What’s Happening: On the heels of the Young V&A, which opened in September, three more world-class art and performance spaces are taking shape in New York, Wales, and El Paso.

The Download: The approach of spring brings April showers aplenty, but less obvious is the bevy of youth-focused cultural institutions that seem to bud with each season’s fresh blooms. While children’s museums, theaters, and libraries might seem like a totem of new-wave parenting movements, their history runs deep. In 1899, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum opened its doors as the first institution of its kind. Anne Caroll Moore then revolutionized America’s nascent library system by introducing children’s programming to the New York Public Library. Dedicated youth reading rooms sprung up in Moore’s wake, including the world’s first children’s library, which opened in Brooklyn in 1906.

Last year around this time, the still-in-progress Young V&A stole hearts and headlines with its updates on how firms De Matos Ryan and AOC involved children in the museum’s design process. By involving 22,000 people from nearby families and schools, the firms created a light-, pattern-, and sound-rich space to engage young minds—which it has since opening in July. Its current show, “Japan: Myths to Manga,” explores how Japanese folklore informs Studio Ghibli, Comme des Garçons, and Pokémon.

Shortly thereafter, in September, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its 81st St Studio to host its family programming. The space, created collaboratively by architecture and interiors firm Koko and experience design firm Bluecadet, doesn’t charge children or their caregivers for admission. It features an art and science reading room, like the ones Moore pioneered, a music room custom-furnished by Yamaha, and galleries with archeological artifacts from the Met’s collection.

Over in El Paso, Snøhetta is building La Nube: a cloud-inspired museum, play, and STEAM (STEM, but inclusive of art) learning center that has been in the works since 2012. The firm has collaborated with exhibit designer Gyroscope and Exigo Architecture to create a space that looks like the playground of our wildest dreams sprung up inside a technicolor reboot of The Matrix. On March 28, Snøhetta confirmed that the institution is slated to open later this year.

Yet across the pond in Wales, one of the most enterprising places in this story isn’t a museum at all. The historic Saint Mary’s church in Bangor has been refashioned into Nyth, a performing arts center for Welsh-language children’s theater troupe Frân Wen. London firm Manolo & White transformed the Victorian-era former church into a “non-precious” arts center with a green room, studios, an 80-seat performance space, a garden for gathering or hosting open-air rehearsals, and, crucially, no steps to hamper access.

In Their Own Words: Like the firms behind the Young V&A, Manolo & White listened to what Nyth’s young people wanted. Avoiding the patronizing effect of some youth-focused interiors, Manolo & White associate Takuya Oura refashioned ceramic tiles, stone, and organ pipes into decorative elements that let creatives and their talents command the most attention. “Nyth belongs to young people. We learned from them that spaces typically designed for ‘kids’ can be off-putting, and what they really wanted was a humble setting for creative exploration,” Oura says. “We drew inspiration from honest conversations. The result of our collaboration is a robust building with a natural material palette, where they can freely mess around and stretch their imagination.”

Surface Says: Who knew that children’s museums and their ilk were the dark horses of the architecture and interiors world?

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In the 1960s, predating the rise of postmodern iconoclasm, Gaetano Pesce was busy honing his experimental claws. After graduating from the University of Venice, he had his sights set primarily on performance art—on one occasion, he filled an entire auditorium with fake blood, and on another, promised to make a portrait for anyone in attendance, simply presenting them with a mirror. These cheeky subversions helped pave the way toward his renown as one of the world’s foremost industrial designers, celebrated for infusing personality into everyday objects by wielding shape, material, and color into unexpected forms with the utmost dexterity.

Noted for their trailblazing use of synthetics such as polyurethane, his pieces almost seem designed to confound and entice. Some of them inflate, others seem effortlessly draped, and one evokes a 3-D manifestation of a casual freehand drawing. As a major force in the Italian Radical Design movement, which saw designers turning from stiff Modernism towards the loose and peculiar, Pesce spent more than half a century making furniture that makes rooms different. His signature resins let the light linger within his creations, which veer in form toward the childlike, the creepy, the sexy, and the strange, recasting the chair as a stage.

“Artistic works must always be made from discoveries,” the maestro once told Surface. His revelations will continue to illuminate. Revisit our 2016 studio visit with Pesce, where he spoke about giving meaning to objects, his wonderfully cluttered working space, and society’s ills.

If we had to pick, the one undesirable aspect of hotel living is the lack of homelike comforts. But Sydney’s newest suites, which sit harborside at The Darling, are a lesson in tasteful splendor. It took Australian studio Fender Katsalidis two years to fully refurbish the 16 rooms. While no two are the same, commonalities can be found in their abundance of contemporary art, and an amber, clay, and ocean blue color palette informed by the Australian landscape.

While well-appointed stone kitchens and harbor views meet practical needs of sustenance and light, the ultimate amenity can be found in the aptly named Karaoke suite. There, a room awash in shades of Bordeaux (and ample sound-proofing) awaits guests ready to let out their inner superstar. There really is no place like home—and sometimes that’s for the best.

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

Florida Fish Are Mysteriously Dying After “Spinning and Whirling,” and Scientists Can’t Explain It [Smithsonian]

Artist Attacked in Italy Over Painting of Jesus Receiving Oral Sex [Hyperallergic]

Harvard Says It Has Removed Human Skin From the Binding of a 19th-Century Book [AP]

Doctor Reveals What a “Slice of Penis” Looks Like Under a Microscope—Viewers Are “Riveted” [New York Post]

Lego Asks Murrieta Police Department to Stop Using Lego Heads on Mugshot Photos [CBS]

The Luddites were 19th-century artisans who fiercely defended the value of handmade craft in the face of industrialization; their dedication to craftsmanship and skilled labor deeply inspired Lex Zee, an industrial designer who specialized in creating custom lighting for the trade industry before launching his own venture, called Studio Luddite, earlier this year. From solid brass table lamps to asymmetrical stone pendants, the New York studio’s inaugural range of materially diverse lighting embodies his core belief that the objects in our homes should be fabricated by craftsmen and with intent.

Earlier this week, artists, curators, and young collectors convened to fête filmmaker and LG Guggenheim award honoree Shu Lea Cheang. The night opened with an intimate seated dinner followed by a dance party that brought hundreds out to Museum Mile after hours. Ethereal scenography by Rachel Rossin transformed the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda, which hosted the party and an all-night DJ set by fashion-favorite music duo The Muses. While cocktails and dancing are all in good fun, perhaps the night’s biggest draw was the after-hours access to the exhibitions, including “Going Dark,” which closes April 7.

When was it? April 2

Where was it? The Guggenheim Museum, New York

Who was there? Naomi Beckwith, Renée Cox, Chloe Wise, Rachel Rossin, Sophia Cohen, Deidrea Miller, American Artist, Joiri Minaya, Jordan Huelskamp, Klaudia Ofwona Draber, Anthony Akinbola, Noam Segal, and more.

Room is reshaping the modern workplace to create the offices of the future around the world with simple and inspired modular architectural solutions that allow teams to create and recreate their work environment with ease. Purpose-built rooms cater to private, focused work, or collaborative teamwork that builds meaningful connection. The result is a dynamic, ever-changing workspace that alleviates the reliance on fixed construction and fixed ideas.

Surface Says: Room’s sleek, soundproof cybertecture pods provide a salve for the clamorous open-plan offices of the past decade and unlock a world of possibilities for the post-pandemic future.

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