This week on Dezeen, the work of up-and-coming French designers, alongside sofas and rugs were on show at the Maison&Objet furniture and accessories fair in Paris.

Maison&Objet's Rising Talents exhibition highlighted the work of six emerging French designers: Natacha & Sacha, Laureline Galliot, Mathieu Peyroulet Ghilini, Wendy Andreu, Julie Richoz and Adrien Garcia.

Their work demonstrated a trend for creating handcrafted objects, with the judges concluding that industrial design is falling out of favour in France.

Homeware and accessories brand Trame chose Maison&Objet to launch its first collection. Named A Voyages to Meknes, the debut collection of rugs and accessories is based on the fictional marriage of Louis XIV's daughter and the Sultan of Morocco.

Numerous statement sofas were also unveiled at the fair, including one based on the shape of pebble stones and the first sofa from Chinese furniture brand Maisondada.

In Vienna IKEA announced its plans to build a city-centre store that will have no car parking spaces. The IKEA Vienna Westbahnhof store will be designed by Querkraft Architekten to address "radically changed customer and mobility behaviours".

Its greenery covered facade will have more than 100 trees placed on balconies within its gridded structure.

In architecture news Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG, defended having a meeting with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro after a photograph of the meeting was widely criticised, including by Dezeen commenters.

"Creating a list of countries or companies that BIG should shy away from working with seems to be an oversimplification of a complex world,"  responded Ingels in a statement.

In New York the continuing saga over the fate of Two World Trade Center continued with BIG's design for a skyscraper  on the site being scrapped in favour of the original proposal by British studio Foster + Partners.

The Norman Foster-led studio also tried to revive another major project, this time in London, by launching a planning appeal against a decision to reject its Tulip tower.

Foster also proposed a design contest to create a home for UK parliament's House of Lords outside of London, which could be a potential future project for the studio.

Popular projects and products this week included a skinny house in London and a minimalist electric screwdriver that was designed to be "unintimidating". Readers also enjoyed roundups of bathrooms and black cabins in remote places around the world.