What’s Happening: Captured in a helicopter six months after the deadly fire, the director’s eerily silent footage of the burnt London high-rise artfully exposes the neglect and incompetence that culminated in one of the U.K.’s most horrific tragedies.

The Download: In Grenfell, a new film by Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen, sound is almost non-existent. The footage begins with a long span of darkness before revealing an aerial view of London on an idyllic afternoon, a camera affixed to the underside of a helicopter gliding smoothly across the city. Patches of parks, homes, and landmarks like Wembley Stadium drift by to subtle birdsong. As the helicopter clears the wintry horizon, a black pillar appears center-screen. The sound suddenly cuts; we’ve arrived at the ruins of Grenfell Tower. Unflinching in its gaze, the camera circles the skeletal structure, bringing its charred remains into uncomfortably close view.

The 24-story high-rise in North Kensington became engulfed in flames in the early morning of June 14, 2017, when a refrigerator caught fire on the fourth floor. Flames and smoke spread up the building’s facade, accelerated by dangerously combustible aluminum composite cladding that failed to comply with building regulations and burned for more than 60 hours. Seventy-two people died, making it the U.K.’s worst disaster since World War II; hundreds were left injured and traumatized in its wake. Locals blamed the city council for neglecting the upkeep of the building, which was populated mostly by poorer residents of ethnic minorities. In an inquiry, authorities even referred to Grenfell as a “poverty trap.”

McQueen grew up close by in a similar residential complex. He remembers walking through Grenfell’s halls when visiting a friend in the ‘90s when he ran a second-hand clothing stall in the nearby Portobello market. “What I loved was the community, all the people with different backgrounds from all over the world,” he says. “There was a wonderful energy, a familiarity, an exchange which was unlikely anywhere else in London.” So upon learning about the tower’s fate, he thought about how to visit the site again after almost 30 years. He strapped himself into a helicopter six months later and began filming, often treacherously close to the wreckage.

Grenfell’s harrowing footage, which will play at Serpentine until May 10, speaks for itself. The one-take film, which abruptly ends after a lean 24 minutes, doesn’t need narrative, voiceovers, or stylization to ask hard-hitting questions about the politics of architecture and socioeconomics. It also manages to expose the somber realities of bureaucratic incompetence. Almost six years later, the inquiry’s full findings haven’t been made available to the public, and no charges have been filed. The film’s raison d’être puts the injustice into full light—after each screening, gallery-goers will enter a room completely empty save for the names of each victim.

In Their Own Words: “I feared once the tower was covered up, it would only be a matter of time before it faded from the public’s memory,” McQueen writes in the exhibition catalog. “In fact, I imagine there were people who were counting on that being the case. I was determined that it never be forgotten. So, my decision was made for me.”

Surface Says: It’s probably not his favorite expression of art, but McQueen is showing a powerful talent for capturing tragedy in poignant detail.

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Chairs often steal the spotlight in design conversations. That’s especially true when it comes to Charles and Ray Eames, the midcentury visionaries whose repertoire of molded plastic and plywood chairs set a new benchmark for mass-producing desirable products using novel fabrication techniques. While chairs indeed present an agonizing design challenge, tables are far simpler. “It’s just a base and a top,” says Llisa Demetrios, granddaughter to the Eames and the chief curator of the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, which recently opened “Tables! Tables! Tables!”, a digital show about the couple’s experiments in table design. “They’re so well-designed, you forget they were designed at all.”

That’s because the Eameses approached tables pragmatically, seeking to create accessible, inexpensive products encapsulated by their mantra “the best for the most for the least.” The show presents an array of these concepts, from one-off prototypes riffing on a single idea to multiple iterations of an idea in development. One early table featured a molded plywood top with a tubular aluminum base designed to be durable and lightweight; an archival photograph shows the couple’s daughter, Lucia, sitting at a folding table surrounded by books and fruit, implying it could support both working and dining.

Flexibility may seem like a simple concept now, especially as remote work has necessitated multiple uses for spaces and furniture, but designers hadn’t considered it at the time. “Mobile, digital connectivity has enabled us to work or create anywhere, and freed us from the spatial demands and specificity of technological installations—much of which fell on tables,” writes Kim Colin, a furniture designer and co-founder of Industrial Facility. “Tables are now less often the centerpieces of rooms and have become more like supporting pieces in a varied landscape where anything goes and everything that can change, will.” With their multidimensional approach, the Eameses may have seen it coming.

Don’t call Michael Hilal’s interiors “timeless”—the San Francisco designer instead wants his residences to feel like effortlessly chic gathering places where hanging out, having cocktails, and putting your feet up comes naturally. He now unveils his first-ever furniture collection, an approachable series centered on a sculptural tête-à-tête sofa of modular upholstered components envisioned as a love letter to the nostalgic, convivial cool of his home state’s majestic mountains and rugged shorelines.

When: Until May 14

Where: Museo Jumex, Mexico City

What: Telling the story of Cartier, from the French maison’s early days to its emergence as a fine jewelry powerhouse complete with its own design signatures and historical archive, is no easy feat. Frida Escobedo has undertaken the considerable task in partnership with curator Ana Elena Mallet. Highlights include 160 pieces of Cartier’s jewelry and timepiece archive, along with archival records of special commissions for royals and celebrities including Golden Age film star María Félix and Brazilian pilot Alberto Santos-Dumont.

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

A Drunken Party Guest Has Pled Guilty to Stealing the Thumb of a $4.5 Million Terracotta Warrior at a Philadelphia Museum [Artnet News]

Derailed Train in Montana Spills Coors Light and Blue Moon Beer Into River [WSJ]

Salt Lake City Whale Sculpture’s Cultish Following Grows With Each Winter Storm [Fox]

Soccer Ref Suspended After Kneeing Player Complaining About Call in the Groin [Mediaite]

ChatGPT Invented a Sexual Harassment Scandal and Named a Real Law Prof as the Accused [Washington Post]

Snake on a Plane! South African Pilot Finds Cobra Under Seat [AP]

Giant Spoon Taken From Arizona Dairy Queen Found Thanks to Pokémon Go [HuffPost]

These Cockroaches Tweaked Their Mating Rituals After Adapting to Pest Control [NPR]

Australian Mayor Readies World’s First Defamation Lawsuit Over ChatGPT Content [Reuters]

Even in the race to stage the most dramatic post-pandemic destination fashion show, Dior’s recent 99-look pre-fall extravaganza in Mumbai stands out. Gucci has taken to Seoul, Chanel to Dakar, and Dior Men to Giza, but there’s more to the French maison’s Indian debut. The runway show forms only one part of the label’s larger cultural celebration of Indian craft, fostered by a 25-year working relationship between Karishma Swali, artistic director of the country’s revered Chanakya textile ateliers, and Maria Grazia Chiuri, who has highlighted the crucial role artisans have played throughout her stewardship of the brand’s womenswear.

Il Bisonte is a high-quality Florentine brand that has been crafting bags and accessories in leather and fabric for the past five decades in Tuscany. These products express a style immune to fleeting seasonal trends.

Surface Says: With their impeccable craftsmanship and hyper-local artisan supply chain, Il Bisonte’s stylish wares are instant heirlooms.

Cheeky cookie jars have always been kitschy vessels for self-expression.

Mathematicians invent a 13-sided “Einstein” shape with curious qualities.

Big bows are gracing interiors in the latest example of “dressed-up decor.”

Highsnobiety shares a definitive ranking of all deepfake Balenciaga videos.