Nate Berg
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Staff writer for @FastCompany @FastCoDesign covering architecture and urban design (+business).
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Articles by Nate Berg
This famous architect died before finishing his last building. Then his son stepped in to help
The final project of César Pelli—the architect behind major buildings such as San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower, Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers, and Los Angeles’s Pacific Design Center—has been completed. But unlike these large-scale skyscrapers and monumental buildings that catapulted him to fame, it’s a modestly sized space that melts into the landscape. For Pelli, who died in 2019 at the age of 92, it’s a poignant final work for both its location and for its subject matter.
Fitbit’s founders designed a wearable for the whole family
Long before 2007 when the health tracker Fitbit single-handedly mushroomed the market for wearable technology, another wearable device had been dominating the niche for nearly 20 years. Life Alert, an emergency medical alert device company, had created a remote control device worn as a pendant that could connect people to emergency services at the click of a button (never forget its iconic tagline: “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!”).
Fitbit’s founders designed a wearable for the whole family
Macy's 1 day ago 27 Things From Macy’s Future You Will Be So Glad You Bought BuzzFeed - Cierra Cowan • 1d Unless otherwise specified, all sizes in this post are listed in women's. 1. A Crock-Pot lunch warmer, because while everyone else is pulling out a boring sandwich or half-soggy salad, you'll be getting ready to feast on a delicious hot meal.
A casa do tamanho do bolso da geração Z
Três novas casas acabam de ser construídas na Suécia com o objetivo de atender a um segmento pouco contemplado pelo mercado. Voltadas para jovens que compram seu primeiro imóvel, elas foram projetadas e construídas de acordo com a renda e a poupança médias de pessoas de 25 anos. Em um país com escassez de moradias como a Suécia, isso parece uma boa ideia.
Ikea se inspira no controle do Xbox para criar móveis para gamers
Para quem já passou dezenas de horas jogando Halo ou Grand Theft Auto, a nova coleção de móveis e objetos para casa da Ikea provavelmente vai parecer bastante familiar. Batizada de Yxstaby, a coleção de nove peças é uma colaboração entre a Ikea e o Xbox, com foco em móveis e objetos pensados para gamers. Várias das principais escolhas de design vêm diretamente do próprio controle do Xbox. Há uma almofada verde menta em formato de X, como as setas direcionais do D-pad do controle.
These shockingly small houses were built to match what a 25-year-old can actually afford
Three new houses have just been built in Sweden that aim to meet an underserved segment of the market. Geared toward young, first-time home buyers, the houses have been designed and built to match the average incomes and savings of 25-year-olds. In a housing-constrained place like Sweden, that seems like a good thing, but there’s a catch. Because the houses are built to match what young people can afford, they are incredibly, oppressively, unrealistically small. And that’s intentional.
Ikea’s new collab turns Xbox controllers into furniture
For anyone who’s twiddled their way through several dozen hours of Halo or Grand Theft Auto, the newest Ikea home furnishings collection will probably look very familiar. The nine-item collection, named Yxstaby, is a collaboration between Ikea and Xbox focused on furniture and objects meant to be used by gamers. Several of the main design moves come directly from the Xbox controller itself.
Ikea’s new collab turns Xbox controllers into furniture
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Architects are sitting on a data gold mine, and Anthropic and other frontier AI labs can’t get to it
Architecture may be one of AI’s hardest pursuits. Unlike coding or writing, the data that could be used to train an architecture AI model is not widely available (or stealable) online. Rather, it’s stored away in the servers and physical filing cabinets of individual architecture firms.
¿Cómo debería verse el futuro? Dentro del programa financiado por la industria tecnológica para crear una nueva estética
A finales de diciembre apareció en internet un sitio web de una sola página. El título era provocador: “A Call for New Aesthetics” (Un llamado a nuevas estéticas). Lo firmaban el CEO de Stripe y multimillonario tecnológico Patrick Collison junto con el economista libertario Tyler Cowen. Su apuesta es directa: pagarle a quien logre definir la nueva estética del siglo XXI. En unas 500 palabras, los dos colaboradores de larga data delinearon un programa informal de becas.
This school security system displays safe evacuation routes during shootings and disasters
In the event of an emergency, evacuating a building can be one of the most important safety measures. But depending on the kind of emergency—whether a fire or a tornado or an active shooting—taking the right evacuation route or finding shelter can be the difference between life and death. Go To Green is a new emergency evacuation system that’s designed to automatically direct people to go, or stay, in the safest place during an emergency.
What should the future look like? Inside the tech-funded program to create a new aesthetic
In around 500 words, the two longtime collaborators outlined an informal grant program they were launching to fund artists and thinkers who want to define the aesthetic of the 21st century. The 20th century, they noted, was largely influenced by a design ethos that emerged from the Bauhaus school of modernist art, architecture, and craft that launched in Germany in 1919. In the 21st century, they argued, perhaps it’s time for something new.
What should the future look like? Inside the tech-funded program to create a new aesthetic
In late December, Stripe CEO and tech billionaire Patrick Collison and libertarian economist Tyler Cowen published a one-page website with the provocative title “A Call for New Aesthetics.” In around 500 words, the two longtime collaborators outlined an informal grant program they were launching to fund artists and thinkers who want to define the aesthetic of the 21st century.
What should the future look like? Inside the tech-funded program to create a new aesthetic
Realme 16x 5G has been launched as the fifth addition to the Realme 16 lineup, sitting below the Realme 16T. Here’s our review. Realme has launched so …
To save $30 million, LAX built its new concourse outside the airport
A new concourse on the edge of Los Angeles International Airport’s international terminal may have just cracked the code for building in highly complex airport environments. The Midfield Satellite Concourse South, designed by the architecture firm Woods Bagot, used a construction method that literally works around the complex and secured space of an active airport runway.
This hotel-inspired hospital is designed to make high-risk pregnancies feel less scary
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By Nate Berg, Fast Company Squint and you might see what looks like a hotel room inside Nemours Children’s Health, a pediatric hospital in Wilmington, Delaware. The hospital’s new Advanced Delivery Unit—which treats patients during the complicated, long, and fearful process of going through a high-risk pregnancy—is much more akin to a guest-centric boutique hotel than a sterile labor and delivery ward.
Design de hotel ajuda hospital a acolher gestações de alto risco
Quem passa rapidamente pela nova ala do Nemours Children’s Health, hospital pediátrico em Delaware, nos EUA, pode até pensar que está diante de um quarto de hotel. Mas o espaço abriga a nova Unidade de Parto Prematuro, dedicada ao atendimento de gestantes de alto risco durante um processo que costuma ser longo, complexo e cercado de incertezas.
Who designed Dulles Airport’s $22.5 billion update? Maybe Trump himself
On July 29, President Donald Trump and U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy revealed major plans to redesign and modernize Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, D.C. Glowing press releases from United Airlines, USDOT, and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) tout the project as a “landmark transformation” that will make it into a “world-class gateway.” But one crucial detail is missing from the announcement: Who actually designed the project?
Partos de alto riesgo en espacios tipo hotel: la apuesta de Nemours Children’s Health
Si entrecierras los ojos, quizá veas lo que parece una habitación de hotel dentro de Nemours Children’s Health, un hospital pediátrico en Wilmington, Delaware. Su nueva Unidad de Parto Avanzado atiende a pacientes durante el complicado, largo y angustioso proceso de un embarazo de alto riesgo. Se asemeja mucho más a un hotel boutique centrado en el huésped que a una sala de partos estéril. Para un hospital, ofrece un nivel de hospitalidad poco común, pero muy necesario.
As its new bikes launch in the Bay Area, Lyft’s bikeshare ambitions are going global
The casual bikeshare rider in San Francisco could be forgiven for not actually knowing who is behind the service they’re using. Since 2019, the region’s Bay Wheels program—along with a few dozen other bike share systems around the world—has been run by Lyft. Better known for its rideshare service which helped it make $1.6 billion in revenue in 2025, the company has spent the past decade or so diverging from its main competitor, Uber, by narrowing in on the global bike share market.
This hotel-inspired hospital is designed to make high-risk pregnancies feel less scary
Squint and you might see what looks like a hotel room inside Nemours Children’s Health, a pediatric hospital in Wilmington, Delaware. The hospital’s new Advanced Delivery Unit—which treats patients during the complicated, long, and fearful process of going through a high-risk pregnancy—is much more akin to a guest-centric boutique hotel than a sterile labor and delivery ward. For a hospital, it offers an uncommon, but much-needed, level of hospitality.
A hockey-inspired bridge finally opens between the U.S. and Canada
Like upturned hockey sticks in the windup to a slap shot, the towers holding up the newest U.S.-Canada international crossing reflect a legacy shared by the two countries. The Gordie Howe International Bridge, named for a Canadian hockey star who made his career with the Detroit Red Wings, is now open between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario. But, as in an actual hockey game, the two sides of this mutually beneficial $4.7 billion bridge are scuffling over its control.
Los sistemas invisibles que hacen funcionar tu hogar acaban de ser reinventados con diseño e IA
¿Exhibirías tu calentador de agua? ¿Refleja tu aire acondicionado tu estilo de diseño personal? A menos que seas muy, muy raro, la respuesta a todas esas preguntas es no. Una nueva empresa emergente de servicios para el hogar llamada Everyday^ quiere que digas que sí. Everyday^ acaba de lanzar lo que denomina un sistema integrado de infraestructura doméstica compuesto por los servicios básicos del hogar: sistemas de climatización, calentadores de agua, purificadores de aire y termostatos.
The ignored, ugly utilities that run your home just got a major redesign
Could you love your furnace? Would you put your water heater on display? Is your air conditioner a reflection of your personal design aesthetic? Unless you are very, very weird, the answer to all those questions is no. A new home utilities startup called Everyday^ wants to make you say yes. Everyday^ has just launched what it calls an integrated home infrastructure system made up of the seemingly boring utilities of the home: HVAC systems, water heaters, air purifiers, and thermostats.
La economía de la experiencia se dirige hacia… ¿un silo de misiles nucleares?
Enterrado a más de 30 metros de profundidad, el caparazón de hormigón de una de las piezas más temibles de la infraestructura de la Guerra Fría vuelve a la vida. Este noviembre, el silo de misiles nucleares Twistflower en Roswell, Nuevo México, reabrirá sus puertas, no para albergar un misil nuclear, sino un peculiar festival de tres días.
The experience economy is heading into . . . a nuclear missile silo?
Burrowed more than 100 feet in the ground, the concrete shell of one of the most fearsome pieces of Cold War infrastructure is being brought back to life. This November, the Twistflower Nuclear Missile Silo in Roswell, New Mexico, will reopen, not to house a nuclear missile, but to host a quirky three-day festival.
GM’s AI tools could cut the car development timeline in half
A great acceleration is coming to the auto industry thanks to artificial intelligence, and one of the giants of the carmaking world is using the technology to reinvent its product pipeline. In recent years, General Motors has dabbled with AI and virtual simulation tools to evolve the way it designs, engineers, tests, and manufactures its vehicles. Now the company has fully embraced these tools and woven them through the entire product development process.
These tiny records now have their own miniature record player
When the startup Tiny Vinyl launched last year, its product was simultaneously more than a century old and brand new. The Nashville-based company had taken the vinyl record and shrunk it down to the handheld size of just 4 inches in diameter, and made it possible to play a single song on each side on most conventional record players. At the time, Neil Kohler, the cofounder, told me that turning the vinyl format into a miniature version was a feat of engineering.
Ikea’s newest collection is designed for young renters on the move
Ikea’s newest collection is designed to move. And move. And move. These 13 home furnishings were inspired by the lived reality of young urban dwellers who regularly find themselves moving to new apartments, neighborhoods, cities, or countries. To ease that nomadic instability, Ikea’s designers have come up with furniture, storage pieces, and even a plant pot that are all intended to add some sense of permanence to a life on the move while also being easy to pick up and relocate.
This prefab homebuilder is moving from tiny ADUs to small-scale starter homes
Samara, the prefabricated homebuilder that was created to chip away at California’s housing shortage with well-designed accessory dwelling units (ADUs), is sizing up. But not too much. The company has just unveiled Locale by Samara, an expansion into single family homebuilding.
Amid ongoing war, a new children’s hospital in Ukraine is a lifeline
A pediatric hospital has just opened in Ukraine that could reinvent the country’s approach to providing healthcare. With a design informed by the trauma of war and a construction method optimized for a pressing need, Project Horizon is a modular, 15-bed pediatric hospital wing. It is located in Brody, a city of 150,000 people 50 miles from the border with Poland.
Los diseños que definen a Estados Unidos
¿Qué hace que un diseño refleje a Estados Unidos? Esa es una pregunta que nos hemos estado haciendo a medida que el país se acerca a sus 250 años de existencia. En ese tiempo, los estadounidenses se han definido a través de objetos, ideas y sistemas que, si bien no nacieron en Estados Unidos, al menos residen aquí espiritual y culturalmente. Pero el diseño estadounidense es algo profundamente personal.
The new Teddy Roosevelt presidential library is a gorgeous extension of the prairie
Blending almost seamlessly into a butte in the rugged Badlands of North Dakota, the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library is, in a number of ways, unlike any of its predecessors. The most important difference is that the library, which opens the Fourth of July in Medora, North Dakota, has been wholly conceived, designed, and built more than a century after the 26th president’s death. “We were not working for the president. And so we had to think about What is the purpose of this institution?
Así el proceso de diseño de Samsung para que tus audífonos se ajusten a la perfección
Federico Casalegno ha pensado constantemente en las orejas. Miles de millones de orejas. “Las orejas son casi como huellas dactilares. Cada uno de nosotros tiene una diferente”, dice Casalegno, vicepresidente ejecutivo de diseño de Samsung. Es un tema relevante para Samsung, fabricante de una variedad de audífonos inalámbricos.
Inside Samsung’s design process to make your earbuds fit just right
Federico Casalegno has been thinking about ears. Billions of ears. “Ears are almost like fingerprints. Every one of us has a different one,” says Casalegno, executive vice president of design at Samsung. It’s a pertinent topic for Samsung, maker of a variety of earbuds, and for Casalegno, who’s in charge of figuring out how to make those earbuds—along with a deep portfolio of wearable technology products like smartwatches and smart rings—as comfortable and useful as possible.
The dollhouse just got an ingenious design update
The cutaway has been the default design of dollhouses for generations. Like a house that’s been sliced in half from the roof to the floor, this conventional dollhouse design is a standard part of many childhoods. But for very young children, the cutaway dollhouse isn’t very easy or fun to play with.
Inside CAA’s new Nashville office, where a listening lounge, sports bar, and employee dressing rooms are the amenities
For a workplace redesign, it’s hard to imagine a project that would need to serve as many types of stakeholders as the new Creative Artists Agency (CAA) office opening in Nashville this July. As one of the world’s leading sports and entertainment agencies, CAA caters to a wide range of outsized personalities, from NBA legends to touring musicians to college football coaches to YouTubers. But it’s also regularly bringing in new, young, unsigned talent, and often their parents or family members.
Zoox redesigned its robotaxis for more comfort and less stink
In the more than 2.5 million miles Zoox robotaxis have driven in San Francisco and Las Vegas since last September, the Amazon-owned driverless vehicle service has learned a lot about operating on chaotic city streets. The company has also learned a lot about the chaos people can bring inside their vehicles. “You’re not supposed to smoke in the vehicle. They smoke in the vehicle.
Peek inside the archives of a titan of 20th century architecture
The archives of one of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s most masterful architecture graduates, I.M. Pei, are heading back to the university. MIT has just acquired the full archive of Pei, who graduated from MIT’s Bachelor of Architecture program in 1940 and went on to design such notable buildings as Dallas City Hall, the glass pyramid at the Louvre, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, and several buildings on MIT’s campus.
You probably haven’t heard of ‘desire lines,’ but they just reinvented this airport’s concourse
Inside Frankfurt Airport‘s new Terminal 3 building, there is a concourse that defies the standard logic of airport design. While the business model of most airports has made the airside space past security checkpoints into aggressive shopping malls interspersed with rows of gate seating, the German airport has made a sizeable chunk of its new terminal into a sinuous plaza worthy of a casual stroll.
This organization’s blueprint for ending street homelessness is as obvious as it is effective
Housing is the “no-duh” solution to homelessness. Cities and advocates for decades emphasized the need to build permanent homes, but that is time-consuming and expensive. DignityMoves is showing that nonpermanent housing can be a fast, cheap, and effective alternative. “Let’s let go of this idea of permanent housing being the only solution,” says Elizabeth Funk, founder and CEO of the San Francisco–based organization that builds interim housing communities to get people off the streets quickly.
He’s designing affordable housing with the actual needs of future residents in mind. It’s rarer than it sounds
When a neighborhood gets redeveloped, the focus is seldom on the people who lived there previously. But the Barry Farm project in Washington, D.C., is a rare kind of affordable housing development, with an uncommon focus on its residents. Set in the historically Black Barry Farm neighborhood, the project has been specifically designed to counter the spatial and social deterioration the community has faced for decades.
Foram necessários três anos para criar a grama da Copa do Mundo
A Copa do Mundo da FIFA de 2022 nem havia começado quando pesquisadores iniciaram o trabalho para cultivar o gramado perfeito para a Copa do Mundo de 2026. Muito antes de as seleções sequer garantirem vaga no torneio deste ano, a FIFA contratou duas equipes de pesquisadores da Universidade Estadual de Michigan (MSU) e da Universidade do Tennessee (UT), nos Estados Unidos, para desenvolver a grama que serviria como campo de jogo desta edição da Copa.
Bruce Springsteen’s new center in New Jersey is a jewel box monument to his music
From the wood boardwalk that leads to its front doors to the weathered steel of its facade to the rough-hewn timber beams inside, there’s an unmistakable postindustrial feel to the new Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music. Opening to the public on June 13, the center is a space built to house Springsteen’s archives and exhibitions on his life and music, but also to tell the broader story of American music.
Inside the painstaking, yearslong process of making perfect grass for the World Cup
The 2022 FIFA World Cup hadn’t even started when researchers set out to grow the perfect pitch for the 2026 World Cup, which kicks off in cities across North America this month. Long before teams had even qualified to play in this year’s tournament, FIFA hired two teams of researchers from Michigan State University (MSU) and the University of Tennessee (UT) to develop the turf grass that would serve as the playing field for its most unconventional World Cup to date.
New STEM University Coming to Bentonville, Ark.
(TNS) — A major STEM-focused university in the unlikely location of Bentonville, Arkansas, is starting to take shape. Announced in 2025, the university is the brainchild of brothers Tom and Steuart Walton, grandsons of Walmart founder Sam Walton and heirs to the massive wealth the company has created. A new design by one of the world’s most famous architects could help the project take shape, and accelerate the large-scale transformation happening across Bentonville.
A world-class STEM university is coming to small-town Arkansas
A major STEM-focused university in the unlikely location of Bentonville, Arkansas, is starting to take shape. Announced in 2025, the university is the brainchild of brothers Tom and Steuart Walton, grandsons of Walmart founder Sam Walton and heirs to the massive wealth the company has created. A new design by one of the world’s most famous architects could help the project take shape, and accelerate the large-scale transformation happening across Bentonville.
Inside the painstaking, yearslong process of making perfect grass for the World Cup
The 2022 FIFA World Cup hadn’t even started when researchers set out to grow the perfect pitch for the 2026 World Cup, which kicks off in cities across North America this month. Long before teams had even qualified to play in this year’s tournament, FIFA hired two teams of researchers from Michigan State University (MSU) and the University of Tennessee (UT) to develop the turf grass that would serve as the playing field for its most unconventional World Cup to date.
This famed architecture firm is bringing rare designs from its archive back to life
Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, the giant of corporate office architecture in the mid-20th century, has its fingerprints on some of the most iconic buildings in American business. From Sears Tower in Chicago to IBM’s New York headquarters to Lever House in midtown Manhattan, these towers became skyline definers, and symbols of postwar American economic power. But zoom in from those skyline views, and you’ll see that SOM‘s designs were more encompassing than the buildings themselves.
The racetrack is getting a long overdue makeover
The historic racetracks that host the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing are each in the midst of an evolution, with major upgrades, renovations, and in one case, a complete rebuild—and they’re all happening at once. It’s part of an industry-level reckoning with the changing demands of horseracing spectators, and the changing fortunes of horseracing itself.
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