Lore Bathing Club
Harking back to the rich heritage of ancient bathhouses that once inhabited present-day Europe, North Africa, and Britain, but with a distinctly contemporary feel courtesy of Ilse Crawford (the guest on Ep. 107 of Time Sensitive) of Studioilse, Lore Bathing Club is an alternative kind of neighborhood space to New York’s abundance of restaurants, coffee shops, and bars. Opening in NoHo later this month, Lore was conceived by a trifecta of talents: James O’Reilly, co-founder of Neuehouse and a former executive of the health club company Life Time, and Adam Elzer, co-founder and CEO of Everyday Hospitality, in partnership with Crawford—who famously conceived New York’s first Soho House members’ club. Designed by New York–based Ringo Studio, the 6,200-square-foot space spans two floors and features a communal Finnish dry heat sauna, a cold-water pool, and an infrared sauna. Light-toned travertine, textured floors, and hammam-style heated benches feature in the cold plunge, while reddish alder wood and deep chocolate tones define the Finnish sauna. Natural materials and sculptural forms throughout cultivate a calm, organic character, while bold, vibrant reds signify transitions between temperatures. “We were drawn to this practice for the social elements, but stayed for the health and ‘felt’ benefits,” O’Reilly says. “While it’s been around for millenia, science now confirms what tradition always knew: Regular sauna and cold water immersion sessions enrich health.” (Studies from the past five years have shown that practicing this type of thermal conditioning with frequency can help practitioners live longer, stave off neurodegenerative diseases and heart disease, and deliver a host of other immediate and longer-term benefits.) With its weekly and monthly membership programs, Lore encourages its visitors to make bathing an essential part of their weekly or even daily routine and health regimen rather than just an occasional indulgence.

Donald Judd’s Marfa Architecture Office
Following a seven-year restoration and rebuilding—including a hiatus in 2021 due to a fire that consumed much of the building’s central interior and roof structure—Donald Judd’s Architecture Office will reopen to the public on Sept. 20. Located in downtown Marfa, Texas, the two-story, 5,000-square-foot brick structure was built at the turn of the 20th century and originally operated as a boarding house and grocery. Conveniently situated adjacent to his Architecture Studio, Judd purchased the property in 1990, repurposing it as his office. The $3.3 million restoration and reconstruction over the past several years, conceived and designed in collaboration with architects Troy Schaum and Rosalyne Shieh, builds upon Judd’s own efforts to return the structure to its original condition in his final years of life. On display across the revamped ground-floor office are architectural models, building plans, and design prototypes used by Judd, including for the Basel Bahnhof and his former Swiss residence, Eichholteren. The Architecture Apartment, on the building’s second floor, meanwhile, houses a multiroom living space with a permanent installation of six paintings by John Chamberlain and furniture by Alvar Aalto. An extensive collection of plywood and metal furniture by Judd has also been reinstalled throughout the building. Embracing the challenges of sustainability in a desert climate, the structure has been outfitted with a passive cooling system and rooftop solar to improve overall energy performance. One of 11 Judd-associated buildings in Marfa recognized on the National Register of Historic Places, the Architecture Office is the first major building project to be completed in Judd Foundation’s long-term restoration plan for its buildings in Texas and will open with a weekend of programs centered on Judd’s architectural work.

“I Am Many” at Jack Shainman Gallery
Bringing together large-scale sculptures; retroflective, lenticular, and textile works; and a group of mixed-media assemblages, Hank Willis Thomas’s latest exhibition, “I Am Many,” on view through Nov. 1 at Jack Shainman Gallery, deepens the artist’s investigation into the ways in which the past and present remain forever interwoven and constantly in dialogue. The exhibition takes its title from an eponymous work that references photographs of the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike, which saw Black men assembled with posters all bearing the same message of “I AM A MAN.” Thomas (the guest on Ep. 83 of Time Sensitive) calls back to that powerful message with new iterations that expand out from the original phrase, crafted out of retroreflective vinyl that, when activated by direct light, reveals latent images of historic protests. This material also features in “Black Survival Guide, or How to Live Through a Police Riot” (2018), a work originally commissioned by the Delaware Art Museum to mark 50 years since the National Guard occupation following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Thomas combines text from the original document—a practical manual created to help African Americans survive an occupation—with News Journal photographs of the time. By encouraging viewers to light up these works with flash photography, Thomas invites them to reinvigorate the images and prevent them from fading from our collective memory. Also on view are Thomas’s punctum sculptures, which take inspiration from philosopher Roland Barthes’s photographic theory describing a detail or passage within an image—the “punctum”—that profoundly resonates with or “pierces” a viewer. In “Community” (2024), isolated hands linking with arms create a circle that denotes the power in solidarity and community. In “E Pluribus Unum” (2020), an eight-foot stainless steel arm points toward the sky while reflecting viewers’ images back to them in its mirrored surface. Employing universal gestures, these works serve as simultaneously commemorative and galvanizing messages, reminding viewers to never forget the past but also to never lose faith in the future.

A lavish commitment to its home city, the Royal Mansour Marrakech is a hotel like no other, built with love, care, and infinite patience by 1,500 skilled Moroccan artisans and craftspeople commissioned by King Mohammed VI. These builders shaped every square inch of this resplendent hotel that doubles as a true showcase of Arab Andalusian decoration, from the elaborate plaster lambrequin arches that characterize Islamic architecture to the elegant array of richly layered materials, whether mother-of-pearl inlays, marquetry, and wrought ironwork; glazed tiles; or thousands of zellige pieces.

The deft hospitality and impeccable service of the staff, and the quality of what they have on offer, more than lives up to this remarkable setting. As soon as you’re dropped off inside the main gate, you immediately breathe in the gentle fragrance of jasmine and orange blossom in the warm breeze—wafts of the hotel’s lush 6.2-acre gardens. This is but a taste (or a sniff, anyway) of the high level of hospitality to come.

Here, there are no endless hotel corridors. In fact, there are no conventional hotel rooms—or even suites. To stay at the Royal Mansour is to inhabit a private multi-story riad, Marrakech’s traditional townhouse, built in a centuries-old style tailored to the climate. Each of the Royal Mansour’s 53 riads, ranging from one to four bedrooms, has its own traditional courtyard with a fountain at the center. Look up, and you will see your riad’s orange-red walls frame the sky overhead, almost like a James Turrell light sculpture.

The interiors of these riads, with their specially made furniture, echo the character of the exteriors. Beautiful marquetry woodwork, ironwork, tiling, and tadelakt, all created by the country’s finest craftspeople, adorn the rooms. The hotel’s art collection of 327 original works, 223 lithographs, and 20 sculptures by 70 Moroccan artists (most of them born or living in Morocco, including Moa Bennani, Mahi Binebine, Mohamed Hamidi, Tibari Kantour, Majida Khattari, and Abderrahim Yamou) do more than decorate; they express the soul of Marrakech’s artistic vision. The living-dining rooms come with fireplaces—it’s not always high-summer heat here—and all of the riads culminate in a rooftop plunge pool.

The extensive gardens, designed by the Spanish landscape designer Luis Vallejo, who also created the gardens for the Royal Mansour Casablanca, have paths lined with orange trees, roses, and hibiscus that meander past seven private pavilions in which to dine or simply to relax. In the plentiful vegetable gardens, herbs and salad leaves grow in raised beds, and beehives produce a most delicious honey.

Although it’s certainly a hotel in which one never needs to see another guest, if you want a more social stay, there are the Royal Mansour’s more theatrical public spaces. Indoors and out, they reflect a nuanced set of memories of a destination with a long and complex history, where the call to prayer echoes over a city that was a French protectorate for half of the 20th century. For total privacy, there is the Moorish-style spa and hammam near the gardens. Birdsong may still echo in your ears as you’re guided through the lightest of lacelike mashrabiya wrought-iron structures, to sit by a fountain that flows into a decorative pool filled with Moroccan roses, one of the many waterworks here that celebrate the Arab Andalusian tradition of water channels, streams, and basins. From this bright sunny space, you are led into one of two traditional Moroccan hammams and invited to lie on the cool marble floors of these warmed, vaulted chambers for a traditional Ghassoul scrub–wrap ritual.

An edible history lesson, dinner at the highly celebrated Hélène Darroze’s La Grande Table Marocaine unfolds with each meticulously researched, gorgeously presented local dish, such as sh’hiwates (Moroccan salads), pastillas, and a traditional seven-vegetable couscous, all accompanied by an accomplished musical trio on strings, drums, and vocals. More relaxed is La Grande Brasserie, with Darroze’s take on classic French cuisine, including the signature appetizer of hot bread piled high with Gruyère cheese. Next door, there is a gleaming, sun-filled kitchen in which guests can learn the finer points of Moroccan cuisine with chef Zahira Lairi, who generously and gently shares her skills for making briouates and lamb tagine.

During most of the year, Marrakshi evenings are warm enough to dine alfresco in the formal, symmetrical Moroccan garden at Massimiliano Alajmo’s Michelin-starred Sesamo, flanked by terra-cotta walls, with a delightful water channel that runs down the center and sparkles in the evening thanks to traditional lanterns emitting delicate candlelight through their metal fretwork panels. Jerome Videau’s open-air café, Le Jardin, dispenses global flavors from Peru to Japan, with sushi, sashimi, and ceviche that bring the taste of the sea to this desert city.

Inside and out, every aspect of the Royal Mansour experience is rooted in Morocco’s distinctive culture and tradition of craftsmanship—one that it serves to underpin and energize at each turn.

This is a condensed and edited excerpt of a text by Sarah Miller, published in the new book Culture: The Leading Hotels of the World (Monacelli), with editorial direction by The Slowdown.