This month’s architectural projects span from the Harumi Residential Towers in Tokyo by Richard Meier & Partners Architects to two houses, Casa Flora in Mexico, a house for the artist Danh Vo by Módica, Ledezma and Del Rio, and Villa T in Lebanon by Youssef Tohme and Anastasia El Rouss plus an infrastructure in the form of Milan’s Expo bridges by Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel and Partners.

Beppe Finessi looks back over Milan Design Week and this issue also presents De Lucchi’s project for the Workplace3.0/SaloneUfficio, the installation by Stocchi Favilla, Faccin’s beehive and exhibition designs by Gilad for Flos and Morrison for Molteni’s 80th anniversary.

The curator of the Italian Pavilion at the Art Biennale in Venice, Vincenzo Trione, tells Domus about the exhibition for which he invited artists to explore the need to weld the present to the past. He is displaying their work in chambers that seen together are like a small city.

Founded 50 years ago as an alternative to the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, the School of Architecture in Aarhus, Denmark, is renowned for its focus on the “art of building” and for coupling scientific research with design practice. From London, Florian Beigel and Philip Christou, of the Architecture Research Unit of the London Metropolitan University describe their approach to teaching: “The practice informs the teaching, and the teaching informs the practice. In this way, there has always been a balance between practice, research and teaching.”

Feedback focuses on the city of Istanbul, described by Faruk Malhan who explains that the newly developing city offers a chance to move away from property development alone for a different form of construction and living founded on open, participatory and interdisciplinary models.

In elzeviro, Enrico Regazzoni asks whether beauty really is the best criterion for assessing good architecture.