The Vitra Design Museum opens the first Geoffrey Bawa retrospective in two decades.
The Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein is opening the first major retrospective of Geoffrey Bawa’s work in twenty years. Titled “Architecture for the Senses,” the show gathers over 250 objects—drawings, models, furniture, film, and photography—tracing the five-decade career of the Sri Lanka-born, London-trained architect who fused modernist principles with local materials and craft. The exhibition includes new commissioned photography by Iwan Baan and immersive scenography by Lina Ghotmeh, designer of the 2023 Serpentine Pavilion. The show also highlights Bawa’s collaborations with Sri Lankan artists and craftspeople, including Ena de Silva and Laki Senanayake, whose work was woven into his buildings rather than added on top of them.
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi names Dr. Valerie Hillings its inaugural director.
The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi has appointed Dr. Valerie Hillings as the inaugural Director of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a cornerstone of the Saadiyat Cultural District alongside the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Zayed National Museum, and teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi. In the role, Hillings will lead the museum’s strategic direction and oversee its inaugural exhibitions ahead of its opening in the Frank Gehry-designed building. Hillings brings a long history with the project: she served as the Guggenheim’s Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs for the Abu Dhabi initiative from 2009 to 2018, working on collection strategy and pre-opening programming, after five years on the Guggenheim’s New York curatorial staff. Since 2018, she has directed the North Carolina Museum of Art, where she added roughly 400 works to the collection. Once open, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will house 30 galleries across 11,600 square meters of interior space, plus 23,000 square meters of outdoor exhibition area, positioning it as one of the world’s major platforms for modern and contemporary art.
Daniel Arsham will partner with The Balvenie on a whisky collection and immersive performance for Frieze Seoul.
Artist Daniel Arsham is collaborating with Scottish distillery The Balvenie on a new whisky collection, Dawn of Our Spirit, debuting September 1 alongside Frieze Seoul. The launch is introduced through an immersive performance directed by Arsham, drawing on the meditative process of turning barley on a malting floor, a step he observes firsthand at the distillery’s Speyside site. Arsham describes the distillery as rich with sensory material, from the copper stills to the scent-laden wooden casks. The Balvenie’s malt master, Kelsey McKechnie, who conceived of the collection, says Arsham’s storytelling brings the distillery’s malting tradition to a global audience. The project adds to Arsham’s growing list of brand collaborations, including Dior, Adidas, and Rimowa, alongside his role as creative director for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Dawn of Our Spirit will later travel to New York, Shanghai, and Taipei.
A new Álvaro Siza show at the Canadian Centre for Architecture draws from his archive across three cities.
A new retrospective at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, titled “The fortune of the city is that it has never been perfect,” follows Álvaro Siza’s decades-long approach to urban intervention, drawing on the Portuguese architect’s vast archive, jointly held by the CCA, Porto’s Fundação de Serralves, and Lisbon’s Museo Gulbenkian since a 2015 donation. Curated by CCA director Giovanna Borasi with Laura Aparicio Llorente, the show favors lesser-known and often unbuilt projects over Siza’s canonical works, using sketches, models, and photography arranged across six rooms. The exhibition moves city by city: Siza’s public housing masterplan for Quinta da Malagueira in Évora, his post-fire reconstruction plan for Lisbon’s Chiado neighborhood, earthquake-recovery work in Salemi, Sicily, and housing interventions in Berlin, Venice, and The Hague. Throughout, the show argues that Siza treated the city itself as an ongoing design project, using form to work through social and civic questions, including reworking his Hague housing plans to better accommodate immigrant residents.
“Blazymania” fuels Chanel’s double-digit sales growth.
Chanel’s comparable revenue rose about 16 percent in the first half of 2026, according to a Bloomberg News report citing a person familiar with the privately held French luxury group’s performance, outpacing publicly listed rivals. The gains are tied to creative director Matthieu Blazy’s debut collections, which reached stores in March and have been credited with helping the house buck an industry-wide slowdown, one reflected in recent results from LVMH and Hermès, whose more modest sales growth failed to reassure investors. According to Bloomberg’s report, Chanel’s fashion division, roughly 60 percent of total revenue, grew in line with the group average, while its watches and fine jewelry unit outperformed, posting 35 percent growth. All regions recorded gains, including China and the Middle East, with U.S. sales up more than 25 percent.
A new living mycelium textile can self-clean, renew, and almost self-repair.
In Rwanda, Congolese chef Dieuveil Malonga’s Culinary Innovation Village studies and prepares food from across Africa.
According to the Lyst Index, the New York Knicks cap was the hottest fashion accessory of Q2.
Aron Wiesenfeld’s oil paintings convey a magnetizing, quiet mystery.
