A new visitor attraction for families is preparing to open in Wuzhen, Tongxiang, in the northern Zhejiang province of China. Designed by Jack Rouse Associates (JRA), the attraction will occupy two existing buildings approximately 30,000sq ft in size and will feature a number of activities and educational zones. The key component of the project is a traditional games and play area, where children can learn about and play with toys

The public are being given the chance to comment on Science Oxford's proposals for a £30m cultural centre for science and enterprise. Science Oxford has begun a public consultation with the view of securing the support of the local people for the scheme. Planned for the heart of Oxford, the centre is set to be built over the next five years. Plans for the centre include a digital planetarium, interactive

Discussions are taking place on plans to preserve HMS Ark Royal and keep the ship at the Royal Docks in east London. Under proposals being considered by the Major of London, the aircraft carrier would become a museum and visitor attraction similar to HMS Belfast, currently anchored in the River Thames near Tower Bridge. Built in 1981, Ark Royal is now in the process of being decommissioned as part of

An event on 8 December will allow the public to view plans for the regeneration of part of the historic Bletchley Park WW2 codebreaking site in Buckinghamshire into a museum and education resource. The Prince's Regeneration Trust (PRT) is project managing the scheme and envisages the restoration of buildings in several areas, including some of the huts in which the code breaking took place and which are now derelict. Elsewhere,

Work is to start on a £5m redevelopment of the Ashmolean Museum's Egyptian galleries after the plans were approved by Oxford City Council. Rick Mather Architects are behind the designs, which will see the existing ground floor galleries transformed. Beard Construction will deliver the work. The project - backed by Lord Sainsbury's Linbury Trust - will also include the creation of a fifth gallery in a space currently occupied by

The new £21m Robert Burns Birthplace Museum (RBBM) has been unveiled by the National Trust of Scotland (NTS) in Alloway, Ayrshire. A 500sq m (5,382sq ft) exhibition space includes four areas - Identity, Inspiration, Fame and Creative Work - to explore the bard's life. The museum, which replaces the former Burns National Heritage Park, brings together a number of sites in Alloway with a connection to Burns. NTS has worked

The Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria, BC, Canada is seeking approval for the rezoning of its current site as the first step in a major redevelopment scheme. At the moment, the site is zoned for residential use and a new Comprehensive Zone, with an expanded boundary, could be tailored to the potential needs of the museum for the foreseeable future. The museum has the care of more than seven million

Tate has announced that work on a £45m scheme to transform its original London gallery - Tate Britain - is to get underway in February 2011. Designed to help conserve the Sidney Smith-designed building,, the scheme will also entail a major upgrade of the the Grade II*-listed attraction's galleries. Caruso St John Architects' plans include the reconstruction of nine galleries in the southern part of the building and the revamp

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has reopened its new theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon following a £112.8m development programme. At the centre of the new-look Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) is a 1,040-seat main auditorium and a thrust stage, which has halved the distance of the furthest seat from the stage to 15m (49ft). The four-year development also included the creation of a Rooftop Restaurant to offer views overlooking the River Avon; a

Glasgow-based Cameron Webster Architects (CWA) has unveiled its latest proposals for a new 'sustainable' visitor centre at Loch Ness, Scotland. The £2.5m Jacobite Discovery Project is an extension of the Inverness-based Jacobite Cruises and will also include the development of a new harbour. Designed to feature a "fully sustainable set of green credentials", the visitor centre will be heated and cooled using water from Loch Ness. CWA partner Robin Webster

An entire Roman landscape has been discovered a few feet underground at Grade I listed Syon Park, West London. The find, by Museum of London Archaeology, followed excavations in August 2008 ahead of the construction of the new London Syon Park, A Waldorf Astoria Hotel, set to open in early 2011. Revealed were a section of a road linking London with Silchester; a rural settlement; a tributary of the Thames;

Exhibition and attractions designer Thinkwell Group has launched Studio Thinkwell - an in-house digital design and production studio. In addition to multimedia, online and mobile integration, Studio Thinkwell will design and develop digital experiences such as alternate reality games (ARG), interactive microsites and RFID tracking solutions. The move is part of Thinkwell's strategy to ensure it is able to continue to provide turn-key designs to operators who demand complex technological

The venue for the 2010 football World Cup final - Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa - has been named as the World's Best Sport Building. Designed by Populous and Boogertman + Partners, the 94,000-seat venue received the accolade at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards 2010 in Barcelona, Spain. WAF Awards judges said of Soccer City Stadium: "It is a genuine example of a building forming deep and

The US$150m (£93m) expansion of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, US, is to open on Friday 26 November. The five-storey, 100,000sq ft museum will boast three floors of core exhibition space, which will explore more than 350 years of American Jewish history, while another floor will be dedicated to changing exhibits. The concourse will be entirely devoted to education: with classrooms, a theatre and a resource

A historic theatre in Aberdeen is to benefit from repairs and the reinstatement of architectural features to its exterior after being awarded funding for the work. The Tivoli Theatre Management Company (TTMC) will receive more than £500,000 as part of the Green Townscape Heritage Initiative (THI) in order to undertake the improvements. First opened in 1872, the Grade A-listed venue's roof, masonry, windows and rainwater goods are to be repaired,

Japan-based architects Kengo Kuma and Associates have been chosen to design the planned Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in Dundee. The practice was one of six shortlisted for the scheme, which will see an iconic new building developed at Craig Harbour - part of a wider regeneration of the city's waterfront area. A panel comprising representatives from the project's partners - Dundee City Council (DCC); the University of Dundee; the

Blackpool Council has appointed Donald Insall Associates to start work on the first stage of restoration work at the Grade II-listed Winter Gardens. The London-based conservation architect has been selected to revamp the Floral Hall and to open up the venue to visitors as part of phase one of the scheme. Existing features will be refurbished and the entrance located on Church Street and Coronation Street will be restored. New

Hanoi Museum, a museum dedicated to Hanoi's history, has opened in Vietnam. The 30,000sq m museum is located in a specially laid out park with water features, exhibits from the history of Hanoi, and a reconstructed traditional Vietnamese village. The museum is next to the National Convention Center, opened for the APC Summit in 2006, which, like the Vietnamese Ministry of the Interior and the national parliament in Hanoi, were

Leisure sector organisations have issued a mixed response to the chancellor's Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) published yesterday (20 October). George Osborne announced a 25 per cent cut in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) budget, which will run over the course of the review period to 2014-15. Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted it was a 'good settlement' and will help enable the government to "protect our sporting and

The US$19m Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust has opened in the US city. The 14,000sq ft museum, designed by architect Hagy Belzberg, features nine galleries that attempt to tell the story of the Holocaust "as objectively as possible". Interactive exhibits, such as the 18 displays in the combined Deportation & Extermination and Labour/Concentration/Death Camps room, depict the "breadth, depth and severity of the world the Nazis created". Wall displays

Work has got underway on the £16.3m construction phase of the new £35m Mary Rose Museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, Hampshire. The Mary Rose Trust (MRT) has selected Warings Contractors - part of the Bouygues group - to build the new museum, which has been designed by a team that includes Wilkinson Eyre Architects. Due for completion in autumn 2012, the scheme will see a boat-shaped building constructed over the

Real Estate Opportunities (REO), the group behind the planned £5.5bn redevelopment of Battersea Power Station, has secured agreement over the deferral of debt repayments. The developer has reached a deal with its loan note holder that will see "all principal and interest payments" put on hold until 31 May 2011. It follows an announcement on 7 September that REO had been given an extension on a combined £262.5m loan facility

An architect has been appointed to design the new Museum of Nature and Science in Las Cruces, New Mexico, US. The current site of the museum, at Mesilla Valley Mall, is 3,900sq ft, is not big enough. ASA Architects, based in Las Cruces, have been given a US$400,000-plus (£250,000, 289m euro) contract to design a new, larger, building downtown. The project is expected to cost US$5.3m (£3.3m, 3.8m euro)and the

The Maryhill Museum of Art near Goldendale, Washington, US, is to receive a US$10m (£6.2m, 7.2m euro) expansion. The new 25,500sq ft (2,370sq m) Mary and Bruce Stevenson Wing will represent the museum’s largest expansion in its 70-year history. Key elements of the expansion include: A dedicated education centre, which will double Maryhill's education space to accommodate the museum's range of programming, and a centralised collections suite with storage areas,

Southampton City Council (SCC) has confirmed that construction work can now start on the new £15m Sea City Museum after final planning permission was approved. The council has appointed Kier Southern - part of the Kier Group - to build the Wilkinson Eyre Architects-designed museum, which is due to open in April 2012. Housed within the city's Grade II*-listed former Magistrates' Court adjoining the Civic Centre, the Sea City Museum

Zaha Hadid Architects have picked up the RIBA Stirling Prize 2010 for the design of MAXXI, the National Museum of XXI Century Arts in Rome, Italy. The contemporary art museum held off competition from five rival shortlisted entries, which included Oxford's Ashmolean Museum - designed by Rick Mather Architects. Opened in November 2009, the €150m (£130m, US$205m) MAXXI building covers 21,200sq m (228,195sq ft) of internal floor space and contains

Six potential designs for a new landmark building that will 'dominate' Dundee's waterfront and house the city's planned Victoria and Albert (V&A) museum have been unveiled. An exhibition is to open at the University of Abertay Dundee's library tomorrow (29 September) to allow members of the public to view the proposals drawn up by shortlisted design teams. Vienna, Austria-based Delugan Meissl Associated Architects; Kengo Kuma and Associates of Tokyo, Japan;