Earlier this decade, Frank Lantz helped pioneer the idea of “big games”—tech-driven multiplayer games that unfold in public space, like PacManhattan, an urban version of the classic arcade game invented by his students at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Area/code, the company he founded in 2005 with Kevin Slavin, has developed these kinds of games for clients ranging from Qwest Wireless to CBS, as well as online social games like the wildly popular Facebook game the company introduced last year to promote A&E’s reality series Parking Wars. Lantz just launched NYU’s Game Center, a game-focused program that will eventually become a degree-granting department.

Ron Arad’s done it. So has Jaime Hayon. For 20 summers running, the world’s top designers and architects have descended on 370 acres in the Poitou-Charente province of southwestern France to lead weeklong workshops in a setting that feels a lot like summer camp and nothing like school. Horses, badminton, a former butchery-turned-nightclub called Porky’s—Boisbuchet is an idyllic setting that encourages free thought and creativity and lures designers and students back year after year. Last August, I.D. had the opportunity to spend a week on the grounds, observing workshops with CuldeSac from Spain, Harri Koskinen and Timo Salli from Finland, and Jiri Pelci from the Czech Republic. Boisbuchet owner and Vitra Design Museum director Alexander Von Vegesack took a few moments to speak with us about the history and future of the camp.

When Jaime Hayon debuted his fanciful bathroom range for ArtQuitect in 2005, the design world swooned. The line’s plasticine-baroque styling and Surrealist joie de vivre became the Madrid-born talent’s signature, and suddenly every manufacturer had him on speed dial. In the three years since, Hayon has churned out chairs for BD Ediciones, shoes and stores for Camper, lamps for Metalarte, figurines for Lladró, furniture for Moooi and Established & Sons, fabrics for Bernhardt Design, a new collection for Baccarat, plus a host of installations and interiors. To accomplish all this, he’s lived the life of a workaholic—scarcely sleeping, always on a plane—but at 35, his priorities are changing. I.D. recently caught up with him at his new home base in London’s Soho.

“Solid Void” has invaded the Graham Foundation’s 1902 Prairie School Madlener House in Chicago.

A demolished home preserved only in images by Chris Mottalini

November 19, 2008. Chris Mottalini’s architectural photo show, 29 Photographs In A Little Room In The Back Of A Shoe Store, does indeed open in a little room in the back of a shoe store at 10 Christopher Street tomorrow evening from 6 – 8 PM (running through December 20). 29 Photographs features portraits of a now demolished Connecticut home designed by Modernist architect Paul Rudolph (from the project After You Left, They Took It Apart) and a collection of school bus shelters built geurrilla-style by Buffalo area parents for their children. I.D. spoke with Mottalini about what it’s like to photograph architecture instead of people ...

Accidental Carpet by Tejo Remy and Rene Veenhuizen

November 12, 2008. Why this chair and why not that one? During Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven at the end of last month, art publisher Onomatopee produced Lift Off 2008: The Truth of Basics, Resetting the History of Living between Four Walls, in an attempt to shed new light on why our interiors look the way they do. The Truth was an exhibition of 11 interiors designed by 11 artists, architects and designers, each using a room in a financial advisor’s office as a starting point. I.D. spoke with co-curators David Keune and Freek Lomme about The Truth ...

Technical drawings by Greta Grossman at The Drawing Center

October 14, 2008. From October 17 through November 6, The Drawing Center will host Greta Magnusson Grossman: Furniture and Lighting, the first major U.S. exhibition of concept drawings by the Sweden-born, Los Angeles-based architect and industrial designer ...