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It's been just over ten years since London architect Stephen Marshall built Artists' House, the contemporary cottage on the grounds of the New Art Centre in Wiltshire and a modern foil for the grand 1804 mansion and Orangery at Roche Court. Originally conceived as a residence for artists putting in long days in the sculpture park, it was repurposed a few years ago by curator Sarah Griffin for the centre's first design exhibition. This weekend Griffin will launch a second design show, which features work by three Britain-based artists - a juxtapostion of domestic household items with larger-than-life creations.

Swiss-born artist Hans Stofer takes up residence - quite literally - on the ground and lower-ground floors, where he has 'unpacked' his personal miscellany. In reality, he has recreated or photographed these everyday things in the studio, yet he exposes them here in such a raw state that the viewer feels like a trespasser in a very private world.

Jennifer Lee, the London-based potter, occupies the first floor with her delicate, earthy ceramic vessels, mathematical in form and yet anachronistic in appearance. Lee's extraordinary talent is in her process: she uses no wheels or glazes, yet attains a warm, sophisticated result with just a hint of (meticulously planned) asymmetry.

There's a duality to Lee's work that seems to be an overriding theme at the Artists' House. Out in the courtyard, especially, the work of Laura Ellen Bacon is at once monumental and inconspicuous, blending into the bucolic grounds. The Derby-based artist sculpts with willow in the image of enormous hornet's nests and organic baskets. Her work seems to cling organically to the sides of buildings, wrap around trees and drape over ancient stone ramparts like overgrowth years in the making.

And yet it will be in situ only until April, which seems slightly surreal. Emptying the Artists' House come spring will be like an exhumation of objects that have collected there over generations.

While hotels often double as platforms for new art, few of them can lay claim to a selection picked from one of the most influential contemporary art galleries today. Settling in until 30 April at London's Hyatt Regency Churchill is 'One Giant Leap' - the first of a series of three exhibitions taking place during 2012 at the hotel, featuring an assortment of works from the Saatchi Gallery collection.

Predominantly scattered around the ground-floor lobby and restaurant, the mix of paintings, sculptures and installations - most memorable being a life-sized hippopotamus by Christina Mackie - were selected to allow for increased access and interaction outside gallery norms.

The partnership, Saatchi's first with a London hotel, is a testament to the gallery's inventive approach to art. Highlights include works by Chantal Joffe, Martin Honert and Dexter Dalwood.

Also in the mix, is a limited-edition Saatchi Gallery suite. Available to guests of the Hyatt, the room is filled with art - from Ronin Cho's interactive knocking door and Steve Bishop's taxidermy fox to a bespoke wall-to-wall soap installation in the bathroom by young artist Celine Fitoussi. A collection of lamps and a furniture range from the Danish design company Republic of Fritz Hansen are also on display.

'One Giant Leap' will be swiftly followed by another show. Details are still to be confirmed, so keep your eyes peeled for the news.

Taken in from Wallpaper* HQ, OMA's new home for Rothschild (the practice's first London building) seems the most exciting addition to the 'City-scape' in years. What makes New Court such a winner, perhaps surprisingly, is its restraint in scale and effect. A ten-storey mesh cube with various annexes, topped by a two-storey 'sky pavilion', it displays a lightness of touch that is certainly missing from the Walbrook Building, Foster's still unoccupied heavy-metal blob it overlooks.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild first moved to the St Swithin's Lane site, just round the corner from the Bank of England, in 1809. This fourth headquarters for the family firm, now a financial advisory company, opened its doors at the tail end of last year. Last week, lead architect Ellen van Loon took us on a tour.

Given the lane is a skinny medieval cut-through, it's hard to take in the façade at street level. What you do get is a marble forecourt and, for the first time in 200 years, views through to Wren's St Stephen Walbrook church.

On the right is an oak-panelled archive and, to the left, a large new lobby. OMA were also commissioned to design the building's interiors, a rare privilege on a big City development. Here in the lobby, and in various meeting rooms, they have had some fun with the company's history.

There is plenty of metal - mostly aluminium and brass as a nod to the bank's long association with cold, hard commodities (the price of gold was, until recently, fixed at New Court). Metal walls are embossed with abstract impressions of the oak panels that were central to the old decorative order. Meanwhile, family portraits and Queen Anne furniture are installed in glass-box meeting rooms.

As one architecture critic pointed out, this does give the building the feel of a boutique hotel in places. Armies of wait staff trundling to and from the large kitchens and the director's dining room add to the effect (Not to mention the whiff of beef Wellington and Eton mess in the air).

This is a building that makes the most of its position, with incredible views across the City and towards St Paul's. And the best views come from the 'sky pavilion', each of its two storeys double height. It is already a popular event space with its just-lofty-enough aspect. In fact, the whole building seems perfectly pitched.

In a gorgeous, medieval Italian city like Bologna the historic treasures come in abundance, yet you'd be hard-pressed to find fine examples of contemporary architecture. Palazzo Pepoli, the new city history museum that opened its doors last weekend, is one such example. Marrying old and new, architect Mario Bellini and graphic designer Italo Lupi took a rundown 14th-century monument and opened it up with all the steel-and-glass tricks of the modern trade.

'Our main idea was to create a museum that tells the city's history, addressing it from different sides - financial, social, urban and artistic,' says Fabio Roversi-Monaco, president of the Carisbo Foundation, which acquired the palace from the local authority a decade ago. Nine years ago, Roversi-Monaco launched a competition for its renovation and transformation.

'It is part of the city's historic itinerary,' he muses of Palazzo Pepoli, the last of eight Bologna buildings to open to the public under the foundation's management (the others are San Giorgio library in Poggiale, Palazzo Fava, Casa Saraceni and San Colombano, plus churches Santa Maria della Vita, San Michele in Bosco and Chiesa di Santa Cristina). They all proudly focus on Bologna's wealth of history, under the umbrella of the foundation's main programme, Genus Bononiae.

The renovation was a long time coming. At the time of the competition, the structure was in need of extra support and the frescoes and reliefs required retouching. But the major addition was the steel and glass tower in the one-time courtyard. 'When we started, the courtyard was open and totally destroyed,' says Bellini, who fought off competition from the likes of Mario Botta and Renzo Piano for the commission. 'The only way to connect the upper and ground floors in a continuous walk was to cover it and create this tower, which is made of four smaller towers that make it appear more slender,' he adds. 'By doing so we made the courtyard the real heart of the museum, surrounded by the entrances to the displays, the café and the shop.'

Bellini, who will launch another grand museum project later this year at the Louvre Islamic Art Galleries (on which he worked with French architect Rudy Riccioti), was keen to tackle the challenge of placing the ancient and modern in parallel. 'The building in itself was something we wanted the visitor to see and experience,' he explains, 'so the new building doesn't touch the old one and we didn't want to imitate the historical language with the new additions. I think it works.'

The 34 rooms are organised in 14 themes - from urbanism and art to theatre and music - over more than 6,000 sq m. The permanent collection counts an impressive 15,000 works of art and 115,000 books. Educational spaces, a cinema, shop and café have all been allocated space. 'We tried to make this a lovely journey - a museum for people with different interests and different paces,' says Bellini. 'People can come many times and every time discover something new.'

Japan is a modest nation when it comes to self-promotion and Honda in many ways reflects this. The country's third-largest carmaker and the world's largest motorcycle maker seldom broadcasts its achievements. This seems a pity. Founded in 1948, Honda now has 70 manufacturing sites in 27 countries. This week the firm announced plans to expand its luxury arm Acura into the UAE, Saudi, Russia and Ukraine.

Wallpaper* travelled to the heart of the operation to see what else the company has in store. Our first stop, the old-school Twin Ring Motegi racetrack surrounded by lush countryside, is an hour from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant. Honda built it in 1997 to introduce the American open-wheel racing IndyCar Series to Japan.

The site's Honda Collection Hall is a museum of the traditional sort. It showcases restored motorcycles, cars and Honda's robot research - which began in 1986 with the rather clunky E0 but later evolved into the almost human ASIMO - Honda's Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility robot.

Watch the ASIMO robot running

But we were there to drive. We started with Honda's small N-Box mini-van, built for the Asian market. It's only 4m long, yet its innovative interior layout means the cabin and boot are roomy. These kei-class cars look almost gadget-like, and driving them was child's play. An upright seating position added to the feeling of invincibility.

We also tried the Brio, a tiny commuter car designed for the Indian and Thai markets, and the zero-emission FCX Clarity. Honda built the latter, its first hydrogen fuel-cell car, in 2008 but never mass-produced it - a shame, as it has super-steady acceleration and emits a satisfying jet-engine roar.

Honda's 'Wako' innovation hub is back in Tokyo and closed to visitors, but we managed to get a rare peek. What struck us first was the confident Japanese aesthetics of the EV-STER, a small sportscar Honda plans to put into production. 'I wanted this to be a car that would make car lovers smile and make young people who are not yet into cars think: wow, it's a really cool vehicle,' said Ryo Sugiura, who oversaw EV-STER's look. The futuristic cabin features twin lever steering, a kind of push-and-pull system that Honda feels could replace the conventional steering wheel.

Next we saw the AC-X (Advanced Cruiser Experience), a clever concept that offers two driving modes. When it's in auto-drive, for autonomous cruising, the steering column retracts into the dashboard, an ottoman appears and the interior illuminates to create a relaxed living-room feel. Outside, the front bumper, rear diffuser and front running lights adjust to the mode.

At Wako we got the chance to examine the electric RC-E motorbike, based on the classic RC racing-bike series. They also rolled out the Micro Commuter Concept, a tiny electric commuter which can be customised by sliding graphic sheets across the front, side and rear panels.

And finally: the robot. Honda's ASIMO is a gender-neutral autonomous machine capable of responding to the movement of people and its surroundings. It can even predict future movement using its pre-set space sensors: if it anticipates a collision, it will stop what it's doing and change tack.

Coordination between visual and auditory sensors enables ASIMO to distinguish voices from one another. At four-foot-three and 54kg, ASIMO resembles a young boy and has a boy's agility, too. The combination of strong legs, an expanded range of movements and a newly developed control technology enables it to run forwards and backwards, react mid-stride and adjust its steps to varied terrain. It can pick up a bottle, open the cap, hold a soft paper cup and pour liquid into it. It even knows sign language.

Watch ASIMO demonstrate sign language

ASIMO's raison d'etre is to aid the elderly and disabled. As we prepared to leave, we were shown a self-propelled robot arm, a foldaway electric Motor Combo scooter and a Uni-Cub, a compact one-wheel-drive mobility device that uses gyroscopic stabilising to provide movement in all directions - a glimpse into the near future.

Cutback culture may be dominating the pages of newspapers, but behind the doors of the exhibition halls of the Parc des Expositions in Paris Nord Villepinte, and the galleries flanking the Seine, fresh new product design from old and new sources was flourishing last weekend at Maison & Objet.

Admittedly, economy and accessibility could be seen to be playing a role in some of the newer offerings. Established designers and design houses appear to be looking to small but perfectly formed product to shore up business.

Tom Dixon previewed his new range Eclectic (due to launch in August), featuring accessories and tabletop pieces in his signature materials of copper, glass and wood, while Belgium's Alain Berteau launched a company, Objekten, that focuses on simple, well-crafted, everyday products.

Denmark's Hay, meanwhile, presented a stand that was pure candy to design-tuned eyes seeking beauty in the quotidien and mundane - a vast collection of brightly coloured stationary, wooden trays and tools for grooming, laundry, cooking and working.

Also new to the Maison scene and chiming with the mood for accessibility was Ghent-based Labt, a design house showcasing furniture designed by Belgian architects and graphic designers and using plywood for the most part, to great effect.

This being France, there was plenty of Gallic talent on show. We viewed the well-established Sentou with fresh eyes, its stand an alluring riot of colourful shelving and tables (by the in-house team) and pieces from a new favourite, the Paris-based daughter of design dynasty the Hansen Family, Gesa Hansen.

Twenty-year-old lighting company Forestier reinvented and relaunched itself with ENO co-founder Jean-Dominique Leze at the creative helm, and dazzled with a range of sculptural lighting from an impressive roll call of designers including Arik Levy, Sebastian Bergne, Ionna Vautrin, and Laurence Brabant.

Brand new maison d'edition Marcel By introduced itself with mirrors, shelving and chairs from founders Stephan Lanez, Samuel Accoceberry, Noé Duchaufour Lawrances and Jakob + MacFarlane. Tolix sustained its recent reinvention with a new desk and shelving system from Sebastian Bergne and free-standing shelves from Normal Studio - as did cabinet company Drugeot Labo, whose wooden shelving units become ever more colourful and inventive.

Maison stalwart Ligne Roset presented an impressive stand brimming with newly produced pieces by the older guard - Pierre Paulin (reissues from his Elysée Palace designs of the 1970s), Jean Nouvel and Pierre Charpin - and brilliant fresh talent in the form of Japanese designer Yota Kakuda and young French collective Numéro 111.

Italian design house Gervasoni chose Maison as its platform to introduce a new offshoot with a focus on the bedroom. The Letti & Co collection launched with five fabric-finished bed designs by Paola Navone. Fellow Italians Alessi, meanwhile, chose Maison as the European launch pad for their meta-collection of trays, (Un)Forbidden City, designed by Chinese architects.

Out in town, no fewer than two galleries - the recently established Carpenters Workshop and the Pierre-Alain Challier - helped Nendo celebrate its tenth anniversary with stunning new collections of work. Tools Galerie put a focus on wood used in unusual ways to build furniture, featuring original work from Elisa Strozyk, David Graas, Peter Marigold and Glass Hill, and Galerie S. Bensimon showcased an inspiring collection of works by young American designer Max Lipsey, Rotterdam-based Lex Pott and David Derksen, and London-based Pia Wüstenberg.

Tripping round the streets of Paris in search of fresh design is never a chore - even the Parc des Expositions has Fauchon and Ladurée pitstops to revive fair-worn legs - but it's all the more valuable when you can return replenished not only with macaroons and éclairs, but with a fund of inspiring new design swimming around in your head, as we did on Monday.

If buildings could talk, China

Terence Conran and John Pawson put in an appearance at what will be the new Design Museum in Kensington this week. Located in the former Commonwealth Institute, the 10,000 sq m building is set to open in 2014, placing the organisation within a stone's throw of 'Albertopolis' - SW7's museum district.

Empty for more than a decade, the Grade II listed building, which features a dramatic tent-like roof, is an example of 1960s architecture at its best.

'The challenge is working inside the skin of an existing building which is more than 50 years old but it still seems very daring, says Pawson, who with his trademark palette of brushed concrete and wooden flooring is striving to 're-tune the architecture so it still feels fresh but also to give the Design Museum what they need'.

The new venue will stretch to five floors and aims to double visitor numbers to 500,000 a year.

Rem Koolhaas' OMA is redeveloping the residential area around the building. Project architect Reinier de Graaf describes this as 'an exercise in fading into the background and being humble. We tried to pay tribute to that period [the 1960s]'.

Conran, who founded the original Design Museum at Shad Thames in 1989, has stumped up £17m towards the £80m project. 'We hope it will have the same spirit as Milan's Triennale,' he says, adding: 'We are no longer the workshop of the world, but we can still be a workshop and with the new - and the old - Design Museum, we can be a great one.'

A little Dan Flavin, a little Studio 54, a little sculptural assemblage and lots of pink neon. That's more or less the flavour of the 24h Museum, an ephemeral,culturally kooky conceit that will already be halfway over by the time you read this.

It's the type of idea that could only be born from a dream team of artist Francesco Vezzoli, Prada and AMO, Rem Koolhaas' think-tank.

And to be sure, 24h Museum adheres less to the traditional definition of a museum than a pulsing remix of art for art's sake (contingent on what you consider art).

Since 8.30 last night, the Palais d'Iéna in Paris has been playing the role of Cinderella, transformed from the headquarters of the Conseil Économique, Social et Environnemental for a full day into three sections representing Vezzoli's vision of 'historic, contemporary and forgotten'.

Built by Auguste Perret between 1936 and 1946, the Palais d'Iéna was originally intended as a public works museum - part of the venue's allure for Vezzoli. AMO had plenty to work with: a staircase of theatrical scale and a wide-open space of concrete columns. This is where Koolhaas' team erected a steel cage backlit by vertical rows of pink neon tubes.

Inside this neon nave are 13 figures. They've got the bodies of classical Greek Aphrodites and Venuses with the familiar faces of Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly - and their eyes have been replaced with Vezzoli's mother's (fixed in coquettish bedroom glances) like a trippy, life-sized magazine collage. The figure holding court at the far end of the space is also a representation of the artist's mother, her head encircled with a halo of the museum's diner-style logo. The male counterparts, meanwhile, have been relegated to the Salon des Refusés, a curtained room that doubled as last night's dance floor.

Prada's presence is invisible in terms of branding. The company is essentially acting as patron, supporting Vezzoli's vision just as it has done with other one-off artistic endeavours in the past.

Known for enlisting stars (Lady Gaga, Helen Mirren, Natalie Portman) in grand performance gestures both live and filmed, Vezzoli has referred to this exercise as both 'a sort of ironic retrospective of my work as an artist' and 'a conceptualisation of a baroque feast'.

Indeed, the 24h Museum's first 150 minutes unfolded as a private dinner for a cross-section of fashion, art and Hollywood bon vivants, many already in Paris for the haute couture collections. By the three-hour mark, the evening shifted into nightclub mode with Kate Moss doing a stint as DJ. Male partygoers could be seen climbing the pedestals to pose for pictures with the statuettes. Meanwhile, the tapestry-filled assembly room had been turned into a cinema.

With the exception of a midday press walkthrough from 12-2, the museum is open to the public (highlights are also being live-streamed at www.24hoursmuseum.com). A closing cocktail party this evening will toast the project once again until 8.30. And then it's game over.

Vezzoli initially stated his ambitious - though not impossible - goal to stay awake the full cycle. Fifteen hours into the 24h Museum, he spared some time to talk to Wallpaper*

Did you get any sleep?

Just a little. When they started playing around with the sculptures, I knew it was time to leave. People took the sculptures and made them dance. It was like a Roman ritual.

Did the installation's here-today-gone-tomorrow conceit shape the way you

thought about it?

Not really. I approached it like I approach my videos. The key word in

my work could be mimesis - an imitation of life, mirroring. This installation could stay up for years.

So why only 24 hours?

Why only make the trailer of a movie that doesn't exist or an advertisement of a perfume that doesn't exist? I'm trying to mirror the unfulfilled promises of the society of spectacle.

What makes Prada such a good patron?

I have so much respect for what [Miuccia Prada] does and how she does it that I want to give the best. She's like Nicolas Ghesquière and Bernard Arnault in one person as far as being the most creative and most financially powerful. I enormously respect Bernard Arnault but he can't design a dress. Or not one that I would wear.

There were school kids here earlier. What do you want them to leave with?

I'm not playing fake modesty but I would assume they came for the Rem Koolhaas intervention. It's important to explain that we are occupying territory that is serious and politically charged. That doesn't make my project political. It's the place I'm occupying that makes it political. I'm making a gesture; I'm putting emotions where usually politics are.

But so few people will get to experience it.

For the YouTube generation, since everything is available online, I think it is important to create exhibitions that only make a difference if you go and see them. If people want the feeling of seeing this moment, they have to bloody come.

Isn't art created to last, though?

But we are discussing ephemerality. I don't care about it lasting. What's going to happen after, I couldn't care less.

So what does happen after - at least in the short-term?

The statues will go into storage and I don't think they should be exhibited ever again because the installation was conceived as a reaction to the building. We are in the week of haute couture and this is haute couture. We designed an entire experience according to the place we were given.

Nearly a decade ago, Alberto Alessi, head of the leading Italian kitchenware manufacturer that bears his name, assigned 22 architects the task of designing a teapot. This simple commission had the legacy of architects and designers collaborating on some of the world's most iconic industrial design. Now one of those 22 architects - Gary Chang of Hong Kong's Edge Design - has been invited to curate Alessi's latest meta-project, 'The (Un)Forbidden City', which asks eight Chinese architects to design their distinct version of a simple tray.

Why a tray, you ask? It's the archetypal Alessi offering and the most conventional of Chinese homewares. Symbolically, it represents a bridge between Eastern and Western design.

Chang and Alessi sought out China's best: Zhang Lei, Urbanus and MAD's Ma Yansong, who recently launched his iconic museum in the new Chinese city of Ordos - not to mention Chang himself. The amazing range of products reveals the potential of Chinese design and the wisdom of collaboration.

Interpretations of the brief were wildly different. Some participants reinterpreted traditional imagery (Liu Jiakun's bamboo rolling mat and Yung Ho Chang's 'A Lotus Leaf' come to mind) while Urbanus' futuristic 'Trayscape' leans toward the other end of the spectrum.

Alessi launched the designs this month at French design fair Maison & Objet after a brief showing last autumn at Beijing Design Week. In April, they will be available to buy through Alessi's 2012 catalogue.