United States

Taking place at the Center for Architecture September 3-23, AIA New York's 'Coverage: Seventy-Five Years of Oculus' Exhibition celebrates 75 years of Oculus and the 10 years since the 2003 re-launch. The exhibition will include original issues of Oculus from the AIA New York Chapter's archives dating back to 1938, and will trace the publication's history from an AIANY newsletter to the quarterly architectural journal it is today. The opening reception takes place 6:00-8:00pm EST. For more information, please visit here,

The Graham Foundation recently announced their upcoming exhibition, Environments and Counter Environments. “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape,” MoMA 1972, which opens to the public on September 18th with a short talk by curators Peter Lang, Luca Molinari, and Mark Wasiuta followed by a reception. This exhibition highlights the lasting significance of MoMA’s groundbreaking 1972 exhibition, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape. Presented for the first time in the United States outside of New York, the Graham Foundation's iteration of Environments and Counter Environments highlights both the dynamic context of radical Italian design and architecture in the 1970s, as well as the innovative exhibition that first presented this work in America. The exhibition will be on view until December 14th. More information provided by The Graham Foundation after the break.

Presented by the University of Maryland's School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, the 'Conflict and Convergence: Urban Informality in Latin America' Symposium aims to explore how recent experiences in cities such as Medellín, Bogotá, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Caracas, among others, can serve as examples for multidisciplinary models to urban and social revitalization in other parts of the world. Taking place October 4th at 5:00pm until October 5th at 10:00am, the event will bring together participants representing a wide spectrum of disciplines and seeks to generate a conversation between professionals and academics to analyze the goals, methods, achievements and opportunities in Latin America. For more information, please visit here.

Designed and constructed by QASTIC Lab, ‘Balance Through Buoyancy’ is a temporary researchpavilion called “Floatastic” which was designed and built for a private client to serve as a shade pavilion for a wedding ceremony. Situated in Edgerton Park, in New Haven Connecticut (an Olmsted planned landscape), this deployable structure aims to create a floated shelter which avoids imposing any loads to the ground, which traditional structures require. Instead, it proposes a well-fabricated balloon, which is filled with Helium to raise the imposed loads of fabric veils and any possible dynamic environmental loads toward the sky. More images and architects’ description after the break.

New York-based, Serbian-born performance artist Marina Abramović has successfully secured funding via Kickstarter for phase one of an interdisciplinary performance and education center in Hudson, New York. The project, known as the Marina Abramovic Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art (MAI), aims to be the first crowdfunded cultural institution ever to be built as well as the only international arts center dedicated to presentation and preservation of long-durational work. With the help of Abramović’s “global community of collaborators,” OMA will now move forward with the project’s design development process. More information on the MAI’s design can be found here.

In honor and celebration of the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington, which took place August 28, 1963, the RFQ for architectural services for the new Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library was officially launched today by the District of Columbia Public Library. Currently a Mies van der Rohe building, which is his only library and the only Mies building in D.C., people using the public library more than ever to seek assistance in navigating the complex networks of information available to them and in converting that information to knowledge for their personal needs (education, lifelong learning, enjoyment, jobs, business development, and so on).

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library will be a place for residents to explore, connect, create and engage. They seek an inspiring design for the library of the future that will accommodate great flexibility in library uses and in technology. The RFQ's are due no later than September 23. A pre-proposal conference is also set to take place September 10. For more information, including the full RFQ document, please visit here.