the new tools of craft
 
For much of the last century, architecture appeared to be moving steadily away from craft. Industrial production favored repetition over variation, efficiency over ornament, and standardization over local expression. As buildings became increasingly assembled from catalogs of prefabricated components, the figure of the artisan seemed to fade from the architectural imagination.
 
Then came the digital revolution. Early computational design opened up entirely new formal possibilities, allowing architects to generate increasingly complex geometries on screen. As digital tools evolved, attention shifted toward finding new ways to translate those geometries into physical structures,...

Role: Managing Editor
Location: remote
Reports to: Editor-in-Chief
 
 
about designboom
 
designboom is one of the most recognized design media brands in the world. We bring together design, architecture, art, and technology to spark creative thought and global dialogue.
 
We’re driven by a simple philosophy: Utopian Optimism and a What If mindset. We believe design isn’t decoration, it’s transformation. One idea, one spark, can outshine the noise and move us forward.
 
the role
  We’re looking for a Managing Editor to run the daily heartbeat of our newsroom.
You’ll own the editorial workflow end to end: shaping the calendar, guiding the team’s output, guarding the quality of every piece we...

atelier vens vanbelle renovates antoon de clerck’s former home
 
Located in Aalter, Belgium, this residential renovation by Atelier Vens Vanbelle transforms the former home and studio of painter Antoon De Clerck into a contemporary dwelling informed by the artist’s visual language. Purchased by Ine and Charles following De Clerck’s death, the property presented a deteriorated structure but retained a number of architectural features that reflected the painter’s interest in abstraction, primary colors, and the principles of De Stijl.
 
De Clerck designed the original house himself, incorporating compositions of lines, planes, and color fields that echoed the themes present throughout his paintings....

Penn Station in New York City is notoriously Kafkaesque and claustrophobic. It's an urban nightmare, a transit purgatory, and a place to avoid at all costs. To make matters worse, the renovated station might carry Trump's name and be designed in his favorite neoclassical style, according to reports. More about that below. Also, do you remember the historic strike that brought the Venice Biennale to a halt in May? Italian cultural workers are planning to expand it to the entire country this week. They're not messing around. And there’s more, including a tour inside the newly unveiled Obama Presidential Center, dubbed the “Obamalisk” by locals. —Hakim Bishara, editor-in-chief A First Look...

So much color in this beautifully agile voice.

Frieze Seoul returns this September with over 125 galleries, two new curated sections, expanded Focus

The “No Ice in the Cup” campaign is using art to protest US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents' planned deployment to the football tournament

prada designs the hidden layer of NASA’s lunar suit
 
Axiom Space and Prada reveal the latest result of their ongoing collaboration for NASA’s Artemis program, shifting attention away from the outer shell of the lunar spacesuit and toward the layer worn closest to the astronaut’s body. The new Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment (LCVG) is designed to be worn inside the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) (find designboom’s previous coverage here), forming a critical component of the system that will support astronauts as they return to the Moon for the first time in more than half a century.
 
While the AxEMU’s white exterior has become a recognizable symbol of the next era of lunar...

Polydrops Rethinks Mobile Living Through Energy Reduction
 
The P21X by Polydrops is a limited-production travel trailer that examines how mobile living can operate within the constraints of finite energy. Developed as an evolution of the P21 model and the company’s energy-conscious design approach, the project extends a self-contained living system into more demanding terrain while maintaining a focus on efficiency, resource management, and aerodynamic performance.
 
Since 2019, Polydrops has approached mobile habitation through the lens of energy consumption. Rather than increasing capacity through larger batteries, generators, and storage systems, the company has focused on reducing energy demand...

The Serpentine Pavilion is one of the most anticipated events in the international architecture calendar. Since 2000, the annual commission in London’s Kensington Gardens has invited leading architects to design a temporary pavilion on the Serpentine Galleries’ lawn. Its inaugural structure was designed by the late Zaha Hadid, with subsequent contributions coming from the likes of Herzog & de Meuron, Oscar Niemeyer, Sou Fujimoto and others. The project has become a leading platform for experimentation and innovation, offering visitors the chance to experience cutting-edge design in a public setting. 2026 is a landmark year for the Serpentine, marking a quarter of a century since Hadid’s first commission...

Alla cerimonia di premiazione del Nikon Photo Contest a Tokyo nell’ottobre 2025, una giovane fotografa cinese ha attirato la mia attenzione. Si chiama Fang Xianhui e, con la sua opera “Mom’s scent”, si è distinta tra i partecipanti di 180 Paesi, vincendo lo Special Encouragement Award nella categoria foto singola. I giudici hanno definito la scena di cottura del pane al vapore, scattata in un villaggio rurale dello Shanxi, come un “campione di emozioni che colpisce dritto al cuore”: nessuna narrazione grandiosa, nessuna tecnica abbagliante, ma solo la più semplice essenza della vita quotidiana. Ciò che mi ha incuriosito ancora di più è che non era la prima volta che calcava un palcoscenico...

Hypha Studios opens its largest project to date in Bankside, transforming an empty office building into a major cultural hub

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Ugo Rondinone's MORE LIGHT transforms London through a rainbow installation, fifty-four Bond Street flags and new sunrise and sunset paintings.

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Invasive Species at Hypha Studios brings together fifteen women artists exploring memory, sensory experience, psychological dissonance and transformation

COLLISIO, a vibrant exploration of memory, family, nostalgia and material disruption.

Al Magazzino del Sale di Cervia, la seconda edizione di Endless Summer conferma la solidità di un progetto che sceglie di sottrarsi alla grammatica convenzionale della mostra collettiva per assumere, piuttosto, la forma aperta di una costellazione curatoriale. Ideato da MAGMA APS e sviluppato come ciclo triennale (2025-2027), il progetto prende in prestito dal celebre documentario di Bruce Brown l’immagine impossibile di un’estate perpetua, trasformandola in una metafora percettiva e mentale: non una stagione, ma uno stato di sospensione in cui desiderio, memoria e dissolvenza convivono simultaneamente.
Riccardo Baruzzi, “Silvia”, 2010, stampa a getto d’inchiostro su carta, dittico, 45 x 38 cm...

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Between 2010 and 2023, more than 1,243 council-run youth centres closed, according to UNISON. Meanwhile, one in three people in the UK say their local areas are in decline, with 13,000 high street shops closing in 2024. Across the country, council restrictions, diminishing spaces, gentrification and enduring prejudices see many communities under threat of erasure. Photographer Sophie Green presents a vivid portrait of the communities, subcultures and social gatherings that shape contemporary Britain, forming a vital archive of a changing nation. For over a decade, she has documented how rituals and traditions build connection, belonging and shared identity. From the adrenaline thrill of banger racing, to the...

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art may have opened its 200,000-square-foot facility in Bentonville, Arkansas just 15 years ago, but it is already ready for its first major addition. At the museum’s campus last week, founder Alice Walton, heir to the Walmart fortune and, per Bloomberg, the world’s richest woman at $143 billion, explained that she and architect Moshe Safdie had drawn up a fifty-year plan for the institution, but given their ages and her insistence that no one but Safdie would touch the building, the two decided they’d better get cracking. The addition is in the same style as the original, defined by curves that echo the surrounding landscape and materials including concrete, cedar, and...

CHICAGO — On the sunny morning of Wednesday, June 3, the blue skies and stretches of greenery made the formidably geometric “Obamalisk” building seem almost inviting. Over the last five years, the rolling hills of Jackson Park have been reshaped to accommodate the structures that now make up the Obama Presidential Center, set to open to the public later this month. Spread across the new $850 million campus, the legacy of Barack and Michelle Obama is embodied in educational, recreational, and civic spaces. Below the mammoth stone tower designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the Home Court, with an NBA regulation-size basketball court, and a new branch of the Chicago Public Library sit among a...

Artist Alma Allen has again accused art publicist David Resnicow of working against Allen’s controversial U.S. Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, after months of criticism surrounding the project. In an Instagram post published Monday afternoon, Allen wrote that “two of the three galleries that withdrew their support for my pavilion informed me that they did so on the advice of David Resnicow,” referring to the veteran art-world publicist whose firm has represented the US Pavilion six times before this year’s edition. “I have never met Mr. Resnicow,” Allen wrote in the post “But his name came up frequently from individuals who told me he had warned them not to support this year’s American...

"Never mind that more and more of these movies look and feel like TV shows"

David Haskell spends his days running New York Magazine. Twice a week, he goes to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and throws clay. The editor in chief of one of the country’s most influential magazines has spent the last dozen years quietly building a second life as a sculptor. Now, that work is the subject of his first solo exhibition, Boom Beach, at Donzella Ltd., a design gallery tucked away on the fifteenth floor of the New York Design Center at 200 Lexington Avenue. Haskell is exactly what you’d expect the editor in chief of New York Magazine to look like. When I visited the gallery, he was dressed in brown leather chukka boots, a pinstripe suit with peak lapels, and a striped button-down worn open at the...

On June 2, Sotheby’s in New York attempted to stage a private auction for Number 19, 1951, an oil and enamel masterwork by abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock, but the sale failed to launch after the auction house wasn’t able to attract enough bidders, according to a report from Artnews.  The asking price for the painting—which is owned by Arne Glimcher, the founder […]

Trump's name will feature prominently in the forthcoming redesign of New York City's Penn Station, according to official renderings released today, June 8. A consortium of developers and designers has released the plans for the future Penn Station — a nearly $8 billion project overseen by the Trump Administration — days after Gothamist first published leaked renderings of the station's patriotic details. Renderings for the forthcoming rebuild echo the president's long-held architectural preference for "classical" styles. They also detail several large American flags along the Beaux-Arts-inspired exterior of the building, gold-colored bronze railings, a terracotta city skyline, an eagle...

The new FotoFocus Center gives the city’s popular photography biennial a permanent presence and an inclusive mandate

Italian labor unions, cultural workers’ associations, and grassroots collectives have joined the call for a national strike across the country's arts and culture sector this Friday, June 12. Strike participants cite unstable opportunities and low wages across the field, as well as public investments into the arms industry and the “conditions that allow institutions to look away from genocide.”The mobilization comes just a month after a historic strike for Palestine and workers' rights at the Venice Biennale on May 8, led by the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA). The global collective has also signed onto this Friday's action, along with cultural labor advocacy groups including Mi...

Russian and Kyrgyz scientists are exploring the ruins of the medieval trading center of Turu-Aygyr, submerged in the waters of Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan for centuries. Their findings were first reported by the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) last November, when it launched a joint archeological mission with the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic to study the drowned city. An important stop on the Silk Road between China and the West, which flourished between the 1st century BCE and the 14th to 15th centuries CE, Turu-Aygyr was destroyed by an earthquake at the beginning of the 15th century and subsequently...

Elfie Semotan, an Austrian fashion photographer known for her collaboration with designer Helmut Lang, died “unexpectedly” on Saturday at 84 years old in Jennersdorf, a town in southeast Austria, according to an obituary posted on Instagram and a report by Austria’s national public broadcasting network ORF. Semotan was based in Vienna, New York, and Jennersdorf, which is near the border with Slovenia and Hungary. She had spent time there since first buying a farmhouse in the area in the mid-1970s. Semotan was born in 1941 in Wels, and studied fashion in Vienna. Soon after finishing her studies, she moved to Paris and worked as a model while developing her interest in photography. After moving back to...

What is prison for? Touted as both a means of punishment and correction, the U.S. carceral system rarely succeeds at the latter. According to the Department of Justice, more than 650,000 people are released from prison annually, with two-thirds being arrested again within three years. Rehabilitation is the purported justification for locking away more of our residents than most other nations, but clearly, the punitive system seldom accomplishes this goal. A new film by writer Marvin Wade and animator Evan Bode juxtaposes the counterproductive forces of the carceral system with the programs, resources, and true determination that make change possible. Presented by The New York Times‘ Opinion section,...

Cover of Andrew Durbin, The Wonderful World That Almost Was (2026)The late photographer Peter Hujar and visual artist Paul Thek keep showing up these days. From Alex Da Corte’s recreation of Paul Thek’s The Tomb for his excellent show at Matthew Marks’ New York gallery in late 2025, to the 2025 film Peter Hujar’s Day, along with forthcoming shows later this year at The Watermill Center and the Morgan Library, there is clearly a renewed interest in their work. And now we have Andrew Durbin’s thoughtfully rendered dual biography of these lovers and friends: The Wonderful World That Almost Was: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek.Dual biographies are not a common thing. Nor is it common for biographies...

A new online platform, Leonardotheka, was launched on Monday that, for the first time in over 400 years, reunites two historically essential collections of writings and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci that were originally separated hundreds of years ago by the Italian sculptor Pompeo Leoni. The online digital archive, which is the result of a […]

The Museo Dolores Olmedo is welcoming visitors again after a six-year-long closure during which plans were floated to relocate its prized collection

Sweden’s minister for culture, Parisa Liljestrand, at a June 8 press conference announced Tone Hansen as the next director of Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Hansen arrives to the institution from Munch, the museum in Oslo devoted to the work of Edvard Munch, where she has served as director since 2022. She previously helmed the Henie Onstad […]

Double can mean many things. It may imply a duplicate, symmetry, a reflection, a twin, a splitting, or even a shadow self. There is an inherent duality that forms around two parts, which may or may not be in concert with one another. Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank was the first to describe the concept in an essay published in 1914, and Sigmund Freud ran with the idea in his 1919 book The Uncanny. For Freud, the phenomenon illustrated how the unconscious is actually a kind of second consciousness. Scottish psychoanalyst R.D. Laing drew on this foundation in his study of schizophrenia in the book The Divided Self, which delves into the nature of “real” and “false” selves. And in a literary sense, the...

Franco-Argentinian artist Julio Le Parc, whose innovations in kinetic and Op art presaged the interactive art of today, died in Paris on May 30. He was ninety-seven. His death was confirmed to Argentinian newspaper La Nación by his son Yamil. Le Parc was the last surviving cofounding member of the pathbreaking Groupe de Recherche d’Art […]

The English musician will co-organise a show at the UK's Hepworth Wakefield next year

Giacomo Manzù: The Artist and his Dealer explores the decades-long relationship between the Italian artist and Rosenberg's father

June marks Pride Month, a time when communities around the world celebrate LGBTQIA+ identities while reflecting on the history of the movement and the ongoing fight for equality. Its origins are often traced to June 28, 1969, when a police raid on the Stonewall Inn in Lower Manhattan was met with resistance from patrons and local community members. The six days of protests that followed, known as the Stonewall Riots, became a turning point in the struggle for LGBTQIA+ rights and helped galvanise a new era of activism. More than five decades later, Pride continues to honour that legacy while creating space for visibility, solidarity and celebration. Art has long played a vital role in this story, offering a...

As Dave Krugman traverses the streets of New York City, camera in hand, he seeks patterns. Throughout his wide-ranging practice spanning portraits, automobiles, tourism, and more, he studies “humanity’s intersection with cities and how people are influenced by their immediate environment,” says a statement. Whether in the countryside or the middle of an urban hub, rhythms and typologies emerge. The Brooklyn-based photographer began documenting windows throughout New York City several years ago, and his aptly named series compiles a cross-section of his captures over the past half decade. Taken at night, these virtually infinite portals into individual lives are illuminated from within. Krugman focuses...

Dearest by Zeinab Diomande is a zine presenting a collection of paintings that, while not a formal series, share a cohesive visual language exploring themes of liquidity and the passage of time, achieved through the use of thinned paint and water. The pieces employ texture as a storytelling device, reflecting the rituals and ceremonies of the artist’s alter egos within imagined worlds.
Zeinab Diomande on Instagram

Opera Theater of St. Louis's summer festival opened last night and Parterre Box is celebrating by launching a new feature: custom travel guides!

Emma Hoffman reports on the glimmers of ecstatic artistry in Lise Davidsen's all-Schubert recital at Carnegie Hall with James Baillieu.

Contemporary art is undergoing a profound shift in how it is made, experienced and understood. At Aesthetica, we are responding to this moment with clarity, ambition and intent. What we are witnessing is not simple progression but a fundamental reconfiguration of how art circulates, gains meaning and operates within wider cultural systems. Across Aesthetica 20, we are building a living framework where exhibition, discourse and publication function as a single connected structure. The Future Now Symposium sits at the centre of this, extending the Aesthetica Art Prize into a space where ideas are exchanged, tested and developed in real time. We are not simply presenting contemporary art, we are interrogating its...

L’architettura quattrocentesca di Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel a Venezia si fa teatro di un dialogo vibrante, eppure straordinariamente eloquente con le opere di Su Xiaobai. La mostra raccoglie trentacinque lavori che ripercorrono la parabola creativa dell’artista, dai primi esperimenti con la lacca risalenti al 2003 fino alle sue più recenti evoluzioni. L’esposizione è curata da Stephen Little, curatore di arte cinese e capo dei dipartimenti di arte cinese, coreana e del sud – sudest asiatico al LACMA.
A render of the works by Su Xiaobai at Palazzo Soranzo Van Axel, image credit © Su Xiaobai Foundation, 2026. Courtesy of the Su Xiaobai Foundation
In questo scenario, le tonalità monocrome delle...

Vivian Maier was born in New York on 1 February 1926. The street photographer spent the majority of her life between France and the USA, working as a nanny for several Chicago families. It was only after her death in 2009 that her 150,000 image archive was discovered. In the same year as Maier was born, across the city, Allen Ginsberg arrived on 3 June. His was a life of fame and notoriety, producing poetry, photography and activism that was foundational in the Beat Movement. His radical literary works left an indelible mark on American counterculture, with his renowned poem Howl becoming the subject of an obscenity trial in 1957. As far as artistic figures go, these two could perhaps not be further apart....

I like to use this recording to annoy Mariah Carey fans by proving that whistle register doesn't count.

È certo che ogni avvenimento del passato continui a persistere ostinatamente nel flusso della storia politica, sociale e culturale contemporanea di un Paese. Talvolta questa presenza risulta così viva e profonda da modellare il presente e influenzarlo, offrendo racconti parziali e significativi. In questo senso, la storia non viene più intesa come un percorso esclusivamente individuale, bensì come un’esperienza condivisa, capace di instaurare un rapporto vivo con chi la incontra. Proprio all’interno di questa relazione si aprono nuovi spazi di comprensione, rendendo visibili dinamiche che spesso rimangono implicite.
MarÍa Leguízamo, Gerson Vargas, “Unos pocos buenos amigos”, installation view,...

Interior Gallery Photos by and ©Tim Hursley, courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum  As a world-class institution showcasing one of the most impressive collections of American art spanning five centuries, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has firmly placed Bentonville, Arkansas on the global cultural map. And, except for a few major holidays, the museum […]
The post Crystal Bridges Opens Impressive New 114,000 Square Foot Expansion first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

C’è un momento, entrando nella mostra Egg di Flora Yukhnovich presso Victoria Miro a Venezia, in cui diventa evidente come il vero tema abbia ormai poco a che fare con il Rococò. La questione centrale riguarda piuttosto il destino della pittura dentro un ecosistema estetico dominato da sovrapproduzione, iperstimolazione e consumo accelerato delle immagini.
Flora Yukhnovich, “Egg”, installation view at Victoria Miro Venice, 5 May–4 July 2026, © Flora Yukhnovich. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro
Per anni Yukhnovich è stata raccontata come la pittrice che ha riportato il Settecento nel contemporaneo: Fragonard filtrato mediante l’astrazione gestuale, Boucher radicato nell’ambiente...

Tavares Strachan is an artist whose interests, references, and approaches to making stretch so broadly, it’s not surprising that one of his more well-known works is an encyclopedia. Created in 2018, the 2,400-page volume contains 15,000 entries on individuals, events, places, and more that are critical to understanding our shared history, and yet were omitted from the Encyclopedia Britannica. This inverse book-cum-sculpture is one of many pieces within Strachan’s oeuvre that question the narratives we collectively disseminate. Born in Nassau, the Bahamian artist is one of the leading conceptual artists working today, and his first monograph, out in July from Phaidon, peers into decades of his expansive...

By A. Laura Brody What is the language of bat senses and beaver teethmarks? How does water communicate to soil and roots, and how do we translate the paths left by burrowing insects or the markings of trees? These are questions asked by the Journal of Therolinguistics exhibition at Descanso Gardens' Boddy House, on view now until July 5, 2026. Oscar Salguero has curated a fascinating exploration of the expressive worlds of plants and animals brought to life by international artists Aistė...

A few miles northwest of Downtown Los Angeles and Skid Row, St. Vincent Medical Center is considered one of the city’s most historical hospitals, having supported Angelenos since the 19th century. Vacant since 2020, the center is slated to become a full-service campus aimed at supporting people with addiction, mental health concerns, housing insecurity, and more. This transformation will begin in the next few months with a final target opening date in 2028 and a wholesale takeover in the meantime. Through July 31, visitors experience an alternative vision for communal healing, all through the lens of 70 artists. Dubbed the Hospital of Emotions, the pop-up exhibition converts 80 rooms into temporary...

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Elsa Dreisig, Jonas Kaufmann, and Malin Byström lead recent album releases.

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...