America’s Alcatraz - one of the world’s most notorious prisons and now a top tourist attraction - is to play host to an art and sculpture exhibition by dissident artist Ai Weiwei. Opening to the public on the 27 September, seven new installations by Ai Weiwei, a Chinese activist and artist, will be on display throughout Alcatraz prison. The multimedia exhibition, named @Large, aims to explore human rights and freedom

Since opening in May 2014, the emotive 9/11 Memorial Museum, NYC, has seen more than one million visitors walk through its doors. Designed by David Brody Bond Architects in conjunction with Snøhetta, the 9/11 Memorial Museum provides a space for telling the story of the 9/11 attacks and their repercussions. And the tasteful approach to the difficult subject matter has seen the attraction more than fulfill visitor number expectations. With

Hadrian’s Wall’s 1960s-era visitor centre will bow out to make way for a brand new facility after plans got the go-ahead from authorities. The English border village of Once Brewed, which serves the stream of hardy walkers who tackle the 117.5km (73 mile) trek across the historic wall, will be home to an £11.2m ($17.9m, €14.3m) development. The Sill National Landscape Discovery Centre, imagined by Newcastle-based architects Jane Darbyshire and

South Korean capital Seoul has become home to a new progressive art museum following the opening of the Arario Museum in Space attraction, located inside the city’s famed Space building overlooking Changgyeong Palace. The Space site was originally designed by pioneering South Korean architect Kim Swoo-geun and was previously home to the architect’s Space Group firm. The launch of the new museum comes as art collector and founder of Arario

Up to 34 Transport for London (TfL)-owned “ghost” train tunnels running beneath the UK capital could soon be transformed into an array of attractions and leisure sites, according to reports. It is understood that TfL is preparing to invite companies to bid to take part in the transformation of several disused Underground and Overground Stations, as well as old horse tunnels that run below the city. Ajit Chambers, a former

Following a lengthy competition process ending in 2013, French architect Jean Nouvel and the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design (BIAD) have begun work on the greatly-anticipated National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) in Beijing. Located in Beijing's Olympic Park – a legacy from the 2008 Games – the NAMOC will occupy 130,000sq m (1,399,308sq ft) of space as part of a new cultural district in the park itself, near to

The Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science (formerly known as the Miami Science Museum), which is nearing the halfway stage of moving to a new US$275m (€212m, £168.5m) facility in downtown Miami, has received a donation of US$5m (€3.9m, £3.1m) to fund health and wellness programmes when the new facility launches in 2016. To be located inside the new science museum, the Baptist Health People & Science Gallery will

The Japanese architect, Shigeru Ban has won an international competition to design and build the new Tainan Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan. Pritzker Prize-winner Ban has designed several well known museums, the most recent being the Aspen Art Museum, USA. The Tainan Museum of Fine Arts project aims to promote the development of Taiwan’s emerging cultural significance by recognising its arts and heritage. The new museum will have a particular

The evolution of London’s Science Museum is now well underway, with several ‘starchitects’ being named to design its new galleries, while a new exhibition space is now set to open on 25 October. Universal Design Studio’s Communication Gallery The impending gallery, designed by Universal Design Studio, is the first in the UK to be entirely dedicated to the history of information and communication technologies. Boasting 2,000sq m (21,528sq ft) of

Following a six month nationwide competition, four multidisciplinary architecture and design teams have been chosen to reveal their design concepts for Washington D.C's first elevated park. The four finalists are as follows: Balmori Associates / Cooper, Robertson & Partners, OLIN / OMA, Stoss Landscape Urbanism / Höweler + Yoon Architecture and Wallace Roberts & Todd (WRT) / NEXT Architects / Magnusson Klemencic Associates. The 11th Street Bridge Park Competition, has

A development group led by tennis coach Judy Murray, mother of star Andy Murray, has been dealt a blow after a prominent member of Stirling Council’s planning office said that it could not support plans for the creation of the Park of Keir sporting hub in Scotland. Led by Murray and the King Group, the project is also backed by her son Andy and former Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie,

Muf Architecture/art has won a competition to design a new interactive gallery for the Science Museum, London. From a shortlist of several renowned architectural firms, including David Kohn and Grimshaw, Muf has been chosen by the museum to design the £4m ($6.4m, €5m) new space. Due to open in 2016, the new gallery aims to build on the success of the current ‘Launchpad’ children’s gallery and create a larger, more

A US$300m (£183.3m, €231.7m) museum for the Oscars has come up against problems, with Los Angeles City Planning department expressing concern over potentially explosive gas pockets under the proposed site. The department has released a draft environmental impact report on the project, which highlights deposits of methane and hydrogen sulphide gas that could potentially harm construction workers and ultimately visitors. The planned Academy Museum of Motion Pictures – which will

As part of the London Design Festival 2014 (LDF), Zaha Hadid Architects will unveil a temporary installation in the John Madejski Garden at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). The structure, named Crest, will be stretched across the pool in the V&A gardens from the 13 to 21 September, the duration of the LDF. Made of thin aluminium, the form will explore the relationship between different elements, such as the

Thomas Phifer and Partners (TPP) has been chosen, from a shortlist of eleven architectural practices, to design Warsaw’s new Museum of Modern Art and TR Warszawa Theatre, Poland. The New York-based practice has beaten other architectural heavy weights to the win the commission, including Foster + Partners and UNstudio. The new museum will be located in Warsaw’s Defilad Square, at the foot of the Palace of Culture and Science. TPP

A competition has been launched to find a landscape design team for the RAF Museum’s revamp. The attraction is undergoing a £23m renovation as it builds up to the centenary celebrations of the Royal Air Force in 2018. The winning team will help achieve the master plan designed by architecture firm Wilkinson Eyre in 2011. The four-phase renovation of the site in Hendon, London, is known as the Centenary Programme

Macedonia’s capital of Skopje is undergoing a major revamp, but some are calling the controversial makeover – intended to attract more tourists to the country – a “crime” against heritage and culture. Skopje, which became the capital of Macedonia in 1991 after the breakup of Yugoslavia, is trying to make a name for itself on the international stage, using eye-catching architecture to entice visitors from abroad. The €500m (US$656m, £395m)

A 60-day programme, conducted by Saudi Arabia’s National Urban Heritage Center (NUHC) and giving Saudi students comprehensive training in heritage renovation, has been completed by a class of graduates. The series of training programmes led by NUHC, an affiliate of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA), was undertaken by students of engineering and architecture from a number of Saudi universities, including King Abdul Aziz University, Al Qassim University

Louis Vuitton’s museum project, designed by Frank Ghery of architecture firm Ghery Partners, is nearing completion almost eight years after plans for the €100m (US$132m, £80m) Paris-based attraction were first revealed. Set to open in October, the 126,000sq ft (11,705sq m) Louis Vuitton Foundation – designed to resemble “a cloud of glass” – includes 11 exhibition galleries dedicated to Vuitton’s private collection alongside a space for temporary exhibitions in addition

Three years behind schedule, significantly over budget and with no lack of controversy, the Picasso Museum in Paris finally looks set to open. The French culture ministry announced the long-awaited unveiling would take place on 25 October, exactly 133 years since Pablo Picasso was born. Musée Picasso closed to the public in 2009 for the renovation of the 17th-century building and an ambitious expansion that would double the exhibition area.

The Palace Museum – housed in Beijing’s, Forbidden City – is to set up an architectural institute equipped for research, training and restoration on China’s ancient architecture. The new unit will operate as a scientific base and will be devoted to multiple fields, with training including the inheritance and development of traditional architectural skills, the adoption of modern technologies in relation to ancient architecture and the training of professionals for

With a budget of £215m ($361m, €270m), one might expect Tate Modern’s high-profile extension to be carried out to schedule and without incident. But a re-shuffle at the upper echelons of the project’s management, topped off with an admission that the budget will need to be revised, has raised questions from one of the UK’s Labour MPs. “There’s £50m ($84m, €63m) of taxpayers’ money in this project which is late

A new museum celebrating country music, built in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, has opened on the border between Tennessee and Virginia in the south of the US. Designed by Peyton Boyd Architects, the US$11m (€8.2m, £6.5m) Birthplace of Country Music Museum, which opens today (8 August) in Bristol, VA, has been in the pipeline for several years. The 24,000sq ft (2,229sq m) museum will feature several different

The new home for the Aspen Art Museum (AAM) is now complete, and ready to open to the public on Saturday 9 August. Designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Shigeru Ban, the 33,000sq ft (10,058sq m) museum and gallery is the new home for the Aspen Art Museum, which had outgrown its old place of residence. As Ban’s first permanent museum in America, the backdrop of the building is the

The French government has announced that it will pledge €200m ($267m, £160m) for urgent repairs and restoration to the iconic La Défense Grande Arche, located in Paris’s financial district. Inaugurated on Bastille Day in 1989, the 20th century answer to the Arc de Triomphe was mastermind by Danish architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsen and completed by French architect Paul Andreu. Standing at 110m (360.8 ft) high, 110m wide and 110m

From a shortlist of six architectural practices, Goldsmiths College, London, has announced that Assemble - a London based architecture collective - will be designing their new £1.8m ($3.1m, €2.2m) gallery in South East London. Housed in Grade II listed swimming baths, Assemble’s design for the gallery will incorporate the original black steel water tanks as part of the new exhibition space, while creating new gallery spaces tacked onto the outside

A large part of Eastbourne Pier was reduced to a burned out shell yesterday (30 July) after a blazing inferno tore through the Grade II-listed structure, destroying a significant amount of the visitor attraction. More than 60 firefighters tackled the fire, which is believed to have broken out in the 144-year old pier’s arcade building. Crews from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) from Eastbourne, Hastings and Newhaven were also