Frida Escobedo’s 2018 Serpentine Pavilion

Mexican architect Frida Escobedo’s Serpentine Pavilion courtyard opens in London’s Hyde Park on 15 June, and the anticipation is high for several reasons. First, Escobedo is the youngest architect tapped for the prestigious project. The material—a British-made, gray cement—maintains her love of locally sourced components. And it certainly brings a powerful display of Mexican modernism to the park for its 18th pavilion commission. Every year …

Emirates Airline a Step Closer to Windowless Planes

The newest plane in the Emirates fleet—the Boeing 777-300ER—has plenty of impressive features, but perhaps the most surprising is its virtual windows for the first-class cabin. Instead of peering out of the plane, passengers will see real-time projections filmed from outside of the aircraft with fibre-optic cameras. Emirates president Sir Tim Clark says the quality of footage is impeccable, and the move itself is a …

The Delightful History of the Lawn Flamingo

Don Featherstone might not be a household name, but his life’s work is wildly famous worldwide. Featherstone, just after graduating art school in 1957, created the pink plastic flamingo—undeniably one of the world’s most popular lawn ornaments. Reproduced over 20 million times, Phoenicopterus ruber plasticus (as its creator called it) is more than a kitsch decoration, as Artsy’s Alexxa Gotthardt writes, it’s “a barometer of …