Glimpse A Star-Studded Rug Collab With A Twist

Heard of plumasserie? It’s the centuries-old craft of hand-applying feathers that was once the stock-in-trade of haute couture houses. Maison Février, the last feather atelier located in the heart of Paris, teamed up with Milanese rug company Illulian and Argentine designer/architect Daniel Germani on a cross-disciplinary project to highlight the ebbing art. Plumaria is the outcome: an irregularly shaped rug in carved white Himalayan wool that becomes the canvas from which frothy feathers spring—the plumes all carefully selected and hand-applied by Maison Février artisans. The quills’ mélange of greens is accented by hints of red, resembling a living wall of tropical foliage. It’s a true tribute to nature and to craft.

Accessorize The Walls With Jeffrey Renz’s Clasp Mirror

Spotted on the streets of SoHo during New York Fashion Week: the accessory of the moment, Clasp. Available in a polished-chrome or matte-black finish, the cast-iron frame, er, mirrors the detailing of a handbag’s metal clasp. Measuring 32 inches high and 20 wide, the looking glass is the latest from Jeffrey Renz and his Brooklyn-based line, Ready to Hang: fun, design-forward mirrors sold at accessible prices, the name a play on ready-to-wear. “We intend to blur the line between fashion and home,” Renz says. Clasp is a case in point.

Acoustic Panels Get A Colorful Makeover In This Punchy Collab

“At age five or six, my favorite pink carpet was replaced by gray flooring, and I remember how the room’s energy died,” Tekla Severin (aka Teklan) recalls. “It was the first time I unconsciously understood what color and texture could do for a space. Later, I recreated that pink carpet in my bedroom.” So began Teklan’s now illustrious career as a photographer and designer who specializes in chromatic play. The Swedish colorist’s latest collaboration is “A Box Within a Box,” a Stockholm Furniture Fair booth for Elettra de Pellegrin’s acoustic-products company, Slalom. “I wanted to balance the more neutral tones of Slalom’s acoustic panels, such as Bloom and Woody, with my typically bold approach to color,” Teklan says. “I focused on creating that magical intersection between two- and three-dimensional perceptions, working with layers, drawing inspiration from labyrinths and tiles.” She also designed a brand-new pattern for the company: Arlecchino, a printed felt alternating sky-blue diamonds with mustard-and-black-striped ones.

Shake It Up At This Bold Apartment Complex In The Bronx

Set alongside the Harlem River in the Bronx, CetraRuddy’s 27-story apartment building Maven stands out for its boldly canted facades, their dynamic stance a reference to the neighborhood, Mott Haven, as the birthplace of hip-hop. Interiors are just as alluring—and just as firmly rooted in place. The open lobby has a building-length gallery wall with color-rich pieces by New York City–based creatives, including graffiti artists Cope2 and CRASH/John Matos and Libby Schoettle, her Shake it Up, a pop art–inflected collage, featuring her cool-kid alter ego PhoebeNewYork. The phrase “life is beautiful,” by Mr Brainwash, sprawls across the faceted reception desk, and the adjacent gallery engages directly with the surrounding neighborhood via the glass curtain wall opposite. Weaving biophilia into the circulation, the rear of the lobby opens to a landscaped garden courtyard, which residents pass by to access elevators. Other perks of the building include a coworking space with sound-attenuated private workstations, a chef’s kitchen with connected screening room, a roof deck with grilling stations, and a pet spa. In all, that’s more than 20,000 square feet of amenities for the 200 units, 60 of which are rent-stabilized.

Inside HSBC’s Sustainable HQ In Manhattan’s Hudson Yards

At an opening ceremony presided over by past and present New York City mayors, HSBC debuted an ambitious 260,000-square-foot zero-carbon headquarters spanning five levels of BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group’s The Spiral in Hudson Yards. The 66-story tower is so named for the landscaped terraces that corkscrew up and around the facade to create a continuous green pathway. In echo, Top 100 Giants firm M Moser Associates gave HSBC’s workplace a grand metal staircase (painted to resemble Corten) with bleacher seating and planters that cascades from the fifth to the third floor. Meeting rooms, suites, and breakout zones—all with an elevated industrial aesthetic—gather around the stair base.

Interactive dashboards allow staffers to find workspaces that match their sensory preferences based on factors like activity levels, temperature, lighting, and noise—ideal for the neurodiverse. It’s powered by an expansive network of Internet of Things sensors that measure real-time data, providing insight into use patterns, monitoring and managing carbon consumption, predicting maintenance needs, and more. The goal? Create the most sustainable, inclusive, and technology-enabled workplace in the city. It’s been a hit, with employee attendance rising from 40 to 80 percent.

5 Health-Centric Facilities Around The Globe

Wellness-seekers at health-centric facilities ranging from a Canadian animal hospital to a Chinese sports center can step into the future with optimism.

Stay In Motion At These Stellar Health Facilities

BBA Bnei Brak Active Sports & Leisure Center by Studio Shira Lavi BD

PrevNext

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Just three main materials—concrete, oak, and Dekton solid surfacing—comprise the palette of a 43,000-square-foot public swim center in Israel featuring an Olympic-size pool and a smaller one for lessons. The effect is spare, almost monastic, yet also sybaritic. In reception, wooden stools of various sizes recall the stone seats found in ancient baths, and a steel-framed clerestory and angled slot windows, all fitted with frosted glass, flood the natatorium with light while ensuring users’ privacy.

King Animal Hospital by Kelly Wearstler

PrevNext

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The Los Angeles–based design star’s foray into the healthcare sector brings her signature heady, multilayered luxury—most often applied to hospitality and residential projects—to an unusual site: a 60,000-square-foot hospital in King City, Canada, for small animals and equines. Waiting rooms are a symphony of European oak paneling, Venetian plaster walls, brass light fixtures, and custom terrazzo flooring, while the hydrotherapy pool is tiled in the prettiest of pinks, bringing warmth to critical care.

Moogie Pilates by Thoughtbarn

PrevNext

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

A 1960’s post office in Austin, Texas, was transformed into a hub for a quartet of local businesses, including a Pilates studio that broadcasts its emphasis on fun and inclusivity through a spin on ’80’s nostalgia. Lengths of off-the-shelf crown molding—installed vertically and painted red-orange—clad the meandering, curve-cornered wall that separates the reformer studio from the back-of-house zone housing a cobalt-tiled restroom, storage, staff room and private massage rooms, and the blush-plastered reception area.

Hexi Sports Field by UAD

PrevNext

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

On Shaoxing University’s urban campus in China, a monumental concrete structure skillfully stacks functions: A 400-meter running track and a soccer pitch commandeer the rooftop, while the partially enclosed area below, sheltered by the brutalist embrace of coffered vaults, houses climbing walls, martial arts spaces, and courts for basketball, tennis, badminton, and volleyball. On either end of the sprawling edifice, ramps and stairs with white-painted perforated-aluminum balustrades connect the levels.

EMS Training Facility by Merge Architects

PrevNext

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

A warehouse converted into a 20,000-square-foot training center for Massachusetts paramedics and other emergency-services personnel takes its bold graphic identity from a source familiar to students: the safety-orange striping and blue lettering of Boston’s EMS ambulance fleet. Divisible classrooms, a gym, and a cafeteria line the perimeter, while the 250-foot-long double-loaded central corridor, cleverly illuminated by solar tubes that shine through the metal-mesh ceiling, is peppered with semiprivate huddle nooks boasting built-in “window” seats.

Estee Clinic by Balcon Studio

PrevNext

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Aesthetic medicine (think restrained “tweakments”) is practiced in this chic 3,300-square-foot clinic in Moscow where earthy colors such as muted green—the brand hue—and elemental materials like dynamically striated marble emphasize the values associated with natural beauty. A seamless application of microcement on both the floors and walls creates a unified, smooth-as-skin canvas, the ideal foundation for curvaceous all-custom furniture.

Add A Splash Of Style With Kohler’s Sculptural Faucet

2024 Best of Year Winner for Bath Faucet: Designer Collaboration

Cast as one singular, sculptural object, Kohler‘s Formation 01 forms a strikingly dynamic gesture. Not to mention the faucet’s uber-bold orange hue, possible thanks to NeoLast, a proprietary composite particularly suited to saturated colors. The winner of Bath Faucet: Designer Collaboration is the brainchild of award-winning British artist and designer Dr. Samuel Ross’s studio SR_A SR_A and reminiscent of his large-scale sculptures. The expressive angles of the faucet demanded precise pressure control for the smooth flow of water—a technical feat Kohler was more than able to deliver.

Expressive Architectural Elements Inform This Hong Kong Duplex

2024 Best of Year Winner for Apartment

Samual Lam Chun Him founded his interiors firm in 2010 and has since gone on to complete dozens of residential projects in Japan and Hong Kong. A duplex apartment in the latter region is a recent highlight: A sober symphony of taupe, gray, and mousy brown, its impact is garnered from both the tonal color palette and the expressive architectural interventions. A standout spiral staircase in ivory-white connects the living and kitchen areas with the upper-level bedrooms. (A cream-hued chandelier over the dining table echoes the color and form of the stair.) In the children’s play area, organically shaped built-ins pair with a mustard daybed for a spike of warm spice. Throughout, there is a play of light and shadow, with gently lit spaces for hunkering down transforming into sun-drenched lounges as sunlight is attenuated through delicate blinds and sheers.

PROJECT TEAM: SAMUAL LAM CHUN HIM; CONY MAN.

OTJ Breathes New Life Into A Storied Mixed-Use Facility In Washington D.C.

2024 Best of Year Winner for Small Commercial Lobby/Amenity Space

A narrow, liminal perimeter area inside a spectacular mixed-use Pelli Clarke & Partners building at 2100 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C., situated steps from the White House might have sat vacant if not for OTJ. Now, it’s a studied sequence of amenity spaces that serves as catnip to prospective workplace tenants. There’s a touchdown counter for hot-desking, communal banquette seating, a custom bar for events, tech-equipped conference rooms, and breakout lounges. Inspired by the building’s striking curved glass facade, the interior blends curvilinear forms, supersize lighting fixtures, and a soft-neutral palette emphasizing blue-gray and cognac. Organic gestures are expressed through rounded soffits, the eased corners of glass-fronted confab rooms, and, most notably, in the flooring, where a wave of poured terrazzo intersects pale wood planks in echo of the curtainwall.

PROJECT TEAM: ANIA LEESON; MARGARET WALSH; JOSE “CHEFE” BENITEZ; GELSIE ISGRO.