Ship-like modules for housing, recreation and provision go far beyond the common conceptions of a house-boat idyll. In their book “Float”, Dutchmen Koen Olthuis and David Keuning present the potential for floating buildings.

Data protection patterns, and columns of numbers and letters without their content spelling a meaning, form the basis of "Rapport", an intervention by architect Jürgen Mayer H. at Berlinische Galerie. Outsized the symbols spread across the floor and walls to form an "experimental spatial structure".

Iceland and Architecture? Architecture Film Festival Frankfurter Book Fair Specialist convention on the city of tomorrow Design with the Other 90%: Cities Dutch Design Week

“Maniera Moderna” at Haus der Kunst in Munich is dedicated to the multi-faceted oeuvre of Italian architect, designer and photographer Carlo Mollino. The exhibition is not the first to address the Turin polymath’s remarkable oeuvre. But it is certainly the most ambitious, as it focuses on Mollino’s oeuvre as a whole.

For people already familiar with Apple, there are not likely to be many surprises in the exhibition “Stylectrical – von Elektrodesign, das Geschichte schreibt” (Stylectrical – on history-making, electrical design) at the Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Hamburg. It is a bit like going to the movies with mountains of popcorn. It does leaves nobody any the wiser but some people come away with a pleasant feeling.

They have been fueling automotive advancement for around 100 years now: gas stations. In Christof Vieweg's informative and richly illustrated book "Volltanken bitte!" we discover that the first gas station was a pharmacy, which brands were once sold, when certain architectural models emerged and what particularly attractive stations look like.

Qubique - A new furniture fair in Berlinneue räume 11 - Furniture show in ZurichBuilding with Timber - Exhibition in MunichTerence Conran - The Way We Live Now Graft - Distinct Ambiguity

Directly prior to the beginning of the 64th IAA International Motor Show in Frankfurt, the first “Audi Urban Future Summit” was held at The Squaire at Frankfurt Airport, curated by Stylepark. International experts from a variety of disciplines spent the day discussing Tag possible approaches to mobility in the cities of tomorrow.

Mottos, slogans, brand claims and ad lines – on the stands at the 64th IAA international motor show you can read the one or other pithy sentence, and the one or other piece of nonsense. We’ve compiled the best of the best and worst for you.

Crisis, what crisis. At the 64th IAA international motor show, the industry is looking to the future with confidence. So how exactly do the designers think the auto of tomorrow will look? You can get an idea by casting a glance at the trade-fair orchestrations and the latest concept cars.

When developing new models today, existing parameters play the central role: What will be defined by statutory norms and regulations, today and tomorrow? What strategies do manufacturers and their individual brands pursue? Here is a small selection of concepts and studies which were often primarily concerned with changing notions of convenience and usage.

+++ Modernism in Miniature ++++++ Exhibiting Design +++ +++ Eames Words ++++++ Exhibition on Hannes Wettstein ++++++ Rethinking Mies +++

Cruising down the street with your elbow out the car window is a leisurely matter. A gesture that could be read as rebellion, or as communication. Will this youthful stance finally have to take a back seat in an era of fully air-conditioned cars?

In mid-September the 64th IAA, the International Car Show, opens for business in Frankfurt. Alongside new drive technologies, today design is crucial for the success of a new model. So what are the car designers’ preferences and methods? Ten hypotheses on the current state of play.

Traffic in China is steadily on the increase. Naturally, you find cars, mopeds and buses there, too but everything works just a little differently. Car hooters sound like house buzzers, for example and taxi drivers cannot read maps.

About half of all the high-rises that stand in the cities of this world have been built in the last decade. Curator Andres Janser sets out in his show "High-Rises - Dream and Reality" at Museum für Gestaltung Zürich to explore what is behind this boom.

+++ Helsinki Design Week ++++++ Vienna Design Week +++ +++ Tomás Saraceno: Cloud Cities ++++++ Exhibition about the architect Ernst Neufert ++++++ Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 ++++++ 24th World Congress of Architecture in Tokyo +++

The international zeitgeist has uncovered Detroit as America's maltreated "motor city": a growing creative scene is bearing witness to the emergence of new visions and an alternative "do-it-yourself movement" for this post-industrial wasteland.

Architects, designers and artists in the 1960s and 1970s just loved communicating their idea of architecture in "little magazines". While there are often immense differences between the periodicals in terms of content and graphics, they all express a wish for radical rejuvenation. "Clip Stamp Fold" is a book that gives a good overall impression of this glittering chapter in the history of architecture.

+++ Space experiments by J. Mayer H. ++++++ London Design Festival ++++++ Beijing Design Week ++++++ Carlo Mollino – Maniera Moderna +++ +++ New perspectives to Ernst May +++

In Year One after Capital of Culture 2010: A photo exhibition in Dortmund looks at the Ruhr region in a way it is otherwise never looked at, portraying a region in upheaval, with scars, non-locations, inhospitable zones. Its present day attests to a past that is gone forever and points to a future that still needs to be identified.

"Misfit" is the title of the current monograph on Hella Jongerius. The publication not only illuminates the Dutch designer's oeuvre to date but also illustrates the available design options when the medium book is re-thought.

Can design learn from history? Are movements like "Memphis" still conceivable or is design moving towards a new kind of normality? These and similar questions were discussed in the third edition of "Dornbracht Conversations". Now the discussions conducted by prominent panel members can be viewed in extensive film documentaries.

The new Kunsthalle Bremen buildings are largely still empty. Before all eyes turn to the first exhibition on Edvard Munch, due to open in mid-October, attention is currently focused on the architecture by Berlin-based firm Hufnagel Pütz Rafaelian.

+++ Tendence ++++++ Maison&Objet ++++++ Frontline ++++++ Materials Revisited ++++++ Art in public space +++

This need to make a personal mark in public space is nothing new. But the means of intervening in buildings, public transport and green spaces are forever changing. Today it is not uncommon to stumble across Lego bricks, knitting and engraved padlocks, for example.

A hotel is always a major investment. All the more important, then, for it to have the right concept. Over the past few years interior designer Yasmine Mahmoudieh has made a name for herself, and not only with "Haus Rheinsberg". Nina Reetzke met up with Yasmine Mahmoudieh for an interview.

Living cities are constantly reinventing themselves. In Paris, this is especially apparent if one looks at the “Les Halles” district. The next wave of conversion and modernization is expected in the not-too-distant future. And this does not alter the dilemma of urban planning decreed from above.

The six architecture offices taking part in the current ‘Lights Change’ display at the Vitra Showroom in Frankfurt immediately agreed that “we want a joint project and we want to use the entire showroom.” Such team spirit is compelling.

He is without doubt one of the best-known Frankfurt architects and the German Architecture Museum is rightly devoting a major retrospective to his oeuvre. For Frankfurt, Ernst developed the concept of "The New Frankfurt", which should to this day prompt discussion, for example as regards overcoming bureaucratic hurdles.

With their “Boudoir” tile series, Villeroy & Boch are offering not only elegant wall tiles, but also a truly captivating design concept.

Applying the "606" by Dieter Rams to any situation. Monika Hary and Michael Haberbosch have decades' worth of experience with the universal shelving system – right now in a show apartment in Munich.

Roman Bezjak has been photographing the architecture of "Eastern Modernism" since 2005. His images do not so much serve documentary purposes, but rather convey what he has seen in relation to everyday life – while maintaining a certain distance. A new photo book presents a selection of these snapshots depicting an uncertain future.

While NASA – following Atlantis' return to Earth – bids a weepy farewell to manned space flight, an exhibition by Slovakian artist Roman Ondák at Kunsthaus Zürich revives that atmosphere of euphoria once associated with man's exploration of outer space. What, asks Roman Ondák, has become of the Soviet Union's Sputnik, which in 1957 became the first satellite to be launched? Did it really burn up when re-entering Earth's atmosphere? Or is it still out there, orbiting the planet?

During the Cold War, the trade fair in Zagreb was one of the few locations where NATO member countries and Warsaw Pact nations presented their wares. Today, the trade-fair complex on the banks of the Sava River is hopelessly out of date and the city is considering a new solution.