The bespoke joinery in this north London home has been meticulously planned to elevate the original 1930s architecture, and sculptural African artworks, like the metal ballerina that sits in its bright living area, have found an accord with the interior stylings of French duo Uncanny Studio's Églantine Sicat and Pauline Dellemotte."Our work is emotional; we really like to create meaningful homes that tell the story of the people who live there," explains Sicat.In the entryway of the pied-à-terre...

“Every step I have taken in my life has led me here, now,” says Paolo De Santis, reading the words on a stone slab that marks the threshold of the two wings of Villa Mondolfo on Lake Como. The villa is home to three generations of the De Santis family, and to walk across the work by the artist Alberto Garutti and into this house is to enter their world. Inside is a large carpet collaged from salvaged offcuts by the Italian conceptual artist Flavio Favelli and a chandelier reconfigured from an ar...

Large-scale experiential installations have become a mainstay at Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week; they can help artists, designers and curators communicate ideas that leave an indelible mark on viewers and participants. Often, they are visually arresting spectacles, but messaging can easily lose potency as people scramble to capture photos rather than question the meaning of what they are seeing. AI technology features prominently at this year’s fair, as do references to nature and the e...

After meeting and sleeping on uncomfortable beds at the last edition of Salone del Mobile, Vispring and Tom Dixon decided to get into bed, creatively speaking, with each other. 'It was really important for us to work with someone with a British connection and global resonance to mark this 125th anniversary,' Clare Schifano, global marketing director at Vispring, explains.'My narrative now is that I couldn't find a hotel room, so I had to build my own hotel,' says self-taught British designer Tom...

“When Apricots Blossom” is the title of a 1937 poem by the Stalinist-era Uzbek writer Hamid Olimjon, about a white flowering tree whose aroma is stolen by the breeze every spring. The speaker is philosophical about this loss: I say “so be it” and will not get angry; I wrap my thoughts around the flowers; whenever I walk out into the spring, I ask whether I have any good fortune. Inspired by Olimjon’s description of beauty and fortitude in the face of recur- ring devastation, the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation made the flowering apricot the symbol of its exhibition of Uzbek design during Milan Design Week.

"One of the first things we picked out was the kitchen backsplash, it pulls so many colors," California-based interior designer Abbie Naber of A. Naber Design recalls. The kitchen features multicolored zellige mosaic, which has been intentionally repeated in new architectural features like the wall niches created by T7 Architecture. This family renovation project began in the winter of 2023, and ended just as the clients were expecting their third child.Their brief was for a complete makeover of...

Davide Groppi‘writes with light’, claims Marco Sammicheli, the curator of a new exhibition by the lighting designer and entrepreneur, at Volumnia, a church-turned-gallery in Piacenza.‘Un’ora di Luce’ (One Hour of Light, on view until 26 May 2026) reveals stories and a number of curiosities about Groppi’s roots and methods. In the documentary projected on a wall, he declares himself a country boy – he grew up, works and still resides in Piacenza, a small city located an hour from Milan in the Emi...

A framed A3 piece shows a green snail hugging a person and the text reads ‘Slow down + chill the hell out, you’re doing great!’ The work is by Orfeo Tagiuri, who explains; ‘I like the idea that the characters in my work are not defined, even from a gender perspective. Ideally, they are universal so that people can identify with them.’London-based Tagiuri was born in America to a psychiatrist mother and an architect father. The 34-year-old has lived and studied in both London and the United State...

Tom Brigden is an architect and the author of Value in the View: Conserving Historic Urban Views (Riba Publishing, 2018), a comprehensive study of the ideas and philosophies at work in policies of view protection. Brigden studied at the Welsh School of Architecture. He then went on to complete a PhD at Newcastle University before joining Purcell Architects who are notable for their work on iconic heritage projects including the Elizabeth Tower – more commonly known as ‘Big Ben’. “I always knew t...

Nacho Polo and Robert Onuska live in a conspicuous New York building designed by Herzog & de Meuron in the city's trendy Tribeca. Downstairs, Anish Kapoor's first permanent public sculpture resembles a shiny mirrored balloon, half squashed under the weight of the building.One of their gallery spaces, Studiotwentyseven, is located just opposite the building. The couple's first space is in Miami, where they live part time. 'When we started looking for a home in New York we were initially looking f...

There aren't many designer's paying homage to their roots, but Galib Gassanoff is paying close attention. Institution was named a semi-finalist for the 2026 LVMH Prize — the Italian label with Georgian and Azerbaijani roots, founded and creatively led by designer Galib Gassanoff.Last September, Institution founder Galib Gassanoff explained the process behind the dress he was exhibiting at the Kering S|Style Denim Lab show, curated by Giorgia Cantarini. Fresh from the close of his spring/summer 2...

If you've ever entered a Milanese residential building, you'll likely have been impressed by the details that go into the lobby area. From marble walls or rich tapestry, to designer sconces or intricate terrazzo floor tiles. These gateways to people's homes were often crafted with care.When fragrance company Satinine was founded in 1883 in Milan by Lorenzo Usellini, the famous Galleria Emmanuelle II had recently been completed and the Liberty style was about to flourish. For the brand’s 2025 rel...

The nun known as Madre Carmen is the first female saint from Venezuela. Carmen Elena Rendiles Martínez was born in 1903, in Caracas, Venezuela. Born to an affluent family of French background, she studied art as a teenager. At 23, she joined a French religious order, the Servants of the Eucharist, and dedicated her life to the Church five years later. She died in Caracas, from influenza, in 1977.

The natural makeup of Dubai’s Creek has been a vital regional hub for East and West trade for centuries. And today it continues to be a nerve centre for the exchange of ideas, and culture, too at the Dubai Design Week, which runs until November 9th. Here global creativity converges with local heritage to shape a city’s evolving identity.How does a city known for hosting the world’s tallest building reconnect with its roots, often hidden behind glass and steel in a growing metropolis? At the Desi...

When speaking about the design of Azimut Yachts’ new headquarters in Avigliana, Michele De Lucchi began with an unexpected yet fitting analogy: comparing a company to a human body.'A person is an organism made up of different elements, such as the heart and lungs, and just like a human being, a company is made up of essential parts that must be nourished in order to function. It also has an identity,' De Lucchi explains. The comparison encapsulates why De Lucchi and his team at AMDL Circle were...

With bold experiments and distinctive styles, contemporary glass artists are redefining what Venetian glass can be today.Legend has it that glass was first discovered in what is now modern-day Syria, but it was in Murano that the craft truly flourished. There, innovation and competition were shrouded in secrecy; what happened in Murano was meant to stay in Murano.At the ninth edition of Venice Glass Week, however, it’s clear that while some traditions remain, others are rapidly evolving. “Histor...

Sometimes, little fragments do offer a clearer view of the bigger picture. At Lake Como Design Festival 2025 – which ran 14-21 September, and was themed ‘Fragments’ – that perspective reflected the state of contemporary design itself, where tested ideas are being reimagined through material innovation. Perhaps Como’s history as a centre of rationalist architecture isn’t just a legacy of the past, but a living influence. It quietly shaped the work on show, revealing recurring themes of adaptabili...

Milan has long been Italy’s style and financial capital. But since Brexit and increased tax on non-doms in the UK — and the re-arrival of Trump in the US — it now has almost as many UHNW (ultra-high-net-worth) residents as London and Paris, according to Henley & Partners’ 2025 World’s Wealthiest Cities Report. Estimated to be home to 17 billionaires and 115,000 millionaires, with numbers fast rising, the city is having to adapt to meet the influx, the latest being a new private members’ club. T...

Natural materials like sandstone and marble elegantly play a role in rooting this courtyard home in Pune, India. Together they deliver a considered, minimalist look where different design details and textures reveal themselves as the sun moves across the sky, choreographing a dance of light and shadows. Named after the Hindi word for a latticed privacy screen, Jali House by Studio VDGA is indeed an ode to the transformative power of light with nature becoming a key protagonist around which the f...

Narrowing down a list of Italy’s best opera houses – the country where the theatrical form was born, and where it remains a cultural cornerstone – is no easy task. The medium’s origins lie in a daring artistic experiment: the quest of a group of Florentine intellectuals to revive the spirit of ancient Greek tragedy through music. The result was Dafne (1597), widely regarded as the first opera, composed by Jacopo Peri – who, like the throng of modern pop stars who have since done the same, first...