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Design Dispatch

Our daily look at the world through the lens of design.

The new NikeLab Air VaporMax x Marc Newson. (Photo: Courtesy Nike)

Special Editions

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of the Nike Air Max, Nike has enlisted Marc Newson, Riccardo Tisci, and Arthur Huang to create new versions of the shoe. “The VaporMax sole—it’s technological, but I think I wanted to sort of play that down,” said Newson of his Air Max design. “So I took this as an opportunity to sort of do the opposite of what I thought everyone else might do.”
[Nike]

New York City in 1932. (Photo: Wikimedia)

Christopher Gray, 1950-2017

Architectural historian Christopher Gray, best known for his Streetscapes column in The New York Times, has died. “Each building has a few competing histories,” Gray wrote in his last column in 2014. “Mansions, for instance, were the domain not just of fancy people upstairs, but also of servants below — who were they? Where did they come from, and go? And what about the people who moved in when the old pile was broken into apartments? There are many stakeholders in a single structure, not just the Astors and Vanderbilts.”
[The New York Times]

Annie Leibovitz. (Photo: Wikimedia)

Leibovitz Papers Preserved

Photographer Annie Leibovitz’s archives will be housed at the LUMA Foundation, a Zurich-based nonprofit. LUMA will organize a series of exhibitions tied to the new acquisition, the first of which will explore Leibovitz’s early work.
[Artnews]

Designs from Thakoon’s fall/winter 2017 collection. (Photo: via Vogue Runway)

Thakoon in Trouble

After adopting the new see-now-buy-now model in 2015, fashion designer Thakoon Panichgul is restructuring his business. “We have recognized that the business model is ahead of the current retail environment,” reads the company’s statement. “Therefore, we are taking a pause and an eventual restructure.”
[The Cut]

A rendering of the Zaha Hadid-designed 520 West 28th Street in New York. (Photo: Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects)

Sovereign Schumacher

The four executors of Zaha Hadid’s will, including Zaha Hadid Architects principal Patrik Schumacher, have been appointed as directors of Zaha Hadid Holdings. The other three directors are Hadid’s niece, architect Rana Hadid, and two of Hadid’s friends, artist Brian Clarke and developer Peter Palumbo.
[The Architects’ Journal]

From Left: Katia Nounou, Head of Sotheby’s Dubai Office, H.H Sheikh Nahyan Mabarak Nayhan, Minister of Culture & Knowledge Development, and Tad Smith, Sotheby’s President and CEO. (Photo: Courtesy Sotheby’s)

Sotheby’s Opens in Dubai

Sotheby’s has officially launched its Dubai office. The ribbon-cutting coincided with Art Week Dubai, the region’s premier art world event. “Our Dubai office enhances our ability to serve our fast-growing community of clients across the region and is geared to broadening the scope of what we offer to a whole new audience,” said the company’s Middle East and India chairman, Edward Gibbs.
[Artnet]

Gianfranco Gorgoni’s “Spiral Jetty (4),” (2013). (Photo: Courtesy Jim Kempner Fine Art, New York)

Art of the State

Utah’s Senate and House of Representatives have both passed bills to name Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” as the official state artwork. In order make the designation official, Utah Governor Gary Herbert still needs to approve both bills.
[Artforum]

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