Jacopo Foggini at the INTERNI exhibition. Photo: Paul Clemence.

The Milan Salone is going full blast and millions of micro to macro world views can be heard there. One moment you might see the exhibit of Italy’s largest design magazine, Interni, which challenged well-known “macro” architects to create “mutant and adaptable” larger than life building forms and the next, an up-coming artist’s micro-experiment to explore with video and dance such puzzling questions as why bees are disappearing from the planet.

Clearly the Salone del Mobile is much more than a furniture trade show. It is a vast dialogue on multiple, curious, holographic, networked, and hive mentality  — from the flood of global visitors to thousands of local teens crowding the streets, design revelers shuffling from one lively party to another. After sprints around three Milanese zonas and little sleep, here is a glimpse at the sites and happenings we took in. Read more…

Starting today, Richard Meier’s Long Island City model museum is once again open to visitors. This is the fourth summer that Meier has invited the public into the 3,600-square-foot space, which houses more than a hundred models spanning the architect’s 40-year career. The centerpiece of the collection is a pair of massive wooden mock-ups of the Getty Center (above), the larger of which was constructed in 16 pieces. During client presentations, Meier would pull this model apart to explain his design process. When the Getty was finally finished, after 15 years, he couldn’t bring himself to just toss it. “We figured at the end, we might as well keep it,” Meier told a group of journalists yesterday. Read more…

Photos, Scott Frances/courtesy Richard Meier & Partners Architects

In two weeks, Richard Meier will once again begin welcoming visitors to his Long Island City model warehouse, a 3,600-square-foot studio filled with more than a hundred architectural mock-ups spanning the Pritzker Prize winner’s 40-year career. Meier first opened the space to visitors in 2007, when, as he told the New York Times, he realized that “to have all this and have no one see it is kind of crazy.”

Visitation is by appointment on alternate Fridays beginning May 1; to schedule an appointment, call Richard Meier & Partners Architects at 212-967-6060. Check out more photos of the warehouse after the jump. Read more…