Constructed in 1908 by government architect Keijiro Yamashita, the landmark Nara Prison is the only complex among Japan’s monumental “Five Great Prisons of Meiji” to survive almost entirely intact. More than a century later, Hoshino Resorts has transformed the former prison into Hoshinoya Nara Prison, , a 48-suite luxury hotel that preserves the building’s distinctive architecture while introducing an entirely new purpose.

Photography courtesy of Hoshino Resorts

Though the converted prison-hotel model isn’t anything new, Hoshinoya Nara Prison approaches adaptive reuse as an exercise in cultural preservation. With support from conservation specialists at Yasui Architects & Engineers, lead architect Rie Azuma (Azuma Environmental Architectural Research Institute) carried out a considered renovation that’s both deeply respectful of the site’s history and resolutely contemporary.

Photography courtesy of Hoshino Resorts

The Nara Prison complex relies on the conventional Haviland System—a radial layout in which five wings extend from a central guardhouse. Rather than masking this rigid institutional typology, Azuma and her team embraced its structural geometry, preserving the original circulation routes and emphasizing the architectural rhythm of the long corridors and brick arches.

Photography courtesy of Hoshino Resorts

“We aim to preserve the memory of how [Japanese people] of the time engaged with unfamiliar Western culture, while creating a space where modern guests can enjoy a comfortable stay,” Azuma explains. Despite this rigid geometry, the resulting interiors balance the building’s imposing architecture with the warmth and comfort expected of a contemporary hotel.

Photography courtesy of Hoshino Resorts

The primary design challenge was converting the narrow, isolated detention cells into expansive luxury suites. Azuma’s team solved this by connecting former cells to create larger accommodations while retaining elements of the original architecture. For signature suites such as The 11-Cell Deluxe, the team brought together 11 original blocks into a single footprint. The resulting suite includes an expansive living area and a separate dressing lounge.

Photography courtesy of Hoshino Resorts

Throughout the interiors, material choices balance historical preservation with contemporary structural requirements. Exposed steel seismic reinforcements—installed to fortify the century-old brickwork—create a compelling dialogue alongside restored plaster ceiling moldings and warm timber paneling.

Photography courtesy of Hoshino Resorts

While the sharp metallic lines stand in stark, graphic contrast against the rugged, hand-laid brick walls, celebrating the physical weight of the original construction, the wooden inserts introduce tactile warmth and soften the otherwise austere material palette.

Photography courtesy of Hoshino Resorts

The interior concept draws directly from the Meiji era’s spirit of global integration. In a first for the Hoshinoya brand, European furnishings appear throughout the property, reflecting the Western influences that shaped Japanese architecture and culture during the period. Contemporary artworks complement the historic interiors, set within the building’s preserved architectural volumes. In the main lounge, an open atrium and exposed structural beams are complemented by a series of arches extending from the windows, creating an inviting atmosphere for quiet reflection and relaxation.

Photography courtesy of Hoshino Resorts

Lighting designer Masanobu Takeishi used subtle indirect illumination and handcrafted ceramic fixtures, thrown by local artisans, to soften the building’s severity and introduce depth and spatial richness. In the courtyard, lighting inspired by distant moonlight creates a similarly restrained atmosphere after dark.

Photography courtesy of Hoshino Resorts

Outdoors, landscape architect Hiroki Hasegawa imagined the expansive grounds through an “outside within” concept, introducing geometrically arranged walkways, private decks, and carefully maintained planting areas to offer guests serene outdoor spaces within the former prison walls.

“The vast, open spaces that once served security purposes have been preserved as much as possible, while fragments of the outside world—carefully maintained landscapes—have been introduced in selected areas,” Hasegawa shares.

Photography courtesy of Hoshino Resorts

Beyond its architectural transformation, Hoshinoya Nara Prison in adaptive reuse and heritage preservation. Rather than treating the building’s history as a backdrop, the project incorporates it into the guest experience, allowing visitors to encounter the original architecture alongside contemporary interventions.

Through what Hoshino Resorts has dubbed the “Cycle of Heritage,” the project proposes a model in which tourism contributes to the continued preservation of significant cultural properties. Connected directly to the on-site Nara Prison Museum through a dedicated pathway, the hotel invites guests to engage with the building’s complex institutional history beyond its newly restored interiors.

At 262 Fifth Avenue, the elevator shafts, major MEP risers, and service infrastructure sit outside the perimeter of the apartments. Architecture studio Meganom developed this exo-core arrangement for the 860-foot NoMad tower in collaboration with structural engineers at WSP and MEP engineers at GEA, leaving its 26 full-floor and duplex residences free of interior columns. Moving these systems outside the apartments creates cleaner, more open interiors.

Photography by Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen

“Architecture is part of our everyday lives, and we should treat it as such,” says Boris Kuzinez, founder of Five Points Development Group, who worked closely with the design teams throughout the project. “At its core, architecture is about protecting and shaping the environments where people live.”

Photography by Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen

For Meganom founder Yury Grigoryan, that philosophy extends to the building’s exterior. “We are trying to find human significance and expressiveness in simple forms,” he says. The facade comprises more than 220,000 sculptural anodized aluminum brick elements, whose textured surfaces capture and reflect daylight as the sun moves across the city. At the crown, a 70-foot oculus frames a 24-karat gold inverted arch, created in collaboration with Florentine gold-leaf atelier Giusto Manetti Battiloro, whose restoration work includes Florence Cathedral, Big Ben, and Rockefeller Center’s Prometheus statue.

Photography by Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen

For the interiors, Meganom turned to Copenhagen-based Norm Architects, marking the first Manhattan luxury residential project for both studios. The separated core allows for full-floor customization and unobstructed city views, with floor-to-ceiling windows reaching up to 20 feet. The building also follows Passive House principles, incorporating triple-filtered fresh air and radiant floor heating by Rehau.

Photography by Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen

Norm Architects approached the interiors through three guiding concepts: Sanctuary in the Sky, Soft Elegance, and Sculptural Balance. “From the beginning, we approached the project as a sanctuary in the sky—but ultimately also as ‘just’ a home,” says partner Peter Eland. The studio envisioned the residences as a retreat from the intensity of the streets below, while maintaining a connection to the city through carefully framed views.

Photography by Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen

Natural light plays a central role in that relationship, moving across walls, floors, and other surfaces throughout the day to create shifting patterns of light and shadow. A tone-on-tone palette emphasizes the inherent qualities of the materials, while geometric forms, sculptural details, and subtle metallic accents reference the building’s aluminum facade.

Photography by Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen

That restrained approach carries through to the material selections. Sustainably sourced oak flooring by Listone Giordano establishes a warm foundation, while Trapattoni Marmi’s sculptural Grigio Alpi stonework brings a more substantial presence to the kitchens and bathrooms, complemented by minimalist fixtures from Ceadesign. Molteni&C produced the kitchens and wardrobes, while Perugini Making handled the custom millwork and staircase, including its leather-wrapped handrails. Custom doors by Lualdi incorporate acoustic insulation without interrupting the interiors’ clean lines, and glare-free lighting by Flos, integrated with Lutron controls, provides illumination without drawing attention away from the architecture.

Photography by Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen

Meganom’s structural decisions create the openness and flexibility that Norm Architects builds upon, while the interiors introduce warmth and intimacy to a building of considerable scale. Together, the two studios demonstrate how architecture and interior design can work toward the same goal: creating a sense of calm high above the city without losing its connection to the streets below.

For decades, Ebony and Jet were among the most important publications documenting Black American life and culture, making Johnson Publishing Company the era’s most influential Black-owned media corporation. Completed in 1972, its headquarters at 820 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago gave that cultural presence a physical form. More than 40 years later, photographer Barbara Karant began documenting the now-abandoned building, capturing its kaleidoscopic patterns, mirrored surfaces, and remarkably intact 1970s interiors. Her photographs are now collected in 820 Ebony/Jet: Visions of the Johnson Publishing Company, an American Icon, a new monograph from MW Editions that preserves the building and its design legacy.

Photography courtesy of courtesy MW Editions

The headquarters was significant before anyone stepped inside. Publisher John H. Johnson had faced resistance from real estate agents and bankers wary of financing a Black-owned company, and ultimately commissioned John Moutoussamy, the first Black architect to design a downtown Chicago high-rise. Rather than the glass-and-steel towers common to the era, Johnson wanted a building with permanence and character. Moutoussamy delivered a restrained exterior clad in travertine marble.

Photography courtesy MW Editions

Inside, restraint gave way to something far more expressive. Palm Springs designers Arthur Elrod and William Raiser gave each of the building’s 11 floors its own combination of color and pattern, creating interiors that reflected Johnson Publishing Company’s cultural ambitions as much as its corporate identity. The cafeteria paired orange, purple, and gold chevrons, while co-founder Eunice Johnson’s cream-and-honey office incorporated pieces from the couple’s art collection. Geometric wallpapers, mirrored surfaces, bold carpets, and richly patterned finishes appeared throughout.

Photography courtesy MW Editions

Remarkably, much of that design remained unchanged until Johnson Publishing Company left the building in 2012. Karant began photographing the empty headquarters the following year and continued through 2018. With the furnishings gone, she focused her lens on the surfaces and details that defined the interiors: geometric wallpapers, mirrored dressing rooms, and the Test Kitchen’s swirling laminate cabinetry, whose psychedelic patterning recalls Italian marbled paper. Mirrors double and multiply motifs within her compositions, while the executive floor’s picture windows bring Lake Michigan and Grant Park into view.

Photography courtesy MW Editions

The building’s emptiness is part of what gives the photographs their power. Stripped of the people, magazines, and day-to-day activity that once animated the headquarters, the rooms become studies in color, pattern, and material—but also records of a workplace and cultural institution that no longer exists in this form.

The book broadens that record with documentary images of the original interiors and Ebony’s in-house photo studio, as well as Richard Hunt’s site-specific lobby sculpture, Expansive Construction (1972). Recollections from former employees add firsthand accounts of life inside the building, while the book also traces its influence on artists including Theaster Gates, Hank Willis Thomas, Kwame Brathwaite, Lorna Simpson, Martine Syms, and David Hartt.

Photography courtesy MW Editions

At 240 pages, 820 Ebony/Jet brings together 142 color and eight black-and-white images, with a foreword by artist Deborah Willis and essays by Aaron Bryant, Cheryl Finley, Carla Williams, Jon Ott, Brenna Wynn Greer, and E. James West. The book preserves a remarkable chapter of American design history—and the physical environment created for two publications that helped shape how Black American life was seen, documented, and celebrated.

Published by MW Editions, 820 Ebony/Jet: Visions of the Johnson Publishing Company, an American Icon, is available Oct. 13 for $65.

A dormant dome in the heart of Istanbul has been reimagined as a contemporary cafe. Designed by international design and creative studio Mitte, Local People transforms an underused structure in Başakşehir, one of the city’s densely developed residential districts, into a community gathering place. As its name suggests, the project embodies a local spirit, bringing a community-centered identity to its surroundings.

Photography by Ibrahim Özbunar

The 23,680-square-foot space revolves around the existing structure’s circular geometry and open floor plan. At the center sits a vertical willow tree installation that symbolizes gathering and belonging. Forming a central “nest” indoors, the willow branches extend outside, providing natural shade and creating a seamless connection between the interior and surrounding landscape.

Photography by Ibrahim Özbunar

From this symbolic core, the layout radiates outward in concentric layers—connecting the main ground floor with a circular outdoor terrace and a mezzanine level above.

Photography by Ibrahim Özbunar

Local People’s architectural strength lies in the building’s domed, circular configuration. While this geometry presented significant spatial challenges, it ultimately became one of the project’s defining design opportunities, shaping both the cafe’s character and the way visitors move through it.

Photography by Ibrahim Özbunar

“Every decision within the space, from circulation flow to seating arrangement, had to be thought through in concert with the rhythm of the circular plan,” the Mitte team says. “As a result, the most critical phase of the design process was reading the geometry of the building and translating it into a functional and balanced spatial organization.”

Photography by Ibrahim Özbunar

Connecting the building’s past and present, the preserved glazed dome is a prominent element in the architectural dialogue that defines Local People. Developed in collaboration with artist Pınar Çetin, custom-designed textile sun-shading panels beneath the dome filter natural light, softening the atmosphere and adding a layered, sculptural quality to the ceiling. At the entrance, an amorphous, color-gradient artwork transforms a structural column into a sculptural focal point.

Photography by Ibrahim Özbunar

With natural light and shadow shaping Local People’s color palette, the cafe draws inspiration from the surrounding valley. Complementing the verdant landscape, the palette balances rich coffee-colored gradients with light earth tones and stark white surfaces.

Photography by Ibrahim Özbunar

For the Mitte team, the gradient tones evoke the way coffee’s aroma gradually diffuses through the air. “The coffee tones were chosen not merely to create an inviting atmosphere, but to translate its sensory qualities—the rich aroma and the way it diffuses through the air—into a visual language,” they say.

Photography by Ibrahim Özbunar

Lending the cafe a contemporary and subtly industrial quality, metal-clad columns by Metal Reklam surround the central core, while breeze blocks by Karo Istanbul line the facade, filtering daylight. To reinforce the project’s connection to its surroundings, Mitte sourced most of its materials from local suppliers, allowing for more customized production and an emphasis on regional craftsmanship.

Photography by Ibrahim Özbunar

“The material palette softens the boundaries between inside and outside, completing Local People’s nature-connected, comfortable, and refined atmosphere,” the Mitte team says. Envisioned as a place to gather, work, or unwind after a long day, Local People offers what the designers describe as a “sophisticated escape within an everyday residential setting.” The result is a contemporary social hub that connects the neighborhood with the green valley at its center.

You wouldn’t think a 7,000-square-foot West Coast modern home would settle in so perfectly on a historical site above the West Vancouver oceanfront. But Openspace Architecture made sure of it, relying on an ultra-minimal material palette of wood, concrete, and glass that lets the project not just mirror the surrounding nature, but seemingly float among the trees.

Photography by Ema Peter

The clients—two empty nesters ready for their forever home—had a strong vision, explains Eric Pettit, senior associate at Openspace Architecture. They were dedicated to a modern minimalist aesthetic that could embrace its environment while standing in stark contrast to it. But those design ambitions created even greater challenges in reconciling the super-thin, compact structural assemblies with stringent seismic requirements and the high-performance envelope demands of the Canadian climate.

Photography by Ema Peter

This three-story sanctuary features long, horizontal massing across the site. The open-plan, main floor houses the living, dining, and kitchen areas framed by floor-to-ceiling glass. Sliding doors connect to a pool terrace and outdoor dining. The primary bedroom suite is perhaps the star of the show, with its own lower level, garden access, and even a manufactured stream that runs past it, filling it with sound when the sliding doors are open. The upper level—which cantilevers dramatically above the main floor—houses the remaining four bedrooms.

Photography by Ema Peter

“It took meticulous coordination and a concentrated effort across our dedicated team of consultants and trades to make sure this all fit programmatically,” Pettit says. That same attention extended to the home’s material selection and craftsmanship.

Photography by Ema Peter

The board-formed concrete walls are a perfect example—crafted by creating a form from wooden planks over which the concrete is poured, capturing an impression of the wood’s grain and texture. The team spent extra time selecting the most beautiful planks for locations where people would interact with the concrete most. These surfaces are double-poured with rigid foam thermal breaks, ensuring the walls read as solid masses while performing as high-efficiency thermal envelopes.

Photography by Ema Peter

From the walls to the CNC-milled, ribbed hemlock ceilings, the attention to detail is evident. The deep walnut stain took 35 samples to perfect, and the ribs align through the glass, with all lights, speakers, and sprinklers perfectly centered, which is no easy task. Upstairs, engineered fumed oak flooring complements the concrete’s gray tones.

Photography by Ema Peter

The home’s wood tones were inspired by the trees and bark on the property, with all exterior cedar siding and louvers custom-stained and mixed specifically for the site. “We varied the combinations depending on the expected light and shadow,” Pettit explains. It’s another way the architecture blurs the lines between indoor and out. Expansive glazing and polished concrete floors bring the sunlight in and help it dance throughout the home.

Photography by Ema Peter

The site itself has roots stretching back a century: In the 1920s, it belonged to one of West Vancouver’s original land barons and included a small farmhouse that was ultimately too deteriorated to preserve. For the new residence, Openspace Architecture took a decidedly contemporary approach, using transparency, natural materials, and carefully framed views to keep the surrounding landscape at the center of daily life.

For Paola Lenti’s São Paulo flagship, Armentano Arquitetura (AARQ) designed a building that knows when to recede. Wrapped in glass, dark metal, and a growing veil of vegetation, the three-story showroom acts less like a conventional retail interior and more like a framework for the Italian brand’s color-rich, tactile furniture.

Photography by Ruy Teixeira

Located in São Paulo’s Jardins neighborhood, the 8,100-square-foot flagship was conceived for Paola Lenti, whose work combines technical innovation with artisanal approaches to fibers and textiles. The brand, represented exclusively in Brazil by Casual Móveis, now operates in more than 60 countries.

For AARQ, the challenge was to give that visual identity room to breathe. “Our role isn’t to compete visually with the objects,” says João Armentano, AARQ’s partner and creative director. “It’s precisely to frame them in the best possible way.”

Photography by Ruy Teixeira

That thinking shaped the building from the inside out. An open floor plan allows the furniture to be rearranged freely, while an independent metal structure keeps the interior fluid and largely uninterrupted. The structural grid echoes the technical precision of Paola Lenti’s furniture, while the glass envelope keeps the interior visually open to the surrounding landscape.

Photography by Ruy Teixeira

But the building’s defining gesture is its planted façade. Tensioned steel cables span the openings of the metal structure, providing a framework for vines that cascade downward across the glass. The effect is already lush, but deliberately unfinished: the planting is intended to continue growing until it forms an even denser veil, filtering daylight as it enters the showroom.

Photography by Ruy Teixeira

That living membrane creates a direct link between architecture and product. Paola Lenti’s furniture often relies on highly engineered fibers woven into textured, vividly colored surfaces; here, AARQ translates that language into a botanical skin. The idea developed gradually: the steel cables appeared in early studies, while the façade planting came later, evolving alongside the decision to use glass. On a compact urban site surrounded by neighboring buildings, transparency was not an obvious choice, but the growing landscape gave the glass envelope both privacy and softness.

Photography by Ruy Teixeira

Inside, that contrast becomes especially pronounced. Matte-black staircases and structural elements read as precise, almost graphic interventions against broad expanses of foliage. Elsewhere, floor-to-ceiling glazing frames palms, broad-leafed tropical plants, and trailing vines, making the greenery feel like part of the interior composition rather than something viewed from a distance.

The decision to wait before photographing the completed project was intentional. AARQ wanted the vegetation to begin performing its architectural role before the building was documented. Armentano notes that the façade was conceived to change over time, much like the interiors it contains. In an era dominated by instant images, that slower evolution became part of the project’s meaning.

Photography by Ruy Teixeira

The original design sketch makes that ambition especially clear: even at the conceptual stage, the building was imagined as a dark, rectilinear volume gradually softened by planting, with architecture and landscape working as a single composition. The finished flagship retains that tension between control and growth, precision and texture.

For Armentano, the combination of metal structure, tension cables, glass, and vegetation best captures the project as a whole. It is both a technical solution and an architectural translation of Paola Lenti’s design language—one that will only become more legible as the plants continue to take over.

Most home renovations begin with a brief. However, this 1955 Paul Rudolph original, located in Delray Beach, Florida, began with a discovery. When Nina and Michael Marco of Casa de Marco Design purchased the former Sewell C. Biggs Residence in 2018, they found a red velvet bag in a bedroom closet—inside were 1950s photographs of the home and Rudolph’s hand-drawn plans. Working closely with Jeffrey Silberstein of Silberstein Architecture, the Marcos revitalized the 1,600-square-foot home, reconstructing Rudolph’s tropical modernist design.

Photography by Venjhamin Reyes

From start to finish, the renovation took six years, yet the Marcos resisted the temptation to make things easier. The challenge was never the design; it was finding where preservation and modern safety intersected: reconciling the 1955 structure with present-day hurricane codes.

Photography by Venjhamin Reyes

For Michael, staying consistent with the creative direction Rudolph envisioned more than 70 years ago was imperative. “From day one, our mandate was simple: honor Rudolph’s design no matter how difficult, time-consuming, or costly,” he says.

Photography by Venjhamin Reyes

The home merges the original steel structure, rehabilitated and raised to meet coastal flooding standards, with the initial layout of two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an elevated rectilinear glass pavilion suspended on steel columns. Exposed structural beams complement expansive glass openings, and jalousie windows allow the Atlantic breeze to circulate through the space.

Photography by Venjhamin Reyes

Adhering to the home’s historic preservation requirements, a two-story glass-enclosed breezeway serves as the architectural hinge, linking the original Biggs Residence to the new contemporary addition. Silberstein conceptualized the breezeway, which contains a high-end kitchen and powder room. The addition also includes two bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms and a two-car garage.

Photography by Venjhamin Reyes

This addition not only serves as the one place where old and new physically meet, but also echoes Nina’s philosophy on working with historic properties. “The past should not be roped off behind glass,” she says. “It should be lived in, walked through, and built upon with the same care it was given the first time.”

Photography by Venjhamin Reyes

The Marcos enclosed the space beneath the elevated steel structure, previously an open-air entertainment area and carport, with expansive sliding glass panels, realizing a concept found in Rudolph’s original drawings. By enclosing the lower level in glass, the Marcos created a transparent, recessed ground floor that became the home’s primary living, dining, and entertainment space.

Photography by Venjhamin Reyes

Outside, lush tropical landscaping wraps around the residence, and a sleek terrace sets the stage for a contoured swimming pool, reintroducing the mid-century style to modern coastal living.

Photography by Venjhamin Reyes

With a palette meant to recede into the surrounding landscape, the color story brings touches of sand, sea, and sky to the home, accented by the natural wood woven throughout. Extra White from Sherwin-Williams on the exterior lets the iconic steel beams take on sculptural qualities. That same restraint continues inside, with warm neutrals and textures adding softness to the space.

Photography by Venjhamin Reyes

Staying consistent with Rudolph’s vision, the Marcos chose materials prominent in the 1950s. Oyster-pebble terrazzo imported from Italy enhances the kitchen’s floating island, echoing the home’s own elevated form. Family heirlooms, vintage Lalique glassware, and original photographs of the home are woven throughout the space.

Photography by Venjhamin Reyes

“Terrazzo, aluminum, and natural stone are all materials that Rudolph himself would have reached for because they age beautifully in a coastal climate,” Nina says. “Nothing in this house is generic; every material earned its place.”

Photography by Venjhamin Reyes

For Nina and Michael, reconstructing the Biggs Residence and preserving a Paul Rudolph original isn’t simply about the architecture—it is “one of the greatest honors” of their careers. For them, it’s about “safeguarding a piece of cultural history and ensuring it can be lived in, loved, and appreciated for generations to come.”

Photography by Venjhamin Reyes

The charred cedar cladding on the Milo House, in Cornwall, Vermont, has been brushed once after its flame treatment, a step that softens the soot layer and exposes the grain still visible beneath the char. Architect Elizabeth Herrmann, of Elizabeth Herrmann Architecture + Design, chose the finish, called Gendai, from Nakamoto Forestry for a house conceived as a series of irregular, offset volumes rising through a dense stand of trees on a sloped hillside site.

Photography by Ryan Bent

Yakisugi is made from Japanese cedar, known as sugi, that is intensely flame-treated to improve durability, dimensional stability, and resistance to rot and pests. Herrmann has used Nakamoto Forestry’s cladding across her residential work, and for Milo House both she and the homeowners arrived at the material independently, early in the design process. The homeowners were after a low-maintenance, high-performance exterior, a goal the charred cedar met while also giving the house its bark-like surface.

Photography by Ryan Bent

Named for homeowners Nathan and Seth’s dog, Milo, the house occupies a site where orchards, woodland, and long mountain vistas shaped the design from the outset. The couple moved to Vermont from Boston, with Red House Building ultimately constructing the home.

Photography by Ryan Bent

“We were really interested in having the house feel natural, almost bark-like in tone and texture,” Herrmann says. “We love working with natural materials that have texture, patina, and depth of character.”

Photography by Ryan Bent

The home’s offset staggered forms respond directly to the site’s slope, its tree canopy, and long views west toward the Adirondacks. Rather than starting with a fixed floor plan, Herrmann let those conditions shape how the house unfolds across the site. The resulting spaces shift between more intimate rooms and cathedral-like interiors, with cross-ventilation incorporated throughout. The dark exterior recedes into the surrounding woods, while lighter interiors frame distant mountain views.

Photography by Ryan Bent

Inside, the dark exterior gives way to bright rooms filled with natural light, lighter wood finishes, and views framed through the trees. Lofted ceilings throughout the gathering spaces are paired with a wood acoustical treatment that softens sound within the tall rooms. For Herrmann, the contrast between the charred exterior and lighter interiors is accompanied by another consideration: how the material will change over time.

Photography by Ryan Bent

“With any natural material, there’s a conversation about how it will age,” Herrmann says. “The point of yakisugi isn’t for it to stay frozen in time. It’s a living material designed to evolve.”

Photography by Ryan Bent

When Elliot March was a student at the University of Edinburgh, a chance meeting led to a successful partnership. “James White and I were late to the same class,” he says. “We immediately connected over a shared curiosity about architecture and design.”

Early in their careers, both men worked at larger practices, continuing to learn and refine their craft. White became increasingly drawn to interiors and exploring how they shape an individual’s experience.

Eventually, the pair branched out and established MAWD | March and White Design in 2010. The two friends treasured this newfound freedom to think more holistically about projects and develop their own point of view.

March has led MAWD’s evolution from a luxury British interior design firm to the globally recognized practice it is today. The team has completed a range of projects across sectors, from hospitality to residential to yachts.

No matter the size or scale of a room, March is less interested in arriving with a particular look in mind. “I’d rather let the architecture, location, light, materials, and daily life of a space lead us somewhere,” he says. “When all of those things come together naturally, the result feels like it belongs there.”

Today, Elliot March joins us for Friday Five! Here, he shares five locations that inspire him and five projects that reflect his work.

Elliot March’s Inspirations

Photography courtesy of Elliot March

1. Wynwood Walls

I’ve been spending a lot more time in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood through my work on The Cloud One Hotel & Residences Wynwood, and it always gives me something new to look at. I love the energy of the murals against the area’s industrial backdrop and the constant tension between raw materials and expression. That contrast has stayed with me as we’ve thought about how the project can feel connected to Wynwood rather than simply placed within it.

Photography courtesy of Elliot March

2. Paso Robles Wineries

I’m drawn to the wineries around Paso Robles, California, for their relationship with the landscape and how architecture can feel quiet within it. The local stone, timber, concrete, and weathered materials have a particular quality that feels both grounded and tactile. I also love the way the buildings frame the surrounding vineyards rather than competing with them. It’s a landscape where material, light, and nature do much of the work.

Photography courtesy of Elliot March

3. Yucca Valley

Cycling through Yucca Valley, California, around sunset is one of my favorite ways to clear my head. The landscape changes so quickly at that hour. The colors get warmer, the shadows stretch out, and suddenly things you’ve passed a hundred times look completely different. I love that reminder to slow down and really look. Some of the best ideas come from noticing what is already there.

Photography courtesy of Elliot March

4. Parte Vieja

I love wandering through the Parte Vieja quarter in San Sebastián, Spain, because the details have so much character. The worn stone, painted façades, balconies, timber, tiled thresholds, and layers of history all sit together without feeling overly considered. It’s the kind of environment where you can spend an afternoon simply looking up and noticing things. I’m always interested in places that have developed organically over time, where the imperfections and traces of use are part of what makes them beautiful.

Photography courtesy of Elliot March

5. Taos Pueblo

I find the Taos Pueblo historic site in New Mexico incredibly moving. There’s a directness to the architecture found in the local materials and simple forms, and an unmistakable relationship to the landscape gives it so much warmth and presence. Nothing feels arbitrary. It’s a place that reminds me how meaningful architecture can be when it grows out of its environment, its materials, and the people who have shaped it over time.

5 MAWD Projects

Photography by VMI Studio

1. The Cloud One Hotel & Residences Wynwood

The Cloud One Hotel & Residences Wynwood is meaningful to me because of how much inspiration we have been able to draw from Wynwood itself. I’ve always been interested in neighborhoods where different histories and influences sit side by side, and Wynwood has that in abundance, from its warehouse and garment-district past to the art and creative energy that define it today. We wanted to capture some of that character through exposed concrete, wild oak, bronze, lush planting, and art curated by Goldman Global Arts, while still creating a place that feels calm and comfortable. I love that balance between the energy outside and the sense of retreat within.

Photography by Evan Joseph

2. The Greenwich by Rafael Viñoly

The Greenwich in Manhattan’s Financial District is especially personal to me. The late architect Rafael Viñoly invited MAWD to lead the interiors, prompting my move from London to New York and, shortly after, the opening of our New York headquarters. It also gave us the chance to bring our superyacht design experience into a Manhattan residential setting. The bookmatched Noir Saint Laurent marble behind the front desk, with its subtle nautical quality, is one example. I love that the project represents both a new creative chapter for MAWD and a pivotal one for me personally.

Photography courtesy of Strategic Property Partners

3. Water Street Tampa

What draws me to the forthcoming residences at Water Street Tampa is the relationship between the architecture and the way people live there. Tampa has this wonderful indoor-outdoor rhythm, so we started by looking at the building’s portals, louvers, and courtyards and thinking about how some of that language could carry through to the interiors. The light and tropical landscape gave us permission to be a little more expressive with color and material. I love projects where the location pushes you somewhere you might not have gone otherwise, and this has been one of those.

Photography courtesy of Related Ross

4. Edgeworth

What excites me about Edgeworth is that it is part of a much bigger moment for West Palm Beach, Florida. Related Ross is helping transform the city into a place where people can genuinely live, work, and spend time year-round, and that brings new energy. With Edgeworth, we wanted to bring that spirit to the waterfront, pairing KPF’s sculptural architecture with interiors that feel relaxed, warm, and connected to the Intracoastal. It is exciting to be designing not just for where West Palm Beach is today, but for what it is becoming.

Photography by Colin Miller

5. Lantern House

Lantern House is special to me because Heatherwick Studio’s architecture gave us such an extraordinary starting point. I was struck by how its industrial glazing could feel so fluid and unexpected. Our role was to bring warmth to that distinctive architecture through oak, brick, bronze, and stone, creating interiors that feel relaxed and genuinely like home.

Laneige’s Seoul flagship is more than a conventional beauty store. Across four floors, oversized architectural installations transform the Korean skincare brand’s bespoke services into physical experiences, while a sculptural red tube spirals from the lobby through the building and toward the sky. Designed by PlayLab, Inc., the space uses these bold gestures to give each floor a distinct identity.

Photography by Han Sung Hoon

The approach grew out of Laneige’s combination of skincare science and customization. Rather than organizing the flagship primarily around shelves of products, the Los Angeles-based firm treated the brand’s bespoke offerings as opportunities for interaction and discovery.

“With the store spanning four floors, we aimed to use the bespoke skincare installations to create places for discovery, making each floor a unique experience and drawing people up through the building,” explains Jeff Franklin, co-founder of PlayLab.

Photography by Image Bakery

“Skincare products are inherently small and can be eclipsed by their environments,” he continues. “We wanted to make spaces and installations that portrayed the products’ unique attributes at the larger human scale.”

Photography by Han Sung Hoon

The scale of those installations becomes clearer in the context of what happens inside. Three main experiences turn Laneige products into customizable services: an ice cream counter-inspired station lets visitors create a personalized Lip Sleeping Mask from 10 scents and up to 45 combinations; a one-on-one color consultation matches customers with one of 150 Neo Cushion Glow shades before a robot produces the compact; and an AI-powered skin reading informs a customized Cream Skin formula, mixed on-site from 25 possibilities.

Photography by Han Sung Hoon

The architecture amplifies those relatively intimate interactions. The red tube introduced in the lobby acts as a visual connector, swirling upward through each floor and out the roof. Against otherwise soft interiors, the saturated gesture becomes both a visual landmark and a thread linking the store’s different spaces.

Photography by Han Sung Hoon

The relative restraint around it is intentional. Laneige’s identity, Franklin says, combines a “clean, comfortable aesthetic” with curiosity and science, leading PlayLab to use the softer architecture as a canvas for the more expressive bespoke installations. Stone, metal, plaster, and lacquer appear throughout, while each installation takes on its own material and color identity within a consistent framework spanning the building.

Photography by Image Bakery

Outside, PlayLab faced a different kind of visual competition. Myeongdong is one of Seoul’s busiest shopping districts, and Franklin describes the flagship’s immediate surroundings as crowded and visually busy. The studio responded by covering the facade in blue tile, creating a clean, bright counterpoint to its surroundings. Soft attachment-like forms punctuate the exterior, doubling as anchor points for seasonal decorations, while the pale interiors and open floor plates remain visible from outside.

Photography by Han Sung Hoon

For all of the flagship’s large gestures, its architecture ultimately returns attention to something much smaller: the individual, personalized product. By expanding those customization processes to architectural scale, PlayLab turns shopping for skincare into a journey through the building—one in which the product, rather than the store itself, provides the blueprint.

Photography by Han Sung Hoon

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.

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.

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