Pezo von Ellrichshausen’s Vara Pavilion for the 2016 Venice Biennale is described by the architects as “a series of exteriors within other exteriors.” Breaking down this crypticness, what emerges is a maze-like complex of circles – ten of them – formed with steel, cement, and painted plaster, which collectively create a series of walls, but no roof, thus forming a pavilion that is open to the elements from above. The 324 square meter pavilion’s title, “vara,” refers to an imprecise and obsolete Spanish unit of measurement, that was employed during the country’s conquering of America to trace and measure cities. Each of circles of the Vara Pavilion is a diameter of the unit, ranging from two to eleven.

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OMA’s long-awaited conversion of the 16th century Fondaco dei Tedeschi as a department store is finally complete in Venice. The project was commissioned by Edizione S.r.l., the Benetton family's holding company, in 2009, and will bring comprehensive changes to one of the city’s largest and most recognizable buildings. The Fondaco was first begun in 1228 and is located at the foot of the Rialto Bridge, across from the fish market. With many past lives, it was first used as a trading post for German merchants, later as a customs house under Napoleon, and in the twentieth century, as a post office under Mussolini. Despite numerous and radical structural changes, the building was listed as a 'Monument' in 1987, restricting further alterations.

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Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery has selected OMA to expand and refurbish the historic museum and its campus. The project team is being lead by OMA New York’s Principal, Shohei Shigematsu, who will spend the next year in partnership with the museum and in consultation with the community on how to renew and revitalize the august institution. Known as AK360, the building will be OMA’s first art museum project in the United States, and the Albright-Knox’s first expansion in more than a half-century. According to the museum, the project’s name is a reflection on this being the institution’s third expansion in its 154-year history, in addition, it establishes an embrace of public feedback and the acknowledges the condition of being encircled by parkland.

Phyllis Lambert, architect and Founding Director Emeritus of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), has been announced as the winner of the 2016 Wolf Prize for the Arts. Awarded by the Wolf Foundation in Israel on June 2, the architect was cited for six decades of championing innovations in building design, for her preservation and regeneration efforts with significant historical works, and for her leadership the field of architectural research.

Gensler’s “Gateway Tower” is a 2000-foot (610 meter) conceptual proposal for the Chicago Spire site. The project is the winning entry for a company-wide internal competition to generate a new megatall structure for the 2.2 acre plot at 400 N. Lake Shore Drive. The mixed-use proposal throws out the residential luxury model that drove Santiago Calatrava’s design, with a concept inspired by tourism and public engagement. Gateway Tower’s volume is still largely devoted to residential functions, but now condos and apartments are coupled with a hotel and public attractions that connect to the riverwalk, lakefront, and city. The building would include four unique experiences including riverfront public access at DuSable Park, a Funicular ride of pods ascending the building’s structural “leg” over Lake Shore Drive, a Skylobby with hotel and retail amenities, and a Skydeck with a restaurant and sky-garden at the building’s pinnacle.

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The design proposals of seven shortlisted finalists for the Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art Design Competition have been released by the competition’s organizer, Malcolm Reading Consultants. Located in the capital city of Riga, the funding for the €30 million project is a public private partnership with support from from the ABLV Charitable Foundation and the Boris and Ināra Teterev Foundation, which co-founded the Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation. The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia and the Museum’s Foundation signed a memorandum of intent regarding the museum and building on 30 October 2014. The competition, organized in 2015 with 25 first-stage participants, will announce a jury-selected winner in mid-June.

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Have you ever wanted to decorate your walls with old-style maps but been discouraged because they don't fit your minimal and contemporary aesthetic? Enter Cut Maps, the Virginia-based company that creates cartographic representations of cities and states using laser technologies to precisely define borders and streets. The resultant maps offer the illusion of their paper precedents, but with an otherworldly precision only possible in the digital age.

Foster + Partners has designed a mammoth, mixed-use complex on the Brooklyn waterfront in Red Hook, with 600,000 square feet (55,700 square meters) of offices and 23,000 square feet (2,100 square meters) of retail space and restaurants. Located on a former industrial site, the buildings will provide flexible open floor plans of up to 100,000 square feet (9,300 square meters). The facility is intended to build on a dramatic growth in technology companies in Brooklyn, creating an office environment that is open and collaborative, reflecting a style that is de rigueur in the tech-sector.

“Immersed in reading a book it feels like [being] inside an architecture, a metaphysical space surrounded by the words,” says Federico Babina, discussing his latest series of illustrations, ARCHIWRITER. In the new series of 27 drawings, the illustrator has created “portraits” of authors by personifying their writing styles, periods, and locations as built environments made from architectural elements and words. Heightening this sense of individuality, Babina states that the resultant portraits can be “fluctuating, vernacular, itinerant, ephemeral, concentric, labyrinthine, surrealist, oneiric, and futuristic.”

This week's issue of The New York Times Magazine, the special New York issue with a theme of “New York Above 800 Feet,” takes a rather irreverent approach to the magazine’s design. Instead of being viewed in the traditional horizontal orientation, the periodical has been rotated 90 degrees and is meant to be viewed by turning the pages up. The long dimension, which is only 10.875 inches horizontally, becomes 17.875 inches vertically, and according to the magazine’s editor, Jake Silverstein, “‘[It] remains absurdly short for our subject, but it is in keeping with the striving spirit that has given New York City its distinctive skyline: This is as tall as it is possible for our magazine to be."

KAAN Architecten has won the commission to design the New Amsterdam Courthouse. The new building will replace the current judicial complex at the intersection of Zuidas and Parnassusweg, which is slated for demolition. The Courthouse of Amsterdam is the largest in the Netherlands and handles 150,000 cases a year with a staff of 200 judges and 800 professionals. KAAN Architecten describes the building's design as both "stately" and "distinguished," stating that the intention was to create a facility that understands justice as an open process, and thus incorporates ways for the public to engage with the Courthouse.

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HarbourLoop is an iconic new pedestrian and cycling network for Hong Kong, proposed by design studio Lead 8. Transforming the perimeter of Victoria Harbour on its Hong Kong and Kowloon sides, HarbourLoop will add 23 kilometers of paths for walking, running, and biking. Lead 8 believes that despite being one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with 6,300 people per square kilometer, Hong Kong’s waterfront is underutilized. HarbourLoop will add social value as it intersects with existing offices, residential and leisure districts, and will encourage new development adjacent to the city’s waterfront, including restaurants, cafes, and community meeting places.

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Are tree covered buildings really in tune with ecological and sustainable principles, or are they just a form of greenwashing? This is the question posed by Kurt Kohlstedt in his essay, Renderings vs. Reality: The Improbable Rise of Tree-Covered Skyscrapers, for 99% Invisible. The author notes that vegetated designs come about for myriad reasons – the appearance of sustainability, better air and views, investment intrigue – but that most of these concepts will never leave the realm of paper or virtual architecture. For as many reasons that these buildings have become popular, there are detractors for why they simply cannot be built, including daunting construction hurdles (extra concrete and steel), vast irrigation systems, added wind load complexities, and the trees themselves having difficulty adapting to their vertiginous conditions.

Have you ever had a conflict with a client over being paid for a file? Have you also been out of free space on your dedicated FTP? The dispute scenario often leads to architects being shortchanged for their work. But, a new cloud sharing platform might mean the end of an era of intractable conflicts. Fileship.io promises a system that leaves the architects and other members of the creative economy in control. The simple idea behind the website is that a client’s files are locked behind a paywall, meaning that in order to gain access designers must be compensated. The platform also doesn’t rely on predetermined limits to server space, a scenario that often makes architects err on the side of leniency in order to load newer work on their FTP. Put simply by fileship.io, “You get paid. They get their file.”

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), in collaboration with Entasis Arkitekter, has released new images of Karlatornet, a 230-meter tower project in Gothenburg, Sweden. Selected by jury in 2014, the tower is scheduled for completion in 2019, and will be Sweden’s tallest building. The project is part of Lindholmen, a new district being built adjacent to the city’s harbor. The full plan – ten blocks of office, retail, and residential space – is slated for completion in 2021, to coincide with Gothenburg’s 400th anniversary.

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Vivid Sydney, the Australian city's annual festival of lights, began today with colorful installations that reinvent icons like the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Jørn Utzon’s renowned Opera House. The event is host to over 90 light installations devised by more than 150 artists from 23 countries, appearing in eight precincts across the city.

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CHROFI and McGregor Coxall have designed Acadia Remembrance Sanctuary as a “bushland cemetery for a secular society.” The architects are proposing a burial ground located in the idyllic setting of a conservation woodland area on the outskirts of Sydney. The project calls for natural graves without headstones, instead opting for GPS technology to find the resting sites of loved ones. The tactic shifts the emphasis of cemeteries from the manicured appearances of individual plots and headstones to the retention and protection of the bush ecology. The proposed cemetery is situated on 10.1 hectares (25 acres) of parkland with a 400 square meter (4,500 square foot) building located at its center.

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