London's Science Museum has revealed details regarding its communications gallery Information Age, due to open in September 2014. The £15.6m space will include interactive displays and reveal personal stories about how human life has been transformed by communication innovations over the past 200 years. Covering a space of 2,500sq m - the largest exhibition space in the museum - the gallery will be divided into six zones focused on transformative

San Francisco's Exploratorium science museum officially unveiled its US$300m (228m euro, £197m) expansion at Pier 15 on the city's waterfront on 17 April. The museum now has 330,000sq ft (30,658sq m) of floor space - trebling the footprint it had at its former home at the Palace of Fine Arts. It will display more than 600 exhibits. Established in 1969, the museum is dedicated to science, art and human perception,

London-based architects Carmody Groarke have submitted a planning application to the Lake District National Park to redevelop the Windermere Steamboat Museum into a heritage attraction. The £13.4m museum development will include exhibition space, a wet dock to display heritage boats and a conservation workshop open to the public. Highlights of the collection will include: steam launches of the 1890s and 1900s; SL Dolly (1850) - the oldest mechanically powered boat

A new US$300m (€ 230m, £195m) Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is being developed in Los Angeles, US by architects Renzo Piano and Zoltan Pali. The Museum, which is slated to debut in 2017, will span 300,000 sq ft (27,870sq m). Located in the 1939 May Company Building on the campus of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the museum will feature six levels of exhibition and programming

Shelburne Museum in Vermont, US is set to open a new Centre for Art and Education that will transform the museum from seasonal to year-round operation. For the first time, the public will have year-round access to the museum's collections. The eco-friendly centre will create a modern, flexible venue for exhibitions of art and design featuring loaned works and touring exhibitions. Designed by Boston-based Ann Beha Architects, the centre will

Science Oxford has submitted a planning application for its proposed £38m attraction The Magnet - the UK's first integrated science discovery and innovation centre. The development has been designed by Foster + Partners to be built next to Castle Mound. Its centrepiece attraction would be a world-class planetarium but it would also include displays, events and lectures promoting all forms of science. The innovation centre would provide accommodation and support

The former Queens Museum of Art has announced it is rebranding as it prepares to reopen in October following a US$68m (53m euro, £45m) 50,000sq ft (4,645sq m) expansion, which will see it double in size. The international art space in Flushing Meadows will now be known as Queens Museum. The institution says the change reflects the breadth of the museum's mission to display not only contemporary art but exhibits

The British government has launched an independent review of architecture and the built environment with aims to better shape policy to achieve high quality design. The report - expected to be complete by the end of the year - will be led by London-based architect Sir Terry Farrell with support provided by an advisory panel. In addition to the government's role in promoting quality design the review will look at

A £2.5m project to transform the visitor experience at Norfolk’s 900-year-old Wymondham Abbey is now able to go ahead due to Heritage Lottery Funding worth £1.5m. Improvements to the Grade I listed site include: two new extensions – including one within a ruined chapel; the removal of inappropriate architectural additions; a recreated medieval herb garden; and public access to county wildlife site Abbey Meadows. A full time learning and events

Preston Park Museum and Grounds has hosted an animated 3D film projected on its façade to celebrate its official re-launch following a £7m revamp. Hundreds turned up to view the night time animation, entitled Lustre, which centred around the hall and its hidden secrets. The restored museum now has a complete redisplay of its collections, an interactive Victorian street and a traditional walled kitchen garden and orchard. The Heritage Lottery

Danish design firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has been announced as the winning team to lead the first phase of the Smithsonian Campus Master Plan, in a US$2.4m (1.85m euro, £1.59m) contract. At 700,000sq ft (65,032sq m) the campus in Washington D.C., US is the world's largest museum and research complex and includes 19 museums, the National Zoological Park and nine research facilities. BIG has already revealed it hopes to

An £11.6m funding application to regenerate Shrewsbury’s eighteenth-century Flax Mill Maltings for public and commercial use will be submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) by the end of March. The site comprises seven listed buildings and includes the Main Mill, which was built in 1797 and was the world’s first iron-framed building and the forerunner of the modern skyscraper. Other buildings to be renovated include the Kiln, the Dye,

A new interdisciplinary exhibition at New York's Museum of Design examines new design approaches in the post-millennial museum. After the Museum: The Home Front 2013 opened on 12 March and aims to get audiences reconsidering traditional notions of the structure and roles of museums through installations, digital initiatives, lectures and publications. Co-curator and manager of public programmes at the museum, Jake Yuzka, said: "Over the last on hundred years, both

Dudley Council has approved plans for three attractions at Castle Hill submitted for planning permission in January. The £10.1m plans for the Dudley Zoological Gardens, the Black Country Living Museum and the Dudley Canal Trust include a shared arrival point for visitors, a new entrance for each attraction and 600 new parking spaces and an upgraded car park. The plans, which had been shared with the public in February, received

The Heritage Lottery Fund has this week awarded £704,500 for the permanent display of the largest and most valuable Anglo-Saxon treasure ever discovered at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery. The 3,500-piece Staffordshire Hoard, which includes 7th-century gold and silver metalwork, has been on temporary display since September 2009 – two months after its discovery in a field near Lichfield. The proposed gallery will showcase approximately 300 items and interpret the

Paisley Abbey has submitted plans to Refrewshire Council for the £2m reconstruction of its fourth cloister, to house a visitor centre, café, gift shop and function space. Architects Simpson & Brown have submitted the plans, received 28 February, and state the extension will complement the existing 12th-century abbey without copying what was there. It is hoped the two-floor expansion- to be constructed of heavy masonry on the ground floor and

A major partnership between East Sussex County Council, Brighton & Hove City Council and the University of Sussex will see around 350,000 items moved from the Royal Pavilion & Museums to new historical resource centre The Keep, beginning next month. Based in Falmer the facility will house the area's archives and historical records including: maps and plans; written records; photographs and films; prints and drawings; oral histories; digital and electronic

Australia's Art Gallery of New South Wales has revealed it plans to double in size and transform itself into an art museum for the "Asian century", in time for the 150th anniversary of its founding in 2021. An international architectural competition will produce a design for the new building, which will expand northwards towards the harbour. Other improvements - part of a strategic master plan for the attraction - include

Financing to fund the first phase of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia, US, has been secured, with construction to start this month. The US$125m (96m euro, £84m) project, which will detail the African-American civil rights movement and ongoing human rights issues, had been slow to secure funds due to the economic downturn. However, on 7 March PNC Bank and Invest Atlanta announced US$24m (18m

Filmmaker George Lucas has revealed his vision for a populist art museum to be built in San Francisco overlooking the Bay Area, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. His proposal is one of 16 received by the Presidio Trust, which is overseeing the rejuvenation of the former commissary site at Crissy Field, with others proposals including an observatory, an environmental museum and a museum dedicated to the US response to

A restructure at the National Media Museum (NMeM) has contributed to the delay in the planned June opening of a new £4m Media Space at the Science Museum in London, which will now open on 21 September. The two museums – both part of the Science Museum Group – have collaborated on the new project, which will provide a gallery to showcase the National Photography Collection. According to the Museums

The George W. Bush Presidential Center, which will include the 13th US presidential library, will host an official dedication ceremony on 25 April before opening to the public on 1 May. The 226,565sq ft (21,565sq m) building, located at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, has been under construction for two years and will include a library, museum and policy institute. Set on 23 acres, including replanted trees from Bush’s

Virginia's planned presidential library for George Washington has achieved its US$100m (76.9m euro, £66.5m) capital campaign goal ahead of schedule with a gift from one of the United States' foremost philanthropists. The Mount Vernon Ladies' Assocation revealed on what would have been Washington's 281st birthday that David M. Rubenstein had donated US$10m (7.7m euro, £6.7m) to the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington. The association

Harvard Art Museums, comprising the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, is currently undergoing a renovation and expansion project and will reopen in Q3 2014. Designed by architect Renzo Piano, the project will bring the three museums under one roof for the first time. The new facility will feature expanded permanent collection galleries along with galleries programmed in consultation with students and faculty and flexible

Dudley Council has shared its plans for the three attractions at Castle Hill with the public, following its submission of planning permission in January for the major redevelopment. The £10.1m proposal for the Dudley Zoological Gardens, the Black Country Living Museum and the Dudley Canal Trust include a shared arrival point for visitors, a new entrance for each attraction and 600 new parking spaces and an upgraded car park. During

Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto has been appointed to design the temporary Serpentine Gallery Pavilion for 2013, which will open in London's Kensington Gardens in June. Fujimoto's design vision for the 350sq m space is a latticed structure with a semi-transparent appearance that will see it blend with the landscape and the gallery's colonnaded east wing. For the first time design firm AECOM will provide technical and engineering services for pavilion.

Work has begun on the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA), which will open in 2016. More than US$95m (£61.4m, 71m euro) of the US$100m (£64.6m, 75m euro) campaign for the new facility was raised by private donations. Designed by New York City-based firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), the centre will feature "bold new architectural form," that will focus on “beauty and accessibility.” The