Graphic designer amongst other things, Stefan Sagmeister is having another client-free year. Swapping his New York studio for Indonesia, his sabbatical is not an extended excuse to head to the beach but personal space to experiment. Before he upped sticks, a project for ExperimentaDesign in Amsterdam proved that the design police still have sweeping powers.

Events like the Venice biennial tends to have a shock and awe effect and there is always plenty to find between the love/hate divide. The main exhibition of this year’s edition aimed to take architecture beyond building, but was it out of bounds to comprehension?

As muse to David Lachapelle and a fixture on New York’s fashion club scene, Amanda Lepore certainly leaves an
impression. The ultimate in a self-constructed and sculpted image, French fan & photographer Gabriel Moginot was blown away by his dream girl.

Over the last few years Dutch author Will Tinnemans and photographer friend Jan Banning have travelled the world
interviewing and picturing 250 civil servants in eight countries. Bureaucracy can be an unequivocal pain in the pass, but it also oils the wheels of liberty.

Originally conceived to commemorate the horrors of the Second World War in the former Yugoslavia, the history of Spomeniks illustrate the ambiguous after-shock experienced by a nation when victims and perpetrators have to live side-by-side. Those remaining stand forlorn and forgotten, so can they ever be considered autonomous works of art?

Plastic spoons, gun triggers, hypodermic needles and phone books all get a second chance to shine in the inaugural show at New York’s relocated Museum of Art and Design. The process of slicing and dicing the ordinary to create something extraordinary makes for the narrative echo of both exhibition and building.

Everyone’s a photographer these days and so what? Taking the fast and humble Currywurst as the main plate, Joachim Schmid explores the quality/quantity equation that is thrown up by the era of online image hosting and
imagines a human life photographed in real time from cradle to grave.

For Swedish designer Monica Förster her work is all about the idea, the material, the poetry, the fun and the magnetism. It’s an approach that has worked for clients such as Poltrona Frau, E&Y Japan and Offecct, so what does it look like? A toilet seat glowing in the dark? A wardrobe in glass?

What the famous German explorer Alexander von Humboldt would have made of a Venezuelan dictator’s fantasy hotel being named in his honour is best left for clairvoyants to discover. Largely neglected on the mountains that overlook Caracas, its symbolic presence, however, is more difficult to erase.

Another supersize selection of the products and places that have captured the collective attention of DAMn°, revealing that in the biggest of worlds the smallest of details can stand out.