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Olafur Eliasson, the artist who created the giant sun in Tate Modern four years ago, is working with architect Kjetil Thorsen to build the Serpentine Gallery pavilion, in the shape of a spinning top. The annual tradition of a temporary pavilion beside the gallery in London’s Kensington Gardens began in 2000 and this is the biggest yet. Past architects include Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, and Toyo Ito. Last year the gallery began inviting both architects and artists to collaborate; Rem Koolhaas designed the pavilion and Thomas Demand created a decorative screen inside it. A real building rather than a folly, the Serpentine pavilion is used for talks, events, and parties every week during summer months by hundreds of people at a time. It opens in June.

Go to website Serpetine Gallery
Read article (Architectural Record, March 23, 2007)

It might seem natural to dream of a special architecture exhibit accompanying the 2016 Summer Olympics in Chicago. But there is no point discussing all this in the vacuum of a museum. Better to build on the idea of the city as a living museum, with audio- and docent-guided tours, interpretive signs at key buildings, and a combination of books, videos, podcasts and other technologies to broadcast the lessons of the 2016 Games.

Read full article (Chicago Tribune, April 22, 2007)

The Colombian Doris Salcedo, the next artist to tackle Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, takes familiar objects and makes them seem strangely unsettling.

At some time during last July, visitors to Tate Modern may have noticed a Latin American woman in her late forties hanging around in the Turbine Hall. Every day for more than a week she would arrive in the morning and settle in for the day, loitering with intent, watching other visitors and their reactions to their surroundings, examining the contours of the building, assessing the feel and architectural language of that vast, iconic space.

Read full article (Times, April 25, 2007)

The beautiful women of the ancient world have always had a dangerous streak. The face of Helen of Troy launched a thousand warships, and now the exquisite Queen Nefertiti is at the heart of an imminent museum war between Germany and Egypt.

The 3,400-year-old bust of the wife of the Sun King Akhenaten has been in German hands since it was dug out of the desert by the archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in 1912. It was smuggled out of Egypt and became a central part of Berlin’s museum collection.

Read full article (Times, April 25, 2007)