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...

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...

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...

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

“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

Masanori Ushiki  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Masanori Ushiki’s Website
Masanori Ushiki on Instagram

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.

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

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...

Caleb Stein  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Caleb Stein’s Website
Caleb Stein on Instagram

Leonie Bo  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Leonie Bos’s Website
Leonie Bos on Instagram

Xiao Hua Yang  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Xiao Hua Yang’s Website
Xiao Hua Yang on Instagram

Alina Bobrova  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Alina Bobrova’s Website
Alina Bobrova on Instagram

Skeletons, tombstones, and serpents. These are just a few of the iconic images pre-v ailing throughout the works of Morgan Sorensen—all relating to the themes of struggle, sadness, pain, and death. While anyone might agree that these graphic designs would all make for killer band T’s, there’s quite a bit of depth surrounding the artist’s […]
The post Future Relics: The Art of Morgan Sorensen first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

The body is an obsession for Monica Piloni. Whether it’s a hollowed face in the Samieses series or the eerie dolls depicted in “Ilegais”, a majority of Monica Piloni’s sculptures confront the human form. And while consistently returning to the body may seem confining to some, it’s a pursuit marked by liberation for the Brazilian […]
The post The Disconcertingly Honest Self-Portrait Sculptures of Monica Piloni first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose issue 42, which is sold out. See Matthew Grabelsky’s new solo show at Thinkspace gallery here.  Matthew Grabelsky had studied tradition in Florence, lived in the cultural nuclei of Europe, but hadn’t yet found the idea that would set him apart as an artist living in the twenty-first century. […]
The post Human/Nature: Animals Go Underground In the Paintings of Matthew Grabelsky first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

“Danger” is a word often associated with the candy-colored work of Los Angeles artist Kristen Liu-Wong. Her feminine tableaus, often rendered in a bright blend of acrylics, paint pen, and marker, have particularly veered into more menacing territory in recent years. “The world is a dangerous place,” Liu-Wong says, in a June interview. “I don’t […]
The post Dont Tempt Me: the Art of Kristen Liu-Wong first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

On paper, Nathan Reidt’s creatures sometimes reveal themselves through a fog of graphite. He may begin with a “vague, circle-y shape” and shade areas. “Then I just stare at it for a long time and wait for something to pop out and refine that a little and stare at it.” The Philadelphia-based artist explains by […]
The post Personal Growth: the Art of Nathan Reidt first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

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.

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...

Limited Edition print by Gerhard Wichler It’s been a distinctly textured start to the year at THE GAZE, where invigorating artistic narratives emerge across forms and disciplines, threading their way through an unsettled climate. I’m delighted to share the completion and publication of a candid, close‑range interview with abstract artist Gerhard Wichler—an exchange that brought a refreshing clarity amid the mayhem of today’s world. You can read our fascinating interview here. We also mark an...

The Undercurrent Surfaces There are moments in a country’s creative consciousness when the atmosphere tilts. For many of the designers showing at Zurich Fashion Week 2026, the seeds were sown during last year’s pre‑events. And so, after more than twelve months of preparation, this was the week their work stepped fully into the light — an undercurrent now rising into a transformative movement in modern style. As I walked into the Kongresshaus Zurich this February, the first edition of Zurich...