For the second year, Alcova, the fair focused on emerging designers that runs in tandem with Salone del Mobile, has set up shop at multiple venues in Varedo, Italy—about 15 kilometers north of Milan. This year, in addition to the 1940s modern Villa Borsani and the beautifully crumbling Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, Alcova has added a stunning abandoned factory and disused greenhouses.

All of the sites offer unconventional yet fitting backdrops for the experimental works on display. Touring the press preview with photographer Olga Mai, we were struck by the range of textures, materials, and ideas—from glazed lava and reappropriated wood to deeply conceptual and more socially charged installations.

While this was my first in-person visit, I sensed a slight tonal shift from years past. If you enter this edition of the fair thinking you’ll encounter only the weirdest of the weird, you’ll be surprised to discover plenty of minimalist (though forward-thinking) designs sprinkled throughout the showcase. Still, it’s pretty clear—at Alcova, creative risk certainly takes center stage.

Below, you’ll find a few of what we found to be this year’s highlights. By transforming spaces—whether revered or forgotten—into moments of radical expression, each of them offers a delightful and thought-provoking experience. They remind us that many of today’s most exciting designs are made, and shown, on the fringe.

Wanting an occasional break from the city, Hákon and Lilja started looking for a place they could escape to. “It was important for us to have a retreat where we could disconnect from the fast pace of urban life and immerse ourselves in nature,” Hákon says. The Reykjavík residents imagined something in the countryside where they could relish Iceland’s short-but-sweet summers, and in colder months, peer out from wide windows. “Somewhere we could experience the changing seasons from our living space,” adds Lilja.

• In Ohio’s Amish country, E-bikes are zipping past horse-drawn buggies, as if the future is lapping the past. Now the divided community has to decide whether the bikes are a modern convenience or a threat to tradition. (The Wall Street Journal)

•  Japan built the world’s first 3D-printed train station in just six hours—offering a fast, cost-cutting solution to rural rail challenges amid a shrinking population. Here’s how they did it. (The New York Times)

• Locked out of New York City by strict, short-term rental laws, Airbnb is pouring $5 million into a SuperPAC to back election candidates who support loosening those restrictions—and the city’s powerful hotel industry is not happy. (Gothamist)

• Contracting work has devolved into a ruthless grind of cut-rate bids and illegal labor practices, driving even the most skilled workers out of the industry. One Connecticut homebuilder shares just how bad things have become. (The New York Times)

• Dwell’s executive editor, Kate Dries, visited Stockholm recently to preview the 40th anniversary of Ikea’s Stockholm Collection, which was just released. While there, she asked the company’s designers which items they keep for themselves. (Dwell)

Top image courtesy of Serendix Inc./neuob Inc.

Location: 2244 Round Top Dr, Honolulu, Hawaii

Price: $3,495,000

Year Built: 1974

Architect: Chip Detweiler

Renovation Designer: Rick Kinsel

Footprint: 2,064 square feet (2 bedrooms, 2 baths)

Lot Size: 0.23 Acres

From the Agent: “This tropical brutalist home, designed by architect Chip Detweiler, is a striking example of minimalist design that perfectly integrates with its natural surroundings. With open-screen windows inviting the tropical elements inside, the home embodies the principles of passive architecture. Detweiler’s use of concrete, wood, and stone creates a clean, honest aesthetic that highlights simplicity and functionality. The bold structure, paired with deep ocean-blue accents, reflects the essence of tropical brutalism, offering a timeless connection to the Pacific landscape. Detweiler’s design not only captures the beauty of the environment but also delivers a space where luxury and functionality meet, enhancing the experience of living both indoors and out.”

Before: A view of the home’s original living area.

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Welcome to Sofa Sagas—stories about the circuitous search for a very important and occasionally fraught piece of furniture.

When I moved into my Brooklyn apartment in 2020, there was already a couch in the living room—far too wide to be removed, I was told, and very comfortable. Because I’d just spent the equivalent of one month’s paycheck on the things I’d need to live in this apartment, the couch was fine. Aesthetically, not my taste, yes, but comfortable enough for me to sit on and watch TV for hours in silence. After a year or so living with this sofa, which was large, brown, overstuffed, and sort of hideous, it became the target of my decor-related ire. I did not like the couch; crucially, I didn’t pick out the couch, and so, because of that reason specifically, it had to go.

Buying a new couch is a fraught and stressful decision for reasons we enumerate frequently at this publication—the furniture you choose to live with says what you don’t about who you are, and often, nice things cost big money. The couch of my dreams is a Maralunga, specifically the one I saw once on Chairish in prissy lilac leather. It cost around $4,000 and needed to be shipped from Italy, both factors that put it far out of budget and practicality. I pivoted my search towards a spate of your standard Instagram furniture purveyors, lured in by the prospect of being able to get what I wanted when I wanted it, and how. And, for reasons I still don’t understand, the next sofa I wanted was to be green—not quite olive and not quite emerald, but a green that, perhaps, only existed in my head.

Armed with these requirements, I found a couch that I liked enough: an olive-pine green three seater with a vaguely midcentury feel, with a bench cushion, a decision that would come to haunt me in the future. The price was right (under $2,000 and financed over a year with no interest), it could be delivered to me in a reasonable amount of time, and came in flat boxes that I could reasonably get into my apartment myself.

 A couple of days before the new couch was set to arrive, two men removed the big brown one from my living room, a treacherous process that took out one banister post from the stairs and I fear nearly killed the men I’d hired for this task. I tipped them generously and enjoyed sitting on the floor of my empty living room until my new couch was delivered. When it arrived, I very politely asked one of my sisters to help me drag the boxes up the stairs; once she left, it took me about 20 minutes to assemble the new sofa and shove it into place. It is at this point where I realized that I’d made two mistakes, neither of which were particularly grave at the time, but would later contribute to the couch’s eventual downfall. One, the couch itself was not nearly as comfortable as I’d anticipated; and two, more importantly, the bench cushion I selected for aesthetics, did look good, but wasn’t the most long-lasting solution.

The furniture you choose to live with says what you don’t about who you are, and often, nice things cost big money.

Over time the couch got more comfortable but really only in one spot, my preferred corner, which positioned me with the best vantage point to watch TV while reading a book. I flipped the cushion; I tried sitting on the other side a bunch. But after five years or so, I realized that there was nothing more I could really do—the couch was lumpy now, and worse, the green that I’d selected with such care was now the only thing I could think about when spending any time in my living room.

The other couch I wanted to buy that wasn’t the expensive Italian one was a less-expensive Danish one: the Teddy by Omhu, a big squishy pile of foam anchored by two Corbusier-adjacent chrome bars. I found it in a store in my neighborhood and sat on it multiple times; I measured my very narrow living room in an attempt to see if this large and wide boy would fit. Various people in my life who were privy to my obsession tried to tell me that this couch would be too large; I listened but did not necessarily hear their warnings. And honestly, if I had followed the impetuous demon that occasionally grabs ahold of my credit card, I think that I’d be disappointed now. But luckily, the couch I would soon truly love was the couch I didn’t even know I needed—and getting it was a labor of love and an awful lot of money. 

After much discussion, a friend bought a sofa on Facebook Marketplace, a low-slung, vintage three-seater, in a nubby cattlehair blend fabric, resting on a rectangular mirrored base, made by Eppinger Furniture., a company based on the Upper East Side in New York that made custom office furniture in the 1960s that wouldn’t be out of place in a well-appointed home now. (This burlwood and chrome desk is ready for the boardroom of a Madison Avenue ad agency, and yes, is heavily inspired by Milo Baughman’s work.) I loved it; she loved it, until she got it, lived with it in her house for a bit, and realized that it was not her style at all. I sat on the sofa and found it comfortable. I wanted the sofa to be mine. And $600 later, it was.

Thankfully, because it is 2025 and the task economy is booming, it was very easy for me to get the sofa from her house, which is at the other end of Brooklyn from mine. Two men again came to my apartment in the early hours of the morning and removed my old couch for donation. Two different men drove to my friend’s house, loaded the sofa into their truck, and brought it up the stairs to me. Once they made it up the two twisty, narrow landings, and into the hallway directly outside my apartment, it became clear pretty immediately that there was no way this couch was going to get through the door.

After fifteen minutes of trying to, I don’t know, shove the sofa in myself, I realized that 1) the men who brought it up here were charging by the minute and 2) there was no way in hell this would work. “You might have to call someone,” one man said to me, as he gathered his moving blankets. “Like maybe the Couch Doctor.”

Couch doctors—or surgeons, your preference—are services that will disassemble and reassemble your furniture item so that it can fit through the door and get into your home. There is something terrifying about what they do—how can a sofa be sawn in half like a magician’s assistant and then reassembled as if it never happened in the first place? A part of me never wanted to find out firsthand, but when faced with the sofa I loved (and purchased), standing at attention in my narrow hallway, I did what I had to do.

In a state of mild distress, as I assume all who use this service are, I texted the number on NYC Couch Doctor’s website and explained the situation. A third, different, set of men showed up about 45 minutes later and after a brief examination, explained what would have to happen. Sawing the thing in half and shoving it through the door was not in the cards—the rectangular base, attached to the bottom of the sofa so that it appears to be floating, was the problem. After about 20 minutes, I emerged from the bedroom and found the sofa being put back together in my living room. The men had removed the base, reattached it, and placed the couch where I wanted it to go. I sent them on their way, and after a 15 minute period of relaxing and reassessing my financial situation in light of this $950 task, I felt something akin to peace. All told, between the sofa itself, the multiple movers, and the couch doctors, I spent around $2,000. The couch I loved was now mine—and, given the effort it took to get it in here, will be mine forever, or as long as I decide to stay in my apartment. To get the thing out of my house again will require the same service. It’s a price I might be willing to pay in the future, but for right now, my sofa and I are happy.

Illustration by Franz Lang

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As a part of our 25th-anniversary celebration, we’re republishing formative magazine stories from before our website launched. This story previously appeared in Dwell’s June 2001 issue. 

“I could care less about tatami,” 37-year-old graphic designer Shingo Fujiwaki says casually as he pushes a shock of long, black hair out of his eyes. Instead, when he had a chance to scrap his parents’s 30-year-old house with its traditional straw flooring and replace it with the home of his dreams, Fujiwaki went in search of an architect who could give him what he wanted: a blank, white shell. In Katsu Umebayashi, the 37-year-old head of the design firm FOBA, he found just the man. And, in Fujiwaki’s house, FOBA found what proved to be a perfect prototype for its new venture: FOB Homes, the architects’s foray into the market of the housemakers, whose kit-of-parts homes account for almost all new houses built in Japan.

A 12-person practice founded in 1995, FOBA is based in Uji, a tea-growing town outside of Kyoto. FOBA is known for its experimental houses and inventive commercial projects such as its own headquarters building, “Organ,” a snaking tube of continuous space complete with level changes and quirky angles.

The 1,376-square-foot house that FOBA built for Fujiwaki and his family sits on a corner site smack dab in the middle of Suita, a kind of Japanese Levittown on the outskirts of Osaka that was created at the time of the 1970 Expo (held nearby). Against the backdrop of the neighborhood’s drab cookie-cutter homes, the Fujiwakis’s house is hard to miss. It is a stark white concrete box—no parapets, no balconies, no ornament, no nothing. And, of course, there’s not a curve in sight. It doesn’t even have any windows aside from a low strip of glass on one side and a large plane of frosted glass on the other. Then there’s the facade: a brilliant white wall, unbroken except where a niche was carved out for the entry foyer. Though almost entirely shut off from the outside world, the house was not meant to be introverted or insensitive. On the contrary, “whenever you face a blank wall to a neighbor, it’s a favor,” says FOBA associate Tom Daniell. The walls politely protect the Fujiwakis’s privacy and that of their neighbors. And because they are set back from the property line, they also create welcome buffers of open space between houses. This is no small feat given the density in areas like this, where plots are small and houses are close together.

While this house may look modern with a capital “M,” the orthodoxy doesn’t extend much past its right angles and unadorned walls. The organization of this house and the way the Fujiwakis live in it are definitely homegrown. This becomes apparent the moment the threshold is crossed. Taking over where the exterior stone paving leaves off, polished concrete becomes the house’s interior floor. Nonetheless, the Fujiwakis exchange outdoor shoes for indoor ones before proceeding into the heart of the house: a double-height, combined living and dining room that somehow connects with almost every part of the building. In one direction it flows into a sleek galley kitchen, a stainless-steel Italian import, where the Fujiwakis can whip up espresso without dropping out of the conversation. In another direction it opens seamlessly onto an enclosed courtyard with glass doors that slide open to flood the room with daylight and fresh air (though the dog is the only family member to spend much time out there). A freestanding metal staircase connects to the second floor. But both primary bedroom, a modest affair with just enough space for a double bed, and dressing room, with its exposed hanging bar loaded with the Fujiwakis’s de rigueur black, white, and gray wardrobe, overlook the living area below. Even the upstairs bathroom, a narrow, skylit corridor lined with the most elegant fixtures money can buy, is linked to the main room.

The Fujiwakis’s house is a far cry from the imitation Western-style homes churned out by house manufacturers who build with Lego-like prefab pieces or even their upscale made-to-order cousins. If you buy a car, camera, or watch in Japan, there are loads of good designs to choose from, explains Fujiwaki. But housemaker houses are another story. “You have no choice—it’s bad design or nothing,” says Fujiwaki. True, they come in a vast array of styles and they can even incorporate a traditional tearoom, complete with the customary tatami mats and the decorative alcove known as a tokonoma, plus a pass-through kitchen all under one gabled roof. But design-wise their stock solutions, based on the Western ideal of separate rooms for separate functions, are criticized for being bland at best, and at worst, poorly suited to the Japanese lifestyle. “The only things most people decide on is which housemaker, how many rooms, and how much they’ll spend,” laments Umebayashi.

It’s not cutting-edge design that customers are after when they visit housemakers’s showrooms and websites. The lure of the housemaker house is that it is a known entity before ground is ever broken. Each one comes with the promise of being built on time and on budget. It’s also guaranteed: Should the synthetic slate roof leak, the company’s 24-hour hotline is always ready to provide service with a smile. And because everyone is doing it, there is never the worry of having a house that’s going to raise eyebrows. If the client wants a customized design statement, he can always hire an architect. Yet many prospective homeowners shy away from the incumbent risks of not knowing what sort of self-indulgent house an architect will concoct or how much it will actually cost. “Very few clients want a work of art; most want a life tool, a life container,” says Umebayashi. Between these two extremes of standardized housemaker homes and one-off, architect-designed creations lies the gap which FOB Homes plans to fill by offering a design-conscious alternative that tops the construction quality of the housemakers’s house but matches the price, which usually starts at $300,000 (not including land costs).

How can FOB Homes pull this off? By dividing the building process into six steps that provide the clarity and convenience of the housemaker’s formulaic method and standardizing the design process to limit client choices. Though FOB Homes has yet to fully utilize this system, its products so far have a similar look and are planned as continuous internal spaces (albeit with careful functional zoning) that are composed from a conceptual kit of parts. Enclosed outdoor spaces are also part of the package.

“We want to make living fun and satisfying.” says Mitsue Masunaga, the head of FOB Coop, a nationwide chain of 12 shops devoted to spreading the gospel of good design. Together with Umebayashi, her nephew, she is the driving force behind FOB Homes. Her shops, named after the shipping term “free on board,” stock a range of interior goods, both foreign made and local, and she is eager to add house designs to her inventory. “The thing that people want most is a house,” says Masunaga, “so I want to sell them.” So kitchens are open and inviting, storage is generous enough to conceal all manner of unsightly clutter, and bathrooms are the most sumptuous spots in each house. (The Fujiwakis’s bathroom features a miniature garden and a German-made Duravit tub.) This approach provides an image of the house and its organizational framework, but the rest can be tailored to meet the needs of the most persnickety clients. Even the signature white surfaces are just a starting point. Be it the art on the walls, the food on the kitchen counter, or, as at the Fujiwakis’s house, their forest-green canoe which sits outside, decoration and color come from the client.

Houses We Love: Every day we feature a remarkable space submitted by our community of architects, designers, builders, and homeowners. Have one to share? Post it here.

Project Details:

Location: Matanzas, Chile

Architect: Gonzalo Rufin Arquitectos / @gonzalorufin

Architect: Felipe Toro

Footprint: 861 square feet

Builder: Constructora Guay Guay

Structural Engineer: Jorge Argandoña

Photographer: Pablo Casals / @pablocasalsaguirre_works

From the Architect: “In the middle of a mountainous sector surrounded by forests and ravines, this house is located on the windy beach of Matanzas, Chile. Its figure appears as vertical and horizontal at the same time, providing its occupants shelter from the climatic conditions of the place. The construction is characterized by the repetition of a module that houses three stories and extends nine times in width, forming 861 square feet of living space. Through a skeleton made up of wood and steel ties, the plan rises vertically. Public areas are on the first floor next to terraces and the private spaces—a primary bedroom and a loft for guests—are on the upper floors. The envelope leaves its sides open to broad views of the forest, accompanied by a set of blinds that generate a permeable closure in connection with the environment.”

Last month, Rocket Companies, the nation’s second-largest mortgage originator, announced that it is making two major purchases, of real estate giant Redfin and Mr. Cooper—the latter the country’s second-largest collector of mortgage payments—in a series of transactions valuing nearly $11 billion total. The home buying and mortgage market has been struggling: According to National Mortgage News, 2025 forecasts for total mortgage production this year fall below pandemic lows; “the change in interest rates from 2020 to 2024 has seen the residential mortgage ecosystem careen from feast to famine,” NMN explains. In this environment, these acquisition shakeups could reshape the consumer experience as realtor and broker may merge into a one-stop home-buying shop.

Over at Redfin, the 2022 interest rate spike caused what ResiClub called “a continuous wave of layoffs,” alongside major losses that have continued through this year. Yet Redfin’s assets, as detailed by Rocket Companies CEO Varun Krishna, include “nearly 50 million monthly visitors, one million active purchase and rental listings and staff of 2,200+ real estate agents across 42 states.” This could drive new mortgage originations, especially as the National Association of Realtors reported that home sales ticked up by more than four percent earlier this year.

As interest rates declined in 2024 and potential home buyers moderately resumed their searches, there’s an advantage in bringing consumers straight to a lender to make their purchase. But it’s not just new loans that Rocket is looking for—according to Axios, the purchase of Mr. Cooper is about maximizing its returning customers, referred to as “recapture rates.” Higher interest rates have meant fewer refinancing opportunities; merging Rocket and Mr. Cooper could retain borrowers as loans are paid off or as homeowners look to refinance if interest rates are cut. It’s a smart move on Rocket’s part to consider not just new home buyers but longer-term outlooks.

The Redfin purchase represents a savvy business approach that ResiClub states “could see [Rocket Companies’s] market share quadruple.” But for the consumer, it’s less clear how it might impact the home-buying process. In car buying, companies like Carvana have managed to integrate shopping, financing, loan approvals, and delivery into one experience—all managed from a smartphone. But buying a house is far more complex. 

A Rocket Company representative couldn’t detail any changes to the website experience at this time. However, in a March 10th investor call, Brian Brown, CFO of Rocket Companies, remarked on this complexity, stating: “The traditional purchase process is fragmented and requires interacting with many entities along the journey—home search, buyer agents, listing agents, a mortgage originator, a title and closing provider, and a servicer. Each stop adds layers of transaction costs, stress, and friction.” For decades, realtors have acted to smooth the frictive process—their relationships with trusted mortgage brokers and real estate attorneys address some of the logistical bumps, especially for those unfamiliar with the process. 

Perusing Reddit, users express frustration and confusion over using Rocket Companies for home mortgages, including required annual income and credit score checks, as well as questionable refinancing offers. One user bemoaned the mortgage prequalification process, which they say was supposed to be “as good as having a check in hand,” yet they describe having to update and revalidate various tax and income documents two weeks prior to closing. As others countered, this is a normal part of the approvals process.

“[The] difference between Rocket Mortgage and a good, local mortgage lender is that we’re gonna remind you about those updated docs we need before the very last minute and keep you in the fold,” writes another user, who claims they work at a mortgage lender. “We don’t just assume you’re mortgage experts that know exactly what we need all the time, and we take the time to explain the process to you so that you’re as comfortable with it as possible during this scary, high-stress, important time in your life.”

For newer buyers using the platform, knowledgeable Redfin agents and financial advisors are still necessary players in the home-buying marketplace; the Great Recession taught us a lesson about the importance of well-informed mortgage consumers and non-predatory lenders. But National Mortgage News reports that Rocket’s acquisitions represent that a vertically integrated model is possible. “A growing portion of the mortgage finance market believes that realtors and loan officers are going to merge functions over time,” reads the story. While we’re a long way off from a “swipe to buy” function, these deals could signal a more consolidated real estate environment—hopefully not at the expense of the consumer. 

Top photo by Seth Joel/Getty Images

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How They Pulled It Off is our ongoing series where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.

From a hobbit-worthy house in Buenos Aires to a floating bedroom in Berlin, these 10 standout projects show just how’s it done.

A Secret Stair Hatch That Seals Off the Living Space

An 18th-Century-Inspired Farm Fence That Keeps Sheep and Their People Happy

When I went to Stockholm in February to preview the 40th anniversary of Ikea’s Stockholm collection, I knew I was in the unique position to ask the question I most wanted the answer to: what does an actual Ikea designer have from Ikea? Would it be something as ubiquitous as the Billy bookshelf, or some obscure product I hadn’t seen before? The team’s answers surprised me, gave me ideas to look for pieces I hadn’t before, and underlined a truth: we all love looking backwards.

Nike Karlsson, designer: I have all those things that never end up in something. It’s the scrap yard. Prototypes.

Paulin Machado, designer: I have Nike’s sofa from 2014 [the PS 2014 sofa]. I found that on a vintage site. I was so happy when I got it.

Dwell: So you’re also looking for vintage Ikea, like everyone else is.

Machado: Oh yes. We love to do that. I think you learn a lot from that too, to see what has sustained in time and how it looks. And I think it’s a good school to learn from.

Johan Ejdemo, global design manager: I have a lot of stuff in my kitchen to cook things, but then I have, obviously there are sentimental projects that I’ve been involved in. And I have Nike’s old day bed; now we have a new daybed, but I have the old one. You can find it at auction sometimes popping up from the PS collection. I have a few products from that PS collection. The steel cabinet, the one that is a locker cabinet, but lower. There have been quite a few of those that we have been moving around. And sometimes they’re all in a row, sometimes they spread out in different places in the home. And they have been with me for a long time.

Machado: I think you have more than me now.

Karin Gustavsson, creative leader: I made a collection a few years ago called Industriell together with a Dutch designer called Piet Hein Eek. And I have that bookshelf. And I collect so many books and it’s the one super smart solution. You can build as big as you want in plywood. So I have that one as one of my favorites. But then I have something every day. I have the mattresses. We have such good quality mattresses. So I’m happy about them. You don’t see things sometimes, sometimes you take them for [granted].

Ola Wihlborg, designer: I have a lot of different stuff because I try them when I design them, I try them and evaluate them. But we have sofas. We have two sofas that we have had for a really long time. The old Stockholm sofa that I told you about with lots of cushions. That one we have had for 10 years. And then we also have Soederhamn, that’s another sofa from Ikea, that one has also been in the house for a long time.

Photos courtesy of Ikea

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