Architecture
Exqz - Curated Guides, Places & Experiences
Exqz curates the world's most exquisite places, experiences, and city guides. Discover handpicked destinations, things to do, and travel stories from around the world.
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Yayoi Kusama's Last Tour
She spent seventy years making a case for infinity. Her final European retrospective, begun in Basel and built with her before she died on 14 August, opens its last chapter in Amsterdam on 11 September.
Travel
Chinese Afternoon Tea on The Lake: Amanyangyun's Best Hour, an Hour From Central Shanghai
Amanyangyun runs a year-round lakeside tea in a camphor forest that was carried more than 700 kilometers to Shanghai. Black swans, a rabbit island, and at least four separate tea bookings that are easy to confuse. Here is what is actually served and how to ask for the right one.
Travel
Reykjaböð Opens Below the Hot River: a 900-Square-Meter Lagoon at the Mouth of Reykjadalur
A geothermal lagoon, a ten-room bathhouse and a glasshouse restaurant are going up at Hveragerði, half an hour from Reykjavík, opening September 2026. Tickets start at 7,900 ISK. Here is what is actually in it.
Travel
A Hotel Brand With No Hotel: Mandarin Oriental Lands on North Flagler Drive
Great Gulf paid $28.5 million for a 1966 apartment complex on North Flagler Drive. In its place: a 31-story Safdie Architects tower with 87 residences from $3.5 million, and Mandarin Oriental's first standalone residential project in South Florida. No hotel attached, which makes the service model the most interesting thing about it.
Travel
Puglia Is Getting a Championship Golf Course: La Maviglia Opens in 2027
A 202-hectare estate near Maruggio with 70 suites, 35 villas and a 5,000-square-metre medical spa, all arranged around the one thing Puglia's masseria hotels cannot offer.
Design
A Private Golf Club With No Course: Stableford Opens in West Los Angeles This Winter
No new private golf club has opened on the Westside in more than fifty years, and there is no land left for a course. Stableford's answer is eight TrackMan lounges, one of the largest indoor putting greens in California, private cold plunges and a bar, capped at a few hundred members.
Architecture
Heatherwick Studio Rethinks the Belvedere, and Louisville Gets a Better Park for It
New renderings show the Belvedere redesign after a year of cuts. The wave over the highway is gone, the river gesture is smaller, and the money moved to a plaza and a pavilion built from lightposts. It is a better project than the one that got the headlines.
Architecture
The Whale: Arctic Norway's New Whale Centre Opens 3 June 2027
Three hundred kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, a concrete shell clad in local stone is settling onto the rocks at Andenes. Dorte Mandrup designed the building, Ralph Appelbaum Associates designed the nine-room journey inside, and the local whale watching operators helped pay for it.
Featured Places
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Casa Cipriani New York
The ground floor is still a working ferry terminal, and the boats to Governors Island load below while the hotel keeps its own porte-cochere and lobbies off the side. Upstairs, the harbor is the whole view. Walker and Morris finished the Battery Maritime Building in 1909, a Beaux-Arts ferry house in iron and copper that the city landmarked in 1967 and that spent later decades holding municipal paperwork. In the conversion completed in 2021, Marvel rebuilt the third and fourth floors into guestrooms and set a glass addition on the water-facing elevation to carry the club above, with Thierry Despont's office taking the interiors. Of the Great Hall's 130-foot glass laylight only a failing steel grid had survived, so the pattern was drawn back from old photographs. Twenty-eight rooms and nineteen suites fill those two floors, finished in custom Italian mahogany with marble bathrooms, walk-in wardrobes and Art Deco in the detailing, and turned toward the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge or the Statue of Liberty. Many suites open onto private terraces set under pergolas, and on the Garden Suite the patio is larger than the suite, 807 square feet against 755. The two Presidential Suites, Roebling and Bartholdi, carry wraparound terraces and Loro Piana interiors. A room key opens the club and the wellness floors for the length of the stay, access that is otherwise a matter of membership. The house car runs drop-offs within twelve blocks, shoes are shined daily, and the Times or the Journal arrives with the morning. The boats keep leaving below.
Fouquet's New York
The toile in the rooms was drawn for this building alone, and it plays loose with the map: the Ladder 8 firehouse turns up beside Greene Street, and a pigeon somewhere in the pattern is making off with a croissant. None of it is salvage: the eight stories went up new inside the Tribeca North Historic District, a joint venture between Groupe Barrière and the developer Caspi Development that opened in September 2022, with SBJ Group setting the brick, stone and cast iron of its neighbors against metal screening and an aluminum panel system. The entrance is easy to walk past. Martin Brudnizki ran the interiors toward lavender and almond green, Art Deco furniture, mohair velvet and deep walnut, and gave the ground floor a lobby with nooks to sit in. It is closer to a domestic lounge than a check-in hall. The toile runs through all 97 keys, 65 of them king rooms and 29 corner or terrace suites, and the bathrooms are marble with rain showers. Windows go floor to ceiling at the prestige tier, where the suites add parquet and Calacatta marble. One of the terrace suites opens onto five hundred square feet of outdoor room, over the nineteenth-century brick of the neighborhood. The penthouse holds the top two floors. A cinema called Cannes takes private bookings and runs ticketed screenings by season, and the spa holds five treatment rooms, an indoor pool, a sauna and a steam room. Le Vaux, the rooftop, is members and room keys only, three visitors to a key, its motifs taken from the château at Vaux-le-Vicomte. The season is short.
Basílica de la Sagrada Família
Basílica de la Sagrada Família
The Basílica de la Sagrada Família stands as one of the world's most extraordinary architectural achievements, a living work of genius where Gaudí's visionary redesign transformed a traditional neo-Gothic commission into something entirely unprecedented. Every element speaks to his revolutionary philosophy: soaring columns modeled after plant stems, 18 symbolically significant towers representing biblical figures, and facades-the Nativity, Passion, and Glory-that narrate Christian stories through stone and light. More than 140 years after the cornerstone was laid in 1882, construction continues, inviting visitors to witness an evolving masterpiece that blends nature-inspired forms with profound spiritual symbolism. The basilica's designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site reflects its status as not merely a building, but a philosophical statement about the relationship between divine creation and human craftsmanship.
Daici Ano / LVMH
DIOR Bamboo Pavilion
Recently opened in Tokyo's Daikanyama district, the Dior Bamboo Pavilion is the French house's most ambitious concept store in Asia yet, spanning 1,800 square meters across a striking golden bamboo facade that glows like a lantern after dark. The first major retail concept to showcase the collections of new creative director Jonathan Anderson, the pavilion blends Versailles-style parquet flooring and Parisian mouldings with washi paper walls, a Zen garden, and a koi pond, in a deep collaboration with around 20 Japanese artists and designers. The experience culminates at Café Dior, where three-Michelin-starred chef Anne-Sophie Pic presents an exclusive menu bridging French cuisine with Japanese flavors.
Gloria Osteria Paris
Gloria Osteria Paris
Nestled on Rue Saint-Dominique between the Invalides and Eiffel Tower, Gloria Osteria Paris channels pure Italian flair through its glamorous 70s-inspired interior, complete with zebra carpet that evokes Gianni Versace's opulent world. Indulge in pillowy gnocchi adorned with black or white truffle, perfectly al dente cacio e pepe, and Neapolitan pizzas bursting with fresh ingredients, all paired with inventive cocktails like the Pesto Dry Martini. This Big Mamma gem celebrates culinary classics with generous antipasti, creamy burratina, and decadent desserts such as molten chocolate soufflé, offering an aspirational dining experience where every bite transports you to Italy's sun-kissed shores.
Grace Farms
Grace Farms
Grace Farms captivates visitors with its visionary River building, a sinuous glass-and-steel structure designed by Pritzker Prize-winning SANAA that elegantly meanders through 80 acres of preserved meadows, woodlands, and ponds. The transparent pavilions dissolve the boundaries between indoors and outdoors, fostering an atmosphere where art, nature, and community seamlessly intertwine. Beyond its breathtaking design, Grace Farms offers a dynamic array of experiences—from intimate performances and thought-provoking art installations to restorative walks along sculpted trails—all imbued with a spirit of reflection and social good. Grace Farms stands as a testament to purposeful placemaking, embracing visitors in a welcoming environment that elevates both mind and senses.
