What’s Happening: After showing at Milan Design Week and completing a number of projects through his studio, the filmmaker and designer throws open the doors to a palazzo hotel in Rome.

The Download: Luca Guadagnino has long been known for his singularly evocative movies: Suspiria, Challengers, and Call Me By Your Name only scratch the surface. A transportive sense of place is a Guadagnino signature on the big screen: a viewer can practically smell the apricot blossoms under the Lombardy skies of Call Me By Your Name from the comfort of their sofa. So it came as little surprise when, in 2017, the filmmaker and producer launched Studio Luca Guadagnino, a design studio through which he sought opportunities to work “on a space that has nothing to do with my practice as a filmmaker,” he said at the time, “where I have to create a space for dimensional storytelling.”

A Milan Design Week installation at the hands of Guadagnino’s studio soon followed, and so too did a breathtaking Venetian villa. Now, the filmmaker has recast a portion of Rome’s 16th-century Collegio Nazareno as Palazzo Talìa. Guadagnino’s studio designed the common areas and singular suite of the 26-room boutique hotel, which channels the distinctly Italian splendor of the founder’s past cohort of private residences and retail projects. The designer imbued the ancient collegio with a wash of color, texture, and a touch of the unexpected: down one interior arcade, botanic carpets by the architect Nigel Peake add color and whimsy, and in the bar, lava stone tables and a Murano glass-mirrored wall create an appropriately cinematic ambiance.

In Their Own Words: “If you come to Rome, a hotel like this, you want to diffuse yourself in beauty, comfort and softness,” Guadagnino tells the Financial Times about the project. “Everything needed to exude that pleasure.”

Surface Says: While Find Me, the erstwhile Call Me By Your Name sequel, was ill-fated on many accounts, we could picture Elio brooding over an amaro at the hotel’s aptly named Bar Della Musa.

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Since it was founded by Jasmin Larian Hekmat in 2012, Cult Gaia has taken the fashion world by storm with its beachy edit of sculptural handbags and shoes and statement-making ready to wear. After tapping Sugarhouse to expand its store presence from SoHo to the Miami Design District earlier this year, the brand has reunited with the studio to open a third boutique in quick succession—this one tucked in the tony Pacific Palisades.

Befitting the neighborhood’s beach-adjacent locale, Sugarhouse’s Jess and Jonathan Nahon weaved oceanic references throughout. Foremost is the store’s moniker, “The Shell.” Then there are the ebbs and flows of its statement aquamarine sofa, wave-like clothing rods, and sculptures that look as though they could have been carved from the cliffs lining the nearby coast.

When Frank Lloyd Wright was designing a hemicycle house for a mobility-impaired veteran and his wife, he envisioned a Usonian home that focused on capability, not disability. The resulting Laurent House in Rockford, IL, endures as the American architect’s only wheelchair-accessible home—and was built four decades before the Americans With Disabilities Act. It also featured furniture that Wright intentionally tailored for his client’s needs, which Steelcase is now reintroducing as the Rockford Collection. It encompasses a rail-backed lounge chair and a grouping of companion pieces including polygonal plywood tables and movable stools.

Joining them is the Galesburg Collection, a series of low-slung sofas, sectionals, and lounge chairs cantilevering over a wooden base that draw inspiration from the built-in linear banquettes Wright often included in Usonian homes in Parkwyn Village and The Acres communities in Michigan. “Looking into the Foundation archive and studying certain homes provided us with a lens to create these collections that really move beyond the more well-known Prairie style,” says Stuart Graff, president and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. “We’re in dialogue with [his] whole body of work, uncovering ideas that matter to our customers, aesthetically and historically, and which feel even more relevant today.”

The Chinese painter widens his already macroscopic view to the universe at large, finding certain expression via coded abstractions in a realm of uncertainty.

Here, we ask an artist about the essential details behind one of their latest works.

Bio: Ding Yi, 62, Shanghai.

Title of work: Appearance of Crosses 2024-1 (2024).

Where to see it: Château La Coste, Provence, until Sept. 15.

Three words to describe it: Cosmic, unknown, spiritual.

What was on your mind at the time: The vast, mysterious universe creates a strong interest in me, an interest that stems from the many unknowns that are indescribable. Through the constellation series, I hope to find a certain expression in the uncertain world.

Founded by David Rockwell, FAIA, Rockwell Group is a cross-disciplinary architecture and design firm that emphasizes innovation and thought leadership in every project. Based in New York with a satellite office in Madrid, projects include Union Square Cafe, The Shed (Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Rockwell Group), NeueHouse, and the TED Theater.

Surface Says: Rockwell Group deeply understands theater as much as it does architecture, and the firm’s immersive environments capture the imagination. Whether designing a Broadway set, a restaurant, or a hotel, David Rockwell and his team combine technological know-how with design thinking, creating spectacular spaces and places.

You can rent—or buy—this Bushwick carriage house designed by Jorge Pardo.

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The New Yorker proffers hilarious but “unclever” interior storage advice.

Spanish authorities place Katy Perry’s production company under investigation.