The architecture studio of David Adjaye have won the international competition to design a new contemporary art museum for the centre of Riga, Latvia. The Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation today (16 June) announced that Adjaye Associates’ vision for the museum – which imagines a highly-animated tilting roof geometry – has been selected ahead of six rival submissions, including from Caruso St John Architects and Henning Larssen Architects. Adjaye

The under-development Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi took a major step forward this week when the temporary sea wall surrounding the structure came down, flooding the area around the building. Contractor Arabtec Holdings has removed the 14m (46ft) temporary hydraulic cutoff walls used during the main construction phase, with the sea water now enveloping the museum, giving it the appearance of floating on water. "This delicate process is the result

Baltimore’s National Aquarium has unveiled plans for North America’s first ever seaside dolphin sanctuary, which has been designed by architects Studio Gang. The aquarium has formed a team of experts who will be tasked to find a site which ensures the health and welfare of the dolphins, following a criteria which includes an outdoor location with natural seawater and a tropical or sub-tropical climate. The aquarium is aiming to transition

New London mayor Sadiq Khan has claimed culture will be as important as housing, transport and the environment in his administration. Speaking at the press opening of the new Tate Modern in the UK capital, Khan vowed to increase the number of cultural facilities and public spaces by “embedding culture in London’s planning system.” “For too long culture has been merely a nice-to-have,” he argued. “We’ve got to change that.”

Tadao Ando has told CLAD about his design for a new contemporary art museum in Paris which will house the vast collection of billionaire businessman François Pinault. Pinault’s plans to transform the French capital’s historic Bourse de la Commerce into the museum were unveiled in April this year. Ando was selected to work on the project following a previous collaboration with Pinault to renovate Venice’s 17th century Punta della Dogana

The Smithsonian Institute is teaming up with the V&A Museum to create a collaborative permanent exhibition space at London’s Olympicopolis site. The plans, which date back to January 2015, originally called for a stand-alone Smithsonian to act as an anchor for the site upon its opening in 2020/2021. The amended plans now come at significantly less cost to the Smithsonian, with the V&A partnership giving the institution a permanent presence

The Goddard Group and Moschanko Investment Group have been given the go-ahead by Russian President Vladimir Putin to develop and build a US$4bn (€3.6bn, £2.8bn) theme park near Moscow. Called “The Magical World of Russia”, the new project has been touted as a major destination and resort theme park that will “reflect Russian and other international cultures”. The development gained the endorsement of President Putin at a recent meeting involving

The first renderings of the next Margaritaville destination resort – which will open in Orlando, Florida by the end of 2017 – have been released, shining a light on US singer Jimmy Buffett's ambitious plans for the US$750m (€664m, £526m) leisure scheme. Construction recently began on the 320-acre property, called Margaritaville Resort Orlando, which features interior designs from The McBride Company and is being developed by Encore Capital Management in

Mark Wray Architects have won an open design competition to design a visitor hub for an ancient forest site in Surrey, England. The firm’s design for the project – which will be located in 640 acre Langley Vale Wood – was described by judges from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and Britain’s Woodland Trust as an “imaginative and beautiful scheme that demonstrates well how mankind and nature can

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor has designed the latest installation for Norway’s National Tourist Route (NTR) initiative, where the country’s most scenic roads are dotted with fantastic viewpoints and architectural rest stops. Allmannajuvet, a commission that dates back to 2002, is finally set to open 8 September, just months after the opening of Utsikten (the View), a precipitous triangle slab balanced on a dramatic mountainside. Zumthor’s Allmannajuvet site consists of

The Rothschild Foundation has backed an international design competition to create a £20m (US$29.2m, €25.7m) light installation on the 17 central London bridges crossing the River Thames. Chaired by Lord Rothschild, The Rothschild Foundation gives grants to a variety of charitable initiatives, also supporting artistic and cultural ventures across the UK. With the foundation’s backing, the Illuminated River contest is searching for ‘elegant and charismatic’ proposals to transform the Thames

The shortlisted design concepts for the new Museum of London are to star in an upcoming exhibition. Six architectural teams were shortlisted for their designs for the new home museum in a Victorian market hall in West Smithfield. The concepts are to go on display in a public exhibition at the current Museum of London from 10 June to 5 August, with the final winner announced shortly after. The mini-exhibit

After plans were revealed at the end of last month to build a permanent home for World Rugby in the sport’s birthplace, Manchester-based design firm Mather and Co have been appointed to create the attraction in Warwickshire, UK. Billed as a “fully-interactive and immersive museum”, the Hall of Fame will be located within the town of Rugby’s art gallery, museum and library. Mather has a strong portfolio of sporting experiences,

This year's Serpentine Pavilion, designed by the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), has opened in Hyde Park, London. At the press launch yesterday (7 June), BIG founder Bjarke Ingels said that designing the pavilion had allowed the practice to demonstrate their values in a way that their more traditional building work cannot. “As architects, we almost always work in situations that are so saturated with existing constraints that the project becomes

Designs by a number of architects competing to design a €30m (US$34m, £23.6m) contemporary art museum in Latvia have been unveiled. The seven teams – shortlisted from an invited list of 25 global architecture firms and each paired with a local design team – include Adjaye Associates and AB3D; Caruso St John Architects and Arhitektu birojs Jaunromans un Abel; Henning Larsen Architects and MARK arhitekti; Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects and

The Museum of London is looking into the possibility of opening a viewing gallery at the top of London’s upcoming 1 Undershaft. The towering skyscraper – which will be as tall as the neighbouring Shard if approved to open in 2022 – will be located in the heart of the capital's financial district. When Eric Parry Architects unveiled the plans in December 2015, the design envisioned large areas of public

The leader of South Korea’s newly-created Administrative City has launched an international architecture competition for a National Museum Complex (NMC) that will help make the destination “a global culture city”. Choongjae Lee, the city’s administrator, has vowed to build “the world's most beautiful and liveable city” through investment in architecture, technology, urban planning and design and environmental sustainability. The Administrative City, also known as Sejong, was established in 2007 and

Zaha Hadid’s Mathematics Gallery for London’s Science Museum will open to the public on 8 December 2016, it has been announced. Hadid studied mathematics at university, so the project was close to her heart. Called The David and Claudia Harding Gallery in honour of two of its major donors, the space will explore how mathematicians, their tools and ideas have helped to shape the modern world over the last four

The president of France Francois Hollande was on hand yesterday (31 May) for the pre-opening of La Cité du Vin; a new international cultural wine centre for Bordeaux, France. Designed by Paris studio XTU Architects, the complex is a permanent 13,000sq m (140,000sq ft), €136m (US$151.3m, £104m) visitor experience celebrating the history of winemaking. It opens to the public today (1 June). The building’s curving form was designed by architects

The British Film Institute (BFI) has unveiled ambitious plans to build a new world-class International Centre for Film, TV and the Moving Image – a move heralded by the great and the good of British cinema. The BFI has revived a long-gestating plan to create a flagship national home for the film industry on the site of an existing car park on London’s South Bank, near its current cinema venue.

The international jury of the 15th Venice architecture Biennale has awarded the Golden Lion award for Best National Participation to Spain, for its pavilion Unfinished. The Spanish exhibition was one of 65 national pavilions at this year’s Biennale. Each engaged with festival curator Alejandro Aravena’s chosen theme Reporting From the Front to show examples of problems facing the built environment in their countries and some suggested solutions to these challenges.

Zaha Hadid Architects have been appointed to design a landmark cultural quarter overlooking the seafront in Bournemouth, England. Initial proposals for the site, which is currently home to a car park, include a multi-use performance space, a hotel, restaurants and new public realm linking the cultural quarter to the beaches, town centre and forthcoming Winter Gardens scheme via a new Grand Garden Walk. The project will cost a reported £25m

New York’s Bronx Museum of the Arts has announced plans for a multi-million dollar architectural overhaul, resulting in more space for the institution’s public programmes and exhibitions. A public-private partnership between the museum and city of New York, the US$25m (€22.4m, £17m) project is being funded by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and overseen by the NYC Department of Design and Construction. Venezuelan-American architect Mónica Ponce de León and

Danish company Kvorning Design & Communication are simultaneously developing projects across all of Norway’s World Heritage sites, creating bespoke exhibitions for each site celebrating the country’s history. Kvorning beat a number of Norwegian architecture firms in a design competition for the contract, which includes the DKR24m (US$3.65m, €3.25m, £2.55m) development of a visitor centre at each of Norway’s eight World Heritage sites. Included in this list is Struves Geodetic Arc,

25 years on from its inception, work is nearing completion on Newmarket’s £14m (US$20.4m, €18.2m) National Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art, which sees the Palace building and stables transformed to create a state-of-the-art museum dedicated to the sport of horseracing. Celebrating more than 350 years of sporting history, Mather & Co are behind the plans, which gained Heritage Lottery funding in 2012 to the tune of £4.25m (US$6.2m,

Lausanne in Switzerland has unveiled plans to combine the city’s three major art and design museums into a single cultural hub, with all three institutions getting new homes as part of the landmark development. Known as Plateforme10, the three museums will sit on 22,000sq m (237,000sq ft) of repurposed industrial land next to the city’s main train station. Laid out as “an open terrace, an esplanade revealing the scope of

The first images of the long-awaited extension to the Tate Modern art gallery in London have been released ahead of its official public opening on 17 June 2016. The Tate Modern was created in 2000 by Herzog and de Meuron, who transformed the derelict Bankside Power Station on the River Thames into a home for the UK’s collection of international modern and contemporary art. The architects reunited eight years ago