Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2025 i Wallpaper

MATTIA BALSAMINI Photographer For our outdoor furniture story (page 226), Italian photographer Balsamini travelled south to Sardinia, where he was fascinated by the unpredictable weather. ‘Everything was ever-changing,’ he recalls. ‘Our senses were alert, reacting to the nature around us. So many images we took connect to specific moments and even childhood memories I had of this same landscape.’ Balsamini is collaborating with a friend on a project on self-perception and neurosciences. DAVEN WU Singapore editor Wu has been writing about design, travel and lifestyle for us since 2000, and is now in charge of our new Bookmark series (page 213), celebrating hospitality openings around the world. ‘I’m so encouraged by how designers and hoteliers are finding ways to breathe new life into older buildings with the kind of sensitivity…

What is a glitch? The consequence of an unstable system, glitches expose a vulnerability to threats, but they also open up the possibility of change. It’s a duality that fascinates the Philadelphia-based artist Qualeasha Wood, who jumps into the black hole of internet malfunctions in a new exhibition, ‘Malware’, at London’s Pippy Houldsworth Gallery. In a series of tapestries, tuftings and videos, Wood marries contemporary digital culture with traditional crafts. In her hands, a digital pixel becomes a single stitch. In video works, she creates glitches by compressing text file data. ‘In this quest for something real, we produce a lot of fake images,’ says Wood. ‘For me, something that feels most natural is something that is decomposing, that’s not perfect or hiding anything. It’s about bringing all those things…

In 1954, Valextra, the Milanese leather goods brand known for its rigorous, architectural sensibility, received the first Compasso d’Oro award for its ‘24-hour’ briefcase. Designed by Valextra founder Giovanni Fontana, it is an icon of midcentury product design, made to hold all the necessities of an overnight work trip, from business papers to a change of shirt, in a minimal leather shell. Exactly 70 years later, Enrica Cavarzan and Marco Zavagno, founders of Venice-based creative agency Zaven, would win the 2024 Compasso d’Oro for an altogether different object: the ‘Za:Za’, a soft-lined sofa designed for Zanotta in 2022. It is this through line of good design that informs a new partnership between Valextra and Zaven, set to be revealed at the former’s John Pawson-designed Via Manzoni flagship store during Milan…

The clients came to us having seen the house in Highgate Cemetery,’ recalls Eldridge London’s associate director Mike Gibson. That award-winning project, created back when the studio was a partnership between Nick Eldridge and Piers Smerin, looms above the historic North London burial ground, unashamedly modern in form and material. This project called instead for a contemporary beach house in Shoreham, on England’s south coast. The site itself was previously occupied by a small chalet bungalow, a top-heavy structure with a large dormer roof punctured by small windows for the upstairs bedrooms. As Gibson recalls, it was typical for the area, but utterly failed to capitalise on the location, with no beach views from the living spaces and a street front dominated by a garage. Happily, and perhaps uncommonly in…

A new project from Gucci pays homage to the proportions of its silk scarves, which came into style in the 1960s after their adoption by the country-hopping jet set. Boldly decorated with the Italian house’s signature motifs – from the classic horsebit to lush depictions of flora and fauna – the silk scarf has become one of Gucci’s foundational accessories, endlessly riffed upon by its creative directors, from Tom Ford to Alessandro Michele. For the new scarf collection, the 90 x 90 project, Gucci invited nine artists to treat the 90cm by 90cm silk square like a canvas, responding to five themes that run through its archive: flora, fauna, nautical, equestrian and the double G monogram. The roster of artists includes conceptual American artist Robert Barry, whose version features elegant…

Jil Sander founded her fashion house in Hamburg in 1969, with the brand steadily gaining a reputation for its clean lines and minimalist aesthetics, and the designer applying her purist vision to everything from fabrics to flagship stores. She would go on to quit her eponymous label, return and then quit again, but she has continued to design the highly-sought-after +J collections for Uniqlo. Sander was recently invited to collaborate with pioneering furniture maker Thonet, taking its tubular steel icons and putting her own stamp on them. Her two new lines, ‘Nordic’ and ‘Serious’, weave in high-gloss lacquered wood details and Viennese canework or leather seats and backrests in a nuanced colour palette, adding a modern elegance to a classic form. Here she talks to Nick Vinson about the inspiration…

It wasn’t so long ago that the Sydney suburb of Redfern could best be described as ‘sketchy’. However, as gentrification crept in, a rundown mall made way for the Wunderlich Lane commercial and residential development. A decade later, this once gritty patch of Sydney is now the city’s newest hospitality and retail darling. With its lush canopy of oak trees, Baptist Street is a picture of tranquillity, and it’s also the setting for Sydney’s coolest new hotel, The Eve, a brick-built, low-rise structure rooted in showcasing Australian art and design while celebrating its locale. At the entrance, Bar Julius beckons with its wide frontage and oversized sash windows that blur the line between inside and out. ‘The street-level entrance is deliberately immediate – there is no buffer. Guests step straight…

Besides assembling the panoply of products, people and presentations that marks our annual celebration of Salone del Mobile, our Design Issue underscores one of the key principles that has made Salone the world’s pre-eminent player in its field for more than 60 years: namely, the need for making, and maintaining, connections. Fortuitously, for our cover, Prada Frames – the symposium launched by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Formafantasma as an antidote to the hustle and bustle of the world’s largest design fair – reflects the same concern, this year gathering a cohort of thinkers to examine ‘infrastructure through the lens of movement’ in a waiting room at Milano Centrale station, and aboard Arlecchino, a Gio Ponti-designed train recently resurrected by Fondazione FS Italiane. It’s to the latter we were…

Faye Toogood is surrounded by a cacophony of roses. These are not the dozens of varieties of roses that she grows in her much-loved garden in the English countryside. Instead, the roses around her inhabit a different cosmos: they are swirling and dynamic, abstract and dripping, vividly layered in visceral pinks and infused with a wild-edged freedom – and she is spontaneously hand-painting them, one by one, on to porcelain in a ceramics studio in Nagoya, central Japan. Toogood is among a handful of creatives, alongside Ed Ng of AB Concept, Marc Newson, Yabu Pushelberg and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, who are reimagining the heritage-steeped world of Noritake, one of Japan’s first modern ceramic tableware makers. Noritake is something of a household name in Japan. Since launching in 1904…

One highlight of this year’s European Fine Art Foundation (TEFAF) fair in New York will be a jewel of post-war French architectural history: two yellow steel frames, resembling massive upside-down tuning forks, each standing 3m tall. They were fabricated in 1947-1948 as part of the Croismare Professional Training School for Glassmakers, the largest demountable structure ever built by French designer and self-taught architect Jean Prouvé. Design dealer Patrick Seguin, who has championed Prouvé’s legacy since the late 1980s and owns the world’s biggest collection of his architecture, is featuring Croismare along with nine other Prouvé buildings at the fair. After the Second World War, France needed to rebuild, and quickly. Prouvé, who trained as a metal craftsman, had developed an ingenious system for making small, demountable buildings with load-bearing portal…

Southern belle THE NICKEL HOTEL, CHARLESTON The latest addition to Charleston’s historic King Street, The Nickel Hotel, by Morris Adjmi Architects, comes wrapped in a series of elegant precast concrete arched windows that artfully complement the neighbourhood architecture. The interiors, also by the New York-based practice and Method Studio, interpret the classic Southern townhouse through a contemporary lens. A sage green palette flows through the 50 guest rooms, where herringbone oak floors and natural grasscloth wallpaper set the scene. Each comes with a kitchen – though with James Beard winner Jason Stanhope handling the Spanish tapas menu in the restaurant, you might not use it much. The terracotta-tiled courtyard makes for a peaceful hideaway, while the rooftop bar commands views over Charleston’s roofline. nickelhotel.com Sea change HÔTEL VILLA MIRAÉ, CAP…

Photography assistants: John Delos Angeles, Simone Mizzotti Interiors assistant: Archie Thomson Post-production: Lasso Studio Local production: Sardinia Production Service with special thanks to Leo Hanozet, Robin Fraser, Joseph Vargiu, Enrico Casini and Cedric Winterfeldt…

Nick Vinson is one of our most treasured stalwarts. He first joined us as Milan editor in 2003, before becoming special projects director in 2007, from where he orchestrated some pretty memorable moments, including enlisting Karl Lagerfeld as guest editor in 2009, and commissioning our first Handmade collaboration, a leather case by Hermès for the newly-launched Apple iPad, in 2010. Vinson’s vision continues to enrich our pages through unique projects that merge his interest in design, rigorous precision (under his alias, Picky Nicky, he penned a monthly column for us) and longevity. But more recently, he has been expanding his creative reach, collaborating with luxury brands such as Ceccotti Collezioni, Armani Casa, Berluti and Birkenstock, and helping to create the striking interiors for the Cromwell Place Café in South Kensington.…

Age is just a number, right? For people, perhaps. But for brands and studios in our current economic climate, age is a surefire signifier of success in the face of adversity. So we have taken it upon ourselves to celebrate some of the movers and makers in the design industry who this year are marking a milestone anniversary. Our celebrants span centennial manufacturers and teenage studios, landmark projects and leading lights. Each has their own story to tell about endurance – a quality too often overlooked in design for sake of novelty, which is an easier premise for a PR team to push. There is much to be learnt from the founders, CEOs and current caretakers that we have interviewed. Age, location, context and output may vary wildly, but there…

The theme of this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, ‘Intelligens: Natural. Artificial. Collective’, promises a cross-disciplinary, collaborative and broad take. Drawing on curator Carlo Ratti’s research and practice, as well as making the most of an open call for submissions (the first ever for the Biennale), displays are set to touch on sustainability, human invention and the future, in an effort to reimagine the relationship between nature and technology within architectural discourse. As the 2025 edition of the festival opens and invites us to explore who and what is important in the field today, the national pavilions – running parallel to the main show – typically create their own, distinct universe, connected to varying degrees to the overall theme, but always offering their rich, hyperlocal interpretations of the architectural zeitgeist. The…

From the pearliest palace interiors to the most epic couture creations, a new residency programme presents an opportunity to explore the uppermost echelons of India’s extraordinary artisanal capability and design talent. Conceived by interior designer Shalini Misra, the Shakti Design Residency aims to offer a glimpse of what can be possible, foster new collaborations, and shatter preconceptions all at the same time. Raised in India, and now based between Delhi, New York and London, Misra has spent nearly three decades seeking out talented artisans around the world for her interior design projects, and her experience of India’s exceptional craftsmanship and collectible design means she has long been aware of the potential of opening this market up to a wider audience. ‘The timing feels particularly important now as we witness a…

Concept: Sylvia Pérez. Set stylist: Henry Hawksworth. Digi tech: James Bryant. Lighting assistants: Chloe Yates, Sara Kompa…

01. Isola Bella One of the Borromean Islands on Lake Maggiore, this is home to the Palazzo Borromeo and a renowned Italian baroque garden comprising ten overlapping terraces. 02. ll Sole di Ranco A family-owned restaurant with spectacular views of the lake. Our go-to order is spaghetti freddi, a refreshing pasta dish for the summertime heat. ilsolediranco.it 03. Passeggiata dell’Amore Translating as stroll of love, this says it all with its name – a romantic path along the lake’s eastern shore. Towards the end, near the old Fornaci factories, you can take a refreshing dip in the crystal-clear waters. 04. Circolo Arolese This café bar, in the lakeside town of Leggiuno, oozes the convivial atmosphere that the Italians are so good at. Its menu, using regionally sourced ingredients, is mostly…