What’s Happening: The collapse of the World Trade Center destroyed the nearby St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, but its replacement building by Santiago Calatrava has been virtually recreated using intricate drone footage.

The Download: When the World Trade Center collapsed following the attacks on September 11, 2001, the only religious building destroyed was the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine. Though political and financial spats hampered reconstruction efforts, the chapel’s long-delayed replacement designed by Santiago Calatrava finally opened in late 2022. Unlike the Spanish architect’s nearby Oculus, the $4 billion transit hub–shopping mall that looms over the 9/11 Memorial, the chapel is far more understated. Its Byzantine-inspired architecture and drum-shaped forms are clad in thin sheets of Pentelic marble—the same type found on the Acropolis—that emanate a gentle glow, serving as a beacon for passersby. Whereas its predecessor is lost to time, the newly completed chapel will endure forever thanks to a realistic virtual model designed by Iconem and digitalization studio G&A that recreates the experience of visiting without setting foot inside.

G&A achieved that through high-resolution photogrammetry, which employs camera-equipped drones to take photographs from a multitude of angles and then uses software to translate them into highly detailed 3D models. That wasn’t easy to pull off—New York City, especially around the World Trade Center, is a strict “no-fly zone.” Yet the crisp final product realistically recreates the church’s exterior, narthex, and nave, offering both a history lesson and commemorating the structure’s symbolic rebirth. The exterior charts the chapel’s destruction and reconstruction; the nave offers an up-close look at biblical iconography recounting the life of Saint Nicholas painted by priest-monk Father Loukas. He’s responsible for the most poignant moment in the nave, where a painted homage to the attacks depicting the hand of God holding the souls who died presides over the altar.

In Their Own Words: “We asked ourselves, how do you create a mobile experience so wholly integrated with physical space that using it simply feels like part of actually being there?” says Stephanie Land, G&A’s senior integrated producer. “Besides being the site of one of the nation’s worst tragedies, the Shrine and its app needed to be a sacred space for collective hope and healing.”

Surface Says: Don’t forget to light a virtual candle.

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The Aladdin Sane, a new cocktail lounge in Downtown Detroit, channels Tokyo’s whisky bars with a statement-making live edge mahogany bar and a captivating mural by Reverend Michael Allen. The moody ambiance, cultivated by Stokes Architecture and Design, is complemented by a cocktail program from Natasha David, an alumnus of New York institutions like Maison Premiere and Nitecap. Her program includes highlights like the Sake & Strange Divine—made with sake, shiso, rice whisky, and caviar. True to its inspirational roots, The Aladdin Sane also has serious whiskey chops, with extremely rare editions of Yamazaki 18 and Glenfiddich 29 on offer.

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

Austrian Climate Group That Attacked Klimt Painting Disbands Over “No Prospect of Success” [Telegraph]

Royal Count Finds Swans Hit By Air Guns [BBC]

How A Rare Disorder Makes People See Monsters [The New Yorker]

Chicken Wings Advertised As “Boneless” Can Have Bones, Ohio Supreme Court Decides [AP]

My Insurance Company Spied on My House With a Drone. Then the Real Nightmare Began. [Business Insider]

Housed in Adolf Gottlieb’s former East Hampton studio, a group show of nearly 30 ceramics opening this weekend veers into the dreamlike and delightfully surreal. “Dream House,” organized by the Los Angeles gallery Stroll Garden, conjures an atmosphere where domestic objects defy their traditional roles and creep into the fantastical. Works range from the avant-garde with masterful manipulation of scale, as seen in Lindsay Lou Howard’s towering Plant Based burger to the utterly uncanny, as with Amiee Byrne’s lifelike Teddy bear. The hyperrealistic Purple Carrot by Ryan Flores could’ve been plucked from an illusory garden, its leafy tendrils reaching skyward. Throughout, reality gently disconnects as one meanders through a summer daze.

The Future Perfect is a platform for distinguished and emerging contemporary designers. With locations in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, The Future Perfect works closely with designers to commission limited-edition pieces and to develop special exhibitions.

Surface Says: The Future Perfect put forth a new paradigm for the design showroom: a curated commercial space that felt like home, only far ahead of its time. As an early adopter of current superstars, founder David Alhadeff has proven to be a bellwether for greatness.

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