Designers get down to earth with primitive huts, a shoe that blossoms into wildflowers and a tree-trunk Panton chair.
Chyutin Architects’ spare arrangement of concrete and grass strips creates a gateway to Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Some unlikely structures have started to appear in London parks and Kent woodlands – elaborate birdboxes inspired by council estates, gated communities and dictators’ palaces.
The interlacing stories of Sweden’s architecture and social democratic politics fascinate Kieran Long.
A trove of objects, hidden away for 40 years in Warsaw’s National Museum, reveals the glamorous aspirations of post-war Polish design.
China is the epicentre of copying, from knock-off handbags to the Venetian Macao hotel – itself a copy of an imitation. But this industrious fakery can be more than mere kitsch. It is creative, modern and raises questions about the value of originality.
As award-winning young designers, Christopher Lee and Kapil Gupta of Serie Architects are unlikely reactionaries against the spirit of the age. But their “deep structural” approach rejects digital-led design for a return to first principles – a stance that has won them commissions in India, China, the USA and eastern Europe.
Ma Yansong shot to fame when he became the first Chinese architect to win a major international competition. Now, with those winning towers approaching completion, he reflects on what it means to represent a country and a generation – and keep from becoming stale.
Carlos Casanueva’s house is both an imaginative ruse to confuse Spanish planners and a bold architectural statement in its own right.
Architect Manuel Maia Gomes takes a brutalist approach to the baroque in a gallery and student flats carved out of a 16th-century house.
The design show celebrated its 60th birthday over five days in February, in the company of 40,000 visitors and 750 exhibitors from 27 countries.
A flagship store by Jaklitsch/Gardner Architects is the first building to be designed specifically for the fashion label.
The architect’s latest concert hall is an uncharacteristically box-like but highly sophisticated multimedia centre.
Singaporean designer Tan Lun Cheak has returned a traditional South-east Asian cooking pot to the heart of social gatherings.
Studio Job creates a teasing parody of a gentlemen’s club in the entrance hall of Alessandro Mendini’s Groninger Museum.
Tokyo practice Atelier A5 has taken a pragmatic approach to the city’s restrictive building codes with a ziggurat-style family home that reclaims every available inch of space for the private realm.
Battling it out with Cologne for the attention of journalists and buyers, design fair Maison & Objet put on quite a show this year at the Parc des Expositions in Paris.
Architect Ooze has tripled the floor space of a gable-fronted 1920s house with an extension that the building wears “like a hat”.