What’s Happening: A sweeping new retrospective at the Vitra Design Museum chronicles how the Dutch photographer humanizes buildings with his lens.

The Download: Iwan Baan was traveling in China on business when he crossed paths with architect Rem Koolhaas, whose firm, OMA, was knee-deep in building the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing. Koolhaas invited Baan to follow along and snap some process shots as the looping geometric structure came to fruition. The year was 2004, and China was rushing headlong into rapid-fire urbanization as anticipation brewed for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Baan quickly landed more commissions with other designers seeking to capture their high-profile projects coming together. Venturing beyond the shiny end result, his images often captured candid moments rarely seen in architectural photography at the time—think laborers taking tea breaks or clustering in living quarters set up nearby.

Baan parlayed this invaluable experience chronicling architecture’s human side into an illustrious, decades-long career that has taken him around the globe portraying buildings by world-class architects like Herzog & de Meuron, Kazuyo Sejima, and Tatiana Bilbao. His oeuvre is currently the subject of “Moments in Architecture,” a sweeping retrospective—and Baan’s first—at Germany’s Vitra Design Museum, where about 1,000 of his most impactful photographs document the rise of beloved landmarks and informal structures, and reveal how we interact with them. Architecture buffs will recognize many from magazines and books, but considering Baan initially submitted 14,000 images and spent a year working with Vitra curator Mea Hoffmann to cull them down, new discoveries inevitably await.

Though the show could have easily become a highlight reel of the century’s most notable architecture, Baan and Hoffmann avoided that outcome. “It’s the portrayal of the lived experience as opposed to quote-unquote architectural photography,” Hoffmann tells Fast Company. Not that Baan doesn’t excel on that front—one section zeroes in on the wide range of perspectives he employs to capture a building’s context and character, from aerial views taken by helicopter to panorama shots. Some of the show’s most resonant images, though, are that of unsung structures: China’s round Yaodong villages, rock-hewn churches of Ethiopia, self-built dwellings in Cairo, and all the unexpected moments within that prove the seductive power of a well-composed image.

In Their Own Words: “What’s important is the story, which is very intuitive and fluid,” Baan says. “I’m not so interested in the timeless architectural image as much as the specific moment in time, the place, and the people there—all the unexpected, unplanned moments in and around the space, how people interact with that space, and the stories unfolding there.”

Surface Says: Baan is yet another reminder of the adage “it’s not about the camera, but who’s behind the camera.”

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Picture this: early fall has descended upon New York City, and in a light-filled former warehouse downtown, Thelma Golden and Tyler Mitchell are candidly talking about art just a few feet away from where you sit. After, you get up to stretch your legs during a break, pausing at the foot of a sleek oak-paneled staircase to let Cindy Crawford and Kaia Gerber snap some photos together. Later, Olivier Rousteing will take the stage with veteran editor Tonne Goodman, chronicling his ascent to the top of the French fashion house Balmain.

Just across the hall, at the Spring restaurant redesigned by celebrated French architect Nathan Litera, you take everything in over a warming bowl of green curry perfected by executive chef Fabio Bano—an alumnus of Union Square Café and Armani Ristorante. Then, you head upstairs to claim a workspace at the members’ club that Martino Gamper furnished in Italian modernist style and resume working over a perfectly steeped cup of peppermint tea. At Spring, which hosts a full-service creative agency, studio space, event production arm, and members club Spring Place, a scene this exceptional is simply part of everyday life.

When Homme Plissé debuted a decade ago, it lent a menswear slant to Issey Miyake’s highly successful Pleats Please line. In creating that, the late designer mastered a technique of permanently heat-pleating polyester to never unfurl, wrinkle, or become staticky.

Homme Plissé made the same innovation available to a wider range of shoppers, and it recently celebrated its 10th anniversary with a Decade collection and campaign shot by fashion and culture photographer Henry Leutwyler. The collection includes a T-shirt, jacket, and trouser, while Leutwyler’s photo series captures the key construction elements of Homme Plissé: its pleated fabric swatches, pins, and a tape measure to represent its unique fit and drape, and shears, seam rippers, and fabric markers as symbols of the expert craft.

When: Nov. 1-4

Where: The National Mall, Washington

What: Tiffany Shlain teams up with the National Women’s History Museum to bring her latest show out of the galleries and into one of the country’s most prolific public realms: the National Mall. The California based artist-activist’s Feminist History Tree Ring comes front and center, featuring annotations on each ring that serves as a timeline of notable moments in women’s history, from Wu Zetian’s tenure as China’s only female ruler beginning in 690 and the United States’ flip-flopping on the legality of abortion access to the 1972 advent of the birth control pill and the eventual repeal of Roe v. Wade in 2022. A plethora of whitespace invites viewers to imagine how the future might unfold on the precipice of a major election year.

Last week, a lively group of artists, collectors, gallerists, and enthusiasts gathered at Guastavino’s to celebrate Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture’s 53rd annual Awards Dinner. The Maine-based artist residency honored multi-hyphenate Lonnie Holley with the Medal for Visual Arts & Music, presented by musician Michael Stipe. Suzanne Deal Booth and Visual AIDS also received special awards. After dinner, guests enjoyed an after-party headlined by keiyaA and DJ duo musclecars.

When was it? Oct. 24

Where was it? Guastavino’s, New York City

Who was there? Ivy Arce, Derrick Adams, Sarah Workneh, Baseera Khan, Jeffrey Meris, Matthew Day Jackson, Alison Saar, Farah Al Qasimi, Pamela Sneed, Clifford Prince King, Elliott Brown Jr., and Hank Willis Thomas.

As Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla prepares for its wide release on the heels of a fantastically successful turn on the film festival circuit, indie art house publisher Mack gives the filmmaker’s cult following a behind-the-scenes look at her oeuvre with Sofia Coppola Archive. The tome compiles the director’s self-shot set photography along with images shot by the likes of Tina Barney and Corrinne Day. Fans are also treated to a first-person perspective on Coppola’s various inspirations, which she details in the form of essays that precede each of her films’ dedicated chapters. $65

At Workshop/APD, an award-winning architecture and design firm, each project is defined by a sense of place and purpose and a desire to enhance user experience through exceptional design at all scales. From layered, textured penthouses and seaside retreats to luxury residences and hotels, the Workshop/APD aesthetic is timelessly modern but site-specific, unbound by project type or style.

Surface Says: With a full-service branding, development, architecture, and design practice, Workshop/APD is a truly multidisciplinary firm—with the dazzling projects to show for it.

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