"In 2012, the Fed shredded 7,000 tons of retired currency—this is a high quality cotton/linen blend, and makes quite a nice reinforcing fiber for plastic," Mielewski points out. She's researching ways to utilize this material.

Jeff lets us in.

A mirror on one of the pavilion's interior walls dissolves the boundaries between interior. The reflective surface of the drafting table amplifies the effect. Photo by Paul Clemence.

A curtain of mirrored metal helps erase the building’s historical references and also “dematerializes” the building by creating the sense of a porous connection between interior and exterior. Photo by Paul Clemence.

The U.S. State Department has just announced the representatives for the American pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale: New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture, helmed by the inimitable Eva Franch i Gilabert, will be programming the U.S. pavilion alongside Ashley Schafer of PRAXIS Journal and Ana Miljački, from MIT's architecture program. The trio—with input from Natasha Jen of Pentagram, Architizer, CLOG, and Leong Leong, who will design the pavilion's physcial space—will stage an "active, experimental architectural office that researches, studies, and remakes 1,000 projects designed by American architecture firms and exported abroad." To learn more about the players involved, take a trip with us through the Dwell archives.

The US Institute of Peace Building continues in Moshe Safdie’s legacy of innovative use of materials. The toroidal forms at play here challenge occupants’ conception of the space. Moshe Safdie, US Institute of Peace Building, 2001, Washington, D.C. Photo by Timothy Hursley.

These pendant lamps—"simple shapes that become wonderful when you are mix them together," says Färdig— were released at Stockholm Design Week earlier this year.

Co-curator Eva Franch i Gilabert stands in front of a wall lined by "project folders," which document the most important and ambitious projects by U.S. architects completed overseas in the last century, from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel to Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum and beyond. Photo by Paul Clemence.

Designed by New York-based architecture firm Leong Leong, the pavilion’s modular drafting tables contain objects ranging from architectural models to archival magazines half-hidden under the tables' semi-transparent surfaces. Visitors are encouraged to sit at the table, touch the objects, and read the same project folders used by the pavilion’s researchers. Photo by Paul Clemence.

Form Us With Love, which is based in Stockholm, introduces a new line of wide-format acoustic panels for Baux. The five "forest-inspired" wall patterns include a mix of 22 colors.

A custom table designed by Staffan Holm, capable of seating 26, runs the length of Anders Bergström and Kristina Lagercrantz’s kitchen in Gothenburg. Unfold pendants by Form Us With Love for Muuto, Lilla Åland chairs by Carl Malmsten for Stolab, and a painting by Hampus Pettersson complete the space.

The central rotunda of the Palladian pavilion has been turned into a break room for both visitors and “partners." The round platform, which seems to be made of granite, is in fact a spongy material that makes for a surprisingly comfy nap. Photo by Paul Clemence.

Ben prepped a bunch of different flora options for us to “plant” on set.

In 1945, Muller-Munk left a teaching position at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh (now Carnegie Mellon University) to found Peter Muller-Munk Associates (PMMA), a design consultancy whose clients included U.S. Steel.

The bold and generously sized Bento chair is a modern take on the tradition of bending wood. The backrest has a built-in flex to provide good seating comfort. Designed by Swedish design studio Form Us With Love for the one year old Finnish brand One Nordic Furniture Company, the chair can be bought online for international shipping and is assembled by the buyer in four steps. ,

The American Institute of Graphic Arts (now AIGA) asked Pratt alumnus Roger Cook and his partner Don Shanosky to design a set of 34 internationally recognizable pictograms that were ultimately adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation to guide users of public spaces. The pictograms now reside in the permanent collection at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

More than 40 years after engineering the Sydney Opera House, the interdisciplinary firm Arup is fine-tuning architectural sound performance with the latest modeling technology, reports principal Raj Patel. The U.S. Courthouse for the District of Utah, in Salt Lake City, was designed using Arup’s SoundLab, in which recordings are utilized to create an aural rendering of a room’s acoustics. “From the moment of creation to the moment of perception, sound is augmented and transformed by the shapes, forms, volumes, and materials around us,” says Raj Patel, Principal and Global Leader of Acoustics at Arup.

Once a derelict urban alley, Mint Plaza is nestled between the Old Mint and several historic warehouses. A simple ground plane unifies the plaza, while a steel arbor balances the towering warehouses to the north and the lower neoclassical facade of the Mint building to the south. The climbing vines on the arbor bring extensive greenery to the heart of the plaza and provide a canopy for al fresco diners. Photo by: Jeremy Blakeslee. Contemporary Architect: CMG Landscape Architecture (2008)

Keven Weeks shows us how it's done inside a Nestrest pod.

This is the Design Museum by Gehry viewed from behind. It was his first building outside the US.

Moster (or Aunt) plate from the Between Us Women series, by Lisa Bengtsson

Tant (or Lady) plate from the Between Us Women series, by Lisa Bengtsson

Mormor (or Grandmother) plate from the Between Us Women series, by Lisa Bengtsson

"Gas chair has allowed us to be part of amazing projects, like the Acropolis Museum of Athens."

…along with fern-like plants that keep the space open and give us a dense green environment.

Here's the ferry that took us from New London, Connecticut, to Fishers Island, a 45-minute ride.

Svarmor (or Mother-In-Law) plate from the Between Us Women series, by Lisa Bengtsson

Graphic designer Joana Niemayer gives us the dirt on what she loves about London.

My mother showed us how to create the perfect “rope ball” to deal with the messy bundles.

Norske Mikrohus tells us that demand is growing for their four turnkey tiny home models—but the company cautions against high international shipping costs.

“Neither of us were too keen on the idea of having handles on the closets or cabinets,” says Atherton. So they cut narrow slots at the edge of the kitchen cabinet fronts to serve as hand pulls.

The home is perched lightly on the site and the landscape has been integrated into the architecture through a sympathetic form and materiality, and the expansive windows. “We long for this untouched nature,” says architect Line Solgaard of the site. “It brings us calmness and maybe even helps us be more in touch with ourselves.”

During the initial site visit Olson Kundig Architects snapped some photos of us on the site. Here, a shot of Henry running down the existing logging road. It was obvious to us as clients that the architects understood early on that this was a house for not just my wife and me, but the entire family. Both Tom Kundig and Edward LaLonde from Olson Kundig embraced the challenge and involved the kids when appropriate in the entire process.

The couple asked for a “no maintenance, not low maintenance” backyard. However, Shino tends to “Carlsbad's largest public bathroom for cats” (otherwise known as their Japanese-style rock garden) about once a month. Don't miss a word of Dwell! Download our FREE app from iTunes, friend us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter!