“24 Hours”
Nearly two years ago, an international group of 24 design studios received a simple brief: Create a wall-mounted clock, each pointing to a different hour, to fit inside a 50-by-50-by-50-centimeter box. The resulting exhibition—“24 Hours,” curated and organized by Jamie Wolfond in collaboration with the design consultancy Simple Flair—will at last be on view at the “creative space” Riviera (Via Gorani 4) during next week’s Salone del Mobile design and furniture fair in Milan. One of the designers featured in the exhibition, the Madrid-based Sina Sohrab, interpreted the prompt in such a way that his expression of the clock, “Real-Time,” illuminates the mundanity that encapsulates so much of everyday life. Using a four-screen device that cycles through footage from 240 live-streaming CCTV cameras around the world, his voyeuristic piece brings visitors face to face not only with the function of a clock, but its futility, too. Amid today’s increasingly frenzied pace, this call to pause and consider the hours feels like a welcome reprieve.

Casa Cork by David Rockwell
Also during Milan’s Salone del Mobile next week, the nonprofit Cork Collective and the New York– and Madrid-based architecture and design firm Rockwell Group, together with cork producer Corticeira Amorim, will debut a “living laboratory” highlighting the material’s myriad uses in Casa Cork by David Rockwell. In a space made almost entirely out of cork—including a chandelier and bar by Artemest; custom wall features, scones, and pendants by Thomas Cooper Studio; and fabrics and tiles from 4Spaces—the setting will offer an education on the promise of this sustainable material, which can be taken from cork oaks without cutting down the tree and recycled again and again. The presentation, to be held at Via Solferino 31, will also show cork-forward design objects and prototypes by makers including Tom Dixon, Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance, USM Modular Furniture, and Vitra. Throughout the week, Tiffany Jow, the editor-in-chief of the design journal Untapped, will host a series of conversations that expand on the ideas generated by the project and include—what else?—wine tastings.

“Adam Pendleton: Love, Queen” at the Hirshhorn Museum
With his first solo exhibition in Washington, D.C., on view through January 3, 2027, Adam Pendleton (the guest on Ep. 110 of Time Sensitive) has transformed the inner rings of the second-floor galleries of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum. Showcasing his rigorous body of abstract works that transcend the traditional boundaries and techniques of painting, the show will include works from his “Black Dada,” “Days,” and “We Are Not” series alongside more recent “Composition” and “Movement” pieces. In addition, “Love, Queen” will premiere “Resurrection City Revisited (Who Owns Geometry Anyway?),” a video work that uses both still and moving images from Resurrection City, the 1968 ad hoc protest camp at the National Mall organized by Martin Luther King Jr., and includes an original score by the composer Hahn Rowe and a reading by the late critic and poet Amiri Baraka. Bringing his bold voice to the National Mall, with “Love Queen,” Pendleton considers and combines time, history, and theory to powerful effect.

Brunello Cucinelli, the founder of his namesake Italian luxury fashion label famous for its cashmere sweaters and knitwear, as of this week has been honored with a new title: architect. On Thursday, the sartorial soothsayer—whom The New Yorker once dubbed “The Prince of Solomeo”—received an honorary degree in architecture from the Università Vanvitelli in Caserta, Italy, outside Naples. This isn’t Cucinelli’s first honorary degree—he previously received a doctorate in management, banking, and commodity sciences, from the University La Sapienza in Rome in 2022, and one in philosophy, from the University of Messina in 2018—but it may well be his most meaningful or surprising. Although not an architect by training, thanks to the global success of his company, he has, over the past few decades, effectively restored the entire village of Solomeo, including its streets and squares, and the Church of St. Bartholomew. He has also built a 240-seat theater there and is currently funding the construction of a library. Here, referencing the likes of Pericles, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Goethe, Cucinelli talks about his design-for-eternity philosophy and why he believes a “humanistic revolution” is upon us.

Congratulations on receiving your honorary Ph.D.!
You will now have to call me “architect,” my friend. [Laughs]

Did this honor come as a surprise to you?
A wonderful surprise! I started off as a surveyor when I was in high school, and then I moved up to engineering, but I only sat one exam in three years. I don’t know whether you know about this, but God was a surveyor. I was in the same line of business as God, basically.

When I was told [about the architecture degree], I wondered why. Then I thought about it one afternoon. Vitruvius, two thousand years ago, was the greatest master of architecture, and he stated that every single building must be solid, useful, and beautiful. That’s why I came up with the idea that I have been the architect of my enterprise. That’s precisely what my purpose was: I wanted my enterprise to be solid, robust, and useful for the community around it. And beautiful.

So you view what you do in fashion as its own form of architecture?
Well, yes, it’s a form of architecture. But the architecture of buildings obviously is something different. 

I run my business as an Italian, but I think like a Greek. At one point, the Greeks decided in Athens, with Pericles, to build the Parthenon. Ictinus and Callistratus were named the architects, and then Phidias, the sculptor. They came up with this beautiful design, but it was also very costly. Pericles submitted it to the Athenians, who reacted and responded, “It’s so expensive! Perhaps we should give up.” He said, “Yes, it’s true. But as long as the Parthenon stands, Athens will stand.” In a nutshell, he was designing for eternity. That’s the same thing that Vitruvius claimed—and Palladio, too. In the 19th century, John Ruskin in England warned that whenever you build, you should build for eternity. Goethe said the same when he came to Rome. He said, “These Romans, they were planning, designing for eternity.” 

Here in Umbria, when Saint Francis set up and founded the order of the Franciscans, he said to the monks, “The churches must be tall, clean, and beautiful so as to be closer to God”—again, building something fine and beautiful for eternity. Something sound, robust, and useful. What this means is that they were listening to the genius loci, in Latin, meaning “the spirit of the place.” This spirit is the master of all arts. When you listen to the spirit of the place, you always get it right, because you listen to what surrounds you.

Is this how you feel about Solomeo?
The tower I’m speaking to you from now dates back to 1391, and it will still be here in a one thousand five hundred years’ time. Who am I? I’m just a transient guardian who happened to be in Solomeo in the years 2000 and 2020, and restored it to pass it on. 

I’ve always been keen on building for eternity. I’ve always admired this concept. It means that you’re not here forever, but what you build is. You are a temporary guardian of what you built. You’re just a defender and safeguard that accompanies the creation.

I won’t say this design-for-eternity perspective is anti-fashion, but maybe it’s the opposite of what we think of when we think of fashion.
No, I do not fully agree, actually. [Pauses] Let me elaborate. I still keep all the garments that I’ve worn across the years in my life. I have a coat that dates back thirty years, and I still wear it. Whatever I’ve designed that I’m wearing, it’s designed in order to be handed down for eternity, to live forever. I can understand that it might be not “of fashion” or “in fashion,” but I can vouch for top-notch quality and a high rate of craftsmanship. I will never throw it away. You can mark my words. There might be some businesses designed not to live forever, but we’re different.

There’s a slowness embedded in what you do. Could you speak to this idea of moving slowly and taking a long view? 
I’ve always adopted that approach. If you feel and act as a guardian, you can feel at ease, at peace. Whereas if you feel and act as an owner, you’re scared of losing what you have, because you’re attached to your possessions. 

I think there’s a fascinating movement for mankind brewing. I think we’re on the verge of some kind of humanistic revolution. Perhaps we’re fed up with people who are harsh, arrogant, and bossy. This humanistic revolution is gaining ground, especially among the youth. We’re just out of thirty years of trying to rule mankind through science only. Science is paramount, but you need the soul together with that. I would say that the progress that medicine has experienced over the past thirty years is the same as the progress of the arts during the Renaissance. But despite this huge scientific progress, what has resulted is some kind of malady of our soul.

Who today is willing to listen to our sorrows? No one, if you think about it. This makes your generation the new sentinels, the new guardians of mankind.

We’re trying.
Yes, you should try. That’s exactly where this revolution will be set in motion, because by nature, the word revolution, it conjures up something really harsh. Whereas I think that a tempus novum, the way the Romans called it, is upon us. We’re moving toward a golden century. It’s yours. It’s going to be your century.

This year marks the eight-hundredth anniversary of Saint Francis writing his praises to God. He writes these regardless of who these praises are for. He talks about “sister moon” and “brother sun,” and water. I believe that that was the first-ever social contract with creation. It all started as a social contract with Plato and Aristotle, and then ended up with John Locke and Thomas Hobbes—and then Rousseau, who wrote his “Social Contract” treatise. This was a social contract with human beings among human beings, though. Whereas now, other parties need to join this contract. We need to speak to water, to ice, to animals, to whatever surrounds us. That’s why I call it a new social contract with creation. It’s up to your generation to draft. This is a very optimistic point of view. I do agree that our generation has a certain responsibility—and sensibility. I was crazy enough to start a media company called The Slowdown.Unless we believe in hope—we all share hope—what kind of life is it?

Agreed.
I’m not an optimist. I’m someone who believes in hope. A life without the idea of a dream doesn’t have any meaning.

Let me tell you something, Spencer: In the 1830s, there was a priest and philosopher named Pavel Florensky who, in Russia, was sentenced to death. Before he died, he wrote a letter to his children. How the beautiful words: “Oh, my dear children, when your soul is burdened, when someone offends you, when someone demeans you, when you can’t really wrap your head around something, just walk outside, get out and look at the sky, and the heavens and the stars, and everything will fall back into place.” We have stopped looking up at the stars, at the heavens. We have to go back to walking with our feet firmly rooted in the ground, but always with the gaze up toward the stars, because they can tell us the way in life.

Do you think that architecture can be a tool for this revolution you’re talking about?
Well, this has always been the case, hasn’t it? Architecture always represents the moment of time in which it’s built. It’s been a century when we’ve been building for not even a hundred years.

I have an esteemed friend, Mohamed Alabbar, from Dubai. I would say that he has built seventy percent of Dubai. I was there last December. We were on a wonderful terrace, and I said to him, “Mohamed, what will be left of all these buildings in a hundred years’ time? What will be left of everything that you’ve built?” He said, “I don’t know.” Two thousand years ago, on the other hand, Augustus the Emperor said, “We should build with marble or bricks so that it can last for eternity.” Those who built the cathedrals, it took them centuries to build.

Those who cast the foundations knew that only their grandchildren would live to see the spires. This was a slow movement. That’s exactly what you’re building with The Slowdown. I am fully in agreement with the movement that you have started with your company. You’ve founded something that is very nice, very elegant, and very tasty, too. It’s exactly what I’m trying to do here with my business. 

Are you working on any architectural projects of your own at the moment
We’re building a library in Solomeo, and the inspiration is the one in Alexandria in Egypt. Its completion has been delayed by two, three years now, but who cares? It’s supposed to be there for the next thousand years. 

This interview was conducted by Spencer Bailey through a translator. It has been condensed and edited.