Beautiful Legacy

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we travel to Piazza San Marco in Venice to explore Negozio Olivetti - the extraordinary showroom designed by Carlo Scarpa for Adriano Olivetti in the late 1950s.
Created to display typewriters and calculating machines, the space became something much more ambitious: a physical expression of Olivetti’s belief that business, design and culture could belong together.
Through stone, glass, wood, mosaic, sculpture and one remarkable floating staircase, Scarpa transformed a small commercial interior into a carefully choreographed experience. Products were not simply displayed - they were given space, attention and meaning.
Negozio Olivetti anticipated what we now call brand experience decades before the term became common. Yet its lesson feels particularly relevant today: memorable retail does not necessarily require spectacle, technology or visual noise. Sometimes, it simply requires extraordinary care.
This is the story of a shop that became architecture, a showroom that became culture, and a brand that understood that the spaces it created could communicate as powerfully as the products it sold.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we step inside M&M’S World - the retail concept that transformed one of the world’s most familiar sweets into a physical destination.
Beginning with the first M&M’S World in Las Vegas in 1997, we explore how Mars took the simplest codes of the product - colour, characters, abundance and play - and expanded them into an immersive branded environment.
From walls of colour and oversized characters to personalisation, city-specific merchandise and endless photo opportunities, M&M’S World demonstrates how a store can become much more than a place to buy.
It can be entertainment. A tourist attraction. A souvenir machine. A piece of media.
And, most importantly, a place where people participate in the brand rather than simply consume it.
This is the story of how a handful of coloured chocolates became a world - and how retail design turned an everyday impulse purchase into a destination.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at the Ray-Ban Wayfarer - the pair of sunglasses that transformed eyewear from a functional object into a symbol of identity.
Designed by Raymond Stegeman in 1952, the Wayfarer broke with the thin metal frames of its time. Thick, angular and unapologetically visible, its distinctive silhouette helped establish a new relationship between industrial design, fashion and popular culture.
From Hollywood and rock and roll to its remarkable revival in the 1980s, the Wayfarer became shorthand for confidence, rebellion and cool - proving that a mass-produced object could carry cultural meaning far beyond its original function.
This is the story of how a pair of sunglasses became a personality, how one silhouette survived generations of changing fashion, and how design helped turn the things we wear into expressions of who we want to be.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at the Swiss Army Knife - the small red object designed by Karl Elsener that became one of the clearest symbols of usefulness, reliability and readiness.
Originally created for Swiss soldiers, the knife compressed several practical tools into one pocket-sized object. But its legacy goes far beyond the military. The Swiss Army Knife introduced a mindset of preparedness: you do not carry tools only for what you know will happen - you carry them for what you cannot predict.
From camping trips to desk drawers, from backpacks to childhood memories, it became a design icon because it makes uncertainty feel manageable. It is not about being equipped for everything. It is about being equipped enough.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at I amsterdam - the city identity created in 2004 by Amsterdam Partners with KesselsKramer.
More than a logo, I amsterdam became a sentence, a civic invitation, and eventually a public object. Its famous red and white letters at Museumplein turned city branding into a ritual: something people could touch, climb, photograph, and share.
But its success also became its complication. As Amsterdam faced the pressures of mass tourism and overcrowding, the logo that once represented openness and belonging started to symbolise the city’s transformation into a backdrop.
This is the story of a city brand that became part of urban life - and a reminder that design does not only shape image. It shapes behaviour, movement, attention, and responsibility.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we explore one of the most recognisable symbols in modern sport - the NBA logo.
Designed in 1969 by Alan Siegel and inspired by the silhouette of Jerry West, the logo did far more than identify a basketball league. It helped transform the NBA into a global brand and basketball into a worldwide cultural phenomenon.
From its origins in an era when professional sport was learning to think like media, to its lasting influence on merchandising, fashion, television, and athlete branding, this episode uncovers how a remarkably simple graphic became one of the most enduring identity systems ever created.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at Futura, the geometric typeface designed by Paul Renner in 1927.
 
Built from circles, lines, and disciplined reduction, Futura rejected ornament and historical nostalgia in favour of clarity, order, and modernity. It was not created to decorate the future - it was created to give the future a visual voice.
 
From European modernism to the Apollo 11 Moon landing plaque, Futura became one of the most powerful typographic symbols of progress. But its legacy did not remain in design history. It entered commerce, culture, and everyday life, shaping the visual language of brands like Volkswagen, Nike, and Supreme.
 
Futura’s story reveals the paradox of modern design: a typeface created to feel rational and universal became one of the most recognisable aesthetic signatures of the 20th century.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at the Frankfurt Kitchen, designed in 1926 by Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky.
 
Created for a social housing project in Frankfurt, this small, narrow kitchen was not designed as decoration or domestic comfort in the traditional sense. It was designed as a system.
 
Schütte-Lihotzky studied movement, reach, storage, hygiene, workflow and time, applying the logic of industrial efficiency to the everyday act of cooking. The result was one of the first modern fitted kitchens - compact, precise and deeply functional.
 
But its legacy is not simple.
 
The Frankfurt Kitchen made domestic labour visible, measurable and worthy of design attention. At the same time, it also reveals the contradictions of efficiency: who is the system designed for, who performs the labour, and what kind of life does the system reinforce?
 
From fitted cabinets to modular kitchens, from ergonomic planning to user-centred design, the Frankfurt Kitchen shaped far more than domestic architecture. It introduced a way of thinking that still defines how we design homes, services, retail spaces and everyday flows.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at I ❤️ NY, the logo that turned civic identity into emotional shorthand.
 
Created by Milton Glaser in 1977, the mark appeared at a moment when New York was facing financial crisis, crime, and a damaged public image. What could have been a simple tourism campaign became something much deeper: a declaration of affection for a complicated city.
 
This episode explores how Glaser compressed belonging, pride, resilience, and emotion into four simple signs: I, a heart, and NY. It looks at why the logo worked so powerfully - not by explaining New York, but by giving people a way to express their relationship with it.
 
From T-shirts and souvenirs to global imitations and civic solidarity, I ❤️ NY became more than a campaign. It became public language.
 
A story about graphic design, city branding, and how a place can become emotionally recognisable through one unforgettable mark.

In this episode of Beautiful Legacy, we look at the bra - one of the most intimate and culturally complex design objects of modern life.
 
Originally created by Mary Phelps Jacob as a practical rejection of the corset, the bra introduced softness, flexibility, and movement at a time when women’s bodies were still shaped by rigid social and physical structures. Her improvised invention separated support from control, offering a new relationship between clothing and the body.
 
But its legacy is not simple.
 
As the bra became industrialised, standardised, advertised, and redesigned, it also became part of a new system of expectations. What began as liberation gradually became connected to beauty, modesty, desirability, and the public gaze.
 
This is a story about design’s power to both free and define us.