What’s Happening: Freedom Reads, a nonprofit founded by formerly incarcerated author Reginald Dwayne Betts, is on a mission to build libraries in prisons across the U.S. so inmates can imagine new possibilities for themselves.

The Download: Reginald Dwayne Betts was only 16 years old when he pled guilty to carjacking and was sentenced to nine years in Virginia’s prison system. Extreme isolation, constant danger, and feelings of hopelessness were pervasive while he served 14 months in solitary confinement, but he soon found a saving grace that launched him on an avenue to a brighter future: a copy of Dudley Randall’s The Black Poets. Thanks to his new reading habit, Betts reoriented his perspective, graduated from Yale Law School, and now works as a published poet, author, and lawyer. Finding reading material in prisons, however, is difficult. Most prisons only have one library, which is open for a few hours per day and requires permission to access. The easiest option is to simply not read.

Increasing access to books has become a raison d’être for Betts, who launched the nonprofit Freedom Reads in 2020 thanks to a grant from the Mellon Foundation. The first-of-its-kind organization aims to install 500-book “Freedom Libraries” in prisons across the United States. So far, Freedom Reads has built 172 of them in 30 prisons across ten states. Stocked with hand-picked titles such as A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, 1984 by George Orwell, and plenty from William Faulkner, one of Betts’s favorite authors, the libraries aim to help prisoners imagine new possibilities for themselves.

The libraries are also objects of design. Each consists of two to six freestanding bookshelves, hand-crafted from maple, walnut, or cherry. Betts insists the libraries occupy vacant cells for quicker access, and fashions each shelf at 44 inches high as to not impede guards’ sightlines. Their curves intentionally contrast the carceral system’s rigid architecture and echo a Martin Luther King Jr. quote about the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice. “We’re trying to argue that you can be gentle in a place as violent and dangerous as this by having furniture that we make with our hands,” Betts says. “To say that this group of folks in prison—for whatever they’re in prison for—deserve this, is compelling.” Talk about a success story.

In Their Own Words: “I do not believe that a book alone will grant a person wings, but the hope of it all is not a fantasy,” Betts wrote in the New York Times. “The hope is someone will turn a page, and with the turning, transform.”

Surface Says: Feel like donating a book?

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.

Acclaimed omakase chef Shinji Kanesaka, the mastermind whose namesake restaurant in Tokyo sparkles with two Michelin stars, is taking his show on the road. Housed within the 45 Park Lane hotel in London’s tony Mayfair neighborhood, the U.K. outpost of Sushi Kanesaka marks the chef’s initial foray outside of the Asia Pacific region. Sequestered in a corner of the property’s Bar 45, patrons enter through a walkway of reclaimed Japanese granite and wooden Kumiko panels inspired by neighboring Serpentine in Hyde Park into an immersive environment inspired by Japan’s traditional sushi dens.

Designed by Itaisan, the nine-seat chef’s counter is made from a single piece of Japanese Kiso Hinoki (cedar wood). Custom vases by renowned ceramic artist Shiro Tsujimura, hand-cut glasses by Horiguchi Kiriko, and Hinoki ice chests, first used by sushi chefs in the Edo period, add authentic notes to the intimate experience. The Edomae-style sushi program, which incorporates elements of curing and cooking, guides the 20 courses meticulously prepared using seasonal ingredients, not to mention chef Kanesaka’s own rice blend from Japan’s Yamagata Prefecture.

The profile of Downtown Brooklyn is quickly changing—and Brooklyn Tower, a 93-story skyscraper by SHoP Architects, is leading the charge. The borough’s tallest building flaunts sleek blackened stainless panels cladding its entire 1,066-foot length from its podium, which emerges from the historic Dimes Savings Bank, and is punctuated by bronze and copper pilasters. SHoP principal Gregg Pasquarelli likens the tower to Brooklyn’s own Empire State Building: “We wanted to make sure that no matter what grid you were on, looking at it from wherever you were in Brooklyn, you felt like you were looking at the front,” he tells Dezeen. The bank’s Art Deco roots, meanwhile, inform much of the interiors, including the lobby by Krista Ninivaggi and a multitude of residences by Gachot Studios.

An alum of Milan’s Domus Academy and London’s Architectural Association who has shown sculptures at the Venice Biennale, Niko Koronis creates “small-scale architectural entities” marked by radically experimental materials and rigorous geometric forms that embody a sense of depth and dimensionality. A selection examining the captivating qualities of Belgian Black Marble, currently on view at Carpenters Workshop Gallery’s London outpost, demonstrates how the Greek-born, Milan-based architect deftly navigates the interplay of nature and artifice, rigidity and play, and positive and negative space.

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, these moments indicate their power to move the needle in architecture, design, fashion, and art.

Cruise through the suburbs and you’ll notice the baby boomer’s McMansion has given way to the millennial’s Modern Farmhouse. These homes sport a post-agrarian look with several key characteristics screaming a “fetishism for folksiness”—white board and batten vertical siding, black frame windows, a covered porch, sans serif house numbers, and dainty wall decals extolling the virtues of living, laughing, and loving.

Credit the HGTV personalities Chip and Joanna Gaines, the hosts of “Fixer Upper,” for helping popularize the style. Devoted fans may describe their bucolic leanings as classic and timeless, but design critic Alexandra Lange dismisses the style as “modernism in drag.” The 166,000 people who’ve joined Facebook group “The People Against MoDErN fArMhOuSe 🧺” likely agree.

Moooi doesn’t tell designers what to do. It listens to what designers want to make, and tries to realize their dreams. It’s eclectic, and always on the edge of commercial reality and cultural interest. The brand creates conversation pieces, which make any environment feel special.

Surface Says: Marcel Wanders and Casper Vissers hit on something brilliant when they launched their Dutch brand in 2001. Tapping the world’s biggest design names for their range of eclectic offerings, the Moooi brand is indeed as attractive as its name (adapted from the Dutch word for “beautiful”) implies.

Here’s what happened when two hikers got ensnared in the Bolt Creek Fire.

Poet and saxophonist Alabaster DePlume relies on jiu-jitsu for his mental state.

Mattel introduces a “Weird Barbie” doll inspired by Kate McKinnon’s character.

Canadian photographer Christopher Hewig captures strange Soviet bus stops.