What’s Happening: A year after giving his brand Patagonia back to the Earth, the eccentric billionaire Yvon Chouinard is exploring how straw bale construction can pave the way for greener living.

The Download: Last year, Yvon Chouinard made headlines when he gave Patagonia—the popular outdoor apparel brand he founded in 1973—back to the Earth. (Conscious of the company’s footprint and fashion’s greenwashing problem, the octogenarian’s family transferred their ownership to a trust created to ensure its profits combat climate change and protect undeveloped land.) While the self-described “existential dirtbag” now spends his free time fishing and surfing, Chouinard is still vamping on sustainable ideas that have been percolating in his mind for decades, long before he launched the brand that would make him a billionaire and land him on Time’s list of “100 most influential people of 2023.”

One of those ideas happens to be straw bale construction. A readily available agricultural byproduct left over from wheat, barley, and rice crops, straw can be utilized as either the main structural material or as insulation in buildings. So when Chouinard acquired a piece of land near Ventura, California, he decided to reimagine the quintessential suburban home with carbon-absorbing straw. He enlisted the help of architect and longtime friend Dylan Johnson, who turned out to be an ideal collaborator—his aunt and uncle built a straw bale home in central Washington when he was a teenager. After lengthy permitting, the project was greenlit and they began construction, which was chronicled in a Patagonia-produced short film extolling the virtues of building green.

And there are many. The construction sector accounts for one-third of all carbon emissions, making the use of bio-based building materials all the more urgent. Straw bale construction interrupts the carbon cycle—crops absorb carbon during the growing season and release it into the atmosphere when they rot or burn, but storing hay in buildings sequesters carbon away and actually goes negative. Straw is also of little use to farmers, and its disposal is both costly and time-intensive; selling it to builders creates another revenue stream. “With less than five percent of all the rice straw that we produce each year in this country,” Chouinard tells Dwell, “we can build a million 2,000-square-foot homes.” It might take the government some time to update their building codes, but California is already catching on.

In Their Own Words: “People are living in bombs. They’re living in gas or propane-fueled houses with cars parked outside,” Chouinard tells Fast Company. “I believe in market forces. That’s why I’m in business. A lot can be done outside of government, just by being creative. Waste is not waste. It’s an opportunity.”

Surface Says: Patagonia’s next ad should say “DON’T BUILD THIS HOUSE.”

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In 2019, MoMA opened its Diller Scofidio + Renfro with Gensler expansion. One of its most exciting additions was the fourth floor’s Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio, which it described as “the world’s first dedicated space for performance, process, and time-based art to be centrally integrated within the galleries of a major museum.” And while climate change protests this summer called for the museum to disassociate itself with the people for whom the studio was named—both board chair Marie-Josée and her husband Henry have extensive ties to the fossil fuels industry—the space continues to program work that expands ideas around the relationship between sound and art.

This week, its “Studio Sound” series brings the legendary Suzanne Ciani for a quartet of performances called “Improvisation on Four Sequences.” Ciani is among the world’s premier performers on the Buchla, a digitally controlled analog synthesizer developed by Don Buchla in 1964 and iterated with increasing complexity through the ‘70s. Her music connects early-20th-century academic electronic compositions with later New Age strategies of deep listening and psychedelic minimalism. Here, she’s paired with beloved experimental musician Sarah Davachi, who will premier a durational solo electronic work with video by filmmaker Dicky Bahto, along with long-form compositions for a chamber ensemble and a brass trio—both sure to create moments of contemplation and focus for a world in crisis.

From Stonehill Taylor and Sydell Group, which brought us Freehand, NoMad, and the LINE hotels, comes a hotspot in the heart of Williamsburg. Penny’s difference is academic—the hotel includes some 100 dorm rooms for Bard College grad students amidst its 118 guest rooms, but this is no frat house. From 200-square-foot Queen Rooms to the “Your Majesty Suite” at almost four times the size, each spot emphasizes a residential sense and local sensibility. Chair cushions, for instance, come from nearby Dusen Dusen, while the books are courtesy of The Strand. A pair of neighboring arts organizations—LAND Gallery and Pure Vision Arts, who secure studio space and resources for artists with developmental disabilities, then represent their work—help curate the programs both in-room and in public spaces.

Guests who linger in their apartment-style rooms can hop up to the ELNico restaurant and bar on the rooftop to watch Brooklyn buzz around below, perhaps over one of beverage program director Leo Robitschek’s Panamericano blends of La Diablada Pisco Moscatel, Cocchi Americano, Cantaloupe, Blanc Vermouth, and hazelnut. Chef Fer Serrano’s menu draws on her Mexican heritage, from a tlayuda of market veggies and pomegranate to large plates of fried octopus. And while the skylines of Brooklyn and Manhattan surround diners, the best view may be in the lobby, where guests can check out a portrait by Bard graduate Michelle Devereux of Sydell founder Andrew Zobler’s chihuahua—Penny, herself.

Our weekly scoop on industry players moving onwards and upwards.

Southern Guild, a stalwart gallery within South Africa’s fine art and collectible design sphere, will open in Los Angeles in February, becoming the country’s first dealer to expand stateside. Located on Western Avenue in a historic 1920s building in Melrose Hill, the 5,000-square-foot outpost will feature three large-scale exhibition spaces designed by art-world favorite Evan Raabe Architecture Studio. Founded by Trevyn and Julian McGowan in 2008, the gallery has upheld the ingenuity of the human hand and an ethos of cultural exchange by uplifting artists from South Africa, Benin, Congo, Kenya, and Nigeria, and with their robust presence at international fairs. On that note, don’t miss their Armory Show debut this week, which features Zizipho Poswa, Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Manyaku Mashilo, and Oluseye.

Other art-world movements made waves this week. Gagosian appointed Jiyoung Lee to lead operations in South Korea, strengthening the mega-gallery’s foothold in Asia. She brings experience from Sprüth Magers, Esther Schipper, and PKM Gallery. The Dia Art Foundation has a new curator and department co-head in Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, who has overseen installations at Dia Beacon and recently revived the long-running lecture series “Artists on Artists.” Tate, meanwhile, hired two new curators: Marleen Boschen, who specializes in ecology, and Kimberly Moulton, who will focus on Indigenous art.

In the fashion realm, Theory tapped Chloé’s chief commercial officer Marco Gentile as its new chief executive officer for Europe and the UK. His appointment follows an era of bullish expansion in London’s retail market with new stores opening in Covent Garden and Battersea Power Station. After spending a few years at Valentino as chief brand officer, Alessio Vannetti is making the leap over to Gucci in that same capacity. He served as the Italian label’s worldwide communications director before his departure.

When: Sept. 8–Nov. 4

Where: Claire Oliver Gallery, New York

What: In his debut solo exhibition at the Harlem gallery, Adams seizes the moment to explore themes of joy, fatherhood, empowerment, and faith through the lens of folklore and fables. A cast of animal characters, including a lion, his cubs, and a “blue (collar) horse” represent the Washington, D.C.-artist’s optimism, hope, and philosophy of finding beauty in the mundane. His practice has evolved from its origins in large-scale sculpture to its present: monumental acrylic paintings that often include mixed media like textiles, fiberglass, and metal.

“I hope my work uplifts viewers and charts a path for choosing to see the beauty and worth behind everything, no matter how insignificant,” he says. “There is magic in our power to choose joy; we can wake up every day and take that decision for our lives.”

The photographer Elizaveta Porodina often collaborates with fashion’s most recognizable names, and in the process, creates otherworldly compositions that subvert tropes and expectations. Her newest body of work, an art book created together with Rizzoli, Carolina Herrera’s creative director Wes Gordon, and featuring a foreword by editor Edward Enninful, is no exception. Since its beginnings as a Zoom photography project in 2020, the book catalogs the label’s collections created in the intervening years, grouping them by color and creating a relationship between each decadent garment, its wearer, light, and motion.. Through Porodina’s lens, we see the artistic and oft-photographed—among them Wendy Whelan, Maggie Maurer, Mao Xing Xing—as we never have before. $85

David Weeks Studio is a Brooklyn-based design studio founded in 1996. A multi-disciplinary designer renowned for his sculptural lighting, founder David Weeks’s minimalist visual language articulates an ongoing and open-ended dialogue between material and form. His genre-defining work is the result of a distinctly hands-on, sculptural process of formal reduction that marries an artist’s sensibility with technical precision.

Surface Says: A talented and incisive designer, Weeks deftly balances true minimalism with levity and discovery in each fixture created by his studio.

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