Latest news with #JeffKoons
Bloomberg
09-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
The Robot Sculptors of Italy
Businessweek Two studio owners whose clients include Jeff Koons and Maya Lin dominate robot-chiseled art. One is spending big to preserve the human touch. By Matthew Hart Photographs by Alecio Ferrari and Lyndon French July 9, 2025 at 6:00 AM EDT Sai Baba lay on his back in the cold sunlight on the mountain, his expression untroubled by the four-and-a-half-ton steel robot drilling at his head. The machine buzzed away in a mist of water and atomized stone. Its arm could move up and down and in and out. It could twist, tilt and spin its tool. Altogether it could work along nine axes—an impressive range of motion. Through the glass walls of the factory behind me, I saw other robots toiling, but this was the one Giacomo Massari had brought me up to look at. Sai Baba was an Indian sage who died in 1918 and is still revered today. The followers who were paying Massari $600,000 to carve his likeness wanted something big. They were getting it. It had taken Massari's team a month to locate the 100-ton block of top-grade marble needed for the job and another month to define the block with diamond saws, coax it from the surrounding rock, and get it to the robot without breaking it. When finished, Massari said, the 15-ton statue would be the biggest robot-carved sculpture ever. It would take the machine four months. 'At that point it will be 95% done,' Massari said. 'The final 5% will be the hand-finishing. 'How long for that?' He shrugged. 'Three months?' We stood there contemplating the robot. Back and forth and back and forth went the diamond-studded carving tool. It never paused. It never took a break. By contrast the hand-finishers would stop for lunch and bathroom breaks and insist on halting work altogether at the end of the day. Maybe even go home and sleep. Humans, what can you say. We were high above Carrara, the world's biggest and most famous source of marble. Hundreds of quarries have worked these slopes in the Apuan Alps above the Tuscan coast since Roman times. Carvers prized the creamy marble of Carrara for its granular fineness, a quality that helped produce an illusion known as morbidezza —the softness of living flesh. Gods and heroes and rearing horses have poured from their chisels. Smirking cherubs by the zillion. When he was 22 years old, Michelangelo ransacked the hills in search of the perfect block—on the heights above us we could see the scar of the quarry where he found it. Two years later he produced the Pietà, the work that ignited the High Renaissance. Many of the most famous images of Western art were made from the rock of this great metamorphic uplift. Rome itself, the Eternal City, was clothed in Carrara stone. It's as if the entire project of the West, its courts and capitols, its idols and its art, came streaming from these hills. Today the great meme factory is short of carvers. Their numbers have fallen sharply. Studios run by the same families for generations have closed. Many artists embrace the robots, praising their speed and accuracy. The machines save money too, taking half the time to perform the laborious roughing-out stage for which sculptors would otherwise often hire specialist artisans. Despite some artists' enthusiasm, though, they tend to hide their robot use behind nondisclosure agreements. Carrara is knee-deep in NDAs, and I asked Massari why. 'Artists,' he said with a tender smile, as if we were talking about his kids. 'They don't want to destroy the idea that they are still chiseling with a hammer.' As a segment of the marble business, sculpture is dwarfed by the industrial side, which slices slabs by the millions of tons each year. Robots help these companies mill countertops and shower stalls for markets around the world. But fine art sculpture is big business too, worth billions of dollars a year. The first robot sculptor appeared in Carrara in 2005. Now there are about 30, and the total worldwide is around 100. Two men play outsize roles in this rapidly evolving business. One is Massari, the more evangelistic of the two. His corporate mothership, publicly traded Litix SpA, trumpets Massari's vision of the future on the first page of a slick marketing brochure. 'We Don't Need Another Michelangelo: In Italy, It's Robots' Turn to Sculpt,' proclaims the newspaper headline he reproduced from a New York Times piece on his company. The other man is a bluff Midwesterner named Jim Durham. In Carrara, they'd known him for decades. He often bought stone there for his thriving fabrication business in America. Still, the Italians must not have grasped what truly drove him. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been so surprised when he completed a yearslong stalk and, last Oct. 29, snapped up Franco Cervietti, the most respected carving atelier in Italy. Some in the Italian marble business were merely stunned; others, horrified. 'An American!' a third-generation stone trader gasped when I asked him about it. They should have seen Durham coming, because back at his $20 million stone fabrication plant in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, he was executing pieces for some of the world's top artists: names like Maya Lin and Martin Puryear. He was the biggest producer of fine art stone sculpture in America, and now, with his Franco Cervietti purchase, the world. To the Italians, this coup may have looked like Rome falling to the Goths—in would come the robots, and out would go the hallowed traditions of the last great hand-carving house in Italy. But that wasn't what Durham had in mind at all. Litix creates its robots at a wholly owned subsidiary called Robotor. The business occupies one end of a sprawling stone yard in the industrial heart of Carrara. Massari took me on a drive past huge blocks of marble to a gray, barnlike structure. Inside was an immaculate assembly plant and a busy staff. About a dozen robots stood around in different stages of construction. Most had come from Kuka AG, a Chinese-owned German manufacturer. Massari pays $70,000 for a basic robot, the kind you might find snapping windshields into cars on an assembly line. He transforms it into a sculpting machine he can sell for north of $200,000 by tearing it apart and reassembling it with extra joints. Then he adds computing power. 'Kuka has a language, and we write our own code to go inside that language,' Massari explained. It's the code that turns the robot into a sculptor. A robot starts with a block known as the resting model. The machine carves by following instructions called toolpaths, which map the carving tool's successive routes through the stone. These instructions change every time the machine removes a layer of stone, because the removal effectively creates a new resting model, and the route from that to the finished piece will therefore be different. Big-name artists may have their own staffs to write toolpaths; for those who don't, Massari offers a subscription service that takes on the coding for them. The client uploads a 3D file showing the desired finished piece and marries it with another 3D file, this one describing the block of stone selected for the job. Robotor's system does the rest. The simplest version of this software goes for $5,000 a year, and progressively more powerful iterations are available for $10,000 and $15,000. 'We try to make it easy for the client,' Massari said. 'They make the design, we do everything else.' Human vs. Machine (and Human) Time required to sculpt a reproduction of "Amore e Psiche" by Antonio Canova at Robotor This makes the process sound simple, and sometimes it is. A lot of Sai Baba, for example, was his flowing robe—a breeze for the robot. But the software's origin and evolution were industrial, not aesthetic. It understands 'Turn left,' not 'Fix those lips!' Moreover, a carving robot doesn't experience the hand-brain feedback loop that neuroscience calls 'embodied cognition,' in which our brains tell our hands what to do and the hands help the brain to think about it. All this was running through my mind as we pushed through a door into a studio and met the toolpath from hell. The robot stood to one side. It seemed to be considering the figure posed before it—for sure an eyeful. Soaring above us, her 8-foot height increased by the pedestal she stood on, was a white marble ballerina. Her expression was so softly carved you couldn't tell if she was in the throes of ecstasy or sound asleep. It didn't really matter, because the girl herself wasn't the main event. The real star was her skirt—a tempest of lace that foamed around her slender body. It was hard to imagine it had ever been a block of stone. 'Wow,' I said. 'I know,' said Massari. 'How long did that take to carve?' 'Twenty months.' And still not finished. I could see little lumpy bits of stone clotted up high in the folds. We studied the statue for a minute. ' Jeff Koons?' I asked. The truth was, I'd recognized it immediately. A pink version is all over the internet. Massari didn't say a word. He let me gape for a bit before ushering me from the studio. I supposed the work was covered by an NDA, but why the secrecy? Koons is pretty much the General Motors of machine-assisted art—he'd be more likely to make a documentary about the robots than conceal them. The answer may have had more to do with the proprietary value of the toolpath, which could have taken years to code. Koons is, after all, one of the most successful artists in history, and there could be any number of purely business reasons for shielding his projects with NDAs. When I spoke with Koons about the ballerina later, he acknowledged the work as his. The one at Robotor was part of a planned run of 12—four each in pink, black and white. He explained that he'd taken the form of the ballerinas from Meissen figurines —German porcelain statuettes that have had an avid following since the 18th century—and scaled it up. Interestingly, he discovered that Meissen craftsmen created the lacey skirts by dipping actual lace into porcelain slip. Then, when the pieces were fired in the kiln, the lace burned away, leaving only its ceramic memory. When Koons' workshop made CT scans of the original figurines, the staff spotted hollows where the lace had been. Later, when his coders wrote the toolpaths for his own ballerinas, he said, they had to eliminate the hollow spaces—presumably so the robots wouldn't try to drill them out. The hard truth is that carving robots are literal to a fault. If a human makes a mistake, the robot won't catch it. That happened to Keara McMartin, who runs a studio in Pietrasanta, the town near Carrara where most of the sculpting has traditionally happened. She'd sent out a job—a larger-than-life head—to a local robot lab. But the lab forgot to swap out the drill bit used for roughing and replace it with the one for finishing, which was 4 millimeters shorter than the roughing bit. The robot just kept carving—4 millimeters deeper than it should have. By the time someone noticed the shrinking head, it was ruined. Making matters worse, the stone was a beautiful dark-green Chinese marble that turned out to be irreplaceable. The quarry had mined the last of it. McMartin came to Carrara 45 years ago, after art school in Maryland. She told me she misses the social life she found back then—the bars teeming with young sculptors, the swaggering specialists known as ornatisti. 'Even at work,' she said, 'there was always a huge party when a job was finished. The new generation, sometimes they just send you a digital file. They may not even come to the studio.' Yet the old artisanal community was withering even then. 'The work can be sporadic,' McMartin said, 'sometimes with long periods of unemployment.' It was also hard and poorly paid, which discouraged some artists from passing on their skills. 'There were master craftsmen in Pietrasanta who would deny their own children access to their studios,' she said. The robots' arrival simply sped up a decline that was already underway. Then the inevitable happened: Where there had been too many carvers, now there were too few. Robot sculpture often needs hand-finishing. The Koons ballerina, after 20 months with the robot, would probably go through a year of manual finishing, maybe longer. It would be exacting work—getting up into the lace to finish the holes and hollow out the flounces. Such work would be too delicate for a robot. With the number of carving studios reduced, the surviving ones, with their veteran artisans, have become increasingly valuable—none more so than the atelier of Franco Cervietti. Cervietti had the carvers, and he had the cred. His was the Vatican's go-to studio for conserving and restoring pieces from its vast collection. When Milan Cathedral—festooned inside and out with one of the densest hoards of sculpture in the world—had a restoration job that demanded an artist's touch, Franco Cervietti was on the speed dial. A-listers like Koons sent pieces there. That was the studio Jim Durham bought, and the reason he bought it. Durham grew up in Fairfax, Virginia, the son of a military officer attached to the Pentagon and a mother who'd trained as a nurse but ended up doing a different kind of triage, sorting and prioritizing the daily mail at the White House. At college he majored in chemistry but concluded that life in a lab wasn't for him. He'd had summer jobs at stone yards in the DC area, cutting flagstone and loading crushed marble into the backs of station wagons, and he found that he liked the work—the mineral smell, the materiality. Drawn to the artistic possibilities of the medium, he signed up for a night course in sculpture at George Washington University. 'My goal was to carve a perfect rose, with the petals so thin the light could pass through them,' Durham told me. He worked with a piece of gray Vermont marble and a mallet bought for him by his father. Every few days he would buy a fresh tea rose to use as his model. Over the weeks, the rose emerged from the stone. But when he got down to the tiniest details, he couldn't find chisels small enough for the work. 'I was working days at a stone yard in Falls Church at the time,' Durham recalled, 'and I mentioned the problem to one of the German masons who ran the place. There were four of them—gnarled old guys who knew a ton about stone. This one grabbed an empty Pepsi bottle and smashed it on the floor. Those old soft-drink bottles were really chunky, and the glass shards were thick. 'There's your chisel,' he told me, and he was right. Some of the shards tapered to a sort of diamond point, and if you held one between your thumb and forefinger you could scrape out stone with it.' When Durham's wife enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Chicago, he packed away his mallet, bought a book called Who's Who in the Stone Business, and started looking for work. At a quarry in South Elgin, Illinois, now a Chicago suburb but then still rural, the owner drove Durham around the property then asked if he thought he could run it. 'I said sure. That was on a Thursday. On Monday I had 50 union guys waiting for me when I got there and heavy equipment I knew absolutely zero about.' He learned fast. 'The demand was crazy,' he said. So crazy that in a single year he was able to run up the price of a ton of limestone from $18 to $96. Another quarry snapped him up, this one in Wisconsin. Two years later he teamed up with his biggest customer and bought out the stone fabricator that owned the quarry. He was 25. Durham ran Madison Block & Stone for eight years, fabricating countless tons of masonry and custom stone and developing a presence in architectural work. By the time he went solo and formed Quarra Stone Co., his private company, he felt increasingly drawn to sculptural fabrication. He brought in master carvers from Germany so he could compete for complex jobs. His confidence grew, and in 2017 he took his most ambitious shot—bidding on the Eisenhower memorial in Washington, DC. The design was by Frank Gehry. Durham threw himself into the pitch, visiting the Eisenhower library in Abilene, Kansas, and constructing a full-scale model of Gehry's design that included actual Kansas prairie grasses. The bid failed when the jury decided Durham didn't have the fine art chops. Crushed, he made a vow to himself: 'That is never going to happen to me again.' In March, while I was visiting Pietrasanta, the machines at Durham's Wisconsin plant were finishing a pair of granite reliefs by Maya Lin—a 7,000-square-foot installation for the outside of the new JPMorgan Chase & Co. headquarters on Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Some 30 blocks to the north, Charles Ray's monumental granite Two horses stands at the entrance to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's contemporary galleries. Durham's robots carved that too, just as they've split apart huge blocks and boulders and pixelated them with bright epoxy dots for Sarah Sze, a MacArthur Fellow and veteran of both the Venice and Whitney biennales. Clearly Durham had the fine art chops that others once thought he lacked. He himself had never been among the doubters, otherwise he wouldn't have had the confidence to pursue the famous Cervietti atelier and nail it for $7 million. I met Durham for lunch in a comfortable bar at his hotel in Pietrasanta, where he now spends two months a year. He's a tall, thickset man, his hair cut short and neatly combed. He ordered a mocktail. Beside him was Martin Foot, the artistic director at Durham's Italian spinoff company, Quarra Italia Srl. Wiry and gray-haired, in jeans and a sweater, Foot asked for red wine and, when he got it, raised his glass. 'A real stone carver,' he intoned, 'is a robot that runs on this.' Foot first picked up a chisel when he was 14, in his uncle's stone-restoration studio in Liverpool, England. Five decades later he's still carving, making sculpture in the classical tradition at his studio in Pietrasanta. After Durham lost the Eisenhower bid, it was Foot he hired to advise him. In a tidy stroke of fate, the man who'd recommended Foot was Cervietti. 'I didn't need any help with robots,' said Durham, who'd already had them at his American plant for years. 'Nobody can compete with us in robot fabrication.' But there's only so far a robot will go. 'People think if you feed it enough data, a robot can make a perfect replica of anything.' One time, as an experiment, Durham scanned a tabletop in his conference room. The resulting 3-D file comprised 20 million data points, and he loaded it into one of his machines. 'The software took one look at the 20 million points and reduced them to three,' he said. 'Three points is all you need for a flat surface, so that's what I was going to get. But it wouldn't be the surface I'd scanned, with all the little nicks and bumps that made it different from any other surface.' 'And that's what robots do to sculpture,' Foot interjected. 'I see it. The art is starting to look the same. The robot doesn't take the art up. The art comes down to meet the robot.' 'You can get a pretty good finish with a robot,' Durham said. 'Where you quit is when you reach the place where the human can do a job better. Everybody makes a choice about where to make that switch. If you let the robot go as far as it can, you finish the job faster, but you get a sort of Ikea version of a sculpture. Some people with big robot operations might think they can make art faster and cheaper. I say, knock yourself out. I'm not Ikea.' At the studio in Pietrasanta, still called Franco Cervietti in deference to the master, Durham has a single milling machine, with two more on order for delivery this year. There are no robots as such, though advanced milling machines are robots of a kind—automated and programmable and capable of executing intricate tasks along multiple axes. I met Foot at the studio one morning, in an industrial suburb of the town. The place looked like a warehouse, an impression that carried inside, where plaster models of famous sculpture loomed from the clutter. Foot was directing a wholesale rearrangement of this impressive stash—the largest, he told me, in the world. Such models are essential to making copies of existing sculpture. We took off on an eye-popping tour, shelf after shelf and room after room. Bernini. Verrocchio. Rodin. Durham planned to photograph every model—there were more than 2,500—to create a proprietary database. This treasury would be an important part of his new Italian business, allowing him to fill orders for reproductions of famous sculpture. It was one of the reasons he'd bought the atelier. Another reason was hard at work upstairs. The satisfying smell of cut stone filled the air as I followed Foot to a sunny workshop. We stopped to watch a finisher named Simone Fortini work on a copy of Antonio Canova's Reclining Naiad, an 1814 sculpture of a river nymph sprawled on a couch. Fanned out on a table and pinned to an easel nearby were dozens of photographs of the original. A commercial gallery in Florence had ordered the copy, Foot explained, and sent them a model produced by another studio in Pietrasanta. 'I thought the model was off,' Foot said, 'and when we milled the piece we left some extra stone in that problem area so we could do that whole part by hand.' Fortini was trying to recapture the languid grace of the original. I was struck by how raptly he studied the photographs, and by the tenderness of his expression. His take-home pay would average around $3,000 a month. He was 47 and had been doing this for 30 years. Through Foot, I asked if he came from a carving family and, when he said no, why he'd taken it up. The question stopped him. Light streamed through the windows of the long room as he considered it. Carving is a grueling trade. Stone chips nick the skin. A misstruck chisel can cause injury. Fingertips bleed from polishing for days on end. Every force a carver exerts on the stone is a force the stone will send back into his hand. They suffer this every day, and finally Fortini said why. 'For the passion of the stone,' he said, in a voice not much louder than a murmur. His face was powdered in marble dust. 'For the love of the stone.' I caught Foot watching me. He raised his eyebrows to make sure I hadn't missed the point. The love of the stone—that's what Durham had bought from Cervietti. For $7 million, he now owned the most distinguished stone-carving house in the world. Often when I spoke to Durham, we ended up speculating about what sculptors call the zero surface. The zero surface is the point where the robot stops carving. It has followed its track through the stone and is done. Only an artist can go past the zero surface into the illimitable data cloud of the human soul. Durham's arc, from a suburban stone yard in Maryland to the most storied carving atelier in Italy, sped eagerly toward that point, where art is perfect and sublimely certain solely because the maker put a chisel one way and not another. 'The unexplained human choice,' he called it. 'Could a robot make an unexplained choice?' I asked the last time we spoke, and Durham chuckled. 'Not yet.'
Business Insider
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
I spent a night at the 5-star Fairmont Pacific Rim in Vancouver and regretted not booking a longer stay
I spent one night at the Fairmont Pacific Rim, a five-star hotel in Vancouver, British Columbia. I slept in a Fairmont Gold room that costs about $725 per night. I left the luxury hotel wishing I'd booked a longer stay. When I think of the Fairmont hotel brand, two words come to mind: historic luxury. From Quebec City's Fairmont Le Château Frontenac to the iconic Plaza Hotel towering over Central Park in Manhattan, every Fairmont hotel I'd stayed in or gawked at from across the street had been reminiscent of a renaissance castle — until I spent one night at the Fairmont Pacific Rim in Vancouver, British Columbia, in May. "We're a lot more contemporary with a different demographic," a representative of the Fairmont Pacific Rim told Business Insider. While Fairmont's heritage hotels give guests a peek into the past, the Fairmont Pacific Rim embraces modern luxury. The five-star hotel has won numerous awards since it opened in 2010, including being named the No. 1 hotel in Western Canada in the Condé Nast Traveler 2024 Readers' Choice Awards. One lavish night in a $725 room at the Fairmont Pacific Rim swept me off my feet. In fact, I left wishing I'd booked it for a longer stay. The Fairmont Pacific Rim is in downtown Vancouver's Coal Harbour neighborhood. The Fairmont Pacific Rim was one of many glass skyscrapers lining the Coal Harbour waterfront in downtown Vancouver. But it was the only one with strips of text lining several stories of the 22-floor facade. In 2-foot-tall, spaceless, lowercase Helvetica Bold lettering, each line read, "lying on top of a building…the clouds looked no nearer than when I was lying on the street." The installation by UK artist Liam Gillick was the first of many indicators that the Fairmont Pacific Rim celebrates art and design. The second was the vibrant BMW coupe in front of the entrance, which looked like a page from a comic book. According to the hotel's Instagram page, pop artist Jeff Koons hand-painted the fancy car. Inside, the lobby is known as "Vancouver's living room." From fashion and music to sculptures and paintings, the Lobby Lounge showcased all types of art. High-end fashion was displayed on mannequins in glass boxes and hanging bird cages. Nestled in a corner was a stage with a piano and drum kit, played by a range of musicians on the rise. Spinning figures of children stood over 6 feet tall on top of a marble fireplace. The Lobby Lounge also has a raw bar serving sushi and cocktails. "It's commonly known as Vancouver's living room because it's so popular for locals," the hotel representative told BI. I wish I'd had more time to hang out in the lobby and listen to live music while munching on sushi. Since I was in a Fairmont Gold room, I checked in on the 20th floor. You can think of Fairmont Gold as a first-class experience. It's an elevated section of the hotel on the 20th, 21st, and 22nd floors with premium rooms and its own mini lobby lounge with complimentary snacks throughout the day. "Essentially, the Fairmont Gold product is like a club floor," the hotel rep told BI. "It is a brand-new product for us, which we're super excited about." Fairmont Pacific Rim's Gold experience launched in March 2025. The rep said the design of the lounge and rooms was inspired by Vancouver's natural beauty. Floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded the lounge, offering views of the harbor, skyline, and mountains. The Fairmont Gold Lounge had complimentary breakfast, afternoon snacks, and evening appetizers exclusively for Gold guests. I was surprised to learn that breakfast was made to order rather than served buffet-style. I ordered scrambled eggs and chicken sausage and paired them with toast, fruit, and fresh orange juice. The eggs were soft and fluffy, just like I like them. All the ingredients tasted fresh and filled me up without spending a dime. If I had stayed longer, I would have liked to try more of the complimentary breakfast dishes, like the brioche French toast or the avocado toast. I stayed in a 400-square-foot Gold Harbour Mountain View room on the 20th floor. The hotel has 367 guest rooms and 60 Fairmont Gold rooms. I stayed in a Gold Harbour Mountain View room that sleeps up to four people. The hotel rep said that the best available rate for this room is 984 Canadian dollars, or about $725, though BI received a media rate for the one-night stay. My room had a king-sized bed, a bathroom, a sitting area, and a balcony accessible via floor-to-ceiling windows. I thought the room was stunning. With custom furniture and unique decor, this was one of the most beautiful hotel rooms I'd ever stayed in. I was immediately taken by the handblown glass Bocci chandelier, which had air plants peeking out from the bulbs. I sank into the custom velvet couch in front of the windows, and warm accent lighting made the space feel even more luxurious. Out on the balcony, I marveled at the grand views of the harbor, spotting seaplanes, yachts, and skyscrapers sitting beneath mountains. Upscale amenities enhanced the luxury feel. My bedside table had an oil diffuser, a smart tablet with room controls, spa booking capabilities, and in-room dining services. The framed TV across from the bed was a whopping 75 inches with a Bose sound bar. I appreciated the small details, too, like the leather box that held the TV remote and lifestyle magazines with elegant spreads highlighting architecture, photography, design, travel, and more. In the evening, an attendant came by for turndown service, where I selected premium pillows and oil scents from a menu. The spacious bathroom felt like a spa. Each Fairmont Gold room has an oversize bathroom coated in black marble, with two sinks, a lit mirror, a glass shower with two showerheads, and a deep bathtub topped with a resin tray. A separate toilet room with a sliding door was at the back of the bathroom. The toilet was luxurious, with a light beaming inside the bowl and an upscale bidet with options to heat the seat, change the water temperature, and a dryer mode. The bathroom had luxury amenities from Le Labo toiletries to a Dyson hair dryer that I fell in love with. After five minutes of use, my damp hair, which drapes past my waistline, looked like it had just gotten a blowout. But the real spa was down on the fifth floor. The five-star Fairmont Spa set a calming mood upon entering. Warm lighting beamed through thin wood panels with a soothing water feature against a wall. In addition to massage, facial, and meditation treatments, the spa has several amenities, including a mineral bath, fitness center, Jacuzzi, and infrared sauna, among others. There's also an outdoor relaxation lounge with gravity chairs and views of the surrounding city. During my stay, I didn't have time to book a spa treatment, but I'll be sure to do so next time. The pool is outdoors on the sixth floor. From November through April, a portion of the pool deck transforms into the Nordic Spa, which moves guests through a range of temperatures with a cedar plank sauna and cold plunge pools. On the second floor, I found the hotel's restaurant, Botanist. Botanist looked like a restaurant inside a greenhouse. Dining tables were surrounded by living plants, lit by floor-to-ceiling windows. "The menu is inspired by the Pacific Northwest, so everything is hyper-local," the hotel rep told BI. The restaurant serves brunch, lunch, and dinner. The menu features sustainably sourced proteins like wagyu beef, grilled octopus, and black pepper-crusted salmon. It also includes hand-cut pasta, locally sourced produce, and lobster Benedict. Also on the second floor, there was a rotating art gallery. "This hotel is a platform for creativity," the hotel rep told BI. "We blend influences of art, music, and fashion." The art in the Pacific Gallery rotates every three months. During my visit, the exhibit was Angela Teng's Colourwork, a series where crocheted acrylic paint acts as yarn. The vibrant art popped in an otherwise white room. I think art enthusiasts would be inspired by a stay at the Fairmont Pacific Rim. But don't book just one night like I did.
The Verge
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
You can own a functional version of Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog sculptures for $750
Jeff Koons, best known for his Balloon Dog sculptures that have sold for as much as $58 million, has collaborated with Lexon Design and The Broad museum in Los Angeles to make his iconic artworks more functional and accessible. Available for preorder through Lexon's website starting June 17th are a new 11-inch tall Balloon Dog Speaker and Balloon Dog Lamp that are each made from (an unspecified) 'high-quality translucent material' that reveals the internal electronics that make each more than just a piece of art. Both are only being produced in a 'limited supply' and each one will set you back $750 with shipping expected to start sometime in October 2025. That is extremely expensive, and you're definitely paying a premium because this is an official collaboration with Koons. But to Lexon's credit, at least on paper, the company seems to have packed these with solid hardware. Inside the Balloon Dog Speaker are a total of 'six ultra-precise active drivers and four finely tuned passive radiators' designed to deliver 360-degrees of 'high-fidelity sound.' We haven't had a chance to test the sound quality of those drivers, but that's more than similarly-sized Bluetooth speakers that aren't shaped like a novelty dog often utilize. The speaker connects to mobile devices using Bluetooth 5.0, and with built-in microphones it can be used as a hands-free speakerphone. If you've got $1,500 burning a hole in your pocket, you can also pair two of the Balloon Dog Speakers to create a true stereo sound experience. Inside the Balloon Dog Lamp you'll find nearly 400 LEDs hidden in tubes that create the appearance of neon lighting. All combined, the LEDs can generate up to 200 lumens of brightness with color options that include warm and cool white light plus the full spectrum of color lighting. Although preorders are limited to just two of each piece, Lexon says its 'Easy Sync technology' allows the lighting intensity and color of an 'infinite number of Balloon Dog Lamps' to be synchronized so you can destroy your budget by filling a room, or your entire home, with matching illumination.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Lexon and Jeff Koons Collaborate to Revolutionize Art with Technology
Introducing the Balloon Dog Speaker and the Balloon Dog Lamp: two innovative editions imagined with The Broad, designed to inflate iconic art into everyday life. PARIS, June 11, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lexon is proud to announce a historic collaboration with Jeff Koons, unveiling the Balloon Dog Speaker and Balloon Dog Lamp: two reimagined, sculptural objects that merge art and technology in an unprecedented way. These official editions envisioned with The Broad in Los Angeles bring the playful spirit of Koons' iconic art into homes worldwide. Pre-orders for this collection will be available starting June 17, 2025, exclusively on with limited supply. A Transparent Fusion of Art and Function The Balloon Dog Speaker and Balloon Dog Lamp expand Jeff Koons' iconic Balloon Dog into new, everyday objects, using a high-quality translucent material that echoes its signature curves and captivating presence. Originally conceived in the 1990s, Koons' Balloon Dog is one of the most recognized symbols of contemporary art. Now, in partnership with Lexon, this masterpiece has been 'inflated' with technology, giving rise to functional and accessible objects. The transformation of Koons' Balloon Dog into a tech-powered object is a remarkable feat of engineering, with over 50,000 hours dedicated to perfecting every detail. Conceived as a true acoustic art piece equipped with Bluetooth 5.0 technology, the Balloon Dog speaker delivers 360° high-fidelity sound with exceptional richness and depth. Its enveloping soundscape is born from the harmonious alliance of six ultra-precise active drivers and four finely tuned passive radiators, meticulously crafted to elevate the low frequencies. Every note fills the space with rare sensory intensity, transforming each moment into a deeply immersive listening experience. Packed with built-in microphones, it supports hands-free calls through your connected device, offering a fun and practical way to enjoy your Balloon Dog Speaker. Thanks to True Wireless Stereo (TWS) technology, two Balloon Dog Speakers can be paired to create an expansive stereo soundstage, offering greater depth, and a more powerful audio presence. The Balloon Dog Lamp harnesses advanced multicolor lighting through nearly 400 integrated LEDs, delivering up to 200 lumens of brightness. It offers a wide selection of hues including warm and cold white, blue, magenta, green, orange, and more, allowing users to tailor the lighting to any setting. More than illumination, it offers a dynamic play of light, empowering users to shape the atmosphere and mood of any space with precision and elegance. With Lexon's proprietary 'Easy Sync' technology, the Balloon Dog Lamp offers a next-level lighting experience, allowing you to connect and synchronize an infinite number of Balloon Dog Lamps in color and brightness effortlessly. Whether placed in different corners of a room or side by side for a striking visual effect, the Balloon Dog Lamps instantly sync together, creating a perfectly coordinated ambiance. Both objects share the same sculptural dimensions of 11 inches / 28cm height and 2 pounds / 900 gr of technology are crafted for durability and everyday use. This collaboration merges artistic heritage with technological innovation, transforming an iconic artwork into functional design with purpose, presence, and everyday relevance. "I'm excited about this new collaboration with Lexon, which has transformed Balloon Dog. The Balloon Dog Lamp has a wide range of vibrant colors, while the Balloon Dog Speaker surrounds us with immersive sound. The two objects are an exciting way for Balloon Dog to enter into our daily lives where art, design, and technology come together," says Jeff Koons. "Our creative alliance with Jeff Koons marks a historic moment for Lexon. It is both an honor and a milestone to bring together our passion for design and technology through a bold reimagining of Balloon Dog, one of the most iconic artworks of our time. This collaboration challenged us to go beyond form and function, crafting pieces that are not only innovative, but emotionally resonant; designed to be lived with, used daily, and cherished as true pieces of art. Through these two new Editions, we proudly reaffirm Lexon's mission as a Maison de Design Française: to make timeless, high-quality design accessible to all, offering everyday objects that elevate life through beauty and purpose," says Boris Brault, CEO of Lexon. Exclusive, Certified Authenticity Each piece is engraved with Jeff Koons' signature under its front paws and comes with a certificate of authenticity. To further solidify its exclusivity, both the certificate and the packaging feature a hologram, reinforcing authentication and enhancing its collectible value. The Balloon Dog Speaker and Balloon Dog Lamp are produced in a limited supply, with pre-orders starting exclusively on beginning June 17 2025. Shipping for pre-orders will start in October 2025. An Immersive Journey Through Augmented Reality To further elevate this artistic and technological experience, Lexon has unveiled an augmented reality (AR) feature that allows everyone to preview the Balloon Dog Lamp and Balloon Dog Speaker directly in their own space. This immersive tool enables users to visualize the pieces in real scale and context, bringing the essence of the collaboration into their homes and daily lives. By merging digital innovation with iconic design, the AR experience makes interacting with art more personal, accessible, and playful. A Historic Collaboration with The Broad and The Shop at The Broad As part of this collaboration, the Balloon Dog Speaker and Balloon Dog Lamp will be showcased for the first time at The Shop at The Broad on September 20, 2025, celebrating the museum's 10th anniversary. The Broad, home to the original Balloon Dog sculpture, continues its mission to democratize art, making it accessible and meaningful beyond gallery walls. This partnership with Lexon enables the fusion of cutting-edge technology with iconic art, providing the public with a tangible, everyday connection to Koons' creations. From September 20 to October 20 2025, the Balloon Dog Speaker and Balloon Dog Lamp will be available for an exclusive one-month sale at The Shop at The Broad, both in-store and online, offering visitors another unique opportunity to see and purchase these limited-edition pieces. First Pre-order Details Pre-order Launch: June 17, 2025, starting exclusively on Price: 750 $/€ per unit (Speaker or Lamp) Shipping Start: October 2025 Pre-order Limits: 2 units per product, per customer Worldwide Availability: Pre-orders available internationally About Lexon Since its foundation in 1991, Lexon has relentlessly pushed boundaries and created a difference in the world of design, all while staying true to its commitment of making small objects useful, beautiful, innovative, and affordable. Whether in home, office, leisure, or travel accessories, Lexon has established a unique relationship with creativity and partnered with the best designers around the world to create timeless collections of lifestyle products, sold at million pieces every year. Today, with more than 30 years of existence, +250 awards, collaborations with some of the most renowned designers, a retail presence in 90 countries across the Globe, Lexon has truly established itself as an iconic French design brand. About Jeff Koons Jeff Koons is a leading contemporary artist known for transforming everyday objects into bold, reflective sculptures that engage with art history and modern culture. Born in 1955 in York, Pennsylvania, he studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since his first solo exhibition in 1980, his work has been showcased globally in major institutions like MoMA, the Guggenheim, and Tate and of course, The Broad. Koons' iconic pieces, including Balloon Dog, Rabbit, and Puppy, explore themes of self-acceptance and transcendence. His monumental floral sculptures and mirror-finished stainless steel works challenge perceptions of materiality and craftsmanship. Honored internationally, Koons has received the Légion d'Honneur from France and the U.S. Department of State's Medal of the Arts. He has also contributed to cultural diplomacy and child protection efforts through the Koons Family International Law and Policy Institute. About The Broad The Broad's mission is to make contemporary art accessible to the widest possible audience. Founded in 2015 on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, the museum offers free general admission and presents an active program of special exhibitions and innovative live events, all within a landmark building designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The Broad is home to the Broad collection, one of the world's leading collections of postwar and contemporary art, which continues to grow as new artists and artworks are added. The museum is the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation's worldwide lending library, which has been loaning collection works to museums around the world since 1984. An expansion of the museum will open before the 2028 summer Olympics in Los Angeles, creating even greater public access. View source version on Contacts Annabel Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Business Wire
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Wire
Lexon and Jeff Koons Collaborate to Revolutionize Art with Technology
PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Lexon is proud to announce a historic collaboration with Jeff Koons, unveiling the Balloon Dog Speaker and Balloon Dog Lamp: two reimagined, sculptural objects that merge art and technology in an unprecedented way. These official editions envisioned with The Broad in Los Angeles bring the playful spirit of Koons' iconic art into homes worldwide. Pre-orders for this collection will be available starting June 17, 2025, exclusively on with limited supply. Lexon is proud to announce a historic collaboration with Jeff Koons, unveiling the Balloon Dog Speaker and Balloon Dog Lamp: two reimagined, sculptural objects that merge art and technology in an unprecedented way. Share A Transparent Fusion of Art and Function The Balloon Dog Speaker and Balloon Dog Lamp expand Jeff Koons' iconic Balloon Dog into new, everyday objects, using a high-quality translucent material that echoes its signature curves and captivating presence. Originally conceived in the 1990s, Koons' Balloon Dog is one of the most recognized symbols of contemporary art. Now, in partnership with Lexon, this masterpiece has been 'inflated' with technology, giving rise to functional and accessible objects. The transformation of Koons' Balloon Dog into a tech-powered object is a remarkable feat of engineering, with over 50,000 hours dedicated to perfecting every detail. Conceived as a true acoustic art piece equipped with Bluetooth 5.0 technology, the Balloon Dog speaker delivers 360° high-fidelity sound with exceptional richness and depth. Its enveloping soundscape is born from the harmonious alliance of six ultra-precise active drivers and four finely tuned passive radiators, meticulously crafted to elevate the low frequencies. Every note fills the space with rare sensory intensity, transforming each moment into a deeply immersive listening experience. Packed with built-in microphones, it supports hands-free calls through your connected device, offering a fun and practical way to enjoy your Balloon Dog Speaker. Thanks to True Wireless Stereo (TWS) technology, two Balloon Dog Speakers can be paired to create an expansive stereo soundstage, offering greater depth, and a more powerful audio presence. The Balloon Dog Lamp harnesses advanced multicolor lighting through nearly 400 integrated LEDs, delivering up to 200 lumens of brightness. It offers a wide selection of hues including warm and cold white, blue, magenta, green, orange, and more, allowing users to tailor the lighting to any setting. More than illumination, it offers a dynamic play of light, empowering users to shape the atmosphere and mood of any space with precision and elegance. With Lexon's proprietary 'Easy Sync' technology, the Balloon Dog Lamp offers a next-level lighting experience, allowing you to connect and synchronize an infinite number of Balloon Dog Lamps in color and brightness effortlessly. Whether placed in different corners of a room or side by side for a striking visual effect, the Balloon Dog Lamps instantly sync together, creating a perfectly coordinated ambiance. Both objects share the same sculptural dimensions of 11 inches / 28cm height and 2 pounds / 900 gr of technology are crafted for durability and everyday use. This collaboration merges artistic heritage with technological innovation, transforming an iconic artwork into functional design with purpose, presence, and everyday relevance. ' I'm excited about this new collaboration with Lexon, which has transformed Balloon Dog. The Balloon Dog Lamp has a wide range of vibrant colors, while the Balloon Dog Speaker surrounds us with immersive sound. The two objects are an exciting way for Balloon Dog to enter into our daily lives where art, design, and technology come together,' says Jeff Koons. 'Our creative alliance with Jeff Koons marks a historic moment for Lexon. It is both an honor and a milestone to bring together our passion for design and technology through a bold reimagining of Balloon Dog, one of the most iconic artworks of our time. This collaboration challenged us to go beyond form and function, crafting pieces that are not only innovative, but emotionally resonant; designed to be lived with, used daily, and cherished as true pieces of art. Through these two new Editions, we proudly reaffirm Lexon's mission as a Maison de Design Française: to make timeless, high-quality design accessible to all, offering everyday objects that elevate life through beauty and purpose," says Boris Brault, CEO of Lexon. Exclusive, Certified Authenticity Each piece is engraved with Jeff Koons' signature under its front paws and comes with a certificate of authenticity. To further solidify its exclusivity, both the certificate and the packaging feature a hologram, reinforcing authentication and enhancing its collectible value. The Balloon Dog Speaker and Balloon Dog Lamp are produced in a limited supply, with pre-orders starting exclusively on beginning June 17 2025. Shipping for pre-orders will start in October 2025. An Immersive Journey Through Augmented Reality To further elevate this artistic and technological experience, Lexon has unveiled an augmented reality (AR) feature that allows everyone to preview the Balloon Dog Lamp and Balloon Dog Speaker directly in their own space. This immersive tool enables users to visualize the pieces in real scale and context, bringing the essence of the collaboration into their homes and daily lives. By merging digital innovation with iconic design, the AR experience makes interacting with art more personal, accessible, and playful. A Historic Collaboration with The Broad and The Shop at The Broad As part of this collaboration, the Balloon Dog Speaker and Balloon Dog Lamp will be showcased for the first time at The Shop at The Broad on September 20, 2025, celebrating the museum's 10th anniversary. The Broad, home to the original Balloon Dog sculpture, continues its mission to democratize art, making it accessible and meaningful beyond gallery walls. This partnership with Lexon enables the fusion of cutting-edge technology with iconic art, providing the public with a tangible, everyday connection to Koons' creations. From September 20 to October 20 2025, the Balloon Dog Speaker and Balloon Dog Lamp will be available for an exclusive one-month sale at The Shop at The Broad, both in-store and online, offering visitors another unique opportunity to see and purchase these limited-edition pieces. First Pre-order Details Pre-order Launch: June 17, 2025, starting exclusively on Price: 750 $/€ per unit (Speaker or Lamp) Shipping Start: October 2025 Pre-order Limits: 2 units per product, per customer Worldwide Availability: Pre-orders available internationally About Lexon Since its foundation in 1991, Lexon has relentlessly pushed boundaries and created a difference in the world of design, all while staying true to its commitment of making small objects useful, beautiful, innovative, and affordable. Whether in home, office, leisure, or travel accessories, Lexon has established a unique relationship with creativity and partnered with the best designers around the world to create timeless collections of lifestyle products, sold at million pieces every year. Today, with more than 30 years of existence, +250 awards, collaborations with some of the most renowned designers, a retail presence in 90 countries across the Globe, Lexon has truly established itself as an iconic French design brand. About Jeff Koons Jeff Koons is a leading contemporary artist known for transforming everyday objects into bold, reflective sculptures that engage with art history and modern culture. Born in 1955 in York, Pennsylvania, he studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since his first solo exhibition in 1980, his work has been showcased globally in major institutions like MoMA, the Guggenheim, and Tate and of course, The Broad. Koons' iconic pieces, including Balloon Dog, Rabbit, and Puppy, explore themes of self-acceptance and transcendence. His monumental floral sculptures and mirror-finished stainless steel works challenge perceptions of materiality and craftsmanship. Honored internationally, Koons has received the Légion d'Honneur from France and the U.S. Department of State's Medal of the Arts. He has also contributed to cultural diplomacy and child protection efforts through the Koons Family International Law and Policy Institute. About The Broad The Broad's mission is to make contemporary art accessible to the widest possible audience. Founded in 2015 on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, the museum offers free general admission and presents an active program of special exhibitions and innovative live events, all within a landmark building designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. The Broad is home to the Broad collection, one of the world's leading collections of postwar and contemporary art, which continues to grow as new artists and artworks are added. The museum is the headquarters of The Broad Art Foundation's worldwide lending library, which has been loaning collection works to museums around the world since 1984. An expansion of the museum will open before the 2028 summer Olympics in Los Angeles, creating even greater public access.
