What’s Happening: Telo is a compact electric truck designed by Yves Béhar that offers ample storage in the footprint of a Mini Cooper, but American buyers used to hulking pickups may need time with its “cute” build.

The Download: Smartcar but make it truck? It may be difficult to visualize, but it’s the idea behind Telo, a compact new electric pickup with sky-high ambitions to disrupt the automotive sector’s design expectations. (It feels like a noble pursuit given how recent pickup trucks and SUVs have been compared to death machines.) Telo forgoes the macho gestures baked into most American pickup trucks, offering the seating and storage of a Toyota Tacoma but in the footprint of a Mini Cooper. In the words of lead designer Yves Béhar, it’s “cute.”

Telo is the brainchild of two auto industry veterans—vehicle safety specialist Jason Marks and Tesla battery expert Forrest North—who envisioned a compact pickup that’s easily maneuverable in cities but kitted out for weekend adventures. The truck’s most notable feature is its lack of a visible engine, which is hidden inside essentially a big, flat skateboard that makes up the bottom component. The driver is pushed forward, leaving additional space for a backseat and the cabin, which can even fit surfboards despite the truck’s cozy build.

Though interior visuals aren’t yet available, some critics noted Telo feels more like a gadget than a vehicle—no surprise given Béhar’s industrial design pedigree. But the vehicle has the capacity to upend the hulking pickup truck market if it passes all the safety tests and convinces American consumers to embrace a design that feels European—no easy feat. More development to make Telo market-friendly might be needed, but the company plans to hand-build 500 units over the next two years. Pre-orders for the $50,000 truck start at $152—one dollar for every inch of its length—and are fully refundable if one gets cold feet.

In Their Own Words: “I don’t mean to knock on the car industry, but it’s not product- or user practicality–driven,” Béhar tells Fast Company. “It’s really marketing driven. We’re designing Telo the way you’d do any product design. Focus on the experience. Focus on all elements of the interior that make this unique configuration really comfortable.”

Surface Says: Perhaps Telo could look to the Volkswagen Bug’s famous Lemon ad as a roadmap.

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Couches have always been a headache to move, but what if your next sofa could be easily flat-packed? Thanks to generative AI, it may soon be reality. Space10, the Danish design lab dedicated to ideating products for Ikea, teamed with Panter&Tourron to prototype a modular, bench-like sofa with thin cushioned panels that fit snugly in an envelope-like tote and weighs only 22 pounds.

Hundreds of Midjourney and DALL-E prompts—“we want to use this as a collaborative tool,” says Space10’s Georgina McDonald—progressed the concept from an origami diner booth and pillowed clamshell to its final form, which draws from conversation pits. From there, the designers developed a comfortable sofa that could actually be built and displayed their prototype at Copenhagen Architecture Festival.

Enclosing the Seymour H. Knox Building’s courtyard at the newly restored Buffalo AKG Art Museum is a mesmerizing canopy of triangular glass and mirrored panels by Studio Other Spaces. A gem of the museum’s OMA-led refresh, the installation allows viewers to become part of the artwork as they move thanks to angled mirrors creating kaleidoscopic reflections of the scene below. “It sensitizes you to the world outside,” says Olafur Eliasson, who helms Studio Other Spaces with Sebastian Behmann. “It draws your attention to things difficult to measure, that depend on your active involvement. If you don’t get involved, nothing will change.”

When: Until Aug. 19

Where: Patron Gallery, Chicago

What: A series of sculptures join a site-specific installation in the São Paulo–based artist’s exploration of luscofusco, the Portuguese word for twilight. For Simões, a trained architect, there’s more to “Luscofusco” than capturing the dreamy hues of golden hour; he delightfully subverts expectations with meditations on the dawn of Greco-Roman sculpture, Modernist architecture, and a composite of past and present in each work. His third exhibition with Patron Gallery is effectively a study in balance, in which precarious-seeming sculptures exude balance while rigid steel and concrete lose their rigidity, instead evoking fluidity and grace.

New & Notable is a cultural catchall that highlights interesting new products and projects from our brilliantly creative members of The List. With new releases, events, and goings-on, the below moments indicate the power they have to move the needle in so many realms, including architecture, design, fashion, and art. With NYCxDesign having come and gone, we look back at the product debuts from our List members.

Elish Warlop: The lighting and furniture designer’s dual-discipline expertise was on full display with the kinetic porcelain ellipse screen; its brass accents catch and project light while its geometric porcelain cones create a mesmerizing sculptural installation.

Model No.: As the face of 3D-printed furniture made from plant resin, Model No.’s collection of statement furnishings is a welcome sight for those seeking environmentally conscious pieces fit to complement modern interiors. The collection includes the polygonal Esker chair and coordinating ottoman, the biodegradable Bolster chair, BioBench, and Prowl Studio-designed Gather table.

Istituto Europeo di Design (IED): With support from IED, Ines Balbas and Matteo Congiu—two alumni of the Milan-based design school—presented innovations from their emerging studios. Balbas showcased her Selo collection, which transforms culinary waste like eggshells into transfixing ceramic lamps while Congiu’s studio OTQ displayed his minimalist line of cork furniture.

Nestled within a wooded clearing in London’s lush Kensington Gardens is this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, a rippling, low-slung structure that Lina Ghotmeh envisioned as a place that fosters lively discussion around the dinner table. Considering food as an expression of care and an opportunity to have moments of conviviality, the French-Lebanese architect intends for the pavilion to simply become a gathering place where memories are made. “It’s an encouragement to enter into a dialogue,” she says, “to convene and to think about how we could reinstate and re-establish our relationship to nature and to Earth.”

Flavor Paper is a Brooklyn-based wallpaper company that specializes in hand-screened and digitally printed designs. Flavor Paper is eco-friendly, using water-based inks and PVC-free materials when possible. All products are print-to-order for easy customization. Residential, commercial, and specialty products are available.

Surface Says: This studio’s colorful creations are a feast for the eyes, and sometimes even the nose. Their range of clever and often humorous designs includes Pop Art–inspired scratch-and-sniff options.

Take a walking tour of a Chicago suburb replete with Frank Lloyd Wright homes.

Contemporary art fairs have undergone a major transformation over the years.

Home Depot has started selling modern tiny home builder kits with roof decks.

A lucky family unearths more than one million pennies in their father’s home.