What’s Happening: With the news of Bernard Marson’s passing, we reflect on how the architect and developer pioneered SoHo, New York’s transition from industrial wasteland to artist enclave—a template for gentrification and new development that numerous cities would try to mimic with mixed results.

The Download: The 100-acre swath of Manhattan bounded by Houston Street, Crosby Street, Canal Street, and Sixth Avenue, colloquially known as SoHo, emerged as a tony commercial and entertainment district by the mid-19th century, with department stores, grand hotels, and theaters congregating in Broadway’s newly erected cast iron buildings. Brothels soon popped up nearby, alienating businesses and attracting small manufacturing plants—especially textiles—in their stead. As the city center moved uptown and textile firms relocated to the South, SoHo’s industrial activity dwindled, its buildings sitting unoccupied and dilapidated.

By the 1950s, the area became not-so-affectionately known as Hell’s Hundred Acres—a fire-prone industrial wasteland full of sweatshops and warehouses that was virtually deserted at night. As a way to remove the blight, urban planner Robert Moses submitted controversial plans for an elevated highway—the Lower Manhattan Expressway—to slice the neighborhood in half and connect Brooklyn to New Jersey. His proposal was revoked, largely thanks to the advocacy of urban theorist Jane Jacobs, and SoHo was spared the wrecking ball.

Shortly after the fracas, artists started moving in, wooed by low rents, high ceilings, and cavernous interiors. At the time, the city was teetering on the brink of economic collapse and afflicted with record crime rates. SoHo was still gaining steam as an artist enclave—Andy Warhol, Gordon Matta-Clark, Louise Bourgeois, Sol LeWitt, and Jean-Michel Basquiat all frequented the area—but city officials desperately sought to preserve the area as an industrial base.

The architect and Cooper Union alum Bernard Marson, who worked alongside Marcel Breuer during the construction of the Whitney Museum of American Art on the Upper East Side, was keeping tabs on SoHo’s transition and purchased several former industrial buildings, including Ernest Flagg’s 12-story Little Singer Building and a former glue factory. He discovered a loophole in the city’s zoning regulations that allowed for “studios with accessory living” in manufacturing districts, thus absolving the artists who illegally settled there and paving the way for more to join.

Faced with the new realities of the real estate market, New York State passed the 1982 Loft Law, which required landlords to bring buildings up to livable standards, protected artists from eviction, and provided rent stabilization. SoHo soon started attracting more affluent residents, enamored with loft living, elegant cast-iron facades, side streets lined with Belgian blocks, and its reputation as a haven for artists. The new money lured high-end fashion boutiques and caused real estate prices to surge—a pattern of gentrification now known as the “SoHo Effect.” Its reputation as an artistic enclave may have since waned, but many artists have stayed put for decades despite the city’s gallery scene having mostly relocated to Chelsea.

In Their Own Words: “Mr. Marson was responsible almost single-handedly for the growth of New York City’s SoHo into an artist community and historic district,” Raquel Ramati, who headed the Urban Design Group in Mayor John V. Lindsay’s administration, said when recommending him for a fellowship with the American Institute of Architects.

Surface Says: Developers elsewhere have since attempted to replicate the “SoHo Effect” to spur gentrification, but SoHo’s revival was largely the product of a distinct time and place. Marson, it seems, captured lightning in a bottle.

Have a news story our readers need to see? Submit it here.

Reach the design world every morning. Find out more about advertising in the Design Dispatch.

When: Aug. 6–Sept. 3

Where: Onna House, East Hampton

What: Five stellar ceramicists are the focus of this group exhibition at Lisa Perry’s newly opened Onna House, a gallery and incubator within a restored 1960s Modernist home in East Hampton that aims to uplift female artists and designers. Among them are Cape Town–born Katherine Glenday, whose translucent porcelain pieces defy their materiality and evoke quiet movement; Yoona Hur, whose fusion of ancient ceramics, traditional Korean arts, and eastern philosophy explores her Asian identity and spirituality; and Yuko Nishikawa, the Brooklyn-based artist who creates awe-inspiring installations that explore color and textures.

Sawyer & Co. has a knack for cultivating a sense of place. Case in point: The New York City–based design studio’s recently completed 174-room Canopy Hilton Memphis. Located downtown, the project aptly nods to the traditions of music, barbecue, and, yes, bourbon in the Home of the Blues.

“The property opens with palettes, textures, and design details that are driven from notions of Memphis’s lively music culture, including the nearby Beale Street and local cuisine,” the Sawyer & Co. team states. “Radio stations, musical instruments, and musicians are layered with smoke lingering beneath bright stage lights from Memphis’s signature barbecue, then conceptually layered again with the taste of bourbon.”

For the 174 guest rooms, the studio looked to a different source of local inspiration: the creative wonderland of recording studios. “The guest rooms are inspired by the story of local guitar musicians woven with the staging of a recording studio and musical instruments. Details and finishes on the furniture are those found in a recording studio, furnished with overlay area rugs in cream and charcoal, blackened steel accents, and a woven cane headboard.”

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

Sneakerhead Accused of Running Huge Air Jordan Ponzi Scheme [Bloomberg]

It’s So Hot That Brands Are Making Jackets With A/C Units [Highsnobiety]

UK Man Begs to Excavate Landfill After Tossing $184M in Bitcoin [Input]

North West Is Now Making Art With Human Hair [The Cut]

Japanese Man Lost a USB Drive With Entire City’s Personal Data After a Night Out [Vice]

The Tale of Trump Burger and the Quickly Ensuing Memes [Boston]

We Now Live in a World With Spicy Hot Cinnamon Toast Crunch [Food & Wine]

Jair Bolsonaro to Carve Motorway Through Amazon Rainforest [The Times]

Utah Man Accused of Causing Wildfire by Burning a Spider [Associated Press]

Alex Jones Lawyer Accidentally Sent Cell Phone Records to Sandy Hook Lawyer [Newsweek]

Cat Merrick’s Monocle collection uses experimental optics to reflect the surrounding world, creating a strange illusion to help the wearer see the world with fresh eyes. “They’re a reminder that the art object isn’t important,” Merrick says. “Art is just a tool to bring the ordinary world around us back into focus. Art is a tool for sight.”

The Far Sight necklace is made with a flat-faced, half-round mirrored crystal that reflects and distorts the colors of its surrounding world and reflects its own mirrored walls again in a perfectly contained ball deep within its surface. All the metal in Merrick’s collection is precision machined in the United States and press-fit whenever possible to allow for disassembly and repair. Every piece is closed by a magnetic clasp with a satisfying click, audible feedback on a job well done, because even minimalists should be allowed to have a little fun.

The past couple decades haven’t been kind to Greece’s healthcare system, with the ongoing pandemic putting major strains on a system that was already stretched thin from the country’s financial crisis of the mid-2000s. If one needs major treatment that requires specialized healthcare, like brain surgery or for pediatric cancer, their best bet is to travel to Athens. Medical facilities elsewhere in the country have struggled to upgrade their systems, can only handle certain types of treatments, and are in dire need of a refresh.

This will change in 2025, when the country will unveil three state-of-the-art hospitals in Komotini, Thessaloniki, and Sparta that feature sustainable design elements and spaces specifically tailored for patient wellness. The $750 million project will be funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Health Initiative, which enlisted Pritzker Prize winner Renzo Piano to design each hospital.

Similar in shape and design, the three facilities will feature two long buildings surrounded by verdant landscapes and healing gardens, and designed with flexible floor plans that can quickly adapt to the changing demands of modern healthcare. Each structure is equipped with rooftop photovoltaics—a major plus in Greece’s hot, dry summers considering that hospitals need to run 24/7 and are prone to high energy consumption.

Standard is the Los Angeles–based architecture and interior design partnership of architects Jeffrey Allsbrook and Silvia Kuhle. Standard’s projects are guided by identity and culture, reflecting the narrative for which they’re designed. Conscious of architecture’s potential to communicate, from a way of living to a company’s image, the firm’s work aspires to provide the setting that expresses the project’s conceptual idea.

Surface Says: Standard’s work exemplifies a mastery of harmony, craft, and complimentary existence with the natural world. Look no further than their residential projects like Forrest Knoll and Wildlife, which accentuate the finer points of picturesque Southern California.

Tabasco’s spicy new visual identity stays faithful to its diamond-shape logo.

Xochitl Gonzalez posits that the sound of gentrification… is no sound at all.

Breathtaking footage shows a rare type of shark walking on land using fins.

Westworld’s spooky AI hosts seem to be letting their hair down this season.