The U.S. Pavilion at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, organized by the Institute for Urban Design on behalf of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, will be devoted to the theme Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good. The exhibit features 124 urban interventions initiated by architects, designers, planners, artists, and everyday citizens that bring positive change to their neighborhoods and cities. — bustler.net

The self supporting wooden sphere stands 15 meters tall, 35.2 meters long, and 14.4 meters wide. Units were built as ‘cartridges’ off-site and assembled into a self supporting grid. All wood is sustainably harvested. The timber strand beams and stained plywood skin is gridded with large windows throughout. Set to the solar south the structure is evenly daylit and illuminated by LED lighting at night. A separately supported floor is entered though an elevated bridge. — eVolo

The Horniman Museum and Gardens in London just reopened its 16.5 acre gardens to the public after a major £2.3M ($3.5M) redevelopment. [...]

The most prominent part of the redevelopment is the new Gardens Pavilion designed by London-based practice Walters & Cohen. The firm's partners, Michál Cohen and Cindy Walters, recently topped a shortlist of strong competitors to win the coveted AJ Woman Architect of the Year Award. — bustler.net

NL Architects has sent us images of their recent project: a pretty rad mash-up pavilion for a bicycle club in the Hainan Province in southern China. The proposal is part of a big resort for developer VANKEN, and NL Architects told us that they've just received green light from the client! Looks like this will actually get build soon. — bustler.net

The Thematic Pavilion “ONE OCEAN“ for the 2012 EXPO in Yeosu, South Korea [...] is scheduled to open later this week, May 12. The pavilion, a permanent building and one of the major facilities for the Yeosu EXPO, was designed by Austrian firm soma who won the international competition for the assignment back in 2009.

The pavilion's exhibitions will give the visitors overview and introduction to the EXPO’s theme, The Living Ocean and Coast. — bustler.net

London's Serpentine Gallery just released plans for the 2012 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei. This summer's pavilion, the twelfth commission in the gallery’s annual series, will be open to the public from June 1 to October 14, 2012. — bustler.net

The Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris today announced Ball-Nogues Studio from Los Angeles as the winner of the 2012 edition of the “Pavillon Spéciale” competition. Now in its 2nd edition, the Pavillon Spéciale consolidates its role as an annual spring architectural series that gives young emerging international architects the opportunity to build with students a temporary project in the heart of Paris. — bustler.net

The pavilion concept SEAT by New York and Portland-based collaboration E/B Office has won the commission for this year's Freedom Park Project at Atlanta. SEAT is a garden pavilion composed of approximately 400 simple wooden chairs arrayed and stacked in a 3-dimensional sine wave surface rising above the ground. — bustler.net

Austrian firm soma is updating us on the latest construction status of their “One Ocean“ Thematic Pavilion for the EXPO 2012 in Yeosu, South Korea. The pavilion is a major and permanent building for the Expo and is scheduled for official opening on May 12, 2012. [...]
The building will house two kinds of exhibitions that will give the visitors an introduction to the EXPO’s theme, The living Ocean and Coast. — bustler.net

The results of the Pfff Inflatable Architecture competition, organized by CityVision and FARM, have recently been announced at MACRO - Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome. Competition winner is the concept 'Grenade' by Emmanuel Sitbon and Selma Feriani of Paris-based SITBON ARCHITECTES. — bustler.net

New York-based HWKN has been selected for this year’s MoMA/PS 1 Young Architects Program. Their proposal, called “Wendy,” uses standard scaffolding to create a visually arresting object that straddles the three outdoor rooms of the PS 1 courtyard. Tensioned fabric coated in smog-eating paint provides shelter and programming areas including a stage, shower, and misters. — blog.archpaper.com

The Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei collaboration – the 12th pavilion – breaks the mould of the sequence so far as the criterion for the commission had been for an architect not to have built in England. But Herzog & de Meuron are also deeply engaged in the art world, having built the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. They are currently working on art museums in New York, Miami and Kolkata. — ft.com

The U.S. Pavilion at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale, devoted to the theme Spontaneous Interventions: Design Actions for the Common Good, has launched a new website to share information about the exhibition and to broaden the call for projects to be considered for inclusion. — bustler.net