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

Photo © Christine Kim Gere Kavanaugh In Los Angeles, June is the month for design. Coinciding with Dwell on Design (June 20-22) at the Los Angeles Convention Center, the Los Angeles Design Festival (LADF) celebrates local and international talent with a series of events. Last year, LADF introduced the Julia Morgan Icon Award, intended to recognize a bold woman and her outstanding contributions to the design industry. This year’s recipient is Gere Kavanaugh, one of California’s pioneer female designers. Kavanaugh earned her BFA from the Memphis Academy of Art and was one of the first women to receive an MFA

Photo courtesy Architecture for Humanity Architecture for Humanity is currently supporting reconstruction efforts in the earthquake and tsunami-ravaged areas of Japan. AFH's Ishinomaki, Japan, office has completed 16 projects, including a new school building, above, for a kindergarten that was destroyed in the March 2011 tsunami. Eric Cesal is the new executive director of Architecture for Humanity (AFH), the nonprofit’s board of directors announced today. A longtime volunteer, Cesal joined AFH full-time in 2010 to start the Haiti Rebuilding Center in Port-au-Prince. Since 2012 he has led the organization’s global post-disaster rebuilding efforts from its headquarters in San Francisco. Cesal

Photo © David Cooper Lynn Richards officially takes over as president of the Congress for the New Urbanism on July 1. On June 4, when the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) begins its annual meeting in Buffalo, a new president, Lynn Richards, will greet its members. Richards spent 14 years working for the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington before moving to the Chicago-based nonprofit. (She officially takes over from former Milwaukee mayor John O. Norquist on July 1.) Richards, 47, arrives at the CNU on the heels of a withering critique by author Witold Rybczynski, who wrote on his