Design

Design

LEGO transformed from a childhood toy to a design phenomenon this year, releasing sets that blur the line between construction kit and sculptural art. The Danish company pushed beyond simple nostalgia, creating builds that demand interaction, celebrate cultural touchstones, and challenge what plastic bricks can become. From mechanized aquariums to Broadway stages, these releases prove LEGO understands what adult collectors actually want.

YOKOMAE et BOUAYAD announce their selected entry, among five others, inside the Louvre Abu Dhabi for the Richard Mille Art Prize.

She would attend events like Burning Man and Ondalinda with friends and party through the night, but upon returning home she kept running into the same issue. "Everything closes just when you feel like you're about to have a great, long evening out," she says. "And things can get messy during the wee hours of the morning at clubs - if they're even open." The only solution, naturally, was to design a private nightclub in her own home.

This residence is conceived as a quiet framework for everyday life, shaped through reduction rather than expression.

Red Cabin is an experimental holiday developed as part of the Merryda Wiki World - Secret Camp, a forest-based project composed of more than a dozen discreet treehouses set within a metasequoia woodland inhabited by migratory birds. The project, located in Dongxihu District, , forms part of Wiki World's ongoing 'Wiki Building School' initiative, which explores alternative living models through co-building with nature.

Birddy, a recent award-winning furniture design by Korean designers Yejin Hong and Seyeon Park, is exactly that kind of creation. It's a children's swing when sunny days call for play, and a bird feeder when rain clouds roll in. Simple as that sounds, it's the kind of thoughtful design that makes you wonder why we don't see more of it.

It doesn't take much to transform a place sometimes, trust in what already exists is enough. Built in 1977, the Otto Church in Dusseldorf's Gerresheim district stands as a quiet testament to this idea. Architect Herrmann Rauch, a defining figure of post-war church architecture in North Rhine-Westphalia, created spaces characterized by restraint: reduced in form, deliberate in their use of light, and powerful in their presence.

Home on a Hill by Pirinen & Salo rises above the shoreline of Lake Inari in northern Finland, shaped by the client's desire for economy and an unbroken relationship with the surrounding landscape. The dwelling's form is at once compact and open, and responds directly to the terrain and the long northern light. The exterior carries the presence of a cabin from the Savo region, translated with deliberate irregularity. Spruce board cladding, left untreated, takes on gradual shifts in tone

Koji Fujii / TOREAL "A Space Where Precision and Trust Reside" An office for a company engaged in concrete investigation, surveying, and civil engineering design.

Once your mattress has reached the point of no return-meaning it's worn down and past the warranty date-searching through the best mattress brands to find the right bed can be overwhelming. But fear not. We've been testing mattresses from leading retailers for years to help you find the right foundation. To give you a glimpse into our process, we don't test in a lab or facility.

Buildings that welcome visitors across cities, forests, and coastlines must respond directly to darkness and cold, not by denying them, but by creating interior worlds that offer orientation, warmth, and psychological relief. The act of welcoming in Scandinavia is therefore inseparable from the climate, grounded in the understanding that shelter, light, and human presence are fundamental resources in Arctic environments.

Yanko Design's new podcast, Design Mindset, continues to bring fresh perspectives from design leaders around the world. Every week, this series (Powered by KeyShot) explores critical questions shaping the future of design, from recognition and validation to the evolving role of awards in our digital age. Episode 15 tackles a particularly timely subject: whether design awards still hold relevance when every designer has Instagram, Behance, and LinkedIn at their fingertips.

Each winter, ice and snow become building materials. From vernacular structures such as igloos and temporary snow shelters to snowmen shaped by hand, frozen water has long been used to form space, mark presence, and test the limits of climate and material. In contemporary practice, architects and artists work against time and temperature, shaping environments that last only as long as the cold allows.

Picture this: you're hiking through the Carpathians when fog rolls in and you lose your bearings. Instead of waiting hours for a helicopter rescue team, a drone reaches you in minutes, delivering supplies and guidance while thermal cameras track your location. This isn't science fiction. It's the vision behind Lynx, a jaw-dropping architectural concept that's equal parts rescue station, tourist destination, and gothic cathedral.

Those who follow me on LinkedIn may have gotten the impression that I'm against AI. Nothing is further from the truth. What I'm really against is the notion that you can't do design without AI so you either learn AI or you're doomed. Using AI is of course useful for designers. But so is knowing how to use Figma and I put both of those in the same bucket of tactical skills.

Visual design increases brand engagement by shaping perception, generating emotion, and enabling brand recognition. Brands like Innocent Drinks use playful illustrations and informal typography to strengthen user connection. Their packaging design increases memorability and brand recall among UK audiences. Colour, typography, imagery, and layout influence how people experience a brand. Colour shapes emotional response. Blue signals trust, red activates urgency, green suggests sustainability. Barclays uses blue to build authority, while Oatly uses earthy tones to align with eco-conscious values.

The installation draws reference from both lived and imagined meals, translating familiar rituals into a spatial and mechanical composition. Rather than focusing solely on , the table incorporates the broader environment of a festive dinner, including decoration, movement, sound, and atmosphere. A series of mechanical systems animates glass objects, triggers light sequences, and releases scents, creating a layered sensory experience distributed along the length of the table.

"I was always fascinated by how lighting could change a space. It's like painting with light," Casella says.

Wee take great care here at AD to not publish just one kind of home. The projects we feature are different sizes and styles, designed for different types of families and uses, and in locations across the globe. What unites them is a shared execution; each starts with a vision and finishes with a distinct perspective. "We're always looking for homes with a strong, personal point of view," confirms Alison Levasseur, global interiors and garden editor. "Spaces that feel authentic, real, and full of joy."

Form Us With Love's Nomad Collection remedies cable chaos in today's increasingly fluid work environments. An ever-imaginative Swedish industrial design studio, Form Us With Love developed the modular Nomad system in partnership with technical design company Forming Function to better accommodate the hybrid conditions of contemporary workspaces - where charging devices and task lighting are no longer tied to a single desk or location.

There's something quietly radical about sitting in a recycled Adirondack chair while you're waiting for your flight at the world's busiest airport. Plastic Reimagined transforms locally sourced plastic waste into full-scale seating prototypes, bridging design education, material research, and civic infrastructure at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and honestly, I can't stop thinking about how clever this is. Here's what happened.