What’s Happening: As more over-the-top giga-projects are planned for the futuristic Saudi Arabian city-state, concerns are mounting over whether the country’s oil riches are enough to bring the Crown Prince’s plans to fruition.

The Download: It’s nearly impossible to consume architecture news without seeing updates—or lack thereof—about the outlandish giga-projects that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is planning for the oil-rich Middle Eastern country’s ambitious Vision 2030 plan. All eyes are on Neom, the futuristic city-state roughly the size of Belgium that’s owned and supported by Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund. Anchored by The Line, a pair of mirrored skyscrapers taller than the Empire State Building stretching for an astonishing 110 miles and set to house nine million people, new regions of Neom are announced so frequently that it’s increasingly tough to wrap one’s mind around the size and scale, let alone the astronomical amount of labor and engineering heft to bring its increasingly audacious conceptual buildings to life.

Critics spurn Neom as a dystopian nightmare and over-the-top vanity project aimed at softening the country’s unsavory reputation as a regime that whacks journalists and displaces Indigenous people to make way for construction cranes. While satellite imagery shows that construction on The Line, billed as the “world’s biggest earthworks operation,” has kicked off, there are concerns that Saudi Arabia is pouring so much money into flashy spending that its cash reserves are drying up. Remember, developing Neom is only one part of Vision 2030: the country launched an airline that involved purchasing $35 billion worth of Boeing jets, plans to invest $40 billion into artificial intelligence, and launched a golf league that eked out a partnership with the PGA Tour. The country’s sovereign wealth fund has plummeted by roughly three-quarters to $15 billion, the lowest since December 2020.

To keep spending, Saudi Arabia has turned to borrowing and planning a large sale of stock in the state-owned oil behemoth Saudi Aramco. That’s a cause for concern considering Vision 2030 spending has only started ramping up, including a plan to invest $38 billion into the video game sector. “It’s mind-boggling the amount of stuff that’s trying to be done here,” Tim Gallen, a visiting fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute think tank, told the Wall Street Journal. Other experts anticipate projects will be scaled back, but there’s also the chance they can be pulled off. Qatar delivered on an overzealous $300 billion plan to build world-class museums, a sprawling public art program, starchitect-designed sports stadiums, and five-star hotels ahead of the 22nd FIFA World Cup in Doha. Though the construction boom was far from smooth, Qatar mostly realized those plans—proof that oil-driven wealth and an aspiration to flaunt cultural credentials can get things done, albeit at a smaller scale and an immense human cost.

In Their Own Words: “Neom might stand with Donald Trump’s wall against Mexico, Buckminster Fuller’s glass dome over Manhattan, and Superstudio’s dystopian renderings as the unrealised totems of late modernity—or it might be realized, in part at least,” architecture critic Edwin Heathcote wrote in an op-ed for the Financial Times. “It’s difficult to think of anything more emblematic of our age than a sliver of mirrored desert city crumbling back into the sands, solar-powered drones still darting about its long-deserted ruins purposefully, trying to clean the windows.”

Surface Says: On the bright side, the Urbex community will have a field day with Neom if the project flops.

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London Paddington’s 60-room Grand Hotel Bellevue wears its heart on its sleeve, so to speak; grand is in the name, after all, and it’s set in a historic Victorian townhome under the proprietorship of tony Parisian hospitality group Lignée Hotels. But its interiors are a vision of warmth, styled after what the project’s Paris-based architect Fabrizio Casiraghi imagined as the home of an “eccentric, globetrotting” English couple.

The potentially imposing effect of period touches like plaster crown moldings, marble fireplaces, gilt mirrors, and wall tapestries that seem fit for the Renaissance collections of an art museum are all tempered by an amiable color scheme of soft cream and burnt orange in common spaces and throughout the guest rooms. On closer inspection—or pending the perception of an in-the-know friend—the period tapestries are revealed to be the product of a collaboration with Emily Adams Bode. Contemporary art and wall sconces temper the effect of antiques, such as a found French setée in the lobby and romantic mahogany millwork. Amenities by Floris Cosmetics, as well as captivating bathrooms done up in poignantly contrasting hues of green, orange, and blue, offer guests the comforts of our modern times.

Few are as dialed into the heritage of Mexican craftsmanship as Hector Esrawe, the industrial designer by training whose prolific talents extend to picturesque boutique hotels, limited-edition furniture, and even a beloved gallery in his home of Mexico City. His latest collection of signature editions is an ode to the rarefied master artisans who keep his country’s ancestral metalsmithing practices alive—and their ability to find beauty in the mundane. The Gear series of bronze sculptures mimic the geometry and repeating sequences of utilitarian cardboard’s honeycomb cells but are rendered in a lustrous material that presents the jagged patterns in an entirely new light. “I’m often drawn to overlooked materials, finding an interesting and intrinsic beauty in what’s often discarded,” Esrawe says. “I feel compelled by simple shapes and expressions, repurposing them into objects of new meaning.”

Encompassing side tables, freestanding lighting sculptures, and a cocktail table resembling haphazardly stacked metal rings, Gear also gives Esrawe room to experiment and get his hands dirty. To form the side patterns, he renders a fragmented and rearranged sequence that’s hand-formed and then cast in bronze or aluminum. “Within these materials, I find a trove of hidden possibilities, rethinking their nature or their personality to create objects of purpose,” he says. “My country is an endless source of inspiration and it provides the means for creation.” Catch them on view at Les Ateliers Courbet’s New York gallery until April 25 alongside his large-scale brass luminaires that resemble parabolic ribbons.

Beyoncé is galloping toward the release of her eighth studio album, Act II: Cowboy Carter, the eagerly anticipated country-tinged follow-up to 2022’s dancefloor epic Act I: Renaissance. On Instagram, the superstar shared the record’s cover art and thanked her fans for making her the first Black woman to top Billboard’s country chart following the release of lead singles “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” further explaining her decision to venture into the genre arose from an “experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed.” She wrote: “The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me.” Artistic nods abound in the cover art, which was shot by photographer Blair Caldwell with the same equestrian themes as those of Renaissance but much less sparkly.

Instead, she assumes the form of a rodeo queen perched atop a racehorse, reins in one hand and an American flag in the other. Quick comparisons were made to the work of Kehinde Wiley, which places Black people in lavish settings referencing Western masterworks previously reserved for white leaders. One writer pointed out how it evokes Napoleon Crossing the Alps and the banner Marina Abramović holds in The Hero, and how it arrives at a cultural reassessment of the cowboy. Ivan McClellan will release a photography tome about Black rodeo culture and a recent exhibition at MCA Denver explored how artists are reckoning with the cowboy’s archetype of masculinity. It remains to be seen if Cowboy Carter dissects these themes, but we’re in for some surprises. As she projected on the Guggenheim, “This ain’t a country album. This is a Beyoncé album.”

Adam D. Miller worked for years as a painter before meeting ceramicist and curator Tony Marsh, who encouraged him to pursue a more craft-based medium; he then assisted in producing Sterling Ruby’s ceramics before launching his own studio, where his creativity truly took off. Besides running the beloved artist-run L.A. gallery The Pit and creating a line of ceramics called Reaperware, he crafts stools, lamps, bud vases, and other small vessels with vivid, borderline psychedelic imagery that draws from a multitude of influences like the Yucca desert where his family calls home, punk aesthetics, and the 1960s Japanese sci-fi television show Ultraman.

Our weekly roundup of the internet’s most preposterous headlines, from the outrageous to the outright bizarre.

Facebook Wants Pokes to Become a Thing Again [WWD]

A Museum’s Feminist Artwork Excluded Men. So One Man Took It to Court. [New York Times]

So Long, Stumpy. More than 150 of DC’s Cherry Trees Have to Go As Water Rises [NPR]

Police Say He Got on a Plane Using a Photo of a Girl’s Boarding Pass. Now He Faces a Felony Charge [AP]

Global Ocean Heat Has Been at Record Levels Every Single Day for the Last Year [CNN]

Mysterious “Godzilla Eggs” Spotted in Lake: “What in the Alien Invasion Is This?” [New York Post]

As a leader in both galvanizing its community of ardent supporters and staging exhibitions of our time’s most groundbreaking contemporary art, the Bronx Museum knows a thing or two about standing out. It’s fitting, then, that its gala was one for the ages. Artist Sanford Biggers and jazz musician Samara Joy were among those who received awards from the museum, while Artsy spearheaded an auction overseen by Mattos Paschal of Christie’s. Following cocktails, dinner, the auction, and dancing, DJ Ethan Tomas spun tunes for a late-night afterparty.

When was it? March 18

Where was it? Ziegfeld Ballroom, New York

Who was there? Thelma Golden, Hank Willis Thomas, Rujeko Hockley, Derrick Adams, Michael Chuapoco, John Ahearn, Gia Kuan, Emma Kohlmann, Baseera Khan, Dread Scott.

Carl Hansen & Søn believes that iconic design is a combination of simplicity, aesthetics, and functionality brought to life through skillful work with the highest-quality materials. For more than 100 years, the Danish brand has specialized in providing outstanding furniture craftsmanship that brings visionary design concepts to life.

Surface Says: A master of timeless design, Carl Hansen & Søn always knows how to balance homeyness and modernity.

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