This week Ferrari released its first electric car

This week on Dezeen, automotive brand Ferrari unveiled its first-ever electric car, the Ferrari Luce, designed by Jony Ive and Marc Newson’s studio LoveFrom.

The Ferrari Luce is also the brand’s first five-seater and features a large curvaceous glasshouse, paired with aluminium body panels at the sides that transition into wide aerodynamic wings at the front and rear.

LoveFrom also designed the interior of the car.

“What was really, really critical for us was that we created an absolutely coherent experience, both inside and out,” Newson told Dezeen.

Researchers in the UK have warned that green walls could present a similar fire risk to the highly combustible cladding used on Grenfell Tower.

This is due to the plastic used in their potting systems. Green wall systems using plastic polypropylene plant pots could fail key fire tests in less than four minutes, according to new research by the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) at the University of Greenwich.

In our opinion piece this week, Dezeen features editor Nat Barker coined a new term for an architectural style that has emerged over the past decade: gentleism.

Gentleism, which Barker believes is tied to the tough realities of the architecture profession, “holds that buildings should make a modest contribution to their surroundings. They do not try to hide themselves, but nor do they attempt to dominate”.

Fashion house Dior made the news this week with two retail designs. In Los Angeles and New York, USA, the brand unveiled surreal windows by British artist Alex Chinneck that referenced American streetscapes and showed classic cars and local street lamps.

In Osaka, Japan, architect Sou Fujimoto designed the House of Dior Shinsaibashi flagship store, which features an interior by architect Peter Marino. Fujimoto’s undulating facade design was described as “a homage to the virtuosity of haute couture”.

Dezeen’s US editor Ben Dreith and US reporter Ellen Eberhardt looked back on this year’s NYCxDesign and chose eighteen “weird, wonderful and well-made projects” from the week.

Among them were shows featuring everything from dozens of nightlights to conceptual furniture and innovative student work, with metal materials and oxblood hues among this year’s design trends.

British practice Heatherwick Studio has teamed up with Japanese brand Jins to design its first-ever eyewear collection.

The glasses have asymmetric frames with playful rippling surfaces and were “inspired by the movement and material richness of nature: the flow of water, the movement of air, the luminosity of stone,” the studio said.

Popular projects this week included a Foster + Partners art gallery lined with tubular glass, a house wrapped in recycled ocean plastic and an Indian home overlooking a cardamom plantation.

Listen to our journalists talk about the key design and architecture stories of the past seven days on our Dezeen Weekly podcast, which this week discussed the fierce reaction to Ferrari’s unveiling of its first all-electric car, asking Why does everyone seem to hate the new Ferrari?

This week on Dezeen

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week’s top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don’t miss anything.

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