What’s Happening: The Australian heritage brand partners with Aboriginal artists for a limited edition of home products whose proceeds will kick off an Aboriginal Design School.

The Download: Some 16 years ago, Alison Page, an Aboriginal design expert and Wadi Wadi and Walbanga woman of the Yuin nation, began a conversation at a wedding with a man who turned out to be the design and innovation director of Breville, one of Australia’s oldest appliance brands. Page challenged him to think about incorporating Aboriginal heritage into the brand, and he accepted the challenge—eventually.

It took a few years for the timing to feel right, Page says, and even longer to get the process right. Now an adjunct associate professor in design at the University of Technology Sydney and founder of the National Aboriginal Design Agency, Page knew she wanted to use work by original members of the Pintupi Nine, a tribe living in their traditional ways in remote Western Australia. They only came into contact with other Australians in 1984, but their astonishing paintings were gaining attention in the art world and beyond. (Jay-Z bought one by Yukultji (Nolia) Napangati for Beyoncé.) “I wanted to celebrate the traditional origins,” Page says, “but, also, these are some of the best contemporary artists in the world.”

As that world inched closer to recognizing the richness of Aboriginal visual culture, Page worked with Breville on strategies to embody the vision without exploiting its makers. “It made my brain hurt so much trying to figure out how to do this,” she says. Initial concepts of wrapping appliances with existing paintings felt inauthentic. “In terms of how Aboriginal people view objects,” she says, “when we’re making something, the maker is a channel through which the ancestors speak. And so, in a way, we could only do one thing: have the artists paint directly onto the objects. Painting on canvas is a newer concept for Aboriginal people. When we painted our stories, our Dreaming, they were always put on objects, on a cave wall, our bodies, in the sand, or on objects. This was much more natural.”

And stunning: Napangati’s piece, in which dots form lines that travel the expanse of a coffee machine, connect the morning rituals of ancestral women at campsites in Marrapinti with the global wake-up ritual of coffee-making. Yalti Napangati’s kettle makes an even more direct connection, with swirls of lines and dots illustrating women drinking tea made from Piruwa flowers at Kiwirrkurra, her country’s women’s site. Toasters and toaster ovens—the former designed by Gaawaa Miyay founder, textile designer, and Yuwaalaraay woman Lucy Simpson—map the travels of grains and seeds, traces of which have been found on Aboriginal stone tools dating back some 65,000 years, as they make their way to today’s breakfast table.

If you take design seriously, Page says, “objects are talking to you all the time—they’re often saying something boring. But you turn on a coffee machine every day, and while you’re waiting, there’s this opportunity to have a dialogue with something bigger.” That dialogue leans on mutual respect—to that end, Page worked with Indigenous intellectual property attorney Terri Janke to ensure the artists maintained authorship of their work. She convinced Breville to develop a process of scanning the marks the artists made on their objects and transforming them into 3-D printed decals that were hand-applied to each appliance.

Most importantly, Breville will return every cent of its profits to Aboriginal communities, funding initiatives by the National Indigenous Culinary Institute and the Moriarty Foundation’s childhood nutrition-focused Indi-Kindi program—and, crucially, helping Page establish a new school for Aboriginal design within the University of Technology Sydney. It took almost a decade to get the details settled, but the opportunity for these artists to further their storytelling was more than worth the wait.

In Their Own Words: “In fashion, textiles, architecture, and landscape architecture, we’ve got a role to play in terms of seeing them through a First Nation lens,” Page says.

Surface Says: Breville’s pledge to donate its profits is both ethical and an example manufacturers should follow when considering future collaborations with underrepresented communities.

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For this May’s Design Month Graz in Austria, the 12th-century Schloss Hollenegg castle will host “Ashes & Sand,” its eighth annual exhibition curated by founder Alice Stori Liechtenstein and Rainald Franz, curator of glass and ceramics at Vienna’s MAK.

Five artists from the Schloss Hollenegg for Design program will show creations made over a month-long residency in the castle. Some found inspiration in the vast castle collection, which spans centuries. Tamara Barrage, for example, reconceptualized Chinese porcelain lights into oversized zoomorphic candle holders. Others tackled the castle itself—Antrei Hartikainen cast impressions of its architecture in glass, turned them into vases, then embedded them back into the building—or its surroundings, including sand removed from beneath the castle in creating a new rail line, which Christian & Jade crafted into a drinking set.

Some 20 more up-and-coming designers also join them, including those like Hanna-Kaisa Korolainen and Stories of Italy, who reinvent traditional glassblowing techniques, and those, like Lenn Gerlach, who explore the local legacy of the development of those techniques. Clara Schweers, Studio Groovido, and others fashion political lenses from the show’s titular media. And while accomplished glassblower Marc Barreda will produce objects on the castle grounds during the opening weekend via his traveling glass furnace, the rest of the work remains on view through May 28.

Nestled in the snow peaks of the Swiss Alps, the new Faern Arosa Altein is the first full-hotel commission from Run for the Hills. It’s a woodsy wonder, greeting guests with a Belle Epoque concierge and a grand marble staircase leading downstairs to a brasserie and bar. But first, the rooms. Faern’s 126 keys comprise singles, doubles, and deluxe corner suites with balconies overlooking the Arosa rooftops; their palette, a blend of crisp black, terrazzo, timbre, and clay paint, is warmed up with cozy touches like Swiss green cross wool bed blankets and charming throw-back photography from the Slim Aarons collection.

Days are best spent seasonally, whether snowboarding the nearby cliffs or parachuting into their verdant, summery valleys—or, on inclement days, unwinding in the town’s largest spa. Nights belong to jewel-toned bouclé banquets of the aforementioned Zuc Brasserie, with a nightcap on a nook sofa at the Alchemilla Parlour Bar. And for those who can’t risk a moment apart from the beloved Swiss landscapes, the Alpensand Panoramic Restaurant & Social Club offers warm cocktails and refreshing aperitifs with picture-perfect mountain views complimented by alpine-inspired wallpaper by Mind the Gap.

After sitting abandoned for 40 years except for a family of goats that took over the ground floor, a 120-year-old brick building on the Harlem River has been rejuvenated into a striking public school by Adjaye Associates. The building, a former ice factory known as 20 Bruckner, has become the latest location of Dream Charter School, a 30-year-old nonprofit with seven facilities focused on educating youth communities in East Harlem and the South Bronx.

Public schools in New York can feel prison-like, so the firm opened up two large wells through the building’s upper portions to light up the core. Other interior features include high barrel-vaulted ceilings and exposed brick and steel beams, which quickly caught David Adjaye’s attention. “The height allowed for a cathedral-like space,” he says, “which fits the idea of a school as a temple of knowledge, freedom of thought, and the uncapped potential of the students.” Although the redesign came with a price tag of $50 million, Dream sees it as a necessary expense to push forward on its mission to upend public education—and rewrite the design book for schools in underserved areas.

When: Until June 17

Where: James Fuentes, Los Angeles

What: For the debut exhibition of the gallery’s West Coast outpost, William merges painting and printmaking in one ethereal body of work. Scenic underwater tableaus depict a world unconstrained by gravity. Motifs of caves and water nod to his home country of Haiti, positioning the viewer between past and present, reality and mythology. This tension and dichotomy permeates the show, including the title: a euphemism reflecting life as we wish to see it, and as it is.

Last week, Public Art Fund hosted its annual spring benefit to celebrate the organization’s past, present, and future of bringing dynamic artworks to the public. The night transformed New York’s Metropolitan Pavilion into a fantasy greenhouse awash with foliage designed by Putnam & Putnam, where guests enjoyed festive cakes by Yvette Mayorga and banners adorned with prompts from children’s storybooks by Typoe. After a seated dinner organized by BITE, guests enjoyed a DJ set from Aidan Noell of Nation of Language. A silent auction raised more than $1.1 million to support Public Art Fund’s mission.

When was it? May 2

Where was it? Metropolitan Pavilion, New York

Who was there? Paul Rudd, Fred Eversley, Hugh Hayden, Jacolby Satterwhite, Jordan Nassar, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Susan K. Freedman, Nicholas Baume, and more.

“I love disco balls,” James Gardner says. Anyone who’s set foot in a Gitano will attest to his affection—glittering disco balls are a defining feature. His love affair with Tulum first began in the ‘90s. Joined by his husband Andrew, the couple reveled in the quaint Mexican haven’s pristine sands and rustic charm. After a polymathic career that included a consulting gig at Accenture, a stint at Goldman Sachs, and a foray into the tempestuous world of fashion, Gardner collated his disparate skillset and launched Gitano in 2013.

From its inception as an off-the-beaten-track mezcal bar, Gitano has evolved into a stylish hub for the yuppie class and emerged as one of the early stewards of Tulum’s rise as a global hotspot by treating guests as participants in Gitano’s grand theatrical performance. (Some early celebrity patrons such as Demi Moore, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Orlando Bloom assisted with the early buzz.) More spaces have since followed: Gitano Beach and Meze in Tulum, Gitano Miami Beach, and Gitano Island in New York City.

Submaterial creates thoughtful and precisely handcrafted design pieces for modern interiors. In their simplicity and beauty, these works explore the territory between objects of art and objects of design. Submaterial has always focused on natural and sustainable materials such as wool felt, cork, wood, and leather. These materials are fashioned by hand into beautifully surfaced wallcoverings, panels, and screens by skilled fabricators using environmentally conscious and lean manufacturing processes.

Surface Says: Submaterial harnesses the elegance and beauty of natural materials like wood, leather, and wool to create its selection of handcrafted artwork and décor.

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