What’s Happening: With Skyview 6, a new hotel tailored for pilots and flight attendants, American Airlines takes a stab at solving some of the biggest grievances of work travel.

The Download: Frequent fliers are privy to a shared set of pain points: sad hotel gyms, a dearth of healthy dining options, gate-checked luggage full of damp clothing from sitting too long on a rainy tarmac; the list goes on. At American Airlines’ new 600-room hotel in Dallas, this and other feedback from pilots and flight attendants has shaped the airline’s flashy new employees-only lodgings, Skyview 6. The company tapped a slate of A-list firms to oversee the architecture of the hotel, which is part of the airline’s Fort Worth headquarters and training hub. Commercial design power player Gensler handled interior architecture alongside design architect Pelli Clarke and Partners, all under executive architect HKS.

While the words “corporate” and “training” are a bit of a snoozefest, the amenities are anything but: a 73,000-square-foot workout center puts most high-end gyms to shame, while a coffee bar, food market, cafeteria, and tavern provide a refreshing change of pace from stale airport food. Each floor is decked out with a communal lounge allowing colleagues to gather, study, and unwind without ceding their personal space. And, for truly frequent fliers, having laundry on each floor might feel miraculous.

Speaking of snoozing: guest rooms are clad in an inoffensive palette of whites, grays, and blonde woods with midcentury-inspired lighting and décor. At pilots’ requests, they feature magnetic blackout curtains to help the jet-lagged catch shut-eye no matter the hour, while motion sensor–activated lighting helps guests orient themselves amid groggy “what year is it?” wakeups. En-suite bathrooms each come with a Bluetooth-enabled mirror, which can play music, podcasts, or weather forecasts—the latter being of particular importance to people who operate planes for a living.

“This was the gold standard for what it could be,” Allied Pilots Association spokesperson Dennis Tajer told the Wall Street Journal after a recent visit, compared to the “dark, dank hotel” he stayed at for training last year. Despite making up the country’s population of most frequent fliers, hotels tailored to the needs of pilots and flight attendants are few and far between. Aside from JetBlue’s nearly decade-old JetBlue Lodge, located near the airline’s training facilities in Orlando, Skyview 6 may be in a class all its own.

In Their Own Words: The accommodations seem to be a hit with employees, leading some to wonder when they can expect similar standards for work travel elsewhere: “The finishes and the amenities are much higher-end than the hotels we often frequent [on layovers],” Ellie Boothe, a flight attendant, told the WSJ.

Surface Says: As nice as Skyview 6 is, swanky corporate accommodations hardly make up for the years of ill-behaved passengers and stagnating salaries pushing pilots to strike.

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Situated atop Rome’s Pincian Hill is the grand Villa Medici, which offers breathtaking views of the city below from its arched entranceway. Built in the 16th century, it once was home to Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici and features some of Rome’s most striking Renaissance frescoes. For more than two centuries, the villa has housed the French Academy and provided a sanctuary for artists, historians, and artisans to immerse themselves in Roman culture. Now, thanks to India Mahdavi, the villa has been given a colorful makeover.

The latest chapter of the villa’s re-enchantment saw the Parisian interior designer revitalize six spaces thanks to some help from French and Italian artisans. The Debussy and Galileo bedrooms showcase Maison Craman-Lagarde’s marquetry expertise with Mahdavi’s color-block pattern translated into a four-poster bed and matching shelves. The private apartments feature a geometric green and burgundy rug by carpet-maker Manufacture Robert Four inspired by the gardens outside.

The redesign wasn’t only about commissioning new pieces—Mahdavi also brought her own subtle touches to the interiors. She refreshed the Mobilier National archive with new upholstery and restored wall decorations by Modernist painter Balthus. Her intervention is the second chapter of the “Re-enchanting Villa Medici” project, with the final component to be unveiled later in the year following an open call.

By adorning salvaged furniture with foamy, biomorphic forms, Charlotte Kingsnorth seems to capture everyday objects in free-flowing states of metamorphosis. From wicker bistro chairs affixed with spider-like legs to Victorian furnishings enveloped in plump, mossy upholstery, the Londoner forecasts a hyperreal future where nature has slowly started to reclaim artifice.

The fate of dead malls has been a topic of discussion for a while now. Few institutions of everyday life have experienced such a dramatic fall from grace, from a titan of consumerism to skeletons of their former selves that now sit practically deserted. Developers have been forced to think outside the “big box” to repurpose what are essentially warehouses surrounded by acres of pavement: healthcare facilities, marijuana farms, university offices, and, of course, Amazon fulfillment centers. The latest idea comes from Studio Sutton, an English firm that transformed The Mailbox, a former shopping arcade on the ground floor of a former Royal Mail sorting office in Birmingham into a thriving co-working hub for Spaces.

The scheme draws inspiration from the organizing principles of a shopping mall, preserving much of the building’s original configuration. Where there was once the central arcade now features a cafe and communal desks. Former storefronts now house individual meeting rooms; anchor stores contain rentable office space complete with colorful privacy curtains. “We like to work along with the existing building,” says Nathan Breeze, a director at Studio Sutton. “It’s about going there and really understanding the character and letting the building give us clues in terms of how to work with it.” With a layered scheme that seamlessly blends public and private, it serves as a clever blueprint for reviving dying malls.

When: Until May 28

Where: Museum of Decorative Arts and Design, Riga

What: Glass sheds all subtext in the work of Germans Ermičs, who has long focused on manipulating glass into amorphous components that make up tables, shelves, and mirrors, all striated with vibrant hues that dissolve to other colors or levels of transparency. The Latvian designer’s latest museum outing highlights his greatest achievements using glass but also shows how his chromatic approach easily translates to unexpected objects like rugs by CC-Tapis and sculptural speakers for Bang & Olufsen.

Best known for their handmade rugs, Ouive has expanded into fashion with the launch of hand-crafted leather house shoes. Founder and CEO Kristina Williamson found inspiration in Morocco’s traditional babouches when seeking a stylish alternative to ordinary house slippers. Design touches like a rounded toe, slip-on mule silhouette, and cushioned insoles make for an all-day-ready shoe, complete with a durable leather outsole that’s ready to go wherever the day takes you.

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

Why Did the Umpire Quit Little League? Nasty Parents [WSJ]

Amnesty International Faces Backlash From Photographers for Creating AI-Generated Images of Protesters [Artnet News]

A Photographer Tried to Get His Photos Removed From an AI Dataset. He Got an Invoice Instead. [Vice]

This Wooden Toilet Is So Chic, You Might Not Want to Poop in It [Fast Company]

Arkansas Woman Pleads Not Guilty to Selling Over 20 Boxes of Stolen Human Body Parts [NPR]

NYC Woman Sentenced to 21 Years for Trying to Kill Her Lookalike With a Poisoned Cheesecake [NBC]

In the early 2010s, an 1866 red brick building in Red Hook, Brooklyn, was a former iron works. Dustin Yellin used to stare at it from his studio across the street. One day he explored it, and then began exploring the idea of transforming it into a hotbed for art, performance, science, and community. In 2012, it opened as the massive—and soon massively popular—Pioneer Works. “It was like a hallucination, a fantasy gone off the rails,” he says over Zoom, having only recently emerged from a long exploration of the Sơn Đoòng caves with his friend Bjarke Ingels. “Off the rails, I mean, in a good way,” he laughs.

Today, the building’s three floors comprise studios for science and ceramics, tech and media labs, a garden, classrooms, and ample interconnected performance and exhibition spaces, along with a robust digital presence and Pioneer Works Broadcast publication. “It was a crazy vision,” he says. “But then you have to operate the vision, which means you have to start a nonprofit. You need lots of people to help you on the Board side, on the mechanicals of programming culture at that scale, and on making it free to the public. For a decade, a lot of it was just reacting to the dream.”

Avant Arte is a creative marketplace that makes discovering and owning art radically more accessible for a new generation. From Tau Lewis and James Jean to Jenny Holzer and Cai Guo-Qiang, Avant Arte collaborates with leading artists to create limited-edition works, from sculpture editions and NFTs to hand-finished screen prints. They’re building the world’s largest creative community with more than 2.5 million young art lovers, collectors, and artists.

Surface Says: Contemporary art and accessibility rarely go hand-in-hand, but Avant Arte and its roster of partners are leading the charge in disrupting the status quo for the next generation of collectors.

Nendo designs a beer can with two pull tabs to create the “ideal foam.”

Even the ancient Romans dropped their fancy ring stones down the drain.

MSCHF’s new chatbot site lets AI evaluate whether you’re hot or not.

Brandon Blackwood and Starbucks drop a colorful “sip and sling” bottle bag.