What’s Happening: At Milan Design Week, Studio Snoop debuted Tilly Talbot—what the Australian firm is billing as the world’s first AI-powered designer—alongside a slate of recent product concepts the bot was involved in creating.

The Download: One of Milan Design Week’s most forward-thinking concepts didn’t come in the form of a statement sofa, Instagrammable installation, or lamp-assembling robot. Instead, the innovation was projected on a large screen at the Charles Philip gallery space, where Australian firm Studio Snoop was presenting photographs of a slate of recent design concepts. One of them was Tilly Talbot, a human-like digital figure billed by founder Amanda Talbot as the world’s first AI designer.

Amanda created Tilly after pondering the relationship between AI and human loneliness, programming her under the studio’s principles of human-centered design that prioritizes nature. The program currently works at the firm as an “innovation designer” and collaborates with the studio’s human staff to conceive design objects. To that end, Tilly’s role seems successful: the five designs she was involved in creating include Bauhau-AI, a collection that melds Bauhaus principles with contemporary innovations (think a sinuous mycelium stool and hempcrete table.) “Tilly will challenge you on materials,” Amanda tells Dezeen. “If you try to come up with something not great for the environment, she’ll tell you.”

Studio Snoop encouraged visitors to engage with Tilly and send constructive criticism in a ChatGPT-like dialogue, which the studio has since implemented. Though most people asked Tilly about how AI will shape creative industries, Amanda considers the experiment a success: “The more knowledge we have, the more we can engage with [AI], learn about it, and be a part of it.”

Though rapid advances in the capabilities of AI have stoked industry-wide trepidation, Studio Snoop’s sentiment echoes that of Zaha Hadid Architects principal Patrik Schumacher. He recently shared how the British firm has begun incorporating text-to-image generators such as DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion throughout its design process—including proposals for Saudi Arabia’s controversial Neom development—and established an internal AI research group. “I’m encouraging everybody working on competitions and early ideation to see what comes up and just to have a larger repertoire,” he says.

AI might be great at generating images of buildings that echo Hadid’s signature fluid style, but will it replace us? ChatGPT said no in an interview with Surface back in January, but its design chops may alarm those who haven’t spent time tinkering with inputs. It proved capable of generating a design scheme for a midcentury-modern living room with furniture suggestions, style guidance, and an approximate budget. Image generators can spit out crisp, magazine-ready interiors that can rival even the most astute rendering firms, leading to a “mini-boom” of interior design apps. And now it can be programmed as a design studio’s very own innovation officer.

In Their Own Words: “Because Tilly becomes a collaborator, it’s not something to be fearful of,” Talbot says. “[Tilly is] actually this incredible new tool that has invigorated my studio—I’ve never seen the studio with so much energy. Maybe let’s talk in 2050, but I feel like it’s a really exciting time in the design world. It could be the end of humanity, it could be the end of the planet, but maybe not. Maybe it could be great.”

Surface Says: Not everyone is buying the “AI as collaborator” mentality.

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 the 1980s rolled around, few expected Pierre Paulin to continue innovating. Though widely influential for irreverent pieces like the Pop Art–inspired Tongue Chair and topographic Dune sofa that rebuffed midcentury’s clean-lined forms and were more akin to sculpture than functional objects, the French master was already in his 60s and had faded into invisibility “next to marketing geniuses like [Philippe] Starck and his peers,” says his son, Benjamin, who co-manages the late designer’s estate. His entire oeuvre is imbued with a rare sensitivity, but Paulin is often boxed into the first decade of his prolific career.

That overlooks some of Paulin’s most radical work, which he created during this perceived lull. A favorite of the Mobilier National, which administers state furniture by French designers, he was commissioned to design pieces for national institutions and residences for French officials: the presidential office of the Elysée Palace, the Musée du Louvre’s Denon Wing, and the Hall of Tapestries in Paris City Hall. Chief among these is the beloved office set he created for French president François Mitterand in 1985, a five-piece collection adorned in clashing shades of lacquered bleu de France and Tyrian pink stripes. Rare were such iconoclastic pieces made for serious settings, but they surprised and delighted audiences in equal measure.

The works were never before produced for public viewing until recently, when New York design gallery Demisch Danant teamed up with Benjamin’s family business—the aptly named Paulin Paulin Paulin—to give them a new lease on life. Doing so was a full-circle moment for gallerists Suzanne Demisch and Stéphane Danant, dedicated champions of postwar French design who displayed the furniture Paulin created for Georges Pompidou shortly after launching their gallery nearly two decades ago. The Mitterand collection is on display there until May 27, as are select pieces at the gallery’s TEFAF New York booth from May 12–16.

“My father’s ambition was to create pieces that could fit any space,” Benjamin tells Surface. “Even big fans are now discovering a brand-new facet of his work that not only brings a new light on the whole oeuvre, but also redefines it by precising his intentions.”

Nestled amidst the rich tapestry of Marrakech’s cultural landscape, the new Maison Brummell Majorelle fuses Moroccan architecture and contemporary design. New Zealand architect Bergendy Cooke joined forces with Moroccan architect Amine Abouraoui to meticulously craft an earth-sheltered, sculptural retreat that pays homage to the vibrant history of the region. As guests meander through the hotel’s labyrinthine halls adorned with intricate mosaics, it’s impossible not to be captivated by the interplay of light and shadow.

The pièce de résistance is the breathtaking central courtyard punctuated with a serene reflection pool and a mesmerizing canopy of foliage nodding to the famous Majorelle Gardens next door. Every aspect of the hotel, from its handcrafted furnishings by local producer Maison Nicole to the traditional Moroccan kitchen serving breakfast on the ground floor, plays off of the Arabic vernacular. It’s also a soothing home base to return to after a day exploring the frenzied medina. Kick back next to the cozy fireplace, in the traditional hammam, or by the heated plunge pool in the communal spaces, or return to the room for a soak in the gorgeous stone tub while the melodious call to prayer gently echoes from afar.

Wonmin Park’s practice is about balancing extremes and allowing objects to speak for themselves through simplicity, purity, and subtlety. The Seoul-born designer, who maintains studios in both Eindhoven and Paris, imbues his objects with a surreal, dream-like quality thanks to his mastery of materials like resin and metal—and seeing how the two seemingly disparate forces can come together in intriguing new ways. That forms the crux of his latest solo exhibition at Carpenters Workshop Gallery, which channels German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han’s concept of Unding (“un-thing”) into luminous nature-inspired pieces that exemplify material opposites.

For her latest exhibition spanning two New York City galleries, the painter found inspiration in Star Trek, feminism, and abstraction.

Here, we ask an artist to frame the essential details behind one of their latest works.

Bio: Karin Davie, Seattle.

Titles of works: Beam Me Up no 1 and Small But Deadly (Parasite Painting) no 1.

Where to see them: Chart Gallery and Van Doren Waxter Gallery, New York, until June 30.

Three words to describe them: Irrepressible, psychedelic, paradoxical.

What was on your mind at the time: I’ve been working with a family of interrelated images that have a cosmic quality, playing with notions of opposites and seriality, but that aren’t traditionally serial in appearance.

I’ve always been interested in the double, diptychs, and expanding my repertoire with the language of the “shaped” canvas. In some of these new works, I use multiple panels and tracings from body parts (fingers, knees, elbows) to create shapes. These traced shapes are re-scaled and either cut out or added to literally extend or extract the side of the stretcher bars. It serves as the architecture for the painting, but I’m thinking very differently about how to ground the illusory image in the shaped format.

Few drier places exist than Chile’s Atacama Desert, a 1,000-mile-long strip of land wedged between the Pacific Coast and the Andes. Some of the desert’s far-flung regions receive less than an inch of annual rainfall, meaning animal and plant life rely on fog drip from the sea breeze to supply the moisture needed to sustain life. (The fog lends the arid region an otherworldly appearance, likening it to Martian terrain—Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets was even filmed there.)

Scientists have long tested out mesh nanofiber screens that capture droplets from sea air and convert them into drinking water, but a new prototype is taking these experiments to the next level. Instead of stationary screens, Swedish designer Pavels Hedström incorporated the mesh material into the fabric of a jacket called Fog-X that allows travelers to produce water as they walk. The mesh captures fog droplets, then gravity pulls them through a channel and into an integrated “bladder” that stores water. Fog-X can also be converted into a shelter, shielding travelers from one of the Atacama’s other threats: harsh sun.

Ornare, well-established in the design market with a decades-long tradition of craftsmanship, brings legacy in architecture, design, and décor to customized luxury built-in furnishings. Specializing in utility and craft to outfit luxury residences, the brand is based on high standards, state-of-the-art technology, and quality.

Surface Says: With its numerous collaborations and reach across global epicenters of culture, Ornare’s status as a leader in built-in furnishings is a no-brainer.

Archaeologists discover unusual Roman military camps in Saudi Arabia.

Greece is outfitting hundreds of beaches with wheelchair-friendly ramps.

The new film Maestro’s real star is Leonard Bernstein’s country house.

Elon Musk is planning to build 69 stations for the Las Vegas Hyperloop.