Oscar Niemeyer still works as an architect - at the grand old age of 102. As the exhibition in the Brazilian pavilion proves conclusively. The title "Brasilia - 50 Years On" whets the viewer's appetite; after all, the rigorously modern city was the promise of the day. Alongside Niemeyer, who designed the ideal city's most important buildings, the works of a new generation of young architects are also on display. Nonetheless, the Biennial's perhaps most interesting contribution to Brazilian architecture is actually to be found elsewhere.

Here, construction comes into its own. Connections are not talked about but simply shown - modestly but accurately in black and white. "Landschaft und Kunstbauten" (Landscape and Engineering Structures) is the title of the exhibition realized at the Swiss Pavilion by the renowned engineer Jürg Conzett from Chur. It mostly features bridges in Switzerland.

When the world changes, architecture changes, too. That sounds easier than it is. So what do the visions of the many different "futures" gathered at the Architecture Biennial look like? And what role does the past play in them?

The Kingdom of Bahrain has taken the Biennial's motto very seriously: People meet, take a seat, watch, listen, dream. What better place to sit and think about the loss of identity, the increase in urban space and the magic of the sea than in fisherman's huts from the beach in Bahrain that were taken down with their owners' permission. And there is already one tangible result: the Golden Lion for the best country contribution.

Japan's pavilion finds and unusual and surprising way to celebrate the "Metabolist" movement, which kicked off about half a century ago. Instead of space capsules and concrete shelving full of living units you can peruse doll's-house-sized models and an insightful presentation of Tokyo as the city of permanent change.

Like its sister event, the Architecture Biennial has long since expanded beyond its traditional grounds in the Giardini. There are a great number of intriguing country pavilions not only in the halls of the Venice's Arsenale, but also scattered around the city. So we resolved to take a walk past the contributions by Portugal, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Cyprus, Iran, Singapore, Hong Kong and several other exhibitions.

In Russian Pavilion a serious attempt is being made at the dialectical triple jump from the past into the future. It presented three emotional states en route to ideas to reanimate the Russian industrial city of Vyshny Volochok.

In the framework of the Audi Urban Future Award 2010 curated by Stylepark, six internationally active architecture offices participated in a process in the course of which they developed their own particular visions of how mobility, architecture and the city will in future interact. Five of them are currently presenting their ideas in an exhibition at Venice. The competition was won by Berlin-based Jürgen Mayer H.

Stylepark held a lavish celebration in Venice to mark the occasion of its 10th anniversary. Several hundred well-wishers traveled to the lagoon city to celebrate. Pictures of a most wonderful party...

In mid-August, the Swiss Pfister furniture store launched the Atelier Pfister Collection. Thirteen design studios, curated by Alfredo Häberli, designed more than 120 pieces of furniture and accessories for the Collection. The goal has been clearly defined: High quality based on sound craftsmanship and timeless design.

Museum Folkwang's "Hacking the City" exhibition features interventions in urban and communicative spaces. Artists, Web designers, street artists and musicians address types of public action and practiced forms of resistance. A courageous approach by the museum in Essen that definitely bears continuing - let's hope the exhibition and events series takes things to an even more intensive point.

Never before was an architecture biennial so similar to an art biennial. Indeed, the latest rivalry among star architects to devise ever more eccentric shapes spawned objects that were commissioned if only for their "sculptural" qualities. At the first architecture biennial since the Big Crash the focus is closer to art again - against the background of the skepticism towards the once booming "signature architecture".

The British Pavilion has opened its doors to a School of Seeing. Given the wealth of models, photographs, maps, drawings, notes, film and exhibits from various ages that comment on one another here, indeed seem to generate one another, all the media manifestations, differences in genres and lines dividing the epochs seem to have little validity. At "Villa Frankenstein", where architecture, art and historiography bid you good night, order gets upended.

The solution need not always be a new building. And in the French Pavilion Dominique Perrault therefore asks how empty spaces in a city are handled and how we can rejuvenate our metropolitan peripheries. The Dutch Pavilion also focuses on how the existing can best be used. Here, Rietveld Landscape addresses the use of government-owned vacant buildings.

The recently opened extension building for the Nya Nordiska textiles editeur designed by Staab Architekten in Dannenberg in Lower Saxony, is a minor sensation and a prime example for the successful integration of commercial architecture into an urban context.

The word "Sehnsucht" (desire) is written above the gold-colored drapes decorat-ing the entrance to the German Pavilion at the Venice Giardini. Inside, a burgundy red salon awaits the visitor, featuring more than 180 representatives of the trade - who each inform us about the depths and shallows of their souls on a single sheet of paper.

Kazuyo Sejima, the Director of the 12th Venice Architecture Biennial, has pulled something special out of the bag with the central exhibition "People meet in Architecture". She has managed to create an atmosphere of light-heartedness in which the opportunities afforded by contemporary architecture as well as the latter's limits are on show without glossing over the weighty issues.

In the 1930s, Charlotte Perriand was convinced that it was necessary to fight for a better future. Not only did she strive for new forms in design, but she also sought to improve social conditions through design and architecture. She employed large photo collages on which she had applied layers of writing to communicate her political and social messages. The Museum of Design in Zurich is now holding an exhibition dedicated to these works.

Antonia Henschel's new magazine is about tea, nothing but tea and bags. "Tea-total" that is, not "teetotal". Abstinence is certainly not on the agenda here.

"Hidden Heroes: the Genius of Everyday Things" is the title of a new exhibition at Vitra Design Museum. Not only can you familiarize yourself with these simple heroes of everyday life in the masterfully designed exhibition in the Buckminster Fuller Dome on the Vitra Campus in Weil, but you can explore them online too.

One area on which Jean Prouvé focused in his work was prefabricated houses, construction elements and façades. The now legendary Maison Tropicale was one product of this. The prototypes stood in West Africa for almost 50 years and are now on show in a series of exhibitions in Europe and the USA.

The future of mobility lies in a combination of various transport systems that dove-tail with one another. Train, streetcar and underground play an important role. Transport policy in this country, however, has not yet recognized the advantages of a customer-friendly train.

Anyone who expects to find a book about cars between the covers of "The Porsche Book" will be wrong. The focus here is instead on the stagings by photo designer Frank M. Orel. The cars tend to play only a secondary role.

During the reconstruction period in West Germany. a new control instrument entered the political landscape: urban planning. Its objective was to make a strict division between labor and living . People should work in the city, and live in the country. The fact that commuters were obliged to buy a car to cover the distance between the city center and the periphery merely boosted the economy. And produced slip roads, city highways and traffic jams lasting for kilometers. The car-friendly city - an unsuccessful historical concept or bitter-sweet reality?

As part of the Audi Urban Future Award, New York architects Diller Scofido + Renfro devoted some thought to the issue of mobile dwellings, responding to changes in residential patterns. Many older people above all in the United States have cut their ties with conventional notions of domesticity.

In the media age racing cars not only have to be fast, they also have to look fast and stand out on the racing track thanks to colors, lines, numbers and logos. In "Go Faster" Sven Voelker illustrates that this was not always so and shows what characterizes those models with particularly successful styling.

The projects by the artists' and architects' collective "Raumlaborberlin" are far from being conventional. The group of eight, which is at present developing the exhibition architecture for the "Audi Urban Future Award" that is curated by Stylepark, is currently presenting a very special kind of installation at Kunsthaus Bregenz.

The "AUFA Audi Urban Future Award 2010", which is curated by Stylepark, has set itself the task of thinking about the city of tomorrow as regards the issue of mobility. We are running a series of articles in coming weeks on some aspects of automobility and urban planning as relating to the AUFA - the latter will culminate on August 25 with a presentation of the findings in Venice in the form of an exhibition and the selection of the first prize winner.

System furniture was long considered the epitome of no-fun and über-rational design, but now it is undergoing a revival. The new items of system furniture are proof that functionalist Modernism is being seen in a new light and mark the end of the heyday of design art and limited editions.

Be it purses, chairs or roofs: Wickerwork, one of the world's oldest construction methods is experiencing a revival.

"Maison&Objet" is taking place in Paris from September 3 through 7, 2010.

Hardly any other metropolis has been subjected to such radical upheavals in the last century as the German capital. The exhibition "Das ungebaute Berlin" (Unbuilt Berlin) shows the projects which never saw the light of day. Who, for example, remembers Max Bill's suggestions for expanding the New National Gallery in 1981?

Brothers Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec have realized their bathroom vision for Hansgrohe's Axor design line. The result of the six-year developmental study is a complex, 85-piece bathroom series. With their design approach, the Bouroullec brothers have opened up the bathroom into the living area.

Recently published, the "Container Atlas" provides evidence that a new age of container architecture has dawned. It follows the trend towards temporary buildings trend and is a kind of pop-up architecture that no longer lays claim to historical longevity.

Vienna has for years now been trying to establish itself as a capital of international fashion. And Austria's largest fashion spectacle, the "10 festival for fashion & photography", has just finished. But the country's most successful designers were not in on the act.