The Western Pennsylvania Conservancy (WPC), who administer Fallingwater, are celebrating the 75th anniversary of that iconic house, and getting ready to build six new guest cottages on an adjacent property.  I just wrote about the competition they held to select an architect for the project.  The winning entry, from Patkau Architects, is a stunner.  It takes Frank Lloyd Wright’s dictum to build into the hill quite literally, shaping structures within slopes in the ground.  It’s a scheme that’s both elegant and elemental.

But maybe the WPC, who ran the competition, deserve the lion’s share of the kudos.  Instead of starchitects, or Wrightians, they invited six accomplished, mid-sized North American architecture offices to compete.  Each one is known for its supple, site-responsive work.  In addition to Patkau, they are Marlon Blackwell Architect, Wendell Burnette Architects, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, Olson Kundig Architects, and Saucier + Perrotte Architectes.  It’s satisfying to see a design competition recognize their good work.

Richard Serra’s two new steel works, “Junction” and “Cycle,” fill the cavernous galleries at the Gagosian in Chelsea, squeezing out all peripheral space.  Which means that you can’t really see them from the outside, as objects.  It’s hard to think of them as sculpture anyway.  They remind me of what former French president Francois Mitterrand called his national building program, “Grands Projets.”

Certainly, Serra has a mastery over some fundamentals of architecture (perspective, ground, procession) that would shame most architects.  Walking between the thick, curved steel panels and arriving at the spaces of refuge inside is a hypnotic, cinematic experience.  The steel shapes high, narrow spaces and blocks the stabilizing visual forces of ground and sky.  The forms, subtly curved in both directions, are powerfully charismatic; they lure you in and out.  And the steel has a powdery, pollen-like, oxidized surface that’s strangely organic.  These two sculptures are great, unguilty pleasures.

“Lust for Life,” Vincente Minelli’s 1956 movie about Vincent van Gogh, really delivers.  It gives us the love affair with the hooker, the tender patronage of brother Theo, the verbal flare-ups with Gauguin, the ear-cutting, and, in between all the drama, some painting.  It also, quietly and convincingly, recreates places from Van Gogh’s paintings, taking us to the outdoor cafe at Arles, the billiards table, the artist’s bedroom, and the field with crows.

Most remarkably, the film has actors, both in speaking roles and in the background, who resemble the artist’s portraits.  Kirk Douglas, who plays Van Gogh, doesn’t feel sufficiently tormented and inward-looking to be the painter, but he looks just like a self-portrait.  The minor characters are stunning.  The potato eaters, Dr. Gachet, the Zouave, the postman, they all come naturally to life.  The people who sat for Van Gogh must have been those who cared for him, and those he loved most.  Watching the film, I understood that the faces of the people around us are an integral part of our landscape.  They’re what the world looks like to us.

Can you build a building without a program?  The Guggenheim’s summer pop-up inside the park along Houston Street at Bowery, designed by Atelier Bow-Wow, comes tantalizingly close.  It’s a spare steel frame wrapped in metal mesh, stuffed with A/V equipment, and furnished with fold-out chairs.  When I visited last weekend there was a trio of hippie chicks singing, and then a documentary about the politics of Central Africa.  A small crowd had assembled, mostly passersby who were interested and stopped to find out more.

The space, the BMW Guggenheim Lab, is carefully programmed each day with socially-relevant performances and presentations.  But what I liked best about the Lab is how porous it is, both literally and figuratively.  It fills an empty lot between two existing, anonymous buildings, and opens onto both Houston and First Streets.  People enter from both sides, sit down for an event, and then spill out into the park, where there’s a temporary cafe, and hang out a bit more.  In a city that’s become riddled with empty storefronts, co-opting them seems like a perfect strategy.  What if we mapped all the unoccupied spaces in New York and handed them over to artists, activists and performers?  Their work and their noise would fill the city.