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Among the avalanche of executive actions which spilled forth after Donald Trump’s second inauguration as US president was the return of an idea he’d tried in December 2020 (though it barely lasted a couple of months, and certainly did not lead to any buildings): a memorandum titled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Architecture”.

For “beautiful” read “classical”. But for “classical” read what, exactly? Is the US government really going to go all Beaux-Arts? With sculpted friezes and domes, mosaics and Corinthian columns? It’s not cheap, this stuff.

The right loves a little classicism. It always has. It stands in their minds for class and conservatism and drawing a line back to the ancient world. That the Capitol and the White House were built in part by enslaved labour and that Hitler and Mussolini loved a classical column once tainted any hints of classical revivalism. Now that the US government is determined to abandon any hints of “wokeness”, we needn’t really worry about that any more.

Trump’s taste is also a reflection of a much larger trend of what we might call right-wing revivalism. In Budapest, Viktor Orbán is rebuilding the old castle district to its Habsburg pomp, so that it is becoming difficult to tell what is old and what is new. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has been Bauhaus-bashing, suggesting modernism “displaced local architectural traditions”. And social media is flooded with memes of classical buildings and white marble sculptures as ciphers for the “purity” and supposed superiority of western culture.

There are bad neoclassical buildings just as there are bad modernist buildings. You cannot make it a stylistic binary: Corinthian columns good, curtain walls bad

Such rhetoric is cultural dog-whistling. As the Oscar-tipped film The Brutalist — starring Adrien Brody as a postwar Hungarian-Jewish émigré architect — points out with such clarity, much of the distaste for modernism is a not-so-veiled attack on its many Jewish and often communist theorists, protagonists and patrons. Those associations have stuck around, incredibly, for a century and modernism is still seen by the right as somehow alien.

Yet America became the default home of modernism, the nation where it achieved its apotheosis. Midtown Manhattan or downtown Chicago or the affluent mid-century houses of southern California are arguably the zenith of modernism, albeit stripped of its early ideology (when the concerns of its often left-leaning architects tended towards social housing and a more egalitarian society). The world went modern not because of the Bauhaus but because US big business adopted and embraced modernism so completely and so seductively.

And that success included, of course, one Donald Trump. The president, who made his name in real estate, was an enthusiastic erector of generic high-rises. You will find no classical porticoes, no sculpted friezes on Trump’s towers. They are all resolutely late-modern, unadorned, shiny extrusions of steel and glass. At least, on the outside.

In his brilliantly waspish book, From Bauhaus to Our House (1981), Tom Wolfe wrote: “Every great law firm in New York moves without a sputter of protest into a glass-box office building . . . and then hires a decorator and gives him a budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars to turn these mean cubes and grids into a horizontal fantasy of a Restoration townhouse.”

He might have been writing about Trump, whose own taste in interiors veers towards Versailles. There is this strange disconnect between the predilection for classicism and the gaudy golds and mirrors of dictator-kitsch, and the practicalities of modern construction, geared towards repetitive floor plates and curtain walls.

The right’s position is that federal buildings should be recognisable, grand, and should inspire awe. In fairness, it might be time to introduce a little nuance here. Neo-classicism and the Francophile Beaux-Arts style were the default language of government architecture, right from Antebellum to the early 1950s. And it was, in its way, an apolitical choice. Much of the biggest and best classically inflected architecture dates to the New Deal 1930s, when Franklin D Roosevelt used the construction of vast new government buildings as an employment and training programme, employing stonemasons and carvers, mural artists, sculptors and metalworkers. And a great deal of it is nearly indistinguishable from what the fascists were doing across the Atlantic, even down to the imperial eagles and fasces carved on to the facades and the friezes of heroic workers.

But Trump is not Roosevelt. His is a small-government public realm. What, exactly, is the government proposing to build? Probably mostly data centres to support its $100bn AI programme. Will these be dressed as classical temples?

Certainly you can still build in a classical style. There are a few architects who specialise in it and others who are happy to be chameleons. But it is expensive, time-consuming and it is difficult. And it often arrives with the weird assumption that to be traditional, or classical, or not-modern is enough to make it beautiful. It is not. There are plenty of bad neoclassical buildings just as there are bad modernist buildings. You cannot make it a stylistic binary: Corinthian columns good, curtain walls bad.

When far-right and neo-Nazi groups gather across the US, they often alight on classical buildings as a background, as they did in Charlottesville in 2017 and Nashville, Tennessee, the following year — Grecian temples as symbols of western civilisation. And the images from the assault on the Capitol remain indelibly seared in the collective consciousness. Likewise, Hollywood directors have displayed a penchant for blowing up those classical edifices: the Capitol, the White House, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials.

Classicism represents permanence — and Trump’s garish schtick yearns for something more substantive. But dressing up as Ancient Greece in the age of Trump looks like cosplay.

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Harvey Weinstein is weighing in after two of his children received a mention during the Academy Awards.

Adrien Brody, who is dating Weinstein’s ex-wife Georgina Chapman, gave a shout-out to the kids Weinstein shares with Chapman while accepting the Oscar for best actor on Sunday.

During his acceptance speech honoring his role in “The Brutalist,” Brody thanked “my amazing partner” Chapman, saying she has “not only reinvigorated my own self-worth, but my sense of value and my values.” He also thanked “her beautiful children, Dash and India,” adding, “I know this has been a rollercoaster, but thank you for accepting me into your life, and Popsy’s coming home a winner.”

Weinstein was married to Chapman from 2007 to 2021, and they share two kids: India, 14, and Dashiell, 11. Chapman first announced her split from Weinstein in October 2017 after allegations of sexual abuse against him emerged, saying at the time, “My heart breaks for all the women who have suffered tremendous pain because of these unforgivable actions. I have chosen to leave my husband.”

In reaction to the speech, a representative for Weinstein told USA TODAY, “Harvey is very happy for Georgina and grateful that his children are being cared for (and) loved as they deserve to be.”

Weinstein also shares three children with Eve Chilton, his first wife.

Adrien Brody’s epic Oscar speech breaks record as longest in history

Brody has been linked to Chapman, a fashion designer whose label Marchesa dressed many Oscar attendees during Weinstein’s Hollywood reign, since 2020.

Weinstein, who prior to his criminal convictions was a major player at the Academy Awards and was frequently thanked during acceptance speeches, is currently incarcerated after he was found guilty of rape in Los Angeles in 2022. Separately, Weinstein’s rape conviction in New York was overturned in 2024.

Halle Berry kisses Adrien Brody on Oscars red carpet in viral callback to 2003 scandal

Brody’s Oscar acceptance speech broke a record as the longest in the history of the Academy Awards, clocking it at 5 minutes and 37 seconds. According to Guinness World Records, the previous record was set by Greer Garson, who gave a 5 minute and 30 second speech in 1943 after winning best actress.

On the red carpet at Sunday’s Oscars, Brody shared a kiss with Halle Berry, calling back to the moment he famously kissed her after winning the best actor Oscar for “The Pianist” in 2003. Chapman reacted to the moment in an interview with Extra, saying, “How can you deny a man a kiss with Halle Berry?”

The three-year milestone since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine falls in the depths of winter, when temperatures hover around freezing.

Since that day in February 2022, more than 2mn homes have been damaged by attacks, according to the UN, leaving many with destroyed roofs, shattered windows and a lack of power. Or worse. “For the residents remaining in front-line communities, many of whom are the most vulnerable older people, the repairs of homes are vital,” says Matthias Schmale, UN resident and humanitarian co-ordinator, Ukraine.

While centralised repair and rebuilding efforts have been ongoing — including those by the government, the UN and the EU — independent groups have stepped up.

“We saw the scale of destruction in the villages with our own eyes,” says Ihor Okuniev, a Ukrainian artist who travelled to the deoccupied countryside around Chernihiv and Kyiv in May 2022. “People had nowhere to go; they continued living in partially destroyed houses, with leaking roofs, dampness and mould.” 

Okuniev — together with Vladyslav Sharapa, a construction manager, and florist Kseniia Kalmus — had already been providing humanitarian aid in Kyiv. Their volunteer organisation, Livyj Bereh, was named after the left bank of the Dnipro River, where its efforts began. But seeing the residents of these villages catalysed a focus on supplying free new roofs.

“If the roof is damaged, it’s only a matter of time before the entire structure begins to fall apart,” says Okuniev. To date, Livyj Bereh has rebuilt approximately 400 roofs across Ukraine, working with village councils to identify families in need.

One, the Hlushko family, lives in Slatyne, Kharkiv, just 12 miles from the Russian border. Oleksandr Hlushko has provided “extensive support to fellow villagers” throughout the war, says Kalmus. His 11-year-old daughter Masha cares for the animals abandoned by neighbours forced to flee. The Hlushko home was damaged by heavy shelling in June 2022, and following deoccupation by Russian forces, Livyj Bereh repaired its roof. Now, Oleksandr helps distribute roofing materials in the village.

Livyj Bereh uses sheets of galvanised corrugated metal — “a universal solution that suits most houses”, says Sharapa. It is robust, easily available and relatively affordable. Still, the average cost of each new roof, including labour, is around €2,000. Livyj Bereh is funded solely by charitable donations.

The biggest challenge is finding windows and doors, which suffer most during air raids

Through its restoration work, Livyj Bereh has also been documenting Ukraine’s at-risk vernacular architecture, showcasing it at exhibitions through photography and artefacts. “Due to massive shelling and fighting, many traditional houses — vivid examples of Ukrainian architectural heritage — have been destroyed or marked by significant destruction,” says Okuniev.

After one exhibition in Düsseldorf in 2022, it decided to dismantle the exhibition pavilion and use the materials to construct a new home for a family in Sloboda Kucharska village, working alongside Ukrainian architectural studio MNPL Workshop. In 2023, the story of the house was presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

In November last year, the organisation won the 2024 Royal Academy Dorfman Prize, awarded to “an architect, practice or collective who are reimagining the future of architecture”.

Another organisation driving change is Warsaw-based BRDA, established by Polish charity worker Zofia Jaworowska and Ukrainian architect Petro Vladimirov, which has been co-ordinating the delivery of windows to Ukraine since July 2022. Jaworowska had been helping Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Poland find housing, but she and Vladimirov decided there must be something they could do to help those who stayed in Ukraine — or were returning. 

The duo reached out to NGOs there to find out what was needed. “They specifically said that the biggest challenge is finding windows and doors, which suffer most during air raids,” says Jaworowska.

Funded largely by charitable donations, BRDA began to collect windows from a range of sources — renovated office blocks in Warsaw, homeowners in London — and organised transport to Ukraine. There, volunteers in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions distributed the windows.

BRDA’s “Window” project was showcased at the 2023 London Design Biennale. Here, visitors could see the stories of some of the windows that had been donated, alongside a manual BRDA created to help recipients install them in different situations.

Over the past few years, their process has been streamlined. Now, instead of small numbers of windows coming from scattered sources, BRDA obtains large quantities from single sources, such as developers. “Anywhere where there’s a large building that has windows being replaced, or the whole building is being demolished, that’s our best source,” says Jaworowska. Currently, BRDA is working with a French investor renovating a large housing estate outside Lyon, sending windows from there to Kharkiv and Kherson. As of last month, BRDA has sent 2,658 windows to Ukraine.

Glass has become prohibitively expensive for many in Ukraine. Previously reliant on Russia and Belarus, Ukraine was forced to turn to pricier imports from other European countries after the war began. While donations organised by groups like BRDA help many, the scale of demand is huge. Insulate Ukraine, a charity established by British engineer Harry Blakiston Houston, supports Ukrainian communities by installing new, shatterproof windows using plastic and duct tape — and no glass.

Houston developed the emergency window design as a University of Cambridge PhD candidate; it is touted to be better at insulating than double-glazed windows. Established in December 2022 and supported by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Deutsche Bank, among others, Insulate Ukraine sources materials and pays local labourers to make and install windows where they are needed. According to Houston, more than 37,000 windows have been installed in Ukraine so far.

According to the UN, in 2024 humanitarian groups supported more than 114,000 people in Ukraine with “light and medium . . . repairs of apartments or houses”.

Restoring a house can only do so much, but it is a first step to survival — and recovery. For Livyj Bereh, the biggest challenge is “seeing people who have suffered because of the war — those who have lost loved ones, their homes and everything they had built or gathered throughout their lives”, says Kalmus. “While homes and material possessions can be restored, lives cannot be brought back.”

Kalmus hopes they are giving people “hope for the future” — whenever that peaceful future might arrive. “Because the biggest dream for all of these people is to stay on their land, in their own homes.”

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From duchess to Dutch oven, Meghan’s new lifestyle show is available for feasting on Netflix.

“With Love, Meghan” debuted eight episodes Tuesday, showcasing the Duchess of Sussex’s love for elevating a moment and whipping up a fresh dish with ingredients from her garden or eggs from hens. The birds live in a house named Archie’s Chick Inn, after Meghan and Prince Harry’s 5-year-old son. They’re also parents to daughter Lilibet, 3.

In the series, Meghan provides glimpses of her personal life. She gently corrects guest Mindy Kaling, who calls the “Suits” actress by her maiden name. “It’s so funny, too, that you keep saying Meghan Markle,” the royal notes. “You know I’m Sussex now?”

“Well now I know,” Kaling says, “and I love it.”

Meghan’s Prince Charming appears in the final episode, in which Meghan plans a brunch to celebrate her brand, As Ever. The new venture, slated to launch this spring, is “a collection of products, each inspired by her long-lasting love of cooking, entertaining, and hostessing with ease,” according to its website. Three types of teas, raspberry spread and dried florals dubbed flower sprinkles are among the current offerings.

With just minutes left in the finale, Harry arrives looking California cool in sunglasses and a linen button down. He greets his wife with a kiss and sips a mimosa.

He congratulates Meghan in an intimate moment, gushing about the party, “You did a great job. I love it.”

Meghan addresses her guests, including her mom, Doria Ragland, with a toast.

“This feels like a new chapter that I’m so excited that I get to share, and I’ve been able to learn from all of you,” Meghan says. “So just thank you for the love and support. And here we go. There’s a business!”Meghan also reflects on her former lifestyle blog The Tig, which she shuttered in 2017 after falling for Harry.

“All of that is just part of that creativity that I’ve missed so much,” Meghan adds. “Thank you for loving me so much and celebrating with me!”

Harry, pointing his champagne flute at his wife, toasts, “To you.”

Meghan told People magazine in an interview published Monday that she sees “this spark in (Harry’s) eye when he sees me doing the thing that I was doing when he first met me.

“It’s almost like a honeymoon period again,” she said, “because it’s exactly how it was in the beginning when he’d watch me scribbling away, writing newsletters, fine-tuning edits and just really being in the details of it. I think he loves watching as much as I love doing that creative process.”

There is an apocryphal quotation which has been variously attributed to Laurie Anderson, Frank Zappa, Elvis Costello and William S Burroughs: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” At first glance it appears smart, a snide elision of the extremely unlikely. The problem is that dancing about architecture is not really such an odd notion. The two have much in common: dance is about movement in space, buildings are about accommodating movement. 

Yet when Irish architects Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey are chatting about the spaces in their new Sadler’s Wells East building in London, which opens on February 6, they highlight a point of difference. “Dancers do not want anything except a box,” Tuomey says with a smile. “They are so conservative.”

Apparently, dancers need to feel the four corners to be able to situate and orientate their bodies in a space effectively. They are using architecture as a framework against which they perform.

The resulting Sadler’s Wells East complex is, then, not an extravagant blockbuster, but rather a cluster of boxes, a hefty, grounded brick container; urban, almost industrial. And very deliberate. 

It is sited in east London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, a neighbourhood that was once heavily industrialised, a dense brown and grey quilt of factories, tanneries, smokestacks and workshops around rivers, canals and snaking railway lines. That industrial character is clearly referenced in this new building and, though it might be a bit of a cliché in contemporary cultural infrastructure, it works because these kinds of buildings for performance are, in themselves, a form of industrial architecture. There are the truck access roads and loading bays, the pulleys and rigs of the lighting and sound systems, the machinery of the fly towers and the huge doors for stage sets. The backstage area of the dance house is now more industrial than almost any of the other building in surrounding Stratford.

Unlike a factory, though, this cluster of brick volumes has been made welcoming, starting with the massive red “You are Welcome” neon signs over the entrances. The ground floor features a long bar and café area that wraps around the site, enveloping it in social space, with a long concrete bench set into the outside wall. It softens the site well; without it, this might have been a pretty stark building. Its rear wall, for instance, inspired by fragments of the city walls of Rome, is a great cliff of brick, with some enigmatic bulges protruding from its flatness. 

Along with its neighbours, the bleak-looking new BBC Music Studios and another O’Donnell + Tuomey building in the strange squid-shape of the new V&A East, these arts buildings create a kind of cultural wall butting up to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. It is being self-consciously branded as “East Bank”, a new counterpart to London’s South Bank built at a cost of £674.6mn It’s informative to think about the differences. When the South Bank was built in the 1960s and ’70s, it was a bastion against the decaying remains of industry and a pioneering venture into a part of London that would inevitably regenerate. For Stratford, the Olympics played that role and the East Bank looks like a bulwark against the encroachment of generic, globalised investment housing towers.

Sadler’s Wells already has a big dance theatre, a place that grew out of a “Musick House” in a 17th-century pleasure garden between Islington and Clerkenwell. Like the V&A, it has expanded eastward, chasing new audiences, perhaps younger, perhaps more diverse. This new building will allow them to provide a much greater spread of performance as well as providing facilities to visiting dance companies from across the UK.

At its heart is a 550-capacity hall, its seats (a little surprisingly) on retractable but reassuringly solid bleachers. The adaptability of its seating allows for rapid switching of formats (even during an interval), so that an audience may, for instance, find themselves seated for one part and standing in a huge hall for the next. It is a space that will bring London into line with other European cities where dance is better catered for.

This hall occupies about half of the volume of the site, but a complex massing of other spaces wraps tightly around it. Those include six new studios, the largest of which is the same size as the main hall’s stage area. It is in these that the factory-style sawtooth roof profile appears, admitting natural light into the spaces. Most also have access to outside space, to terraces and balconies so that the dancers can grab a little fresh air (the studios are heated to 26C to reduce strains on muscle and potential injury). It might also animate the exterior, giving this hefty chunk of brick and concrete a bit of a buzz.

There are a few curious quirks in the architecture. First, though least visible, is a massive acoustic separation space between the main hall and the smaller one directly above it, to prevent sound from leaking between the two spaces. This helps to pile up the bulk, giving the whole ensemble more presence on the burgeoning skyline. And there is the curious facade to Carpenters Road at the rear, a brick escarpment that betrays the architects’ interest in brutalism and the late modernism of the 1970s. 

The interiors have been done well: from the bars and stairs to the lavatories and the landings, it feels like a generous, modern public space of the kind built in London in the mid 20th century, such as the National Theatre, Festival Hall or Barbican.

This is a building sited amid a weird architectural menagerie, squeezed between the one-time Olympic stadium (now home to West Ham United football club), Zaha Hadid’s fluid and wonderful London Aquatics Centre (surely the grandest municipal pool in the country) and the vast, messy, garish mass of the Westfield shopping centre through which it is approached. It needs to be tough to stand up to this visual cacophony — and it is. This is an architecture that reflects the choreography of London, enabling the city to dance in and around it in ways not yet, perhaps, fully defined.

sadlerswells.com

“Paradise” fans and cheese fries lovers don’t fret. You won’t have to wait too long for another season of the nail biting political thriller.

On Tuesday morning, creator Dan Fogelman responded to a fan on X who raised concerns about the timeline for new episodes of Hulu’s new widely-beloved show.

“Please don’t wait two years to give us season 2 of Paradise @hulu,” the fan wrote.

Fogelman responded, “we start shooting in just a few weeks. It won’t be 2 years I promise! #Paradise.”

The show follows Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) as he tries to hunt down the culprit behind the murder of President Cal Bradford (James Marsden). His death rattles their sunny, picture-perfect community and reveals sinister truths that make Collins realize that everything isn’t as it appears to be.

The finale and the other seven episodes from Season 1 are currently available to watch on Hulu.

‘Paradise’ finale recap: Who killed Cal? What does it mean for Season 2?

‘Paradise’ greenlit for Season 2

Last month, Hulu and Brown announced on social media that “Paradise” had been picked up for a second season. The series received high interest from the start, garnering seven million views for the premiere episode in the first few days on the streaming platform, Variety reported.

“We heard you loud and clear,” Hulu’s caption said. “#ParadiseHulu is renewed for Season 2.”

In light of Tuesday’s finale, Fogelman − also the mastermind behind NBC’s hit show “This Is Us” − shared that that he asked Brown to be a part of the series back in 2022. During a recent appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” Brown said the decision was a no-brainer.

“I’ve read 106 scripts of his, loved every one. This was 107, and I loved that one, too,” the actor said. “He said ‘If you like it, let me know.’ I called him back and I said, ‘I’m in.’”

‘Paradise’ Season 1 episode list

• Episode One: “Wildcat is Down”
• Episode Two: “Sinatra”
• Episode Three: “The Architect of Social Well-Being”
• Episode Four: “Agent Billy Pace”
• Episode Five: “In the Palaces of Crowned Kngs”
• Episode Six: “You Asked for Miracles”
• Episode Seven: “The Day”
• Episode Eight: “The Man Who Kept the Secrets”

‘Paradise’ main cast list

• Sterling K. Brown as Xavier Collins
• James Marsden as Cal Bradford
• Julianne Nicholson as Sinatra
• Julianne Nicholson as Dr. Gabriela Torabi
• Nicole Brydon Bloom as Jane Driscoll
• Jon Beavers as Billy Pace
• Krys Marshall as Robinson

Taylor Ardrey is a news reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her at [email protected].

Built between 1918 and 1921, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House is a madcap, cast-concrete temple of a building. The architect’s first Los Angeles project is often cited as a precursor of Californian Modernism but, with its 3D-design concrete fireplace, it also anticipates the mid-century penchant for bas-relief. Reinvented in Modernist, mostly geometric guise, the ancient art of sculpting a raised-up surface was soon cropping up from Californian fireplaces to the Co-operative Insurance Society building in Manchester, where postwar artist William Mitchell created one of his many striking 1960s and 1970s murals. 

Now the bas-relief is back. Sculptural wall features are being rethought, with a nod to their mid-century forebears. Ceramic tiles are trading flat surfaces for 3D patterns; one-off wall pieces are being sculpted in wood and metal; and eco-friendly materials including compacted cardboard and fabric waste are being pressed into the mould of yesteryear’s concrete. 

At Design Miami in December, the eclectic booth of LA and New York-based gallery The Future Perfect captured the mood. One wall was given over to a sinuous, sculptural wall panel, its interlocking pieces wrought in ivory-coloured clay by French artist Olivia Cognet.

“I’m inspired by that super 1970s moment, how artists were using bas-relief,” says Cognet, a former accessories designer for brands including Lanvin, Isabel Marant and Sonia Rykiel. After learning the skill as a hobby, her first commission was for a Paris home in 2021. Today her pieces can be found in homes across the world, as well as Fendi stores, and while she continues to be inspired by the Californian landscape and its Modernist architecture, she has since moved to the south of France.

I’m inspired by that super 1970s moment, how artists were using bas-relief

Her first studio in Vallauris was once the atelier of ceramicist Roger Capron — a space that “still has some of his work: a bas-relief floor, a table, a barbecue”. “Seventy per cent of our production is bas-relief artworks,” says Cognet, who employs a team of 10 and has moved to a larger, industrial space to keep up with demand. 

LA-based Ben Medansky’s statement textured walls grace the homes of private clients as well as members’ clubs and hotels: a lounge area at boutique New York hotel The Manner, for instance, features two columns clad in organically built-up blue and white panels; at LA’s Proper Hotel, an indoor pool room designed by Kelly Wearstler is lined along one wall with chunky 3D tiles. 

In New York, interior designer Laura Gonzalez opened a new showroom last summer featuring a floor-to-ceiling ceramic fireplace surround by Laurent Dufour, its gently curving cream-coloured panels playfully revealing two dogs’ heads. Artist Peter Lane creates large-scale architectural installations in his vast Brooklyn studio; his work can be found in Tiffany’s New York flagship store, the Four Seasons at Park Lane in London, and the East Hampton home of Robert Downey Jr — a blue-and-gold-glazed fireplace, in neo-Brutalist style. 

All interiors have potential. “At the moment we are working on a large mural for a private swimming pool in London,” says Kris Scheerlinck, one half of London-based design duo Boquita de Cielo. The Belgian architect and his partner in work and life, interior designer Koen Meersman, first began working with ceramics to recreate antique tiles for a renovation project. They trained with a Japanese master and have made their name with bespoke hand-carved clay tiles, finished in their own range of natural ceramic glazes, and installed in homes from Madrid to South Korea. The pair spent 13 years living in Barcelona, where, says Meersman, “there is a strong tradition of having ceramic features in common spaces, inside and outside, of apartment buildings”. 

But ceramic is only a small part of this 3D revival. Cognet has been developing her “shape language in new materials, going from ceramic to leather to stone to wood”, she says of new explorations that were recently shown at The Future Perfect’s LA space. Polish interior design studio Paradowski Studio worked with artist Tomasz Opaliński to create a wooden bas-relief wall in the lounge of Kraków’s Puro hotel, a space inspired by the city’s mid-century architecture. 

More unconventional materials are also at play. At the Mix hotel in Brussels, for instance, designer Lionel Jadot commissioned a cast-concrete relief mural from Belgian-Moroccan artist Omar Griouat to run alongside the pool, but also worked with the collective Papier Boulette to clad a meeting room in a papier-mâché bas-relief, crafted from cardboard salvaged from the hotel’s construction.

In Milan, design duo Studiopepe’s geometric-relief Pleiadi tiles are constructed from cotton linters — a byproduct of fabric production. Used in its natural, undyed state, it is tactile and textural, but also “sustainable and breathable, [with] acoustic-dampening properties”, they say. 

“Designers are always looking for new ways to incorporate texture,” says interior designer Linda Boronkay, crediting Arts & Crafts and Art Deco versions of the trend as inspiration. “In one of our projects in Beirut, we ran with the idea of bas-relief in all sorts of shapes and forms.” A fireplace is wrought in brass and bronze, hammered and punctured to resemble raised-up cigar leaves, while cornices are decorated with papier-mâché and plaster wild flowers. “It’s hyper-textural,” she says. 

But adding 3D elements does not necessitate architectural intervention. Cox London brings a romantic and botanical approach to the 3D wall trend with a trailing and leafy grid of iron and bronze, inspired by Edward James’s Surrealist sculpture garden in the Mexican jungle, Las Pozas. It can be added to a space in the same way as a painting.

Boquita de Cielo also produces ready-to-hang framed panels and, at London design store 8 Holland Street, the current exhibition by Gavin Houghton, titled Such a Relief (until February 22), features clay and plaster reliefs. They may be small compared to some of the bold 3D statements being made today, but they certainly don’t fall flat.

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