Rob Walker looks at the ElRay, a new punctuation mark for our enthusiastic social-media era. Proposed by photographer Ellen Susan, it would reside “in the emotional range between the just-the-facts period and the whoop-to-do excitability of the exclamation point.”

For its new book series, Apartamento magazine invited artists and designers to create coloring pages for kids. The first three limited-edition books are by Reg Mombassa, Matt Leines, and Geoff McFetridge (who speaks at Insights 2013 next month).

Now a design icon, the Aeron chair had troubled beginnings: conceived of by Don Chadwick and Minnesota’s Bill Stumpf as ergonomic seating for the elderly, the futuristic design was initially a tough sell for manufacturer Herman Miller.

At his funeral last month, Oscar Niemeyer’s coffin was flanked by flowers from Raul and Fidel Castro. But how did the famed architect’s leftist values—he was a longtime Communist Party member—come through in his work for Brazil’s military and financial elites?

Universe Architecture’s Landscape House aims to be the first 3D printed building in the world. With a looping design reminiscent of a Möbius strip, it’ll be created using a giant D-Shape printer.

Balthazar Korab, an architect and winner of an AIA Medal for Architectural Photography, has passed away at age 86. Subject of the 2012 book Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography, he served as Saarinen’s in-house photographer.

“The brave new seamless surface of the future is officially an antique,” writes Oliver Wainwright of Formica’s 100th birthday. Designs with names like Skylark, Mayflower, and Softglow abounded in the laminate boom that shaped mid-century interior design.

In honor of the inaugural “Orwell Day” on Jan. 21—the 63-year anniversary of the author’s death—Penguin is releasing a David Pearson–designed edition of George Orwell’s dystopian tale 1984 with the book’s title, fittingly, censored out.

Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas has been confirmed as the next curator of the Venice Architecture Biennale. He says he aims to “give a new look” to architecture’s basic elements “to see if we can discover something new about architecture.”