Taking its cues from the straw tatami mats popular in traditional Japanese homes, Tarkett’s modular flooring system offers a decidedly homey and flexible alternative to permanent broadloom carpets in office settings. Four sizes of modules can be linked together with a temporary adhesive that allows for easy release when it comes time for a new […]

A design company specializing in awe-inspiring light installations, Lasvit makes resolutely modern creations. Yet its new headquarters, which incorporates two restored 18th-century timber houses, shows equal regard for new and old — and in a manner that exalts its preferred medium: glass. The material is the mainstay of Nový Bor, a town in the North […]

Konstantin Grcic's ghostly Noctambule for Flos is takes the Design: Lighting Fixtures prize.

Your typical penitentiary is a grim, fortified edifice far removed from community and culture. Not so the Minimum-Security Prison of Nanterre, a suburb of Paris. Located in a mixed-use neighbourhood, the 4,350-square-metre building is surprisingly congenial. It’s clad in perforated weathering steel, and the interior palette consists of lacquered aluminum and fine mineral plaster — […]

Textile development is both an art and a science. Case in point: Carnegie’s Xorel Knit. While the company’s woven Xorel material has long been a popular choice for wallcoverings and panels, it lacked the pliability to serve as effective upholstery. Thus began an elaborate quest to develop an offshoot version that could be wrapped around […]

What if Old MacDonald hired a cutting-edge architecture firm to design his farm? That’s the question posed by Montreal studio La SHED. Its concept for a family-owned organic cheese producer in Quebec’s Montérégie region delivers a contemporary cow stable that shifts away from the industrialized metal boxes common in the industry and harkens back to […]

As the judges conclude, the winner in Interiors: Commercial and Institutional is "a stunningly crafted space.”

A quartet of seven-metre-tall huts, BAAQ’s Casa Naila sits atop a concrete plinth on a 250-square-metre beach property in Oaxaca. Each box is distinctively wrapped, partially by concrete walls and partially by slatted palm wood enclosures supported by wooden framing. This vernacular building technique, which allows cross ventilation and natural light to filter through, is […]

Well beyond the recent resimercial trend and our current WFH reality, the desire for domestic comforts in office environments is a phenomenon poised to grow stronger in the years to come. To that end, workplace furniture specialist Coalesse and Spanish textile expert Nanimarquina have teamed up to create a soulful rug collection tough enough for […]

Despite being recognized with legal status and basic utilities 12 years ago, the informal Comuna 4 settlement at the edge of Bogotá still lacked effective park space. When its citizens grew tired of lobbying city officials, they resolved to spearhead the initiative themselves. Aided by a team of university students, Aaron Brakke and his design […]