What’s Happening: The Games have garnered somewhat of an unsavory reputation for requiring host cities to funnel money into building larger-than-life facilities that sit derelict after closing ceremony, but Paris’s own green ambitions forecast a different future.

The Download: Over the past decade, public sentiment has shifted away from extravagant Olympic stadium architecture. A mere six months after the 2016 Rio Olympics wrapped up, video footage showed gargantuan venues in states of disrepair, its seats ripped out and stagnant water festering in warm-up pools. After drawing apt comparisons to a child’s potty, the gravely over-budget stadium proposed by Zaha Hadid for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was declared a national embarrassment and unceremoniously scrapped, the project instead going to Kengo Kuma. As conversations around funneling tax dollars to fund starchitect-designed white elephants continue to rage, Paris has opted for a far subtler approach.

City officials have instead refreshed existing venues and mounted pop-up stages in strategic locations, with landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, Versailles, and newly restored Grand Palais providing world-class backdrops for the highly televised games. The plan essentially creates a two-week-long commercial for the city while reducing construction overhead. Because Paris hosted the Games twice—in 1900 and 1924—as well as the World Cup in 1998, it already had facilities to accommodate thousands of spectators or provide training facilities for athletes. Newly built structures, such as the Centre Aquatique Olympique, eschew the grandiose for the green. It’s equipped with France’s largest urban solar-energy farm, handsome glulam structural beams, and 6,000 seats made of recycled plastic bottles.

The natatorium’s designers, Ateliers 2/3/4 and VenhoevenCS, envisioned the facility as serving locals of Saint-Denis, one of France’s poorest banlieues, long after the closing ceremony. The neighborhood is also where the Olympic Village, master-planned by architect Dominique Perrault, has steadily risen. There, dozens of housing blocks clad in creamy pastels offer a pleasing visual contrast to Paris’s dour cityscape and are equipped with a bevy of green features. As are the sustainable milestones the city achieved as part of Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s utopian Réinventer Paris campaign for various quality-of-life improvements in anticipation of global tourism and attention. It involved creating 250 miles of bike lanes, extending the Métro network, purifying the Seine, and planting 300,000 new trees.

In Their Own Words: Laure Mériaud of Ateliers 2/3/4, in a statement to The Guardian, captured the city’s ethos in orchestrating the greenest Games yet: “It’s about doing better with less. You can do something simple and efficient that is also beautiful and extraordinary.”

Surface Says: The city’s green ambitions seem to have stuck the landing—now let’s see if Parisians can hold the pose and stop grumbling about how the Games are disrupting la vie en rose.

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In L.A.’s Elysian Valley, Levi’s alumna Heidi Baker has captivated a certain subset of creative Angeleno with her brand Ozma Studio. Its linen and raw silk separates, as well as its edit of breezy slip dresses, are all shoppable in a riverside flagship boutique designed by Elizabeth Roberts, who has crafted art- and- collectible design–forward shops for Ulla Johnson and Rachel Comey.

For Ozma Studio, Roberts and her firm channeled the brand’s sunny ease through a palette of raw timber, unglazed clay tiles, and an all-glass garage door that can be opened onto the adjoining courtyard. After browsing alpaca-cotton cardigans—a layering staple for chilly evenings on the beach—Japanese cupro maxi skirts, and ruched silk crop tops, shoppers can take in the sun from the garden designed by Molly Rose Sedlacek and landscaped with native flora.

Russell Pinch and Oona Bannon founded Pinch with a simple goal: to create timeless furniture and lighting they wanted to live with. Two decades in, the London studio continues to champion meticulous craftsmanship and slow design through collaborations with skilled European artisans, resulting in pieces that embody the notion of finding beauty in simplicity and whose well-crafted details are sure to delight.

This past weekend, friends, family, and art enthusiasts enmeshed in the world of more than 145 participating institutions celebrated the fifth edition of Upstate Art Weekend, organized by Helen Toomer. Jack Shainman Gallery kicked off the celebratory weekend at its Kinderhook outpost, The School, with a fête on its bucolic grounds. The event commemorated the official start of the weekend and the extension of “Lie Doggo,” a monumental exhibition of Nina Chanel Abney’s practice that will now be on view through Nov. 16.

When was it? July 20

Where was it? Kinderhook, New York

Who was there? Helen Toomer, Danny Baez, Jordan Casteel, Larry Ossei-Mensah, Ryan Waddoups.

Vitra is a Swiss furniture company known worldwide for creating innovative products with lauded designers. Vitra’s catalog includes furniture, lighting, and objects from mid-century titans Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Verner Panton, Alexander Girard, and Jean Prouvé, as well as works from Antonio Citterio, Jasper Morrison, Alberto Meda, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, and Hella Jongerius. Vitra products are installed worldwide by architects and designers in living, working, and public spaces that inspire comfort and productivity.

Surface Says: The Swiss furniture brand’s eye for comfort, sleekness, and versatility makes it a standout in a crowded market of beloved brands. Through its collaborations with the industry’s top minds, Vitra goes the extra mile.

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