Design-Milk

Lang Architecture’s latest project, an apartment in New York City’s East Village, began as two separate units inside a 1930s Art Deco building. A full gut renovation of the New York City space brought them together into a single 1,650-square-foot home for a family of four. The new plan centers on a formal entry that opens directly into a great room, where the kitchen, dining area, and living space converge. Two bedroom suites anchor either end of the apartment, and a glass-doored den sits between them, serving as a study, playroom, or retreat depending on the day.

Photography by Bjorn Wallander

The building itself carries a quieter version of Art Deco than the style’s Midtown landmarks. Its brickwork uses subtle geometry and modest reliefs, and its windows group vertically rather than announcing themselves at street level. Lang Architecture, led by principal Drew Lang, carried that restraint into the interior, distilling the era’s motifs into coved ceilings, rounded jambs, and brass-trimmed leather drawers, with cabinetry built to the specifications of furniture rather than fixed millwork.

Photography by Bjorn Wallander

Limewashed walls run through the apartment alongside slabs of Calacatta Panozzo marble and warm wood surfaces. The mix of vintage and contemporary pieces extends that restrained Art Deco approach without attempting to recreate the period outright. Vintage lighting includes Palm sconces by Blue Green Works, sourced through The Future Perfect, and a rare Hans Bergström pendant over the dining table. Jorge Zalszupin’s Cubo sofa and a Segment coffee table from Estudio Persona furnish the great room.

Photography by Bjorn Wallander

The apartment also makes room for something more personal. A shelf designed by Lang and built by one of the client’s relatives sits in the great room alongside the marble and collectible furniture, introducing a family-made object into the otherwise highly considered mix of materials and design pieces. It’s a small but fitting example of what Lang Architecture calls its pursuit of “generational sustainability through connected design.”

Photography by Bjorn Wallander

Leather-clad seating, lacquered woodgrain, and a palette pitched between ivory and champagne now finish a nearly 1,600-square-foot suite inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. The material list belongs to an aircraft, specifically the front cabins of the Airbus A380, and Emirates has carried that design language courtside in its 15th consecutive year as the airline partner of the U.S. Open.

Anchoring the space is the horseshoe-shaped bar from the A380’s upper deck, appearing at the tournament for the first time. Its geometry dates to 2004, when Emirates commissioned Paris-based Pierrejean Vision to develop concepts for the onboard lounge, arriving at a central horseshoe counter with curved seating. The version that entered service in 2008 has flown on the airline’s A380 fleet since, and its reproduction inside Arthur Ashe Stadium creates the suite’s most direct connection to the aircraft interior.

Photography courtesy of Emirates

Arthur Ashe Stadium, built in 1997, currently sits at the center of an $800 million reimagining of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, led by HOK+ROSSETTI and scheduled to finish before the 2027 tournament. More than a million people move through the grounds every August and September, a volume the USTA planned to accommodate at each phase. The second of three phases was completed in time for this year’s championship, adding an expanded courtside bowl and two new levels of luxury suites.

Emirates used the new space to translate its cabin interiors into a hospitality setting, pairing familiar materials and finishes with unbroken views of the matches unfolding at ground level. Holding a mid-court vantage, the suite extends outside into terraced seating on the same axis, trading enclosure for proximity to the play.

Photography courtesy of Emirates

The connection to the A380 extends beyond the bar. The cream palette, seating, and lacquered finishes all reference the airline’s cabin interiors, while the U.S. Open makes the reverse journey aboard Emirates flights during the two weeks of the tournament. Themed dishes, coasters, and headrest covers carry elements of the championship into the cabin, creating a design exchange between two very different forms of hospitality.

Beauty retail increasingly asks stores to do more than simply display products. At a new SoHo concept from Outside In and Nature of Things, shopping is only one part of the program: Makeup and skincare share an address with fragrance, coffee, and a hidden garden, all connected by an architecture designed around light and sensory experience.

Photography by Outside In and Nature of Things

Opening at 31 Crosby Street, the project brings together dedicated flagships for the two brands, along with a fragrance gallery and an Outside In Café. The concept comes from Carisa Janes, founder of Hourglass Cosmetics and Outside In and owner and brand architect of Nature of Things. For the interiors, Janes collaborated with Shanghai-based F.O.G. Architecture on the studio’s first project in the United States.

“This was a rare opportunity to design beyond the visual, to think about how a space can engage people on multiple levels at once,” says Leilei Wu, Partner in Charge at F.O.G. Architecture. “Each space is designed to unfold gradually, encouraging movement and engagement.”

Photography by Outside In and Nature of Things

That approach is perhaps most literal inside the Nature of Things flagship. The plant-based bath, body, hair, and hand-care brand is surrounded by organic materials and tactile surfaces, including curved walls made from individually installed pieces of loofah. At the entrance, a monolithic stone basin turns product discovery into a physical interaction.

Photography by Outside In and Nature of Things

Light becomes the primary material next door at Outside In. A sweeping coved ceiling culminates in a circular oculus overhead, while frosted glass and stone diffuse illumination throughout the space. Curved custom vanities integrate their own lighting for makeup consultations and shade matching, and dimmable exterior glass can provide additional privacy when needed. Synchronized wall and ceiling lighting in the fragrance gallery shifts in color and intensity, transforming the atmosphere around a custom scent wall.

Photography by Outside In and Nature of Things

The project also pushes beyond conventional beauty retail altogether. The Outside In Café serves pastries, coffee, and specialty drinks using custom-designed ceramics; the small eatery opens onto a hidden garden tucked within the Soho site. Together, the cafe and garden give visitors a reason to linger without requiring a beauty purchase—a notable shift from the transactional logic of retail.

Photography by Outside In and Nature of Things

That combination of shopping, hospitality, and gathering is intended to continue through programming as well. Artist residencies, product launches, private appointments, gatherings, and cultural events are planned for the space. In a neighborhood already crowded with retail flagships, Outside In and Nature of Things make their case not by displaying more product, but by expanding what can happen around it.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

Bvlgari’s serpent has spent decades wrapped around wrists, fingers, and necks. Now, it’s winding its way through the New York City landscape.

Opening Sept. 10 on the High Line, auruBOROS – Urban Memory and Collective Dream is Bvlgari’s first public art installation in the United States. Commissioned as part of the house’s ongoing Serpenti Infinito project, the work was conceived by Berlin-based artists Marco Canevacci and Yena Young of Plastique Fantastique.

Photography courtesy of BVLGARI

The duo is known for pneumatic installations that use air to create immersive, often surreal additions to existing architecture. For auruBOROS, that approach takes the form of enormous golden coils that appear to emerge from beneath The Standard hotel before moving into the elevated landscape of the High Line. The effect falls somewhere between sculpture and architecture: a gleaming foreign object inserted into the familiar infrastructure of Manhattan.

Photography courtesy of BVLGARI

“auruBOROS began with the ancient image of the ouroboros, but instead of keeping the serpent as a closed circle, we opened it and allowed it to enter the city,” Canevacci and Young tell Design Milk. “Its gold, reflective body moves through the High Line, absorbing buildings, vegetation, people, weather, light, and sky into its surface.”

That reflective surface means that the sculpture changes continually with its surroundings: Buildings and greenery mingle with passing visitors, while shifts in weather and daylight alter the work throughout the day.

Photography courtesy of BVLGARI

Despite its imposing scale and seemingly solid presence, auruBOROS will exist on the High Line for just 11 days. “Although it appears monumental, the entire structure exists through air and is temporary,” the artists explain. “We were interested in that contradiction: something that looks precious and permanent but is actually light, fragile, and transient.”

Photography courtesy of BVLGARI

auruBOROS – Urban Memory and Collective Dream is on view Sept. 10–20 on the High Line at Little West 12th Street in New York City. Alongside the installation, Bvlgari is debuting three Serpenti Tubogas high-jewelry pieces and an exclusive minaudière inspired by New York’s artistic history, all available at select boutiques this month.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

The idea for Hollis+Morris’ Beaufort lighting collection began somewhere over the Atlantic. Founder and lead designer Mischa Couvrette was flying home from Copenhagen after 3daysofdesign when a conversation about ice and climate change led to an exploration of ice depth, transparency, and formation.

“For years I have been drawn to the beauty of ice above a body of water, the layered gradients, the shifting transparency, and the mysterious world concealed beneath the surface,” Couvrette says. “That conversation ultimately inspired us to conceive of a light fixture that holds that sense of hidden depth and quiet mystery.”

Beaufort M2 Horizontal Pendant by Hollis+Morris. Photography courtesy of Hollis+Morris.

Rather than translating those references literally, the Beaufort Collection explores them through material and light. Each fixture begins with rough-sawn solid oak or walnut shaped into a half cylinder with softly rounded ends. The wood is then carved from within, concealing the lighting technology while creating a chamber that controls how illumination escapes the fixture.

Beaufort R5 Horizontal Pendant by Hollis+Morris. Photography courtesy of Hollis+Morris.

Sandblasted acrylic forms the other half of the equation. Stepped shoulders and faceted surfaces meet the carved wood in layered planes, creating subtle shifts in depth even when the fixture is switched off. Turn it on, and the acrylic takes on a different role as light passes through its translucent form in soft gradients—an effect intended to recall the changing density and transparency of ice.

That relationship between wood and acrylic is the building block for the entire collection. Hollis+Morris repeats, mirrors, and rotates the same basic component to change each fixture’s silhouette and the way it distributes light.

Beaufort R5 Vertical Pendants and Table Lamp by Hollis+Morris. Photography courtesy of Hollis+Morris.

The simplest form is the Beaufort Sconce. The M2 Horizontal Pendant mirrors two components, directing light upward and downward, and comes in four lengths from 13 to 60 inches.

Beaufort Sconce by Hollis+Morris. Photography courtesy of Hollis+Morris.

The R5 Horizontal Pendant pushes the repetition further. Five elements form a circular composition that can be suspended horizontally to create an almost orbital fixture or rotated vertically to become a compact lantern. The same arrangement, placed on a surface rather than suspended from above, becomes the Beaufort Table Lamp.

From sconce to pendant to table lamp, the Beaufort Collection changes orientation and scale without losing the material tension at its center—a fitting approach for a collection inspired by ice formations, which are continually reshaped by time and light.

Beaufort M2 Horizontal Pendant by Hollis+Morris. Photography courtesy of Hollis+Morris.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

When you’re indulging in a day of pampering, the right setting can enhance the overall experience—but all too often interiors lean toward clinical, with standard fixtures and a white palette. To provide that perfectly calming atmosphere in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, Sana Skin Studio founders Valentina Hernandez Botero and George Dufournier turned to Michael Dolatowski. For the latest iteration of the studio, Dolatowski drew on what he had learned designing every Sana location to date, creating what he sees as a prototype for the brand moving forward.

Photography by Jeanne Canto

Sana Skin Studio launched in 2020, with its first location in Wynwood. The brand takes its name from the Spanish word “sanar,” which means “heal.” It’s an apt moniker for a company that emphasizes healthy skin rather than just surface beauty. As the brand has grown, the original Wynwood studio has been replaced with a new flagship that reflects the evolution of both Sana and its design language. Dolatowski describes the first location, completed on a shoestring budget just before the pandemic, as almost akin to a set design. This time, the goal was to take what the team had learned from subsequent locations in Coconut Grove and Fort Lauderdale and push those ideas further.

Photography by Jeanne Canto

“If anything, we subtracted a little bit in Wynwood and leaned more into the sculptural form,” Dolatowski says. The nearly 15-foot ceilings feel sculptural, with an airy quality that matches the spatial flow. Curves are found everywhere, from arched doorways and mirrors to a circular light feature. The latter grew out of a practical challenge: Existing columns protruding from the wall needed to be concealed, so Dolatowski turned the area into a large illuminated circle that takes advantage of the room’s height. In the hallway, a vaulted ceiling changes direction overhead, creating what he describes as an almost cathedral-like effect.

Photography by Jeanne Canto

A soothing beige palette covers the limewashed walls, where two layers of creamy beige from JH Wall Paints create subtle depth. The restrained material palette was intentional, allowing the architecture to take precedence. Hand-formed terracotta bricks from Clay Imports add texture along the corridor, while fluted travertine on the point-of-sale station introduces a natural stone element. Cosentino Dekton counters are ultra-durable and easy to clean, essential in high-touch zones.

Photography by Jeanne Canto

In a nod to Japanese design, paper lanterns float overhead, while mini Zen gardens built into some retail islands create a meditative effect. The influence also extends to the circular light feature and, for Dolatowski, the intentionality behind each surface and detail. Rather than using partitions to separate areas, tonal linen curtains maintain fluidity as clients move from the front to the back of the studio. That sense of continuity has become increasingly important to Sana’s interiors: Retail areas that were once conceived as individual zones now connect to create what Dolatowski describes as one continuous sculpture.

Photography by Jeanne Canto

There is one notable break from the otherwise neutral palette: The bathroom is drenched in a deep terracotta red, a deliberate reference to the warmer colors found in Sana’s original Wynwood location.

Photography by Jeanne Canto

This modern oasis is a refuge of calm in contrast to the frenetic arts district location. “There is a lot going on visually, and this is kind of a counterpoint to that,” Dolatowski notes. “We always wanted to create this feeling of a deep breath,” he adds. “It is minimal while still being quite expressive in form.”

Photography by Jeanne Canto

That atmosphere also reflects how Sana wants clients to use the space. The brand calls its aestheticians “skin healers,” and Dolatowski thinks of the studio as a place of ritual rather than a destination for a quick fix. “It’s meant to be a place you come back to,” he says. “It’s really about transformation over time.”

Photography by Jeanne Canto

With an intentional blend of architecture, materiality, and proportion, Sana Skin Studio is a place that offers more than temporary treatments. For Dolatowski, the new Wynwood flagship represents the most complete expression yet of a design language that has evolved alongside the brand: increasingly pared back, continuous, and sculptural.

Why are adults afraid to play? In a world that can feel increasingly bleak and gray, British-Nigerian designer Yinka Ilori makes a case for color, imagination, and a little silliness. Those ideas come together in Chairman, the first comprehensive book dedicated to Ilori’s furniture work.

Photography courtesy of ORO Editions

Known as an “architect of joy,” Ilori brings his signature approach to architecture, furniture, and products. Colorblocking, contrasting hues, and unexpected details are all within the realm of possibility, and these themes run throughout Chairman, which traces more than a decade of his furniture practice.

Photography courtesy of ORO Editions

At the center of that story are vintage chairs sourced from charity shops around London, which Ilori transformed through color, pattern, and decoration. Rather than treating the existing furniture as a blank canvas, he was drawn to the histories the pieces already carried.

Photography courtesy of ORO Editions

“For me, those chairs felt like people with stories,” Ilori says. “I became genuinely attached to them because it was so personal and so meaningful.”

Photography courtesy of ORO Editions

That approach to furniture has parallels throughout Ilori’s broader practice. From architecture and products to interiors, he brings a playful vision to the conversation, one where expectations can be upended. Decorative elements, shiny lacquer, and detailed patterning are all a minimalist’s nightmare—Ilori frequently uses all three, a welcome release from convention, coupled with intention.

Photography courtesy of ORO Editions

Chairman is a deep dive into Ilori’s furniture explorations. Where decoration, pattern, and color are often deployed sparingly in contemporary interiors, Ilori lets his combinations sound off with a bang. Applied to something as familiar and functional as the chair, they challenge expectations of what one of design’s most ubiquitous objects can be. A chair may be mundane—even ordinary—but in Ilori’s hands, it becomes a place for experimentation, storytelling, and play.

Photography courtesy of ORO Editions

Published by ORO Editions, Chairman by Yinka Ilori is now available for purchase.

Evey sits in Montreal’s dense residential Hochelaga-Maisonneuve neighborhood, on a lot adjacent to a green alley where, as Appareil Architecture describes it, “everyday activities intersect with the more discreet presence of the city.” Appareil Architecture approached the property as a renovation and extension of one of the existing buildings lining the street.

Photography by Félix Michaud

The Montreal triplex is a recognizable housing type: three units stacked behind a shared facade, built close against neighboring buildings on a narrow city lot, with a shared party wall that any renovation must work around.

Photography by Félix Michaud

Appareil Architecture’s approach did not “aim to rethink the typology of a Montreal triplex, but rather to subtly reorient the living conditions it offers,” explains associate architect Marc-Olivier Champagne-Thomas. The scope of work included an extension and a renovation, yet the building’s outward identity as a triplex stayed in place—the real change happened inside.

Photography by Félix Michaud

Champagne-Thomas ties that restraint to the site itself. The project, he says, “revolves around negotiating a balance between the intimacy of the house and the implicit openness to the immediate urban context.” Rather than resolving that duality, the renovation keeps it active, a tension he calls the project’s guiding thread. The alley bordering the house is where that balance gets tested daily, a strip of the block where residents’ routines and the wider city both pass through.

Photography by Félix Michaud

The spatial organization inside Evey, says interior designer Esther Leduc, “is based on a continuous line that runs along the party wall,” an axis that “structures the entire project and ensures its coherence.” She describes it as a silent device, along which “circulation, visual openings, and moments of openness are aligned.” A staircase to the basement, a run of interior windows, and a framed sightline between the front and back of the house all belong to that same line. It’s a house built to be traversed, Leduc says, rather than compartmentalized.

Photography by Félix Michaud

For club owners—or anyone with unusually loud neighbors—keeping sound contained can be a necessity. But completely eliminating unwanted sound is notoriously difficult. Spaces designed to absorb virtually all sound reflections, known as dead rooms, require specialized materials and acoustic expertise. (Think: vocal recording booths.) Drawing on that concept, emerging Spanish design firm Clap Studio reimagined a room inside an iconic Valencia music venue around the pursuit of pure sound.

Photography by David Zarzoso, courtesy of Clap Studio.

A temple of techno for decades, SPOOK is part of La Ruta del Bakalao (or “Ruta Destroy”), the legendary 18-mile club circuit along the CV-500 highway that captivated Spain and Europe’s electronic dance scenes in the 1980s and ’90s. When local practice Clap Studio was tapped to reimagine one of SPOOK’s rave rooms, the goal was architecturally pure sound: crisp, clear, and direct, like a recording studio.

Photography by David Zarzoso; courtesy of Clap Studio

Completed earlier this year, the 1,500-square-foot space is covered in spiky pyramid forms that extend the ceiling, pillars, and walls. Some are made of dark gray concrete, while others are crafted from polyurethane foam, doubling as acoustic paneling while reinforcing the interior’s austere energy.

Photography by David Zarzoso; courtesy of Clap Studio

The updated SPOOK is also completely coated in shades of deep blue, from ultramarine surfaces to pale blue speakers salvaged from the previous space and repainted. Even the room’s lighting casts an indigo hue across the dance floor, while a crisp ice blue emanates from the bar. In an intentionally monochromatic space, these shifts in light create striking contrast.

Photography by David Zarzoso; courtesy of Clap Studio

Paying respect to the club’s 1980s roots, Clap Studio also created a custom-designed sofa and pouf from denim fabric scraps. The gesture is small, but it reflects SPOOK’s broader approach: preserving traces of its past while reshaping the space for its next era.

Clap Studio founders Jordi Iranzo and Àngela Montagud at SPOOK. Photography by David Zarzoso; courtesy of Clap Studio.