What’s Happening: A proposal to transform an industrial area of Queens into a sprawling mixed-use development and “arts district” has come under fire for its flimsy commitments to the cultural sphere. It’s not the first one.

The Download: Earlier this month, the anti-gentrification group Art Against Displacement published an open letter calling on a few New York art institutions to sever ties with Innovation QNS, a luxury development proposed for Astoria, Queens. The letter, signed by 200 locals, accuses the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) and Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works of “artwashing” the $2 billion project, which is being overseen by developer Larry Silverstein, film production mainstay Kaufman Studios, and Bedrock Realty. The plan calls for a dozen new ODA New York–designed buildings across five blocks with retail units, green space, and offices.

What is artwashing? Jenny Dubnau, who co-authored the letter with fellow artist Vanessa Thill, defines it as “when real estate entities use cultural capital to rebrand their luxury developments.” One notable example occurred when developers David and Jerry Wolkoff razed the 5 Pointz graffiti building in nearby Long Island City and built two luxury towers in its place with bronze replicas of street art in the lobby. (Before and after images reveal a stark transformation.) “For every artist who gets tossed a crumb, like a temporary studio or a chance to make art for the lobby of a new hotel in a manufacturing zone,” Dubnau writes, “there are dozens of other artists who lose their studios because the surrounding rents go up as a result of the luxury development that these ‘opportunities’ reside in.”

Kaufman Studios claims that Innovation QNS will create an arts district around MoMI, but hasn’t revealed further details beyond commissioning Queens-based artist Zeehan Wazed to paint a mural along nearby Steinway Street. The open letter dismissed Kaufman’s claim as a “real estate deal masquerading as a cultural benefit,” arguing that the project will gentrify Astoria and price out artists. “Whenever I dig deeper into their claims about free arts programs and residences, I find there is nothing to actually back it up,” Dubnau tells Hyperallergic.

Tensions about affordable housing are high as New York City grapples with skyrocketing rents, especially now that pandemic-era discounts have ended. According to a new report, the average Manhattan rent surpassed $5,000 in June for the first time as landlords sought to recoup their losses. Most of the 2,800 units planned for Innovation QNS are studios and one-bedrooms priced at more than $3,000 per month, though 711 units will be earmarked as “affordable” at below $1,675 per month. Detractors argue that even with affordable units, building more than 2,100 luxury apartments will lead to higher rental prices and the displacement of current residents, many of whom are low-income immigrants of color.

In Their Own Words: “The developers claim they’re going to create an arts district, as if there isn’t already a natural arts district wherever people and culture exist,” Dubnau says. “For this to be an arts district, they would need to provide the existing community with free and low-cost cultural events and real benefits to actual working artists.”

Surface Says: If real estate developments really want to avoid artwashing, they’d create realistically affordable artist facilities and fund initiatives to support the community beyond the PR shtick.

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Surface has long prided itself on celebrating the creativity of the hospitality industry, whether it be through incisive coverage of hotels, restaurants, and bars, or recognizing our favorite spaces, meals, and experiences via the Surface Travel Awards. If you’re a fan of dining out, you’ve likely noticed that getting a prime table at a top restaurant is nearly impossible these days, which is why we’re excited to announce a partnership with Dorsia.

Dorsia is a new platform that offers its members access to coveted reservations at in-demand restaurants by committing to a guaranteed minimum spend. Dorsia recently launched in New York with hospitality partners Cote, Cosme, Estela, Crown Shy, Ito, Corner Bar, and more. In The Hamptons, local favorites such as Highway, Kissaki, and Moby’s are now live. Coming this fall: marquee culinary markets including Miami and L.A.

Download the app and apply for membership here. Surface readers will be fast-tracked for approval; just be sure to write “Surface” in the referral field.

Perched on a slope on the fringe of Oaxaca’s nature reserve, Cordillera de la Sierra Norte, Flavia is in harmony with its surroundings. Known for his organic approach to architecture, João Boto Cæiro of Rootstudio adapted the property to the terrain and tapped Luis Zárate, who spearheaded the city’s Ethnobotanical Garden, to bestow the gardens and courtyards with endemic vegetation: cacti, pochote trees, pitayas, and aquatic plants.

Constructed of raw concrete, the brutalist shell is warmed by an interior palette of earthy hues and tropical timber. The 11 rooms feature custom furniture by local artisans and stunning idiosyncratic touches. The Bunker, for instance, is a subterranean abode with a James Turrell–esque skylight pouring sun rays onto a standalone cement tub. At the restaurant, Cruz Cocina Mixta, creative Mexican dishes (white wine–flamed chocolate clams, black mole chicken enchiladas) are served up with panoramic views of the Oaxacan cityscape.

The metaverse has divided opinions since it rose to prominence this past year, with critics describing the immersive 3D worlds as resembling a “late capitalist technocratic nightmare” replete with bad behavior and questionable aesthetics. Still, Wall Street remains bullish on the metaverse and predicts it will one day be worth trillions. The metaverse world-building platform Mona will soon look slightly better thanks to The Alexander Team and Everyrealm, which is launching The Row, a members-only virtual community with homes designed by the likes of Alexis Christodoulou, Misha Kahn, and Andrés Reisinger.

The Row will feature a limited-edition series of 30 architectural landmarks—each sold as a one-off NFT—that can be deployed across numerous metaverse platforms. “When designing for The Row, I considered how my sculptures would appear from inside this unique piece of architecture,” says Daniel Arsham, who serves as Everyrealm’s creative ambassador and designed one of the properties to reference his Fictional Archaeology series. Kahn, meanwhile, dreamed up a folly based on his own “illogical and irreverent” ceramic works.

Everyrealm is headed by Janine Yorio, an industry veteran who previously worked with André Balazs at Standard Hotels, and who envisions Mona as a world-building platform that gives designers free rein to bring their visions to life. “The metaverse has no physics, no weather, and no limitations other than human ingenuity,” she says. Development will be underway until late 2022, but expect the venture to fetch big numbers at launch: The celebrity-favorite Alexander Team is the highest-grossing residential real estate brokerage in New York and Miami, and secured the country’s largest residential sale.

Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

Thousands of Dead Cattle Dumped in Kansas Landfill [Inhabitat]

Polish Museum Asks Visitors to Stop Having Sex on Its Premises [Notes From Poland]

Japanese City Alarmed by Biting, Clawing, Attacking Monkeys [Washington Post]

Shortage of Dijon Mustard Sparks a Very French Food Crisis [Business Insider]

Eight Things I Wish I’d Known in My Twenties Before I Blew My Life Savings on an Alpaca Farm [The New Yorker]

Chaotic Walrus Keeps Climbing on Small Boats and Sinking Them [Futurism]

Following Outcry, GameStop Pulls Tasteless “Falling Man” NFT Evoking 9/11 Attacks [Hyperallergic]

Klondike’s Choco Taco Discontinued After Almost 40 Years [People]

Final DIY Project: Build Your Own Coffin [The Wall Street Journal]

This Grandma’s Dying Wish Was a Giant Dick on Her Grave [Vice]

When: Until Aug. 28

Where: Helsinki Design Museum

What: The timber industry is one of the world’s largest in terms of revenue and impact on everyday life, giving rise to clothing, furniture, fuels, and fertilizers, among other products for everyday consumption. Few know, however, that trees are often felled in biodiverse and fragile ecosystems, which are increasingly at risk. Continuing Formafantasma’s research into design’s ecological and political responsibilities, this show re-evaluates our relationship with trees and asks how we can better understand the connections between objects and the conditions that produced them.

The Italian duo also teams with Finnish furniture company Artek and seeks to establish how the extraction and use of timber in the Scandinavian country has evolved over time. Though it focuses more on process and ecological matters than finished products, “Cambio” showcases custom furnishings made from a single tree felled during storms in Val di Fiemme, Italy, wood samples loaned from the Royal Museum of Central Africa, smells developed to evoke wet earth, and maps of the Amazon rainforest made by indigenous communities.

Dara Schaefer is the founder of Wonderground Studios, located in both New York City and the Hudson Valley. She attended the art and architecture schools at The Cooper Union where she studied architecture, and has been working in clay for more than a decade.

She uses a myriad of traditional clay and digital technologies to realize each collection. Her forms are all designed in Grasshopper, a visual programming language where she employs mathematical algorithms to alter surface textures. She uses a Potterbot to 3D print clay forms, and 3D prints in plastic to create plaster molds for slip casting in porcelain or investment molds for bronze and aluminum casting. The Fantastic Fungi collection comprises multiple 3D printed ceramic mushrooms, fired and glazed, and lit from within by LED light.

Adam Parker Smith once quipped “I feel like so many of my ideas start out as jokes, for better or worse.” He’s long toyed with ancient forms, most notably by recasting Grecian amphoras in resin and slippery-looking spaghetti and red sauce. His latest endeavor sees the American talent condense the canon of Greco-Roman and Renaissance sculptures into ten-square-foot cubes of Carrara marble, as if they were tossed into a trash compactor or mimicking crystallized contortionists.

Fittingly titled “Crush,” the six works show Smith subverting the seriousness ascribed to classical sculpture. As the gallery notes, the statues were merely imitations of everyday life in ancient times and “may have held for the Greeks and Romans the same thrill of proximity as selfie-stick users today feel inside of a Madame Tussauds.” Rather than gazing in awe at the chiseled muscles of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s David or pondering the cunning power wielded by Bertel Thorvaldsen’s Cupid Triumphant, which both appear in the show, today’s viewer may instead approach Smith’s renditions with a “how’d he do that?” curiosity and ponder the possibilities of digital tools interacting with antiquity.

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Founded to reconnect consumers to value, Laurea handcrafts pure 24-karat gold into beautiful wearable form. Designed and crafted by a highly skilled team of artisans in both Palm Beach, Florida, and Veneto, Italy, Laurea connects old-world crafting techniques with modern investing. Sold by weight and at prices linked to the current price of gold, Laurea jewelry lives digitally in online client portfolios, allowing customers to track the value of their investment pieces in real-time and the ability to sell back their jewelry at any time for its current gold value.

Surface Says: Laurea brings a rare mindset to the world of high-end jewelry in that each piece is treated as an asset whose value can be tracked in a digital portfolio. More than a beautiful bauble, every purchase can be sold back or traded up.

Enter the iron-pumping Alphaland, a Disney World for bodybuilders.

“Solar kerosene” made of sunlight, air, and water vapor may replace jet fuel.

At 170 carats, the largest pink diamond in 300 years was just unearthed in Angola.

A pop-up restaurant that pays homage to the Golden Girls opens in Beverly Hills.