This week on Dezeen, Wolfgang & Hite designed pink architectural sex toys to comment on New York's Hudson Yards development, and Banksy launched his own merchandise to keep custody of his name.
Design studio Wolfgang & Hite created a series of silicone sex toys based on the design of numerous buildings in the Hudson Yards development, which is described as the largest private real estate development in the US.
The XXX-HY collection sees Thomas Heatherwick's Vessel turned into a sculptural butt plug, and the 10 Hudson Yards skyscraper by Kohn Pedersen Fox redesigned as a large dildo, as a way of putting phallic architectural design "to the test".
In London, graffiti artist Banksy launched his own range of branded merchandise following legal action taken by greeting-card company trying to seize legal custody of his name.
In order to protect his brand, Banksy debuted his new merchandise line in a pop-up-shop installation named Gross Domestic Product, in Croydon, UK. While the showroom is for display purposes only, all sales will be carried out online when the website opens.
In design news, Design Museum co-directors Deyan Sudjic and Alice Black announced that they will be stepping down from their roles in January 2020, after 12 years of working together.
A successor, whose role will be a combination of chief executive and director, is expected to be announced on Monday.
A retrospective exhibition of Charlotte Perriand's work opened this week at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, which includes 50 rare examples of her furniture designs spread across four floors and 11 galleries.
The show aims to draw more attention to the breadth of the designer's work, which is often overshadowed by her association with Le Corbusier.
Charlotte Perriand: Inventing a New World was included in Dezeen's pick of the top 10 exhibitions on display during autumn 2019, which outlines some of the best architecture and design shows to visit from around the world.
The exhibition guide also features The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100 on show at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, and the Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master exhibition in New York's Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.
In architecture news, Zaha Hadid Architects completed its starfish-shaped terminal building at Beijing Daxing International Airport. The airport is arranged around a central "grand courtyard", with five aircraft piers extending from it.
Despite measuring 700,000-square-metres – making it one of the largest airports in the world – the terminal has been designed to be as compact as possible.
Both Foster + Partners and BIG revealed renders of new architectural projects this week. Visuals of Foster + Partners' Le Dôme winery show its hill-like form that is designed to mimic the rolling hills of the vineyards in the historic commune Saint-Émilion in France.
Images of BIG's mixed-use King development in Toronto reveal interiors complete with private greenhouses and rooms for meditation, as well as extra Nordic-inspired facade details including glass bricks and flat-roofed volumes covered in plants.
In the field of technology, smartphones hit the headlines this week as Microsoft joined in with the folding phone trend, and Fairphone released a new version of its "ethical" smartphone.
Microsoft's Surface Duo is a dual-screen Android folding phone, which can be unfolded like a book to form a small tablet device.
Fairphone's device, on the other hand, is designed to be easily taken apart for repairs in a bid to offer a "real sustainable alternative" to regular smartphones.
Other projects that were popular with our readers this week include a multipurpose, modular stove by Brazilian brand Noori, a restaurant in Copenhagen with a planetarium-style ceiling and biogarmentry clothes made from algae that can photosynthesise like plants.