Diary editor: Riya Patel | riya@icon-magazine.co.uk
LIVING: Frontiers of Architecture III and IV	Nature/02: West 8	Maurizio Anzeri
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark	MAXXI, Rome	Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
Until 2 October 2011	Until 21 August 2011	Until 2 October 2011
LIVING, an exhibition that looks at the home through an anthropological lens, is the last chapter in the Louisiana Museum’s series of interdisciplinary investigations around architecture. Focusing on the concept of the home and its meaning in different sociological and geographic contexts, it takes us from European gypsy communities to Indian cyber cafes in an attempt to explore new modes of living. www.louisiana.dk	This year, Rome’s MAXXI museum is holding a cycle of monographic exhibitions under the theme Nature, timed to coincide with the seasons. West 8, the Rotterdam-based landscape design and architecture collective, brings us the summer stint: a selection of projects that it believes describe “nature recreated”. Images from projects such as the Botanic Bridge for Gwangju (2001, pictured) will be on show in a specially designed space called The Stolen Paradise. www.fondazionemaxxi.it	The Baltic presents an exhibition of work by Maurizio Anzeri, the Italian artist best known for his series of embroidered portraits made from photographs found in flea markets. Anzeri transforms found photographs of unknown people from the 1930s and 40s by stitching and sewing directly on to them. Some 25 portraits will be on display along with several pedestal-mounted sculptures that incorporate braids of woven hair. www.balticmill.com
At Home in Japan: Beyond the Minimal House	New Olds: Design Between Tradition and Innovation	Industrious Artefacts
Geffrye Museum, London	Design Museum Holon, Holon, Israel	BZuiderzee Museum, Enkhuizen, Netherlands
Until 29 August 2011	Until 10 September 2011	Until 12 February 2012
Japanese houses are widely regarded as the epitome of refined style, clean lines and unabashed minimalism. But could it all be a myth? At Home in Japan sets out to give the real picture of everyday domestic life, putting decorations, possessions and people in the frame, too. Laid out as a typical Japanese home, the exhibition features Susan Andrews’ project-specific photography of 30 urban homes in the Kansai region. www.geffrye-museum.org.uk	The stuff of everyday domestic life is the inspiration behind DMH’s exhibition New Olds. Cross-stitched cushions, cuckoo clocks and oriental rugs are some of the 70 objects that have been reinterpreted by a range of exciting young designers, who use old motifs to new effect. Our favourites are Mono Thone (2010) – Martino Gamper’s mash-up of a Thonet chair with a plastic garden seat – and Pini Leibovich’s Happy Material Armchair (2005, pictured), which reminds us of a deep pile bathmat. www.dmh.org.il	Dutch designers Jurgen Bey and Rianne Makkink are curating Industrious Artefacts – a look at the evolution of crafts and industry in the Netherlands’ Zuiderzee area. Items from the museum’s historic collection are interspersed with contemporary objects that reflect the area’s current design culture. Look out for work by Eindhoven-based Studio FormaFantasma, Lucas Van Vugt’s collection of figurines made from animal bones and Merel Karhof’s Wind Knitting Factory (pictured). www.zuiderzeemuseum.nl
Both Sides and the Centre	Jason Payne/Hirsuta: Rawhide	Venice Art Biennale
MAK Centre, Los Angeles	SCI-Arc Gallery, Los Angeles	Various venues, Venice
19-21 August 2011	Until 11 September 2011	Until 27 November 2011
LA’s MAK centre is asking writers for their interpretation of the iconic Schindler House in West Hollywood, in an experimental literary festival organised with Les Figues Press. Using dance and video art in conjunction with writing, the contributions will explore divisions between private domestic space and the public realm, the blurring of interior and exterior spaces and the kind of architectural conditions that propagate voyeurism. www.mak.at	Jason Payne, founder of experimental LA architecture practice Hirsuta, designs buildings with “hides”, conceiving exteriors that go beyond the “architectural skin” metaphor to take on a more luscious, textured and even hairy appearance. SCI-Arc is exhibiting Hirsuta’s Raspberry Fields project (pictured): a residential building in northern Utah covered with slender shingles that curl up when weathered, like the ruffled feathers of a bird. www.sciarc.edu	The 54th Venice Art Biennale is titled ILLUMInations and features 83 international artists, alongside 89 national pavilions and many satellite events around the city. We look forward to seeing Steve Shearer’s 9m-high freestanding mural for the Canadian Pavilion, Mike Nelson’s disorienting British pavilion named I, Impostor, and Greek artist Diohandi’s Beyond Reform, a site-specific installation with a byzantine facade, encased in an outer shell that cracks and splits over time. www.labiennale.org

The Italian design duo’s Botanica range of vases reinvents plastic as a craft material by using long-forgotten plant and animal polymers.

With only a week left to see The Vorticists at Tate Britain, we bring you Owen Hatherley’s review of this exhibition celebrating the “insurgent avant-garde” art movement that flourished in London before and during World War One.

To celebrate our 100th issue, Icon will present an exhibition during the London Design Festival showing remakes of Lego's Architectural Classics series by some of the most exciting architects in London. In the accompanying café, visitors will have the opportunity to create their own Lego models which will be displayed alongside those by Foster, Adjaye, Make, FAT and others.

Dominique Coulon has built an angular and colourful educational complex on the site of a notorious housing estate in the Paris banlieues.

The work of the great French modernist was everywhere at Design Miami/Basel, while G-Star Raw and Vitra have reissued 17 classic pieces.

Snøhetta has mixed traditional and modern construction techniques to create a shelter “like a big bench” in the Norwegian wilderness.

Vienna’s Mischer Traxler twists an ostensibly prosaic basket-making project into a deft comment on the ambivalence of automation.

The CCA's exhibition examines what architects did during the Second World war. It focuses on projects such as the Pentagon, Auschwitz and the monumental factory designs of American architect Albert Kahn "the producer of production lines". Here’s our review.

SelgasCano Arquitectos has created an “open factory” under a bright wavy canopy for the residents of the Spanish town of Mérida to climb over, graffiti and skateboard through.