Claridge’s Unveils a Pristine John Pawson–Designed Gallery, and Other News

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Claridge’s Unveils a Pristine John Pawson–Designed Gallery 

We recently paid a visit to Claridge’s when they debuted the Painter’s Room, an ornate cocktail nook awash in Art Deco flourishes, but the legendary London hotel offers yet another reason to return with ArtSpace. One of the largest galleries within Mayfair’s burgeoning creative community, the newly unveiled exhibition space becomes the first designed art gallery within a luxury hotel and has been created to museum-quality standards.

ArtSpace is the result of a groundbreaking five-year-long engineering project in which London clay underneath the hotel was excavated and donated to artists to create ceramics. John Pawson masterminded the interior, which occupies the hotel’s refurbished Victorian basement that enjoys a dramatic staircase, 13-foot-tall ceilings, and pale gray terrazzo flooring. Kicking off the program of rotating two-month-long exhibitions is “Sunshine” by Damien Hirst, who presents a series of his pipe cleaner animals and examples of his color chart series. 

Lehrer Architects builds a complex of colorful tiny houses for the homeless in L.A.

As the housing crisis in Los Angeles intensifies, the city’s Bureau of Engineering has tapped Lehrer Architects for a complex of tiny houses called Whitsett West. The project, which supports the city’s 2029 mission of building a minimum of 255,000 affordable housing units, will house 150 residents across 77 colorful units situated within a narrow, 20-foot-wide plot. “A profound joy of these projects is the necessity for—and intensity of—their visual presence,” says Michael Lehrer. “Every tool in our visual palette was employed, starting with perspective, procession, and color. If beauty breeds honor and respect, there are no more deserving groups than our sisters and brothers on the streets.”

Kering and Phaidon team up to launch the Women in Motion Design Scholarship.

In 2015, Kering founded Women in Motion to spotlight women’s contributions to culture and the arts. On the heels of Woman Made, a new book supporting women designers recently published by Phaidon, the luxury conglomerate is also launching the Women in Motion Design Scholarship. The $25,000 award supports one undergraduate woman designer’s college tuition and fees and is available to women enrolled in an undergraduate design program at an accredited university whose work focuses on product, furniture, textile, or lighting design. 

Boy Smells is opening an L.A. pop-up as the candle brand eyes product expansion. 

Boy Smells has gained attention and amassed a sizable following for its low price points and non-gendered approach to scent—a concept it calls “genderfulness.” Now, the five-year-old brand is eyeing further expansion by opening a pop-up in Los Angeles. According to chief executive David Duplantis, the pop-up will serve as testing grounds for potential future brick-and-mortar ventures, tracking traffic and buying habits among customers. “We’ve never been able to take the entire, full breadth of the collection and all our brand storytelling and put it in one [real life], physical location,” adds co-founder Matthew Herman. 

Diego Rivera’s City of Arts complex opens its doors 80 years after its conception.

Envisioned as a giant performance space that fosters Mexican artistry, the City of Arts has completed its final phase with the addition of 13 volcanic stone buildings that will host a gallery, library, workshops, and offices thanks to father-and-son architects Mauricio and Manuel Rocha. The $960,000 facility, originally envisioned in a manifesto that Rivera wrote in the late 1940s but was never actualized before his death in 1957, serves as an extension of the Anahuacalli Museum, which houses Rivera’s massive collection of Mesoamerican art.

The actor Elijah Wood sells an NFT purchased from an artist with a racist history.

The Lord of the Rings star’s side hustle of accumulating an NFT arsenal has backfired after a recent purchase of a George Trosley artwork ignited online criticism. Unbeknownst to Wood, the cartoon artist once depicted minorities in a derogatory fashion in a 1970s porn magazine. Following this realization thanks to vocal Twitter fans, Wood sold his NFT and decried racism, donating proceeds from the sale to the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and Black Lives Matter.

Authorities arrest the owner of a collapsed 21-storey apartment block in Lagos.

After a 21-storey apartment complex in Lagos collapsed and killed 14 people, it surfaced that the building was only approved for 15 floors. Authorities arrested the owner and property developers in connection with the tragedy, suggesting that the surplus weight contributed to the collapse. Rescue teams are scrambling to locate missing people trapped in the rubble.

Today’s attractive distractions:

This collective is carving space for women and gender-nonconforming skaters.

What if the world was covered in enormous, genetically engineered supertrees?

Tupac Shakur’s estate will open a major touring exhibition about the late rapper.

Quentin Tarantino will soon offer seven uncut scenes from Pulp Fiction as NFTs.