The Design Dispatch offers expertly written and essential news from the design world crafted by our dedicated team. Think of it as your cheat sheet for the day in design delivered to your inbox before you’ve had your coffee. Subscribe now.
Have a news story our readers need to see? Submit it here
Dolce & Gabbana Casa makes its debut during Milan Design week with two boutiques.
“Dolce & Gabbana Casa opens the doors to its first two dedicated spaces in Milan. Unveiled during Milan Design Week 2022, the two spaces will showcase the fashion house’s rich collections of furniture and accessories, including home textiles, Murano glassware and Sicilian ceramics. The home furnishings and accessories debut comprises four distinctive collections, each embodying a different Italian spirit.” [H/T Wallpaper]
New data suggests that the NFT market may not be completely on the brink of collapse.
“Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that sales of NFTs were “flatlining”, citing data from NonFungible, a data analytics company that covers the industry. On the face of it, the figures look stark: active NFT wallets appear to have dropped 88 percent—from 119,000 to 14,000—since September last year, and individual sales have dropped from a daily average of 225,000 to 19,000, a precipitous 92 percent. The problem is that these data do not provide the full story. NFTs are a vast and diverse asset class that defy attempts to explain their value in terms of one set of market principles. Sometimes they behave like assets in the traditional art market, with one-off pieces and collections produced by popular artists going for exorbitant sums based on a heady combination of perceived prestige and faith in an even more exorbitant resale price.” [H/T The Art Newspaper]
PAE Living Building in Portland by ZGF Architects. Photography by Jamie Goodwick…
ZGF Architects completes the world’s largest living commercial building in Portland.
“ZGF Architects has shared news that a highly anticipated hometown project, one that sets a new and elevated benchmark for sustainable design and advanced engineering in the City of Roses, opened to the public earlier this week. Named the PAE Living Building, the five-story, 58,000-square-foot mixed-use structure … can now officially claim bragging rights as the largest commercial building in the world built to achieve full Living Building Challenge certification from the Seattle-based International Living Future Institute. What’s more, the PAE Living Building is the first building in Portland to meet this performance standard and the first-ever LBC project to be developed and funded as a speculative office building through the standard commercial real estate development model. [H/T The Architect’s Newspaper]
Reebok launches Fit to Fit, its first-ever adaptive sneakers for people with disabilities.
“Sportswear brand Reebok has unveiled Fit to Fit, a collection of adaptive trainers that can be easily put on and taken off, as part of the brand’s move towards a more accessible footwear offering. The range, which comprises the Nanoflex Parafit TR and the Club MEMT Parafit, was designed with adaptive features that allow people with restricted mobility to dress quickly and more easily by removing trickier elements such as buttons and buckles.” [H/T Dezeen]
Modular Imagination by Abloh for Cassina…
Cassina and Alessi are presenting new products by Virgil Abloh at Milan Design Week.
As an artist, architect, engineer, creative director, artistic director, industrial designer, fashion designer, musician, DJ, and philanthropist, it’s hard to argue that Virgil Abloh was anything other than a visionary of contemporary culture. Prior to his sudden passing last November, Abloh had been working with famed Italian design labels Cassina and Alessi on two separate projects, both of which are set to be presented at Milan Design Week. Cassina—a brand renowned for crafting high-end designer furniture—is showcasing ‘Modular Imagination by Abloh,’ a collaboration rooted within the elementary creative process of play, comprising two different-sized, matt-black building blocks. For his partnership with Alessi, Abloh offered a brutalist viewpoint on everyday cutlery. Arriving as a part of the label’s 100 year project, “Alessi 100–001” is a collaboration with Abloh and his London-based design studio Alaska Alaska, which will be showcased in an installation by Studio Temp. [H/T Highsnobiety]
Gagosian Paris is presenting Christo’s early works before he wrapped landmarks.
“Long before scaling the heights of the Reichstag in Berlin or the Pont Neuf in Paris, the artist known as Christo started on a much smaller scale. Today, two years after his death, some of the rare and rarely seen works, many of them creative experiments that would later find expression in far larger projects—including the wrapping of the Arc de Triomphe last October—feature in a new exhibition in Paris. The event, at the Gagosian gallery, a short walk from the artist’s first studio, will display 25 artworks created by Christo before his collaboration with his wife, Jeanne-Claude, between 1958 and 1963.” [H/T The Guardian]
ABBA Arena by Stufish Entertainment Architects…
Today’s attractive distractions:
An extreme drought reveals the ruins of a submerged city in an Iraq lake.
