Welcome to our fourth annual issue dedicated to the US. As the nation turns 250, we reveal the latest instalment of the Wallpaper* US400, our roll call of those shaping the creative conversation – and you’ll meet many of this year’s honorees in the issue.

For our cover story, we travelled to Taos, New Mexico, where artist Johnny DeFeo has fashioned a one-of-a-kind guest house in the form of a coyote’s head – a self-described ‘silly’ idea that nevertheless enshrines the sense of artistic and individual freedom that pervades this issue.

Taos is also home to fellow honoree and jewellery designer Anna Sheffield, whose own artistic process has been reignited by a move back to her native New Mexico.

And we head to the North Dakota Badlands to peruse the Snøhetta-designed Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, its low-slung silhouette and grassy roof beautifully photographed by Vicky Sambunaris.

In LA, we premiere Studio Muka’s new base for boundary-pushing film production company Neon Rated, and tour the 1970s Owl House, a characteristically playful Mickey Muennig home renovated by the interior design studio of Nicole Hollis.

Exploring the ways in which métiers often traverse the globe to evolve in the hands of those similarly transplanted, we meet five design practices renewing their connections with Poland, Vietnam, India, South Korea and China, and we head to Italy‘s ‘home of glass’, Murano, to discover how Peter B Staples, founder of Manhattan-based lighting design studio Blue Green Works, created a fitting memorial to his late mother.

Elsewhere, we examine the work of two artists contemplating either end of the societal scale: architect-trained Olalekan Jeyifous, creator of ‘protopias’ – digital collages that propose alternative cityscapes – and Danielle Mckinney, whose canvases reflect the solace inherent in the domestic setting

We also visit the San Francisco apartment of Ron Zuckerman, where every available surface is adorned with works chronicling two centuries of queer life, and we tasked writer and curator Lou Stoppard with analysing the simple pleasures of the swimming pool to introduce our portfolio of leading American image-makers.

Finally, by way of a salute to its ‘big birthday’, we offer a miscellanea of our favourite American design motifs, a host of totemic, almost talismanic trademarks that we feel capture the country’s longstanding creative and commercial kudos.

Bill Prince
Editor-in-Chief

Wallpaper’s July 2026 Design Directory is available from 4 June, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today