How does China hope to excel in design as well as manufacturing? Christopher Turner finds out.

The end of Hustwit’s Design Trilogy asks where cities are headed but leaves us to think about the answers, says Fatema Ahmed.

A rollercoaster ride through three decades of cynicism exposes the crassness of an era best left behind, says William Wiles.

This multi-venue Toulouse biennial transforms the experience of wandering into a psychological journey, says Francesca Gavin.

A chaotic displays help Rem Koolhaas avoid sentimental retrospection, says Edwin Heathcote.

Belfast's sectarian bonfires.

Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, the designers of the 2012 Olympic torch, are the UK’s best-known design duo. The self-described “masochists” explain how they design simple things that turn out to be fiendishly difficult to make.

Every summer 50,000 artists and revellers descend on Nevada’s Black Rock Desert for the Burning Man festival. The campsite they create is a model of urban planning and community organisation, but its architecture is defined by the event’s destructive driving force

In Vardø, an island at the most northeasterly point of Norway, Pritzker prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor and artist Louise Bourgeois collaborated on a monument to 91 witches burned at the stake in the 17th century

Two design graduates are challenging the status of the rubber dingy with a boat that can be built in two minutes from a single sheet of plastic.

The designer’s new range for De La Espada blends industry and craft to create eye-catching furniture that wants you to notice how it’s made.

Architect Mariana Pestana organised a forum for designers to sell their creations at this year’s festival. The catch? Money was not allowed.

From the polished showrooms of Bloomsbury and Brompton to the edgier venues in the east, this year’s London Design Festival was brimming with new talent and exciting product launches. Here’s our pick of the best.

The eighth London Design Festival coincided with Icon’s 100th issue, giving us plenty of reason to celebrate at the old Shoreditch tube station. Elsewhere, the capital was alive with creative shows, product launches and original installations – here’s our round up.

Coop Himmelb(l)au’s church in Hainburg, Austria combines digital design with references to the giants of modernism.

Fuse Atelier’s sculptural house on a narrow site makes clever use of cantilevered upper rooms to create a surprisingly large interior.

MAD has landed an abstract metallic object in the middle of the Inner Mongolian desert, hoping to shape the barren region’s cultural identity.

Heatherwick Studio has revived the spirit of this striking 1960s church in Kent with small but vital changes to its incomplete interior.

The undulating forms of Odile Decq’s dining room curve around the structure of the Paris opera house without ever touching it.

Herzog & de Meuron’s landmark headquarters for a pharmaceutical company shows off the latest in structural technology