Kurosawa Kawara-ten renovates a timber tea room in Ichihara
 
In Ichihara, Chiba, Japan, Kurosawa Kawara-ten renovates a six-tatami tea room within an annex belonging to a former family timber business. The project retains traces of the building’s accumulated history while introducing new elements through a material and formal language that connects the existing structure with its garden setting. For generations, the property was associated with the family’s timber business. A small annex within the garden accommodates a tea room, storage space, and garage, with the six-tatami tea room renovated as a place for resting between farming and gardening activities and for receiving guests. The main house is a...

Located within a former residential garage in South Jakarta's Panglima Polim neighbourhood, Jun Matcha Club responds to the area's growing concentration of independent cafés and restaurants, offering a slower, more contemplative spatial experience centred around the ritual of preparing matcha. The project draws from the values embedded in matcha practice—ritual, attentiveness, and restraint—and translates them through Indonesian craftsmanship and locally sourced materials.

During the summer of 2026, the Instituto Superior de Arquitectura y Diseño (ISAD) hosted a new edition of the Taller del Desierto (Desert Workshop), an intensive academic exercise that for over a decade has brought together students from various design disciplines to develop and build 1:1 scale interventions in the urban context of Chihuahua. Over four weeks, the workshop links design, material experimentation, and fabrication to take a proposal from its initial concept to its final construction.

designboom shop drop: material, craft, and art of making
 
The designboom shop presents its next curated drop for August 2026, celebrating objects that honor raw texture, traditional craft, and material innovation. From century-old ceramic techniques to hand-worked precious metals and twisted hardwoods, the drop brings together a selection of design objects where the art of making takes center stage.
 
discover DESIGNBOOM SHOP drop highlights below:
Iga-Yaki cup by Asemi Co.
 
 
Product: Iga-Yaki cup
Brand: Asemi Co.
Price: from $54
 
Fashioned from a dark, pebble-infused gaerome clay with a 1,200-year heritage in Japan’s Mie prefecture, the Iga-Yaki cup by Asemi Co. embraces the Wabi-Sabi philosophy...

Located in Foz do Iguaçu, within the Atlantic Forest, the Refugio House was born from the search for balance between architecture, nature, and thermal comfort. In a region with a humid subtropical climate—characterized by high humidity year-round, hot summers, and mild winters—the main challenge was to integrate indoor and outdoor spaces without compromising the home's thermal performance. As a result, the residence opens inward toward the lot, wrapping around the garden to create a peaceful retreat.

In response to the housing crisis and the growing vulnerability of people experiencing homelessness, the Old Brewery Mission is building a new permanent supportive housing pavilion directly across from Monk metro station. This project, comprising eighteen studio apartments, is conceived as a place for long-term reintegration, offering stable and dignified housing for a vulnerable population, with on-site professional support.

HOW AND WHY AUSTRALIAN HOMES ARE SOFTENING DENSE URBAN SITES
 
When temperatures reach their peak, urban density intensifies, and harsh environmental conditions call for smarter residential design, Australian architects are having to rethink domestic living – and that’s exactly what they are doing. Bending both rules and walls across suburban and urban landscapes, modern Australian homes are abandoning the rigid, traditional box in favor of climate-responsive design strategies. Rooted in sweeping curves and tactile reclaimed materials, designers treat sculptural forms as high-performance mechanisms for daylight optimization, cross-ventilation, and indoor climate control.  
designboom selects six...

There has never been a more celebrated moment for craftsmanship in architecture. Across magazines, awards, and international exhibitions, handmade brick, lime plaster, carved stone, woven bamboo, and rammed earth have re-emerged as symbols of environmental responsibility, cultural continuity, and architectural authenticity. Beyond these carefully documented projects lies another reality. The overwhelming majority of buildings constructed today, from apartment blocks and office towers to public housing and commercial developments, continue to rely on industrialized systems that leave little room for skilled artisans. Craft has become increasingly visible at the very moment it has become increasingly uncommon....

So Koizumi’s exhibition explores design through scent and space
 
Designer So Koizumi of So Koizumi Design presents his first solo exhibition in South Korea in collaboration with Seoul-based scent brand POINTTWOFIVE·SECOND. The exhibition takes place at 025S SEONGSU HAUS, the brand’s flagship space in Seoul, where Koizumi’s works are distributed throughout the interior as part of a spatial installation.
 
POINTTWOFIVE·SECOND is a scent brand centered on personal experiences of fragrance, memory, and emotion. Its approach extends beyond perfume to include tea, art, and other sensory experiences, creating a setting in which scent is considered alongside different forms of material and spatial...

architecture decides who gets in
 
Architecture has always made decisions about who gets inside. Walls separate one environment from another, roofs close the gap overhead, and increasingly controlled building envelopes keep the human interior dry and predictable. Birds nesting beneath the eaves or insects finding their way into a cavity tend to enter the conversation later, usually as maintenance.
 
Across a group of projects that designboom has followed over the past decade, architects are beginning with a different premise. Some openings stay open on purpose. At ChartierDalix’s School of Science and Biodiversity in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, completed in 2014, the concrete envelope was formed with...

Mary Heilmann, an influential abstract painter who received her first solo exhibition in a New York museum in her 60s, died at 86 on Friday in Riverhead, New York. Her studio announced the news in an Instagram posting, adding that she died “due to complications from a fall.” Heilmann was a pioneering abstract painter who blended elements from pop culture, craft, and art history with ease and wit. In the catalog for Heilmann’s 2008 retrospective at the New Museum—also her first solo at a New York institution—art critic Dave Hickey wrote, “The canons of geometric abstraction, Color Field painting, and Minimalism are honored in the spirit but not in the letter. In Heilmann’s synthesis, they are...

Philippe Sly is sublime as Messiaen's Saint François D’Assise in Salzburg, though Romeo Castellucci's production could brush up on its catechism.

Summer and the streets are teeming with beautiful young people. In a shop window, I catch my reflection staring at me with contempt. I need a haircut but have no barber to go to. The last one talked too much about his prostate and made me look like the reincarnation of Saddam Hussein. I spot a pretty well-known artist walking towards me. We’ve met and emailed before, but we can’t really be called friends. We exchange side glances and notice each other, but make an unspoken agreement to keep walking anyway. In hindsight, I should've stopped to say hi. But it was a muggy day and it was hard enough to just exist. I put on my dark Ray-Bans to avoid any more awkward encounters. Speaking of Ray-Bans, you...

Renée as Thaïs finding salvation while trudging through the parched Egyptian desert in off-the-shoulder La Croix atelier.

Brazilian authorities have recovered eight prints from Henri Matisse’s iconic “Jazz” series (1947), the New York Times reports.   Two armed men stole the works on December 7 from the Mário de Andrade Library in São Paulo during public hours at the city’s largest library. In addition to the recovered Matisse works, they also took five paintings by Brazilian modernist Candido Portinari. The English edition of Folha de S. Paulo reported the value of the eight works—The Clown, The Circus, Monsieur Loyal, The Nightmare of the White Elephant, The Codomas, The Swimmer in the Aquarium, The Sword Swallower, and The Cowboy—to be more than 1 million Brazilian reais (around $193,000). They had been on view...

Digital artist Lily Belmira has created a free video game that recreates the environment of Michael Heizer’s monumental land art sculpture City, 1970–2022, in the Nevada desert. Belmira, who is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, wrote on her blog that she saw the act of creating the game as a “way to undermine its power.” Having taken over fifty years […]

Likely prompted by the runaway success of a certain classically oriented movie in theaters this summer, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has returned the oldest preserved fragment of The Odyssey to one of its galleries, where it can be seen and appreciated after a long time out of view. The relic is now on display in Gallery 162 in the museum’s section devoted to Greek and Roman Art. In a round-up of Odyssey-related collection treasures on its website, the Met describes the relic as the first early Ptolemaic fragment of the text ever discovered and notes: “Dating from around 285–250 BCE and made in Egypt, this fragment is beautifully inscribed using a combination of charcoal and water via a stylus on...

As workers race against the 72-hour, so-called golden window to rescue survivors from collapsed buildings following Monday’s devastating 7.4 earthquake in northern Colombia, the region’s museums are also in serious jeopardy. On Monday evening, Alejandro Garces, a curator at the Museo de Arte de Pereira, posted photos on Instagram of the damage sustained to the museum that is located about 220 miles west of Bogotá and is the principal art institution for the states of Caldas, Risaralda, and Quindío, which together form the “Zona Cafeteria” or the country’s coffee triangle. The images show whole walls collapsed, leaving its interior with sweeping views of the city. Jagged X-shaped fissures ripped...

A Picasso print stolen from a Milwaukee gallery in 2018 has miraculously resurfaced in a decrepit apartment in the same city, according to recent reports. The print, Torero (1949), was discovered during a landlord’s walkthrough of an apartment recently vacated via an eviction. Hoping to offset lost rent by flipping the property of the evicted […]

When French President Emmanuel Macron visited Damascus in early July, he pledged to support the country’s rebuilding efforts in the wake of former President Basher al-Assad’s overthrow 18 months prior. While the main focus of the visit was economic—Macron discussed reviving Syria’s banking sector and returning more than $50 million that had been confiscated from the Assad family—the diplomatic gesture also involved the return of 23 artifacts that had been held in France since their initial loan for an exhibition at the Arab World Institute in Paris 15 years ago. According to a report in the Associated Press last month, Macron himself transported the artifacts on the presidential plane and delivered...

Whether on walls or in boxes, the frisky foxes of Annatomix’s murals and mixed-media sculptures bring vibrancy, playfulness, and just the right amount of cunning. The street artist is known for her vivid geometric animal murals evocative of origami, where planes of color and bold shadows make the animals pop from brick surfaces and wooden containers alike. “I am particularly fond of foxes because I find them so relatable,” the artist tells Colossal. “Sacred to some, vermin to others. Wrapped in mythology and misunderstanding. Fond of trash and screaming into the void.” Although the shapes are simplified, the artist summons animated expressions and dramatic movement. “Longbridge Foxes” (2023)...

When sculptor Shirley Tse was invited by her former student Anna Hrund Másdóttir to produce an original exhibition at her cooperative gallery Kling and Bang in Reykjavik, her first thought was to invite her friend and former teacher, the film and video maker Dana Berman Duff, to collaborate with her. Geography, landscape, desire and time are some of the interests these two artists shared. The result is an extraordinary manifestation of physical elements — breath, moon and tides — that bind us and the universe. Working under the name “Relational,” Tse and Berman Duff's exhibition The Universe Breathes Us was first staged at Kling and Bang in 2025, and again this summer at Shoshana Wayne Gallery...

With the help of a $2.5 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Furness Hall, a former University of the Arts dormitory in Philadelphia, will be turned into 45 new affordable apartments for artists. Designed by famed American architect Frank Furness, the building is currently part of the Village of Industry […]

Yoed and Natasha Anise’s first-ever art purchase unravelled after the artist’s estate allegedly decided they are not sufficiently serious collectors

Es Devlin's first solo exhibition in Korea brings more than 30 years of her practice to FUTURA SEOUL

“Anas was one of the journalists who ran into the line of fire,” reads a translated eulogy by independent journalist Doaa Shaheen about her late colleague, prominent Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, 28, who was killed alongside four other journalists on August 10, 2025, by a targeted Israeli strike on their media tent near al-Shifa Hospital. “He covered events as they unfolded because he believed the Palestinian narrative was worth this effort and exhaustion,” Shaheen's voice note continued. “Our stories are worth all this suffering. They deserve our presence on the front lines, documenting the truth.”Shaheen's oral eulogy is one of several devoted to al-Sharif on a new digital...

The sixth edition of the Frieze Seoul international art fair will move for its 2027 iteration from COEX exhibition center in Gangnam to the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), a cultural center in Seoul designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. Frieze Seoul has staged its annual operations at COEX for all five of its editions since 2022, […]

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — On the first Friday of each month, a dozen or more exhibitions open across galleries, studios, and temporary spaces in Knoxville. For many people in the small city’s art community, the night is either an overwhelming jumble or a repetitive routine. Artist Lauren Farkas’s maps offer a way through.“If everything is on the map, people get overwhelmed,” Farkas told Hyperallergic. “I put all the things that I would like to go to if I had enough time on the map.”Farkas, a high school art teacher at L&N STEM Academy who has lived in Knoxville for nine years, said that she considers her educational work to be “a long-form performance piece.” She approaches each map as an artwork...

Issues at the Terracotta Warriors Museum in Xi'an and the Zhejiang Museum have prompted the National Cultural Heritage Administration to put out a notice

A few weeks shy of his 10th birthday, Anderson Taylor opened a museum in the small town of Cambridge, Illinois, with just one display case. Two years later, after expanding the collection to over a dozen cases of animal fossils, iridescent bones, and rare minerals, Taylor set a Guinness World Record as the world’s youngest museum curator.Announced July 15, the award notes the curator's precise age as nine years and 340 days old when the Cambridge Natural History Museum opened on August 10, 2024.

Martin Clark has been appointed CEO and director of Towner Eastbourne, on the coast of southeast England. Clark joins the institution from Camden Art Centre, where he spent a decade as director. He will begin in his new role on January 27. While at Camden, Clark organized exhibitions of artists including Forrest Bess, Christodoulous Panayioutou, […]

In the introduction of a new book titled Great Women Photographers, Fiona Rogers writes, “If ‘greatness’ has long been defined by visibility and remembrance, then the continued documentation and celebration of women’s photographic practice is not only relevant but essential.” The forthcoming title spans a multitude of photographic works from 68 countries and covers nearly 200 years of history. It’s the fourth volume in Phaidon’s series of books commemorating influential women in the artistic sphere, with previous installments focusing on distinct creative mediums such as painting and sculpting. Alex Prager, “Eve,” 2008. Image courtesy of the artist, Alex Prager Studio, and Lehmann Maupin, New...

The works had been taken from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation near the city of Parma in March

Orthodontics once carried the image of an awkward teenage phase, all metal and self-consciousness. That picture is thoroughly out of... Read More

San Francisco goes baroque with performances of Handel's Alcina, Tolomeo, and Rinaldo.

At Wolf Trap Opera, a season-closing Tosca is weighed down by an incoherent setting during Italy’s Anni di piombo.

Frieze Seoul will move to Zaha Hadid’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza in 2027

The British Museum presents its first major exhibition of Korean art and history in more than 40 years.

And why did he sign so few? The intriguing story behind his signatures

The museum director will move from London to the East Sussex institution ahead of the development of its new outpost in the South Downs National Park

ASICS, VANDYTHEPINK, Junghoon Vandy Son, South Korea, Korean culture, Korean design, streetwear, sneakers, GEL-KAYANO, fashion

What to our wondering ears should appear, but a 40-track Jonas Kaufmann Christmas album?

From the collection of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, which features a wealth of artwork and artifacts related to social justice and community organizing, a new exhibition highlights American democracy and freedom of speech through the lens of art as an agent of change. Turn the volume up! includes works by a diverse group of contemporary artists and photographers, from Spider Martin’s dramatic documentation of Freedom Marches during the Civil Rights Movement to Kara Walker’s multimedia interrogations of U.S. history and racial stereotypes. Visitors will also encounter works by the Guerilla Girls, Carrie Mae Weems, Kiki Smith, Bruce Davidson, and many more. Kara Walker, “Confederate...

Our oceans are places of mystery and biological wonders as much as they are essential to communities’ livelihoods. We tap these expansive bodies of water for recreation, food, transportation. From the Atlantic to the Arctic, oceans cover around 70 percent of the earth’s surface, and there is an incredible wealth of life yet to be discovered. As the continuing climate crisis melts ice caps and raises sea levels, and industrial fishing and waste threatens endangered marine animals and habitats, reminders of the oceans’ irreplaceable value and power are ever more critical. That’s where Oceanographic magazine and Blancpain’s annual Ocean Photographer of the Year contest comes in as a catalyst for...

“The wind is my nemesis!” says Jennifer Latour, and rightly so. In her sculptural assemblages, single flowers or small clusters of blooms sprout from tree branches or thick stems, appearing like otherworldly forms standing in the landscape. A soft breeze could topple the Vancouver-based artist’s ephemeral works, scattering their delicate petals and spindly shoots before she has the chance to snap a photo. These fleeting moments are preserved in Latour’s Bound Species series, which she began during lockdown by piecing together objects found around her home into unconventional, ikebana-style compositions. “During this time, I started having a recurring dream of giant flowers growing around me with...

Le sculture di Anna Maria Maiolino (Scalea, 1942) si accumulano. Si ammucchiano per ripetizione e sono costruite da gesti infiniti e dal tatto. Ma questi piccoli gesti quotidiani non sono solamente pratica artistica: visualizzano come la vulnerabilità e la sensibilità, il tatto e la cura, possono essere un atto di resistenza. La Galleria Ovale del Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) di Lisbona, Portogallo, racchiude queste sculture create con modalità ripetitiva. La mostra si intitola Poetic Earth. Alcune delle opere sono state realizzate decenni fa, altre sono state create in situ, proprio in questo spazio a forma di foglia.
View of the exhibition “Anna Maria Maiolino. Poetic Earth”,...

Ci sono artisti la cui carriera coincide con una lunga ricerca e altri che, raggiunta una determinata soglia, sembrano aver trovato una lingua tanto riconoscibile da poter attraversare qualsiasi soggetto senza modificarne realmente la struttura. È una condizione rara, che appartiene a quei pochi autori il cui immaginario ha ormai assunto la forma di un universo autonomo, capace di assorbire temi, epoche e narrazioni mantenendo pressoché intatta la propria grammatica. Osservando Le Alchimiste, il mastodontico progetto concepito da Anselm Kiefer per la Sala delle Cariatidi di Palazzo Reale, a Milano, a cura di Gabriella Belli, la sensazione è proprio questa: non quella di assistere a una svolta, quanto...

La pittura contemporanea ha spesso trasformato il ritorno in una narrazione di recupero: un’interruzione superata, una perdita convertita in nuova possibilità. When the Sun Shines Again, la prima grande personale newyorkese di Guimi You presso Lehmann Maupin, usa questa struttura per metterla in crisi. La mostra osserva ciò che accade quando il gesto artistico emerge da periodi di sospensione, quando il fare pittura si intreccia con la cura, l’attesa e forme di vita che tradizionalmente rimangono fuori dalla storia della produzione.
Guimi You, “When the Sun Shines Again”, installation view at Lehmann Maupin New York. Photography by Studio Kukla, courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul...

Knokke Art Fair è una delle fiere d’arte più antiche al mondo e la più longeva tradizione internazionale sulla costa belga, un luogo speciale dove l’arte emoziona, giovani e anziani, curiosi ed esperti. Che sia ammirata tra le solenni mura di un luogo deputato o all’aria aperta (con una scultura site-specific), l’arte suscita emozioni, stimola la riflessione e invita al dialogo.
Vista esterna della location di Knokke Art Fair, edizione 2026
Knokke Art Fair è un evento del tutto indipendente, incentrato sulla qualità basata su un’accurata selezione che si svolge prima dell’apertura della fiera, ed è organizzata da Alexander Tuteleers. In questo luogo, il tempo sembra essersi fermato in...

Fino al 30 novembre 2026 il Parco Archeologico di Pompei ospita la mostra Philip Colbert in Pompeii: Pop Mythology. La mostra, curata da Cesare Biasini Selvaggi, espone oltre trenta sculture monumentali dell’artista britannico tra le quali protagonista assoluto è l’astice antropomorfo, alter ego dell’artista e ormai suo marchio riconoscibile.
Philip Colbert, ph. courtesy of the artist studio
Le opere di Colbert sono progettate per risultare subito leggibili e perfettamente compatibili con le aspettative della comunicazione social. Molti lavori si distinguono per l’uso di colori saturi, monumentalità, ironia pop e kitsch con citazioni della classicità ridotte a segni facilmente riconoscibili e nel...

By Betty Ann Brown "The idea becomes a machine that makes the art."—Sol LeWitt Dean De Cocker creates richly conceived, exquisitely crafted, and visually delightful artworks that shuttle between abstraction and conceptual representation. He has long been drawn to machines, from bicycles to motorcycles, cars to airplanes, and formal echoes of these devices appear in his current body of work, exhibited at the Visual Arts Center in the small Central California town of Visalia. Welcome to the...

By Victoria Thomas Photographer and ceramic artist Catherine (Cathy) Opie first shocked and rocked the fine art world with her self-portraits during the late 1990s. Today, her decades of work — often termed confessional — now serve as context for the far more enigmatic Holding Blue installation, on view at Regen Projects through July 3. The Los Angeles-based artist identifies as a leather dyke, lesbian cowboy, an elder, and as "Mama Cathy," with a mustachioed male alter-ego named Bo. Opie is...

By Betty Ann Brown "Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation — I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances."—Henri Matisse Jill sykes by Eric Minh Swenson Jill Sykes creates beautiful paintings of botanical phenomena. Like Matisse, she translates three-dimensional objects into two-dimensional images, occupying the territory between abstraction and representation to achieve balance and equilibrium. From a very early age,...

By Victoria Thomas There's something about a hanging. Whether legal or not, the visual experience seems mythic, supernatural, theatrical, and ritualistic, versus the efficiency of a swift kill. If local authorities greenlight the killing, it's called a hanging. If they don't, the hanging is extrajudicial, and it's called a lynching. Anyone with even the scantiest grasp of American history will know that our country has a sordid romance with lynching — a romance which persists. And unless...

By Betty Ann Brown Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, February 22–June 28, 2026 Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.—Dolores Huerta The Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF, originally the Rebel Chicano Art Front) was an art collective founded in Sacramento in the early 1970s. The visual art members, who focused on printmaking and murals, collaborated with writers, musicians, performers, and teachers. Together, they...

It is credited with ‘democratising photography’ on a global level – and now Shutter Hub is making its most democratic move yet. As of this month, the organisation will pass into the control of the community it was built for, in what founder Karen Harvey MBE describes as ‘a logical next step: to make things more equitable we need multiple perspectives.’ The announcement follows Karen’s decision to remove paid memberships last year, making Shutter Hub ‘fully open-access and available at no cost to all’. It’s a typically altruistic move from the social entrepreneur: also the founder of Toiletries Amnesty, the award-winning NGO. She was made an MBE in 2024 for services to people living in hygiene...

The week of Art Basel is for me the most compelling moment in the city, and this year it reaffirmed its position as the most closely watched annual event in the international art calendar.

The City Series by Shutter Hub is an ongoing publishing project exploring the people, places, cultures, and contradictions that shape cities around the world. Rather than documenting a location as a fixed subject, the series invites photographers to respond to a city as an idea: something experienced, observed, imagined, and interpreted through the photographic eye.
For its second edition, we turn our attention to London in partnership with Battersea Power Supplies, a new museum and gift shop celebrating Battersea Power Station. We invite photographers from across the globe to contribute to a major publication celebrating one of the world’s most photographed, complex, and ever-changing cities. We want to see...

For an artist to return to painting after life‑altering injury is to witness the human spirit at its most unguarded. In such a moment, understanding the forces that carry you back to the page becomes all‑important, and in Joel Bradish Nichols’ case, the answers lie in the people and pursuits he had cherished. In a coma for months after a near‑fatal accident, his re‑emergence into artistic practice becomes inseparable from a narrative of devotion and determination — a surrounding spiritedness...

By Tabea Martin ‘Me Myself’ brings together four artists — Anna‑Lena Ruff, Debora Schultheiss, Tabea Martin, and Eva Schick — whose works move across differing styles and energies yet find in this art space an unforced coherence. I sense a shared thread of observation and inner dialogue, and a contemplation of natural female presence. The exhibition is currently showing at the Anja Edith Brinckmann Galerie, Basel. From here, the individual narratives invite a closer reading. By Anna-Lena...