compelling home.

Text by Joseph Koh
Images courtesy of Oryza Design Studio

For more than a century, Carl Hansen & Søn has stood as a guardian of Danish furniture tradition. From a family-run base on the island of Funen, the company has nurtured generations of craftspeople, shaping a culture where skill, patience and a deep respect for materials guide the work as much as design.

At the heart of this legacy is the Wishbone chair (CH24). Its steam-bent oak frame, Y-shaped back and hand-woven paper-cord seat are instantly recognisable, yet it is the brand’s careful stewardship and attention to craft and detail that has maintained the chair’s relevance for more than 70 years. Today, the Wishbone chair remains an icon of simplicity and craft — a lasting expression of the values that continue to guide Carl Hansen & Søn.

The Long View

The Wishbone chair by Hans J Wegner is as enchanting today as it was groundbreaking in 1949. A product of the first collaboration between the renowned Danish designer and furniture maker Carl Hansen & Søn, it endures as one of the most celebrated chairs in design history

Between 1943 and 1945, Danish cabinetmaker and designer Hans J Wegner began work on a series of chairs inspired
by Chinese Ming Dynasty-era furniture. Hinting at both East Asian and modernist sensibilities, Wegner described his approach as ‘stripping the old chairs of their outer style and letting them appear in their pure construction’. His straightforward signature style — defined by line and silhouette with rigorous carpentry details and a deep respect for materials — made Wegner’s oeuvre instantly recognisable and quickly caught the attention of Carl Hansen & Søn, one of the country’s foremost furniture makers.

When the company commissioned him to create a chair suitable for series production, Wegner responded with four prototypes: the CH22, CH23, CH25 and the chair that would become his most celebrated design, the Wishbone chair (CH24). In a daring design leap, the Wishbone chair combined the top rails and arms into a single piece, stabilised by the characteristic Y-shaped back that earned the chair its famous nickname. Wegner also explored the CH26 in these sketches, which remained only a working drawing until it was first produced in 2016.

Although Wegner created the Wishbone chair with mass production in mind, the design requires more than 100 production steps, most of which are done by hand. Its complex woven paper-cord seat — a hallmark of Wegner’s design — takes an experienced weaver one hour to complete, while eight skilled cabinetmakers are needed to shape and coax the timber into its distinctive sculptural form. Despite these complexities, Carl Hansen & Søn embraced the challenge; all four prototypes went into production the following year, cementing the reputations of both Wegner and Carl Hansen & Søn as giants of Danish furniture history.

Nearly 80 years later, the Wishbone chair still occupies a special place in the design canon, celebrated as an icon of form and style. Generously proportioned, comfortable and texturally pleasing, the chair has remarkably required little change over the decades.

Continuously reviving the design’s relevance, the company has released multiple limited-edition versions to honour Wegner’s birthday, introducing subtle variations such as dark oak wood, leather seats, and new colourways and finishes. The company still partners closely with the family-run Hans J Wegner Design Studio, which maintains a meticulous archive of the designer’s original pencil drawings, numbering more than 500. As Wegner famously remarked: ‘Imagine if you could design just one good chair in your life... but you simply cannot.’

Text by Lena Hunter

In Good Hands

On the Danish island of Funen, Carl Hansen & Søn is training the next generation of world-class cabinetmakers. Its in-house apprenticeship, The Lab, immerses students in the signature techniques and designs that have defined Danish furniture for more than a century

Few manufacturers have specialised in wood furniture for as long as Carl Hansen & Søn. Since its founding in 1908, the
family-run company has brought to life some of the Danish modern movement’s most enduring wood masterpieces. Continuing the legacy, Carl Hansen’s grandson Knud Erik Hansen says great Danish design remains a balance of function and aesthetics: ‘It is minimalistic, easy to understand, with no unnecessary details.’

But minimalism does not mean easy manufacture. ‘We need skilled cabinetmakers,’ says Hansen,‘but they are hard to find.’That’s why, in 2019, the company launched its own apprenticeship, The Lab, at its factory in Gelsted, Denmark. ‘By training our own cabinetmakers, we preserve the design tradition that Denmark has become so famous for,’ he says.

Around 20 apprentices enrol at a time in the three-year, nine-month programme. As per tradition, the first task is to make their own tool cabinet. ‘They craft different kinds of joints and gain an in-depth understanding of the possibilities and challenges of cabinetmaking,’ says teacher Martin Tolberg Møller. Other techniques like finger joints, sanding, cut-outs and weaving are also passed down. ‘It’s a 360-degree experience of large-scale furniture production, while delivering excellent craft every time,’ says Møller.

For many, cabinetmaking is a second career. Apprentice Simon Hamidavi R Moestrup joined at 28, leaving the office for something ‘non- digital and more tangible’. Today, cabinetmakers not only work with their hands, but use state- of-the-art machinery to handle the heavy and repetitive processes. ‘The human hand takes over where sensitivity, judgement and experience are required,’ explains Møller. ‘The challenge is to remain faithful to the designer’s original intentions,’ adds Moestrup, ‘combining the soul and tactility of handcraft with the precision and efficiency of machines.’

An even more delicate job is restoration. Reviving family heirlooms without erasing their patina requires the highest expertise. ‘It’s a special feeling to work on a piece of furniture that has already lived a long life. You can read its history in the surface of the wood, the paper-cord seat and the joints,’ says Moestrup. ‘It deepens my respect for the craft.’

Carl Hansen & Søn is one of the few historic furniture producers left in Denmark, and demand for its pieces is high. Fortunately, interest in cabinetmaking is ‘clearly growing’ among younger generations, according to Møller. ‘Last year we received five times as many applications as we have places.’

For Hansen, craft is the ‘beating heart’ of the company, and he intends to keep passing it on. ‘No machine can create a pleasing tactility like the human hand and eye combined,’ he says. ‘This is the essence of what we teach our apprentices.’

Text by Lena Hunter

Right at Home

For Rika Yukimasa, dining is as much about atmosphere as it is a sense of taste. The Y-chair has shaped both for almost 40 years

When Rika Yukimasa was a high school exchange student in California, reluctant to return to her native Japan, her host family offered her a deal: make dinner five nights a week in lieu of rent. Cooking her way through junior college and then UC Berkeley, she realised that there was more to dining than what she put on the plate.

‘Entertaining isn’t just about food. It’s about the atmosphere,’ says Yukimasa. ‘When you enter a room, you listen to the music, you sense the light, you notice the furniture. That atmosphere already gives you an impression of the food before you eat anything.’

Teaching herself to cook and entertain would later flow into a career that spans authoring more than 50 books on cuisine and interiors, running restaurants, hosting international television programmes on Japanese cooking, and even developing online language learning systems for children.

After returning to Japan, she joined advertising behemoth Dentsu, her bilingual and bicultural fluency making her a natural fit for the firm’s international projects. It was there that she first encountered Nordic culture and design, immediately recognising its affinity with Japanese sensibility and style.

Yukimasa also felt that, although Italian and French style had caught Tokyo’s imagination at the time, Danish artisanship was more closely matched with Japanese restraint. ‘Nordic design has a simplicity that fits Japan very well. It’s not flashy or extravagant but, if you look closely, the attention to detail is incredible. That approach is very close to Japanese values.’

When Yukimasa came across the Wishbone chair at a friend’s house in Sweden nearly 40 years ago, it was a case of love at first sit: ‘It looks like a hard wooden chair, but it’s incredibly comfortable. I didn’t know the designer or the brand at first. I just knew it felt right.’

She notes the influence of Japanese craft and visual language on its designer Hans J Wegner, and its enduring popularity in Japan, where it is commonly called the Y-chair. Yukimasa has owned eight over the years, with four currently spread across her Tokyo home, a nearby design studio and her other studio in Kyoto.

At home, the chair accompanies Yukimasa’s leisurely evenings, which often commence with a bottle of wine around six p.m., continue through multi-course dinners and end with her moving the Wishbone chair in front of the television to enjoy a drama. ‘I even fall asleep in it sometimes,’ she confesses with a laugh.

She also lauds the chair’s low- maintenance nature, believing scratches and stains can add to its charm. ‘In Japan we talk about wabi-sabi. My kids spilt things, my husband spilt wine. But to me, that’s okay. I like to age with the chair.’

Text by Gavin Blair Images by Karin Tomino

Second Life

Character, longevity and the human touch are hallmarks of true craft — principles perfectly captured in Carl Hansen & Søn’s Wishbone chair

In the hands of Carl Hansen & Søn, furniture is made to be lived with, touched and treasured for generations. Central to this philosophy is the idea that repair and restoration deepen the appreciation of the objects themselves. A table can be mended after years of wear; a chair can be rewoven without losing its original character and beauty. Every mark of age becomes part of the story, a testament to both the materials and maker that have shaped it.

In Gelsted, Denmark, the Carl Hansen & Søn factory stands as the epicentre of the company’s craft, where generations of knowledge and skill converge, and every curve and joint is attended to with practiced familiarity, whether through creation or repair. This same dedication is mirrored in Japan, where a specialised restoration facility upholds the same rigorous standards, ensuring the brand’s designs are maintained with equal care.

A nation celebrated for craft and decades- old tradition, Japan has long nurtured generations of hands capable of transforming raw materials into objects of care and wonder. Concepts such as mottainai, the regret of discarding what could have another life, and wabi-sabi, which finds beauty in imperfection, reflect the same reverence for materials and process that underpins Carl Hansen & Søn’s work.

One of the brand’s most iconic designs, the Wishbone chair, is unmistakably human made, and therefore unsurprisingly popular not only in Japan but all over the world. Its exquisite ink-like curves are fashioned with care. Its paper-cord seat is handwoven by master craftspeople whose leathered hands are filled with valuable, prized expertise.

Today, the Wishbone chair inhabits a wide range of interiors across the globe, from private residences and studios to restaurants and cultural institutions, where it has become a signifier of taste and appreciation for design and making. Its appeal is inherently global, grounded in a shared sensitivity for craft and material honesty.

Through its specialised repair facilities, Carl Hansen & Søn ensures that this attention continues long after a piece leaves the workshop. Structural repairs, refinishing and reweaving are carried out with the same devotion as the original making. This care given to the materials and craft ensures that objects last for generations, accruing character and story over time.

The Next Chapter

Explore the world of CH24 and more at Carl Hansen & Søn’s showrooms in Singapore, Tokyo, Osaka and at carlhansen.com

The monthly briefing from Design Anthology’s editors on the most interesting things to see, places to go and products to know

Azuma Farm Koiwai
Hotel
Shizukuishi, Japan

Opening next month, Azuma Farm Koiwai is a boutique retreat in Iwate Prefecture developed through a collaboration between East Japan Railway Company and Azumi Japan, the brand co-founded by hotelier Adrian Zecha. Situated on an eight-hectare site within the historic 3,000-hectare Koiwai Farm, the property is designed to frame views of Mount Iwate and its surrounding forests. The retreat reinterprets the traditional ryokan for a mountain setting, and architecture integrates with the pastures to foster a direct connection with the land. The result is a quiet rural escape focused on regional craft and the rhythms of the seasons.

Pillar
Store
Jakarta

Pillar’s newly relocated boutique in Plaza Indonesia serves as a clean, versatile canvas for fashion and art. Designed by architecture firm Fffaaarrr, the space creatively reinterprets iconic elements from its original location. Familiar blue marble counter tables have been repurposed into display cases and pedestals, while the former steel-plated hallway is now an immersive, cylindrical fitting room. Minimalist lighting continues to illuminate the store, complementing the original furniture. The boutique also functions as an art destination, featuring a rotating selection of artworks.

Maxi Coffee Bar
Cafe
Singapore

Now located just up the road in Club Street, the new iteration of Maxi Coffee Bar is a more refined cafe designed by Plan O Studio. The interior blends warm timber with a signature deep blue and terracotta palette, accented by matt brass details and textural elements like kit kat tiles at the filter bar and grounded travertine floors. A striking blue velvet curtain elegantly encloses the storage areas, integrating custom spherical lights reminiscent of the original shop. A curved terracotta floor pattern thoughtfully connects the espresso bar and filter bar, softening the narrow transitional space.

Studio Nicholson × Échapper
Collection
Tokyo

London-based Studio Nicholson and Japanese lifestyle brand Échapper have collaborated on a refined capsule collection dedicated to elevating domestic rituals, and marking the opening of the former’s new store in Kyoto. Crafted in specialist factories in Tokyo and Osaka, the garments undergo a natural botanical dyeing process utilising Japanese logwood. The collection features a Karst shirt and Hera pant made from navy silk, dyed in their finished garment form to preserve the yarn’s relaxed state and minimise creasing. A French flax yarn linen gown provides a dry hand feel with a compact structure, while house shoes crafted from supple goat leather and cowhide complete the wardrobe.

LB’s Record Bar
Bar
Melbourne

Merivale’s inaugural Melbourne venue, LB’s Record Bar, offers a retro-futuristic listening space designed by their in-house team. The venue’s street presence is marked by verdant mosaic tiling, complemented by mushroom-shaped lighting and bright vermillion stools. At the centre of the interior sits a restored horseshoe bar, surfaced in timber and terrazzo. Acoustics drive the aesthetic, with handcrafted speakers finished in walnut veneer and walls clad in rows of vinyl records. Scarlet carpets and tactile upholstery reinforce a subterranean, soil-toned atmosphere. Overhead, a geometric framework supports mirror balls and pink strip-lighting, blending mid-century warmth with a rhythmic, contemporary geometry.

Oaken Lab Incense Holder
Product
Jakarta

Jakarta-based fragrance house Oaken Lab recently introduced a carefully considered metallic incense holder as part of its Traces in Transit collection. Designed to ground space during everyday routines, this piece is formed from brushed stainless steel in a practical, flat-packed design. It’s an understated, architectural object crafted to age with the user and hold memory, ideally complemented by the brand’s incense sticks for daily aromatic rituals.

Marshall Studio has restored a rare Streamline Moderne apartment in Adelaide, stripping away decades of design clutter to honour the building’s original 1930s geometry

Located in a quiet suburb of Adelaide, Millswood Moderne stands as a rare surviving example of the city’s pre-Second World War architectural experimentation. Designed in the late 1930s by Lawson and Cheeseman, the staggered apartment building represents a fleeting moment in design history, capturing the transition from ornate Art Deco to the comparative functionalism of the Streamline Moderne. For owner and designer Bronwyn Marshall of Marshall Studio, taking ownership of one of its apartments was an act of architectural stewardship. ‘It’s Deco before it becomes modernism, which is such a small, narrow period of time,’ she notes. The building itself was an early experiment in medium density, cleverly cascading towards the rear of the site to maintain the stately presence of a traditional home.

The restoration process began with patience. Marshall lived in the space for a year to observe its natural light and flow before initiating changes. Central to the exterior reinstatement was a collaboration with Adelaide metal artist Nat Penney. Together, they iteratively prototyped a custom geometric screen door and a sculptural building sign. Marshall refers to the screen door as ‘the handshake with the house’ — the crucial first physical interaction that sets the tone for the interior.

Inside, the architecture's inherent sweeping curves dictated the design language. Marshall was particularly drawn to the seamless transitions between surfaces. ‘There are no cornices,’ she explains. ‘It's just continuous plaster that wraps around beams, around the fireplace, around walls.’ Decades of incremental, stylistically confused renovations — including anachronistic diamond-patterned lighting — were stripped away to reveal a calmer foundation. The original concrete beams, an innovation of the era, allowed for a surprisingly generous six-and-a-half-metre living room and higher ceilings devoid of modern downlights.

To honour the building’s specific proportions, Marshall established strict rules for the interiors. ‘In terms of geometries the style was all about long bands and spheres,’ she says. ‘So, when making any selection I was thinking, “How do we bring that back?” All the hardware, all the fixtures had to adhere to that language. Is it long and does it either have a rounded edge or is there some kind of rounded geometry to it?’ She reintroduced chrome fittings throughout the apartment, adhering faithfully to archival research, despite it not being her typical preference in contemporary practice. In the kitchen, playful white spherical handles provide a stark, functional contrast. Another pivotal addition was a salvaged 1930s stained-glass door, sourced from a neighbouring property.

The completed project is an exercise in restraint, where small interventions allow the original structural volumes to breathe. Rather than rely on heavy overhead lighting, Marshall utilised intimate pendants and lamps to complement the natural light and maintain a soft atmosphere. Even the private garden, complete with heritage-listed palm trees, reflects this careful editing. For Marshall, the success of Millswood Moderne lies in its quietness. ‘There is a boldness in it, but the boldness is in its simplicity,’ she reflects. ‘It’s in the lack of details that there’s detail.’

Text by Katherine Ring
Images by Jonathan VDK

From the winding roads of northern India to the pages of our latest issue, our editor-in-chief reflects on why friction, effort and showing up still matter in a world increasingly experienced at a distance

What a month in the skies and on the road. My March began with lunch in New Delhi’s diplomatic enclave. Three weeks later, I find myself on a rather lush piece of Adrian Zecha-sourced real estate in the terracotta-tinted valleys of Rajasthan, where this note is being tapped out. While I’m usually not one to spend so much time in a single place, our team has been giving this corner of the globe a little more attention than usual as we work on something special for later in the year, focused entirely on India. If you have leads, my inbox is always open.

Rewinding to last week, we hosted a group of our most charming readers, as well as some repeat retreaters, for a few days in Chandigarh, exploring one of the country’s most fascinating cities. The Le Corbusier-designed capital looks and functions like few others in India and reminds me, in many ways, of my birthplace, Canberra. For our guests, this intellectually rich journey culminated in a perfect blend of great food, inspiring hosts, superb company and a genuine sense of place, high up in a remote patch of the Himalayas where we took up residence at Amaya (images above and below by Jonathan Leijonhufvud).

The roads to Amaya wind tightly between multi-storey village houses where you frequently find yourself squeezing past buses, motorcycles, trucks and the occasional wandering cow with millimetres to spare. It seems India has collectively decided that horns are a more effective signalling system than indicators, meaning the valley echoes with melodic honks. Getting to Amaya requires patience and a bit of stamina. But friction and, at times, a little discomfort, have their virtues: they sharpen the senses and heighten the reward when the road finally opens out and the landscape falls quiet. Arriving at Amaya after that slow, dusty climb makes the vastness of the place feel earned.

That idea — that effort heightens the pleasure of completion — is something we return to in our new issue, out next week. Issue 42 is a geographically vast affair and, because of that, hides an enormous amount of logistics. Between commissioning our writers and getting our own team out into the world, we’ve gone to great lengths to bring you stories that we’ve witnessed firsthand, on the ground, with our own eyes. While machines can summarise the world, they cannot replace the act of being present in it.

At a time when most of what passes across our screens dissolves almost as quickly as it appears, there remains something reassuring about those who show up in the real world and dedicate their time and energy to making things well. This issue celebrates that instinct: to build something tangible and lasting, to create works that cannot be revised or silently withdrawn when the wind changes direction. It champions work that is serious, permanent and, above all, takes a position. The stories form a portrait of a world that does not necessarily agree on very much, but which thankfully still shares a belief in the value of good design, recognising that debate and disagreement are oftentimes healthy.

Perhaps you ended up somewhere unexpected in your own travels this month, and in doing so learnt something new or met someone interesting. Despite the universal standards that rule global aviation, travel at the moment carries extra unpredictability — a reminder of how quickly the systems we take for granted can falter. All the more reason, then, to leave your comfort zone and go and see how things really work, unfiltered by someone else’s commentary.

Allow us to take you on a tour of the world as it really is. Support your local newsstand, bookstore or library by picking up a copy of our new issue — ask them, they can order it in! — or simply purchase one (or even a box of copies to gift) from us directly. Even better, we welcome your support by taking out an annual membership, which includes a complimentary copy of each issue.

Ready to get out there yourself? Next week, you’ll find us at a dedicated Design Anthology booth at Art Basel Hong Kong. Please drop by and say hello to the team. Looking ahead to April, perhaps we’ll cross paths in Milan as the world’s largest design event convenes in Italy’s commercial capital, or somewhere along the way. The world, for all its unpredictability, remains open to those willing to step into it. See you out there.

Text by Jeremy Smart
Images by Jonathan Leijonhufvud

By blending raw MDF with Pakistani pink salt and hand-applied plaster, Negu Inc has created a tactile sanctuary in Omotesando that physically embodies Remedy Cave’s philosophy of healing from within

When a client unexpectedly contacted Tokyo-based design studio Negu Inc with a request to build a skincare and massage space in a mere two months, lead designer Kenta Nagai knew the timeline was a challenge. But, with calm determination, Nagai and his team managed to bring Remedy Cave to life only a little later, in just three months, with a result that belies its timeline. Tucked away on a quiet back street off the Tokyo’s bustling Omotesando, the space was thoughtfully designed to physically embody the brand's core philosophy of ‘healing from within’. The resulting environment offers visitors a sanctuary, enveloping them with a sense of security and tranquillity much like a physical cave.

To achieve this distinctly calm atmosphere, Nagai deliberately avoided visual noise by relying on just three primary materials: Pakistani pink salt, MDF and sand plaster, which was applied by hand to give the space a unique, tactile warmth. By incorporating sweeping curves into the architecture and furniture, the team sought to express the soft lines of the human body and create an enveloping atmosphere. Structural intervention was kept minimal, with a single wall built to divide the salt treatment room from the rest area.

The team's use of MDF is perhaps the project's most humble, yet crucial, detail. Typically relegated to a hidden base material, the material is here left entirely exposed without any applied ‘make-up’. Nagai's team carefully polished the edges and added a clear finish, creating a smooth, nuanced surface that Nagai notes somehow resembles traditional Chinese ceramics. This raw, authentic approach was a deliberate reflection of the store’s purpose. ‘Skincare doesn’t cover the skin,’ Nagai explains. ‘Skincare is used to make the skin better. So, we used the same process — rather than covering the MDF, we made it better.’ By quietly and carefully elevating a basic material, the team gave physical shape to the idea of inner beauty.

The store’s centrepiece is a specialised treatment room built entirely of thick pink salt bricks sourced directly from Pakistan. Working with this unconventional material posed a unique logistical hurdle for the team. Because pink salt bricks are virtually unused in Japanese construction, Nagai struggled to find a local vendor who knew how to install them. Eventually, he tracked down a specialised sauna contractor who understood the specific glue and techniques required to secure the heavy blocks. 

Throughout the space, Nagai shifted his focus to a holistic, experiential design rather than rely on grand architectural gestures. The studio designed the brand's product packaging and incorporated physical ingredients from traditional Chinese medicine into the visual landscape to harmonise with the brand’s signature worldview. And to complete the sanctuary’s atmosphere, they draped simple cloth over basic fixtures to create custom lighting, allowing a soft, gentle glow to diffuse into the space. 

Text by Katherine Ring
Images by Junpei Kato

During the pandemic, many homeowners became amateur horticulturalists. For some, the interest faded as they headed back into the world and resumed normal life. But for others, gardening defined a new way of living. Such was the case for the owner of this Singapore apartment, who had become a true plantsman and was frustrated by the way his home’s compartmentalised framework kept him away from his leafy companions.

‘I want to wake up to my plants’ was the simple brief he gave Shing Hui Lim, founder of L Architects, who worked on the home with the studio’s architectural interior designer Reid Tan. Typically for dense, developed cities, the apartment had a small living area and an enclosed kitchen, with three bedrooms accessed via a corridor. 

Lim decided to look at outdoor park settings as the starting point. ‘First, we needed to find the right material, and we wanted to look for one that was commonly used in parks,’ she explains. In particular, she drew on her memories of the outdoor benches, walkway edges and planters made of double bullnose bricks in Singapore’s older parks.

Eventually they found a supplier for the bricks; the material was out of production due to low demand, but the supplier ‘was happy to sell us all he had, all 571 pieces,’ she says. ‘These bricks are special because the round edges help soften the aesthetics of the interior.’ The team used the bricks to create a tessellated wall between the living and study areas, a low, curved bench between the study and dining area, and the base of the three metre-long kitchen island that caters to the couple’s love for cooking and entertaining.

These elements now connect and divide the spaces, adding to the sense of fluidity that came with adjusting the floorplan. Lim removed the walls of two bedrooms and inserted jalousie windows that enhance physical fluidity, natural ventilation and daylight, and make good use of the bands of windows at either end of the apartment. 

Other materials were chosen based on the bricks’ distinct burnt red colour, such as the terracotta-red travertine for the bathroom vanity’s top. ‘We used handcrafted and wood-fired tiles for the kitchen backsplash,’ Lim adds. ‘They have natural textures, making every individual piece different. When the tiles interact with the morning light, it creates a mesmerising visual tapestry for the kitchen setup.’ The overall effect is rustic yet refined.

Now the homeowners can see greenery from every vantage point, and the reworked home has become a petite study in creating biophilic spaces. ‘Besides sufficient light, in order for plants to thrive, ventilation is also key,’ Lim notes. ‘It brings in fresh air and carbon dioxide to give plants what they need for photosynthesis. And actually, as we focused on designing a good environment for the plants, we realised that good morning light and cross-ventilation also suits the occupants.’

Text by Luo Jingmei
Images by Jovian Lim

Step inside Honeydripper, a dual-level vinyl listening lounge in Adelaide. Designed by Claire Markwick-Smith, this 1970s Laurel Canyon-inspired space champions sustainable craft and flawless acoustics for an immersive, nostalgic retreat

A deliberate shift in place from the building within which it sits, Honeydripper is low-lit, tactile and quietly immersive. The dual-level vinyl listening lounge by Claire Markwick-Smith resists the urgency of the city beyond its encasing doors, instead inviting patrons to settle in, listen and tune out. Shaped ultimately by atmosphere — one where sound, memory and material work together — the interior evokes a distinctly nostalgic and familiar feel. 

Located within central Adelaide, at the base of a newly opened hotel, the listening bar is spread generously across two levels and was conceived as a nostalgic immersion into 1970s lounging culture. Honeydripper draws from a time when music was shared, not streamed, and the soft crackle of vinyl filled a room. ‘The client brief was simply 1970s Laurel Canyon, walnut and leather,’ says Markwick-Smith, ‘with an interior that focused on brilliant acoustics.’ 

The site began as an empty shell of concrete and glazing, with a brief to ensure the space felt like it had always been there. ‘It was acoustically challenging,’ Markwick-Smith adds, ‘but a spatially generous base.’ In the double-height volume, a new mezzanine was introduced to create both separation and enhanced intimacy through scale. On the ground level below, a symmetrical, sprawling lounge anchors the entry sequence, encouraging lingering and shared listening. While the existing concrete columns inform the floor plan and help break up the overall space, the location of the bar and DJ booth also help to frame specific moments within the interior.

‘The custom furniture that wraps the space was designed to also encourage sharing in a spatial sense,’ Markwick-Smith says, ‘and then as you move upstairs, the atmosphere tightens into something more intimate and club-like.’

A theme of sustainability underpins the entire approach. Through both restraint and a desire to maximise the reuse of waste material, elements such as lighting fixtures were fabricated from scrap aluminium left over from custom tables. Together with other pieces that utilise recycled high-density polyethylene from Defy Design, vintage furniture is reused alongside locally made pieces, reducing the carbon footprint typically associated with furniture. ‘We were so careful in resolving details to reduce waste,’ Markwick-Smith reflects. ‘I worked closely with the builder, Sam Weckert, to ensure as many of the wastage panels as possible could be reused for future projects.’

Advanced acoustic engineering was integral to how the space performed across both levels. Acoustic considerations were seamlessly integrated into the fabric of the interior, ensuring sound remained the project’s true protagonist. Every surface was considered for how it absorbs sound, retains it or allows it to travel. ‘Acoustic performance was treated as a core design input, not a layer applied at the end,’ says Markwick-Smith. As well as materials, spatial planning and furniture layouts were driven by how the space sounds and feels in use. Each element needed to balance seclusion with energy, working within a larger dialogue about how the space acts as an extension of the public streetscape beyond. 

By day, Honeydripper offers a quiet reset — a place to watch passers-by through darkened Venetian blinds. By night, it becomes a destination to disconnect. As a venue, it reframes the listening bar as an everyday, relatable interior — immersive and warm — designed not just to be seen, but to be felt and cocooned within.

Text by Bronwyn Marshall
Images by Jonathan VDK

Returning to Paris during Fashion Week for its third edition, Matter and Shape sees global designers and makers examine scale, from physical dimensions to systems of craft, production and collaboration

Set amidst the gravel paths and manicured trees of the Jardin des Tuileries, design salon Matter and Shape recently returned for its third edition. Led by WSN’s Matthieu Pinet with artistic direction by Dan Thawley, the event united designers under two pavilions, conceived by London- and New York-based studio JA Projects. The structures paid homage to the site’s history as a centre of silk production through the use of moiré-patterned wall treatments. 

This edition adopted ‘scale’ as its organising idea — exploring not only the physical dimensions of objects but the relationships between craft, industry and the systems that produce them. ‘Scale, for me, is about the idea that we have both industrial and heritage companies that have made incredible things for centuries, and likewise younger makers who are questioning craft while working with veterans to preserve it through new designs,’ Thawley explained during a walkthrough on the fair’s opening morning. The roster reflected this diversity, featuring heritage companies like Lobmeyr, the 200-year-old Viennese crystal glassware house, alongside cultural institutions such as the Fondation Arp-Taeuber and emerging brands like Fassen, founded only in 2023.

The fair moved easily between centuries-old craft traditions and contemporary experimentation. At the stand of StudioSoSlow, co-founder Shenjun Ge presented a lighting structure derived from traditional Chinese kite making techniques. In the works, thin strips of bamboo, cut using ancient methods, create a lattice that can expand dramatically in scale, from small lighting pieces to towering installations. Previous iterations have reached architectural proportions, including a six-metre version created in collaboration with Valentino for Lunar New Year at Shanghai’s Tianhou Palace. ‘I wanted to share this elegant, traditional Chinese craft, without the “oriental gaze”, translating it into a modern language that’s accessible to younger generations,’ Ge explained.

Further into the fair, Japanese brand Heralbony explored scale through reproduction. The Cannes Lion- and LVMH Innovation Award-winning company works with artists with intellectual disabilities, scaling original artworks into everyday objects through collaboration and licensing. Showcasing artists from Europe and Japan, the brand featured collaborations with master artisans specialising in Nambu ironware, Nishijin textiles and satin embroidery. ‘Art itself is precious, but it’s only one piece,’ said co-CEO Takaya Matsuda. ‘If we can scale the art into everyday life through different techniques, more people can experience it.’

For Paris-based studio ANF Work, scale is less about size than about time and process. Founded by French-Japanese duo Ayumi Yoshida and Timothée Kaplan, the studio fosters long-term collaborations with regional craft workshops across Japan. Its presentation focused on lacquer-ware pieces from Yamanaka — some taking up to six months to produce — as well as a rediscovered craft object that hadn’t been produced for decades. The keyaki, or Zelkova, wood form was first created in 1948 but fell out of production in the 1980s. Kaplan and Yoshida unearthed the technique through local archives before locating the original family craftspeople. ‘We went to the city hall to find who made it originally,’ Kaplan said. ‘Finally we worked with the family — a father and son — to make it again for the first time since the eighties.’

In the gardens where mulberry trees once fed the city’s silk trade, Matter and Shape now wove new threads of continuity, connecting craft, collaboration and innovation as they move between cultures and generations.

Text by Divya Bala
Images courtesy of Matter and Shape

In his latest exhibition at Singapore Art Museum, Bagus Pandega’s kinetic, bio-responsive installations hand agency to plants, minerals and mud, exposing how ideas of endless productivity at any cost remain bound to finite environmental resources

The conveyor hums before you register its logic. In LOOP (Less Organic Operation Procedure), nickel fragments circulate endlessly, their tempo governed not by human command but by the biofeedback of tropical plants. Positioned within, Gurat Lara (Scars) stages a slow, almost painful alchemy: a sculpture of a human face, submerged and steadily plated with nickel, its transformation streamed live and the image inverted so that rising bubbles appear to fall downwards in sweat or tears — referencing the hidden costs of Indonesia’s status as the world’s largest nickel producer. Meanwhile, Fabric of the Earth produces three-dimensional printed forms made of mud from the Sidoarjo mudflow, each object a quiet witness to a human-made disaster that never quite ends. 

Together, these works in the exhibition Elia Nurvista and Bagus Pandega: Nafasan Bumi ~ An Endless Harvest, on view through 31 May 2026 at the Singapore Art Museum, encapsulate Pandega’s singular ability to turn industrial systems into instruments of reflection. ‘I’m interested in tracing how raw materials from Southeast Asia — minerals, agricultural products and energy resources — are transformed into objects and technologies: electric vehicles, artificial intelligence and digital currencies,’ he says. ‘Despite appearing immaterial or clean, they depend on intensive extraction, energy consumption and logistical infrastructures.’

Born in Jakarta in 1985 and now based in Bandung, Pandega’s first creative language was music. His geologist father who moonlighted as a Sunday musician filled the family home with musical instruments, and Pandega played in a high school band. Art arrived almost by accident: placed in Indonesia’s social sciences stream, he couldn’t enter the engineering faculty at the Bandung Institute of Technology. The only path available to him was art school, where he majored in sculpture.

Sculpture proved formative — but also constraining. The physical toll of materials like resin, silicone and paint thinner, combined with an encounter with a sound-based kinetic installation by Muneteru Ujino, shifted Pandega’s trajectory. ‘Seeing everyday objects transformed into something rhythmic, mechanical and expressive opened up a new way of thinking,’ he recalls. After graduating, he began moving away from traditional sculpture towards systems built from sound, movement and feedback.

If Pandega’s work feels technically sophisticated, its roots are stubbornly pragmatic. Much of his mechanical and electronic knowledge is self-taught, shaped by ngulik — a local ethos of resourceful tinkering. ‘It’s not about efficiency, polish or technical perfection, but about making things function with what’s available,’ he explains. Prototypes fail, systems misbehave and the work grows slowly through adjustment rather than optimisation.

The questions anchoring these machines are historical and ecological. Pandega’s father’s laboratory of mineral samples left an early, half-understood imprint, but the artist’s focus on extraction emerged later, informed by Indonesia’s colonial education and the long arc from spice trade to palm oil and nickel. ‘I see technology and nature as forces that stand in tension with one another,’ he notes. ‘Technological development is closely tied to extraction and environmental destruction, relying on the continuous removal of resources from the earth.’ He responds to this imbalance by creating systems whereby control shifts from humans to signals from plants or natural processes ‘to expose the dependency of technology on living systems’.

These concerns converge in his Singapore exhibition. Installed as a single ecosystem with Nurvista’s palm oil and batik works, Pandega’s conveyors, electroplating tanks and living systems breathe together. Agriculture, extraction, transformation, circulation and consumption are no longer abstractions but experiences — felt, heard and watched in real time. As Pandega puts it, his aim is modest yet urgent: ‘not consensus, but awareness. If my work can create moments where people pause, question or reconsider their relationship with technology, nature and the resources that sustain them, then it has fulfilled its role.’

Text by Y-Jean Mun
Images courtesy of the Singapore Art Museum

Studio Antimatter’s contemporary spin on Korean culture and spatial customs reflects dining bar Bartenders of Pony’s experimental take on traditional comfort food and beverages

At Bartenders of Pony (BOP), Singapore’s first Korean cocktail and dining bar, boundaries dissolve to create a highly curated, immersive environment. While the Jigger & Pony Group venue is known for its experimental menu — featuring playful twists like a soju martini layered with seaweed and soy-sauced tinged olive jangajji and a nostalgic Binggrae-inspired banana milk tiramisu crafted by chef Jason Oh and bartender turned creative director Uno Jang — it’s the spatial design that truly anchors the concept.  

Porto-based Singaporean designer Gabriel Tan of Studio Antimatter created interiors that reflect this innovative attitude. Having previously designed the private residence of Jigger & Pony Group’s owners, Indra Kantono and Guoyi Gan, he was a natural choice when conceptualising BOP. Tan’s approach was guided by the Korean values of kki (craft), jeong (human heart) and heung (youthful energy). ‘There was a shared understanding that the bar needed to feel deeply personal without becoming overly thematic or representational,’ says Tan. ‘So, we designed much of the furniture and lighting for user comfort and warmth, which are central to the concept.’

The Korean identity came through crafting logical spaces, tactile materials and emotional atmospheres. BOP’s layout traces the Tras Street shophouse’s elongated floor plan over four zones, from public to private and energetic to cosy. ‘Rather than reference specific hospitality precedents, we looked more closely at domestic environments — particularly the progression and zoning found in traditional Korean homes,’ Tan explains. 

The open front, nearest to the five-foot way, is suited for casual encounters and drop-ins, and the centre Skylight Green bar offers a convivial space for patrons to gather around the DJ and bartender, akin to communing around a large kitchen island in a home. Next is a timber portal into the dimly lit Bojagi Room. ‘The spatial scale compresses to create a sense of privacy and discovery,’ Tan comments. The end of the bar is a snug space that sits just four, cocooned for quiet dialogue.  

Tan’s introduction of latticework, textile layering and colour that plays an emotional role informed the design language. Korea’s traditional colour systems of obangsaek and dancheong inspired a rich palette of dark reds, muted greens, earthy terracotta, deep blues and honeyed timber tones. References to jogakbo — a traditional textile craft used to make patchwork bojagi cloths for storing, wrapping and carrying items — are found in the bar’s timber counter, the linen and mulberry paper lamps, and curtains, wall coverings and shelf patterns. ‘We interpreted these not as visual references, but as spatial references of layering, protection and care,’ Tan highlights. The Bojagi Room’s geometric wall is a clear example.

Beyond aesthetics, these textiles help with acoustics, bring cosiness to the spaces and provide soft surfaces to lean on. They’re also counterpoints to the carpentry framing the spaces and displaying Jang’s vinyls. ‘The result is an environment that feels grounded in tradition yet contemporary, reflecting our broader interest in cultural translation as a means of creating spaces that are both familiar and new,’ says Tan.  

Text by Luo Jingmei
Images by Lauryn Ishak

As FutureObjekt debuted at the Melbourne Art Fair, the city’s leading designers challenged the status quo, blending high-end craft with conceptual rigour to redefine the future of Australian collectable design

At the entrance to FutureObjekt, I found myself reflecting on something Golnar Roshan had said to me earlier that day: that the difference between art and design depends on the user. For Roshan — whose work at Rive Roashan with her partner Ruben de la Rive Box moves fluidly between luminous glass installations and functional objects — the categorisation feels increasingly redundant. As creatives, she told me, they resist being pigeonholed. What matters is the experience: how a piece shifts perception and how it participates in our daily lives.

It was precisely this porous, cross-disciplinary approach that defined the inaugural edition of FutureObjekt, Melbourne’s first collectable design salon, presented within the annual Melbourne Art Fair. The premise was simple but ambitious: to platform design with the same curatorial rigour and conceptual framing typically reserved for contemporary art. In doing so, it signals a maturation of Australia’s design scene — and an eagerness to situate it within a global conversation.

As Andy Kelly, senior marketing & partnerships manager at Melbourne Art Foundation and director of Oigåll Projects, put it: ‘I think we punch really high above our weight and I wanted to platform that in this kind of environment.’ Australia may not have a Salone del Mobile, he noted, but that absence was precisely the impetus for building something locally that reflects the calibre of talent here. 

Rive Roshan’s new work, presented by Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, titled The Sky We Share, set a contemplative tone. A series of new works — lenticular glass wall panels, mesmeric vessels and radiant, horizon-like tables — capture fleeting moments of sky photographed from the duo’s Amsterdam studio window. The pieces shimmer and shift as you move, engineered with optical precision yet deeply poetic in intent. Beneath the beauty lies a quiet political statement: the sand-printed Voices Vessels, inspired by the Kurdish Woman, Life, Freedom slogan that became prominent in Iran, transform granular material into defiant, dancing forms. Roshan spoke of ‘soft power’ — of design’s ability to reconnect us to wonder. 

While Rive Roshan’s pieces hover between art and object, Adam Goodrum’s self-produced folding chairs return us to his long-standing fascination with articulation. Revisiting a hinge detail first conceived 30 years ago — and never realised by Cappellini — Goodrum presented an edition of 20 mirror-polished stainless steel chairs with integrated hinges. This obsession with movement, with forms that transform from one state to another, is a thread that runs throughout his career — perhaps most recently exemplified by his work with Arthur Seigneur as Adam & Arthur. Here, though, freed from commercial constraints, it re-emerges as a sculptural enquiry: compact, reflective and resolved.

Adam Cornish, by contrast, leaned into exuberance. His OOO chair — part sculpture, part rocking seat — evolved from a stacking form study into a counterweighted, meticulously balanced object upholstered in reversible wool with 1960s-inspired stripes. The engineering, he admitted, took weeks of trial and error. Alongside it, titanium tile works — anodised at varying voltages to produce a spectrum of colour — reveal a near-obsessive material curiosity. Commercial relationships with local factories have, he explained, enabled this more experimental, collectable direction.

Material experimentation was a recurring motif. At Volker Haug Studio, designer Abdé Nouamani introduced the Pilz collection: mushroom-like Murano glass lamps blown using 4,000-year-old glassmaking techniques, and both classic and contemporary murrine patterns. Developed through hands-on collaboration in Venice, the pieces depart from the studio’s more architectural metal language, embracing a softer, almost whimsical silhouette. It was a reminder for us all that innovation often lies in deepening, rather than abandoning, craft histories.

Ella Saddington of Cordon Salon similarly bridged past and present. Drawing on an applied research fellowship that took her through European armour archives, she translated the structural logic of plate armour into stainless steel lighting wrapped in leather and suede. The pieces carry a subtle fashion sensibility — unsurprising given her background in tailoring — yet feel resolutely architectural.

Dean Norton’s booth functioned almost as a retrospective. Representing himself, he presented works spanning the practice he established in 2018, from the earlier Moodlum mirrors to the newly released Pillar collection in layered MDF, finished in white polyurethane. His Looking Glass works — layered with dichroic glass and silver mirror — create kaleidoscopic infinity effects, edging further into engineered art objects. The through ine is an evolving formal language rooted in reflection and perception.

Sozou Studio offered a quieter meditation. Kozo paper from Kyoto, aged brass and Australian blackwood converge in lighting that is symbolic of hybridity. Tokyo-born but now Melbourne-based designer Kohtaroh Colwell-Matsuura described the intention not as explicitly Japanese or Italian (his business partner Stefano’s heritage), but as distinctly Melbourne: multicultural, layered and respectful of tradition without being beholden to it.

Tom Fereday’s cast aluminium Cor light, meanwhile, celebrates permanence. Sand-cast in sections and welded to appear monolithic, each piece bears the pitting and variation of its process. Originally conceived in travertine, the new aluminium iteration extends its application indoors and out. Fereday spoke of working with — not against — makers, allowing technique to inform form, and showing respect to materials.

Around them, other exhibitors — from Studio Gardner’s layered, internationally inflected showroom, to Oigåll Project’s own tightly edited roster, Christopher Boots’s exploration of geology and illumination, and Don Cameron’s architecturally inspired works in metal — reinforced the salon’s broader ambition: to normalise the coexistence of art and design within a single collecting framework.

What FutureObjekt ultimately proposed was not a new category but a new confidence: the idea that Melbourne can host a salon where design is discursive, experimental and collectable. It proves that Australian practitioners, as Kelly suggests, punch above their weight, and that perhaps the art-versus-design debate is less about hierarchy and more about use — about how we choose to live with the objects that shape our days.

If this first edition was any indication, the sky — shared or otherwise — is the limit.

Text by Suzy Annetta

The monthly briefing from Design Anthology’s editors on the most interesting things to see, places to go and books to read

Tropical Retreats by Iker Zuniga, Lannoo Publishers, Bali
Book

Authored by Spanish photographer Iker Zuniga, Tropical Retreats is an intimate anthology of Bali’s residential landscape. The monograph moves beyond the typical travelogue to explore how architecture becomes a vehicle for self-expression, featuring both established studios like Ibuku and Studio Jencquel, and the personal sanctuaries of collectors. It captures a dialogue with nature, illustrating how diverse creatives reinterpret local vernacular to define their own senses of home within the island’s lush environment.

Tokyobike Porter, Tokyo
Bicycle

Known for bicycles that prioritise the joy of the ride, Tokyobike has expanded its philosophy with the release of the Tokyobike Porter, its first electrically assisted cargo model. The Porter is designed to navigate the nuances of urban life, featuring a substantial front carrier for groceries or gear while maintaining the brand’s signature slender silhouette. With a low centre of gravity and a length tailored to narrow streets, it transforms the chore of transporting heavy loads into a breezy, stable extension of daily leisure.

Libertario Coffee Roasters, Delhi
Cafe

In Delhi’s Greater Kailash 2, Libertario Coffee Roasters offers a refreshingly polished take on the city’s evolving cafe culture. Founded by Miguel Villaquiran and Arushi Mehra, the space is designed by Aayushi Malik to break away from typical cafe tropes. The interiors are elegant but industrial, utilising varied finishes of stainless steel — brushed, polished and chromed — alongside a reflective ceiling that amplifies the volume. Softened by micro-concrete surfaces and striking blue tiling, the venue feels immersive and international. 
Images by Avesh Gaur

Turntable, Hermès, Paris
Record Player

Hermès elevates the audiophile’s ritual with a turntable that’s as much a sculptural object as it is a feat of engineering. The design marries the warmth of Swift calfskin with the cool precision of mirror-polished chrome, creating a refined tactile contrast. Subtle details abound, from the house seal on the dust cover to control buttons inspired by vintage cameras. Available in four leather colourways, including a vibrant limoncello, this piece elevates the act of playing some vinyl.

Lemaire Wukang, Shanghai
Store

Housed within a 1930s residence in Shanghai’s Xuhui district, the new Lemaire flagship is in some ways an invitation to slow living, revealing layers of the brand’s collections at an unhurried pace. The space occupies a villa originally designed by architect Dong Dayou, preserving its domestic warmth to display collections alongside books and music. Artistic directors Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran have orchestrated a dialogue between East and West, in which a Spanish-style facade gives way to interiors mixing Bossche School and Viennese Succession furniture with locally sourced vintage pieces.

Urban Bake Gangnam, Seoul
Bakery

This small Seoul bakery, designed by Seuk Hoon Kim and his team at Studio Eccentric, draws inspiration from the owner’s and designer’s shared memories of New York neighbourhood bakeries. The design avoids overly polished decor, focusing instead on raw surfaces and clean lines to create a quiet corner shop atmosphere. Minimal ornamentation and warm lighting ensure the bread and sandwiches remain the true focal point. 
Images by Jisang Chung

Futureobjekt, Melbourne
Event

As part of the Melbourne Art Fair, the programme introduces Futureobjekt, a dedicated 600-square-metre salon celebrating the blurring lines between functional design and art. Described as a fair within a fair, the inaugural showcase features more than 20 of Australia’s most compelling creators, including Adam Goodrum, Volker Haug Studio (pictured right), Adam Cornish, Tom Fereday and Christopher Boots. Beyond mere display, the sector — framed by a specialised conversations series — aims to provoke dialogue on craft and collectability.

Inspired by Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, a bachelor’s apartment in Kuala Lumpur masterfully blends nostalgic Old Shanghai aesthetics with modern design, creating a space of wistful romanticism

In the Mood for Love, a romantic masterpiece by Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, may have premiered more than 25 years ago, but it continues to inspire. This time, its influence finds expression in a bachelor’s apartment in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur.

Set in 1960s British Hong Kong, the film stars Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung as Shanghainese expat neighbours whose lives coalesce after they discover that their respective partners are having an affair. Everyday environments swell with atmosphere, from the acidic colour palettes and mesmerising, sharp qipaos to silences punctuated by tendrils of cigarette smoke, swirling with longing.

Victoria Loi, chief creative officer at Kuala Lumpur-based design firm The Makeover Guys, partnered with the homeowner to imbue the apartment with this wistful romanticism and Wong’s flair for framing spaces through colour and materiality. ‘We wanted to create a space that would evoke emotion and spark your imagination,’ Loi explains. ‘I’d always loved how a cinematographer uses light, structure and texture to conjure feeling, even in scenes without much dialogue.’

Red — a recurring motif in the film — was a clear starting point. However, its vibrancy can often overwhelm a room and compromise its timelessness. With a light and sure hand, Loi employs the colour in various shades and exacting moments without overpowering the overall palette. ALPI Sottsass Red veneer, reminiscent of a furnace’s vivid embers, forms the base of the custom dining table, tempered by an acid-washed black Indian granite tabletop.

The dining room as a whole nods to Old Shanghai, a period that fused Chinese tradition with Western inflections like Art Deco. An Emperador marble shelf combines with vintage handmade tiles and herringbone-patterned wool upholstery to form an enthralling nook, made complete with Bauhaus-inspired chairs from Hangzhou-based furniture brand Grado. A slanted panel with serrated edges amplifies visual interest, breaking up the square dining area while cleverly concealing a bulky refrigerator.

The reds deepen in the living room, which features cherry-hued framed sliding panels and handles with scarlet-tinged marble detailing. Loi also tapped into her own storied past: the intriguing Minster-patterned glass took inspiration from her grandmother’s home in Sabak Bernam, Selangor. ‘She had similar glass cabinets that evoked 1960s Malaysian style and evoked a sense of nostalgia,’ she says.

Once again, the brighter tones are offset by the decidedly moodier walnut wall panels, Emperador marble detailing and handmade glass sconces from Guangzhou. Anchoring the space is a three-metre leather sofa from Grado, sized to suit the owner’s build. Nearby, a lounge chair embroidered with striped patterns is redolent of Old Shanghai qipaos.

As with Wong’s films, subtle, oft-overlooked gestures abound in the home. The hallway entrance is built with a tilt to counterbalance the dining room’s angled panel. In the main bedroom, a pendant lamp and sconce set off an asymmetry, alluding to the emotional push and pull between the film’s protagonists. Though Loi initially had a more restrained colour scheme in mind, the owner encouraged her to experiment with a dash of red. The result is a muted raspberry upholstery that enlivens the room while aiding its acoustics.

Throughout each room, Loi’s delicate approach recalls Wong’s distinctive sensitivity to minutiae, seen in her mindful selection of materials and her perceptive use of colour and texture. The apartment reminds us that a home is made to be a repository of love, memory and time, and it has every ability to kindle intimacy and beauty, just like Wong’s iconic films.

Text by Joseph Koh
Images by Weng Jen

In place of overt luxury, Signyan Design’s Qing Shan Hot Spring embraces rural authenticity and back-to-basics simplicity — without sacrificing modern comfort

To complement Qing Shan 49, Signyan Design’s studio-run retreat, founder Ke Xie sought out a separate site in the largely untouched, thermally rich village of Xiashankou for a dedicated hot springs hideaway. Reached via a roughly 40-minute chauffeured drive, the spa occupies a historic courtyard dwelling, as integral to the experience as its wider surroundings. ‘We wanted the hot spring villa to feel more like the courtyard of a long-time resident, where guests can still sense the place as it once was,’ Xie says, recalling long, reflective site visits that led to this outcome. ‘Beyond studying the physical space, it was even more important to feel it and imagine.’

With a conservation-led approach, the project keeps an abundance of original imprints, from the entrance gate and wall paintings to the stonework, doors and handles. Traces of wear and time are also present throughout, helping to build a narrative, including windows with weathered glass panes and remnants of earlier paint finishes on rammed-earth walls. Beyond introducing heated pools into the layout, Xie limited significant interventions to opening key interior spaces into double-height volumes and replacing courtyard-facing walls with glazing to increase transparency.

New materials were also introduced sparingly, either reclaimed locally — like roof tiles sourced from nearby farmhouses — or selected for minimal intrusion. The latter include black stone flooring, firebrick and terracotta surfaces, polycarbonate panels and ironwork fabricated on site. Decor, likewise, keeps its voice low. It nods to the rustic through objects once used by former residents, placed alongside antiques and artworks from Xie’s own Yiji Collection, and intermittent paper lighting by the likes of Isamu Noguchi.

Xie and his team worked closely with local craftspeople and the home’s former owner, himself part of the construction trade, to anchor the project in authenticity. ‘Having worked within this landscape for many years, they brought deep, practical knowledge and an aesthetic sensibility rooted in nature and time,’ he notes. Such sensitivity extends to other aspects that define the experience, among them the planting, preserved or introduced — all local species that carry the scents of agrarian life — and the fare, considered with equal care to celebrate local flavours. ‘I hope those who visit feel a sense of coming home, as if returning to the Dali of twenty years ago, or to an old childhood dwelling,’ says Xie.

Text by Tomás Pinheiro
Images by Iker Zuñiga

How do you bring both a magazine and a skincare brand to life? How is it felt? What does it mean to touch, smell, hear and taste a set of ideas that usually live on the page, in stores and in amber glass bottles?

For Design Anthology, this thinking has guided the magazine since founding, our purpose being to share the work of creative individuals and communities. That sensibility extends beyond what we publish to how our own work is encountered. The physicality of the magazine matters: the texture of the paper, the scent of the ink and the heft of its binding connects it to place, to process, and to the human hands that brought it into being. The same attention shapes our films, our digital channels and our events. Each is considered as an experience, paced and composed to enrich and delight.

Aesop, a natural partner of many years, approaches each experience with a similar intent. Across its stores, products and collaborations, there is a sustained focus on hospitality, atmosphere, material intelligence and human-scale encounters. Architecture, craft and ritual are treated as essential to how customers and partners move through its world and it was this shared way of thinking that framed early conversations between Design Anthology and Aesop as we began designing the programme of what became a four-day retreat in Tokyo last November.

At the centre of this was a shared preoccupation with the senses, and with experience as something emotive and deeply human. For the first time, patrons of our two brands could inhabit a shared world over several days and evenings in one of the world’s great cities, one that is well traversed yet remains curiously guarded. Guests arrived from around the world to experience a Tokyo rarely encountered through conventional travel, thanks to the access and exchange offered by our two brands.

Hosted by Design Anthology’s Suzy Annetta and Jeremy Smart alongside Michelle Tan, Xinyao Qiu, Hizuru Tsuchiya and Mayuna Morita from Aesop, it was conceived as a journey through the city for a small group of travellers attentive to craft and culture. Guests arrived on a crisp November afternoon at the Mandarin Oriental, high above Nihonbashi. As evening settled, welcome drinks at the Mandarin Bar gave way to dinner nearby at Maruyama, a contemporary interpretation of the izakaya, set on the ground floor of the Claesson Koivisto Rune-designed hotel K5, where sake and seasonal produce set the tone for the days ahead.

Friday morning began in Nakameguro at Aesop Tokyo, the brand’s flagship store in Japan and one of the first to open in the country, guided by its designer Shinichiro Ogata. The visit unfolded as a conversation about place and material, with Ogata presenting elevations and photographs of the store to a studious audience, notebooks and cameras in hand. Guest Gerhard Heusch found this the most compelling aspect of the retreat. ‘You really facilitated for us to get an insight into Ogata’s unique creative process, which is rooted in his culture,’ he commented. ‘This was exactly what I was hoping to be able to experience in your retreat and what attracted me to it in the first place.’ Skin and fragrance consultations followed, allowing guests to engage directly through touch and scent. Lunch at Ogata’s first ever restaurant, Higashiyama, introduced the principles of shojin ryori, Buddhist temple cuisine based on seasonality and ceremony.

That evening, guests gathered at the Aesop Japan office in Shibuya, welcomed by the local team for an introduction to the brand’s work over several decades in the island nation. The Torafu Architects-designed space was introduced by founder Koichi Suzuno, who gave guests exclusive insight into thinking behind its creation. A private dinner on the building's verdant rooftop followed, catered by Aesop alumna Hiroko Shiratori and paired with Japanese wines from Domaine Tetta. Around the table, editors, architects, designers, curators and travellers shared expansive, joyous conversation.

Saturday was devoted to making. At Sokichi in Asakusa, guests were introduced to the Edo-era craft of kiriko glass cutting, a delicate hand-cut technique unique to Tokyo, working directly with the material to shape their own sake cups. Lunch followed at Mukojima Shichifuku Suzume no Oyado, before an afternoon of shodo calligraphy, a traditional practice using a bamboo brush and black ink to paint Japanese characters. In a 360-year-old Buddhist temple, brush and paper became tools of concentration and reflection. ‘I never imagined that a calligraphy master would hold my hand to help me write my own name gracefully,’ said guest Masulin Lim. ‘It made me realise how to respect my identity meaningfully.’

The retreat concluded with a private dinner at the peerless Yakumo Saryo, hosted by its founder Shinichiro Ogata. The evening drew together many of the themes explored over the previous days: craft, authorship, restraint and the value of time, expressed through food and conversation.

Across the four days, the city’s leading designers and makers offered rare insight into their practice, while the city emerged as a place of contemporary expression built atop tradition. ‘It was truly inspiring to be part of such a rare moment where creatives from different fields came together to appreciate the things that connect us,’ reflected guest Lance Tan. As guests gathered for a final breakfast above the waking skyline on Sunday morning, the experiences of the retreat lingered in conversation and, on departure, in a renewed attentiveness to how design is seen, smelled, heard, tasted and ultimately felt.

aesop.com

Images by Nobu Arakawa

Architecture collective FOG cleared the air to reimagine the new YuSpa in Beijing

When I meet Yu Zheng, he looks nothing like his picture. A partner at FOG Architecture, a practice split between London, Shanghai and Chongqing, his portfolio photo shows a black-shirted young man with a side-swept fringe and a serious expression. The man in front of me has longer hair, kept somewhat under control by a baseball cap, and is wearing a casual T-shirt. Behind him, industrial metal shelving is roughly stacked with folders and books, all set under a roof of distressed concrete. This is one of the two men behind Beijing’s most serene new wellness destination, YuSpa.

When YuSpa opened its flagship location in Beijing’s upmarket Taikoo Li Sanlitun precinct in 2025, the transformation marked not just the evolution of a beloved wellness brand, but the maturation of FOG Architecture’s sensorial, human-centred design ethos. Led by partner Di Zhan, with insights from Zheng, the studio approached YuSpa with a deep design question: how do you calm someone, spatially?

FOG, founded in 2019 — the name is a playful poke at the weather in London, where Zheng and Zhan both trained at the AA, and Zhan’s home Chongqing — is known for work that fuses materiality, emotion and perceptual experience into spatial form. Its projects, whether the immersive retail world of ToSummer’s flagship store in Beijing, the craft-driven Lemaire Chengdu boutique, or even the experimental Cycle Cycle Portable Bakehouse, all grapple with the same fundamental idea: architecture as a vessel for atmosphere. YuSpa extends that philosophy from retail into ritual.

The client, already renowned among Beijingers for his meticulous approach to service, came to FOG with a simple brief: ‘I want something calm and peaceful.’ His first spa branch had been self-designed, rich in detail but lacking the spatial sequencing that could gently transition customers from street bustle to internal stillness. This is where FOG’s architectural sensibility, rooted in the choreography of movement, became transformative.

On arrival, guests step from Taikoo Li’s bright pedestrian corridors into a dimly lit, narrow passageway, the first act in a carefully composed journey of relaxation. ‘We wanted the arrival experience to prepare the mind,’ says Zheng. The corridor widens into a generous lobby where neutral-toned floors, walls and ceilings merge into a continuous envelope. This monochromatic quietness erases visual distraction, helping to still the mind and body.

In FOG’s design approach, scent and sound become architectural materials. Soft aromatic sprays, from citrus to floral, are tuned to morning, afternoon and evening. Low voices drift from spa staff who have perfected the art of whispering, while soft hidden partitions dampen ambient noise. To avoid the eerie hush of total silence, FOG introduced water, with a central font anchoring the acoustic landscape in nature.

‘Architecture,’ says Zheng, ‘is about finding the potential of a space and releasing people’s uneasiness.’ At YuSpa, that release is palpable. In fact, it envelops the moment the front door closes behind you, when Beijing disappears — and serenity becomes a spatial act.

Text by Simon Ostheimer
Images by Wen Studio and InSpace

In an era of short-lived offices and borrowed workplace models, Knoll brings together Thailand’s design community in Bangkok to reconsider Florence Knoll’s idea of Total Design and its enduring mark on how we design today

The office has undergone profound change in recent years. Once a predictable hub of productivity and innovation, it now finds itself unsettled, negotiating its place in a world of hybrid schedules and flexible layouts.

For architects and designers, the brief has evolved. Workplaces must now do more than just accommodate activity; they must foster connection and collaboration, support evolving patterns of work, and remain relevant over time. The challenge is particularly acute in Southeast Asia, where rapid urban growth, dense cities and deeply rooted work cultures collide with workplace models that promise adaptability but rarely reflect local nuance.

With this friction in mind, Knoll, in collaboration with Pergo, convened an intimate discussion in Bangkok this January, gathering Thailand’s architecture and design community to revisit a concept that predates open plans, co-working and the language of workplace consultancy. Florence Knoll called it Total Design.

Her belief was simple but rigorous: furniture, architecture, textiles and planning must work together as a unified whole, or the space would fail. Founded in 1938 in New York by Hans Knoll, and later shaped by Florence’s architectural approach, Knoll became known for turning modernist principles into functional, thoughtfully designed interiors. The company’s in-house Planning Unit put this philosophy into practice, designing interiors as complete, harmonious ecosystems — a legacy that continues to inform how Knoll approaches design for the modern workplace today.

Moderated by Design Anthology’s editor-in-chief Jeremy Smart, the discussion moved fluidly between the uncertainties of today’s workplace landscape and the practical realities of contemporary design practice. Panellists Sarinrath Kamolratanapiboon of DWP, Theeranuj Karnasuta Wongwaisayawan of IA49, Chanintr Sirisant of Chanintr and Alexandra Ramundi of MillerKnoll reflected on how Florence Knoll’s philosophy of Total Design continues to resonate within the Thai context. Specifically, they discussed how to uphold these standards while navigating hybrid work models, evolving client expectations and increasing pressure for flexibility and long-term performance.

What, then, makes a workplace relevant when work itself is constantly evolving? The panel returned repeatedly to the primacy of human experience. Spaces, they argued, should anticipate behaviour, support collaboration and rely on materials and furniture that improve and age gracefully over time. Successful workplaces are rooted in human-centred designs that balance openness with intimacy, layering light, texture and colour to create environments that feel purposeful and supportive of creativity and productivity.

More than eight decades on, Florence Knoll’s influence remains deeply embedded in these principles, not just in the furniture that carries her name, but in the way designers think about and orchestrate space. Beyond a brand legacy, Total Design remains a powerful idea that continues to shape how people move, work and engage with a space to its fullest effect.

Celebrating 20 years of hiding in plain sight — most recently through a striking photo-performance in the Maldives with Ruinart — Bolin Liu reveals that behind the camouflage, his first and enduring artistic love remains sculpture

Over the past two decades, Beijing-based artist Bolin Liu has mastered the art of vanishing. Nicknamed ‘The Invisible Man’, he has slipped into newsstands, cityscapes, supermarket shelves and political landmarks, using his own body as a living canvas. Yet, behind the spectacle of his camouflage lies a quieter truth: Liu is, at heart, a sculptor — one who has always hoped the world would recognise him as much for his three-dimensional work as for his photographs.

‘From a young age, I engaged in toy-making as a form of spatial thinking,’ he recalls. Clay aircraft and pistols were his childhood experiments in modelling. That instinct matured at the Shandong Academy of Fine Arts and later at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, where sculpture became his principal language. Today, his studio practice extends beyond classical mediums. After experimenting with circuit boards, USB cables, mobile phones and chargers, he now builds fragmented sculptures using resin, copper and cutting-edge digital tools, often beginning by scanning the body using 3D technology. 

Liu explains his adoption of unconventional techniques: ‘Traditional sculptures and paintings fail to convey the profound dissonance between body and spirit that I wish to express. With the advent of 3D scanning and printing technologies, I found a way to express those feelings.’ Even in his photographs, the foundation is sculptural: the meticulous moulding of paint layers, props and spatial alignments allows him to dissolve into his surroundings.

The impetus for Liu’s ‘invisible’ works emerged from crisis rather than experiment. In 2001, ‘the September eleven terrorist attacks shocked me to my core and made me reconsider the meaning of life and my relationship to civilisation as an artist,’ he says. ‘It made me realise the world was not what I thought it was. That’s when I began using my body as a medium.’ Four years later, when his Beijing studio was demolished by Chinese authorities, he staged his first ‘invisible protest’, painting himself to disappear into the rubble. It became the genesis of the series Hiding in the City, now marking its 20th anniversary.

What began as a response to China’s rapid transformation evolved into a global vocabulary. Liu has vanished into cities like Venice, Paris, London, Singapore and New York, underscoring themes of identity, consumerism, power, cultural tension and climate change. ‘Choosing where to hide is to highlight the meaning hidden in that place,’ he explains. ‘My intention is to reflect upon the world’s imperfections, striving for transformation through art in order to contribute positively towards a better world.’

Last November, Liu deepened that commitment with Elements, a photo-performance created at The Ritz-Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands, in collaboration with champagne house Ruinart. Disappearing where ocean meets sky, framed by a blazing ring of fire, he embodied the four elemental forces of life: earth, water, fire and air. ‘In traditional Chinese philosophy, these refer to the four basic elements that constitute all things in the world,’ he notes. ‘Excessive human intervention has caused significant disruption to the marine ecosystems near the Maldives, which I wanted to draw attention to. We must protect our oceans, our environment and our earth.’ The work also continues Ruinart’s long-standing tradition, dating back to 1896, of commissioning contemporary artists to reinterpret its heritage.

Earlier, in Milan, Liu blended into The Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie, using Leonardo da Vinci’s sacred Renaissance fresco to question presence, absence and spiritual continuity. Such works reveal the philosophical core of his practice: the body as a vessel and the world as a stage for renewal. ‘The human body is a temple,’ he says. ‘When we return to a state of elemental purity, we reconnect with the world and with ourselves.’ Twenty years on, Liu is still disappearing, with each vanishing act — and each sculpture — illuminating the truths we too often fail to see.

Text by Y-Jean Mun
Images courtesy of Liu Bolin, Liu Bolin Studio and Ruinart

Too much design is reactive, cosmetic and ignores the humans who use it. Design Anthology’s editor-in-chief Jeremy Smart makes a case for considering context, care and why the real test of any environment is whether the people inside it are smiling

Bill Bensley keeps a set of leather-clad dumbbells in his customised Volkswagen Caravelle. The mobile office, living room and gym that ferries him through Bangkok’s notorious traffic is — much like Bill himself — charmingly eccentric yet practical, a design solution to the city’s everyday grind. Why shouldn’t we turn mind-numbing congestion into an opportunity to get the blood pumping?

I spotted this unique set-up while catching up with the architect and designer at his Wonka-esque studio in Bangkok’s heart. As we parted ways, Bill offered me his driver to take me to my next appointment. Not an unusual gesture in this part of the world, but a kind one nonetheless. It made me wonder where this instinct has gone in the broader business of hospitality, where everything seems to come with a bill to be signed and is more concerned with the former than the latter.

I was in Bangkok to host a conversation on the legacy of Florence Knoll (pictured below) with our friends at MillerKnoll and Chanintr. We talked about the evergreen principles of designing spaces for life and work: how to bring pieces of furniture with heritage and history into an interior responsibly, and why design must account for the whole story — the hard and soft, the structural and the human. We returned, repeatedly, to the idea of designing for context, what Knoll called ‘total design’, where everything should be conceived in relation to its larger context. Too much of the design industry today works in isolation and is reactive and cosmetic.

Designing environments that people both relish and cherish requires optimism and adaptability, but most importantly empathy and care. You have to give a damn: about your colleagues, makers and builders, end users, and your literal and metaphorical neighbours. To do so, Bill advocates for getting off screens and paying attention to the world around you: by watching, reading and listening. To understand what works and what doesn’t, you’re going to need to actually show up — not just dial in.

At Bill’s studio, I shadowed him on an afternoon of MBWA (Management By Wandering Around), perhaps the simplest and most effective diagnostic tool available. Having visited countless studios, factories and headquarters of companies large and small, I’ve found the best measure of an organisation’s culture is the number of smiles I spot. It’s immediately clear whether people feel respected, trusted and have agency. Even in more studious workplaces, it’s pretty obvious whether a team is performing happiness for a hovering manager or taking real pleasure in their work. It’s difficult to fake camaraderie, and joy is infectious and obvious to visitors. Workplaces that achieve high smile scores are rewarded with long tenures, low turnover and a resulting sense of institutional choreography that only time can buy.

As you plan the months ahead, I’d implore you to consider this a metric worth monitoring. All of us should ask, more often than we do, whether the places we shape, commission or write about actually bring pleasure to the people inside them — or whether they simply serve a company’s bottom line or a set of hollow KPIs.

If you’re due for some real-world lessons in ‘total design’ (and of course great hospitality), find a window in your diary for 8–14 March. There are still a couple of places remaining on our fast-filling trip to Chandigarh. I’d love to have your company in the foothills of the Himalayas for eye-opening studio visits, good food and wine, enlightening conversation amongst new friends, and some real-world MBWA. Smiles guaranteed.

Text by Jeremy Smart

Set against Hong Kong’s layered urban landscape, in December Kohler Design Forum convened architects and designers to consider how memory, technology and cultural identity continue to shape contemporary practice

Hong Kong is a city of contrasts. Towering glass and steel rise alongside colonial facades, while narrow historic lanes thread through high-rise clusters; density, speed and scale collide with history and craft. Tradition and technology are in constant negotiation, shaping the city’s ever-evolving character. These tensions came into sharp focus last December at the Kohler Design Forum, which brought together renowned architects, designers and innovators to explore how memory, technology and cultural identity continue to shape and inform contemporary design practices.

Moderated by Design Anthology founder Suzy Annetta, the afternoon was structured around two parallel lines of inquiry: one focused on emerging technologies, the other on the enduring role of narrative and place. On the technological front, Simon Yu of Zaha Hadid Architects and Craig Miller of Heatherwick Studio examined how computational tools and artificial intelligence are reshaping architectural thinking. 

When applied with intention, technology is framed as a collaborator, one that accelerates design processes while remaining anchored in human-centred principles. Through spatial experimentation, master planning and structural and 3D modelling, both studios demonstrated how digital tools can expand architectural possibilities without losing sight of human judgement or authorship. This approach is visible in the Xi’an CCBD in one of China’s ancient capitals, the Unicorn Island master plan in Chengdu, and the ongoing Zhejiang Shaoxing Shangyu District Cao’e River Culture and Art Centre. Across these projects, the question is no longer whether technology should be used, but how it can be used well, in ways that enhance both its design and purpose.

Adding to the discussion, Lyndon Neri of Neri&Hu and Su Seam Teo of LTW Designworks spoke of design as a carrier of memory, and how buildings, interiors and objects can absorb cultural residue and re-emerge in contemporary form. Teo highlighted the new Korean Air Lounges, where layouts take cues from the traditional Korean hanok, evoking the calm order of a courtyard. Heritage is expressed through proportion, materiality and detailing, as well as the reinterpretation of cultural symbols, including the Joseon era moon jar and specially commissioned artworks, demonstrating how history can quietly inform modern interiors without feeling too literal. 

Lyndon Neri emphasised the reuse of materials and layering of history. One of their early projects, The Waterhouse at South Bund, Shanghai, exemplifies this approach, where a 19-room boutique hotel was built on an existing Japanese Army headquarters from the 1930s. Retaining much of the original structure, Neri translated the intimate, exploratory qualities of traditional Shanghai nong-tang — narrow lane houses where the public and private intertwine — into the hotel’s layout. Similarly, at Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat, he drew on vernacular courtyard houses, repurposing bricks from nearby villages to create new spatial experiences that are both rooted in local context and connected to the past.

Bringing these conversations together, Kohler further highlighted its interest in thoughtful, human-centred interiors and the evolving design landscape across the Asia-Pacific region. Taken as a whole, the talks revealed a vision of design that is neither purely digital nor wistfully analogue, but a careful negotiation between the two. They anchor the idea that the value of design lies not in tools or history alone, but in the care and discernment with which they are applied, shaping not just what we build, but the stories these spaces carry forward for generations to come.

Nice Projects’ renovation of Odette is a sensorial commingling of theatre, tempo, nature and art

If the original Odette projected the lightness and playful spirit of spring, its refreshed iteration ten years on evokes a meditative autumn day. Located in Singapore’s National Gallery, chef-owner Julien Royer’s three-Michelin-starred, modern French institution has just completed a significant reimagining by designer Sacha Leong of Nice Projects with his co-founder Simone McEwan. The former had first designed the restaurant while working at Universal Design Studio.

Compared to the first design, when he needed to create a spatial identity from scratch, Leong had to be more strategic about changes. ‘People have come to love the interior, which forms a big part of the DNA of Odette,’ he says. ‘We had to make sure we kept those bits, but also created a warmer and even more considered space.’ 

Previously, there were pale pinks and sharp whites, accented by potted palms. Singaporean artist Dawn Ng’s mobile-like installation, A Theory of Everything (2015), floated in the void of the former Supreme Court’s quotidian registration room, abstracting the chef’s ingredients onto oak, polyfoam, brass and paper. 

This visual narrative continues in Odette’s facelift, which has improved functionality and introduced a more subdued palette of apricot and vanilla. Rather than entirely erasing its past, Leong retained familiar elements to preserve intimacy in the tall space. Wall panels are no longer blush-coloured, but feature patterning from four veneer types evoking topography or painterly strokes, depending on how one perceives them. 

‘The veneers were carefully matched and laser-cut, and then pieced together across all the panels,’ Leong explains. So, while looking effortless, they were challenging to make, like Royer’s adroit manipulation of flavours and textures expressed as table art.

There were alterations to the layout too: each dining group now has its own personal, cosy banquette, and a dedicated private dining room was introduced. The kitchen has also now become a theatrical sideshow, framed by the building’s columns. 

Likewise, the new entrance design celebrates spatial storytelling, procession and rhythm. ‘It was important to have the greeter facing you straight on, and centred between the historic front doors,’ avers Leong. ‘It also felt right for this warm, very direct welcome back by Dawn’s impressive new artwork. There’s a sense of discovery once the guests pass through the sheer curtains to the main dining area.’

Ng’s art, positioned centrally between the arched doorways, is interwoven with the building’s interior architecture. Titled Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall (2025), it consists of four conjoined ‘platelets’ of pulverised paper, with colours drawn from a seasonal palette of botanical and culinary ingredients — petal, root, leaf and spice — providing a backdrop to the reception table, like a tableau within a proscenium.

Their colours and textures, gleaned from Royer’s seasonal palette of culinary ingredients echo the natural world. They are ‘maps of wind currents and vegetal textures that drift and coalesce in a tapestry of time,’ says Ng, and they serve as her poignant whisper to guests as they enter with anticipation, and leave, awoken and satiated.

Text by Luo Jingmei
Images by Khoo Guo Jie, courtesy of Nice Projects

In Singapore, a restored home carries the legacy of Chen Wen Hsi, one of the nation’s pioneering artists and a key figure of the Nanyang style. Once where he lived, painted and taught, the property has been sensitively reimagined into a contemporary space that honours his spirit. Guided by his belief in harmony between life and nature, the home opens to garden courtyards and picture windows that frame shifting views like living artworks. Concrete is softened by greenery that draws the landscape inward, creating an interplay between inside and out that echoes Chen’s ethos. Two preserved murals form the core of the home, while artworks by first- and second-generation Singaporean artists continue a dialogue across the spaces. Rather than existing as a relic of the past, the home extends the artist’s lineage — a place where art remains present in daily life.

Images by Studio Periphery

Designer Patricia Ho transforms a 30-year-old apartment into a lived-in gallery of memories, guided by a deeply personal approach to hospitality, travel and home

In Singapore, designer Patricia Ho, founder of Studio P and White Jacket, has transformed a 30-year-old apartment into a home that reads like an autobiography through space. Informed by her work in hospitality, the design prioritises mood over spectacle, using texture, proportion and light to shape experience. Terracotta-washed ceilings, Zellige tiles and handcrafted furniture lend warmth to the architectural bones, while a custom mural by artist Chloë Manasseh establishes a lyrical centrepiece that echoes throughout the home. Spaces are fluid yet grounded in ritual: morning coffee on the balcony, painting in the studio, candlelit dinners. Rather than pursue trends or visual perfection, the home embraces imperfection, tactility and personal history. It is a living document of the designer’s journey, evolving with its owners and revealing itself through use, routine and time.

Images by Studio Periphery

This singular home acts as a canvas for its owners’ artistic work and existential views

The first thing one notices on the black-stained concrete facade of this terrace house in Singapore’s Little India is the tangle of black industrial trunking. This gesture hints at the building’s function as a canvas for the homeowners’ many self-made art pieces. A couple in a creative field, the owners intended to elevate the house beyond functionality and called on local studio Ministry of Design (MOD) with the rather enigmatic brief to ‘let the home capture the spirit of the philosophy beyond life, as we know it’.

This philosophy refers to the Christian understanding of life on this earth as ephemeral and a mere ‘stepping-stone to the next life, however permanent it appears,’ explains MOD co-founder and design director Colin Seah. The architecture is designed with this idea in mind, but the multi-storey construct with only two slim windows — one in front and one behind — also considers the couple’s personalities. ‘The husband-and-wife owners are hyper-social on one level, but hyper-private on the other,’ notes MOD co-founder Joy Seah. Any demarcation of clear scale or domestic content is absent from the black-box structure. Is it even a house? Is it a theatre? A sub-station? 

Colin explains that this idiosyncrasy gels with the streetscape, a hodgepodge of typologies that eschews the clear zoning typical of Singapore’s residential estates. The home’s unabashed strangeness is what melds it to the offbeat whole of the street; it is an enigma, augmented by an orchestrated trajectory or series of ‘acts’ like in a play. One enters the ground floor through a sort of proscenium between the garden and garage, flanked by black curtains that hide shoe storage, bicycles and other paraphernalia. Even the garden is a type of memento mori, animated as it is by sprawling Moringa, known as the ‘tree of life’ for its incredible durability, nutrient density and supposed protective properties.

In the garage, a large photograph of the space taken during the construction stage glows cinematically on a red lightbox, a silent commentary on the dual sentiments of destruction and rebirth in the process of building the house. The notion is reiterated in a series of viewing portals on a raised metal platform before the main door, which offer a view into an installation of debris salvaged from the site’s former structure. The piece elevates the prosaic, creating art from dirt, and the result is not unlike looking into an archaeological dig at a museum.

Even before entering the house proper, the scene is thick with mystery and a sense of discovery. A black panel conceals the guestroom door, placed along this entryway so that guests can have a self-sufficient silo without entering the main home. Through the door and up a darkened stairwell, one arrives at the second act: the black steps, defined like a dark cut-out in the floor, transition into screed concrete flooring and a stainless-steel kitchen.

‘The idea is for guests to feel like they’re sort of “emerging into the light”, like coming out of water onto dry land,’ Colin muses. ‘There’s a datum line that you feel at a subconscious level. Entering this floor, you feel you’re in a different place altogether.’ Here, again, curtains create fluid boundaries, with one closing off the dining area from the staircase and another separating the kitchen from a cosy sitting corner that, adorned with plants and lit through the front window, feels like an outdoor terrace.

A lightweight vertebra-like staircase with black-stained timber treads links the first and second floors, integrated with shelving that invites moments of pause here and there between the home’s more social levels. In the second-floor living room, customised seating can be tucked into elevated corners for the creation of a central ‘pit’ to contain more people at gatherings, such as the couple’s regular book club.

The final act is a secret space reserved only for the couple. On the third floor, a spiral staircase leads to the uppermost level containing the study, main bedroom and en-suite. There are no windows, but two courtyards and a skylight present their own show of daily beginnings and ends, of day and night, rain and shine, of sky and clouds, and even moonlight. Nature, this culmination point seems to say, is the truest reminder of the ticking clock of life. 

Text by Luo Jingmei
Images by Khoogj

Caon Design Office and Akin join forces for Qantas’ new Auckland International Airport lounge. Inspired by Aotearoa’s rugged terrain, the earthy design offers travellers a grounding sanctuary and a moment of calm amidst the chaos of modern transit

Getting from A to B seems simple enough on a map, but the path of modern travel is rarely linear and entails many complex moving parts. In a liminal space such as a transit lounge, successful design can fade this travel noise completely into the background, providing a moment of calm before the next leg of the journey. 

For Qantas, that outcome has been achieved in its newest lounge, which opened at Auckland International Airport on 17 December. In their fourth collaboration for the airline, Caon Design Office, the boutique industrial design practice established by David Caon in 2009, and multidisciplinary design practice Akin Atelier, have created a grounding experience for travellers — a calming connection to place for those in transit or departing Aotearoa New Zealand.

Each Qantas lounge is designed to achieve familiarity, yet strike out on its own with regional points of difference. While the Singapore lounge draws from the island nation’s shophouse heritage and the Hong Kong lounge references the city’s dynamism, the cues for Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland came from the drama of the natural landscape — the rugged coastline, native forests, lush volcanic terrain and even its inclement weather. Expressed through material textures and forms, all honouring a natural palette, even the dedicated kids’ area looks like a place you could stay awhile. Pity the parents who have to negotiate a departure.

‘The landscape is such a big part of how people think about the region,’ says Caon. ‘It’s tonally earthy and that works well because it's inherently peaceful. People’s moods are a big part of their experience, but over and above it was the region that inspired this palette.’

On arrival, soft greens in the Verde Bardini marble reception desks reflect those you might see in the rocks of an east coast beach. This generously proportioned area is wrapped in curved American oak walls, with Palladiana Carrara underfoot. In the light well above you might read a boomerang shape, but Caon insists its curves simply serve to ground the reception pods and offset the surrounding walls. 

Glass porthole wall details, familiar from the Hong Kong lounge, create a connection between inside and out and loosely reference an aeroplane window. From the entrance, the portholes — hand-blown locally by Monmouth Glass Studio — extend through to the interior walls. Once inside the lounge, a four-metre artwork by Sydney-based Gabrielle Penfold serves as an anchor point. The contemporary artist has captured the iconic form of Rangitoto, the extinct volcano that rises from Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf. The richly detailed landscape provides a connection for those in transit and an evocative memory for those departing.

Design is embedded into place through collaborations with local practitioners, such as architect Céili Murphy from Architectus, as well as Simon James Design, which brought Caon’s custom furniture to life, while the work of Snelling Studio and Resident can be found in the lighting. Ceramics by Margi Nuttall and Courtney Petley’s handcrafted homewares sit alongside pieces by Sydney’s Henry Wilson. brought the ‘Australia and New Zealand have a natural interconnectedness, so it’s not surprising the design elements synchronise well,’ says Caon.

Including a lengthy production period, it’s been a long haul for the project that consolidates what was two lounges into one. Now spanning 1,750 square metres, the space achieves a subtle delineation between zones — including bar and dining, quiet and family zones, and a VIP area — through a change in flooring or joinery and furniture. And subtlety is the key  — a considered touch that provides quiet luxury when you need to get from A to B.

Text by Jo Bates
Images by Simon Devitt

Against the constraints of a narrow Bangkok plot, AA House became a vertical sculpture. Designed by PHTAA Living Design for a photographer friend and his wife, the home uses split levels, raw concrete and dramatic light to serve as a private gallery for their eclectic collection

Situated on a slender urban plot in Bangkok, AA House represents a deeply personal collaboration between architect and owner. The project was born from a friendship stretching back to Silpakorn University, where lead interior designer Thanawat Patchimasiri of PHTAA Living Design and the client — now a professional photographer — studied together. Located directly adjacent to the owner’s workplace, Sans Studio, the site presented a significant challenge: a frontage of only four metres and a depth of 14 metres.

To navigate this narrow footprint without creating isolated silos, PHTAA rejected a traditional multi-storey approach. Instead, Patchimasiri and lead architect Ponwit Rattanatanatevilai conceived of the home as a vertical sequence of split levels. ‘We tried to split the floors, because if you design just three storeys I think sometimes the visual connection between the floors is lost,’ says Rattanatanatevilai. This stepped design allows for a fluid transition of spaces, beginning with a ground-floor parking area that frequently doubles as a social space for parties, flowing upward into the dining and kitchen zones. Higher up, a lightweight curtain, rather than a heavy wall, defines the living area boundaries, keeping the narrow space feeling airy.

The property is located in downtown Bangkok, where construction restrictions limit the height of buildings. ‘It’s like a boundary area between a green part of Thailand and a more residential neighbourhood,’ says Rattanatanatevilai. ‘Bangkok has a mixed culture and a mixed typology of building, which blur together so you can see the old space, the new buildings and the mix.’ Similarly, the home’s aesthetic is a curated fusion of the owner’s eclectic interests, merging Brutalism, Bauhaus and Japanese minimalism — the client had envisioned the house as a gallery for his collection of rare furniture and art, requiring a neutral backdrop. ‘We wanted to design a space for the owner’s archive, to create a blended ambience,’ says Patchimasiri. The material palette is similarly restrained, utilising raw concrete and white paint to allow the colourful objects to take centre stage.

Given the owner’s profession, light serves as a primary architectural element. The design team incorporated cutouts and skylights to manipulate natural light, allowing the sun to change the home’s ambience throughout the day and creating something of a live studio environment for the owner to photograph his collection. The centrepiece of this Brutalist vision is the concrete staircase. At the owners’ request, it was left without railings to function as a raw structural feature. ‘At first we tried to design the rail for them,’ says Patchimasiri. ‘But when we saw the construction site, the owner and I said just get rid of the rail and use the rough material so it can be like a sculpture.’ Both Patchimasiri and Rattanatanatevilai declare it their favourite part of the home’s design.

Other specific details cater to the client and his partner’s lifestyle, such as a Japanese-style tatami floor for sleeping and a custom stainless steel rail for hanging clothes. While the interior is open and light-filled, the exterior facade facing the studio remains solid and private, using a screen to blur the boundary between the bustling work environment and this quiet, light-filled retreat.

Text by Katherine Ring
Images by Santana Petchsuk

Architect Livina Cali crafts her holiday home with local materials, reworking the traditional wantilan

In Bali, the horizon belongs to the palms. ‘Houses should not be taller than a coconut tree,’ says architect Livina Cali. This philosophy guided the design of her holiday home in Tampaksiring — a region of the Indonesian island known for its ancient, sacred springs.

Cali and her husband Andre have been based in Singapore for 17 years, where Cali’s architectural sensibility was shaped by time spent at several reputed architecture studios such as Ernesto Bedmar Architects and Formwerkz Architects. ‘Living in Singapore where everything is fast-paced and urban, we longed for space and stillness. Returning to my homeland to create our own piece of heaven felt right,’ she says.  

The site is located within the UNESCO-designated cultural landscape of subak — Bali’s traditional irrigation systems. The official plaque was actually discovered across from the house, inspiring its name: Rumah Subak (rumah meaning house in Indonesian). Nature abounds, with rice fields to the north and west, and a forest ravine at the rear. ‘We were drawn to the vastness of the landscape, far from the busiest part of town,’ says Cali.

The architect wanted to create ‘a home that belongs to Bali, both culturally and climatically, yet offering comfort and ease; a place for family to gather, rest and reconnect with nature.’ The wantilan provided the perfect precedent — a traditional Balinese hut, historically used for communal gatherings. While Cali’s version swaps the rustic feel for more minimalist lines, both are open, support cross-ventilation and blend in with the surrounding environment. 

A sense of ritual starts at the threshold between terracotta brick walls. Passing through, one discovers a water court that instantly calms. ‘We considered procession and spatial transition, from the walled compound to the gradual unfolding of spaces within,’ says Cali. 

Through the main door, set within another opaque terracotta brick wall, are the living and dining areas that look out to picturesque scenery. A terrace extends outward, providing an alternative vantage point. Bedrooms are located one floor below together with the pool, joined to a kink in the L-shaped plan to house a spa, sauna and gym. Beneath this, a light-flushed library is contemplative and dramatic in equal measure.  

The property uses few, and rather humble, materials but these are elevated through dextrous expressions. ‘Natural materials like wood and terracotta bring warmth and authenticity. Terracotta brick, commonly used in Indonesia and traditionally seen in Balinese temples, was a natural choice,’ says Cali. They also suited the project’s modest budget and made it easy for local builders to construct. 

Using the home feels freeing rather than rigid. ‘We move around the house a lot, from the open kitchen for breakfast to the upper terrace to soak in the morning light with coffee in hand or for some light exercise,’ says Cali.

Beyond enjoying the spaces, designing and making a house for her own family rather than for clients has produced many lessons, according to Cali. Failed experiments taught her to be creative and adaptable, while living in Bali deepened her understanding of designing for the climate, she says. ‘I learnt how air, light and landscape could come together to create comfort naturally.’   

Text by Luo Jingmei
Images by Willem Keuppens

Drawing on the cinematic romance of the Republic of China era, Kasawoo and Yo.Q Design have created an immersive dining experience in Shenzhen. The new restaurant, Rener, blurs the lines between memory, theatre and reality through bespoke local craft

In the ultra-modern district of Qianhai in Shenzhen, where the skyline is dominated by high-rises housing global firms, a new restaurant offers a deliberate rupture in time. Rener is not just a place to eat; it is a set stage, conceived by a client with an acting background who wanted to transport his guests back to the 1920s Chinese Republican era.

For London- and Hong Kong-based architecture studio Kasawoo, led by Darius Woo and Katie Kasabalis, the project was an exercise in cross-continental collaboration. Yolande Wang, the partner in charge of the project, worked closely with Chinese studio Yo.Q Design to interpret this historical brief without falling into the trap of creating a museum replica. Instead of simply copying the past, the team looked to cinema for inspiration, specifically the atmospheric moods of Wong Kar Wai and Wes Anderson, focusing on the emotions a space can evoke rather than simply historical accuracy.

‘We played with the idea of an immersive set from the very beginning,’ says Wang. ‘We wanted the restaurant to bring the customer into character while they’re dining there, but at the same time the set is supposed to be an illusion.’

The guest experience is choreographed like a play. It begins in the foyer, which Wang describes as her favourite part of the design. This transitional space acts as a palate cleanser, allowing guests to shed the reality of the modern city outside and step into the narrative of the restaurant.

‘There’s this fabulous moment at the foyer where you can see a slit of the kitchen behind a heavy velvet curtain,’ Woo echoes. ‘I always loved that idea that you're entering a space that looks quite polished, soft and warm, but then you're seeing someone cooking in the back. I quite like those moments where the set is broken and it becomes a restaurant.’ 

Similarly, a low-level slot at the bar allows patrons to glimpse the kitchen staff's hands at work, contrasting the polished, warm dining room with the raw reality of the service behind the scenes.

Inside, the design really plays with the tension between the visible and the invisible. The dining area features those same heavy velvet curtains, which allow guests to enclose their booths, offering privacy while cultivating a sense of mystery about who might be dining behind the fabric — a game of ‘to see and be seen’, says Woo. Wang notes that the designers used specific references, such as the colour palette from the Nanjing Presidential Palace, to ground the space in its intended era.

However, the design also intentionally breaks the fourth wall. In one corridor, warm wood panelling gives way to metallic, reflective surfaces. This mirror effect forces diners to confront their own reflections, momentarily snapping them out of the immersive character of the restaurant. ‘One of the key ideas was that each patron, each diner, would create their own narrative or story based on however the space feels to them,’ says Woo. 

The execution of these details relied heavily on local craft. Wang and her team scoured local waste-yards and workshops, sourcing materials like green marble and timber. This proximity allowed the team to custom design nearly every element, from the furniture to the lighting, achieving a level of bespoke detail that Woo notes would be economically impossible in many parts of the world.

While Rener functions as a theatrical escape, it remains connected to its surroundings. Large doors in the main bar area open fully to the street, allowing what Woo terms the interior’s ‘esoteric condition’ to spill out into the neighbourhood. It is a project of contrasts — familiar yet strange — where memory serves as the primary building material.

Text by Katherine Ring
Images by Xian Studio

Through his Ho Chi Minh City creative space and travelling workshops, designer Dương Gia Hiếu draws on the everyday ingenuity found in the streets across Asia to rethink the possibilities of DIY design

Growing up amid the bustle of a Vietnamese open-air marketplace, Dương Gia Hiếu absorbed almost by osmosis the ad hoc design culture that defines similar spaces across Asia: found objects spliced, altered and pressed back into service as functional forms. ‘With my working-class background, I look at these things very respectfully,’ he says. ‘Everybody is a designer. They’re just not academically trained, but their work is everyday intelligence and my source of inspiration.’ Dương set his own making in motion during the Covid years, refashioning discarded objects at home. As restrictions eased, an open house event sparked the desire to create a space where he could share his approach.

In 2023, Dương opened Ném, a creative hangout in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 3 where he works, meets people for exhibitions, events or coffee, and shows objects created by him and other makers. One such object is the Phẳng PF lamp, made with sheets of reclaimed polarised film. ‘This is one of the layers inside a TV,’ he explains. ‘You’d be surprised how much of it you can find.’ Another is the Fan lamp, formed from a steel fan guard, with its base made from a plastic megaphone. Dương sources his materials from salvage centres, though he notes he’s selective: ‘I’m not a hoarder,’ he quips, adding, ‘I don't want my designs to look upcycled, but appealing and useful — just like any product.’ At Ném, through the workshops he leads, Dương realised that it’s not only the hands-on process that fosters a deeper connection with the objects but also the social dimension of the space. ‘People learn from each other, and that moment of connection gives the piece its story,’ he says.

That same year, he took part in a residency programme in Kobe offered by Nishimura-Gumi, a group of architects dedicated to reviving Japan’s abandoned houses. He reinterpreted objects found in these empty homes as chairs and lamps and, in keeping with Ném’s DNA, brought in a social element. ‘I wanted people to use the objects, so I organised movie screenings and a workshop. I also invited a local DJ who’s a carpenter to play and gather people. More than just creating furniture, it was about bringing life back into a space that was empty.’

Dương’s biggest workshop to date, New Comfort, took place in Shanghai as part of the Rockbund Art Museum’s 2025 architecture festival. Through an open call, he brought together designers from China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to present chair concepts shaped by personal stories and the particularities of sitting culture across Asia. The host city’s vernacular creativity proved equally influential. ‘Shanghai is amazing — especially for chairs. It’s very hip and polished, yet there are still so many makeshift designs, even in the city centre,’ he says. Dương is quite fond of the research photography he produced during his time there; he's developing a publication around it, all while imagining new editions of New Comfort in other cities. ‘Observation is a way of learning; just walking down the street and noticing things,’ he says. ‘And it reminds us we can make, rather than buy.’

Text by Tomás Pinheiro
Images courtesy of Nem

Tailored Architects transforms a charming old apartment for an art-collecting family, shaped by terracotta tones, soft light and thoughtful spatial flow

This home began with an ambition toward tropical brutalism, using raw textures, strong forms and an emphasis on practicality. As Tailored Architects worked with the homeowners, who are avid art collectors, the concept evolved into something softer and more intimate. The dining area became a pivotal moment: a statement artwork introduced early in the process shaped the room’s mood and earthy tones, setting it apart as a curated ‘box of curiosity’. Throughout the apartment, terracotta tones, warm woods and forest greens create a calm, grounded atmosphere, while flexible spaces such as the interlocking living room, the adaptable study and the quietly framed patio reflect the family’s lifestyle. The result is a home that balances its raw beginnings with warmth, personality and a lived-in sense of artful restraint.

Images by Studio Periphery

In Shanghai, FOG Architecture’s patient three-year renovation of the Xijiao Residence prioritises daily rituals over architectural spectacle. This intergenerational home was designed to breathe and evolve alongside the entire family

In the western suburbs of Shanghai, a three-storey villa known as the Xijiao Residence serves as a quiet rejection of the rigid, high-gloss finishes often found in luxury renovations. For FOG Architecture, the project was less about delivering a perfect finished product and more about creating a ‘reconfigurable container’ — a space designed to grow and breathe alongside the three people who inhabit it: a young couple and the wife’s mother.

The project’s most defining feature is the patience and care with which it was built. Spanning three years, the renovation became a deeply personal labour of love for both the designers and the clients. Zheng Yu, a designer on the project, reflects on this timeline not as a delay, but as a period of profound care: ‘When I look back now, I feel it was beautiful. It felt like a gift the couple gave to each other as they care for each other.’

This collaborative spirit informed the physical layout, which balances the distinct needs of two generations. The first level and basement were designed specifically as the mother’s space, tailored for hosting friends and the slow rituals of tea gatherings. By introducing new openings, the architects pulled natural light into the basement, transforming it into a grounded, tactile sanctuary defined by textured walls and wooden cabinetry.

To connect the mother’s world with the upper floors, the architects redesigned the staircase to abandon sharp angles in favour of softened turns. The upper levels belong to the younger generation; here, the attic has been opened up with skylights to invite the shifting atmosphere of the sky into the private quarters. ‘The general tone is very calm,’ says lead designer Yuyu He. ‘But then you see this contrasted with popping moments of colour, such as a stool, a lamp or a painting.’

Renovation restrictions in Shanghai meant that some challenging features of the original build couldn’t be demolished. Instead, the edges of these architectural elements have been softened, with rounded corners and diffused lighting replacing the harsh lines typical of modern villas. ‘We used these soft forms to wrap around all these kinds of hard shapes, and they started to formalise certain kinds of zoning of the house without creating hard boundaries,’ says Zheng. Throughout the home, a unified sandy palette of terrazzo floors, wood-grain concrete and soft fabrics creates a quiet atmosphere.

Ultimately, the residence values resilience and softness over fragile perfection. Zheng and the team at FOG saw their role as to simply facilitate a process that belonged to the family: ‘A home should be built by the members of the family,’ says the designer. ‘We’re happy that we happened to be there to give them a hand.’ 

Text by Katherine Ring
Images by Zhu Hai

Maison&Objet Intérieurs Hong Kong 2025 sat at the crossroads of craft, culture and imagination. Designers and makers from Asia and beyond converged to turn materials into vessels of memory and possibilities

At this year’s Maison&Objet Intérieurs Hong Kong 2025, intersecting forces converged at a Crossroads — the event’s central theme and guiding principle for its approach to material exploration. Moving between tradition and innovation, materials emerged as vessels of culture, memory and emotions, reflecting the rapidly evolving ways of living. 

In the Design Showcase, eight international installations explored hybrid living, hospitality and culture. Teo Yang’s Fragments of HK, A Letter from Seoul reimagined Hong Kong’s imprint on Korean memory. ‘For me, Hong Kong is part of the emotional landscape I grew up with in Korea,’ Yang explains. ‘In the nineties, Hong Kong movies, music and pop culture had a huge influence on Koreans, and many of us remember the city with a mix of longing, excitement and nostalgia.’ Drawing on posters, records, postcards and film stills from that era, Yang transformed them into a library-like emotional archive.

Wu Bin’s Hybridization: Garden Wanderings offered a contemplative pause amid urban intensity, where bark-textured walls, warm floors, filtered light and a fragrant garden guided visitors through a sensory journey. ‘We aimed to express fluidity and ambiguity: where inside merges with outside, movement coexists with stillness, and public intertwines with private. It feels like Hong Kong, like Shanghai — and even more like a folded projection of our shared urban daily life,’ says Bin.

Meanwhile, Steve Leung’s Connect merged modern materials with traditional craft, transforming furniture and lighting into playful, functional gestures rooted in memory. Pure white poles rose in a layered framework, their reflections multiplied by mirrors to create an expanding space, while a deep-grey curved core anchored the installation with a sense of solidity, echoed in the details of the patterned carpet and woven centrepiece.

Drawing from his experience as someone who lives and works in Hong Kong, the installation was conceived as a space where contrasts coexist and, in his words, where collaboration across disciplines, ‘from weaving to lighting technology, sculpture to smart systems, reflects a broader shift in Asian design toward ecosystems in which different skills and stories enrich one another.’

Beyond the showcase, the Design Factory presented four immersive pavilions spotlighting sustainability and material innovation. Bringing names such as Clélie Debehault and Liv Vaisberg of Collectible, Ann Chan and Korakot Aromdee, each pavilion invited visitors to explore materials in unexpected ways while proposing solutions for contemporary living.

Meanwhile, Le Club served as a hub for professional encounters, bringing together Hong Kong’s homegrown design talent alongside curated brand showcases. CL3, led by William Lim, and Lim + Lu, co-founded by his son Vincent Lim and Elaine Lu, reimagined the space by transforming modular plastic stools ubiquitous in Hong Kong into building blocks for perforated walls and hanging installations. ‘You know my dad and I don't actually do a lot of work together,’ explains Lim. ‘We come from the same school and background so the training was all aligned. We both look at everyday objects that people are familiar with but offer them in a very unexpected way.’

Rejecting the standard, clinical business lounge typology common at these events, the designers instead employed circular partitions inspired by the geometry of local eateries to carve out intimate pockets for meetings. Bespoke furniture crafted with local fabric studio Coltex, alongside carpets featuring mosaic-inspired patterns, subtly celebrated Hong Kong’s visual culture.

The event unfolded like a mosaic of lived experiences, each corner revealing a different way of inhabiting space, imbued with memory and craft. Materials spoke with quiet authority, guiding visitors through environments that felt lived, remembered and imagined all at once.

Text by Design Anthology
Images courtesy of Maison&Objet Intérieurs

Designed by Skarn Chaiyawat Architects, Bangkok’s influential gallery Nova Contemporary has moved into a renovated shophouse in the city’s Sam Yan neighbourhood, its weathered surroundings subtly shaping the viewing experience

When the need came for Nova Contemporary to find a new home to expand into, founder Sutima Sucharitakul looked for an architect who could draw out the character of both the neighbourhood and its shophouse, one of Southeast Asia's most recognisable urban forms. ‘We’re an international gallery, but I still wanted the Bangkok setting to register in a way you can’t achieve in a white cube,’ she says. Her confidence in Skarn Chaiyawat Architects grew from the value the owner and namesake places on Thai heritage, something she noted in his first solo project — monks’ living quarters and library for a Buddhist temple in the rural north-east of Thailand — and in the unforced way his buildings relate to their surroundings.

The five-storey gallery’s defining feature is a pivot glass door set into the chamfered corner of the building’s front. With the main entrance through a back alley, the pivot door mostly lets in large-format works but, above all, acts as a wide window, opening the interior to near-complete visibility from the street. ‘It was an opportunity to connect people outside with the art,’ Chaiyawat says. ‘If you walk past, you’ll almost certainly look in.’ From the main gallery, the door frames Bangkok’s bustle — including colourful traffic and street hawkers — as if it were a permanent installation. Chaiyawat integrated two floors to lift the ceiling height in this room, and aside from the window and the exposed rough concrete beam at the centre, everything else is white walls. ‘Across my projects, I try to design what people cannot see,’ says the architect, who also hid every air-conditioning unit, wire, duct and service panel through openings masked within wall systems. ‘It’s like what I did in the monks’ living quarters — everything has to be as subtle as possible so it doesn’t interfere with their life, and here, the art.’

Natural light varies across floors: it washes over the main gallery and pours through the large windows of the top-floor office. In the private viewing room, arranged for slower conversations, smaller openings soften the light to a more domestic scale. Chaiyawat left one level intentionally muted, filtered by frosted glazing for works that benefit from a lower-lit environment. While the ground level rests on a new matt concrete flooring, the upper floors alternate original pastel green and pink terrazzo, in conversation with exposed concrete ceilings and a cast-in-place staircase. ‘During renovations, we defined three levels of roughness. Level three is the cut floor,’ he says, pointing out the stairwell he opened at the building’s service and circulation core to enhance vertical permeability. The railings are a mix of restored originals and newly formed bent-iron sheets, detailed to feel both robust and comfortable for visitors to lean on while conversing.

Throughout, new additions are clearly legible as detached interventions, keeping the historical integrity of the space. White panels conceal two pantries and two restrooms, each of the latter tiled in a palette tuned to its floor’s terrazzo. Chaiyawat also opened the entire rear facade and covered it with polycarbonate to allow a constant sense of context, even when the panels are closed. They’re often left open, though, framing the weathered warehouse across the patio and lending the interior a balcony-like sociability that folds naturally into the alley. ‘At the opening, people talked to each other from different levels and looked outside while having a drink,’ he says. ‘It was a small but welcome surprise.’

Text by Tomás Pinheiro
Images by DOF Skyground and Lalina Kittipoomvong

Amidst the urban density of Ningbo, OutIn Design crafted a 430-square-metre sanctuary that turns inward, blurring the lines between city living and the wild

In the Yinzhou district of Ningbo, a city historically defined by its role as a departure port for the Maritime Silk Road, the urban landscape is dense and energetic. Yet, adjacent to the river that cuts through the city — a green artery connecting Yinzhou Park to the wider landscape — sits a residence that deliberately turns its back on the noise. Known as The Inner Garden, this 430-square-metre home is more retreat than renovation. Designed by OutIn Design, the project creates the rare experience of coexisting with nature in the heart of the city.

The owners, designers themselves, approached the project with a desire to dismantle the very discipline they practice. They did not want a showroom; they wanted a vessel. As Elena Le of OutIn explains, ‘The core requirement of the project was to abandon all preconceived notions of “form”, “style” or “technique”, stripping away visible traces of design and responding to the soul of “home” in a purer, more essential way.’

The conceptual anchor of the home emerged from the owners’ initial directive: ‘We want a garden, and we want life to wrap itself around it.’ In response, the design team reorganised the interior architecture, arranging the bedroom, meditation area and leisure zones to encircle this central green space. The garden serves as the home’s respiratory system, allowing the owners to find real pauses in their everyday life and giving the mind room to reset.

Stepping inside, one encounters a space defined by texture rather than decoration. A clean white palette provides a neutral backdrop, while microcement and natural stone add a raw, tactile quality to the floors and walls. To soften the architecture, the designers utilised generous amounts of linen and cotton, creating a gentle, breathable foundation. The lighting is equally restrained; artificial illumination is minimised to allow natural light to dictate the rhythm of the day.

The interior narrative is driven by a dialogue between memory and modernity. Rather than imposing a rigid aesthetic, the home houses the owners' personal collection — a clay qilin sculpture from Quanzhou, a traditional Japanese tea bowl, and a bamboo basket passed down from family. These historical artifacts sit alongside contemporary pieces, such as a Vitsœ 606 Universal Shelving System and a black Vitra coffee table. ‘These items become “narrative elements” within the space,’ Le notes. ‘Each piece feels like an object with its own story, infusing the home with a refined, distinctive and deeply personal character.’

Even the threshold is designed to slow the pulse. The custom entry cabinetry functions as a screen, echoing the Japanese concept of ma — the meaningful space between things — to create a psychological buffer between the outside world and the interior. It is a home that prioritises the invisible over the visible, realising the owners’ ideal of being ‘born of the wild, yet at peace within the home’.

Text by Katherine Ring
Images by Zhu Di

Designed by Kulapat Yantrasast of Why Architecture, Dib Bangkok will bridge Thai and international art in a calm enclave amid the city’s bustle

Dib Bangkok is best approached on foot or with the car windows down. Set in the lively Khlong Toei district, the museum embraces the shift from delightful urban jumble to an almost Zen-like calm. ‘I’ve always told my architects to design a life, not the form,’ says Kulapat Yantrasast of Why Architecture, the museum’s designer. ‘A building alone doesn’t make a museum — I felt the need to create a place.’ This continues Yantrasast’s approach to previous projects, in which he steps away from the typical neutrality of museums, favouring a sense of welcome and engagement. To help develop and realise the project, the international design studio was supported on the ground in Bangkok by local architects A49.

Along a gently inclined ramp fringed by a reflecting pool and a living wall, visitors enter directly into Dib’s broad courtyard, where marble globes by Alicja Kwade sit like a miniature solar system. The museum unfolds in an inverted U-shape, with the left wing housing ticketing, the bookshop and a soon-to-open bistro, and the right holding the main galleries across three floors. A polycarbonate skin sheaths the gallery block, gently luminous at night; its translucency eases the weight of the adjacent cast-in-place concrete mass. ‘I didn’t want the material to be too distracting,’ Yantrasast says. ‘The essence is actually in the void, which is the proportion and the light, and that’s waiting to receive the artwork.’

Yantrasast works with light as a material. At Dib, he choreographs it to shape the visitor’s journey, letting the building brighten progressively with each ascent — an allusion to spiritual enlightenment. At the top, saw-tooth skylights draw in the softer northern light, bathing the top-floor galleries without glare. The roof nods to the site’s industrial past as a warehouse, though beyond the exposed structural frame inside and a few other retained elements, the project is essentially a complete reworking. Anchoring the courtyard, a chimney-like form recalls Le Corbusier’s sculptural language in Chandigarh. This is the Chapel, a conical gallery clad in porcelain tiles that reference traditional Thai temples. Opposite it, on the mezzanine planned for a sculpture garden, are steep, narrow stairways leading to a cylindrical tower that will house Thailand’s first permanent James Turrell installation.

Yantrasast’s portfolio includes new wings, pavilions, architectural interventions and full buildings for some of the world’s most prominent art and culture institutions, working with his studio, Why, and earlier alongside Tadao Ando. Still, Dib holds a special place for him as his first cultural project in his native Thailand. ‘I think it’s a beautiful point of departure,’ he says. ‘It will be such an important springboard to bring Thai contemporary art within the context of the international art community.’

The vision for Dib stems from avant-garde patron Petch Osathanugrah, who imagined a home for his international collection but didn’t live to see it realised. His son, Purat Osathanugrah, carried the project forward. As Ariana Chaivaranon, Dib’s inaugural curator, notes, the collection continues to grow, aligned with the founder’s original ethos of supporting emerging Thai artists. ‘Khun Petch was among the earliest collectors of many Thai artists who are now renowned worldwide,’ she says. ‘It's in our blood as an institution to place contemporary local artists in dialogue with something broader.’ Aptly titled, the opening show, (In)visible Presence, debuts on 21 December in tribute to the late patron.

Text by Tomás Pinheiro
Images courtesy of Dib Bangkok

Following an 18-month closure, Park Hyatt Tokyo reopens with a sensitive refresh by French studio Jouin Manku. The iconic hotel, which starred in Sofia Coppola’s 1997 film Lost in Translation, has been redesigned for the modern guest while preserving the original 1994 vision of Kenzō Tange and John Morford

Today, the plastic cones will disappear and the steady stream of taxis will return to the Park Hyatt Tokyo’s austere driveway, perched just above Shinjuku’s sweeping central park. With it will come a collective exhale as the hotel unveils its head-to-toe refresh. For many, the moment will prompt a familiar question: can a hotel have a soul? Is it found in the architecture, the public spaces, the guestroom furniture — or in the people who keep the whole thing quietly humming?

Regulars — and there are plenty — will be relieved to find the Tokyo Gas-owned building mostly as they left it when construction hoardings went up in May 2024. Aside from a new bench opposite the bell desk, arriving guests could be forgiven for wondering whether any renovation had taken place at all.

But the surgical knife went deep. ‘We’ve redone everything, especially in the guestrooms. Ninety-nine per cent is brand new, but the DNA is the same,’ Patrick Jouin tells Design Anthology. Jouin and his partner Sanjit Manku’s firm was commissioned to oversee the renewal of the legendary hotel that opened in 1994. And following their work, part of the pleasure for the returning regular lies in the guessing game while moving through the building: what’s fresh and what’s original?

Before planning began in earnest, Jouin’s team lived in the hotel for a week. ‘We tested everything: the breakfast, all the restaurants, the jazz band. We saw the people coming and the kinds of guests,’ he explains. ‘We saw what was working, what was not working, what was out of fashion and what was run down.’ In Japan, it’s not unusual to replace almost everything — from flooring to wall coverings and even artworks — while maintaining a near-identical look and feel. At Park Hyatt Tokyo, the most noticeable shifts come through the furniture: new chairs, tables and occasional pieces introduced across both public and private spaces.

Eagled-eyed loyalists will spot features like the new beds and lamps in the guestrooms immediately, each bringing a soft curviness that the original interiors lacked. ‘We brought warmth and sensuality,’ Jouin says. ‘Kenzō Tange’s architecture is very strict and minimalist. And John Morford too. Everything is with a ruler — perfection, proportion. And us — we also do perfect proportion, but with curves. Something warmer.’ The technology that powers it all, of course, has been completely renewed to meet the demands of today’s traveller, while bathrooms have seen a wholesale replacement, but with a familiar material and colour palette. And, pleasingly, the return of the full Aesop amenity set-up.

Public spaces, meanwhile, remain almost entirely faithful to Morford’s original vision. The check-in desks and the guest journey from public to private — and the lighting that guides it — are still discreet and elegant. The top-floor swimming pool, enclosed within Tange’s soaring atrium, and the spa’s sumptuous spaces remain almost entirely intact. ‘The whole idea was not to touch the DNA, but to reconnect the DNA with its time,’ Jouin adds. ‘In thirty years, someone else will redo it. And it will have the DNA of Kenzō Tange, John Morford, Jouin Manku. And they will add a new chapter.’

Read our in-depth feature on Park Hyatt Tokyo’s rebirth in Issue 42, available to pre-order now.

Text by Jeremy Smart