The historic Belgian city of Bruges has been illuminated with a 2km (1.2mi) walk-through lighting and visual experience for the festive "Wintergloed" (Winter Glow) season, using atmospheric light installations from Painting with Light (PWL). The company was commissioned by Bruges Plus, the organisation responsible for the city's cultural events, and has designed a series of ephemeral lighting and projection-mapped installations in six different areas, each inspired, according to PWL, by

Studio Studio Studio, a new interdisciplinary collaboration lab founded by Edoardo Tresoldi, have created a 26m (85ft)-high pavilion from cork and mesh with intimate spaces and narrow paths that visitors can explore. Gharfa is part of the Diriyah Oasis temporary creative district in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. Tresoldi aimed to create "a theatrical world where technique, reality, and illusion are all intertwined." Mesh has been used to sculpt

The Wuxi Taihu Show Theatre, designed by Steven Chilton Architects with a forest of bamboo-inspired columns around its perimeter, has opened in Jiangsu Province, China. Built to house a permanent water show by Franco Dragone, with its designs released last year, the 2,000-seat theatre was inspired by China's largest bamboo forest – the Sea of Bamboo Park in Yixing. The circular building is wrapped in a full-height glazed façade and

Moreau Kusunoki Architects, working with local firm Genton, have won a competition to transform Sydney's Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences with a design aimed at challenging the perception of a conventional museum. The new Powerhouse Parramatta venue is envisaged as a multi-functional "hyper-platform" comprising seven flexible spaces that will allow the museum to host a variety of exhibitions and immersive experiences, as well as showcase its collection. Beyond its

Snøhetta have won a competition to create the Xingtai Grand Theater in China with a design that provides indoors and outdoors performance spaces, unites nearby cultural programmes and anchors a new masterplan for the region. The fast-growing city of Xingtai is one of a number in Hebei Province that is struggling to meet the demands of its development. The Grand Theater has been conceived as the cultural cornerstone of a

JKMM Architects have won a competition to create a new annexe for the National Museum of Finland with a disc-shaped, pavilion-like design that connects its interior with the museum's previously underused garden through floor-to-ceiling windows. The competition brief sought additional exhibition space and workshops, a new restaurant in the enclosed garden, improved accessibility and a new museum entrance. Called Atlas, JKMM's proposal was inspired by similar pavilion structures used in

OPEN Architecture's Chapel of Sound amphitheatre – designed for concerts and the appreciation of nature – has topped out at its site in a rocky valley at the foot of the Jinshanling Great Wall in Beijing municipality. The 790sq m (8,500sq ft) structure, the designs for which were revealed in February, houses an indoor-outdoor amphitheatre, an outdoor stage, viewing platforms and supporting spaces. It takes the appearance of a layered,

Hou de Sousa have created a playful, colourful installation for New York's Flatiron Public Plaza that filters its surroundings with shifting patterns, colour and light as people move around it. Ziggy was created for the annual Flatiron Public Plaza Holiday Design Competition, which has been running since 2014. The call for proposals sought a "highly visible temporary landmark" for what is a relatively small triangular site. The lightweight installation, described

The first exhibition has opened at MICA, the contemporary art museum at the Changsha Meixihu International Culture & Arts Centre, which which was designed by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA). ZHA says the 115,000sq m (1,240,000sq ft) centre is the largest and most versatile cultural centre in China's Hunan province, comprising three separate but complementary venues that each cater for a different use. The 1,800-seat Grand Theatre, which was completed in

State Library Victoria, in Melbourne, Australia, has reopened after being revamped by Schmidt Hammer Lassen and Australian studio Architectus to expand its community outreach and enhance the visitor experience. The work is part of a five-year redevelopment plan and focused on a number of spaces within the library, which comprises 23 individual buildings and occupies an entire city block. The aim was to better weave together the spaces within the

The New York Philharmonic has unveiled plans for the revamp of David Geffen Hall with Diamond Schmitt and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (TWBTA) designs aimed at fostering a sense of community and connecting it to the world outside. The $550m (€496m, £418m) project was initially to be led by Heatherwick Studio before those plans were dropped. The new plans will see Diamond Schmitt reconfigure the concert hall, which is

The Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA) reopened on 30 November after a renovation lasting more than four years, however, it was forced to close again temporarily due to its proximity to the ongoing protests in the city. The renovation work was carried out by Hong Kong's Architectural Services Department, which is responsible for the design and construction of many of the territory's public facilities. Exhibition space has been increased

Art collective teamLab have launched their second digital-only Borderless museum, described as "a world made of artworks without boundaries." Located in Huangpu District, Shanghai, teamLab Borderless Shanghai ​ follows the launch of MORI Building Digital Art Museum: teamLab Borderless in Tokyo last year. Designed by teamLab Architects, the 6,600sq m (71,000sq ft) destination is said to be an intricately-structured three-dimensional space housing around 50 artworks. Visitors walk through the galleries

CROX have created an organically shaped museum in Liyang, China, inspired by a musical instrument that is one of the city's cultural symbols and designed to give the appearance of floating on a grassy hill. The Liyang Museum is located next to a lake within a public park in a new urban district of the city and is aimed at acting as a connection between the new urban area and

RDH Architects have converted an old derelict post office in the Candian city of Cambridge, Ontario, into a bookless library with new glass volumes that are cantilevered over the adjacent Grand River. The Idea Exchange provides a free community hub with spaces for learning, creativity, meeting and socialising. The $11.1m (US$8.4m, €7.6m, £6.5m) project combined contemporary additions and design with restored elements of the original building, which was built in

C+ Architects have created art gallery in Wulong, China, that is designed to look like a glowing ring in the mountains. The LAB Art Museum is set on a 3,000sq m (32,300sq ft) hilltop site that at times is surrounded by clouds. Its white elliptical form stands out against the surrounding green hills and its main volume is raised up on four functional blocks at ground level that serve variously

HOK and ERRE have designed a €220m (US$243m, £188m) arena for Valencia that will be used for music, arts, culture and sporting events. Designed for the client Licampa 1617, the facility will house a 1,200sq m (12,900sq ft) multipurpose room, a 1,300-capacity underground and multistorey car park and the headquarters for the men and women’s Valencia Basket Club. The arena will seat up to 15,600 people or accommodate up to

Elizabeth de Portzamparc has argued that cultural buildings like libraries and museums shouldn't just preserve knowledge and heritage, but should forge social links too by ensuring their accessibility and approachability. De Portzamparc was speaking in the most recent issue of CLADmag following the opening of the Musée de la Romanité earlier this year, which she described as "the most symbolic public facility I’ve ever worked on." Explaining why, she said:

Istanbul-based MAS Architecture Studio have created a barjeel – or wind tower – installation for Dubai Design Week 2019 that gives passersby a place to pause, rest and cool down. The installation, titled Barjeel, was a response to an open call via which Dubai Design Week was seeking to showcase "the design identity of the UAE through diverse representations of local and international creative efforts." Barjeel was inspired by the

Plenty has been written about the newly opened Diller Scofidio + Renfro expansion of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, but there's been work going on behind the scenes too. With 38,000sq ft (3,500sq m) of new gallery space and 21,000sq ft (2,000sq m) of new public space, there's much more for visitors to explore. But front-of-house spaces need new back-of-house spaces to support them and that

Snøhetta and Clark Nexsen have revealed their design for the new Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, with elements that help to achieve the mission of it being more than just a library and also serving as a public commons. Located in the US city of Charlotte, North Carolina, the building will cover an area of 115,000sq ft (11,000sq m). It is shaped with a curved prow at one of its corners, which

Thai architects Onion have created a community reading space in Bangkok called Samyan Co-op that offers different types of seating and atmosphere to suit different types of users. The project was commissioned by Golden Land Property Development, who were planning to build a new commercial mall and wanted to give something back to society. Their brief for Onion was to create 500-capacity reading and working space that would be free

Shanghai's West Bund Museum, designed by David Chipperfield Architects, has opened to the public as part of the West Bund Masterplan that will introduce a new 9sq km (3.5sq mi) cultural district on former industrial land. The 22,000sq ft (2,000sq m) facility, established as a partnership between Centre Pompidou Paris and the publicly-owned West Bund Group, sits on the north bank of the Huangpu River and is located in a

Richard Hall Architect has designed a new art gallery for the Australian city of Launceston in the heritage-listed circular shell of an old gasometer. The DADA gallery will house the art of a private collector so that the public can enjoy it as well. The site is the last remaining gasometer frame in the city and is in a high-profile position close to the city's historic Albert Hall and opposite

A mixed-use public space comprising a golden cube-shaped kiosk and a giant floating balloon, designed by David Gianotten and Rem Koolhaas of OMA, has been unveiled outside Hong Kong's recently opened K11 Musea. Kube is at once a place to buy coffee, a place to sit and a place to hold events. The anodised aluminium kiosk, which changes colours as the light changes, opens up as a small retail unit.

A multidisciplinary design studio called Stock-a-Studio has created a temporary gym in a shopfront that can be easily assembled, disassembled, customised and reassembled using a variety of low budget materials. The installation, called [ a kit of these some parts ] x budget gym ], is aimed at encouraging assembly rather than construction and refinishing rather than remanufacturing. Hosted at LA's Materials & Applications – a non-profit organisation that seeks

Wolfgang Tschapeller has suspended four levels of library stacks containing around 100,000 volumes in an inverted ziggurat at the Unversity of Cornell 's Mui Ho Fine Arts Library. Tschapeller's goal was to create "a 21st-century interpretation of the grand reading rooms associated with great research collections." To achieve this, he removed the third floor of the Rand Hall building, in which the library is housed, to create a double-height space