Sep
4

By

Strange Furniture Design History: A Sex Scandal, and a Sweet Update to Arne Jacobsen’s No. 7 Chair

Category: Core77

Inspired by the Eameses

The Eameses LCM (Lounge Chair Metal), unveiled in 1946 at the MoMA, was breathtaking and cutting-edge at the time.

Image: Eames Office

The world’s first plywood chair with metal legs, the LCM became an instant design classic, selling tens of thousands of units within a matter of years.

Image: Eames Office

Image: Eames Office

Image: Eames Office

One of the people who purchased the LCM was Danish architect/designer Arne Jacobsen. A fan of the Eameses work, Jacobsen kept the chair in his studio as inspiration, and intended to one day design bent plywood chairs himself.

The Ant Chair

In the early 1950s, Jacobsen had his chance. The Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Industries (today called Novo Nordisk) was growing, and wanted a nice cafeteria for the 600 employees at their Copenhagen headquarters. Jacobsen, who had already (and would continue to) design factories for Novo, was hired to design the chairs.

Jacobsen’s answer was the Ant chair. This design pushed past what the Eameses had accomplished, as the seat and back were a single piece of bent plywood. The chair was designed to be economical, using a minimum of material—the tapered waist hints at the insect that inspired the form—and practical for a cafeteria, being stackable. The initial design featured, unusually for the time, just three legs; Jacobsen felt it prevented a sitter’s legs from getting tangled. Even more radically, Jacobsen specified the legs be made of plastic, a more modern material than metal.

Image: lglazier618, CC BY 2.0

Fritz Hansen was reportedly not interested in producing the chair—perhaps it was seen as too radical for the time—but Novo put in an order for 300 units, so into production it went. And there was apparently some debate about the legs; while we don’t know the particulars of the discussion, we know that the Ant chair that wound up in the cafeteria had four legs made of metal, rather than three made of plastic.

The Ant chair went on to became a commercial success, and Fritz Hansen still manufactures it today.

The No. 7 Chair

In 1955, Jacobsen designed a follow-up to the Ant chair. His Model 3107 chair—today referred to as the No. 7 chair and/or “the Sevener”–was an elegant refinement of the Ant chair, with the Ant’s irregular cutouts made smoother and more flowing.

It retained the stackability.

Image: Corvus, CC BY-SA 4.0

More pleasing to the masses than the Ant, the No. 7 chair went on to become one of the most successful furniture designs in history, selling millions of units.

The Profumo Affair

There is a bit of a tawdry sidenote involving a knockoff of the chair. In 1963 Christine Keeler, a 21-year-old British showgirl, was involved in a sex scandal. That year the British press revealed that she had had an affair with both John Profumo, the (married) British Secretary of State for War—as well as Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché. As the Cold War was going on at the time, this was a career-ender for both Profumo and the British Prime Minister. The socialite who introduced Keeler to the men was put on trial and committed suicide.

Keeler became famous—think 1960s Kardashian—and British celebrity photographer Lewis Morley shot an iconic portrait of her that year. The provocative image featured a nude Keeler partially concealed by a chair Morley happened to have in his studio.

Morley’s studio chair was a knock-off of the No. 7 chair. Note the handle cut-out, which the original design does not have.

The image went 1960s viral, and The Independent suggests that it boosted sales of the actual No. 7.

So famous did the knock-off chair become that the Victoria & Albert Museum acquired the actual chair from Morley, referring to it as the Keeler Chair.

The museum points out what makes it a knockoff: “The plywood is much thicker and less subtly molded,” Gareth Williams, who works in the V&A’s furniture, textiles and fashion department, told the newspaper. “The cinched ‘waist’ is more pronounced, and the front of the seat is set back too far. Unlike Jacobsen’s chair, this model has a cut-out handle at the top of the seat, but even this is inaccurately positioned and irregularly cut.”

The Series 7 – Tailored

Now let’s wash the taste of scandal out of our mouths, and discuss another type of sexy. This is the 70th anniversary of the Sevener, and Fritz Hansen has created a special Series 7 – Tailored model. They’ve partnered with Italian leather specialist Enrico Pellizoni to wrap the chair in three sensual, precisely-stitched leather finishes: Slate grey, warm ecru and saddle brown.

Speaking to the lasting nature of the design, Creative Director Els Van Hoorebeeck says, “Since its release, it has been used in significant interiors as well as in everyday life—at home and in the workplace. You can make it approachable or more exclusive. These two characters—one functional, stackable, practical; the other expressive and iconic—coexist in the same design. It has withstood the test of time, again and again.”

The Series 7 – Tailored launches today.

Sep
4

By

drawing works clads one-person house in seoul with layered corrugated steel facade

Category: Design Boom

DRAWING WORKS explores compact single-person urban living

 

Located in Gusan-dong, Seoul, at the corner of a three-way intersection, One House 2 by DRAWING WORKS explores how small-scale residential design can adapt existing structures to contemporary living. The project continues the studio’s investigation into one-person housing, following an earlier project in Yeongdong that featured a similar dwelling set within a natural landscape. This second iteration situates the concept within the dense environment of the city.

 

The house is composed of two floors, each measuring approximately 21 sqm. The compact plan emphasizes clear circulation and efficient use of space. The remodeling included demolishing an external staircase to introduce a new parking area and ground-level entrance. A steel frame ensures stability and creates flexibility in the reconfigured layout. Inside, the arrangement connects the parking, entrance, kitchen, and staircase in a straightforward sequence that extends upward toward the living areas. On the second floor, the relationship between the room, terrace, and rooftop provides varied spatial experiences within the compact volume.

all images by Yoon Joonhwan

 

 

Small-Scale Architecture Meets Urban Context in One House 2

 

The design addresses environmental performance through careful window placement. South-facing openings maximize daylight, while north-facing windows are minimized to reduce energy loss. These decisions balance comfort with efficiency in a small-scale footprint. Externally, the house responds to its exposed location on three sides. Rather than asserting scale, the design adopts a restrained presence that blends into its surroundings. Corrugated steel cladding defines the facade, chosen for durability and economy. By layering three different off-the-shelf patterns, the elevation achieves depth and variation without additional ornamentation. This material strategy demonstrates how modest interventions can enrich the dialogue between a building and its urban context.

 

Through its compact yet adaptable design, One House 2 by studio DRAWING WORKS redefines the potential of small-scale architecture in dense urban conditions. The project illustrates how careful planning, material economy, and subtle reconfiguration can produce a residence that is both efficient and responsive, contributing to broader discussions on the future of urban housing.

 

project info:

 

name: One House 2
architect: DRAWING WORKS | @drawingworks_architects

principal architect: Youngbae Kim

location: Seoul, Korea

photographer: Yoon Joonhwan | @yoon_joonhwan

 

 

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

 

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom

The post drawing works clads one-person house in seoul with layered corrugated steel facade appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Sep
4

By

Huawei Launches New Mate XTs with Enhanced Tri-Fold Design and M-Pen 3 Stylus

Category: YankoDesign

Coffee shops across China buzz with people folding phones into tablets. Most professionals still carry laptops for real work. Despite having the world’s best tri-fold technology for over a year, mobile work stays limited by software problems that make users choose between portability and professional tools. The gap between new hardware and useful software has left even the most advanced folding devices feeling like expensive toys rather than real work tools.

Huawei’s September 4th launch changes this completely. The Mate XTs doesn’t just improve tri-fold hardware; it fixes the work barriers that made previous folding devices feel incomplete for professional users. For the first time, a smartphone delivers real desktop-style apps and interactions that transform mobile work from compromise to capability.

Designer: Huawei

The breakthrough focuses on software improvements rather than hardware changes. While the original Mate XT Ultimate impressed with engineering and display technology, the XTs focuses on app improvements that finally deliver on tri-fold work promises. Users can now run enhanced versions of Wind Financial Terminal, WPS Office, and East Money on the tri-fold display. This creates desktop-style workflows in a pocket device that actually work for serious business tasks. The integration feels seamless and natural, unlike previous attempts at mobile productivity that felt clunky and limited.

The tri-fold design delivers three distinct display configurations that adapt to different workflow needs. Phone mode provides a compact 6.4-inch screen for standard mobile tasks like messaging and quick app access. Dual-screen mode unfolds to 7.9-inch display real estate, ideal for split-screen productivity tasks like note-taking while browsing or managing communications alongside document editing. Full tablet mode expands to the complete 10.2-inch display that transforms the device into a genuine mobile workstation capable of handling complex spreadsheet analysis, detailed presentation editing, and professional design work.

For existing Mate XT Ultimate users, questions remain about software compatibility. Huawei has not announced whether the new HarmonyOS 5.1 features and desktop-grade app optimizations will be available as updates for the original tri-fold device. Current Mate XT owners are waiting for official confirmation on backward compatibility for these significant productivity enhancements.

Enhanced Software Integration Fixes Previous Limitations

The Mate XTs introduces better app compatibility that removes the mobile work problems that hurt earlier tri-fold devices. Wind Financial Terminal serves 90% of financial professionals with complete market monitoring, global business databases, and testing tools previously limited to desktop computers.

WPS Office integration represents the biggest advancement for mobile content creators. Full desktop editing features combine with the new M-Pen 3 stylus to create real document workflows. The system supports complex spreadsheet work, detailed presentation editing, and team document workflows without the feature limits typical of mobile office apps. These improvements make the device genuinely useful for people who need to create professional documents on the go.

Professional design apps extend tri-fold capability beyond business productivity. Wondershare Diagram and MindMaster deliver complete desktop features with AI-powered tools. These apps use the tri-fold display’s unique shape to present complex information and detailed creative projects with clarity impossible on traditional mobile devices. East Money delivers complete trading features, market analysis, and wealth management tools optimized for the 10.2-inch tri-fold display.

For day traders, the Mate XTs represents a dream device. The expansive 10.2-inch screen provides the real estate needed to read technical charts with clarity previously impossible on mobile devices. Candlestick patterns, support and resistance levels, and multiple timeframe analysis become genuinely practical on the tri-fold display, eliminating the constant zooming and scrolling that makes mobile trading frustrating.

Desktop-Style Interactions Transform Multi-Window Management

Free Multi-Window functionality introduces desktop-class window management to smartphone form factors. Apps can stack, scale, and switch with keyboard shortcuts that mirror traditional desktop environments. This capability removes the single-app limits that forced mobile users to constantly switch between apps during complex workflows. The result feels like using a real computer rather than a phone trying to be a computer.

Three-window Parallel operation allows side-by-side content comparison and cross-app data transfer through natural drag-and-drop interactions. Users can compare pricing across shopping platforms, coordinate travel planning with multiple booking apps, or manage communication while reviewing documents. Window sizes adjust automatically with content scaling that maintains readability across all display configurations. The desktop layout evolution moves beyond dual-screen continuation to genuine tri-screen functionality when fully expanded. Icon capacity increases by 50% while maintaining easy organization that adapts to user work patterns. HarmonyOS 5.1 learns usage behaviors and optimizes app placement based on context and timing patterns developed through extended use.

This smart adaptation makes the interface feel intuitive rather than overwhelming despite the increased screen real estate.

Enhanced M-Pen 3 Integration Delivers Professional Tool Capabilities

The M-Pen 3 stylus introduces three-key functionality designed specifically for professional workflows. The Writing Key activates global annotation capabilities that support scrolling pages and multiple drawing tools with one-stroke shape recognition that converts hand-drawn graphics into standard geometric forms.

Users can circle web content, charts, or visual materials for instant capture. The Transfer Station system organizes everything automatically. Dual-app split-screen collaboration allows direct content dragging between research materials and active documents without app switching. This workflow feels natural and efficient, solving one of the biggest problems with mobile productivity tools. Voice-to-text conversion puts transcribed content directly into annotation boxes for streamlined documentation workflows.

Xiaoyi Circle Selection transforms the stylus into an intelligent research tool that provides instant answers without wake words or app switching. Professional terminology, product identification, and homework assistance become immediately accessible through natural circle-and-search interactions. The system eliminates typing and platform switching during research workflows, making information gathering much faster and more intuitive. Text and image excerpting removes friction between research and content creation through seamless capture functionality.

Hardware Improvements Support Intensive Professional Use

The Red Maple True Color camera system introduces ten-level variable aperture technology. F/1.4 to F/4.0 adjustment range allows depth-of-field control and landscape sharpness that transforms smartphone photography into genuine content creation capability.

Battery optimization addresses the power demands of desktop-style apps through intelligent management that adapts to tri-fold display configurations. The 5600mAh capacity supports extended professional workflows while 50W wireless charging maintains productivity during travel and conference scenarios. Lingxi communication and Tiantong satellite connectivity ensure professional communication reliability across global business environments.

Market Leadership Through Software Maturation

Huawei maintains exclusive tri-fold market position one year after the original Mate XT Ultimate launch. The XTs represents evolution from hardware innovation to software completion. While competitors struggle with basic folding reliability, Huawei advances to genuine productivity transformation through software improvements that use tri-fold advantages. The new family emblem debut signals Huawei’s commitment to ultimate product positioning rather than mass market adoption.

This approach prioritizes professional user needs over consumer accessibility, creating devices designed for extended ownership cycles rather than yearly replacement pressure. Professional services integration includes 50% screen replacement discounts, door-to-door service visits, and VIP store treatment that supports business users who depend on device reliability for professional workflows. HUAWEI Care+ complete protection addresses folding screen concerns that historically limited business adoption of advanced mobile technology.

The Mate XTs launches globally with availability details and pricing to be announced. Professional users frustrated by mobile productivity limits finally have access to genuine desktop capability in truly portable form factors. This transforms business mobility from compromise to competitive advantage, making the device a genuine tool for serious work rather than an expensive experiment. Four new color options reflect professional positioning with premium materials that age well during extended business use. The sand-gold rock vein texture and artisan details create visual appeal while maintaining durability for daily professional handling. These materials feel substantial and premium, justifying the device’s positioning as a professional tool rather than a consumer gadget.

My Year With the Mate XT Ultimate: Why These Updates Matter

I’ve been using the original Mate XT Ultimate throughout this year across three continents, and these software improvements address real limitations I’ve experienced daily.

Airport productivity sessions revealed the device’s potential. DFW Terminal delays became genuine work opportunities with the 10.2-inch display handling content creation tasks that typical phones couldn’t manage. The seamless transition between form factors meant workflows never broke, regardless of available space or seating constraints. Hotel room desk sessions transformed standard hotel desks into legitimate content creation stations, with the device providing workspace for professional article editing, image selection, and multi-platform content scheduling. The titanium construction developed what I call “earned character” over months of daily handling.

Unlike consumer devices that show wear as damage, the Mate XT Ultimate’s materials aged gracefully. Small handling marks blended into the Rock Vein texture, creating natural patina rather than device degradation.

However, software limitations remained frustrating. Chinese productivity applications demonstrated superior tri-fold optimization compared to Western alternatives, while international applications treated the device as an oversized tablet rather than purpose-built tri-fold system. The XTs software improvements directly address these productivity gaps I’ve experienced throughout the year. Most remarkably, the folding mechanism never developed wobble or resistance changes that plagued earlier foldable devices I’ve tested. The tri-fold hardware remains impressive after thousands of folding cycles, but productivity software felt incomplete for serious work.

After extensive daily use this year, I can confirm the original Mate XT Ultimate succeeded at being both genuinely innovative and consistently useful. It’s expensive, exclusive, and transformative for users whose workflows can leverage its unique capabilities. The new XTs software enhancements promise to eliminate the productivity compromises that made even this impressive device feel incomplete for professional use.

The post Huawei Launches New Mate XTs with Enhanced Tri-Fold Design and M-Pen 3 Stylus first appeared on Yanko Design.

Sep
4

By

Samsung Galaxy S25 FE Brings Premium AI to Everyone at $649.99

Category: YankoDesign

Finding an intelligent smartphone feels impossible without breaking the bank. Advanced AI features stay locked behind $1,000+ flagship prices, forcing people to choose between smart technology and financial sense. Premium AI capabilities remain exclusive to expensive devices while mainstream phones offer basic features that barely qualify as intelligent.

Samsung’s Galaxy S25 FE eliminates this false choice entirely. Starting at $649.99, it brings full Galaxy AI capabilities to mainstream pricing, proving artificial intelligence belongs in everyone’s pocket, not just premium buyers’ hands. The stakes feel higher than ever as Samsung commits to reaching 400 million Galaxy AI devices by year’s end, doubling from the current 200 million users.

Designer: Samsung

The S25 FE spearheads this democratization effort as the first Galaxy S device launching with One UI 8. This positions Samsung to expand AI accessibility while maintaining the premium experience that defines their flagship lineup. The device represents a strategic shift toward making advanced mobile intelligence available at accessible price points.

Premium Hardware Engineering Solves the AI Accessibility Problem

The S25 FE achieves flagship-quality construction through strategic engineering that maximizes capability while maintaining accessibility. Enhanced Armor Aluminum framing uses the same material found in Galaxy S25 and S25+ flagships, providing structural strength without premium pricing. The device maintains IP68 water resistance rating, withstanding submersion in up to 1.5 meters of freshwater for 30 minutes while protecting against dust infiltration.

At 7.4mm thickness and 190g weight, the device achieves a thinner and lighter profile compared to the S24 FE. These improvements make extended use comfortable while maintaining structural integrity through premium materials. The 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display delivers FHD+ resolution with up to 120Hz refresh rates and Vision Booster technology for excellent outdoor visibility.

Slimmer bezels increase body-to-screen ratio while preserving one-handed usability. Color options include Navy, Jet Black, White, and Icy Blue, though availability may vary by carrier. Each finish provides Samsung’s signature premium feel that extends beyond specifications to actual handling, creating flagship sensations at accessible prices.

The Exynos 2400 processor powers flagship-grade performance through 4nm architecture. This processing foundation enables smooth AI execution, sustained multitasking across demanding applications, and responsive gaming without thermal throttling that plagues lesser devices. Enhanced thermal design includes a more than 10% larger vapor chamber compared to S24 FE, improving heat dissipation during extended use.

Memory configurations include 8GB + 128GB and 8GB + 256GB storage options, with actual storage availability varying depending on pre-installed software. These configurations provide ample space for apps, media, and AI processing while maintaining responsive performance across all storage tiers. The thoughtful balance between performance and storage ensures users can fully utilize AI features without compromise.

The 4,900mAh battery represents the largest capacity ever included in an FE device. This substantial power source supports intensive AI processing and multimedia consumption throughout full days without midday charging sessions. Super Fast Charging 2.0 with 45W wired charging reaches up to 65% capacity in around 30 minutes when using Samsung’s 45W adapter, minimizing downtime when charging becomes necessary.

Fast Wireless Charging provides convenient cable-free power-ups, while Wireless PowerShare transforms the device into a charging pad for compatible Samsung Galaxy wearables like Galaxy Buds3, Buds3 Pro, Galaxy Watch Ultra, and other Qi-enabled devices. This reverse charging capability adds practical utility for users invested in Samsung’s ecosystem of wearable technology.

Camera System Democratizes Professional Photography

The Pro Visual Engine powers versatile photography capabilities designed for diverse shooting scenarios. The 50MP wide-angle main sensor with OIS and F1.8 aperture handles most photography needs with exceptional detail and color accuracy. The 12MP ultra-wide camera with F2.2 and 123-degree field of view captures landscapes and group shots without distortion common in budget devices.

An 8MP telephoto camera provides 3x optical zoom and up to 30x digital zoom with OIS and F2.4 aperture, bringing distant subjects closer while maintaining image quality through optical magnification. The front-facing 12MP selfie camera with F2.2 aperture and 80-degree field of view delivers improved resolution for social media content and video calls. This comprehensive camera array ensures users have the right tool for any photographic situation.

Enhanced Nightography capabilities leverage improved low-light performance through Low Noise Mode, ensuring accurate skin tone reproduction and natural textures even in challenging lighting conditions. Super HDR in video showcases lifelike colors and contrast in every frame, making the S25 FE capable of capturing professional-quality video content. These improvements bring flagship-level image processing to the accessible pricing tier.

Photo Assist enhances on-device editing with effortless precision, boosting user creativity and seamlessly bringing visions to life through intelligent processing and automated improvements. The integration of professional editing tools eliminates the need for separate applications while maintaining image quality throughout the editing process.

True AI Companion Intelligence Changes Everything

The S25 FE launches as the first Galaxy S device with One UI 8, delivering what Samsung calls a “true AI companion” rather than another feature-packed smartphone. Multimodal capabilities understand context through touch, voice, and vision inputs working seamlessly together, creating natural conversations instead of rigid command structures. This represents a fundamental shift from traditional smartphone interaction to intuitive AI partnership.

Show Gemini Live your closet through the camera, and it provides outfit recommendations based on weather conditions at your destination. Point at objects for instant contextual information. Ask complex questions while sharing your screen, and AI analyzes visual content like a knowledgeable friend reviewing the same information. The system learns your preferences and patterns to provide increasingly relevant assistance over time.

The Now Bar surfaces helpful information at just the right moment, right from the lock screen, showing relevant updates and customizable displays for live notifications, music, modes, routines, and more. Now Brief provides personalized daily updates including traffic, reminders, calendar events, and fitness summaries tailored to your patterns and preferences. These features transform the lock screen from passive display into active information hub.

Enhanced Circle to Search extends contextual understanding into entertainment and gaming. Players circle items or challenging boss fights for instant help without leaving gameplay. The overlay system provides gaming tips exactly when and where needed, exemplifying Samsung’s philosophy of helpful intelligence rather than intrusive automation.

Privacy-First Architecture Protects Personal Data

Samsung addresses growing AI privacy concerns through KEEP (Knox Enhanced Encrypted Protection) architecture. This system creates encrypted, app-specific storage environments within the device’s secure storage area, ensuring each application accesses only its own sensitive information with zero cross-contamination of personal data. The approach prioritizes user control over data sharing and processing.

The Personal Data Engine with Knowledge Graph technology analyzes usage patterns and preferences entirely on-device through Samsung’s native apps. Personal data never leaves the device, yet AI delivers increasingly personalized experiences by understanding how you work, communicate, and interact with technology. Knox Vault protection secures all personal AI processing with fortified security and privacy in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

This privacy-first approach means you get personalized AI without sacrificing data control. The system recognizes select languages and accents, with analyzed data deleted once Personal Data Intelligence settings are turned off. Users maintain complete authority over their personal information while still benefiting from intelligent assistance.

Professional Creative Tools Become Accessible

The S25 FE transforms casual content creation through AI-powered tools previously requiring professional software expertise and expensive subscriptions. These capabilities match what Samsung includes in premium devices, not simplified budget versions. The democratization of professional creative tools represents a significant shift in mobile content creation accessibility.

Generative Edit automatically detects passersby in photo backgrounds and proactively recommends what to remove, eliminating manual selection needs while creating seamless, natural results. Portrait Studio allows users to create personalized avatars with more true-to-life facial expressions, expanding creative possibilities for social media and personal branding. These AI-driven editing capabilities deliver professional results without requiring technical expertise.

Instant Slow-Mo creates super-smooth slow motion effects from any video clip with a single tap, transforming favorite moments into immersive experiences without requiring specific recording settings. The feature works with videos saved in Samsung Gallery app, recorded at up to 4K@60fps. This post-capture enhancement opens new creative possibilities for existing video content.

Audio Eraser offers convenient noise cleanup by isolating specific audio elements such as voices, music, wind, ambient nature sounds, crowd noise, and background interference. Users gain precise control over what to reduce or remove entirely, delivering professional-level audio cleanup across multiple apps including Gallery, Video Player, Voice Recorder, Notes, and Call applications. This comprehensive integration ensures consistent audio enhancement capabilities throughout the device experience.

Auto Trim streamlines video editing by automatically selecting the best moments from footage, with support for clips up to 90 minutes long and combined projects up to 180 minutes. This intelligent editing saves time while ensuring highlight reels capture the most engaging content. The AI analysis identifies key moments based on motion, faces, and audio cues to create compelling video summaries.

Complete Mobile Entertainment Experience

For those seeking to maximize the audio-visual experience, Samsung announces the companion Galaxy Buds3 FE, designed to pair seamlessly with the S25 FE for immersive mobile entertainment. This ecosystem approach ensures optimized connectivity and enhanced audio quality across all content consumption. The coordinated launch demonstrates Samsung’s commitment to complete mobile experience rather than isolated device sales.

The Galaxy S25 FE comes with six months of free access to Gemini Advanced, providing premium AI capabilities and expanded features that complement the device’s built-in intelligence. This promotional offer adds significant value to the overall package while introducing users to advanced AI services. The bundled premium services enhance the value proposition beyond hardware specifications alone.

Long-Term Investment in Accessible Premium Technology

Samsung commits to seven years of security updates and seven generations of OS upgrades, ensuring the S25 FE remains current and secure well into the future. This extended support transforms the device from short-term purchase into lasting investment receiving new features and security improvements for years. The commitment matches what Samsung provides for flagship devices, ensuring no compromise in long-term value.

This timeline proves particularly valuable for AI capabilities, which continue evolving rapidly. Your S25 FE receives new AI features and improvements as Samsung develops them, ensuring your investment grows more capable over time rather than becoming obsolete. The extended support window protects against rapid technology obsolescence while maintaining security standards. One UI 8 will become available on additional devices including the full Galaxy S25 series starting this month, expanding the AI-powered experience across Samsung’s ecosystem.

The Galaxy S25 FE represents more than incremental improvement or cost-cutting measures. It signals Samsung’s recognition that artificial barriers between premium and accessible technology serve no one. By bringing flagship AI capabilities, premium materials, comprehensive creative tools, and professional-grade camera systems to the $649.99 price point, Samsung demonstrates that democratizing technology benefits everyone. For people frustrated by premium pricing of advanced AI features, the Galaxy S25 FE offers compelling alternative. This is premium mobile intelligence made accessible, proving the future of AI-powered smartphones requires neither flagship budgets nor compromised experiences.

The post Samsung Galaxy S25 FE Brings Premium AI to Everyone at $649.99 first appeared on Yanko Design.

Sep
4

By

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra Eliminates the Portability vs Productivity Trade-Off

Category: YankoDesign

Professional tablets have always forced impossible choices between portability and serious productivity. Thin devices lack the processing power for demanding workflows, while powerful tablets become too bulky for comfortable travel. Heavy tablets defeat the purpose of mobile computing, leaving professionals frustrated with devices that can’t handle real work on the go.

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S11 series destroys this false compromise entirely through breakthrough engineering. The Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra achieves just 5.1mm thickness while delivering flagship performance through a 3nm processor and 14.6-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display. At 1.52 pounds, it weighs less than many laptops despite offering larger screen space and desktop-class capabilities.

Designer: Samsung

This breakthrough proves traditional design trade-offs stem from outdated engineering rather than technical limitations. The Galaxy Tab S11 series delivers desktop functionality in Samsung’s thinnest tablet design ever created, powered by advanced Galaxy AI and enhanced One UI 8.

MediaTek Dimensity 9400+ Powers Desktop Performance in Ultra-Thin Design

Samsung solved complex thermal and engineering challenges to pack flagship performance into the 5.1mm Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra profile. The device integrates a 3nm MediaTek Dimensity 9400+ processor, 11,600mAh battery, and professional-grade display technology within dimensions that seemed impossible just years ago.

The standard Galaxy Tab S11 maintains the same design philosophy in more compact form, offering an 8,400mAh battery for extended work sessions. Both models feature Dynamic AMOLED 2X displays with up to 1,600 nits peak brightness and narrow 5.2mm bezels that maximize screen space without compromising comfortable grip zones. Gray and Silver color options provide professional aesthetics suitable for business environments.

The MediaTek Dimensity 9400+ represents the first 3nm processor ever integrated into Galaxy Tab devices. This engineering milestone delivers substantial performance improvements over the Galaxy Tab S10 series: 33% faster NPU processing for AI tasks, 24% CPU performance gains, and 27% GPU improvements for graphics-intensive applications. Advanced thermal management keeps performance consistent during extended use sessions that would cause lesser devices to slow down.

These performance advances translate directly to workflow benefits during demanding sessions. Creative professionals experience faster rendering times when working with large design files or complex video projects. AI features process commands more quickly and accurately, while multitasking becomes smoother with reduced lag between intensive applications.

Samsung DeX Extended Mode Creates True Dual-Screen Productivity

The Galaxy Tab S11 series transforms Samsung DeX into a genuine dual-monitor system through the new Extended Mode feature. This breakthrough enables the tablet screen and external monitor to function as independent displays rather than mirrored outputs, creating workflows previously limited to desktop systems.

Users can drag applications seamlessly between the tablet and external monitor, reference detailed documents while presenting to clients, or participate in video calls on one screen while taking comprehensive notes on the other. This functionality matches the multitasking capabilities of traditional desktop environments while maintaining complete tablet portability.

Four customizable workspaces allow users to create optimized layouts for different contexts and needs. A workspace might arrange email applications, document editors, and spreadsheet programs in configurations that maximize efficiency. Creative workspaces can organize design applications, media tools, and reference materials for artistic projects, while travel planning workspaces provide instant switching without losing application states.

Samsung DeX activation becomes more intuitive through streamlined access methods that eliminate previous barriers. Users can launch DeX directly from the Recent Apps interface or activate it by swiping down when seeing the black bar at application tops, replacing the previous Quick Menu navigation system.

Redesigned S Pen Delivers Professional-Grade Precision and Comfort

The completely redesigned S Pen prioritizes fundamental writing and drawing experiences over feature complexity that can interfere with natural input. The new cone-shaped pen tip supports increased tilt angles for better artistic control, while the hexagonal design provides a more ergonomic feel during extended creative sessions.

Samsung eliminated Bluetooth connectivity to focus engineering resources on improving core functionality. The redesigned S Pen attaches magnetically and requires no charging, ensuring it stays connected during transport while providing immediate access for note-taking and creative work.

Quick Tools provide floating access to drawing and editing controls without disrupting creative flow. The new Sticky Note feature allows users to capture sudden thoughts or tasks directly over Samsung Notes without switching between applications during document review or presentation preparation. These improvements recognize that most users want responsive, accurate input over additional features that complicate essential experiences.

Galaxy AI and One UI 8 Optimize Large-Screen Workflows

One UI 8 brings Galaxy AI capabilities specifically optimized for tablet workflows that leverage larger screen real estate for sophisticated productivity features. The expanded display enables AI interactions that would be constrained by smaller smartphone screens, creating new possibilities for content creation and analysis.

Gemini Live integration enables real-time screen sharing and visual input, allowing users to have natural conversations with AI about on-screen content or physical objects captured through the camera. Users can screen share lecture notes and ask Gemini to interpret charts, explain study materials, or summarize insights for later review. This contextual understanding transforms research and learning workflows.

By pressing and holding the side button, users can activate Gemini across applications to execute complex commands like “Summarize this article and save it to Samsung Notes,” streamlining content processing without breaking workflow momentum. Writing Assist helps refine tone and style for communications before dropping content into emails, documents, or other applications.

Drawing Assist transforms rough sketches into polished visuals that can be dragged directly into Samsung Notes for further development, perfect for brainstorming sessions, visual planning, or creative exploration. While multitasking, Galaxy AI appears as a moveable compact overlay in floating view, allowing users to summarize screen content without losing focus on primary tasks.

Professional Applications Provide Immediate Creative and Business Value

The Galaxy Tab S11 series includes comprehensive software ready for immediate productivity without requiring additional purchases or complex setup procedures. Clip Studio Paint comes with a 6-month free trial and 20% discount on the first subscription, enabling illustration work that rivals expensive desktop applications.

Goodnotes provides a 1-year free version for advanced note-taking and document annotation optimized for S Pen precision and documentation needs. LumaFusion offers 66% discount through November 30, 2025, plus a one-month free Creator Pass, delivering desktop-class video editing capabilities for content creators and marketing teams.

Notion integration includes a one-month free trial of the Plus plan with Notion AI, supporting comprehensive project organization and team collaboration workflows. These pre-installed applications eliminate the need to research and purchase software while providing immediate value for creative and business users who need capable tools from the first use.

Additional applications expand creative possibilities across different workflow needs. Noteshelf 3 offers customizable layouts for capturing and organizing ideas with 30% discount upgrades. ArcSite provides precision tools for transforming creative sketches into CAD layouts with one-month free trials. Sketchbook delivers intuitive illustration environments, while Picsart enables AI-driven design tools for creators working across various media formats.

Advanced Connectivity and Accessory Ecosystem Support Mobility

The Galaxy Tab S11 series supports Wi-Fi 7 connectivity on the Ultra model and Wi-Fi 6E on the standard model, ensuring fast, reliable connections for work that depends on cloud collaboration and large file transfers. The series maintains compatibility with external displays through wireless DeX requiring Miracast support, with both devices connected to the same Wi-Fi network.

The Book Cover Keyboard Slim transforms the tablet into a mobile workstation with instant access to AI assistants through the dedicated Galaxy AI Key. This accessory provides laptop-like functionality while maintaining tablet portability for users who need versatile computing solutions across different work environments.

Available memory and storage configurations address needs across different use cases. The Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra offers 16GB RAM with 1TB storage, 12GB RAM with 512GB storage, or 12GB RAM with 256GB storage options. The standard Galaxy Tab S11 provides 12GB RAM with 512GB, 256GB, or 128GB storage configurations, all supporting microSD expansion up to 2TB for additional file storage needs.

Both models feature quad speakers for clear audio during video calls and presentations, IP68 water resistance for reliable operation in various work environments, and Armor AL durability coating. Fingerprint on Display security ensures quick, secure access to content and applications without compromising convenience.

Seven Years of Updates Protect Long-Term Investment

Samsung commits to seven years of security updates and major OS upgrades, ensuring the Galaxy Tab S11 series remains current and secure throughout extended use cycles. This support timeline makes the devices suitable for enterprise deployment and long-term investment by users who depend on reliable, updated technology.

One UI 8 launches first on the Galaxy Tab S11 series before expanding to previous Galaxy device generations, including the Galaxy Tab S10 series starting in October 2025. This extended support commitment proves particularly valuable for enterprise customers who can deploy these devices knowing they will receive ongoing software support throughout typical business equipment lifecycles.

The comprehensive approach extends beyond hardware specifications to include software optimization, accessory integration, and long-term support that eliminates traditional compromises between tablet portability and desktop productivity.

Samsung Redefines Computing for Mobile Workflows

The Galaxy Tab S11 series represents Samsung’s most complete approach to tablet design, with hardware, software, and accessory ecosystems working together to deliver desktop-class experiences without traditional desktop limitations. The breakthrough engineering eliminates false choices between portability and productivity that have constrained mobile computing.

For users who have accepted compromises between tablet convenience and desktop functionality, the Galaxy Tab S11 series offers a compelling solution that eliminates traditional trade-offs through advanced engineering and thoughtful software optimization. This represents computing redefined for modern mobile workflows, proving that advanced productivity requires no sacrifice of portability or convenience.

The post Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra Eliminates the Portability vs Productivity Trade-Off first appeared on Yanko Design.

Sep
4

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seabrook studio envisions lexus ex truck concept with sculpted curves and elevated stance

Category: Design Boom

Seabrook Studio extends Lexus design language with truck study

 

Seabrook Studio’s Lexus EX Concept envisions a Lexus truck design, introducing a body style new to the brand. Designed as a conceptual study, the project emphasizes proportion, surface, and adaptability while extending Lexus design language into off-road territory.

 

The EX Concept reinterprets the familiar elements of Lexus design with restraint. The spindle grille evolves into a more geometric expression, paired with smooth surfaces and minimal detailing. Traditional headlights and heavy accents are replaced by sharp geometry, giving the vehicle a precise and forward-looking identity. The silhouette is defined by clean lines, sculpted curves, and a wide, elevated stance intended for varied terrain. At the rear, a full-width light bar establishes a distinct signature element across the body. Inside, the two-seat cabin is designed with flexibility, leaving space for luggage or gear. The platform allows for future variations, including the potential for extended cabins or additional doors. The overall structure emphasizes strength and adaptability, supporting both urban and off-road use.

all images courtesy of Seabrook Studio

 

 

Balancing elegance and durability in Lexus EX Concept truck

 

The EX Concept originated as the studio’s exploration into design, 3D modeling, and visualization. The project was developed entirely through digital tools, including Blender and Photoshop, allowing the designers to transition from sketches to high-fidelity renderings while maintaining consistency in form and detail. The process demonstrates an approach where experimental design can be carried into production-ready visualization.

 

By combining refined surfaces with functional proportions, the Lexus EX Concept by Seabrook Studio positions itself as a study in how Lexus design principles could translate into a new vehicle category, balancing elegance with durability.

Seabrook Studio’s Lexus EX Concept introduces a truck body style new to the brand

the silhouette is defined by clean lines and sculpted curves

a wide, elevated stance signals readiness for varied terrain

the concept explores how Lexus design language adapts to off-road use

strength and adaptability guide the vehicle’s overall structure

at the rear, a full-width light bar creates a distinct signature

the two-seat cabin prioritizes flexibility and gear storage

 

project info:

 

name: Lexus EX Concept
designer: Seabrook Studio | @seabrook.studio

 

 

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

 

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom

The post seabrook studio envisions lexus ex truck concept with sculpted curves and elevated stance appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Sep
4

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MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY folds 6,665 aluminum parts into umbrella-like canopy

Category: Design Boom

6,665 parts compose MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY’s Canopy

 

In Bellevue, Washington, MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY completes PILOTI, an ultra-thin aluminum rotunda that rises as a new entrance to the city’s Downtown Park. Commissioned by the City of Bellevue, the self-supported structure unfolds into an umbrella-like canopy and acts as a shelter that invites visitors into the park. The work combines architectural ornament and structural ingenuity in a single gesture, framing the passage from city to green space.

 

Standing 7.2 meters tall, PILOTI is composed of 6,665 unique aluminum parts connected with 180,900 rivets. Its form aggregates multiple umbrellas into one circular surface, held aloft by a ring of slender, stiletto-like columns. Atop each column, twisting capitals grow upward, folding structure into ornament and transforming the space around them into a flowing geometry. Along the perimeter, cantilevered folds terminate in scalloped finials that contribute to structural stability and recall the ornamental detailing of historic marquees.

all images by DoubleSpace

 

 

Piloti Illuminates Bellevue, Washington with its Geometry

 

The New York-based team at MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY pierces PILOTI’s surface with thousands of tiny perforations, a feature that began as a pragmatic aid for construction but evolved into a play of illumination. By day, the canopy scatters light into dappled patterns that drift across the ground, while by night, it becomes a glowing lantern, guiding visitors into the park with a gentle radiance. 

 

The installation is intended as a civic living room in Bellevue, Washington, accommodating everything from casual encounters to community celebrations. Its open canopy sets the stage for weddings, birthdays, reunions, or simple pauses of reflection beneath its airy geometry. 

MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY completes PILOTI

this ultra-thin aluminum rotunda rises as a new entrance to the Bellevue’s Downtown Park, Washington

the self-supported structure unfolds into an umbrella-like canopy

a shelter that invites visitors into the park

architectural ornament and structural ingenuity in a single gesture

PILOTI is composed of 6,665 unique aluminum parts connected with 180,900 rivets

its form aggregates multiple umbrellas into one circular surface

held aloft by a ring of slender, stiletto-like columns

cantilevered folds terminate in scalloped finials that contribute to structural stability

recalling the ornamental detailing of historic marquees

MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY pierces PILOTI’s surface with thousands of tiny perforations

by night, PILOTI becomes a glowing lantern

 

project info:

 

name: PILOTI
architect: MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY | @theverymany
location: Bellevue Downtown Park, Washington, USA

dimensions: 7.3m (L) x 18.6m (W) x 7.2m (H)

 

commissioner: City of Bellevue

photographer: Younes Bounhar, DoubleSpace | @2spacephoto

The post MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY folds 6,665 aluminum parts into umbrella-like canopy appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Sep
4

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“How did rebrand become such a dirty word?”

Category: Design Week

When is a rebrand not a rebrand? Sometimes, because it’s literally not a rebrand, it’s a brand refresh.

But sometimes, to all intents and purposes it is a rebrand – people just don’t want to use the r word.

Several times in the past few months, we’ve received emails about new visual identity projects that came accompanied with the same instructions. Some variation of – please note this is not a rebrand.

Sometimes that was the case, but sometimes it was the term itself that the studio and their client wanted to avoid.

I’ve spoken with various designers who say they don’t use the word rebrand with their clients, especially when it comes to the non-creative/marketing stakeholders elsewhere in the business. These people’s buy-in is vital, and so they need to remain unspooked.

Rebrand, as a word, as an idea, is seems to spook people.

I also spoke with someone connected to a charity that is considering a rebrand at the moment. They told me the word is snarkily thrown around by people who don’t like the plans, a withering shorthand for the current leadership’s wish to make changes.

“A loaded term”

So what the hell is going on?

“The word rebrand has become a bit of a loaded term,” one design leader who will remain anonymous told me.

“It signals wholesale change and often gets linked to bigger business shifts: recruitment drives, layoffs, restructuring, investment. In today’s turbulent climate, it can feel tone-deaf even when the actual intent is positive.”

They understand why clients have become skittish about the idea of a rebrand.

And most of the time, they say, “the need isn’t to start over. It’s about helping a brand stay current and relevant, giving in-house teams the tools to tell new stories across more platforms.

“That’s really an evolution of the design system – expanding its texture, flexibility and range – rather than a total reset. Framing it that way allows the work to move more smoothly through a business without sparking alarm.”

You know who again…

But how did rebrand become such a controversial word? According to Google’s search term history tool, it barely registered up until the start of 2023.

And it seems to have remained a fairly niche design and marketing industry term really until autumn last year, when it suddenly spiked. Rebrands, it seems, entered the mainstream chat.

Oh, autumn last year, lest you have forgotten, was Jaguar.

The idea that the Jaguar furore fundamentally rewired how we think about these seven simple letters is backed up by the related queries Google provides.

The word Jaguar appears time and again, way ahead of the few other brands that make the most-searched list – Pepsi, Facebook and Amazon, among others.

“Rebrand, as a word, as an idea, is seems to spook people.”

Jaguar was one of those incredibly rare moments when graphic design crashes into the mainstream media discourse.

It was all over social media. It was pulled apart in radio phone-ins. Uncles hitherto baffled by what graphic design even is asked designers about it at the family Christmas do.

And in our culture-war age, the debate was electrified by the accusation, in some quarters, that it was a “woke rebrand” – a heritage British company abandoning its stiff-upper-lip decorum for some sort of vegan, pro-trans madness. Fetch me a scotch Maureen, one of the cars is bright bloody pink!

This I think then fed back into the design world. Suddenly this pretty innocuous word became freighted with connotations that no client wanted to contemplate. And then came Cracker Barrel.

Like many Brits, I’d never even heard of a Cracker Barrel a month ago. It sounds like a slightly off-colour term that a man of a certain age might use to describe a woman who wears skirts above the knee. Make it a double Maureen, Rupert’s bringing that cracker barrel home for dinner!

(Someone in the know told me recently that Harvester is perhaps the closest equivalent we have here).

As with Jaguar, “Cracker Barrel rebrand” has become shorthand for an apparent brand design disaster.

A brand is not a logo

It’s an instructive example because, as is so often the case, rebrand here becomes reduced in many conversations to “new logo.” Those before and after images of the Cracker Barrel logo snaked across my social feeds like Japanese knotweed.

Stripped of any context, explanation or sense of strategy, it becomes a simple clarion call – old logo good! New logo bad!

Designers may love saying that “a brand is not a logo” – and to be fair, you do bloody love saying that – but that’s a distinction lost on most people.

And so what happens, as the design leader explains, is the logo reveal “dominates the narrative, putting undue pressure on a symbol instead of recognising that a brand is the sum of experiences.”

It seems incredible to me that two clearly exceptional situations – Jaguar and Cracker Barrel – may have torpedoed “rebrand” as a word people feel comfortable with.

But maybe it shouldn’t. Rebrands only make the news when there is a backlash, and so the word easily acquires unduly negative associations.

But interestingly, treading more carefully when it comes to framing a brand update can also backfire.

Writing about the derisive reaction to Walmart’s subtle brand refresh last year, FutureBrand’s managing Polly Hopkins warned, “It seems that when it comes to switching up your brand identity, no approach is without risk. You’re damned if you do push the boundaries, and damned if you don’t.”

And she pointed out that refreshes are much more common than full-on brand overhauls.

“As an industry we love to work on large-scale reinventions, but total rebrands are rare,” she wrote. “The majority of client briefs aren’t about reinvention, they are about enhancing existing equities.”

But there are times when rebrands “are exactly what’s needed,” the anonymous design leader explains. “When it comes from the C-suite, is rooted in business strategy, and is launched in a way that explains the why, it can be transformative.”

Many people will disagree, but Jaguar’s leadership would argue that’s precisely how its new look was unveiled.

But either way, the way we talk about branding seems to have changed. “The caution we’re seeing now is partly the legacy of high-profile missteps, which have made leaders more wary of the word,” the design leader says.

Source

Sep
4

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ten inclined concrete volumes outline stonehenge lodge real estate sales center in taiwan

Category: Design Boom

Stonehenge Lodge Reframes the real estate sales center in Zhubei

 

Stonehenge Lodge is a reinterpretation of a real estate sales center, located in the rapidly expanding tech-driven city of Zhubei, Taiwan. In contrast to typical sales pavilions, designed to be temporary, decorative, and disposable, this project proposes a long-term civic framework. Situated in a dense residential zone shaped by the pressures of the semiconductor industry, the building offers a quiet spatial counterpoint to a lifestyle marked by speed, burnout, and transience. The structure, developed by Enter Future Construction + HoLebensArt Living Co. + HEJU Architect + Terrarch Design, is composed of ten cast-in-place concrete volumes, each inclined and uniquely shaped to define a sequence of spatial thresholds. These volumes house various functions: a bakery, a meeting room, an exhibition area, stair access, and utility cores, while some remain deliberately undefined to allow future reprogramming. The project avoids interior walls and ceilings; instead, spatial character is established through the rhythm of mass, void, scale, and light.

all images courtesy of Enter Future Construction + HoLebensArt Living Co. + HEJU Architect + Terrarch Design

 

 

Stonehenge Lodge crafts Open Typology for Slow Architecture

 

For the production process, the collaborative team, Enter Future Construction + HoLebensArt Living Co. + HEJU Architect + Terrarch Design, emphasized precision and material honesty. Each concrete volume was poured once, without secondary finishing or cladding. Because of their inclined geometries, the formwork design demanded careful structural calibration and millimeter-level control, particularly in aligning embedded bolts, waterproofing details, and coordinating horizontal slabs across fragments. Construction required not only engineering accuracy, but a choreography of sequencing and site logistics. No insulation, paint, or drywall was applied. Openings were framed in aluminum and glass, and interior use is defined by modular furniture and lightweight interventions. The outdoor landscape flows between volumes, using permeable gravel, native planting, and minimal paving to connect each program zone. More than a building, Stonehenge Lodge is a spatial scaffold, an open typology that resists spectacle and encourages reinterpretation. Its architectural proposition is not to conclude, but to endure, offering a raw, slow, and civic presence in a city often built for speed.

Stonehenge Lodge reinterprets the real estate sales center

located in Zhubei, Taiwan’s rapidly expanding tech hub

a civic framework instead of a temporary pavilion

ten inclined concrete volumes define the building’s form

no interior walls or ceilings shape the rooms

program includes a bakery, meeting rooms, and exhibition areas

each volume creates distinct spatial thresholds

mass, void, scale, and light organize the architecture

 

project info:

 

name: Stonehenge Lodge
architects: Enter Future Construction + HoLebensArt Living Co. + HEJU Architect + Terrarch Design

location: Zhubei, Taiwan

 

 

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

 

edited by: christina vergopoulou | designboom

The post ten inclined concrete volumes outline stonehenge lodge real estate sales center in taiwan appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Sep
4

By

designboom radar: exhibitions to see around the world this september

Category: Design Boom

SEPTEMBER exhibitions FROM DESIGNBOOM RADAR

 

September brings a wide range of major exhibitions across art, design, and architecture, with museums and galleries unveiling new collections across the world. designboom radar highlights this month include the 40-year celebration of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Wrapped Pont-Neuf in Paris, a survey of wedge-era automotive design at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, the long-anticipated U.S. debut of Richard Serra’s Running Arcs (For John Cage) at Gagosian in New York, and Ai Weiwei’s first commission in Ukraine. Explore our picks of what shows to see around the globe below, and check out our dedicated event guide for more listings.

 

beach ruins

 

The Galeria Municipal do Porto has inaugurated Beach Ruins, a site-specific installation by Greek artist and architect Andreas Angelidakis, in the gardens of Palácio de Cristal. Drawing on ideas of the ruin, Angelidakis stages a set of fragmented columns that appear to have traveled across Europe, coming to rest in Porto. The installation references the ‘Grand Tour’ tradition of the 17th to 19th centuries, when European elites sought out ancient sites, but here the ruins themselves become the travelers, embodying a playful inversion of history and cultural expectation.

 

By pairing stone-like columns with parasols, Angelidakis transforms markers of heritage into interactive urban furniture. The pieces function as oversized poufs that invite rest and social gathering. As the inaugural edition of the gallery’s new outdoor commission, the installation sets a precedent for works that activate Porto’s public realm through seasonal, experimental interventions.

 

name: Beach Ruins
artist: Andreas Angelidakis
gallery: Galeria Municipal do Porto
location: Porto, Portugal
dates: May 10th — October 12th, 2025

Andreas Angelidakis, Beach Ruins, Porto, 2025, image courtesy Galeria Municipal do Porto

 

 

Jean Jullien: JUJU’s Castle

 

The Nanzuka Art Institute in Shanghai presents JUJU’s Castle, the first solo exhibition in China by French artist Jean Jullien. Spread across multiple gallery spaces, the show comprises painting, sculpture, and installation into a spatial experience that unfolds like an imagined fortress. The presentation includes over eighty new paintings created during Jullien’s time in Tokyo, joined by three-dimensional works and a large-scale installation that turns the institute into a multi-room narrative environment.

 

Each room is conceived as a ‘dungeon’ within the castle, referencing the level-based structure of role-playing games. Visitors are positioned as protagonists — warrior, elf, mage, or hero — encountering fantastical creatures and settings. This transformation of the gallery into an architectural sequence gives the exhibition the pacing of an exploratory journey, moving from one immersive space to another.

 

name: JUJU’s Castle

artist: Jean Jullien

gallery: Nanzuka Art Institute

location: Shanghai, China

dates: July 12th — October 26th, 2025

image © Nanzuka Art Institute

 

 

Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years

 

Edinburgh’s Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) becomes a vast landscape for Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years, the artist’s largest indoor exhibition to date. Organized by the National Galleries of Scotland, the show spans five decades and over two hundred photographic works, transforming the historic galleries into an environment of cracked clay walls, windfallen oak branches, suspended reeds, and stones from over one hundred graveyards in Dumfriesshire.

 

The exhibition is designed as one continuous, site-specific work that responds directly to the RSA’s architecture, using its spaces, light, and materials as active elements. In doing so, it extends Goldsworthy’s long-term investigation into how people, buildings, and the land are bound together and where they are held apart.

 

name: Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years

artist: Andy Goldsworthy 

gallery: Royal Scottish Academy (RSA), National Galleries of Scotland

location: Edinburgh, Scotland

dates: July 26th — November 2nd, 2025

Andy Goldsworthy, Edges made by finding leaves the same size. Tearing one in two. Spitting underneath and pressing flat on to another. Brough, Cumbria. Cherry patch. 4 November 1984, 1984 Cibachrome photograph | all images courtesy the artist, unless stated otherwise

 

 

The Wedge Revolution: Cars on the Cutting Edge

 

Petersen Automotive Museum shows some of the iconic wedge cars from the 60s and 70s in an exhibition, from the 1970 Lancia Stratos HF Zero to the 1974 Lamborghini Countach LP400 Periscopio. Titled The Wedge Revolution: Cars on the Cutting Edge, the show spotlights wedge-shaped automotive design that features angular silhouettes, faceted planes, and even bold geometric forms. These are some of the car concepts and designs that defined the era from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s, with their forward-looking, and quite literally, styles.

 

Some of the vehicles include models from Aston Martin, Chevrolet, Lamborghini, and Lancia. The exhibition takes the chance to showcase the wedge‑car design movement that emerged as a stray from the curvaceous, chrome-laden styling of earlier eras, visibly favoring a futuristic aesthetic instead of the typical aerodynamic-focused production. Designers such as Marcello Gandini, Giorgetto Giugiaro, Sergio Coggiola, William Towns, and Jerry Palmer played a central role in this visual revolution, and their names appear in the exhibition, a rightful recognition for their progressive wedge-car works.

 

name: The Wedge Revolution: Cars on the Cutting Edge

museum: Petersen Automotive Museum 

location: Los Angeles, CA

dates: August 2nd, 2025 — September 2026

side profile of the 1970 Lancia Stratos HF Zero | image courtesy of Petersen Automotive Museum

 

 

Ernesto Neto: Ba Ka Ba, a Dance of the Eternal Polarities

 

The Seoul Museum of Art presents ‘Ernesto Neto: Ba Ka Ba, a Dance of the Eternal Polarities,’ a new site-specific installation by the Brazilian artist that transforms the Korean museum’s Seosomun Main Branch lobby into a sensory environment. Commissioned as part of the 2025 SeMA Public Space Project, the woven artwork expands Ernesto Neto‘s longstanding interest in the relationships between body, space, and collective experience.

 

The installation is composed of expansive crochet structures woven from industrial cotton fabrics in shades of brown and pink. These colors, chosen to evoke tree trunks and night alongside flowers and day, establish a dialogue between natural rhythms and architectural structure. Suspended and filled with dried guava leaves and locally sourced tea leaves, the artist‘s forms invite a multi-sensory encounter that engages smell both texture together.

 

name: Ba Ka Ba, a Dance of the Eternal Polarities (Ba Ka Ba, uma dança das eternas polaridades)

artist: Ernesto Neto

museum: Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA)

location: Seoul, Korea

dates: August 13th, 2025 — December 31st, 2026

image courtesy SeMA, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

 

 

falling from the sky

 

Unit, the contemporary art gallery in London, welcomes artist Sho Shibuya with the exhibition Falling from the Sky. Since 2020, the artist has greeted each morning with a painting, translating the day’s sky onto the front page of a newspaper. While his series of daily rituals primarily captures the sunrise, Falling from the Sky turns to the quieter subject of rain. Rendered from photographs of water streaking across glass, the works reflect on ephemerality and the meditative patterns formed by droplets in motion.

 

For Shibuya, rain carries both intimacy and tension. It recalls both personal memories and stark contrasts in how skies are experienced across the world. Where he finds comfort in gray clouds, others may see smoke or destruction. This duality infuses the series with a sense of fragility, transforming depictions of rain into reminders of peace’s vulnerability. Falling from the Sky asks viewers to linger with these moments, considering what endures after the storm has passed.

 

name: Falling from the Sky
artist: Sho Shibuya
gallery: Unit
location: London, UK
dates: August 20th — September 17th, 2025

Sho Shibuya, Falling from the Sky, Unit, London | image courtesy Unit

 

Rocking to Infinity

 

Kukje Gallery will present Louise Bourgeois: Rocking to Infinity, focusing on the final two decades of the artist’s career. The exhibition gathers sculptures, drawings, and fabric suites that meditate on intimacy, memory, and time. The title, drawn from Bourgeois’s own writing, evokes the image of a mother rocking a child to sleep. This gesture of security and tenderness resonates throughout the works on view.

 

Immersive wall installations pair gouaches and watercolors that revisit themes of the self, the couple, family, and the spiral. The gallery’s center hosts major sculptures which explore emotional bonds and the passage of time. The Hanok space introduces a rarer body of drawings on coffee filters, made in 1994, where circular compositions bridge domestic material with reflections on cycles, abstraction, and organic form. All together, the works reveal Bourgeois’s late practice as both intimate and monumental.

 

name: Rocking to Infinity
artist: Louise Bourgeois
gallery: Kukje Gallery
location: Seoul, South Korea
dates: September 2nd — October 26th, 2025

installation view, Louise Bourgeois: Rocking to Infinity, image courtesy Kukje Gallery

 

 

GABRIEL CHAILE: ESTO ES AMÉRICA, O QUAL É O LIMITE?

 

Gabriel Chaile’s debut New York solo exhibition, Esto es América, o qual é o limite?, presents new adobe sculptures created on site at Marianne Boesky Gallery, alongside drawings and photographs. Drawing from the artist’s ongoing exploration of what he calls the ‘genealogy of form,’ the works draw from the material and formal traditions of Indigenous communities in northeast Argentina while linking them to broader histories across the Americas. The sculptures are at once monumental and anthropomorphic. Their surfaces are covered with dense networks of line drawings, resist straightforward interpretation while holding onto layers of cultural memory.

 

The exhibition incorporates influences from Chaile’s time in Montana, where he observed a No Kings Day protest that shaped the atmosphere of the new works. Charcoal drawings on canvas echo the markings on the sculptures, while photographs from the protest offer a documentary counterpart. The title itself, half in Spanish and half in Portuguese, reflects Chaile’s negotiation between statement and question, declaration and doubt: ‘This is America’ followed by ‘What is the limit?’

 

name: Esto es América, o qual é o limite?

artist: Gabriel Chaile

gallery: Marianne Boesky Gallery

location: New York, NY

dates: September 4th — October 18th, 2025

image © Macy Rajacich, courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery

 

 

lee bul: from 1998 to now

 

The Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art will open Lee Bul: After 1998, a large-scale survey tracing nearly three decades of work by one of Korea’s most influential contemporary artists. Bringing together around 150 pieces, the exhibition spans performance, sculpture, installation, and drawing, examining Lee Bul’s sustained inquiry into the body’s entanglement with society, technology, and systems of power. Together, a range of works illuminate her engagement with utopian modernity’s ideals and contradictions, and the recurring human pursuit of perfection.

 

Organized in collaboration with M+ Hong Kong, the exhibition unfolds as a landscape where individual memory and historical fragments intersect with broader sociopolitical references. The show charts the evolution of Lee Bul’s practice, and highlights her role in expanding conversations around humanity’s past and imagined futures.

 

name: Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now

artist: Lee Bul

museum: Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art

location: Seoul, South Korea

dates: September 4th, 2025 — January 4th, 2026

installation views, ‘Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now’, Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, 2025. courtesy of the artist and BB&M © Lee Bul, photo by Jeon Byung-cheol

 

 

Design Disco Club

 

During Paris Design Week, Pli Office will present DESIGN DISCO CLUB, an exhibition dedicated to a new generation of designers and architects reshaping contemporary practice. Drawing on the collective energy of disco, the project frames design as a space of freedom, emotion, and shared experience, while questioning the balance between industrial and human rhythms. With scenography by Paf atelier, the exhibition stages a diverse spectrum of works that reflect the shifting temporalities of production and the commitments that define today’s creative landscape.

 

The show will feature contributions from around forty emerging creators alongside legendary fashion houses like Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Marine Serre, Marie-Ève Lecavalier, and Mugler. A range of objects are each presented as an example from a multifaceted moment in design. With a series of talks, DESIGN DISCO CLUB adopts the spirit of a club to become a gathering space for imagining the cultural forms of tomorrow.

 

name: DESIGN DISCO CLUB

gallery: Pli Office

location: Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, France

dates: September 6th — 12th, 2025

image courtesy Pli Office

 

 

CHRISTO AND JEANNE-CLAUDE: PARIS PROJECTS

 

This fall, Paris marks the 40th anniversary of The Pont Neuf Wrapped with a citywide tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation, supported by the City of Paris, will stage a free outdoor exhibition along the Seine. Titled Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Paris Projects, the installation will highlight the couple’s close relationship with the French capital, where they lived, worked, and realized a series of landmark projects over several decades. The program also includes the naming of a public square in their honor, underscoring the city’s recognition of their enduring cultural impact.

 

Paris served as both the starting point and central site for Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s artistic collaborations. Their interventions included Wall of Oil Barrels — The Iron Curtain (1961–62), Wrapped Statue, Trocadero (1964), The Pont Neuf Wrapped (1975–85), and L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped (conceived in 1961, realized posthumously in 2021). Artist JR will revisit the Pont Neuf with a new project that will transform the iconic bridge into a stone-like cave for two weeks in September 2025..

 

name: Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Paris Projects

artist: Christo and Jeanne-Claude

location: Paris, France

dates: September 6th — October 30th, 2025

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, The Pont Neuf Wrapped, Paris, 1975-85 — image by Wolfgang Volz © 1985 Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation

 

 

Sweets and Paradise

 

Bernhard Knaus Fine Art will present Sweets and Paradise, a new exhibition of photographic works by Ralf Peters. Recognized as a leading figure in conceptual photography in Germany, Peters uses digital manipulation to reframe everyday objects, landscapes, and environments, unsettling the line between reality and construction. His practice asks viewers to reflect critically on how images shape perception.

 

The exhibition brings together two recent series. In SWEETS, natural forms such as branches and leaves are digitally enhanced against vivid backgrounds, transforming them into visual compositions that waver between authenticity and invention. PARADISE introduces AI-generated gardens and architectural visions that draw from cultural and religious ideals, evoking both the desire for harmony and the unease of a digitally engineered utopia. Shown together, the works highlight the tension between nature’s fragility and technology’s promise of perfection, positioning photography as a space where beauty, illusion, and critique converge.

 

name: Sweets and Paradise

artist: Ralf Peters

gallery: Bernhard Knaus Fine Art Gallery

location: Frankfurt, Germany

dates: September 6th — November 22nd, 2025

Ralf Peters, Poppi Paradise, 2025, image courtesy Bernhard Knaus Fine Art Gallery

 

 

Lygia Pape. Tisser l’espace

 

The Pinault Collection will present the first solo exhibition in France dedicated to Lygia Pape (1927–2004), a central figure of the Brazilian avant-garde. Serving as a prelude to the upcoming exhibition Minimal, Lygia Pape: Weaving Space is built around a major work from the collection, Ttéia 1, C (2003/2025). Formed from copper threads stretched across space, the installation immerses visitors in an environment where light and movement activate the work. This embodies Pape’s idea of ‘weaving space’ and redefines the viewer’s role in the artistic encounter.

 

The exhibition brings together key pieces from across Pape’s career, from her early abstract engravings to her monumental Livro Noite e Dia III (Book of Night and Day III, 1963–1976), as well as a selection of experimental films. Deeply informed by Brazil’s sociopolitical context, her work reflects a commitment to social transformation, dissolving the boundaries between art and life. The show highlights Pape’s place alongside Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica as one of the defining voices of Brazil’s postwar avant-garde.

 

name: Lygia Pape. Tisser l’espace

artist: Lygia Pape

gallery: Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection

location: Paris, France

dates: September 10th, 2025 — January 26th, 2026

LLygia Pape, Ttéia 1, C (2003/2025), image courtesy Pinault Collection

 

 

Max Lamb: Crockery

 

Gallery FUMI will open Crockery, a new exhibition by Max Lamb in collaboration with ceramics manufacturer 1882 Ltd., on September 11, 2025. The series features slip-cast earthenware pieces produced from plaster models hand-carved by Lamb, extending his ongoing investigation into material possibilities. Made in Stoke-on-Trent, the works embody the technical rigor of 1882 Ltd. and the designer’s experimental approach, rethinking the role of ceramics in contemporary design.

 

With Crockery, Lamb turns to a medium traditionally associated with fragility and transforms it into functional forms that challenge assumptions about strength and durability. His interest lies in pushing ceramic beyond its conventional uses, exploring its viability as both a sculptural surface and as a material capable of bearing weight and shaping furniture. In doing so, the project reframes ceramic as both resilient and versatile, opening new ground for its role in design.

 

name: Crockery

artist: Max Lamb with 1882 Ltd.

gallery: Gallery FUMI

location: London, UK

dates: September 11th — 30th, 2025

image courtesy Penguins Egg Studio (Tom Wright) for Gallery FUMI

 

 

Carmen d’Apollonio: Salut, ça va, c’est moi

 

Friedman Benda will open Salut, Ça va, c’est moi, the fourth solo exhibition by Carmen D’Apollonio, on September 11. Known for her playful and idiosyncratic approach, the Swiss-born, Los Angeles–based artist expands her practice here with new materials and sculpted glass lampshades, pushing her work toward greater dimensionality and narrative depth.

 

The exhibition unfolds like a theatrical set, populated by personified lamps that perform across the gallery space — leaning, dripping, suspending, and wandering. D’Apollonio’s new glass elements amplify the dialogue between form, light, and shadow, revealing more of what was once hidden behind linen shades. Titles such as Why fall in love when you can’t fall asleep and If you ever have forever highlight her use of language as a candid, humorous, and empathetic extension of her practice, drawing viewers into a direct conversation that is both intimate and universal.

 

name: Salut, Ça va, c’est moi

artist: Carmen D’Apollonio

gallery: Friedman Benda

location: 515 W 26th St 1st Floor, New York, NY

dates: September 11th — October 16th, 2025

image © Friedman Benda

 

 

Richard Serra: Running Arcs (For John Cage)

 

Gagosian will present the U.S. debut of Richard Serra’s Running Arcs (For John Cage) (1992), opening September 12th, 2025, at the gallery’s West 21st Street space in New York. First shown more than three decades ago at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, the large-scale steel work returns on the exact anniversary of its original unveiling and will remain on view through December 20th, 2025.

 

The sculpture consists of three massive conical steel segments, each inverted in relation to the others and set in a staggered arrangement. Measuring 52 feet in length and 13 feet in height, the monumental forms embody Serra’s enduring investigation into weight, balance, and spatial perception, while also honoring his longtime connection to composer John Cage.

 

name: Richard Serra: Running Arcs (For John Cage)

artist: Richard Serra

gallery: Gagosian

location: West 21st Street, New York, NY

dates: September 12th — December 20th, 2025

Richard Serra during the installation of Promenade (2008), artwork © Estate of Richard Serra / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. image by Raphael Gaillard/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

 

 

ELMGREEN & DRAGSET: THE ALICE IN WONDERLAND SYNDROME

 

Pace Gallery presents The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, the first solo exhibition in Los Angeles by Elmgreen & Dragset, on view from September 13th through October 25th. Spanning the gallery’s main space and adjoining south gallery, the show explores shifts in perception through acts of doubling, resizing, and spatial reduplication.

 

The Berlin-based duo, known for sculptural interventions that probe identity and belonging, uses the gallery’s architecture as both stage and subject. Each artwork appears at full scale in the main hall, while exact half-size versions are replicated in a carefully constructed miniature of that same space.

 

name: The Alice in Wonderland Syndrome

artist: Elmgreen & Dragset

gallery: Pace Gallery

location: 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, California

dates: September 13th — October 25th, 2025

Elmgreen & Dragset, installation view, 2025 © Elmgreen & Dragset / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

 

ai weiwei’s installation in ukraine

 

RIBBON International will debut Ai Weiwei’s Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White at Pavilion 13, marking the artist’s first commission in Ukraine. Conceived as a site-specific installation, the work continues Ai’s investigation into the material and symbolic traces of conflict, transforming ideologically charged objects into reflections on contemporary struggles and shared human experience.

 

Referencing Leonardo da Vinci’s Divina Proportione, the piece engages with Enlightenment ideals of harmony and rational order while questioning their appropriation in contexts of war and concealment. By juxtaposing mathematical precision with objects tied to militarized histories, Ai underscores the fragile line between ideals of progress and the realities of violence, positioning the installation within his broader humanist and pacifist practice.

 

Ai WeiWei says: ‘That is the challenge, to build new works relating to what I feel, to me in the past and to the current situation. Art is more metaphysical. You cannot really give every description, but you can always suggest a gesture or attitude or some kind of symbolic meaning, more like a poetic gesture.’

 

name: Three Perfectly Proportioned Spheres and Camouflage Uniforms Painted White

artist: Ai WeiWei

location: Pavilion 13, Kyiv, Ukraine

commissioner: RIBBON International, FORMA Architects, Pavilion of Culture

dates: September 14th — November 30th 2025

image courtesy RIBBON International

 

 

Sueño Perro: Instalación Celuloide de Alejandro G. Iñárritu

 

Alejandro G. Iñárritu presents Sueño Perro: Instalación Celuloide de Alejandro G. Iñárritu at Fondazione Prada in Milan, an exhibition marking the 25th anniversary of his debut feature Amores Perros (2000). The installation resurrects previously unseen footage — abandoned during the film’s editing and preserved for decades in the archives of the National Autonomous University of Mexico — revealing fragments that speak to enduring themes of love, betrayal, and violence against the backdrop of Mexico City’s complex social realities. At its core, the work emphasizes the tactile presence of 35mm film, using its grain and flicker to evoke memory and immediacy.

 

name: Sueño Perro: Instalación Celuloide de Alejandro G. Iñárritu

artist: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

gallery: Fondazione Prada

location: Largo Isarco 2, Milan, Italy

dates: September 18th, 2025 — February 26th, 2026

Stills from Amores Perros (2000) by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, courtesy Rodrigo Prieto © Alta Vista Films

 

 

calder gardens

 

Calder Gardens, the new cultural destination designed by Herzog and de Meuron and Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf, has announced its opening date for September 21st, 2025. Located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in downtown  Philadelphia, the gallery space is set to showcase the art and ideas of Alexander Calder, one of the 20th century’s most influential artists and a Philadelphia native.

 

The institute has also appointed Juana Berrío as the Marsha Perelman Senior Director of Programs. A seasoned curator, educator, and arts programmer, Berrío will lead public programming that connects audiences to Calder’s work through performances, events, and wellness activities, fostering engagement and community in this innovative blend of art, nature, and architecture.

 

name: Calder Gardens

architect: Herzog & de Meuron

landscape designer: Piet Oudolf 

location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
opening: September 21st, 2025

image courtesy Calder Gardens

 

 

The post designboom radar: exhibitions to see around the world this september appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

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