Middle East operator, Gymnation, has opened its largest club to date in Riyadh's Qurtubah district, offering male and female facilities. The 77,000 square foot club offers Saudi Arabia’s biggest ladies-only reformer Pilates studio, as well as a private reformer Pilates room; an outdoor roof terrace for fitness and social events; the region’s largest free weights area; a recovery zone with saunas, ice baths, and treatment rooms; a dedicated Glute Training

The Auberge Resorts Collection has opened the luxurious Collegio alla Querce in Florence, its first property in Italy. The 16th Century buildings were once home to a school, a chapel and theatre. The architectural restoration of the estate was led by Spanish father-son design duo, Esteva i Esteva, who have preserved the original character of the structures and also by Florentine interior designers, ArchFlorence, who have kept the Renaissance features

Plans have been revealed for a US$400bn city which could be the home for up to 5 million people in the US. Billionaire investor Marc Lore and architect Bjarke Ingels have teamed up for the ambitious Telosa project, which is being touted as a sustainable metropolis in the desert. Lore – a serial entrepreneur who also served as president and CEO of Walmart US eCommerce until January 2021 – has

Design specialist BRC Imagination Arts (BRC) has been selected to design and produce the World Food Center Experience in Ede, the Netherlands. The attraction will become an interactive platform exploring the impact of the world’s food choices and the importance of sustainable and healthy food production. BRC's concept will take guests on a personalised journey that will "challenge what they know about how food is produced and consumed, worldwide". The

As part of its Ten York condo development in Toronto, developer Tridel has created an Innovation Suite that explores and showcases how technology can be used for the future of apartment living. The suite came about through the desire to gain an understanding of how smart home technologies could meet or exceed the needs of residents. The intention was to integrate technology and design seamlessly to provide connectivity, comfort and

The US pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai is to be designed by the experiential design and production agency Thinkwell Group and will explore "the exciting future made possible by American innovation, vision, and enterprise". The building will be designed in such a way as to appear to be moving at times and will house exhibits about journeying to Mars, the city of the future and 3D-printed prosthetics and organs. It

OF Studio have won a competition run by Emaar to create a new "landmark structure" on a 6,300sq m (67,800sq ft) plot within the 5.6 million sq m (60.3 million sq ft) Dubai Creek Harbour waterfront development. Participants were briefed to submit proposals that would respect the culture and climate of Dubai, but also expose children and families to new worldviews. OF Studio's LAND-MARK proposal was conceived to be a

Legacy Entertainment has designed a 27,500sq m (296,000sq ft) aquarium called The Sea Shell for Phu Quoc island, Vietnam. The building will open early in 2020. Habitats will provide animals with ample space to ensure their wellbeing, while the life support systems will be provided by Advanced Aquarium Technologies. The interior experience, created by designer James Hampton, will take guests on a journey through five galleries, each relating to different

The Majestic Hotel, a new US$850m, 620ft tall Las Vegas hotel that will begin construction in May 2020, will feature a focus on health and wellness. The brainchild of Las Vegas native and developer Lorenzo Doumani, The Majestic Hotel is slated for completion in early 2023, and will include a four-level, 70,000sq ft fitness, nutrition, and medi spa facility. Serving as a state-of-the-art medical wellness destination, it will not only

Architecture practice UNStudio and its tech division, UNSense, have revealed an ambitious plan to turn Karle Town Centre (KTC) in Bangalore, India, into a tech campus and futuristic garden city, powered by Internet of Things (IoT) technology. The Project is being undertaken for developer Karle Infra. The 72-acre redevelopment, designed to create a work:live community based around health, culture and greenspace, will see KTC transformed with the addition of a

Belmond Savute Elephant Lodge has reopened in Botswana’s Chobe National Park. Renovated by London-based interior design studio Muza Lab, the renovated resort – which Inge Moore, the firm's founder, has likened to an environmentally conscious explorer’s camp – has 12 new guestrooms and an open-air dining space, lounge, bar, library, and spa. Other features of the timber wood and bamboo lodge include a multi-function room for yoga and private meetings,

In among the busy, loud and polluted streets of Bangalore, one might think it would be hard to find solace and practice wellness routines. However, the architects behind Navyas Naturopathy Centre have been undeterred, creating an antithetical haven in which medicinal plants, softer dynamics and a general sense of calm pervades. Set in the heart of Bangalore, Navyas Naturopathy Centre brings a range of wellness offerings to the surrounding populace.

Carlo Ratti has created a climate-controlled garden pavilion with green spaces curated by Patrick Blanc and Flavio Pollano for the 57th annual Salone del Mobile in Milan. The pavilion, entitled Living Nature, uses an innovative energy management system “to allow spring, summer, autumn and winter to coexist under the same roof” and aims to explore the effects of climate change and the link between nature and the city. It evolved

The creative director of Gucci has opened a restaurant, museum and gift shop dedicated to the luxury fashion house – in a 14th-century Florentine palace. Alessandro Michele decided to open the attraction, called Gucci Garden, as a fun and accessible introduction to the brand and “a hypnotic territory that alters the state of consciousness and perception". The attraction spans three floors within the Palazzo della Mercanzia, which previously housed a

British exhibition designers Casson Mann will team up with Parisian architects Atelier Philéas to create a new Centre of Franco British Relations in Ouistreham, France. Located on Sword Beach, facing the English channel, the attraction will explore and celebrate the shared social history and culture of the two countries, and the influence each has had and continues to have on the other. The design team were chosen ahead of 132

Horsen’s 162-year-old Prison Museum in Denmark has debuted a new permanent exhibition chronicling the escape of former prisoner Carl August Lorentzen. The exhibition, called Lorentzen’s Tunnel, tells the story of Lorentzen, a burglar who after 11 months of work had dug an 18-metre-long (60 foot) tunnel that led him to freedom on Christmas Eve 1949, leaving a note in his cell saying “where there’s a will, there’s a way”. While

The tall tales of Jules Verne, the mysteries of the moon and the Chinese fairytale of the Jade rabbit have inspired a quirky new French restaurant on the roof of I.M. Pei’s Macau Science Center. New York design firm Wilson Associates were commissioned to create the design and concept for Le Lapin, which occupies a circular space at the peak of Pei’s distinctive conical building. As the restaurant is a

The sweeping Dolomites mountain range in northeastern Italy has inspired a dramatic new hotel designed by architecture firm Network of Architecture (noa*). The irregular, asymmetrical silhouette of the Hotel Tofana in the town of St. Kassian is designed to evoke one of the tree-lined mountain peaks that dominate the region’s Badia Valley, complete with plants lining the building's terraces and façade. Guests can “ascend” the hotel as if it was

Architecture practice Cebra have unveiled concepts for a new cultural attraction focusing on the historic connection between Denmark, Greenland and the Arctic. The iceberg-esque form, located in the harbour of Danish town Hundested, covers 3,000sq m (32,300sq ft) and will aim to communicate the relationship between the three locations in historic, contemporary and future contexts. Knud Rasmussen – Denmark’s famed polar explorer and researcher – is the inspiration for the

The design and engineering of Olympic stadiums is the focus of a temporary exhibition opening today (13 October) at The Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. Stadiums: Past and Future explores the facilities cities have built to host the Games – from the Olympia in Ancient Greece through to modern architectural icons such as Frei Otto’s Munich Olympic Stadium and Herzog and de Meuron’s Bird’s Nest in Beijing. Curated by Geraint

A new London exhibition is set to explore communal bathing culture through the work of contemporary architects and designers. The immersive show – called Soak, Steam, Dream and organised as part of the 2016 London Design Festival – uses photography, film and archive objects to showcase international bathhouse projects by designers as varied as Peter Zumthor, Kengo Kuma and H3T architekti. Each project has been chosen for its role in

A new football-specific stadium has been earmarked for Nashville, Tennessee as a result of the city launching a bid to establish a Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise. A 22-member organising committee – headed up by businessman and investor Bill Hagerty – is leading the bid to bring top-flight football to the city. The group has been in contact with a number of potential investors and located several stadium sites with

The Center for Architecture in Portland, Oregon, is to launch the first major US exhibition on international architecture studio Snøhetta and their work around the world. Named Snøhetta: People, Process, Projects, the exhibition will explore the practice's culture and design philosophy and follows on from a similar event held last year at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen. It will be launched on 17 April 2016 to kick off Design

A conference exploring the relationship between neuroscience and architecture will take place at the London headquarters of engineering firm Arup next week. Taking place on 1 March, the one-day Conscious Cities event has been organised by London’s Museum of Architecture and THECUBE – a collective of scientists, engineers, designers, technologists, artists, futurists and anthropologists. Among the topics under discussion will be how our built environments affect behaviour and cognition, how

Visitors to the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London this May will be able to explore a garden pavilion inspired by nature and fabricated by robots in front of their eyes. The Elytra Filament Pavilion – created by experimental architects Achim Menges and Moritz Dörstelmann in collaboration with engineers Jan Knippers and Thomas Auer – will launch a special Engineering Season at the museum. The installation will explore the

Peter Law, creative producer at design collective Flying Object and creator of Tate Britain’s IK Prize-winning Sensorium, has outlined how multi-sensory spaces can be used to create unique personal experiences. Sensorium – which utilised experts in sound, taste, scent and touch, combined with lighting and theatre elements – ran until September 2015 at the Tate Britain in London as a multi-sensory experience centred around four famous artworks. "We had an

Two major exhibitions open in London this week exploring how architects can change the world in different ways. Creation from Catastrophe, which opens on 27 January at the Architecture Gallery of the Royal Institute of British Architects, will explore how destruction and devastation present unique opportunities to radically rethink environments. With a focus on architects as diverse as OMA, Toyo Ito, Sir Christopher Wren and Elemental – whose founder Alejandro