What’s Happening: Hayao Miyazaki’s acclaimed animation studio finally lifts the curtain on its long-awaited theme park, an anti-Disney oasis where visitors are afforded the mental and physical space to become their own Studio Ghibli characters.

The Download: There’s a spiritual quietude to Hayao Miyazaki’s award-winning films. In a 2002 interview, Roger Ebert commended how the Studio Ghibli founder conveys “gratuitous motion,” the way “sometimes people will just sit for a moment or sigh, or gaze at a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.” Miyazaki quickly identified that concept as ma, the Japanese word for “emptiness.” Studio Ghibli’s most memorable characters—No Face from Spirited Away, the rattle-headed kadoma spirits from Princess Mononoke—embody ma, affording viewers moments of pause and breathing space to contemplate the intangible.

Such is the surreal experience of attending the long-awaited Ghibli Park, which opened this past November in the suburban outskirts of Nagoya. Avid filmgoers have long dreamed about stepping into Miyazaki’s fantastical universe since the project was first announced five years ago—the studio’s poetic animation style and unparalleled world-building lends itself well to the thrills of a theme park. Where Disney’s sprawling operations swallow the world around them with concrete and plastic, Ghibli Park does quite the opposite. It’s ensconced within a leafy acreage of Aichi’s Expo Park, the site of the World Expo 2005. No trees were cut down to make way for its facilities. There are no rides, and it doesn’t have a parking lot.

This, of course, echoes common themes throughout Studio Ghibli films: reverence for nature and reckoning with progress versus tradition. Attractions are scattered throughout the park at great distances, accessible only by traversing windy wooded paths with minimal signage. They’re deliberately understated yet unmistakable, ranging in scale from a tabletop statue of Sosuke’s bucket from Ponyo to Spirited Away’s mysterious red gate and a to-scale replica of Mei and Satsuki’s quaint country house in My Neighbor Totoro.

The idea for Ghibli Park was hatched almost 20 years ago. Toshio Suzuki, a longtime Studio Ghibli producer and Miyazaki’s affable right hand, long dreamed of creating a real-world simulacrum of the old-style structure. When the 2005 World Expo invited Studio Ghibli to mount a pavilion, he enthusiastically accepted and enlisted Miyazaki’s son, Goro, and a select group of artisans to get the traditional woodworking right. He initially questioned whether fair attendees would even care about seeing a wooden replica from a cartoon, but the house became a sensation. Even though no soot sprites or Totoro could be found inside, the house attracted more than 600,000 applicants for 800 tickets every day. The studio fielded calls from across Japan to tour the house when the fair ended.

Today, the house is at home within Ghibli Park, imbued with a pleasant realism: actual dishes occupy cabinets, tatami mats line the floors, and water flows from a pump outside. It lacks the gimmicks of a traditional theme park attraction, which is the point. The park offers its fair share of those elsewhere, mostly in Ghibli’s Grand Warehouse, where scale models of a Totoro play structure and No Face plaintively sitting on the train let visitors insert themselves into the studio’s most memorable scenes. But outside, and in Mei and Setsuki’s house, a stillness pervades, as if Miyazaki’s ma stepped out of the screen and planted itself into our surroundings.

In Their Own Words: “We wanted to do something authentic,” Goro Miyazaki told the New York Times. “Once you try to bring Totoro into reality, you can only do it with a doll, or a robot, or someone dressed as Totoro. It would just lose authenticity. I felt that it was more important to have the building give the feeling that Totoro might be there. When you sit in that tatami room, or if you look under the stairs, you feel like he might be hiding.”

Surface Says: Sorry Mario, but we’re going with Studio Ghibli in the Japanese theme park wars.

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.

It verges on understatement to say Mortlach has a distinguished roster of collaborators. Through Mortlach by Design, the heritage brand has partnered with a cross-section of the industry’s foremost creative talents—Felicia Ferrone, Sabine Marcelis, Joe Doucet—to exhibit boundary-pushing works at the likes of Fotografiska, the Cooper Hewitt, and the London restaurant Toklas, the latest venture from Frieze founders Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover. Now, Sebastian ErraZuriz is picking up the mantle at Frieze L.A.

The Chilean-born artist is gearing up to unveil a thought-provoking installation of augmented-reality sculptures, titled State of the art A.I. 02/15/23, at Neuehouse’s new location in Venice.

For more than four decades, Paolo Roversi has pioneered a style of fashion photography that’s exquisite, ethereal, and fiercely modern. Though he’s collaborated with fashion A-listers like Rei Kawakubo, Vera Wang, and Giorgio Armani, the Italian photographer attributes his longevity to distance. “The fashion world is a big star system where [a lot] happens—it’s a rather complicated world,” Roversi says in Paolo Roversi. Il sentimento della luce, a documentary that recently screened at Fondazione Sozzani. “I’ve lived through it for 50 years, and I managed to do so because I’ve always kept a certain distance from it.”

The documentary, directed by Dario Migliardi, retraces Roversi’s career through some of his most formative images. Anecdotes from his many collaborators—Naomi Campbell, Monica Bellucci, Alberta Ferretti—offer an intimate look inside the man behind the lens, self-described in the film as “a simple Paolo, on the beach like a child.” His distinct misty style and use of light, which combines realism and illusion, stems from growing up around colorful Byzantine mosaics in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region. “Paolo’s direction is minimal, but you feel the light on your face, it’s a sort of dance with lighting,” John Galliano, a frequent collaborator, says in the film. “When he starts taking pictures, you feel completely safe.”

Nigerian-born designer Taofeek Abijako founded Head of State at age 17; from the beginning, the brand has been a representation of youth culture in a post-colonial world. That theme is continued in his latest collection, which explores Yoruba culture, the Twin House architecture of Lagos, and the blues of the oceans traversed in the process of leaving home and returning.

Runway Redux is a fashion column in which we ask a designer to reflect on a new collection; this week, Surface reports from behind the scenes at New York Fashion Week.

Name: Taofeek Abijako (@headofstate_)

Describe this collection in three words: Home, nostalgia, dream.

Which look is your favorite? The last look of the show, an all-green gown.

What was your inspiration behind it? The outfit my mom wore during my naming ceremony, a traditional celebration of childbirth.

Attending any fun parties or events this week? The Palace, with friends, family, and everyone who contributed to making this collection.

Why did you show in New York instead of another fashion week? New York is as raw as it gets.

Earlier this week, guests gathered at Los Angeles restaurant Botanica for a five-course dinner party hosted by Maria Vogel in honor of artists Carlos Jaramillo, Lily Stockman, Emma Webster, Aryana Minai, and Greg Ito. As part of the advisory’s Rococinco series of art–inspired dinners, Botanica head chef Heather Sperling looked to each artist’s practice to inspire the menu. Guests were treated to an olfactory experience of Diptyque’s Figuer candle, while objets from the fragrance house’s latest artist collaboration graced the table.

When was it? Feb. 14

Where was it? Botanica, Los Angeles

Who was there? Nazy Nazhand, Caleb Hahne Quintana, Gisela McDaniel, Theodora Karos, and more.

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

China’s Bid to Improve Food Production? Giant Towers of Pigs. [New York Times]

“Architects May Become a Thing of the Past” Says ChatGPT [Dezeen]

Mars Wrigley Factory Fined After Two Workers Fall Into Chocolate Vat [BBC]

Choreographer Smears Dog Feces on Critic After Negative Review [New York Times]

California Lost 36 Million Trees to Drought Last Year [Smithsonian]

Ex-Mormons Are Running a Magic Mushroom Church [Vice]

Yale Professor Says Japan’s Old People Should Kill Themselves in Mass Suicide [The Jerusalem Post]

Frida Kahlo’s Husband May Have Helped Her Die, Reveals Diego Rivera’s Grandson [The Guardian]

When a relationship disintegrates, your first instinct might be to chuck your partner’s belongings out the window. When Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic broke up more than 20 years ago, however, the Croatian couple came up with a different idea. A computer, television, and vacation souvenirs all proved easy to sort, but one particular object was too painful: a small fluffy rabbit, which the couple would often wind up and send hopping around their house. They decided it was inappropriate for either to keep it, sparking a lightbulb moment: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a place where everyone could send objects after a breakup?”

The Museum of Broken Relationships, a global archive of mementos from failed romances, was born. Since opening in the Croatian capital Zagreb in 2010, the museum has become one of the Eastern European country’s quirkiest—and most visited—tourist attractions.

Worthless Studios provides space, materials, technical assistance, and resources for aspiring artists of all backgrounds to realize their creative visions. The studio dreams up and executes public art programs collaboratively with staff, community partners, and artists under the belief that public art must go beyond simply installing artwork in public spaces.

Surface Says: Worthless Studios aims to democratize access to resources and studio space within the competitive art market by offering their Brooklyn facility to early-career sculptors who otherwise wouldn’t have access. Their mission is exactly what the industry needs after this past couple years of economic turmoil.

What could “transformation-flavored” Coca-Cola possibly taste like?

Here’s a “handy” guide on how men can tastefully stack their bracelets.

Is Bad Roman the most unhinged Italian restaurant we’ve ever seen?

Modern dating is tough, but this trusty glossary can help you scrape by.