Dezeen's top 10 design and architecture videos of 2023
Continuing our review of 2023, we round up the top 10 Dezeen videos of the year, which include exclusive interviews with Ai Weiwei and Sou Fujimoto, as well as collaborations with the Barbican Centre and the Serpentine Galleries.
In our first selected video, Dezeen hosted an exclusive interview between Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei and Design Museum curator Justin McGuirk.
The conversation marked the opening of Weiwei's first design-focussed exhibition to date, which ran at the Design Museum in London from April to July this year.
During the interview, Weiwei told McGuirk that the exhibition explores design in a multifaceted way.
The exhibition, he explained, is about "how humans make definitions about our life, our memories and how our design acts relate to our past, our history and also [how they] relate to current personal issues or political issues".
Find out more about Ai Wei Wei: Making Sense ›
Lina Ghotmeh's Serpentine Pavilion 2023
In this exclusive video produced by Dezeen in partnership with the Serpentine Galleries, architect Lina Ghotmeh unveiled her 2023 Serpentine Pavilion titled À table.
Ghotmeh told Dezeen how she aimed to create a space where people could connect with one another. She noted how she took inspiration from cultural gathering spaces from across the world, such as Malian togunas, when designing the structure.
Ghotmeh is a Lebanese-born architect, now based in Paris. Her recent work includes the Hermès Manufacture in Normandy, and the Stone Garden tower in Beirut, for which she was awarded the architecture project of the year at Dezeen Awards 2021.
Find out more about Ghotmeh's pavilion ›
Concrete Icons video series with Holcim
This year Dezeen continued our six-part Concrete Icons video series in partnership with building materials company Holcim. In this instalment, Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto told Dezeen how his stacked-cube learning centre was one of the most significant projects of his career.
Named The Square, the building is a higher-education learning centre for the University of St Gallen in Switzerland.
The exterior of the building is made of a series of cubic volumes contained within a lattice of white frames. The stacked cubes, which form both the facade and interior walls, were made from floor-to-ceiling glass designed to blend in with the surrounding residential area.
Watch more of the Concrete Icons video series with Holcim ›
Resolve Collective at the Barbican
Dezeen teamed up with the Barbican Centre in London early in the year to create a video series showcasing the work of interdisciplinary design studio Resolve Collective.
Created and led by Melissa Haniff and brothers Seth and Akil Scafe-Smith, Resolve Collective created an architectural installation in the Barbican's Curve Gallery that aimed to reimagine the traditional role of institutions.
Visitors were encouraged to sit, play and climb on the reclaimed materials that made up the piece. Materials were later given away to the public in a "closing-down sale", in order for local communities to use them to create their own artworks and meeting spaces.
The installation was accompanied by a programme split into four seasons, which gathered a series of artists, musicians and local organisers to reflect on the themes of infrastructural practice, knowledge sharing, and joy.
Find out more about Resolve Collective ›
Dezeen Awards China architecture project of the year
To celebrate the launch of this year's Dezeen Awards China, Dezeen created a series of videos profiling the winners of the architecture and interiors categories. The first video interviewed Hua Li, founder of Trace Architecture Office (TAO), which won the overall category prize for the Haikou Jiangdong Huandao Experimental School.
TAO aimed to create a "a miniature pastoral city" that stimulates creativity and interaction, in a departure from conventional exam-oriented learning.
The high school also includes a student dormitory and an 18-class kindergarten, with a total construction area of 64,700 square metres.
Find out more about the Dezeen Awards China winners ›
Dezeen Awards China interiors project of the year
In the second of our Dezeen Award China series, Dezeen spoke to designer Zhan Di from FOG Architecture. The design studio was named the winner of the interiors project of the year category.
A 280-year-old courtyard house in Beijing was transformed into an open-to-the-public commercial space that connects the surrounding neighbourhoods.
To showcase the traditional structure of the building, the studio replaced the street-facing facade with glass, opening up the building to pedestrians. The original triangular timber roof trusses and wooden columns were uncovered to give character to the space.
Find out more about the Dezeen Awards China winners ›
Dezeen and Bentley's Future Luxury Retail Design Competition
In this video, judges and winners discuss highlights from Dezeen and Bentley's Future Luxury Retail Competition, which was filmed at Bentley's headquarters in Crewe, UK.
Dezeen teamed up with Bentley to host a global design competition that challenged architects and designers to define the future of luxury retail.
The first-placed winner of the competition was Finnish design agency Ultra for its proposal called Bentley Intercontinental Pavilion. The proposal imagined a series of temporary pavilions which would house an exclusive range of Bentley cars.
Second and third place were awarded to designers Daniel Czyszczoń and Meredith O'Shaughnessy respectively.
Find out more about Dezeen and Bentley's Future Luxury Retail Design Competition ›
Dezeen filmed a series of four videos at this year's Dutch Design Week, the largest design event in northern Europe, featuring highlights of the various events, exhibitions and installations taking place throughout the week.
The first video in the series featured the Design Academy Eindhoven student graduate show, and showcased projects such as a running shoe designed for use on Mars and a sensory water-based installation.
Other videos in the series took in an exhibition exploring the future of space farming, biotechnology at the Jalila Essaïdi- founded BioArt Laboratories and futuristic wearable technology.
Watch more of the Dutch Design Week series ›
Chatsworth House: Mirror Mirror
The next video on the list saw the Dezeen team film at Chatsworth House, a 17th-century stately home in Derbyshire.
The video explored the institution's exhibition Mirror Mirror: Reflections on Design at Chatsworth, which brought together a collection of contemporary furniture and objects intended to respond to Chatsworth House and its gardens.
The exhibition featured works including a throne-like seat made from musical instruments by Korean designer Jay Sae Jung Oh and an installation of monolithic furniture made from bronze and stone by British designer Faye Toogood.
Find out more about Mirror Mirror ›
The last video in our top 10 roundup showcases the (W)rapper, an unusual office tower in Los Angeles.
"The core is pulled out of the building," explained Eric Owen Moss, the architect behind the building. "What holds the building up and prevents it from falling down are the steel ribbons."
"The technical aspect of the welds alone, because of the unusual shapes and so forth, was a real science in itself," said MATT Construction CEO Steve Matt, who also spoke to Dezeen for the film.
The tower is part of 35-year revitalisation plan for a former industrial and manufacturing neighbourhood in central Los Angeles.
Find out more about The (W)rapper ›
This article is part of Dezeen's roundup of the biggest and best news and projects in architecture, design, interior design and technology from 2023.