Beauty is what you buy

Within southwest Arkansas’s Garvan Woodland Gardens, a four-story communal treehouse welcomes visitors to the Evans Children’s Adventure Garden. Designed by modus studio and constructed in 2018, the whimsical yet contemporary structure is embraced by pine and oak trees, connecting visitors to the surrounding woods via elevated walkways and lookouts.

“This unique structure is a defining small project for modus,” the team says, sharing that the work draws on their own childhood experiences in the region. They add that “it is easy to take for granted our strong connection to the creeks, forests, insects, and animals of Arkansas. However, many children in the modern world are unfortunately disconnected from this type of play.”

The studio took dendrology, the study of trees and wooded plants, as a starting point for the overall form and the way people interact with the space as they move along its passageways and stairwells.

The curving screen encasing the structure is composed of 113 fins made from locally sourced Southern yellow pine. Airy slats and metal screens redolent of branches let the light and breeze filter through, maintaining visitors’ connection to the surrounding Ouachita Forest from numerous vantage points.

Designers conceived of a space that would refocus people’s attention on the natural wonders of the canopy and allow visitors to climb higher and see farther. “The tree house uses a rich visual and tactile environment to stimulate the mind and body and strengthen connections back to the natural world while accommodating the needs of all users,” the firm says.

modus studio was recently selected to exhibit in the U.S. Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. If you’re in Arkansas, you can also see Coler Mountain Bike Preserve, where the team designed a series of pavilions and dynamic bridges. Find more on the studio’s website. (via Plain Magazine)

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As AI infiltrates every part of the creative process, those committed to human expression have found innovative ways to make craft and artistry endlessly appealing. Creative director Jason Pattinson is one such person. He’s behind Fleckled, a new online shop of hand-printed letterpress typefaces that have been digitized and are available as high-resolution downloads.

Currently, Fleckled contains more than 150 fonts printed on an 1860s-era Columbian press, with more on the way. All are available in either uppercase, lowercase, or numeral sets with additional ornaments and borders across myriad styles. Retaining the signature graininess and warmth of the wood, each also comes in two versions: one with a thicker, more saturated ink and another with a lighter, more distressed feel.

“The small flaws in the hand-carved wooden blocks are what give letterpress its distinctive character and enduring appeal,” Pattinson says. “Visible defects, woodgrain, planing patterns, and wear effects have been balanced through various levels of inking and pressure to achieve the optimal dense and distressed versions.”

Pattinson and his team have been working on digitizing letterpress for more than two decades. He’s collaborated with printers and dealers across Italy, Sweden, Germany, Argentina, the U.S., and the U.K., where he’s based.

“We’re in discussions with a few retired printers who own some truly remarkable private collections, exploring opportunities to digitise and sublicense their fonts and various assets to expand our online resource,” Pattinson told Design Week.

As Fleckled grows, it makes the medium more widely available and offers an alternative to AI generation for those who might be interested in the letterpress aesthetic without access to a press.

Pattison launched the shop because he wanted “to make these timeless assets available to a new generation of creatives.” He shares with Colossal, “It fills me with a great confidence that in a world being overwhelmed with AI, the design community is resolute in authenticity!”

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Given the emphasis on functionality and design for industrial production, the Bauhaus movement is rarely associated with disciplines like dance. But for Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943), translating its principles into movement and performance was as compelling as a well-conceived chair or building.

In the last century, the Bauhaus has indelibly shaped our modern built environments and the ways we think of the relationship between form and function (it even inspired conceptual cookbooks). German architect Walter Gropius founded the school in 1919 in Weimar, Germany, with the intention of uniting architecture, fine arts, and crafts. The school focused on minimalism and creating for the social good and involved artists and designers like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, László Moholy-Nagy, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Anni and Josef Albers.

The Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, Schlemmer was a painter, sculptor, and choreographer responsible for the under-known Triadic Ballet, a striking, playful dance structured around groups of three. Debuted in 1922, the avant-garde production comprises three colors—yellow, pink or white, and black—and three costume shapes—the square, circle, and triangle.

“Building on multiples of three,” says an explanation from MoMA, “transcended the egotism of the individual and dualism of the couple, emphasizing the collective.”

In true Bauhaus form, the idea was to eliminate the decorative frills associated with ballet, including tutus that allow bodies to bend, twist, and explore a full range of mobility. Instead, Schlemmer’s costumes restrict movement and add a modern quality as dancers appear stifled and almost mechanical, a nod to the movement’s focus on accessibility through mass production and turning “art into industry.”

Several of Schlemmer’s illustrations for the ballet are available online, including his bizarre sculptural costume designs with wide, bubbly skirts and vibrantly striped sleeves. MoMA’s collections contain a print titled “Figures in Space,” which reveals one of the performance’s foremost preoccupations: how bodies move and interact in space.

As seen in a fully colorized film of the dance from the 1970s, the dancers are incredibly deliberate as they navigate sparse sets with clean lines. Open Culture notes that they appear almost like pantomimes or puppets “with figures in awkward costumes tracing various shapes around the stage and each other.”

A few years back, Great Big Story created a video visiting the Bavarian Junior Ballet as it prepared for a performance. The costumes are faithful to Schlemmer’s vision and retain the rigid geometries and bright palettes. As noted by director Ivan Liška, the strange attire combined with the jilted, robotic choreography often leaves the audience laughing. “It’s very successful because the audience can’t believe this is 100 years old,” he says. “There you see the visionary power of Oskar Schlemmer.”

Triadic Ballet is rarely reproduced, but Bavarian Junior Ballet will bring the work back to the stage this June to celebrate its 15th anniversary. And if you’re in New York, you can see one of Schlemmer’s studies in Living in the Age of the Machine at MoMA. It’s also worth exploring The Oskar Schlemmer Theatre Estate and Archives, which boasts a trove of archival imagery and drawings on its website.

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