This week Dezeen launched the first ever Virtual Design Festival

This week on Dezeen we launched a Virtual Design Festival featuring a live video interview with Li Edelkoort and messages from architects and designers from across the world.

Virtual Design Festival, the world's first online design festival, launched this week to help unite and uplift the industry during the coronavirus pandemic.

The event kicked off with a compilation of video messages sent in by scores of creatives from around the world sharing their situations and their hopes for the future.

Trend forecaster Li Edelkoort sat down for a video interview with Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs, discussing her new manifesto for how hope can change the world. Klein Dytham Architecture also dialled in from Tokyo to talk about PechaKucha, which they founded.

Burning Man festival in America has cancelled its event in Black Rock City and will host a virtual alternative this year due to the pandemic. Organisers revealed that Virtual Black Rock City will be going ahead with the original theme of the Multiverse.

With America now the epicentre of Covid-19, the American Institute of Architects has cancelled its annual conference. The crisis has also revealed the deep issues with New York's housing, local architects told Dezeen.

Face shields have become an essential part of the front line in the fight to contain coronavirus. In an interview with Dezeen, US physician and epidemiologist Michael Edmond said that everyone should be wearing one outside of the house as they could be more effective than masks.

Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka has released his design for an easy DIY face shield that anyone can cut from a piece of flexible plastic and slot through the arms of a pair of glasses.

In non-coronavirus news, Nike has unveiled the "shoe of the future". The Nike Air Max 2090 will have a sole designed to mimic the feeling of walking on air, and has been redesigned to be as lightweight as possible.

Another update to a classic is architecture studio SO-IL's plan to introduce a shortcut to Amanda Levete's Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology. Called Beeline, the installation will connect visitors to Lisbon's waterfront via a secret back door.

It was a week for film buffs on Dezeen. Readers responded to a list of 10 films with exciting architecture with recommendations of their own, which we compiled into another movie guide.

Dezeen interviewed the production designing of Oscar-winning film Parasite Lee Ha Jun about creating the film's set.

This week Dezeen readers also enjoyed a concrete guesthouse overlooking the sea in South Korea, a French farm conversion with minimalist interiors, and a light and airy house extension in London.

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