Dutch photographer Bas Princen spent four months in the Chinese harbour town of Xiamen. To decode and decipher what is going on in his images is an ambiguous-filled process, and reveals his understanding of an invented landscape and passion for artificial reality.

Politics, gender and crochet are just some of the elements that come together in the work of artist Joana Vasconcelos. Often creating something monumental and spectacular out of banal objects, her artistic approach shifts context and makes interaction more than a remote concept.

A gore-fest with a particular penchant for ripping open stomachs and dismembered bodies is one way to describe the posters that advertised the films shown at Ghana’s mobile cinemas during the Eighties & Nineties.

German artist Maix Mayer’s most recent work brings together the odd geographical couple of the East German island of Rügen and an abandoned holiday resort in Taipei. Different but similar, the former’s architectural legacy and the latter’s pod-houses provide formal parallels and lurking contradictions.

The works of Argentine Nicola Costantino can both shock and scandalise the casual observer, but this is an artist who delves into our most intimate relationships with the people and the world in which we live.

A self-built cathedral is an undertaking of such immeasurable scale that even a hardened atheist can offer a pray for completion. In Spain’s Mejorada del Campo, Justo Gallego Martinez has made his life’s work such an act of faith, but magnificent domes of buckets don’t find much favour in Rome.

From journalists to curators, members of the Buenos Aires creative community come together to discuss the state of their country’s artistic output, and how its modern evolution and multiple identities fit together on the global stage.

The design partnership of Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby has resulted in works for Cappellini, Flos, Isokon, Swedese and Stella McCartney, among others. Their studio is a reflection of an approach that arrives seamlessly through a process that is detailed in the extreme.

If Berlin is losing its past, then artist Mirko Mielke wants to recover views of the city’s tangible past and repatriate these fragments to a place which doesn’t deny what has gone before. Enlarging the city’s history in a meaningful way, his camera obscura is full of compassion.

Recent months have seen the various aspects of the Swarovski brand release a number of new projects; ones that further define its reinvigorated profile. Now in its seventh edition, the expanded concept of the Crystal Palace is the latest event set to do the dazzle.

What happens when an antique house brings contemporary designers into contact with the traditions, techniques, materials and proportions of expert artisans? Meta is a new company from Mallet of Bond Street and its first collection steps outside the realm of ‘machine-age production’.

From obsessive-compulsive disorders to tarot cards, artist Laura Keeble is fascinated by systems. In one of her latest works, the global marketing tactics of Christian symbols are the focus.

Three new releases from the German publisher Gestalten: Jaime Hayon Works, a monograph of the Spanish designer and artist; Fragiles, a contemporary take on porcelain, glass and ceramics; and Architecture of Change, a book based on the Zumtobel Group Award for Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment.