Black Cant System, a chic monochromatic fashion concept store by Hangzhou AN Interior Design was revealed as the 2016 World Interior of the Year on the last day of the INSIDE: World Festival of Interiors...Located in the suburban outskirts of Shanghai, the Heike concept store is quietly tucked away on the second floor of a furniture store. — Bustler

Rem Koolhaas said Zaha Hadid Architects could survive the death of its founder if it feeds on her architectural DNA. [...]

“I think there is a model these days where fashion houses survive by working on the DNA of their founders,” he said.

“It is a model that is becoming more and more current and it could work in architecture too, I think.” — building.co.uk

NOT MANY ARCHITECTS get to reshape a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But Shohei Shigematsu, who runs the New York branch of Rem Koolhaas’s Rotterdam-based firm, OMA, has done precisely that. This month he converts a skylit, double-height section of the museum—the 1970s Robert Lehman Wing—into a graceful, cathedral-like setting for Manus x Machina, the Costume Institute’s spring show, opening May 5. — the Wall Street Journal

'I envisage to make a forest of light. A forest which consists of countless light cones made from spotlights above. These lights pulsate and constantly undergo transience of state and flow.'

“People meander through this forest, as if lured by the charm of the light. Light and people interact with one another, its existence defining the transition of the other.” — Sou Fujimoto

[Aaron] Jacobson [of FAAN], now 31, spent “a lot of time imagining space” as a child in Cleveland, Ohio, and remembers being ecstatic when his parents gave him graph paper, which he’d fill with blueprints for dream houses. He studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis and received his master’s degree from University of Toronto before moving to Beijing to work for a small Chinese firm. A half-year later...he first tried his hand at garments... — New York Times

For the 2016 Spring/Summer Prada Real Fantasies, AMO graphically reinterprets the Indefinite Hangar as a synthetic sunset fixed within a 3 dimensional blank space. The abstract hangar is populated with geometric objects and furniture. Characters move through a neutral scene between the undefined and distilled fragments of daily life. The horizon and scale constantly shifts, manipulating the frame and disrupting a linear sequence: an artificial landscape where fiction and collection collide. — OMA

“I am excited by being an architect now,” she says. “We are in a world where ideas are shared and migrate. There is no going back, so let’s go beyond. Let’s look at what really are the differences between, for example, two housing projects that both have curved balconies. Architecture makes a difference. Let’s discuss what difference it makes.” — theguardian.com

The practice of using corporate largess to finance restoration projects for public antiquities was once fairly rare here. But with the nation struggling with a stagnant economy and crushing public debt — Rome is flirting off and on with bankruptcy — politicians are now looking to private companies and international sources to help preserve Italy’s cultural heritage. — nytimes.com

Is there no end to this woman’s talents? Well, in the case of Zaha Hadid, a grinding halt seems to have been reached with the eminent architect’s flirtations with fashion. Hadid has long pushed the boundaries of her considerable talents, with credible adventures into furniture design and oil painting, but her latest swimwear range for Viviona shows that sometimes even the deepest wells can run dry. — telegraph.co.uk

Barton Strawn didn’t set out to be a fashion designer.

In 2009, he was an architecture student at N.C. State University, drafting by day in increasingly technical courses his senior year, which proved to be so taxing that Strawn needed an outlet. [...]

And, inspired by college formals and a touch of Mad Men, he found one: Handmade neckties and bowties. [...]

Over the years, Lumina has added pants and button-up shirts, all made in the United States. — upstart.bizjournals.com

“Avocado Green,” explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. “And Harvest Gold.”

Those were the colors of the 70’s, with a nice helping of brown. “It was all so pervasive in that time,” Eiseman says – without derision, notably.

In the early eighties, the dominant color scheme was mauve, gray, and turquoise. Back then, color trends were virtually “dictatorial,” says Eiseman, “everyone marched to the same drummer.”

Then, consumers revolted. — marketplace.org