A team of architects led by BIG and HOK have won an international competition to design the largest dock of Zurich Airport in Switzerland. Composed predominantly of regional wood, The new Dock A and adjacent buildings seek to strengthen the airport’s continued status as the gateway of Switzerland. Bjarke Ingels, BIG founder and creative director, said: “As airports grow and evolve and as international guidelines and safety requirements change, airports

Architects AZPML and UKST have secured the commission to design the Korean Museum of Urbanism and Architecture (KMUA), a £31.4m project in Sejong, South Korea. The competition was organised by the National Agency for Administrative City Construction (NAACC), which is looking to establish a museum exploring the history and the development of the built environment across the country. With a total floor area of 17,050sq m, the museum will be

A team led by Feilden Fowles has won the National Railway Museum 's competition to design its new Central Hall with an elegant timber-frame rotunda. Run in partnership with Malcolm Reading Consultants, the competition was launched in September 2019, with a shortlist of five teams announced in February 2020. Proposals were sought for a £16.5m ($22m, €20m), 4,500sq m (48,400sq ft) centrepiece building to provide a new entrance space and

Kengo Kuma & Associates, working with K2LD Architects, have won a competition to create the Singapore Founders’ Memorial with a design that "draws from monuments of the past and the context of the present to create a space for the future." The Founders' Memorial International Architectural Design Competition was launched in January 2019. It sought an integrated building and garden experience, with exhibition galleries, landscaped spaces and art installations, as

Two winners have been chosen in this year's City of Dreams Pavilion Competition, with one constructed from air-filled materials and the other with an inverted pyramid that is a comment on environmental instability. The City of Dreams Pavilion Competition is run by FIGMENT, the Emerging New York Architects Committee of the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter and the Structural Engineers Association of New York. It is based on

MVRDV is one of two finalists in a competition to design the Shimao ShenKong International Centre, with a proposal that combines stacked terraces, curved organic forms and lush greenery. The competition sought designs for a municipal facility for Universiade New Town in China that would accommodate a variety of different amenities and green spaces. MVRDV'S 101,300sq m (1 million sq ft) Shenzhen Terraces proposal was conceived as a new urban

Aidia Studio has won the Rifat Chadirji Prize 2019, which sought design proposals for a new Barjeel Museum For Modern Arab Art in Sharjah, UAE. Established in 2017, the Rifat Chadirji Prize is one competition run by the Tamayouz Excellence Award and seeks ideas that respond to local challenges, as well as to celebrate architecture in the Near East and North Africa. Aidia's proposal for a building to house Barjeel's

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) and Cox Architecture have won an international competition to design the new Western Sydney Airport in Australia, proposing both a passenger-focused experience and a leisure destination for locals. The new AU$5.3b (US$3.6b, €3.3b, £2.8b) greenfield airport is aimed at helping to drive the growth of Sydney and its greater metropolitan area over the coming decades. In addition to a design for the airport, ZHA and Cox

Spanish firm Arquivio Architects has won a competition to design Lithuania’s new National Concert Hall in Vilnius with a design that integrates the building into the landscape “as naturally as possible”. Following a brief that included a building and two concert halls, Arquivio proposed that the different elements be interconnected by an open ground floor green corridor. In addition, it sought to carefully incorporate the nearby Lutheran Garden. The brief

A competition to find alternative designs to replace the destroyed Notre Dame Cathedral roof has attracted a number of innovative "solutions" – including a rooftop waterway over the medieval cathedral. The People’s Notre Dame Cathedral Design Competition was launched in defiance of the French senate’s plans to restore the roof exactly as it was before the devastating fire earlier this year. Set up by book publisher GoArchitect, the campaign invited

The Czech city of Ostrava is to have a new concert hall designed by Steven Holl Architects and Prague-based Architecture Acts following an international competition. The structure will create a tension between new and old, with the new building sitting astride the city's existing House of Culture. The 1,300-seat concert hall, which is expected to open in 2023, was designed as a "perfect acoustic instrument in its case" in collaboration

Piscina & Wellness Barcelona (PWB) has launched an international contest for architecture students to conceptualise a new aquatic centre. According to the company, the future leisure facility will be designed for public bathing and will occupy a tract of land on Barcelona’s waterfront, between “Drassanes Quay and the Rambla del Mar of the Port Vell”. “The space includes a large area of water, thus providing the possibility of even imagining

Architecture office Henning Larsen have been chosen to revitalise a 30,000 sq m seafront park in Esbjerg, Denmark. The architects' plans will see the centuries-old public space transformed into a “city mountain” with new footpaths, artificial ponds, and an expansive amphitheatre. “We are reconnecting the city back with its environment,” said Salka Kudsk, Head of Landscape at Henning Larsen. She continued: “It was initially practical, holding the sand in place

Carlo Ratti Associati have unveiled the first images of VITAE – their winning concept in the Re-Inventing Cities competition. The mixed-use building will have show-stopping biophilic elements, including a 200-metre 'urban vineyard' which weaves up through the building from the ground floor to the roof. The green pathway will be designed to reflect the double-helix structure of DNA to symbolise the "embrace between research and biophilia". The €40m (US$44.6m, £35.4m)

Following the tragic destruction of Notre Dame's 19th-century spire, the French prime minister, Édouard Philippe, has invited architects to put forward ideas for its restoration. "The international competition will allow us to ask the question of whether we should even recreate the spire as it was conceived by Viollet-le-Duc," Philippe said of the project. "This is obviously a huge challenge, a historic responsibility," he added. Viollet-le-Duc, who counted Victor Hugo's

The Transport Museum of Hungary is building a new home in Budapest and has chosen New York architecture practice Diller Scofidio + Renfro to design it, following a competition. The firm beat out rivals including AL_A, Caruso St John, David Chipperfield, and Foster and Partners among others for the museum's new home, which will be based on a former rail maintenance depot site in the Kobanya region in east Budapest.

A former union club for naval officers in Berlin is to be converted into a new city museum for the German capital. Designed by architectural practice Adept, Stadtmuseum Berlin at 'Marinehaus' will be "a cultural pivot that anchors the museum in the neighbourhood through exhibitions, workshops and as a community centre for the locals", according to the architects. Renderings show that the 7,800sq m (84,000sq ft) building's existing floors will

An innovative two-tower design – consisting of vertically networked platforms, terraces and verandas – has been selected winner of an AU$2bn (US$1.4bn, €1.3bn, £1.1bn) competition for a new mixed-use tower on Melbourne's Southbank in Australia. ‘Green Spine’, designed by architects UNStudio in conjunction with Cox Architects, takes the form of two curved towers that sit on top of a podium. The taller tower, standing at 356.2m, is wholly residential but houses

Steven Holl Architects (SHA) has been declared winner of the Future Campus – University College Dublin International Design Competition. In a statement, the international jury judging the competition said it was "hugely impressed" by SHA’s design proposal for a Centre for Creative Design and the accompanying masterplan for an Entrance Precinct – which in total will cover a 24ha area of the campus. The design competition's four other finalists were

Some of the world’s most renowned architectural practices have submitted entries to a design competition for a new building in Melbourne, Australia. Situated in the city’s Southbank area, the new building will be a mixed-use tower development. Six entrants, including Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), MAD Architects, Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and MVRDV have submitted entries. BIG, in partnership with Fender Katsalidis Architects, are proposing a mega 359.6m-high two-building development

A design team led by US studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Australian architects Woods Bagot has won the international design competition for the Adelaide Contemporary art museum. Intended to revitalise the site of the former Royal Adelaide Hospital (oRAH), the attraction will be a sister museum to the Art Gallery of South Australia, combining exhibition, research and education spaces with a public sculpture park and community meeting place. It

Design initiative Young Architects Competitions (YAC) has announced the winners of an ideas contest for the transformation of a remote Italian fortress into "one of the most atmospheric centres of contemporary art in the Mediterranean". Italian studio Simposio have secured first prize for their proposal to carefully integrate new cultural and hospitality buildings into the rocky landscape of Favignana, an isle in the Southern Sicily that is home to Santa

The Dutch municipality of Den Helder has today (12 April) announced MVRDV as the winners in a competition to design a new public installation on the city’s northern dike representing the connection between city and sea. The design, called SeaSaw, is a viewing platform that takes the shape of an infinite loop, with visitors able to walk across it in either direction. Den Helder is located on the country’s northernmost

Architects, urban planners and landscape designers have been invited to submit proposals for the UK’s first Garden City of the 21st Century: a “truly modern and healthy” community of 15,000 new homes, seven parks, numerous leisure amenities and 30,000 new jobs. Ebbsfleet in Kent will be the site of the Garden City, which is the largest project of the 10 Healthy New Town initiative launched by the National Health Service

Following an international competition, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) have been appointed to design the Central Hub of the Aljada leisure masterplan in Sharjah, UAE. Development company ARADA is overseeing the enormous mixed-use project – one of the largest of its kind in the region – and organised the competition to find an architect for the 1.9 million sq ft (176,500sq m) Hub, billed as “a major destination for tourists and

One of the largest ongoing leisure developments on the planet, EuropaCity in Paris, will feature a dramatic indoor/outdoor cinema embedded into the landscape, courtesy of a competition-winning design by UNStudio. The Dutch practice have been selected as the architects to realise the Centre Culturel Dédié Au 7è Art – one of eight key buildings within the wider EuropaCity masterplan created by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). Described by UNStudio as “a

Design initiative Young Architects Competitions (YAC) has joined forces with the Italian government to launch ‘Art Prison’, an ideas contest for the refurbishment of a fortress on a remote island in southern Sicily. The fortress of Santa Caterina stands over the peak of Favignana, an isle in the Mediterranean Sea. It was once a prison but has stood abandoned for more than a century. Over time, it has become a