Despite being in the middle of Italy's strange little war on modernism, the Venice Architecture Biennale exhibition kicks off in short order come mid-September, then running through around Thanksgiving before it folds up so everyone in Venice can prep for the more well-known, much larger art/design version next year. The Biennale's site has a series of interesting pieces by the people running the show, including some essays, a lengthy list of who all will be there, and some history lessons on just what all of this new stuff will mean in the context of architecture's heritage. And because it's right in their backyard, designboom has launched what we figure will quickly become a regular series, with their first preview post on the Spanish Pavilion, which looks to be a doozie and sure to make lots of anti-modernists' blood boil. We look forward to more. Stick it to 'em Venice!

Just over a year after launching their new first class lounges in Sydney and Melbourne, Qantas Airlines has stayed on their Marc Newson kick, as the first look at the designer's new plans for the airline's fleet of A380 planes have been unveiled by none other than everyone's favorite design writer Alice Rawsthorn herself. Re-printing a story she wrote for the International Herald Tribune last week, the NY Times has updated it a bit, including a small handful of images of the planes' new interiors, which seem to closely follow Newson's lounge designs, albeit it maybe a little less flashy (these things have to get up in the air and be inexpensive to operate after all). Rawsthorn, true to form, gets into all the nitty gritty about what's what and what's where with Newson's plans, including all of the testing and safety processes that go into designing for airplanes, the sorts of things you don't usually worry about when you're not attaching something you've built to flying gas cans. It's almost enough to make us want to try experiencing one of these new planes without taking any Xanax to curb this writer's all-consuming fear of flying. Almost.

In keeping with the fact that many of us are still reeling off the distant contact high from last night's Obama speech, we thought we'd head over to the Campaign Stops blog for Steven Heller's recap of the DNC's staging at the Pepsi Center. Without fail, as we saw throughout most of the Obama campaign and have talked about here and there, the whole look of the convention was spectacular, just flawless. Heller seems to agree, seeing the whole undertaking having been "Obamacized," following the footsteps of what's been a very design-conscious campaign. He also goes back and takes a look at the history of these conventions, showing where Obama has deviated from the standards and where he's built on what works. We're a little biased, being here in Chicago, but we find it hard to fathom a world where the RNC next week is going to be anywhere near as beautiful.

After five years and millions of dollars, U.S. president James Madison's house has finally been restored. This Virginia home is where Madison, father of the Constitution, spent most of his youth. This residence will reopen September 17. What makes it particularly unique is that so many restorations honor Jefferson or Washington, but not Madison. Historians have made painstaking efforts to recreate the house that our fourth president knew. "It's been a mountaintop experience to witness the revelations as the house gives up its secrets," says Mark Wenger, an architect formerly on the staff of Colonial Williamsburg now working with the restoration firm. For example, researchers punched more than 300 tiny holes into the walls to find faint outlines of long-gone chair rails and stairs. We're thinking that this renovated house, along with the new nearby Center for the Constitution, will be worth seeing.

Wear Palettes started out as a spin-off from The Sartorialist. A Swiss graphic artist initially pulled four colors from each photo he found on Scott Schuman's site for his own site. He just recently teamed up with Lookbook.nu, and now he does the same thing with a whole smorgasbord of other photos. This writer prefers the reborn Wear Palettes because there's a whole smorgasbord of original photos. You could probably do the same thing with your own photographs and Photoshop to see what colors you consistently wear over and over.

Even though this writer spends his days working the trenches of the cynical ad world, sometimes a campaign or a quick ad just melts his cold, dead heart. Such is the case with the UK-based department store, Harvey Nichols, in Bristol, the home town of Aardman Animations. And to kick off their opening, they were given permission to dress up Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit in some designer clothes the store sells for a series of print ads and store displays. And it isn't some widespread campaign that will run all over England. Nope, it's just the local shop giving a nice nod to the local business. It's advertising, sure, but doesn't it just make you feel good somehow? Here's a bit from Park, talking about the ads:

"Wallace usually shops at Tank Top Man so this is a big transformation for him.

"He isn't exactly known for his up-to-the-minute fashion sense but I know he's feeling pleased with himself - it's great to see him looking so chic and stylish.

"I caught him looking at his reflection in a shop front window on West Wallaby Street the other day, he says he looks and feels 10 years younger. Gromit reckons it'll be moisturiser next."

Commercial Archive has more info and additional images and The Daily Mail has a behind-the-scenes video of the ads being made.

Quickie story that got us thinking. PC World has up this review of some new Nokia cell phone which quickly moves away from the phone itself and turns into a "what happened to Nokia?" piece, wondering how they transitioned so quickly from being one of the great design companies into an organization that hardly anyone talks about anymore (save for bad reviews like the one above). The puzzled review made us remember that feature in the New Yorker from a few years back, "The Phone Guy," which was in part about designer Frank Nuovo, but largely about how amazing Nokia was, how much time and energy they spent on designing the perfect product, and how much research they put into to everything deep within their flashy futuristic offices. We have no answer at all (maybe it was Nuovo's decision to leave in 2005?), but it does make you wonder what has happened in lo these few short years to this once former king of the industry.

The streets of New York are potentially about to get much brighter in the near future, assuming the city government doesn't take as long as it did to approve the project. Four years after launching the City Lights Design Competition in 2004 to find a better method of street lightery, the Department of Design and Construction has selected the firms The Office for Visual Interaction and Lighting Science Group to begin installing and testing six LED streetlights in miscellaneous parts of the city starting in the spring of next year (because it's only been four years, why rush things?). Here's a bit about the lights:

There are more than 300,000 streetlights in New York City, the majority of which are based on high-pressure sodium technology. Replacing a commonly used 150W high pressure sodium lamp with the proposed LED lighting solution will reduce the energy consumption by 25-30% to an estimated 105 W per LED module, LSG says.

The winning design developed by OVI combines hi-flux LED technology with state-of-art lensing optics in a small oval-shaped profile, which provides the structural framework and heat sink for the LED modules.

If you're hungry for more, NY1 has this video up about the new lights.

We'd heard stirrings about Tiger Woods joining his celebrity brethren in getting involved in Dubai and designing homes, hotels and a new golf course (his first ever design) since ground was broken for the project back in February, but nothing had been released yet until, thanks to Archinect, we found the first renders (maybe real photographs?) of the whole layout for Tiger Woods Dubai. As a part-time, horrible golfer, this writer thinks the course looks great (even though they will never ever let him play there, and with good reason), and even the private homes and the hotel looks good. Maybe a little too much like a slightly gaudy, high-end strip mall in Southern California, but hey, Dubai has never been known for its moderation. And if you're still hungry for more, the International Herald Tribune has additional info on where they're at in the building process.

Developer Barbara Behm says she feels like she's been pregnant for the past three years, according to this Los Angeles Times article. Her baby? A Richard Neutra house, which she had moved from one part of the city of Angels to another, all in the quest to save the home, which the city declared a historical cultural monument in 2005 to keep the bulldozers away. But that wasn't enough apparently because the homeowners Jeffrey and Karen Brandlin announced that they wanted to demolish the residence, which famed architect Richard Neutra designed in 1941 for Sybil and Charles Maxwell. Enter Behm, who purchased the home alone in 2004 from the Brandlins. All legal hurdles were cleared this year, and the architectural gem was moved this past weekend from the tony Brentwood neighborhood to Angelino Heights, near the downtown area. Once re-assembled and renovated, real estate firm of Deasy/Penner & Partners will oversee the house's sale. Anyone want to live in a Modernist ranch-style house in a sea of multi-story Victorians?