London’s five-star Andaz Liverpool Street Hotel by Hyatt is the latest to embrace the growing trend of teaming hospitality offerings with the world of art, following the launch of its Room With A View project. The trend to combine hotels and art has also seen London offering The Beaumont Hotel – due to open later this year – work with award-winning artist Sir Anthony Gormley to create an iconic room

De Matos Ryan – a London based architectural firm – has been granted planning permission to go ahead with a £4.1m revamp of The York Theatre Royal, UK, while nearby Newcastle's Theatre Royal is also getting a makeover, albeit behind the scenes. After a large fundraising effort, the York project is now set to move forward with an onsite start date of March 2015 and a provisional completion date of

Rome’s long-awaited €250m, (US$340m, £198m) Cinecittà World theme park – designed by multiple-Oscar-winning production designer designer Dante Ferretti – will finally open its doors to the public on 24 July after a decade of delays. Conceived as Italy’s take on Universal Studios, Cinecittà World comprises 20 attractions, including roller coasters, dark rides and a flight simulator. Incorporating elements of science fiction, Bollywood, spaghetti westerns and many other themes from more

Roger Stirk Harbour + Partners’ have completed their £135m (US$231m, €170m) extension to the British Museum, London. As one of the most popular visitor attractions in the world, the British Museum is a defining institution and its new World Conservation and Exhibition Centre has been a long time coming. Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) won the contract for the extension in 2009 from a shortlist of top architectural practices,

Archiview, a Dutch architectural practice, has created a planetarium-come-cinema in Groningen, the Netherlands, with plans to open a further 20 across Europe in the near future. Called “Infoversum” and now open to the public, the structure is effectively a 3D theatre aimed at promoting science and knowledge. Films are projected on to the ceiling of the planetarium showing educational footage and visitors can experience a multi-dimensional view of the universe

The Mall of the World – a giant indoor ‘city’ under construction in Dubai – will have its own version of Oxford Street and Broadway, as well as galleons, waterfalls, a theme park, wellness district and a host of other leisure activities and attractions. The ‘city’, which has a giant retractable dome, is Dubai’s vision for a climate-controlled leisure district, including luxury hotels with more than 20,000 bedrooms, shops, entertainment

Washington's National Building Museum in the US has revealed its latest exhibition – a complex wooden maze designed by Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) which fills the large West Court of the museum’s Great Hall Taking inspiration from ancient labyrinths to european 17th-18th century hedge mazes, BIG has created a modern day riddle with the all important “great reveal” in the centre. At approximately 18ft (5.5m) high and

Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP), Wakefield, UK, has taken home a £100,000 prize from The Art Fund after being announced the UK Museum of the Year by Art Fund – the national fundraising charity for art. YSP beat several other top museums to the prize, with the shortlist including; Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft in East Sussex, Hayward Gallery in London, The Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, Sainsbury Centre for

Pritzker Prize winning architect Peter Zumthor and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) have unveiled new plans for the US museum’s proposed US$650m (€477m, £380m) transformation. Following controversy over the original designs, Zumthor has altered his original plans to avoid the La Brea Tar Pits – an important site for palaeontology research and a major tourist hotspot in the LA area. Before changes to the plans, the proposed

London’s AT Design Office has released designs for a floating city in the China Sea, and the plans look set to become reality as China's government looks to maximise its tourist footprint. Space is a premium on any continent, especially so in China and the proposed floating city would be built to appeal to tourists and residents alike, offering an array of attractions and plenty of green space. Commissioned by

A planned super city in South Korea that will cost an estimated US$275bn (€202bn, £160bn) will include a host of leisure features including a theme park, casinos, luxury hotels, a 50,000 seat concert hall and a medical-themed ‘healing town’. Dubbed ‘City8’, the giant metropolis will create an estimated 930,000 new jobs and aims to attract 134 million tourists annually. Other features for the proposed city – to be built on

The new Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in South Africa's Cape Town will be designed by Thomas Heatherwick – marking the architect's biggest museum project to date. Zeitz MOCAA is to be a new non-profit cultural space alongside the V&A Waterfront, one of the most visited attractions in South Africa. As part of a masterplan - Heatherwick will transform an historic grain silo into 9,500sq m (102,000sq

Frank Gehry and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) have unveiled a new masterplan for the 90-year-old museum site in America. Known for his famous cultural projects such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, Gehry’s latest designs for PMoA have been revealed in a new exhibition – Making a Classic Modern: Frank Gehry’s Master Plan for the Philadelphia Museum of Art – which is now open to the public.

New York City based architectural firm The Living has completed its winning design for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Young Architects Program, Hi-Fi – a tubular tower made of mushroom and corn bricks. Constructed to provide shelter and seating for PS1’s Warm Up concert series at the MoMA, the structure is almost 100 per cent biodegradable and is intended to be composted down after its use. The circular tower

Redevelopment plans for London’s Crystal Palace have hit a wall as negotiations with the site's investors – Chinese ZhongRong Group and Bromley Council – have taken significantly longer than expected. Speaking to the Architects’ Journal, Green Party spokesman in Crystal Palace Tom Chance said: ‘We understand that the negotiations are stuck in a catch 22 situation – that the council wants more detail on the plans before they sign off

Wuhan, the capital city of central China, could be the home of the world’s tallest pair of buildings by 2018, as part of an ambitious mixed-use scheme. Chetwoods Architects, a UK based firm, have submitted proposals for the world’s tallest towers and are awaiting final approval from Wuhan’s mayor. The new Phoenix Towers, standing at 3,280ft (1 km) tall, would take up seven hectares of a yet-to-be developed 47 hectare

Dubai city officials and architect Fernando Donis are at loggerheads following the unveiling of plans for a unique new attraction in Dubai. Donis, a Mexican architect, won the Dubai Municipality competition to design a new public monument in 2009 and now, five years later, new images have been released of the redesigned structure. The “Dubai Frame” will be 150m (492ft) tall and 100m (328ft) wide, with a walkway between the

The Southbank Centre, London, is to receive funding from Arts Council England to carry out part of the much need conservation project across the site. The £16.7m grant will fund the repair and maintenance of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery. Starting in 2015, the project will begin to address an accumulated backlog of £24m worth of repairs. Arts Council England will meet 70 per cent

The Babcock Galleries at The National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard have opened to the public following a £4.5m renovation. The opening coincides with the centenary of the First World War, with the Galleries house to host a new permanent exhibition which explores 100 years of life in the Navy and the personal stories from those who served at sea. The project, led by architects Purcell

UNStudio, a Dutch architectural practice in collaboration with the Hong Kong based AD+RG, has been chosen to design a fifth arts venue in the West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD), Hong Kong. Scheduled for completion in 2019 with schematic designs being released in Q3 of this year, the new 1,200 seat Lyric Theatre will be Hong Kong’s first dedicated facility for dance performances. The venue will also be used for the

Developers behind the £8bn Battersea Power Station mixed-use renovation project will demolish the the Grade II listed building’s iconic chimneys, with work due to start this summer, but say all four towers will be fully restored by 2016. The crumbling chimneys would likely pose a danger to the under development leisure and retail project – which includes designs from architects Norman Foster and Frank Gehry – with a combination of

The Natural History Museum (NHM) has announced Niall McLaughlin Architects, in collaboration with Kim Wilkie, as the winners of their Civic Realm competition to redesign the grounds of the London attraction. Niall McLaughlin was chosen from a shortlist of five architectural practices also including Stanton Williams Architects, Grant Associates, Land Use Consultants and BIG. The Civic Realm competition was launched to help address visitor engagement, care of the collection and

Plans have been unveiled to build a 125,000sq m (410,105sq ft) desert oasis in the shape of the Al Fayah Park in the city of Abu Dhabi. Scheduled to open to the public in 2017 – with work starting as soon as the design stage is finished by architects Heatherwick Studios in late 2014 – the park will offer a variety of open spaces with exercise paths and picnic areas.

Work has been completed on the US$425m (€307m, £254m) Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) in South Korea. ZHA won an international design competition for the project back in 2007 and the scheme has finally come to fruition, having opened in time to host Seoul Fashion Week at the end of March. The 86,574sq m (931,874sq ft) DDP comprises a design museum, educational facilities, a sky lounge

A heritage row has erupted over plans to build a permanent home and museum for the Nobel prize – the first in the award’s 114-year history. The new headquarters threaten two historic buildings with demolition and a group of more than 5,000 has formed in protest of the plans. Under the proposals, a 25,000sq m (269,000sq ft) facility will open in 2018. The new centre will house nearly all Nobel’s

Work to create Sydney’s version of New York’s High Line has begun, with plans to transform a disused rail track, originally used for transporting freight, into a reinvigorated public space for leisure. The High Line is a public park built on the former rail line that ran above the streets of New York and is the inspiration for the Australian Sydney project. The Goods Line in Sydney stretches for 500m