Hasta La Ideas

This week on Dezeen, we unveiled the design for the YOO GYE skyscraper in Guayaquil, Ecuador, by Philippe Starck’s architecture and interiors studio YOO Inspired by Starck.

The 176-metre-high skyscraper will be located alongside the Rio Guayas river in the centre of Ecuador’s largest city and contain a total of 633 apartments.

It is the latest project from developer Uribe Schwarzkopf, which has also commissioned leading architects including BIG, MAD and MVRDV to design residential high-rises in the country.

In other Starck news, we also revealed the French designer’s concept for Qatar Preparatory School – set to be the country’s first vocational school focused on education for the creative industries.

We continued our coverage of the Venice Architecture Biennale with a pair of opinion pieces reflecting on the event.

Dezeen’s editor Tom Ravenscroft drew a comparison between the futures presented at the biennale and Neom’s nearby Zero Gravity Urbanism exhibition, while Ewa Effiom, Krish Nathaniel and Aoi Phillips reported on the spirit of openness and sincerity they observed at the event.

“The usual champagne-socialist pomposity of Venice has been drowned out by a newfound openness,” wrote the trio.

We also reported on the news that China had accused Alison Killing of including “a large amount of false information” in her Venice installation, focused on alleged internment camps in China. In response, Killing told Dezeen: “We stand by our reporting”.

In the UK, the London Design Biennale opened at Somerset House. The biennale’s fourth edition was curated by the Nieuwe Instituut and its artistic director, Aric Chen, under the theme of Remapping Collaboration.

We rounded up ten key pavilions from the event, including a giant wind chime, touch-sensing bio-textiles and windows for Ukraine.

We also looked ahead to the World Expo 2025, which is set to take place in Osaka, Japan, as Dezeen revealed an exclusive look at the undulating pavilion that architect Shigeru Ban has designed for the event.

Named the Blue Ocean Dome pavilion, it will consist of three conjoined domes made of paper tubes, bamboo and carbon fibre-reinforced plastic.

Popular projects this week included an “anti-monument” to Ethiopia’s former prime minister, a pigsty in Switzerland that was converted into a house and the refurbishment of Malmö’s Hippodromen theatre, which aimed to “equip the building for another century of life”.

Our latest lookbooks featured calming bedrooms with minimalist interiors and concrete kitchens with raw and tactile surfaces.

This week on Dezeen

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week’s top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don’t miss anything.

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