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At the Venice Biennale, Rem Koolhaas urges visitors to look at architecture’s fundamentals, but exactly what is he asking us to consider? In the Central Pavilion in Venice’s Giardini, Rem Koolhaas and his curatorial team have broken down architecture into 15 basic “elements.” The Ceiling display pairs the dome in the pavilion, painted in 1909 by Galileo Chini and newly restored, with its contemporary counterpart, the dropped ceiling. Rem Koolhaas, director of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, casts scorn in myriad directions in this three-headed hydra of a show, ambitiously entitled Fundamentals. His approach, we learn

Smiljan Radić's 2014 Serpentine Pavilion opened to the public on June 26. The Serpentine Pavilion has become one of London’s leading summer attractions since launching in 2000. Last year’s cloud-like structure by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto within the city’s Kensington Gardens was visited by almost 200,000 people. In March, Serpentine Galleries Director Julia Peyton-Jones and Co-Director Hans Ulrich Obrist announced their selection of Chilean architect Smiljan Radić to design the 2014 edition of the temporary construction. A 2008 Architectural Record Vanguard, the architect may not be as well-known as some of his pavilion-designer predecessors – which include Rem Koolhaas, Frank

Photo © Christine Kim Gere Kavanaugh In Los Angeles, June is the month for design. Coinciding with Dwell on Design (June 20-22) at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the Los Angeles Design Festival (LADF) celebrates local and international talent with a series of events. Last year, LADF introduced the Julia Morgan Icon Award, intended to recognize a bold woman and her outstanding contributions to the design industry. This year’s recipient is Gere Kavanaugh, one of California’s pioneer female designers. Kavanaugh earned her BFA from the Memphis Academy of Art and was one of the first women to receive an MFA

Hotel construction has surged, recovering rapidly from its recession-era slump. Over the next few years, the sector should remain on an upward trajectory, thanks to strong profits and improving occupancy rates. Click the image above to view a full presentation of these stats [PDF].

The New York City Office of Emergency Management begins testing its new architecture of disaster relief. Photo © Architectural Record New York City officials unveiled a new modular post-disaster housing unit, designed by Garrison Architects. It’s nothing short of  building a city within a city overnight. That’s the fundamental premise behind a new modular post-disaster housing unit, designed by Garrison Architects, which was revealed Tuesday by New York City officials. The premise is simple but ambitious: Post-disaster housing will allow city residents to live in their neighborhood for months or years after a major disaster while their homes undergo repairs.

The 191,500-square-foot mixed-use development incorporates permanently affordable housing, pre-kindergarten classrooms, and the new Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio joined with community leaders in Harlem on a rainy Monday morning to celebrate an innovative housing development nearing completion in the neighborhood’s historic Sugar Hill enclave. Designed by David Adjaye, the 191,500-square-foot mixed-use development incorporates permanently affordable housing, pre-kindergarten classrooms, and the new Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling. “It is so rare to see a city do this kind of project,” the London- and New York-based Adjaye explained at

Photo courtesy Architecture for Humanity Architecture for Humanity is currently supporting reconstruction efforts in the earthquake and tsunami-ravaged areas of Japan. AFH's Ishinomaki, Japan, office has completed 16 projects, including a new school building, above, for a kindergarten that was destroyed in the March 2011 tsunami. Eric Cesal is the new executive director of Architecture for Humanity (AFH), the nonprofit’s board of directors announced today. A longtime volunteer, Cesal joined AFH full-time in 2010 to start the Haiti Rebuilding Center in Port-au-Prince. Since 2012 he has led the organization’s global post-disaster rebuilding efforts from its headquarters in San Francisco. Cesal

While the Korean pavilion won the Golden Lion, and Chile took the silver, many other national participations in the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale offered interesting variations on Absorbing Modernity: 1914-2014, the theme set out by director Rem Koolhaas. Click the image below to view a slide show of highlights as well as a special presentation by London's Architectural Association School and a new set of drawings by Daniel Libeskind. Kingdom of BahrainFundamentalists and Other Arab ModernismsCurators: George Arbid, Bernard Khoury – Arab Center for ArchitetureThe Bahrain pavilion presents a vast library of 100 years of Modernism in the Arab world

A new archaeology campus designed by Moshe Safdie is under construction on a Jerusalem hillside. The most striking feature of the National Campus for Archaeology is a giant, concave canopy, held in place by cables and made of woven fiberglass-and-polymer fabric. In Jerusalem, the capital of a modern country enthralled by its past, a unique national archaeology campus is being built. The project—commissioned by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and officially named The Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel—combines three major components: storage of the national archaeological treasures (some two million items); restoration labs for

 Golden Lion Winner: The Minsuk Cho-organized Korean Pavilion in the Giardini. Could it be a coincidence that minutes after reporting that Phyllis Lambert had received the Venice Architecture Biennale's Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at a ceremony earlier in the day, the radio station in my rental car (as I mbarked on a pilgrimage to Carlo Scarpa’s Brion Cemetery) broadcast the Sondheim ballad “I’m Still Here”? Lambert, 87, could have been Elaine Stritch, now 89, singing about good times and bum times, my dear. Related links Exhibition Review: Time Space Existence Venice Dispatch: Highlights from the National Pavilions Venice