Surface

9 stories

SurfacePeter Zumthor Expands Fondation Beyeler With a Trio of New Structures, and Other News. Plus, RH brings its RH Estates concept to North America and Prune Nourry to fill Petit Palais' galleries with portraits of forgotten sculptors Photo by Iwan Baan.

September 25

SurfaceCiti and The Supper Club Bring an Exclusive Dining Experience to Chicago’s Bavette’s Bar & Boeuf On September 17, Citi Strata Elite(R) presented an evening at Bavette's Bar & Boeuf with The Supper Club, bringing their dining series to one of Chicago's most sought-after restaurants.

September 25

SurfaceDesigning Delicious: Asador Bastian From a butcher room inside a restored 1883 townhouse, chef-restaurateur Doug Psaltis and his French Laundry-trained partner Hsing Chen are refreshing Chicago's storied steakhouse scene with San…

September 24

SurfaceThyssen-Bornemisza Museum Gains 360 Works in a Major Madrid Expansion, and Other News. Plus, Faye Toogood puts faces on tiles for her debut collection with Mutina and Bienal de Yucatan launches as Mexico's first international contemporary art biennial. Photo by Roberto Ruiz / TBA21.

September 24

SurfaceFor Freedoms Announces “America(!) The Beautiful(?)” at The Ford in Los Angeles Xiuhtezcatl. Photography by Josue Rivas For Freedoms, the artist-led organization centering civic engagement, will present "AMERICA(!) THE BEAUTIFUL(?)," a night of jazz, blues, hip-hop, and poetry…

September 24

SurfaceCK Reed Illustrates Detroit Month of Design 2026 The artist and Surface contributor's observations from Cranbrook to Michigan Central, The Shepherd, and more By CK Reed Detroit Month of Design, hosted by Design Core, brings together exhibitions…

September 23

SurfaceJohn Gerrard and LACMA Complete The Year-Long Digital Art Project “SPIRITS” john gerrard, still from SPIRITS (Atlantic Ocean), Courtesy of the artist. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Irish artist John Gerrard have completed "SPIRITS," a year-long digital artwork…

September 23

SurfaceThe U-Haul Art Fair Returns to Chelsea With 20 Exhibitors, and Other News. Plus, Tyler Mitchell wins the Crystal Bridges Museum's $250,000 Don Tyson prize and MillerKnoll lowers revenue forecast Courtesy U-Haul Gallery.

September 23

SurfaceInside La Prairie’s Swiss Pristine Collection Penthouse Party As the sun settled over Manhattan, an elegant enclave of New York Fashion Week attendees rose to the 21st-floor penthouse of The Standard, East Village for a cocktail in celebration of the new Swiss…

September 22

発見, hakken: a finding. This is a record of what one designer notices in a week.

I grew up beside the Arakawa, in Adachi, and spent five years in a Ginza studio drawing identities for companies you have used without once thinking about them. That work teaches you to read a city as a page. A vending machine is set type. A rice bag is a packaging problem somebody solved in the eighties and nobody has improved on since. A good deal of the best design in Japan is like that: already in the street, unsigned, waiting to be looked at properly.

So this magazine watches the street as well as the feed. Around fifty sources come in through the day, ten of them Japanese, and what the world's studios are arguing about is counted and plotted so you can watch it move. Every third day I write about one thing I actually stood in front of.

What you get for a story is a headline, a short excerpt, one picture and the way out to the people who reported it. Never the article itself, and never the photograph as though it were ours. A story written in Japanese stays in Japanese here, headline and excerpt both, because that is how its author set it down.

Everything is also published in Japanese at hakkenmag.com/ja/.

— Ren Arakawa, Tokyo