Yuha Lotus Cho is a Graphic and Visual Designer, currently designing at Mother Design. She is based in New York, United States and Seoul, South Korea. She was previously at No Ideas. She holds an BFA from the School of Visual Arts. She specializes in brand identity, brand strategy, editorial design, web design, and art direction.
Copenhagen-based furniture brand Frama transformed an old apothecary into a space split between a furniture showroom and a cafe, intervening only minimally in the existing structure. Similarly, Lille Bakery repurposed a former shipyard drawing office into a bakery, preserving its duplex layout so visitors can observe the entire bread-making process from above. In both cases, the value lies not in novelty, but in continuity, allowing the past to remain visible while adapting it for present use.
We’re surrounded by objects and systems that already work well. In that world, the idea of a completely new future is getting harder to imagine. We live in a globalized environment where ideas travel fast and technology keeps promising more, and we’re constantly told that the future has to be faster, newer, better. But it’s worth stopping to ask? do we really need that kind of radical reinvention? And does progress always have to mean replacing what already exists?
In this context, the exhibition The Shape of Things to Come, curated and designed by Milan design studio Formafantasma, staged inside Negozio Olivetti designed by Carlo Scarpa, offers a compelling contrast. Within a space that embodies durability, craftsmanship, and social responsibility, the exhibition critiques electronic waste, the technology industry, and planned obsolescence.
What are the things we truly need to carry into the future? And what have we chosen to keep, and repeatedly discard, along the way?