The French brands Lacoste and Alpine have announced an unprecedented partnership that unites the world of fashion with the racing tracks. This collaboration results in two main products: an exclusive electric rally car concept, named Beware of the Crocodile – Alpine Lacoste A290 Rallye, and a clothing capsule collection.
This unique specimen was developed from the A290 Rallye, the competition version of Alpine's first street electric car, and was created specifically for rally competitions. Its design is striking, inspired by the characteristic red crocodile tongue of Lacoste, featuring flared fenders, a spoiler, air intakes, and a carbon fiber diffuser.
Mechanically, the vehicle prioritizes agility and instant electric response, featuring an optimized chassis, suspension adapted for rally terrain, increased track width, and aerodynamic solutions focused on stability, cooling, and downforce generation.
The car's interior offers a complete experience within the brand's universe. The cabin uses an entirely red color scheme and incorporates the traditional petit piqué fabric, the same used in polo shirts, seats, and panels. These elements feature embroidery signed by Potencier, the historic atelier responsible for the brand's crocodile emblems. A notable detail is the presence of 290 references to the reptile spread throughout the vehicle, which also employs 3D printing parts to reconcile aesthetics and functionality, a principle shared by both companies.
In addition to the automotive concept, the partnership includes a capsule collection that merges the style associated with playing fields, a heritage of René Lacoste, with the competitive spirit of Alpine, founded by Jean Rédélé. This line covers polos, T-shirts, light technical pieces, accessories, and co-branded products, available in a limited number of countries.
The launch is promoted by the film Le Test, a light and humorous production by Ninety Films, featuring actor Pierre Niney and Pierre Gasly, driver for the BWT Alpine F1 team, both brand ambassadors. The competition A290 Rallye was presented in 2025, the year Alpine celebrated its 70th anniversary, and it is assembled in the competition workshop of the Dieppe factory, named after Jean Rédélé. With an initial cost of 59,990 euros (excluding taxes) in Europe, it will give rise to a fully electric single-brand trophy set to debut in the French Rally Championship in 2026. The clothing collection aims to replicate the lightness and precision cultivated by both companies in wardrobes.
The Sagrada Familia Basilica is a grandiose project whose construction has lasted almost 150 years and incorporates elements of art, mathematics, politics, and drama.
On June 7, 1926, an elderly man with long hair and a beard was hit by a tram in Barcelona. He was mistaken for a homeless person. After hours of searching and recognition, he died in the hospital three days later at the age of 73. This was Antoni Gaudí, the architect who designed one of the world's most famous and ambitious works.
At the time of the accident, Gaudí was heading to a routine service after work, only eight blocks from his unfinished masterpiece—the Sagrada Familia—to which he had dedicated the last four decades. Previously, in the 1880s, he visited his projects daily, traveling in an elegant carriage. However, after 34 years divided among various projects, he focused exclusively on the Sagrada Familia. He changed: he stopped paying attention to his appearance, became more withdrawn, and began living directly on the construction site.
Gaudí's funeral drew the streets of Barcelona. He was buried in the crypt of the Nativity Façade—the only part of the building that was ready to function as a temple. Exactly one hundred years later, in 2026, 120,000 people gathered for a memorial mass led by Pope Leo XIV. This event marked not only the centenary of Gaudí's death but also the opening of the Christ the King Tower. After 144 years of work, the Sagrada Familia Basilica reached its maximum height (172.5 meters) and became the tallest church in the world.
When the Association of St. Joseph Parish decided to build a church in honor of the Holy Family in Barcelona, they lacked architectural innovations. The Association was not officially affiliated with the Catholic Church and held conservative views: the project was intended to be a response to growing liberalism and anti-clericalism in the recently industrialized region of Catalonia. Initially, the building was conceived as an expiatory church, funded by individual donations to atone for the sins of the donors.
The initial architect was Francesc de Paula Villar, who designed a Neo-Gothic church similar to other European examples of the time—very tall and pointed. Construction began in 1882, but the following year, Villar resigned due to disagreements with the Association. The project was taken over by the young architect Antoni Gaudí, one of his assistants, who previously had only minor experience in civil projects for wealthy clients.
Gaudí was not intimidated by the scale of the task; on the contrary, he raised the stakes and completely reworked the design in just a few weeks. His church was to be even taller, have more towers, and include innovations to bring believers closer. A square surrounding the church was planned, with each point situated at a distance he considered ideal for viewing the church. Gaudí drew inspiration from nature, incorporating elements of Catalan fauna and flora into his design. He was later recognized as a representative of the Renaissance movement, which sought to restore Catalan identity, which was crucial because the region had been forcibly incorporated into Spain since 1714, and speaking and writing in Catalan was forbidden.
Gaudí's style developed through trial and error. Therefore, he preferred creating detailed three-dimensional models rather than traditional plans. Some of his models reached five meters in height. He understood that he would not complete the work in his lifetime and became famous for the phrase that his 'client' (God) was not in a hurry. The delay was attributed not only to the church's dependence on donations but also to the level of detail and innovation. Gaudí left his successors general symbolic concepts, as well as standards of measurements, forms, and proportions that needed to be followed.
By the time of his death, about 10-15% of the construction was complete, but one of the three main façades—the Nativity Façade—was already finished. Gaudí decided to prioritize this one to give the workers a common goal and make the work 'too significant to abandon later.' This worked. Subsequent builders gained creative freedom in choosing details and styles for other parts of the church, always adhering to Gaudí's guiding principles.
This approach proved critical when, ten years after the architect's death, in 1936, all models and designs were destroyed by vandals. This act occurred amid a crisis arising from decades of tension between nationalists (military, conservative Catholics, and monarchists) and Republicans (socialists, anarchists, and proponents of Catalan independence). In 1936, the military, under General Franco, staged a coup against the Spanish republic proclaimed five years earlier. In Barcelona, Republican groups took control of parts of the city and attacked institutions considered allies of the nationalists, and churches fell into the zone of conflict.
Thus, on the night of July 20, anarchists burned down Gaudí's workshop in the Sagrada Familia, smashed his models, and killed the church's chaplain (religious assistant). This became one of the first of hundreds of conflicts marking the three years of civil war until the victory that secured Franco's power for 36 years.
After the attack, Gaudí's students restored the wreckage and saved 8,000 fragments of models, which are stored in a fund for researchers attempting to reconstruct the plans over nine decades. Materials published elsewhere and books written by architects who worked with Gaudí also form this puzzle.
However, the decades following the saving of the models saw slow progress. In 1977, although the main part of the building had advanced, the church still lacked a roof, and the floor was earth. Architects worldwide questioned whether the work should be completed or preserved as a relic of genius.
In the 1990s, the Barcelona Olympic Games revived tourist interest in the city and the basilica. Thanks to ticket revenue (which became the church's main source of income), construction picked up pace again. Today, the Sagrada Familia Construction Council is divided into specialized groups that analyze every clue left by Gaudí. One group focuses on the shape of the columns, while another searches for stones of suitable color and strength, analogous to the originals.
Gaudí lived with rheumatic diseases and spent his childhood in isolation in rural Catalonia. During this period, he began developing two key skills for future architecture: observing nature and three-dimensional modeling, which he learned in his father's forge. According to Gaudí, his works, like nature, lack straight angles or lines. For him, the curves of trees and bones represented ideal structures for supporting weight. He stated: 'A straight line belongs to man; a curved line belongs to God.'
Therefore, every column of the Sagrada Familia is slightly inclined. At the top, they branch into thinner and curved columns. And this is not just any curve: Gaudí was the first to intentionally use catenary arches, which distribute weight evenly across the entire surface and are often found in nature. This form appears when strings are suspended and deformed under their own weight, such as ropes on a clothesline or when holding a necklace before putting it on.
To calculate the catenary arches of his columns, Gaudí created an ingenious system of inverted models. He hung weighted strings at different points and, using a mirror on the floor, copied the resulting curves. If the weight or position of the string changed, the entire structure changed with it. Decades were required for computers to understand the calculations he made on paper and models. In the 1990s, aerospace engineering software proved more effective for calculating curves than traditional civil engineering.
Another innovation lies in the bases: the columns are not perfectly round. They begin as stars and gradually transform into polygons with a number of sides such that they ultimately appear cylindrical. Imagine a stack of coins. If they are round, the column will be round. But if you use six-pointed star-shaped coins, the stack forms a star-shaped column. However, if you slightly rotate each coin, shifting the vertices of the stars as the column rises, the distance between the vertices becomes smaller and smaller. So many facets are created that the final result does not look like a polygon (with straight lines) but rather like a circle. This is what Gaudí did on a large scale.
The structure of polygons and branches ensured a balanced distribution of weight and eliminated the need for buttresses—external supports for the church walls. Gaudí considered the buttresses common in Neo-Gothic churches to be 'crutches' for fragile structures. Instead of these structures, he filled the space with additional windows.
Gaudí also had a favorite repertoire of geometric forms—ruled surfaces. They have complex names, but they are familiar: hyperboloids (nuclear power plant tube), ellipsoids (flattened sphere), hyperbolic paraboloids (Pringles chips), and ellipsoids (screw spiral). These ruled surfaces are present throughout the basilica, but not always in the way they appear in geometry textbooks: Gaudí explored intersections, overlaps, cuts, and compositions that allowed for the creation of even more unusual shapes.
When the author first entered the basilica, captivated by the size, curves, and colors, a not very religious song played in his mind. It is no wonder that the classic program of the Cultura channel was inspired by Gaudí's architecture to create a castle in the middle of a large city that did not look medieval and matched its owner—a 3000-year-old inventor-sorcerer. Production designer Lou Greco, who participated in the castle's design, explains: 'Gaudí's style possessed this certain chaos that allowed for the insertion of any whim necessary during the episodes.'
In the photograph provided, for example, the starry ceiling is created by the intersection of several hyperboloids (nuclear tubes). Below, the 'nodes' of the columns are formed by ellipsoids (flattened spheres), 'cut' by other inclined ellipsoids. Like trees, these nodes ensure the best weight distribution between different branches. Although this may seem complicated today, imagine a stonemason receiving instructions from Gaudí 140 years ago. But it is not something incredibly complex: the curves are not random, but calculated based on the intersection of straight lines in space, and in most cases, it is not necessary to carve every curve individually.
Set designer Lu Grecco details the behind-the-scenes of creating the iconic sets and explains how Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí served as an inspiration for the aesthetics of Rá-Tim-Bum Castle.
In the 1990s, a team of set designers from TV Cultura was tasked with developing a set for a program featuring a three-thousand-year-old wizard. Initially, there were no clear definitions regarding the castle's appearance; it could not be medieval, nor follow the Disney standard, nor be located on a mountain.
The set needed to be dynamic to appeal to children of different age groups, without being excessively childish or austere. Furthermore, it should reflect the main character, who was both a wizard and an inventor, and should not display exaggerated luxuries so as not to bother children from more modest social classes. A crucial requirement was that the castle be urban, given that the antagonist planned to buy it to transform it into a hundred-story skyscraper.
Lu Grecco, who participated in the entire set design process, revealed that historical and artistic research led to the discovery of Antoni Gaudí as an ideal support to meet all these requirements. She pointed out that Gaudí is inspired by the forms of nature, generating movement, which is essential for the child audience. His work combined textures, colors, and shapes in a harmonious and aesthetically rich way.
Initially, the style of German anthropophic architecture, also inspired by nature, was considered, but this was discarded because it was considered visually heavy and harsh, while the team was looking for something happier. Gaudí's style was chosen because it was ingenious and versatile, accommodating various elements necessary for the set, such as the accommodation of actors and puppets, and allowing for future changes, as happened in episode 40.
Additionally, Gaudí's style had a strong urban presence in Barcelona and its surroundings, which helped in visualizing buildings with his language integrated into the urban environment.
Grecco emphasized that nothing in the set was an exact reproduction of a building or park, but rather a stylistic reinterpretation. A more referenced element was a seahorse sculpture, made at the Bica location for children to wash their hands, which referred to elements of Park Güell.
She stressed that the castle is entirely sinuous, without straight lines, which gives movement and breadth to the video. Regarding the execution, Grecco believes that Gaudí had intensive work with stonemasons, but the complex design of the castle was made possible by a highly qualified staff, including carpenters, set technicians, and props masters.
Although there were no artistic blacksmiths in the set design department, two blacksmiths from the maintenance sector were loaned. They created pieces such as a railing, molding the iron by hand, which resulted in a wonderful and fun product for them.
Despite not having any idea of the success Rá-Tim-Bum Castle would achieve, the team took a chance and enjoyed the creative process. The program represented a new format, and TV Cultura had low ratings, making the success unexpected.
Grecco shared that the program's impact endures, with former students mentioning the Castle as inspiration to study architecture or journalism. She concluded that the cultural reverberation of the Castle, now a classic, will probably never end.
To create set elements, Grecco adopts the public's perspective, putting herself in the place of a child. When designing the kitchen, for example, she asks herself how a five or seven-year-old child would imagine that space and what the characters would do in it.
To maintain the playful side, she suggests that those who do not have this facility should feed on references, as the act of researching stimulates the brain, even if the researched elements are not directly used in the final work.
Casa L.A., a project presented by the design team Emedos Projetos, is located in the gated community La Z Residence. This development is situated in the central area of Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic.
The main objective of Casa L.A. is to establish a symbiotic relationship between the physical environment of the land and the architectural construction itself. To achieve this, the project aims to integrate the various social areas that make up the residence internally.
