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Johannesburg's Arts on Main complex, with its stylish mix of tenants, has quickly become a culture hub since it opened last summer, bringing life back into the heart of a neglected central business district. The project, the brainchild of the 27-year-old developer Jonathan Liebmann (who's currently converting a nearby factory into a hotel in time for this summer's World Cup), occupies five redone warehouses around a central courtyard (below right) on the corner of Main and Berea Streets. The complex's anchor is the studio of the celebrated South African artist William Kentridge, whose presence has helped draw an elite group of chefs, designers and gallery owners. Canteen: Locals and tourists alike flock to this cafe (above left) for gastropub-meets-game-reserve fare (think ploughman's platters and springbok carpaccio) courtesy of the British chef Richard Rust. The walls display work by the complex's residents, and a rooftop bar holds film screenings. 011-27-83-399-9740; entrees $6 to $12. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When you think about it, the Rockwell Group has been in the business of playgrounds for years, creating a showy interior for a glamorous jeweler, a JetBlue terminal and Nobu restaurants from New York to Dubai. So the Imagination Playground at Burling Slip, which opens next summer in a former parking lot near South Street Seaport, is a logical next step. The peanut-shaped park is inspired by midcentury adventure playgrounds, where children used found objects and postwar debris. It features sand and water, Playground Associates to oversee the action, and more than 350 loose parts, including wheelbarrows, pool noodles and weather- and germ-resistant foam blocks (above, in Brooklyn). David Rockwell, the founder and C.E.O., has created a standard kit that can be deployed cheaply in open spaces across the country, but at Burling Slip he pays homage to its nautical past with pulleys, masts and periscope-like tubes through which children can talk from opposite ends of the park. ''Each place encourages a kind of cooperative, self-directed fantasy play,'' he says. ''Or you can just run around like a maniac.'' JILL SINGER [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Fernando and Humberto Campana are iconoclasts at heart: their fruit bowl for the French porcelain company Bernardaud was a mass of disembodied baby-doll limbs. Still, when Lacoste approached them to create limited-edition polos for its fourth annual holiday series, the Sao Paulo duo was wary. ''It's like asking someone to change the Coca-Cola bottle,'' says Fernando of messing with the company's preppy bloodline. But their four polos do just that: one features Lacoste's embroidered crocodile logos piled upon one another, as crocs do in their natural habitats; another gathers the logos in discrete clusters meant to mimic an Amazonian archipelago; and a third stitches dozens of logos together to form a reptilian bit of Brazilian lace. The Campanas aren't the only design stars dabbling in fashion this fall: in October the Scottish label Ballantyne will introduce a supertechnical, water-resistant cashmere line by Philippe Starck. The French designer has sniffed at calling his creations fashion, but what else to call a collection of tailored pullovers, body-con shifts and hooded coats with details like detachable waistcoats and silk linings? Cozy, perhaps. JILL SINGER [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Besides the sweeping vineyards and spectacular chateaux, there's a new reason to take the A10 motorway from Paris to Bordeaux this summer. Beginning in July, Domaine de Boisbuchet, the 19th-century castle on 370 acres near Poitiers, will open to the public for the first time. Bought in the late 1980s by the Vitra Design Museum director Alexander Von Vegesack, Boisbuchet has for years been something of a cult destination for designers, architects and artists who attend its yearly workshops, run by the museum in conjunction with the Pompidou Center in Paris and Cireca, a cultural and agricultural education center. Vegesack is finally offering the public a glimpse of its particular art-camp-for-adults charm: horses, meadows, a lake for swimming and canoeing, and numerous small architectural wonders dotting the grounds, like a bamboo gridshell by the German engineer Jorg Schlaich and a traditional Japanese guesthouse transplanted from Shimane Prefecture. Visitors can also sample the resident chef's cooking at a new cafe, inside a restored mill, as well as look in on what some of the architecture students are up to, like the Swiss group who will be installing an exhibition of vernacular architecture models. Go to boisbuchet.org. JILL SINGER [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

BOARDER PATROL For anyone low on cash and high on wanderlust, there's a new option: AirBed & Breakfast, a Web-based company that hooks up locals with visitors looking for a place to crash. Founded by three recent college graduates, the service was conceived as an upgraded version of couch surfing in overbooked cities holding major events. (''Need a place for the inauguration? I've got a futon in Cleveland Park.'') Recently, however, the site has come up another notch to include more design-oriented and less collegiate accommodations -- nearly 3,000 listings in 72 countries, among them a two-bedroom in Williamsburg, Brooklyn ($150 a night), a cabin in the Oregon woods (left; $125 a night) and a room in a medieval farmhouse in Girona, Spain ($55 a night). Go to airbnb.com. JILL SINGER [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gary Hustwit, a Brooklyn filmmaker, spent years on movie projects about bands like Wilco and Death Cab for Cutie, but a documentary about a font made him a rock star in his own right: Hustwit's direction of ''Helvetica'' in 2007 earned him the adoration of graphic-design geeks worldwide. His latest, ''Objectified,'' had its premiere at last month's South by Southwest festival. This film looks at industrial design, mixing interviews with assembly-line factory shots and B-roll footage of people shopping. Sustainability, consumerism, robots -- ''Objectified'' covers all the bases and catches the design world's hotshots off guard. There's Dieter Rams, pruning a bonsai tree in his Japanese garden; the IDEO co-founder Bill Moggridge firing up his 1955 GMC Jimmy; and Jonathan Ive, deep inside Apple's top-secret facilities, wiping the screen of his iPhone with his T-shirt. JILL SINGER [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]