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

“Here is the most modern of modern houses I’ve ever seen and loved,” she wrote, describing the turquoise mosaic tile, the compact state-of-the-art kitchen, the distant views of city lights, the proximity to her daughter’s family and the circular stairway that she felt, sadly, too old to sail down.

“I guess you can’t expect to have too many dreams answered,” she concluded. “At least, I’ve had the opportunity to see the Morris House, to know it existed.” — nytimes.com

Victoria Newhouse - "aesthetically I think they are greatly improved from what we had before...they're smaller and more intimate...more inviting...they are acoustically improved...and many of them have the ability to be reconfigured...all of this leads to a very exciting scene" — Charlie Rose

People walk out of an upside down house, built by Polish architects Irek Glowacki and Marek Rozanski, in the western Austrian village of Terfens May 5, 2012. The project is meant to serve as a new tourist attraction in the area, and is now open for public viewing. Picture taken May 5, 2012. — buzzfeed.com

The architect on the new gallery is the L.A.-based firm wHY Architecture, founded by Kulapat Yantrasast, who worked with Tadao Ando for 15 years, and designed the L.A. branch of New York gallery L&M Arts, in Venice Beach. The firm, Mr. Rubenstein says, was recommended to him by Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art director Jeffrey Deitch, a New York transplant himself. — galleristny.com

Thom Mayne of Morphosis Architects beat out some serious competition yesterday when he was awarded the honor to design the first CornellNYC Tech academic building on Roosevelt Island. The six candidates included Diller Scofidio + Renfro of High Line fame; One World Trade Center designers Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), and Steven Holl Architects. — Inhabitat

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 concept of building or imagining a new City is actually more than just a concept, and has been delivered in recent times for political, economic, social or other reasons. Abuja, Nigeria is one of the more recent, purpose built in the 1980s and now Nigeria’s Capital City since 1991. — thisbigcity.net

What might happen at Seattle Center when Memorial Stadium goes away? Are there imaginative and unique uses for a large urban park? What is the Jelly Bean and why is it floating next to the Space Needle?
Join us Friday, May 11, for presentations by the finalists of a design competition, Urban Intervention, that explores the future of Seattle Center and public space. The lecture is free and open to the public, but tickets should be reserved in advance. — AIA Seattle

Elected officials in Goshen, N.Y., voted Thursday against a resolution to demolish and replace the Orange County Government Center by Paul Rudolph. Steven Ward, hoped “mr diana will now get behind this decision and determine how best to renovate to meet the needs of the community...score one for preservation of the modern!"

My business cards say FASHION ARCHITECTURE BASKETBALL. When people ask me what I do, they’re usually trying to ask how I made my money, not what my job is. In my mind, what I do is those three things. They occupy most of my time: fashion, going around to all the fashion weeks and being such a fanatic when I pick out my clothes, trying to be in the latest fashions. Architecture, which you can see here, with this house. And basketball, which is another full-time occupation for me. — interviewmagazine.com

Just off the narrow, crowded streets of Greenwich Village is a lush, spacious garden of drooping mature willows and sycamores.
New York University, its owner, fights for its destruction.
If the university prevails, two curvy towers shaped like chocolate drops will arise from the garden. The million square feet of new construction are the space equivalent of a hefty skyscraper. — bloomberg.com

in professional practice, there’s a tendency to lose track of the initial spark that drew us to the profession and fall into a routine of designing similar projects for a familiar client type without thinking too deeply about it. It’s hard to make any money in the profession without a certain amount of repetition and standardization. So when a project comes along that challenges your values, that would be a good time to reconnect with the reasons you got into your profession in the first place. — thepolisblog.org

MASS Design Group is one of a handful of nonprofits showing that design isn’t just for the wealthy, nor is it just image-making. The challenge, for MASS and others trying to do public service design work, is to make their operations financially sustainable. As students, MASS provided much of their work on the Butaro Hospital pro bono, but they are not students anymore. The staff of MASS eclipsed 20 in the past year... — blog.sfgate.com

Beginning on May 19th, people will see the Barnes collection not where Barnes intended it to be seen, but in a new building designed by the New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien.

This building won’t please the absolutists, the people we should probably call Barnes fundamentalists, because nothing would please them short of a return to the way things were. But it really ought to please everybody else, because—to cut to the chase—the new Barnes is absolutely wonderful. — vanityfair.com