(Selected contributions to the magazine’s “Best of” feature package)

Bright Ideas
Architect Andre Kikoski has LEDs on the brain. “They’re everywhere!” he proclaims soon after returning from Maison & Objet, the Paris design show. “I flew home on an Airbus A380, and they were there, too!” Kikoski, whose firm recently completed the Guggenheim’s stunning new restaurant, the Wright, embraces technologies. He uses laser-cut leathers and is on the lookout for ways to make green walls thrive year after year. A ground-up project of his, Long Island City’s Z Hotel, opens later this year, and soon he’ll finish a Madison Park residence for a Turkish art collector and a retail space in Bushwick. “Like Frank Lloyd Wright, we want to work between scales, from a master-planned city down to custom fabric,” he explains. For now, Kikoski fans are sated with the Wright, with its fiber-optic-inlaid woods, a bar sheathed in glittery metalwork and a bright Liam Gillick sculpture. “Wright never romanticized history,” Kikoski says. “He was all about the future, so that’s where we looked too.”

Double Play
Before taking on clients like Mindy Kaling and Seth Meyers, Ariel Ashe and Reinaldo Leandro were just antsy young associates at Pierce Allen. They soon modeled their own firm, Ashe + Leandro, on their alma mater—she’s on interiors; he, architecture. Small staff aside, their teeny Downing Street storefront is a creative hive; a furniture fabricator and a graphic designer also share the space. The duo is currently finishing an office in the Seagram Building for a hedge fund (“hip, but not so hip that it doesn’t seem stable,” Ashe says); a hotel in Caracas, Venezuela (Leandro’s hometown); and several city residences with designs that are youthful but not young. Where many nascent designers lean on graphic wallpapers or slick lacquers to add oomph, this duo turns to wood, marble or concrete, letting possessions tell the story. One family’s West Side home gets its color from the spines of National Geographic magazines. You’d never guess that restraint is a muscle they flex: “We both like too many colors,” Leandro says. “But we’re good at editing each other. It would be Pee-wee’s Playhouse if we didn’t.” 212.242.3642.

Alfa Goes Beta
First released by Molteni & C in lacquer and leather finishes, the Alfa chair by the late Swiss designer Hannes Wettstein was an instant hit. But Alfa’s beta model, which is made exclusively for the outdoors, may supercede its housebound brethren. The new version is sheathed in a velvety, element-proof Soft-Touch polyurethane finish and is downright addictive to touch. But it’s not as precious as it feels; temperature, humidity and seaside salty air won’t faze the frame. With bladelike back legs that recall Jean Prouvé and a palette (including amber, orange and aubergine) that also hits the French-’40s-style nail on the head, it’ll tempt you to take it in from the cold. $510 for Soft-Touch and lacquer; $1,670 for leather. Molteni & C, 60 Greene St., 212.673.7106.

Bench Mark
Garden furniture inspired Ruché, a new Ligne Roset sofa by the French star Inga Sempé that prompted gasps of delight at the European design shows this year. Slim legs hoist a plush mattress whose quilted texture was mocked up by Sempé on her sewing machine.

Case Studied
Two years ago, Joris Laarman scored a place in MoMA’s permanent collection for his Bone Chair, which mimics the efficiency of human bones. His mission, using life-science lessons to make functional art, is further realized at the Friedman Benda gallery beginning March 4. Utilizing technology hasn’t kept Laarman from challenging it: his Stair bookcase was devised to rival an e-reader—at 18 feet tall, it holds just as many books (around 1,000), and its owner will never have to upgrade. March 4-April 10 at Friedman Benda, 515 W. 26th St., 212.239.8700.