A Year in Design
Whitewall is looking back on the best of 2023 in design, from exhibitions to new collections, and from new spaces to our favorite in-depth features.
Best of 2023: The Venice Architecture Biennale
Installation view of the Denmark Pavilion at 18th International Architecture Exhibition-La Biennale di Venezia, “The Laboratory of the Future,” photo by Matteo de Mayda, courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia.
On May 20, The 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia opened in Venice. The biennial, an inspired, multi-faceted presentation, curated by Lesley Lokko, was on view to the public through November 26. With a focus on sustainability and carbon neutrality throughout the sweeping spaces of the Giardini, the Arsenale, and Forte Marghera, the six-part exhibition brought together 89 global participants and especially illuminates Africa and the African Diaspora. Lokko placed an emphasis on freedom of expression and exploration in the art of architecture, alongside dialogues into the many shades of African culture, its complex histories, ardent desires, and everlasting strength and optimism.
El Cosmico by Liz Lambert and BIG
A rendering for the new El Cosmico project by Bjarke Ingels Group, ICON, and Liz Lambert, courtesy of ICON.
The bohemian hotel and off-grid campground El Cosmico first opened in 2009, imagined by the hospitality and design visionary Liz Lambert to celebrate the regional landscape and community. Like Lambert’s other projects that reflect their locality, including six Bunkhouse hotels, the original El Cosmico successfully mirrored Marfa as a center for art, nature, and hospitality. Now over a decade later, Lambert is teaming up with two architectural forces—Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and the pioneering 3D printing company ICON—with a plan to relocate and expand El Cosmico into a 60-acre site. Breaking ground next year, the hotel and condo project details an innovative cluster of large-scale 3D-printed domes and parabolic forms, creating guest rooms in which the creative culture and minimalistic environment of Marfa converge with new amenities and resources, like a restaurant, pool, bathhouse, and an arts and crafts workshop space.
Best of 2023: Molteni&C’s Salone Debuts
Mateo table by Vincent Van Duysen and artwork by Roberto Ruspoli, courtesy of Molteni&C.
During design week in Milan in April, Molteni&C invited us to picture a domicile dwelling of Ancient Rome, with its uncovered courtyards, inner portico, column adornments, and garden. This was the point of departure for Vincent Van Duysen when imagining the house’s 2023 collections, detailed by avant-garde notes taken from a Milanese house built and designed by Pier Giulio Magistretti in 1933. Connecting indoor and outdoor and intimate and private spaces, the collection’s natural materials (leather, glass, natural wood, and metals) and rich, earthen hues propose noble, uncomplicated pieces for the home, designed with the help of collaborators like Herzog & de Meuron, Naota Fukasawa, and Marta Ferri, who created the season’s fabrics. Now on view, the collection includes pieces like Mateo table, which includes a columnar base and a disc-like flat top; the Tuscany chaise longue, which features a chic reclined shape reminiscent of the region’s rolling hills; and the Cinnamon chair, which features a cushy rounded form that begs to be your next resting spot. The debuts can be seen with a backdrop commission painted by the artist Roberto Ruspoli, whose Virgil’s Dream was informed by the collection.
Mariam Issoufou Kamara in Whitewall’s Summer 2023 Impact Issue
Hikma Religious Secular Complex, photo by James Wang, courtesy of atelier masōmī.
Mariam Issoufou Kamara founded the Niger-based architecture and research firm atelier masōmī in 2014. Ahead of its tenth anniversary next year, atelier masōmī is creating a museum and cultural center in Senegal named Bët-bi, a housing plan in Sharjah in the UAE named Hayyan, the local Yantala Office building using CEB construction, the Niamey Cultural Center, and the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development in Monrovia, Liberia—the first-ever presidential center for the first woman president in Africa, dedicated to her personal and professional work. From her headquarters in Niamey, Kamara joined Whitewall on Zoom to hear how her projects are rooted in local identity with economic and social sustainability in mind.
Best of 2023: David Chipperfield Wins Pritzker Prize
The Hepworth Wakefield, photo courtesy of Iwan Baan, courtesy of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
In March, David Chipperfield was named the 2023 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, receiving the architecture field’s arguably highest honor. The architect known for the America’s Cup Building in Valencia, the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate, and the Museo Jumex in Mexico City took the announcement as an opportunity to emphasize the need for architecture to address social inequality and sustainability. He encouraged the next generation of architects to forge their own path, one that will need “vision and courage.”
Best of 2023: In Memory of Andrea Branzi
Andrea Branzi, portrait by Francesco Brigida, courtesy of Friedman Benda and Andrea Branzi.
This fall, we lost one of the great minds and visionaries in design, Andrea Branzi. Earlier in the year, we were lucky enough to speak with Branzi about his exhibition at Friedman Benda in New York, “Contemporary DNA,” which included furniture and objects that showcased what he calls a hybrid nature. Branzi can be described as a philosopher, who saw the driftwood used in his series “Roots” as “noble memories of ancient storms,” or the bamboo in his “Buildings” shelving units or “Germinal Seats” chairs as “forests of poetic thoughts,” like the pipe organs in houses of worship. Driven by the seemingly useless objects we hold dear because of their ability to contain our story—our memories, our loves, our sorrows—Branzi shared with Whitewall his thought process behind saving the world from its contemporary ugliness.
Tatiana Bilbao in Whitewall’s Spring 2023 Latin America Issue
Photo of Los Terrenos home by Rory Gardiner.
Tatiana Bilbao opened her Mexico City-based architecture studio in 2004. Her first project was a home for the artist Gabriel Orozco. In the nearly two decades since, she has designed other residences, offices, and research centers, as well as the Culiacán Botanical Garden, the Pilgrimage Route in Jalisco, and more. With a keen focus on sustainable living, her approach is to design spaces that contribute to their surroundings rather than interfere with them. Materials like concrete, clay brick, and glass help reflect the surrounding nature, as well as cool a space’s interior with little electricity. Ahead of her firm’s 20th anniversary next year, Bilbao shared with Whitewall how she is embedding landscapes with social values, why she still sketches every single project by hand, and what she hopes her impact is.
Best of 2023: Lily Kwong Designs The Orchid Show at the New York Botanical Garden
Installation view of “The Orchid Show: Natural Heritage,” courtesy of The New York Botanical Garden.
On February 14, the landscape artist Lily Kwong stood before an intimate crowd at the New York Botanical Garden to open her eponymous studio’s exhibition “The Orchid Show: Natural Heritage.” On view through April 23, it marked the institution’s 20th-anniversary “Orchid Show” presentation, hosted inside the landmark Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. It was a delightful homecoming for Kwong, as she was enrolled in Garden’s landscape certificate program ahead of starting her own company just five years ago. Returning to the space also marked an important milestone for both her and the agricultural destination, as she became the first woman and person of color to ever take the helm of the anticipated exhibition.
