Design’s New Mood in the Swiss Alps
There's a new generation of Swiss hospitality rising in the Bernese Oberland, with drab interiors and old-world formality making way for chic spaces and warm smiles.
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An Architectural Masterpiece Hosts a Youthful Visitor
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House is stepping back into its original role as a living arts laboratory with Ryan Preciado: Diary of a Fly (until April 25). Installed throughout the UNESCO World Heritage landmark, the Los Angeles–based artist’s new and recent sculptures and textiles (his firsts) contrast with Wright’s style, highlighting the artist’s ability to blend different material cultures together. A highlight lands in the inner courtyard: Eight Different Ways, a large-scale arrangement of bright yellow geometric forms finished in automotive paint, nodding to California car culture and the city’s street rhythms. For In a Flat Field, Preciado collaborated with the Hernandez family of weavers in Oaxaca, creating textiles that echo the building’s blocky ornament while warping its silhouettes. Composer and mathematician Spencer Gerhardt adds a sonic layer via new piano music recorded on-site. hollyhockhouse.org
India Mahdavi Uses Her Outdoor Voice
Women looking for a ray of sunshine this spring during the inevitable showers can call upon interior designer, and former podcast guest, India Mahdavi for the right protection. Her new collaboration with Aigle, a French outerwear company founded in 1853, brings her signature pastels to the closet with two highly graphic creations: natural rubber boots that are the brand’s signature, and a generously sized raincoat that’s waterproof, water-repellent, breathable, and windproof. aigle.com
A Look Back at Starck’s Nature-Loving 90s Era
Galerie Ketabi Bourdet turns to (former podcast guest) Philippe Starck’s long-running dialogue with nature in The Spirit of the Forest, (until Feb. 28) in Paris. The exhibition traces an “eco-minded” undercurrent in Starck’s work—less the slick minimalism of the 1980s than a softer, referential language that prefigures his later emphasis on the common good. Highlights include materials and ideas from Maison Starck (1994), his utopian, affordable-house proposal developed with mail-order giant 3 Suisses, and the Bo Boolo collection (1995), which brought the forest indoors via raw tree-trunk elements while acknowledging forestry stewardship through France’s National Forestry Office. ketabibourdet.com
Jeanne Gang Gives a Brooklyn Neighborhood a Safe Haven and a Source of Joy
Studio Gang, the award-winning architecture firm led by former podcast guest Jeanne Gang, has completed the 74,000-square-foot Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center, a new $141 million civic anchor for East Flatbush, Brooklyn in New York. Named for Brooklyn-born activist and politician Shirley Chisholm—the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Congress—the center is designed as an open, inviting social hub for fitness, recreation, and learning in the challenging neighborhood that lacks options for local youth. On its compact site, the first city-built center of its kind in the last 15 years, the building projects into a shaded plaza, with a transparent, centrally placed entrance that faces both the neighborhood and an adjacent public school. A gently curving brick façade is punctuated by large arched windows that pull daylight deep inside. Three lower levels concentrate movement and activity around a bright stair, linking a double-height gym, a walking track, and a competition-grade pool visible from the lobby. Above, community spaces (including daylit learning rooms, afterschool areas, and a media lab) spill onto a wrap-around rooftop terrace and gardens. studiogang.com
An Exhibition Elevates the Tools of Sports to Cultural Treasures
Milan’s ADI Design Museum is teeing up the nearby 2026 Winter Olympic Games with In-Play: Design for Sport, an exhibition that frames athletics as both a cultural arena and a civil right. Running until April 6, the show takes over the museum’s galleries with roughly 100 projects—from iconic historical objects to contemporary prosthetics, smart devices, and performance-driven materials—mapping how design has shaped the rituals, rules, and experiences of sport. The show “seeks to explore, through design, the transformations of a sporting world in which the challenge is never solely that of the athlete or the team, but also of the culture of design itself,” writes the curatorial team of Davide Fabio Colaci and Giulia Novati. “This is a widespread process of sportification, in which design assumes a critical role, translating values and cultural tensions and transferring research from the competition arena into the spaces of everyday life.” adidesignmuseum.org
