In Blurring Boundaries’ newest project, a woodland area in Wada, Maharashtra, India, and a serene architectural oasis converge in a remarkable farmhouse. The Mumbai-based firm (previously) conceived of a sanctuary called “Maativan,” cradled by trees in a feat of biophilic design, which is constructed from natural materials to create a synergy between interior and exterior experiences.

Undulating beamed ceilings, open-air spaces, an organic layout, and plenty of ventilation allow for ample natural light, airflow, and heat control. With sustainability at the forefront of its mission, Blurring Boundaries incorporated mud, lime, bamboo, stone, wood, recycled bottles, wheels, glass, and other repurposed substances into the home’s framework.

“Maativan’s commitment to sustainability, cultural authenticity, and ecological responsibility is evident in every aspect of its construction and operation, making it a true sanctuary for those seeking a deeper connection with the natural world,” the studio says. Find more on its website.

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Stepping into Shirokuro, the new Japanese omakase restaurant in New York City, you’d be forgiven for thinking you wandered into a sketchpad or a black-and-white storyboard. With the exception of an eclectic array of globe lights, some colorful ceramic dishes, and the open kitchen, the entire restaurant is rendered like a 2D drawing.

“Shirokuro” translates to “white-black.” The New York Times shares that proprietor James Lim was inspired by an immersive, 2D restaurant he visited ten years ago in Korea, and he envisioned one of his own, now open in the East Village. To make the interior pop, he invited his friend, real estate agent and artist Mirim Yoo, to transform the space into an all-encompassing environment.

Vibrant dishes are complemented by hand-drawn floors patterned like wooden planks and Japanese icons on the walls like bonsai, tea pots, cherry blossoms, and ukiyo-e compositions. “Our vision was to offer something unique: a place where art and food intersect in a living, breathing sketchbook,” the restaurant says.

You might also enjoy Mr. Doodle’s full house makeover or Anastasia Parmson’s hand-drawn installations.

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From the birth of the first modern nail parlor in 19th-century Paris to the rise of the Vietnamese nail industry in America after the fall of Saigon, nail beautification has always been connected to the world it adorns.

Author Tembe Denton-Hurst reminds us of this in her new book, Fresh Sets: Contemporary Nail Art from Around the World. Setting the scene with her own experience of falling in love with manicures as a child in Brooklyn and a brief survey of the transformative history of nail embellishment throughout time, the book showcases 35 standout artists thriving today.

While basic sets remain timeless, there’s no doubt that in the 21st century, contemporary aesthetics have flourished in a subversive, powerful way. From birthday candle pedicures and maximalist jeweled acrylics to moss-covered fingertips and sculpted claws channeling cyber sigilism, Fresh Sets features 300 vibrant images highlighting ongoing innovations in the medium.

The democratization of nail art has allowed the creative form to flourish across time and space. Extravagant designs once only seen sauntering down the catwalk, for instance, are now within reach for daily wear. The rise of nail artists has uniquely blurred this line between luxury and everyday accessory, forging paths and connecting worlds.

One such artist featured in Fresh Sets is Lauren Michelle Pires. With a methodical precision, she approaches her practice as a designer, collecting extensive archives of color combinations and references images. Once a fashion student, Pires now works with designer brands such as Loewe, Diesel, Miu Miu, and more.

“I view being a nail artist as a very intricate and pristine job, and I definitely try to capture beauty in my work,” she explains. “But, over time, I’ve really learned how to experiment more and to lean into the awkwardness of beauty.”

As the realm of nail design continues to evolve in tremendous fashion, transforming one’s own fingernails as if they were ten tiny canvases—each a site for creating an extension of self, asserting identity, and even signifying resistance—has and always will be a deeply resonant gesture for many. As Denton-Hurst shares in the introduction, “long nails have become part of me, as identifiable as the brown of my skin or my loud laugh.”

You can find your own copy of Fresh Sets on Bookshop. See more from Tembe Denton-Hurst on Instagram.

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In the Garden of Generations in Einbeck, Germany, a playful new installation asks park goers to find equilibrium with their neighbors.

“Balance Bench” is the latest project of Berlin-based artist Martin Binder. Installed in his hometown, the interactive artwork rests on a central cylinder rather than four legs, requiring that at least two people sit on either side to level. “It cannot be used alone—it demands awareness, consensus, and cooperation between people to become a functional public space,” he says.

Binder originally envisioned the piece, which is made of oak and powder-coated steel, to debut at a public art festival in 2021, but that event was unfortunately canceled due to COVID-19. Emerging now four years later, the minimal installation provokes questions about how the ways we gather and partake in outdoor activities have changed.

“The pandemic made us hyper-aware of proximity in public spaces,” he says. “This bench interrogates that awareness through play. It asks how we share space post-pandemic—not just physically but socially.”

In addition to its usefulness for promoting conversation and interaction among park goers, “Balance Bench” is also a less volatile version of the once-ubiquitous equipment that’s less common these days due to eye-opening safety concerns.

For more from Binder, visit his website and Instagram.

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Depending on the day, you might look to the sky and see a sea of pale blue or a radiant sunset creeping toward the horizon. If you’re in a major metropolitan area, though, you might also be met with the characteristic red-brown haze of smog.

Berlin-based artist Macarena Ruiz-Tagle is behind the vibrant Cyanometer and Sunset postcards we’ve featured on Colossal (and that have sold out in our shop several times). But she also created a third version designed for those not-so-bright days.

The World Health Organization estimates that 99 percent of people on Earth breathe unsafe air, making Ruiz-Tagle’s Air Pollution postcard perhaps the most fitting for our era of climate catastrophe. While a stark contrast to the brilliant blues, yellows, and oranges of the other two, this design is awash in pale pinks and grays to match that of a gloomy, and even soiled, atmosphere. Like the others, the idea is to hold the work up to the sky and mark the corresponding hue before dropping it in the mail.

The interactive card shifts in meaning depending on whether the opening reveals a misty fog or air thick with chemicals, and it’s part of a growing movement to track climate data in a tangible, grassroots manner. “Separating the visual delight of being immersed in a cloud from the intoxicating reality of breathing heavily polluted air, the postcard evokes both the smog that engulfs global cities and the ethereal beauty of fog,” the artist writes. “In its mesmerizing aesthetic ambiguity, the work sustains a space for contemplation within our troubled atmosphere.”

Find all three postcards in the Colossal Shop, and explore more of Ruiz-Tagle’s work on her website.

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A quote widely attributed to Tom Robbins says, “At the typewriter you find out who you are.” Or in the case of one unique machine that’s been missing for decades, the same could be said for finding one, too.

In January, Jennifer Felix and her husband Nelson were sorting through items in Jennifer’s grandfather’s basement in New York. They stumbled upon a typewriter like they’d never seen, with Chinese keys. Nelson posted a few photos in a Facebook group called What’s My Typewriter Worth? “From my internet search it looks to be a Chinese-made MingKwai,” he wrote. “I just can’t find any ever sold here in the States. Is it even worth anything? It weighs a ton!”

Resounding enthusiasm rippled through the comments, as it turned out the machine was indeed a MingKwai — named for being “clear and fast” — the only one of its kind in the world.

Missing for more than half a century, the discovery prompted a multitude of messages from people around the world wanting to purchase the machine or place it into museums. It is now in the collection of Stanford Libraries.

Invented in 1947 by writer, translator, and linguist Lin Yutang, the typewriter was the first compact concept to feature a keyboard that could produce the Chinese language’s 80,000-plus characters. He accomplished this by creating a kind of sort-and-search method.

“Lin broke down Chinese ideographs into more fundamental components of strokes and shapes and arranged the characters in a linear order, like an English dictionary does with alphabetic words,” researcher Yangyang Chen describes in Made in China Journal.

The keyboard consists of 72 options, which can be combined to create one’s desired characters. Chen continues:

By pressing one of the 36 top character component keys and one of the 28 bottom component keys simultaneously, the machine would find up to eight corresponding characters. The user could see the candidates through a special viewing window on the device, which Lin called his “magic eye,” and select the correct one by pushing the respective numerical key.

The Carl E. Krum Company built the only known prototype of the MingKwai, says Stanford Report. Lin was unable to drum up enough commercial interest to produce the expensive machine, so he sold the prototype and rights to Mergenthaler Linotype Company, where Jennifer Felix’s grandfather was employed as a machinist. The typewriter never entered production, and it eventually disappeared—until now.

Stanford plans to use the unique machine for research, exhibits, and academic programs. Regan Murphy-Kao, director of the East Asia Library, says, “I couldn’t be happier to have the opportunity to steward, preserve, and make this extraordinary prototype accessible for scholarship.”

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If you’re familiar with the Japanese art of wood joinery, you’ll likely find kumiko equally intriguing. The traditional craft emerged in the Asuka era between about 600 and 700 C.E. and similarly eschews nails in favor of perfectly cut pieces that notch into place. Intricate fields of florals and geometric shapes emerge, creating a decorative panel that typically covers windows or divides a room.

A video from The Process, a YouTube channel exploring various manufacturing sectors and hand-crafted techniques, visits the workshop of Kinoshita Mokuge. Viewers are welcomed into the meticulous, labor-intensive process of producing elaborate, interlocked motifs. Japanese Arts also offered a glimpse into this art form a few years back during an equally calming visit to Kurozu Tetsuo’s studio.

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From postage stamps to jetliner specifications to items he packed for the journey, José Naranja’s sketchbooks (previously) capture minute details of numerous international trips. “I’m lost in the intricate details, as always,” he tells Colossal. Everything from currency to noodle varieties to film references make their way into small books brimming with travel ephemera and observations.

Naranja is currently working on a thicker book than he has in the past, which is taking more time to fill, along with an illustrated card project called 2050, which merges science, tech events, and his signature “beauty of note-taking” aesthetic. The artist has also reproduced some of his sketches in The Nautilus Manuscript, a small batch-printed, hand-bound edition available for sale in his shop. Follow updates on the artist’s Instagram.

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Murals by Agostino Iacurci bring drab buildings to life in bold jewel tones, playful patterns, color blocks, and symmetry. Whether painting directly onto bricks and plaster or designing immense fabric sheaths to cover construction scaffolding, the artist’s vibrant compositions enliven street corners and urban thoroughfares.

Iacurci often emphasizes geometric patterns, flora, classical vases, and niches that hold symbolic objects or figures. You might enjoy checking out Gingko Press’s Mural Masters, a survey of the next generation of street artists, and see more on Iacurci’s website and Instagram.

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Through colorful squiggles embedded with games, trampolines, and sculptural trees, a new public park in Guangzhou, China, re-envisions the possibilities of play.

“Wired Scape,” which design firm 100architects bills as an “an entangling forest of imagination and fun,” takes inspiration from the natural landscape to create a one-of-a-kind playground in a residential area. Trees resembling balls of colorful wire appear to spin out of the ground, and curvaceous green and blue forms reflect the interaction of land and water.

Lively trees made from pipes spiraling around central cores serve a triple purpose as climbable structures, shade-providing canopies, and supports for a series of interconnected bridges throughout the park. The overall aesthetic recalls computer-generated imagery in video games or animation.

100architects aimed to break away from traditional playground design and instead focus on the layout as a multigenerational space. Children’s imaginations are stimulated by myriad ways to jump, climb, slide, and run, while caregivers and parents have ample options for shaded seating with clear sight lines.

Explore 100architects’ exuberant public installations on the studio’s website and Instagram, and check out more incredible playgrounds.

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