Ali Malkawi has very good timing. In 2013 he moved from the University of Pennsylvania, where he had taught architecture and computational simulation—a sophisticated means of predicting building performance—for more than a decade, to Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where he is a professor of Architectural Technology. A few months later, Malkawi wrote a proposal for what would be called the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, to be funded with a gift from the Evergrande Group, a Chinese company with $75 billion in assets. (Evergrande’s gift was large enough to also fund centers in mathematics and immunology.)

In November, the organization will hold its biggest meeting yet, in Barcelona. The Van Schijndel House, designed by the late Mart van Schijndel, inspired his wife Natascha Drabbe to form an organization dedicated to the preservation of important 20th century houses. In 1992, the modernist architect Mart van Schijndel designed a house in Utrecht with a number of distinctive features. When he died in 1999, his widow, Natascha Drabbe, an architectural historian and public relations executive, was determined to open the house to visitors. But she also needed to continue to live in the 1,885-square-foot building. For advice, she began

In July, Autodesk acquired the experimental New York design firm The Living, led by architect David Benjamin, in order to enhance its research capabilities. This union is just one effort by the software leader to engage in wide-reaching discussions about the future of design. Last year it opened Autodesk Workshop at San Francisco’s Pier 9, a 27,000-square-foot playground for employees and partners to explore advanced manufacturing resources. And, more recently, a summer-residency program charged participants with writing science fiction. “We have an extraordinary talent base that can make stuff,” says Jeff Kowalski (left), “but we also need those folks who

Abraham Thomas became the director of the Soane Museum last December.

Last month the Related Companies founder and chairman gave $30.5 million to the World Resources Institute (WRI), where he serves on the board of directors. Ross spoke with RECORD about his donation and the accompanying launch of the WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities.  Last year, real estate magnate Stephen M. Ross began a spending spree of the most public and benevolent kind. In September, several months after signing the Giving Pledge to donate at least half of his wealth to charity, the chairman and founder of Related Companies—the real estate company currently executing the $20 billion redevelopment of

Smiljan Radić's 2014 Serpentine Pavilion opened to the public on June 26. The Serpentine Pavilion has become one of London’s leading summer attractions since launching in 2000. Last year’s cloud-like structure by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto within the city’s Kensington Gardens was visited by almost 200,000 people. In March, Serpentine Galleries Director Julia Peyton-Jones and Co-Director Hans Ulrich Obrist announced their selection of Chilean architect Smiljan Radić to design the 2014 edition of the temporary construction. A 2008 Architectural Record Vanguard, the architect may not be as well-known as some of his pavilion-designer predecessors – which include Rem Koolhaas, Frank