[Australian Pavilion image via Dezeen]

• Designed by Davide Marchetti Architetto, the Australian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale is something between Daniel Libeskind’s new Contemporary Jewish Museum and Lacaton Vassal’s proposal for The Architecture Foundation in London. Needless to say, I like it. [Dezeen]
  
  

• On Frank Gehry’s Serpentine Pavilion: “…it feels like a giant model – as though through some freakish accident we’ve been shrunk to the size of 1:100 plastic people. The timber posts and beams seemingly lock into each like a giant replica of modelshop balsa handiwork. The way one stick joins to another has been blown up into a gargantuan simulated detail. The model-replica sensation makes me look up, almost expecting to see a giant globule of UHU frozen mid drip above my head. If anything, here it’s all been too well resolved. You can feel the hand of an executive architect faithfully reproducing the models intent, but somehow missing its point… [Strangeharvest]
  
  

• Just in time for the Olympics, The New York Times graphics department have outdone themselves with some interactive maps of Beijing. [New York Times]
  
  

• The X-Men move from upstate New York to San Francisco, setting up shop beneath the bunkers of the Marin Headlands. Apparently our status as a Sanctuary City extends to mutants as well. Highlights from Uncanny X-Men #500 include Cyclops broadcasting a psychic message to all the mutants of the world from the top of the Transamerica Pyramid and Magneto attacking SFMOMA with a trio of giant Sentinel robots. I’m guessing Mario Botta never saw that one coming. [SF Gate]
  
  

• Fluid migration, flood management, and Chertoff as a self-made Moses. “I just find it totally bizarre, symbolic, and possibly a foreshadowing scenario as borders, security, hydrology, and migration have, literally and metaphorically, fallen into the same state of disaster together here.” [Subtopia]
  
  

• Trend Watch: Building columns that blossom into undulating roof structure — or inversely, roofs that melt into building columns. Coming to a 2nd year studio near you. [A Daily Dose]