‘I don’t really agree with the idea of utopianism,’ Sir Peter Cook tells designboom editor-in-chief, Sofia Lekka Angelopoulou, during our live conversation at the stage of the Basque Country International Architecture Biennial, Mugak/2025.

Curated by architect, researcher, and curator María Arana Zubiate, the biennial unfolds under the theme of Castles in the Air, or How to Build Utopia Today, exploring whether visionary thinking still has a place in an age dominated by pragmatism. The legendary architect and co-founder of Archigram participates in the exhibition with two projects – Plug-in City from 1964 and the more recent Filter City – presented as part of the section Escape Utopias alongside New Babylon by Constant, and Exodus and Hyperbuilding by Rem Koolhaas. 

Although many of his projects, including the Kunsthaus Museum in Graz, Austria, and the Drawing Studio for Arts University Bournemouth, have been realized, Cook’s most important tool remains drawing. Through fantastical, colorful drawings that express his visionary ideas of what cities could look like, he has influenced and inspired architecture and architectural thinking over the past six decades.

Sir Peter Cook and Sofia Lekka Angelopoulou at the stage of Mugak/2025

from ‘pie-in-the-skY SCHEMES’ to architectural reality

The British architect does not perceive the imaginary visions of his drawings as something separate to what might be buildable. ‘It is usual to say that there is the utopian world, and put a box around it, and then there’s the real world,’ he explains during our conversation. ‘In a lot of architecture schools, the professor will say, don’t look at that, it’s just a utopian idea, it has nothing to do with what can be done. And I think professors are often the worst offenders, because the fact that it might be buildable makes them slightly nervous. What do we tell the kids then?’

‘I don’t think there’s any dividing line. One day, I was chatting in the street with Rem Koolhaas, who used to live near me, and we were going through all the people we remembered at the Architectural Association who had been dismissed, including ourselves, as drawers. Drawing people who made these pie-in-the-sky schemes. And we listed about 20 of them, including ourselves, who had built. But it was very comfortable to say there’s utopia, and then there’s proper building.’

Here, Cook returns to a recurring theme in his thinking, that the distance between speculation and construction is far thinner than most assume.‘Had something like the Kunsthaus Museum in Graz been shown as a drawing, people would say, ah, yes, but it’s not a real building. And then it’s there, you can walk inside it, have a pee inside it, and put an exhibition inside it. It’s a building, like buildings are.

You can say that there are certain parts of it that are very normal, but there is no dividing line. And I still feel that quite vehemently. Just as it amused me to do the drawing that showed the Play Pavilion in London as a piece of Instant City. Because you could have taken that pavilion, put it in the Instant City drawing and say, oh, yes, that’s just a piece of it. I‘m not saying absolutely every drawing is 100% buildable, but it’s a bloody sight more buildable than people like to give it room for. And I think the connection is important.’ 

Kunsthaus Graz, bird’s-eye view | image Zepp-Cam. 2004/Graz, Austria

DRAWING AS CONTINUUM, NOT ESCAPE

Cook repeatedly returns to the danger of isolating speculative work from architectural practice. ‘If you categorize it as utopian and then declare that this is one thing and that is another, it becomes very, very dangerous,’ he warns. History, he observes, is full of ideas once dismissed as fantasy that eventually materialized. ‘There’s a whole history throughout civilization of things that were dreams that suddenly somebody was surprised by and said, oh, bloody hell, it’s there,’ he adds.

For Cook, the value of speculative work lies precisely in its proximity to reality. ‘Most of the buildings, even the sort of weirder things or imaginative things, have an arrangement of parts,’ he mentions. Whether inserting structures into a hillside or drawing something nearly abstract, he insists he always carries a clear sense of ‘the size of it and how you would access it and what you would make it from.’ His refusal to separate visionary thinking from architectural logic is consistent: ‘There is no dividing line.’

Plug-In City versus Kunsthaus Graz, drawing versus pavilion – for Cook, these are variations of the same continuum. Even projects that appear whimsical are rooted in architectural intent. This attitude extends to how he approaches teaching. He sees drawing as a space for testing architectural thinking. ‘We’re investigators,’ he tells us. ‘And you can investigate with a paintbrush or with a computer or with a measuring rod… we’re still in the doing-it business.’

Kunsthaus Graz, view from the Schlossberg | image Universalmuseum Joanneum/N. Lackner

OPTIMISM, COMPUTATION, AND THE FUTURE

When the conversation shifts to the future and whether optimism is still relevant, Cook’s response is immediate: ‘Oh, absolutely.’ But he is careful to distinguish optimism from naivety. He describes the pandemic as having become ‘a great excuse for gloomers,’ fuelling a culture of resignation he finds unhelpful. Instead, he places his hopes in the emerging generation of computational designers. ‘The people who are doing wonderful things with computational architecture do have the fire in their eyes. They still have the fire in their eyes.’ Geographically, he sees momentum shifting away from Europe. ‘I think the new architecture is coming from the far East,’ he suggests. ‘Not because of cultural ideology, but because they seem not quite so nervous.’

In response to the question about whether his works reflect escapism, Cook resists the idea. ‘There might be, but I would see that as a weakness,’ he replies. For him, these drawings are probes into alternative ways of living. His reflections drift toward the in-between spaces of the urban fabric, suburbs, valley towns, and industrial sheds threading through landscapes. ‘There are many forms of utopia… many forms of the device directed towards a notion,’ he notes.

What fascinates him is how environments stitch themselves together: ‘The notion of how you knit a city interests me tremendously.’ He describes flying over Spain, observing towns splintering into ‘shed, shed, shed,’ and becomes animated about the hidden intelligence within Chinese shophouses: ‘Is it a shop? Is it an industry? Is it family? Is it extended?’ These hybrid conditions, he argues, are not utopias at all but the material of architecture itself: ‘We’re in the let’s-see-how-you-do-it business.’

Filter City (2020s) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 50 cm | © Peter Cook

‘LOOK, LOOK, LOOK’: advice for the next generation

Invited to share what guidance he would offer to a younger generation intent on imagining beyond the ordinary, Cook answers without hesitation: ‘Look. I always say look.’ He illustrates the point with an anecdote about a talented AA student designing a bus station from an American reference rather than her own daily commute. ‘Do you remember getting off the bus?’ he had asked her, a question that, for him, exposes how easily designers rely on ‘packaged information’ instead of lived experience.

True understanding, he insists, comes from attentive observation, noticing how ‘the houses on the cliff’ shift into ‘a smart town,’ where ‘the tourists don’t go,’ and ‘where the backyard industry’ hides. ‘It has to do with looking,’ he emphasizes. ‘The keyword is look. Look, look, look. Watch how you get out of the bus if you’re going to design a bus station. Not what it tells you in a manual.’

Listening to Cook, it becomes clear that utopia isn’t elsewhere. It sits in the sketchbook, in the act of looking, in the split second when a drawing becomes a proposition. The future of architecture is all about staying curious enough to keep on drawing. 

Sir Peter Cook revolutionized modern architecture with visionary projects

installation view: Peter Cook, Cities, Richard Saltoun Gallery London, 2023 © the artist | image courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery London and Rome

Plug-in City (1970/2012) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on board, 79 x 164 cm | © Peter Cook

colorful drawings express his visionary ideas of what cities could look like

The Play Pavilion, designed by Peter Cook (Peter Cook Studio Crablab), in collaboration with Serpentine and the LEGO Group © Peter Cook (Peter Cook Studio Crablab) | image by Andy Stagg

Filter City (2020s) | ink, color pencil, watercolor on paper, 50 x 50 cm | © Peter Cook

his vision aligns with the theme of the Mugak/ Biennial

Drawing Studio for Arts University Bournemouth | image courtesy of CRAB Studio

installation view: Peter Cook, Cities, Richard Saltoun Gallery London, 2023 © the artist | image courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery London and Rome

for Cook, the value of speculative work lies precisely in its proximity to reality

WU Department of Law and Central Administration | image courtesy of CRAB Studio

sir Peter Cook continues to inspire generations of architects

Filter Cities (2023) | VR | © Peter Cook

project info:

name: Designboom in conversation with British architect | @sirpetercookatchap

event: Mugak/ International Architecture Biennial 2025 | @mugakbienal

location: Basque Country, Spain

theme: Castles in the Air, or How to Build Utopia Today

curator: María Arana Zubiate

The post ‘I don’t agree with the idea of utopia’: sir peter cook on optimism and the power of drawing appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Naoto Fukasawa uses the simplicity of everyday paper as the starting point for SIWA A4 Light, a limited-edition portable lamp for SIWA, the washi-based brand developed by longtime manufacturer Onao. Limited to 100 units and releasing in late January 2026, the piece turns the familiar geometry of a standard A4 stack into an illuminated object, a play on material perception, scale, and the cultural intimacy of Japanese paper. ‘The appeal of a light object wrapped in paper is that the paper itself is the element,’ Fukasawa describes.

images courtesy of SIWA

SIWA A4 Light: From Desktop Staple to Luminous Companion

Rather than treating paper as a diffuser or covering, product designer Naoto Fukasawa begins with the archetype of 500 sheets of A4 copy paper, then substitutes it with Siwa’s own Naolon, a strong, water-resistant washi-derived material. The form retains the proportions of a ream, transforming what is normally a quotidian desktop item into a luminous, monolithic block. In this translation, the stack becomes a vessel for light rather than ink, suggesting how subtle shifts in material can recast an everyday silhouette as a sculptural domestic object.

A dedicated paper bag accompanies the lamp and is designed specifically to hold and transport it. The gesture nods to the brand’s lineage in soft, foldable paper goods, while also positioning the light as something carried from room to room rather than fixed to a single spot. The lamp’s built-in LED offers up to five hours of illumination at full brightness, or roughly 170 hours at its lowest setting, extending its function as a portable, battery-powered companion. The SIWA A4 Light with bag is priced at ¥55,000 (tax included) and measures H55 × W210 × D297 millimeters, weighing 800 grams.

the piece turns the familiar geometry of a standard A4 stack into an illuminated object

transforming what is normally a quotidian desktop item into a luminous, monolithic block

a dedicated paper bag accompanies the lamp

project info:

name: SIWA A4 Light

designer: Naoto Fukasawa | @naoto_fukasawa_design_ltd

brand: SIWA | @siwacollection

dimensions: H55 × W210 × D297 mm

The post naoto fukasawa turns a ream of A4 paper into limited-edition portable washi lamp appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Pavilions are architecture’s fast, experimental structures that test ideas long before they scale up to cities. This year’s highlights push that spirit further, blurring the lines between sculpture, shelter, ritual space, and ecological device. From bamboo vaults rising in flood-prone villages to inflatable dream temples, from wind-driven feather structures on remote islands to LEGO-built playscapes in London, the pavilion becomes a tool for storytelling.

Across the ten projects, a set of shared themes emerges: material reinvention, circular design, and a renewed focus on community. Bread waste becomes structure, bamboo becomes climate infrastructure, and woven rattan becomes a water-harvesting system. Some pavilions introduce new behaviors, gathering, dreaming, resting, learning, while others revive old rituals like bathing or communal reading. What ties them together is their willingness to ask what a temporary space can do, and how it can shift our relationship to place, resources, and each other. Here are ten pavilions reshaping how we think about space.

LINA GHOTMEH’S EXPO PAVILION TAKES GOLD IN OSAKA

image courtesy of Lina Ghotmeh—Architecture

Lina Ghotmeh—Architecture designs the Bahrain Pavilion for Expo 2025 Osaka, crafting a timber-and-aluminum structure inspired by the nation’s traditional dhow boats and its long maritime history. Positioned along the waterfront in the Expo’s Empowering Lives zone, the pavilion bridges Bahraini boat-building heritage with Japanese wood craftsmanship, expressing cultural exchange through material and form. The structure reinterprets millennia-old construction techniques with a lightweight wooden frame, an aluminum outer layer, and passive cooling strategies that reduce mechanical energy use.

Designed for disassembly and reuse after the Expo, the pavilion embodies Bahrain’s commitment to sustainability and craft-driven innovation. The structure received the Gold Award for Best Architecture and Landscape in the Self-Built category, recognizing Ghotmeh’s precise, contextual approach and the pavilion’s refined expression of Bahrain’s cultural and environmental heritage.

read more here

SIR PETER COOK’S LEGO PLAY PAVILION FOR THE SERPENTINE

The Play Pavilion, designed by Peter Cook (Peter Cook Studio Crablab), in collaboration with Serpentine and the LEGO Group © Peter Cook (Peter Cook Studio Crablab) | images courtesy of Serpentine; photos by Andy Stagg, unless stated otherwise

Serpentine and the LEGO Group’s Play Pavilion by Sir Peter Cook, installed in London’s Kensington Gardens, is a bright, bowl-shaped structure wrapped in orange and animated with LEGO-built topographies. The exterior walls of the pavilion rise and dip like a shifting landscape, inviting visitors to touch the tactile brick formations before stepping inside.

Sunlight filters through gaps between the roof and base, filling the interior with natural light while maintaining a breezy, open feel. A towering central pillar, assembled from LEGO bricks, anchors the space like a watchful robotic figure. Visitors are encouraged to play, build, and modify the pavilion in real time through an interactive brick wall and a trove of LEGO pieces. Multiple openings frame views of the garden, while a yellow slide offers a playful exit route.

read more here

SIX-SEAT FOREST BAR PAVILION BY ELMGREEN & DRAGSET 

images by Andrea Rossetti, courtesy of Khao Yai Art

Elmgreen & Dragset unveil K-BAR, a six-seat cocktail pavilion tucked deep within Thailand’s Khao Yai Art Forest, inserting an urban typology into a remote natural setting. Appearing most days as a charcoal-gray sculptural object amid dense foliage, the pavilion occasionally comes to life: visitors arriving at the right moment are guided through the forest to find the bar glowing from within.

Inside, stainless steel surfaces, dark wood, red leather stools, terrazzo flooring, and a backlit display channel the intimacy of classic metropolitan bars. A permanently installed 1996 painting by Martin Kippenberger, visible even when the bar is closed, anchors the installation, paying homage to the artist’s legacy and echoing Elmgreen & Dragset’s long-standing interest in ‘denials,’ functional forms that resist predictable use.

Open only once a month, K-BAR plays with visibility, access, and displacement, placing a European artwork in a Southeast Asian forest as a subtle inversion of museum repatriation debates. As part of the newly launched Khao Yai Art Forest, the pavilion underscores the initiative’s mission to merge contemporary art with ecological immersion, offering an unexpected moment of encounter in one of Thailand’s most pristine environments.

read more here 

LEOPOLD BANCHINI INSTALLS TIMBER BATHHOUSE IN SPAIN

image by Gregori Civera

Leopold Banchini Architects installs Round About Baths at the Concéntrico Festival in Logroño, Spain, transforming the center of a traffic roundabout into a temporary public bathhouse. The circular timber structure reclaims an overlooked urban void, introducing cold-water basins, steam rooms, and changing areas that revive the communal spirit of historic public baths.

Built with a standard timber frame and clad in uncut wooden panels intended for reuse, the pavilion emphasizes material efficiency and circularity. High perimeter walls provide privacy while clearly marking the intervention within the car-dominated landscape, prompting visitors to reconsider how urban land is allocated and who it serves. By situating a shared bathing environment at the heart of a vehicular crossroads, Round About Baths challenges conventional urban hierarchies and highlights the potential of underutilized spaces. Once dismantled, the site returns to its previous state, but the project leaves behind a conceptual proposal.

read more here 

TOGUNA WORLD’S NOMADIC PAVILION LANDS IN ATHENS

all images courtesy of Toguna World

Toguna World’s immersive nomadic pavilion, The Sanctuary of Dreams, combines film, ritual, and collective storytelling within an inflatable structure presented as part of Plásmata 3 | We’ve met before, haven’t we? in Athens. Rooted in African philosophies of cyclical time and ancestral memory, the space invites visitors to enter barefoot and step into a meditative environment where a 44-minute, three-channel art film brings together animation, collage, soundscapes, and archival textures.

After the screening, participants join a guided reflection circle, contributing their visions to The Global Mapping of Dreams, a growing archive of future imaginaries from across Africa and its diaspora. Designed by Pierre-Christophe Gam, the pavilion functions as a contemporary ritual space, featuring dimmable lighting, scent, modular cushions, and spatial audio that shape an intimate environment for collective visioning. 

read more here

MERO STUDIOS BUILDS A PAVILION FROM 780 LEFTOVER BAGUETTES

all images by Paul Kozlowski

MERO Studios builds Paysage de Pain, a public pavilion made from 780 salvaged baguettes, turning surplus bread into a tactile, aromatic structure within the courtyard of Montpellier’s Hôtel de Lunas. Developed with the nonprofit Pain de L’Espoir, the installation reframes food waste as a spatial material, highlighting the staggering amount of unsold bread discarded daily in France.

Visitors move through warm, dough-scented walls that crack and age under the sun, transforming the pavilion into a living metaphor for nourishment, excess, and decay. Through its texture, smell, and temporal fragility, Paysage de Pain becomes a sensory monument to resourcefulness.

read more here

FEATHER-BLADE SEASIDE PAVILION SWAYS ON CHAISHAN ISLAND 

image by Liang Wenjun

GN Architects’ Seaside Pavilion brings new life to the abandoned pier of Chaishan Island, introducing a wind-driven structure whose long white blades sway gently above the water. Designed as part of the Hello, Island revitalization initiative, the pavilion acts as a symbolic arrival point, a contemporary echo of traditional village entrances where large trees once anchored community gatherings.

Suspended from a prefabricated steel frame, 36 seven-meter blades move with the sea breeze, creating a rhythmic, feather-like choreography that mirrors the quiet landscape of the island. The installation repurposes the old cargo pier into a resting and meeting place for the elderly residents. Built with corrosion-resistant materials and high-strength fishing ropes for durability, the pavilion balances engineering precision with a sense of lightness. Its movement shifts from subtle to visible depending on the wind, transforming the site into a landmark that reconnects Chaishan’s past, present, and future through motion and placemaking.

read more here

MARINA TABASSUM’S 2025 SERPENTINE PAVILION OPENS IN LONDON

Serpentine Pavilion 2025 A Capsule in Time, designed by Marina Tabassum, Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA). exterior view. © Marina Tabassum Architects (MTA) | image by Iwan Baan, courtesy of Serpentine

Marina Tabassum Architects’ A Capsule in Time was the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion, a modular timber structure that explores impermanence, light, and temporality within London’s Kensington Gardens. Composed of four translucent capsules aligned with Serpentine South’s historic bell tower, the pavilion filters daylight into shifting patterns, echoing the hydrologic landscapes of Bangladesh, where land continually forms, dissolves, and reappears.

A kinetic capsule allows sections of the pavilion to expand for public programs, while a ginkgo tree anchors the interior as a living symbol of resilience. Built entirely from wood and translucent polycarbonate, materials chosen for their reuse potential, the project embraces dry construction and adaptability, ensuring the pavilion continues its life beyond the summer season. Integrated bookshelves house a curated selection of texts spanning Bengali literature, ecology, and identity, including works banned in Bangladesh. Tabassum frames the pavilion as a place of quiet resistance and shared knowledge, offering a contemplative environment where ideas can circulate freely. 

read more here 

BAMBOO PAVILION ANCHORS YASMEEN LARI’S PONO VILLAGE

all images courtesy of Nyami Studio

Nyami Studio and Jack Rankin complete the Juliet Center in Sindh, Pakistan, a bamboo pavilion that anchors Yasmeen Lari’s zero-carbon Pono Village, a prototype community built in response to the devastating 2022 floods. The lightweight vaulted structure is shaped from bamboo, mud, lime, and thatch, translating vernacular forms into a modular, climate-resilient space designed for communal use. The pavilion offers an open, flexible environment for workshops, gatherings, and training programs, supporting Lari’s mission to empower local residents, particularly women, through hands-on construction and craft skills.

Two interlocking vaults span widely without internal columns, creating a breathable interior that can be adapted or expanded as the village evolves. Built using a combination of digital precision and traditional techniques, the project demonstrates how low-carbon materials can achieve structural complexity and durability in extreme climates. Hand-made mud tiles line the floor, and a woven thatch roof of locally harvested grass provides protection from heat and monsoon rains. 

read more here 

RAD+AR BUILDS WOVEN-BAMBOO CHICKEN COOP IN JAKARTA 

images courtesy of RAD+ar

RAD+ar designs the Chicken Hero Pavilion in Urban Forest Jakarta, carving a low, hill-like form into the landscape to house an educational chicken coop disguised as part of the terrain. The pavilion merges ecological performance with community engagement, inviting visitors through a tunnel-like opening into a space that promotes backyard poultry farming as a sustainable household practice. Inside, reclaimed bamboo forms a ventilated, daylight-filled structure optimized for animal comfort and waste management.

The pavilion processes organic waste from nearby restaurants, turning leaves and food scraps into compost and closing the loop by distributing fresh eggs daily, a live demonstration of a micro circular economy. As a temporary installation, the project functions both as a prototype for low-impact chicken coops and as a public learning space. It addresses Indonesia’s significant food waste challenges while breaking stigmas around small-scale poultry keeping. Blending into the park’s topography, the Chicken Hero Pavilion shows how simple construction and local materials can support inclusive education, environmental stewardship, and community-led sustainability.

read more here 

see designboom’s TOP 10 stories archive:

2024 — 2023 — 2022 — 2021 — 2020 — 2019 —  2018 — 2017 — 2016 — 2015 — 2014 — 2013

The post TOP 10 pavilions of 2025 appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Arquitectura-G completes Patio House, a single-story residence in Aiguablava, Spain, that distills domestic life into a continuous loop of light, air, and shadow. The architectural team uses the courtyard typology as a spatial tool to mediate between the natural terrain and the built form, creating a dwelling that feels enclosed and open at the same time.

A setback from the original plot boundary defines the geometry of the house, a move that preserves a ring of untouched terrain around the perimeter. Within this protected envelope, a roofed porch traces a perfect square, enclosing a 15 × 15 meter courtyard framed by a colonnade. At its center lies a shallow reflecting pool and three trees whose canopies filter sunlight across the paving, forming a living microclimate. A thin roof plane seems to hover lightly above the columns and perimeter wall, uniting all spaces under a single horizon.

all images by Maxime Delvaux, unless stated otherwise

continuous porch wraps around patio house

The Barcelona-based collective Arquitectura-G transforms the archetype of the Mediterranean patio house into a contemporary statement of restraint, material clarity, and environmental intelligence. Inside, life circulates through a continuous corridor that wraps the courtyard. Conceived as a variable-width porch, this transitional zone gradually shifts in character from a narrow passage to generous communal spaces like the living room and kitchen. Every room opens directly onto the courtyard through large glazed panels and adjustable louver screens, which regulate light and ventilation.

Arquitectura-G completes Patio House in Aiguablava, Spain

a continuous loop of light, air, and shadow

the architects use the courtyard typology as a spatial tool

a dwelling that feels enclosed and open at the same time

a setback from the original plot boundary defines the geometry of the house

a move that preserves a ring of untouched terrain around the perimeter

life circulates through a continuous corridor that wraps the courtyard

a roofed porch traces a perfect square

enclosing a 15 × 15 meter courtyard framed by a colonnade

a thin roof plane seems to hover lightly above the columns

uniting all spaces under a single horizon

every room opens directly onto the courtyard

large glazed panels and adjustable louver screens regulate light and ventilation

project info:

name: Patio House

architect: Arquitectura-G | @arquitecturag

location: Aiguablava (Girona), Spain

lead architects: Jonathan Arnabat, Jordi Ayala-Bril, Aitor Fuentes, Igor Urdampilleta

project team: Diogo Porto, Siddartha Rodrigo, Jesús Jiménez

structure engineer: Ofici:Arquitectura

MEP engineer: TDI Enginyers

surveyor: Xavier de Bolòs

photographer: Maxime Delvaux | @maxdelv

The post thin floating roof shelters arquitectura-G’s colonnaded courtyard house in spain appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Athens-born artist and self-taught designer Harry Rigalo works at the edge between design and sculpture, where objects hover between furniture, relic, and offering. His practice approaches materials as active systems rather than tools. ‘I stopped seeing materials as isolated objects and started understanding them as parts of a system that activates space and the body,’ he tells designboom.  

This approach is currently reflected in Forms Without Briefs, Rigalo’s exhibition at The Great Design Disaster in Milan, on view until December 30th. In recent months, clay has become central to his practice. Raw, unstable, and time-bound, it collapses drawing and building into a single gesture, forcing the maker into constant dialogue with the material. ‘Clay never gives itself completely. You don’t decide. You negotiate,’ he says. The openness of the material, until the final, irreversible moment of firing, reinforces a way of working grounded in uncertainty, correction, and presence. designboom discusses with the designer his early years on Olympic-scale construction sites, his recent immersion in clay, and his commitment to process over outcome.

all images by Luigi Fiano, unless stated otherwise

from construction sites to process-led practice

Harry Rigalo’s relationship with making was formed early and physically. At fourteen, he began working on Olympic-scale construction sites in Athens, handling concrete and steel and learning through fatigue, repetition, and failure. That ‘unglamorous’ education instilled an instinctive understanding of weight, tension, and structure that continues to guide his work today. The knowledge never became a set of rules; instead, it remained something felt. ‘The result isn’t meant only to be explained, but to be felt,’ the artist notes.

His early practice was marked by structure and composition, drawing from collage and music, where materials operated like notes within a score. Over time, however, that score loosened and process began to outweigh outcome. ‘Process is a space where participation matters more than control,’ Rigalo explains during our conversation. 

Across his work, function remains present but unsettled. Some objects behave as chairs, vessels, or holders, while others resist typology altogether. Function, for Rigalo, can clarify but also constrain. ‘Function can make an object easier to read. Removing that obligation opens a different kind of relationship,’ he reflects. Read on for our full discussion with the Greek designer.

Harry Rigalo works at the edge between design and sculpture

interview with harry rigalo

Designboom (DB): You found your first training ground at olympic-scale construction sites at the age of fourteen. How do those physical lessons, weight, tension, fatigue, failure, still shape the way you design and build today?

Harry Rigalo (HR): I didn’t start from a desire to design objects. I started from a desire to step outside the world I already knew. At fourteen, through a family connection, I found myself on construction sites preparing for the 2004 Olympic Games, a strictly structured environment based on studies, drawings, and constructional precision. It was a large-scale undertaking where theory and practice coexisted, but without room for personal narrative or expression. I worked with concrete, steel, wood, plastic, and brick.

At the time, I didn’t know what this experience would become. It was physically demanding and eventually not something I wanted to pursue professionally, but it gave me a deeply embodied understanding of materials. I learned how weight is transferred and how it translates differently depending on function, how structures behave, how materials react, how they are worked, and how different elements are combined so that something individual becomes functional within a much larger system and scale.

Years later, when I began placing materials myself, that knowledge resurfaced almost instinctively, not as technical rules, but as a physical sense. I stopped seeing materials as isolated objects and started understanding them as parts of a system that activates space and the body. Even today, whether I’m making something functional or something that resists use, I still work through these questions. How weight moves, how a form stands, how material operates in relation to scale. The result isn’t meant only to be explained, but to be felt.

objects hover between furniture, relic, and offering

DB: You found your first training ground at olympic-scale construction sites at the age of fourteen. How do those physical lessons, weight, tension, fatigue, failure, still shape the way you design and build today?

HR: I don’t think we choose materials in a neutral way. There’s always a form of attraction involved, a desire to meet a material and allow it to respond. Clay entered my practice at a moment when I was looking for immediacy, for a way to move from thought to making without filters. In my earlier work, the process was more structured. I was composing different materials through a kind of material collage, and even then the objects were never meant to be entirely comfortable. They still answered to structure. I could say, this is a chair. But the chair itself carried a question. It asked whether a chair always needs to behave like a chair, or whether discomfort could be part of its meaning.

With clay, drawing and building collapse into the same action. What you imagine begins to exist almost immediately in your hands. That directness allows instinct and improvisation to lead rather than follow. Working at larger scales intensified this relationship. As the clay body grows, difficulty and risk increase, and the dialogue between body and material becomes sharper. Clay offers freedom, but it also has limits, and those limits are learned physically. The shift wasn’t a rejection of structure, but a desire to reduce mediation. I wanted to move from inspiration to realization more directly and to build an atmosphere rather than just an object.

Forms Without Briefs, Rigalo’s exhibition at The Great Design Disaster gallery

DB: You’ve been immersed in clay these past months. What did this material teach you that other materials never managed to?

HR: In many ways, clay became synonymous with the philosophy of this body of work. At first, I approached it as a tool. Very quickly, however, it revealed something else, the quiet nature of movement and becoming. Clay never gives itself completely. It’s always in transition. It carries a dual character, addition and subtraction, building and erasing, and through that, balance emerges through form, tension, and symbolism. You don’t decide. You negotiate.

What fascinated me most was its relationship to time. Until the very last moment before firing, everything remains open. A form can always return to something softer, more uncertain. Once it enters the kiln, that openness disappears. Clay becomes ceramic, a different material altogether, and a specific moment is fixed. In that sense, firing feels almost like a photograph. A single state is captured, removed from its previous flow, and carried forward. Not as an ending, but as a moment that continues to participate in movement from another position.

That relationship was intensely physical and compressed in time. My first encounter with clay, from early tests to the final exhibition, unfolded within seven to eight months of daily contact. Long hours, mistakes, repetitions. During that period, I worked through nearly 800 kilos of clay. Not as a way of mastering the material, but as a way of meeting it, while understanding how much I was still at the beginning. Those months were marked by silence and an almost ascetic rhythm. Days of repetition and concentration created a calm intensity that left a quiet afterimage. It was refreshing, and it set a tone. One I hope to return to in future work, finding that same quality of focus again.

Thili

DB: You’ve said the process matters more than the final result. What does process mean to you now?

HR: For me, a work always emerges from a process, and the process begins with desire. At its core, desire starts with attraction, the pull toward a body. Sometimes that participation becomes the act of making a body, an object, a form, a work. Process is how that impulse takes shape. It’s a space where participation matters more than control, and where intention is formed through engagement rather than imposed. What matters to me is not simply to be seen critically, but to be seen through the process itself.

Process reflects movement, flow, truth, and offering. I’m sensitive to the movement of the world around me, and my work is simply a way of taking part in that movement. Not stopping it, but standing within it. For me, flow is very close to truth. Nothing in flow is fixed, just as nothing in truth is fixed. Perhaps the greatest challenge is accepting a non fixed understanding of ourselves and allowing who we are to remain open and in motion.

Elksi

DB: While some of your works remain functional, others resist typology altogether. How do you decide when a piece should behave like furniture and when it should resist that expectation?

HR: When I work on a collection, I think of it as a scenographic condition, a spatial composition. Some pieces function as abstract forms within that landscape, while others act more like offerings. Furniture, and functionality in general, is already a form of offering, allowing a body to sit, rest, or engage. That sense of offering remains important to me. I still belong to the functional side of design, and it continues to inspire me. At the same time, I don’t feel the need to bind every object to use. For me, whatever is produced deserves space, whether it functions or simply exists.

This collection is also the first time I allowed myself to create purely non-functional works, pieces that exist solely through their sculptural presence. That came from another need, the desire not to always be understood. Function can make an object easier to read. Removing that obligation opens a different kind of relationship, one that asks less to be explained and more to be experienced.

Monk

DB: There’s a recurring description of a feminine energy in the forms, not gendered, but intuitive and insistent. Is that something you consciously guide, or something that simply happens when you work instinctively?

HR: It’s not something I consciously guide. It’s something I notice afterward. In my relationship with process, there’s always a quiet pull, a form of attraction that creates a relationship with the material and remains mostly silent.

What is often described as feminine energy, I experience more as a quality of presence. A softness that doesn’t weaken the form, but allows it to exist without imposing itself. A receptivity that holds space rather than demands attention.

I’m interested in creating forms and atmospheres that can be encountered rather than explained. Something you can stand in front of, or within, without being instructed how to feel. If there is femininity in that, it’s not symbolic. It’s experiential.

Aiwaitress

DB: Your work sits between object, relic, vessel, and offering. Do you feel closer to designers, sculptors, or neither, and why?

HR: I don’t feel a strong need to position myself strictly as one or the other. What matters to me more is existing within the act of making rather than within a definition. I’m deeply interested in the multiple sides of human expression, the structured and the abstract, the logical and the instinctive. Both continue to inspire me, and I feel active in both territories. Logic, for me, doesn’t cancel emotion. Sometimes it carries a purer one. And instinct, when observed carefully, has its own intelligence.

At the end of the day, everything is form. What feels essential is remaining open, playful, and free. I’m not interested in chasing trends. Movement exists around trends, not inside them. What I aim for instead is a language that carries motion while remaining grounded in classical foundations.

Isofagus

DB: What’s the next material, rhythm, or question calling you?

HR: My relationship with clay is definitely not finished. What’s emerging now is a new phase, one that respects the material’s qualities while opening it to new encounters. I’m interested in bringing other materials into dialogue with clay, not to overpower it, but to explore new relationships and a different kind of scenography. Working with clay has also pushed me strongly toward thinking about scale. Larger, more architectural forms feel increasingly important to me, and this interest in large scale work is something I know will continue to grow. Alongside this, I continue to design digitally, developing ideas and models that can evolve through collaborations within functional design, which remains an essential part of my practice.

I also know I will return to materials from earlier phases of my work. Marble, in particular, feels unfinished, ideas that were paused rather than completed. At the same time, I’m beginning to explore glazes and color in clay, opening it toward a more playful direction. This naturally connects to my interest in recycling, industrial elements, and even smaller scale objects, including jewelry.

Looking ahead, what matters most is continuity. Forms Without Briefs marked the beginning of a longer trajectory that will continue through my collaboration with The Great Design Disaster gallery. The trust and support of Joy Herro and Gregory Gatserelia encouraged me to move more freely toward non-functional and large-scale work, while keeping space open for functional design to evolve alongside it. The next step isn’t a single material or answer, but an expanded field where scale, materials, and collaborations continue to move together.

clay has become central to the artist’s practice

function remains present but unsettled | image by Antonis Agrido

clay collapses drawing and building into a single gesture | image by Antonis Agrido

some objects behave as chairs, vessels, or holders, while others resist typology altogether | image by Antonis Agrido

Harry Rigalo in his studio | image by Antonis Agrido

project info:

designer: Harry Rigalo | @harryrigalo

gallery: The Great Design Disaster | @thegreatdesigndisaster

location: Via della Moscova 15, Milan, Italy

dates: November 3rd – December 30th, 2025

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Stocker Lee Architetti completes the MANMADE flagship store for Wooyoungmi in Seoul’s Itaewon district. The 970-square-meter building occupies a compact, curved plot along a slightly inclined road, a condition that becomes the primary design driver of the project. The architects allow the perimeter of the site to define the volume, resulting in an architecture that bends, adjusts, and aligns itself with the movement of the street.

The geometry of the building follows the curvature of the road and sets the tone for the project. The architecture does not compete with its surroundings or the garments it houses but instead constructs a measured spatial framework that supports both.

Exposed concrete, cast using OSB formwork and finished with a mineral glaze, carries visible traces of its making, allowing texture and patina to develop over time. The surface recalls the logic of fabric, with a woven appearance subtly echoing the sartorial world of Wooyoungmi. Glass blocks define the facade, filtering daylight into the interior during the day and transforming the building into a softly glowing volume after dusk. 

all images by Simone Bossi

Stocker Lee Architetti designs a mezzanine-based spatial sequence

The Swiss architects organize the program through a sequence of mezzanine levels connected by a central vertical core that functions as the project’s structural and spatial backbone. Moving through the store becomes a continuous journey, with changing ceiling heights and proportions introducing variation across the exhibition spaces. This sectional strategy allows each area to develop its own character while remaining part of a cohesive whole.

Concrete, glass, steel, stone, and wood form the material palette of the MANMADE flagship store, selected by Stocker Lee Architetti for their structural and functional qualities rather than decorative effect. Their sobriety establishes a neutral yet tactile environment in which the clothing assumes visual priority. The MANMADE flagship store operates as an urban interior that translates site constraints, material logic, and spatial continuity into an understated but highly controlled architectural experience.

Stocker Lee Architetti completes the MANMADE flagship store for Wooyoungmi in Seoul

the 970-square-meter building occupies a compact, curved plot

the architects allow the perimeter of the parcel to define the volume

an architecture that bends, adjusts, and aligns itself with the movement of the street

the geometry of the building follows the curvature of the road and sets the tone for the project

glass blocks define the facade

the glass blocks filter daylight into the interior during the day

transforming the building into a softly glowing volume after dusk

exposed concrete carries visible traces of its making

the surfaces recall the logic of fabric

concrete is cast using OSB formwork and finished with a mineral glaze

the Swiss architects organize the program through a sequence of mezzanine levels

moving through the store becomes a continuous journey

project info:

name: MANMADE flagship

architect: Stocker Lee Architetti | @stockerleearchitetti

client: Wooyoungmi | @wooyoungmi

location: Itaewon, Seoul, South Korea

site area: 490 square meters

gross floor area: 970 square meters

volume: 5,600 cubic meters

photographer: Simone Bossi | @simonebossiphotographer 

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Artist Stuart Semple unveils Happy Time, a wearable artwork developed with designer Thomas Lehman of Milan’s Analog Lab that deliberately sidesteps the basic function of a watch. Launched on Kickstarter, the project proposes an alternative relationship with time, defined less by measurement and efficiency and more by pause, perception, and emotional relief. Happy Time operates as a small, conceptual sculpture for the wrist, offering a slowed, ambiguous experience of duration.

At first glance, the watch reads as almost empty. Numerals and hands on the dial are replaced by a black smiley face that rotates slowly, completing a full turn once every hour, while a small silver dot marks a twelve-hour cycle. This minimal design provides only the loosest indication of passing time, resisting precision by design. Semple describes the object as a device that invites stillness instead of urgency. ‘It is a small object, but it gives you a small moment of calm every time you see it,’ the artist shares.

The dial is coated in Black 4.0, Semple’s ultra-matte acrylic paint developed over more than a decade of experimentation. Absorbing nearly all visible light, the surface reads as a velvety void, flattening depth and muting reflection.

all images courtesy of Stuart Semple and Thomas Lehman

happy time questions timekeeping with rotating smiley face

The steel case of the watch is finely machined and balanced for everyday wear, while a high-clarity crystal lens gives the rotating elements a floating presence. A Japanese Miyota movement drives the mechanism, maintaining consistency without drawing attention to itself. Materials are selected for longevity and tactility, with recyclable components used throughout. An optional crystal caseback exposes the movement, reframing the watch as a transparent kinetic object rather than a sealed instrument.

British artist Stuart Semple conceived Happy Time after observing a close friend in the art world who, despite outward success, seemed depleted by constant pressure. The watch was imagined as a way to soften daily rhythms, an object that slows perception. In this sense, Happy Time aligns with broader cultural fatigue around productivity metrics, screens, and constant quantification. Semple and Lehman treat the watch as a conceptual starting point, questioning timekeeping.

the project proposes an alternative relationship with time

a Japanese Miyota movement drives the mechanism

numerals and hands on the dial are replaced by a black smiley face

the rotating face completes a full turn once every hour

resisting precision by design

the dial is coated in Black 4.0, Semple’s ultra-matte acrylic paint

Happy Time operates as a small, conceptual sculpture for the wrist

the watch was imagined as a way to soften daily rhythms

project info:

name: Happy Time

artists / designers: Stuart Semple | @stuartsemple in collaboration with Thomas Lehman (Analog Lab)

The post stuart semple creates a watch that smiles at you instead of telling the time appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Carsten Höller installs Pink Mirror Carousel on the ice rink of the Kulm Hotel St. Moritz this winter, introducing a slowed, reflective amusement structure to the Alpine resort. Clad in pink mirrored panels and precisely calibrated to complete a full rotation every two minutes, the work takes a familiar fairground structure and transforms it into an immersive sculptural environment that folds time, movement, and spectatorship into a disorienting experience set against the Engadin landscape.

Installed outdoors on the hotel’s ice rink, Pink Mirror Carousel continues Höller’s long-standing engagement with amusement rides as what he calls ‘confusion machines.’ Rather than delivering speed or thrill, the carousel deliberately slows the body down. Its rotation becomes almost meditative, encouraging riders to register duration, repetition, and anticipation as material conditions. The structure is composed of twelve identical mirrored segments arranged as a dodecagon, reflecting skaters, riders, the surrounding mountains, and the carousel itself in shifting fragments. 

all images courtesy of Kulm Hotel St. Moritz

Pink Mirror Carousel rotates on the Kulm Hotel ice rink

While earlier carousel works by Höller have required up to twenty-four hours for a single turn, the St. Moritz installation completes its cycle in exactly two minutes. This double minute references the carousel’s counter-rotating elements, with the top turning counter-clockwise and the middle section rotating clockwise. The result is a subtle but persistent sense of misalignment, where mechanical precision and bodily perception never fully sync. As Baldo Hauser, the Belgian artist’s alter ego, notes, the work functions as ‘a sculpture with people inside, animating the inanimate, the mechanical, the lifeless rotation with the realness of human bodies being transported through their own biological time.’

Music curated by the Kulm Hotel’s directeur d’ambiance, Arman Naféei, accompanies the skating rink, layering sound into the experience. Open to both hotel guests and the public, the installation operates as a shared, temporary situation.

Carsten Höller installs Pink Mirror Carousel on the ice rink of the Kulm Hotel St. Moritz

Pink Mirror Carousel continues Höller’s long-standing engagement with amusement rides

its rotation becomes almost meditative, encouraging riders to register duration

composed of twelve identical mirrored segments

reflecting skaters, riders, the surrounding mountains

Carsten Höller at the Kulm Hotel St. Moritz, Switzerland

project info:

name: Pink Mirror Carousel

artist: Carsten Höller | @carsten.holler

location: Kulm Hotel St. Moritz | @kulmhotel, St. Moritz, Switzerland

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POLA GINZA, conceived by Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima, co-founder of SANAA, rethinks the beauty flagship as a space of perception. Developed as POLA’s global flagship in Tokyo, the project brings together architecture, sound, light, and scent to explore how beauty is sensed, internalized, and activated across mind and body. Grounded in the Science. Art. Love. philosophy of the brand, the space prioritizes atmosphere and experience.

Conceived as a place that awakens what POLA calls the ‘latent sense of beauty’ in both mind and body, the project unfolds as an immersive sequence of light, sound, scent, and material atmospheres, a spatial narrative built around perception, self-awareness, and time. The renovation brings together an interdisciplinary group of Japanese creatives, including Kazuyo Sejima, composer Keiichiro Shibuya, lighting designer Shozo Toyohisa, and olfactory artist Kan Izumi, each contributing a distinct sensory layer to the whole.

Sejima frames the project as a garden-like environment that operates on its own sense of time. In her words, visitors are briefly removed from everyday rhythms and invited into a different temporal register, one that supports introspection and self-observation. 

all images by Kenshu Shintsubo

a flora forest at street level in tokyo

At ground floor, visitors enter what Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima describes as a Flora Forest, an animated interior landscape structured by imperfectly symmetrical heptagonal columns. These vertical elements act as spatial cues, creating subtle fluctuations that connect inside and outside, movement and stillness. Walls emit an even, diffused glow, while light shifts almost imperceptibly across surfaces, producing an environment that feels alive rather than staged. The space also hosts a permanent generative sound installation by Keiichiro Shibuya. His work, Abstract Music, POLA version, continuously recomposes itself in real time, drawing from an extensive archive of sound data that is algorithmically layered, altered, and reassembled. 

The experience continues below ground. From the animated forest above, visitors move down to the first basement, where the atmosphere slows further. This level houses POLA’s esthetic and treatment spaces, arranged as fully private rooms. Here, materials, scent, and light shift toward an earthier register: warm illumination, fragrances that recall soil and filtered daylight, and a quiet that feels intentional rather than absent.

Treatments are structured around Resense Scan, a diagnostic system developed using POLA Chemical Industries’ proprietary technology. Facial video analysis is used to visualize current skin and condition states, forming the basis for individualized counseling. From there, the experience unfolds through facial treatments using original masks, radio-frequency body care that introduces gentle warmth, and foot baths integrated into each private room. 

Kazuyo Sejima rethinks the beauty flagship as a space of perception

light behaves like matter

Shozo Toyohisa’s approach to lighting design avoids spotlighting or theatrical contrast and relies on overlapping wavelengths of light and inverse-phase illumination that subtly pulse and dissolve into one another. The effect is a kind of atmospheric blur, where light feels almost tangible, closer to mist than illumination. The environment never fully settles into a fixed state, encouraging visitors to sense change rather than observe it.

Across floors, light, sound, and scent are designed to avoid synchronization, creating moments of dissonance that sharpen perception. Kan Izumi’s olfactory contribution follows a similar logic, introducing two complementary fragrances. One reflects POLA’s contemporary identity through the tension of science and craftsmanship; the other draws on vegetal warmth and memory, grounding the body and slowing attention. Rather than branding the space, scent operates as a quiet guide, anchoring experience without dictating emotion.

the project brings together architecture, sound, light, and scent to explore how beauty is sensed

Sejima frames the project as a garden-like environment that operates on its own sense of time

visitors move down to the first basement, where the atmosphere slows further

treatments are structured around Resense Scan

a diagnostic system developed using POLA Chemical Industries’ proprietary technology

project info:

name: POLA GINZA | @pola_ginza

architect: Kazuyo Sejima | @sanaa_jimusho

address: 1-7-7 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo

music & sound installation: Keiichiro Shibuya

lighting design: Shozo Toyohisa

olfactory design: Kan Izumi / Olfactive Studio Ne

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Construction is underway for KYKLOS, a center for art and culture in the port city of Piraeus, designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Commissioned by the Dinos and Lia Martinos Foundation (DLMF), the project adds to the Italian architect’s growing presence in Greece, including his acclaimed Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens and three new public hospitals developed with SNF across the country. Focusing on sustainability, accessibility, and intercultural dialogue, KYKLOS aims to become a place where contemporary creativity and traditional heritage come together. With completion slated for late 2028 and full private funding, KYKLOS brings together diverse perspectives.

renderings by MIR

kyklos to house art from multiple regions across the globe

The name KYKLOS, Greek for ‘circle’, describes the core mission of the project of creating a continuous, inclusive space where ideas, narratives, and communities converge. The center will house permanent collections of art from Africa, Oceania, and other regions across the globe, collections often underrepresented in Western institutions. Alongside these, an evolving calendar of contemporary exhibitions, lectures, screenings, and both physical and digital educational programs will explore the intersections of global cultures and artistic practices.

Mirroring this philosophy, the project’s visual and brand identity, developed by the creative agency Interweave, embodies the same values of openness and interconnectedness that define KYKLOS. Conceived by Renzo Piano’s team as an urban oasis, the center will dedicate 62% of its site to green and recreational spaces, intertwining architecture and landscape in a way that enhances the surrounding neighborhood. Prioritizing universal accessibility, energy efficiency, and a strong connection to the local context, the building promises to become a sustainable landmark for the city.

KYKLOS center for art and culture is set to rise in the port city of Piraeus

DLMF’s project is scheduled for completion in 2028

Positioned as a node within a broader international network of cultural institutions, the DLMF’s center aspires to bring local and global audiences into conversation. Whether through a school workshop, a traveling exhibition, or a public lecture, KYKLOS will encourage reflection on how artistic expression can help us navigate the complexities of a connected world. As executive director Christos Carras notes, the project is rooted in the belief that art can act as a bridge—one that not only links continents but also fosters empathy and shared understanding.

Expected to open its doors in the final quarter of 2028, KYKLOS represents a significant new chapter for the cultural identity of Piraeus and the wider Attica region. 

the center will house permanent collections of art from Africa, Oceania, and other regions across the globe

Renzo Piano’s vision for KYKLOS is one of openness and environmental responsibility

the project is expected to open its doors in the final quarter of 2028

project info:

name: KYKLOS | @kyklosartscentre

architect: Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) | @rpbw_architects

location: New Faliro, Piraeus, Greece

client/foundation: Dinos and Lia Martinos Foundation (DLMF)

executive director: Christos Carras

branding and design concept: Interweave | @interweave_

completion: projected for 2028

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