What’s Happening: Copenhagen’s recent 3 Days of Design subverts the fair model in favor of something more sustainable, democratic, and fun—all without losing focus on the sales. Our contributor Jesse Dorris scoped it out.

The Download: This year, the global design industry has enthusiastically returned to the trade fair model, with endless rows of temporary stalls stuffed into otherwise uninteresting corporate zones. One of the best parts of Salone del Mobile was Shigeru Ban challenging our ethics; the Mexico Design Fair succeeded by transforming beachfront houses into beguiling local showrooms. At 3 Days of Design, whose tenth iteration ran June 7–9, Copenhagen’s design fair did away with the whole fair entirely.

People—at breakfasts, in showrooms, at parties—kept saying this year’s iteration was the busiest yet. That could be because summertime Copenhagen is a stunning blend of high design and hygge: glittering waterfronts turned ersatz beaches; lively crowds at Apollo Bar, which was packed Thursday night for a fete for local legends Hay.

That brand’s co-founder Rolf Hay was busy trash-talking environmentally irresponsible trade shows. The carbon footprint was heavy in the hotspot’s courtyard that night, but the crowd seemed forward-thinking if perhaps only toward a decision of where to go next. A celebration of Menu and By Lassen together as Audo Copenhagen? The Muuto party, where climbers of the office’s many spiral staircases would ascend onto the rooftop? Or to the fair’s own anniversary party, which stuffed the 25hours Hotel’s lobby to capacity watching acrobats in glittering jumpsuits dance on platforms? The troupe raised light bulbs like lighters. I raised a glass and wondered why this was happening.

Is the point of design festivals to bring in the world to see local work, or vice versa? Fostering local vernaculars or democratizing access? Fritz Hansen forwent showrooms and took over Charlottenborg Palace for an installation called “Expressions of Character.” Since 1754, the mansion has housed the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and Kunsthal Charlottenborg. Fritz Hansen highlighted their connection to the academy (Arne Jacobsen and Verner Panton studied there) through the connected structures of their classics, shown via exploded forms in oversized vitrines. A second room was entirely dark minus spotlights illuminating Drop, Swan, and Egg chairs; the display erased decades of praise cloaking the chairs, casting them anew.

Fritz Hansen also built bridges to the museum’s contemporary art. A room full of Jaime Hayon’s creations were displayed in Donald Judd-y boxes defined by lines of red and gold light. “They’re trying to risk it and make new perspectives,” Hayon said. “Maybe morph into something new, which is really cool. Working with Fritz Hansen, you don’t show much. In 13 years, we’ve got about five, six products. That’s it.”

Even that pace compounds over decades. Fritz Hansen’s archives are elegantly arranged at a warehouse in the leafy town of Allerød. Creative design director Marie-Louise Høstbo showed off a charming 1949 “Kindergarden Table” by Edvard Thornton. The low beech-and-linoleum structure looked part communal table, part jungle gym, part cage. The table’s aesthetic restraint made it seem contemporary; its literal restraint might not fly today. But one could imagine a loosened-up version working at the Kunsthal or see its lineage in new designs by Cecilie Manz and KiBiSi.

In Their Own Words: “Trade shows are a completely irresponsible way of showing by putting so much money, energy, and materials into a display that’s there for four or five days,” Hay says. “The building of something like 3 Days of Design is mainly done in permanent showrooms around the city, and they’ll all remain beyond this week. So it’s definitely a more healthy way of showing. This event is getting stronger and also more international.”

Surface Says: The best parts of 3 Days of Design could only happen in Denmark, which might be the best reason for it. But it was still all about sales.

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Name: Hotel San Fernando

Location: Mexico City

Designer: Bunkhouse and Reurbano

On Offer: Nestled into La Condesa, a 1947 apartment building is now reborn as Hotel San Fernando, the Austin hospitality group’s latest Bunkhouse hotel. Its 19 rooms range from cozy Sencillas with king beds and kitchens to Ocio suites with two sleeping areas and a trio of penthouse Terraza suites with private balconies. “Architecturally,” says executive chairman Amar Lalvani, the building “draws from the anti-traditional elegance of the Art Deco era. Simple volumes and ornamental elements reflect an admiration for the industrial.”

And the decorative: the lobby’s existing stained-glass windows offered inspiration for the curvy breezeblock that forms the walls of the rooftop patios. “The building was filled with great details that we have preserved and celebrated,” Lalvani says, even down to the facade’s engraved name of the patron saint of engineering, for whom the building was originally named and the hotel takes its moniker.

While on an artist residency in 2018, Lisa Ross began exploring the low, brick buildings marshaled as military compounds under Chairman Mao Zedong in Lanzhou, an industrial city in northern China. Ross noted that on the walls of these danwei clung remnants of the only decoration allowed under Mao: propaganda murals composed of his quotations. Over the years, the walls had been sun-bleached, disfigured, graffitied; but just as current Chairman Xi Jinping has not removed Mao’s teachings from government philosophies, the paint remains, raised off their plaster grounds.

“Poisonous Weeds,” Ross’s new show at Palo Gallery’s Selldorf Architects–designed flagship in Manhattan through July 2, grows out of that paint. Ross painstakingly uncovered almost every word of the murals, including them in the catalog with annotations of other signs of life built up around them over the decades. Then, in photographs of the murals, Ross invests the faded red-and-yellow paint colors with stronger hues, emphasizing their connections to Chinese history while increasing their legibility.

The result is a series of photographs and semiotic excavation arguing that when a government coats a building with the words like “Whatever the enemy opposes/we must support it/Whatever the enemy supports/we must oppose it,” there’s blood on the walls.

Last week, New York’s cultural sphere braved the smoky forecast and headed to MoMA for its annual Garden Benefit. This year’s festivities honored artists Barbara Chase-Riboud and Ed Ruscha—both of whom have exhibitions at the museum slated for the fall—as well as philanthropists Marlene Hess and Darren Walker. After a seated dinner inside, guests flocked to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden to sip on cocktails by Maestro Dobel Tequila and dance the night away to a performance by queer indie-pop band MUNA.

When was it? June 6

Where was it? The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Who was there? Derrick Adams, Jeffrey Deitch, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Rashid Johnson, Simone Leigh, Julie Mehretu, Hugh Hayden, Dasha Zhukova, Thelma Golden, and more.

Restitution of the Benin Bronzes was never going to be easy. Most of the bronzes made their way into Western museums over the past century, a potent reminder of colonialism for Nigerians, who have long called for their return. Plans to repatriate the artifacts have moved ahead as institutions faced a reckoning about aggressive acquisition tactics. The German government, the Smithsonian, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art all agreed to transfer ownership of looted bronzes to Nigeria in recent years. Plans called for the artifacts to be displayed in Benin City’s upcoming Edo Museum of West African Art, a glittering institution designed by David Adjaye and slated to open in 2025.

Though the returned treasures reportedly sparked an “artistic awakening” in Benin, disputes surrounding their ownership abound. Would they fall in the hands of Nigeria, its National Commission of Museums and Monuments (NCMM), or Ewuare II, Benin’s oba? Restitution plans snagged when Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s outgoing president, transferred ownership of the looted items to the oba, announcing that any returned artifacts “may be kept within the palace of the oba” or in any location he considers secure. He stipulates that no Benin Bronze can be moved without the oba’s written authority and he must inspect and authenticate each one upon its return.

Hacin + Associates is a multidisciplinary architecture and design firm dedicated to design excellence and client service. Working at all scales, the firm’s services include architecture and interior design, graphic design and branding, adaptive reuse, and historic preservation.

Surface Says: Hacin + Associates imbues its work with a strong sense of place, especially in hometown Boston. Just look at the award-winning Whitney Hotel in Beacon Hill for proof: its expressive design has a pinch of New England flair and exudes a casual sophistication that impeccably matches the Beantown vibe.

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