While most countries design their pavilions as insular bubbles, celebrating the achievements of its own architects, this year, the UK curators, muf architecture/art, tabled that particular tradition.

Instead, they use the project, “which they call Villa Frankenstein,” as a way to generate a dialogue between the UK and Venice.  Clue No. 1: the constructed lagoon out back.  Along the length of the back terrace, muf included what they call a working salt marsh.  Inside, in the back room, an exquisite mapping of the Venice lagoon fills the length of an entire wall, and birds, on loan from the Natural History Museum in Venice, animate the space.

In the front room, a hand-crafted wooden bleacher, oriented to the front door, fills the interior volume.  This “Stadium of Close Looking” (which happens to be a 1:10 model of the London 2012 Olympic Stadium) accommodates drawing classes for local school children along with Biennale-related lectures, but it also visually emphasizes the relationship the curators hope to establish, since muf uses it to set up a framed view of the Biennale’s Giardini. read more

“Decorating is the last subject we need in the national debate right now. Even in the best of times, taste is not a subject that brings people together.”

– Stephen Drucker, editor-in-chief of House Beautiful, when asked to opine on the makeover of President Obama’s Oval Office by The New York Times. The new look is thanks to California decorator Michael Smith, who updated the room with “a rug woven with quotations from Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and others; two fawn-colored cotton-rayon sofas; two elegant midnight-blue lamps by Christopher Spitzmiller; and an extremely contemporary mica coffee table from Roman Thomas, a New York furnituremaker.”

Writer Penelope Green queried a slew of design experts and political commentators to weigh on what Obama’s taste says about his presidency, and the general “audacity of beige.”

Some were pro-relook:

“I can only imagine how difficult it is to decorate an oval room — much less for the government — but I would have to say the room is a success. What we Americans want is good solid comfort, and I think the room delivers.” — Miles Redd

And some, like Arianna Huffington, were more skeptical: read more

Architecture schools around the country have bulletin boards covered entirely in posters, mostly design-y leaflets advertising lecture series or upcoming architecture events.

My own school’s lecture series poster featured a simple rundown of each speaker in a large a large font with no imagery (simple and effective): what stood out was the color scheme: pink, blue and yellow (a departure from classic architecture black). Procrastinating students would stand in the hallway, on late nights or between classes, looking at when the next lecture would be.

This coming fall, there will no doubt be a new batch of architecture posters, especially in academic environments. Will they be well-designed? Some of the posters I encountered were a bit overdesigned or hard to read. Others were clever, simple or clear. In the case of architecture posters, graphics communicate a message directly, though many times using abstractions or playful imagery.

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John Hill, who Matt Chaban calls “the city’s most prolific architecture critic,” has chronicled 31 buildings in New York, one for every day of August. The choices range from Renzo Piano’s Morgan Library and the Yohji Yamamoto store to more unexpected locations like the Pier 62 carousel. [via A Daily Dose of Architecture]

Google is countering some of that less-than-glowing press by creating an $86 million Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) fund that will be used to build 480 affordable rental housing units across the West and Midwest. [via TechCrunch]

Experiencing a lull at work during this last week of summer? The New York Department of Buildings has launched its own YouTube channel. its first video, on the topic of scaffolding safety, is less boring than one might think. In fact, kind of a tearjerker! [via A/N Blog]

Daniel Libeskind headlined the jury for the selection of a Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, Poland — the winning entry by Studio Architektoniczne, “Kwadrat,” inserts a bright red plane into a triangle-shaped site, echoed by fin-like slabs ascending from the building’s center. [via Architecture Lab]

German architects Sauerbruch Hutton designed a breathable “skin” for skyscrapers that allows circulation of fresh air in high-rise buildings. The firm’s KfW Bankengruppe office building in Frankfurt features the world’s first example of the “pressure ring” technology which looks as good as it must feel for whoever pays the electric bill. [via Co.Design]

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The Holland Performing Arts Center is a floating, metal-clad box with a concert hall “floating” within. A large part of Omaha, Nebraska’s cultural revival is owed to the Holland, designed by Polshek Partnership (now Ennead) with local architects HDR.

The comparable Ennead creation, the Rose Center for Earth and Space for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, is a high-tech, spherical planetarium within a glass box. Unlike the Rose Center, however, this is a building you can enjoy with your eyes closed.

While listening to a range of Austrian-related composers in the Peter Kiewit Concert Hall (Mahler, Mozart and the usual suspects), I looked around at the sensuous curving shapes, mostly covered in American sycamore wood panels.  The orchestral stage is wrapped completely in the curving wood, while acoustical tiles with trapezoidal cuts line the back walls.  There are few flat surfaces. Acoustical principles generated the general form of the hall; it’s like being inside of a C.F. Martin acoustic guitar. Coincidentally, the space isn’t only used for classical music, but musicians ranging from Brian Eno to David Byrne. read more

“As a native New Yorker I was truly taken with the diverse shoreline of New York and New Jersey’s shared harbor, a geography I thought I was familiar with but found to be far more complex than I’d imagined. When viewed from lower Manhattan or Brooklyn, this coastline, with its islands, channels, and inlets, appears to be much flatter than it is. Seeing it through the ideas, projects, and proposals of the five teams helped me imagine a future of sustainable waterfront development that is flexible and responsive, rather than fixed and rigid.”

– Architizer co-founder Benjamin Prosky recounts his experience touring New York Harbor with Barry Bergdoll and the architect teams from the exhibition Rising Currents. READ THE FULL POST ON MoMA’S RISING CURRENTS BLOG.

A $27 million visitor’s center for Old Faithful opened in Yellowstone Park last week; the center — designed by CTA Architects Engineers of Billings, Montana — boasts a “36.5-foot-high pentagonal window space looking out on Old Faithful,” making nature, not architecture, the cathedral. [via New York Times]

Analyzing newly-built architecture located next to Los Angeles public transit, Times critic Christopher Hawthorne highlights the Samitaur Tower by Eric Owen Moss in Culver City, praising its goal “not to evoke a mood or draw a line in the sand but to enable an outlook” in the realm of urban renaissance. [via Los Angeles Times]

And some bad news from LA: last-ditch efforts to stop the new owners of a 1951 John Lautner house (one of the modernist architect’s early commissions) from razing it to build a McMansion have failed. [via Culture Monster]

In a real coup for landmark status in New York city, the entire West End Avenue running from 70th Street to 109th Street has been designated a historic district, meaning “two miles of almost uninterrupted pre-war grandeur.” [via A/N Blog]

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At the turn of the 21st century, architect Rem Koolhaas was, needless to say, a big deal. Making a name for himself on a global level with SMLXL (coupled with a handful of award-winning projects), Koolhaas became a prominent figure in both the professional and academic worlds. Bart Lootsma felt that other innovative Dutch architects should share in OMA’s limelight and in 2000 created a book presenting the work of twelve contemporary Dutch architectures titled Superdutch: New Architecture in the Netherlands.

Profiling the work of both established and up and coming Dutch firms, Superdutch became a showcase of practices on the verge of being the next wave of global architectural players. Within the book, OMA along with UN Studio, Mecanoo, MVRDV and West 8 (all firms still making architecture headlines today) showed how they were changing the world of architecture one project at a time.

Shortly after Superdutch hit bookshelves, two ambitious young architects decided to combine their design abilities and began a firm in Denmark simply known as PLOT. Under this alias, Bjarke Ingels and Julien De Smedt* (who met while working for OMA) spent the next 5 years creating narrative-based architecture analyzing practical and theoretical issues. In 2006, the founders of PLOT decided to go their separate ways, creating BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) and JDS (Julien De Smedt Architects). Expanding upon their once-collaborative experience, the architects have managed to establish their respective firms major players in the architecture world.

Currently, the Danish architectural invasion seems to be in full force. Alongside BIG and JDS, a new batch of up-and-coming Danes have been making waves in the field — the Superdanish, if you will. read more

An ambitious architecture student from California College of the Arts created a sound map of New York City, plotted on a circular 24-hour clock and color-coded by typology. You know what? Just watch the video above. [via Data Visualization]

It’s official! Autodesk announces today that the company is bringing its flagship AutoCAD design and engineering software to the Mac for the first time in nearly two decades. [via New York Times]

Clocking in its second sports complex in China, Populous was tapped to design an athletic park in Datong, on the outskirts of Beijing. The masterplan includes a 30,000 seat stadium, an 8,000 seat arena, a 1,500 seat natatorium and a multiuse training hall, all meant to spur economic growth in the historic city. [via ArchiCentral]

If you thought nothing could slow the roll of David Adjaye’s trajectory into the ranks of starchitecture, please refer to Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat, who just won the commission for a Russian university on the outskirts of Moscow. [via Building Design Online]

Shipping container structure or treehouse? Erm, maybe both. This wooden observation tower in The Netherlands by Ateliereen Architecten can be scaled via climbing walls — so we’re going with answer (C): a playhouse for adults. [via Inhabitat] read more

It’s almost the beginning of September, which for a select few means lights, camera, action in the form of Fashion Week. (Hitting New York September 9-16, then onto London and Paris.)

And no longer are the trappings of fashion’s biggest spectacle irrelevant to those of us in the design/build field. Architects are designing high-end boutiques and delving into shoe design — not to mention we’ve been sponsoring a fashion/architecture hybrid competition that’s wrapping up next week.

After the jump, we’ve got the skinny on three fashion designers whose architect-designed pop-up shops will be open to the public at Building Fashion headquarters at Neil Denari’s HL23 building next to the High Line — all starting during New York Fashion Week. read more