On the back of successful events in Sydney, Berlin and Lyon, London is to welcome a new international light festival at the start of next year. From 14-17 January, Lumiere London will showcase renowned artists from across the world, with the event expected to draw thousands of visitors to the UK capital. Taking place across 20 iconic locations in London’s West End and King’s Cross areas, Lumiere London will be

Art collector and luxury retailer Tony Salamé has opened his own private museum – the Aishti Foundation – in a new mall on the Mediterranean, twenty minutes from downtown Beirut. The dramatic terracotta-red building, by British architect David Adjaye, cost an eye-watering US$100m (€90.7m, £64.8m) and contains a spa, restaurants, cafes, luxury boutiques, a curated bookshop and a rooftop bar with panoramic views of the Lebanese capital. It covers 40,000sq

One of the top architecture prizes at the 2015 Milan Expo has been awarded to the Hive; the UK pavilion created by artist Wolfgang Buttress, engineers Simmonds Studio and architects BDP. The team received the BIE Gold Award for Architecture and Landscape on the final day of the six-month international exhibition. Since opening in May, more than 3.3 million people have been to see the 14 cubic metre (459 cubic

Ground has been broken on construction of a luminous green and blue amphitheatre, called the Chrysalis, in the US state of Maryland. The New York-based art and architecture studio Marc Fornes/Theverymany created the design for the semi-transparent, Gaudi-inspired shell, which will host live cultural performances in Merriweather Park’s Symphony Woods. Explaining the dramatic colour scheme, the architects said: “Colours are taken from the environment and pushed to a level of

Despite the best effort of green space advocates in the city of Chicago, George Lucas’s legacy project will go ahead after the legendary director’s Museum of Narrative Art was approved by the city council. The project has come up against strong opposition from Friends of the Parks – the nonprofit group who tried to sue Lucas in an attempt to halt development on the Chicago waterfront – but in September,

The multi-billion dollar Hollywood-inspired Studio City Resort in Macau, which as its centrepiece offers Asia’s tallest and the world’s only figure-8 ferris wheel, has opened its doors in China. Masterplanned and designed by the Goddard Group, the US$3.2bn (€2.9bn, £2bn) cinematically-themed gaming and leisure destination resort from Melco Crown Entertainment opened to the public on 27 October. At the heart of the 1,600-bedroom development is the Golden Reel – a

A planned garden installation in a Chinese sculpture park will let visitors wander the grounds over, under and around huge stacks of flowers. The Chinese architects behind the design, Studio Pei-Zhu, plan to build their garden around an abandoned two-storey concrete frame in a bid to “attach new content and meaning to ordinary worthless things.” The structure – in Quanzhou National Art Park in the province of Fujian – is

David Chipperfield is seeking legal action over “defects” in the construction of his Museo delle Culture (Mudec) in Milan. The museum had its soft opening on 27 October. On the same day David Chipperfield Architects posted a statement on their website making clear the firm's anger at how the project has been handled. The company said: “The Milan City Council is opening the doors of the museum despite David Chipperfield

A Colorado, US, hotel which inspired Stephen King's The Shining has announced plans to open a horror-themed museum at the establishment, with some of the biggest names in horror backing the ambitious US$24m (€21.7m, £15.7m) project. Led by Denver-based design firm MOA Architecture, the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park will be home to the 43,000sq ft (4,000sq m) interactive museum, which will also feature a horror film archive and a

Locals in Brighton, UK, have taken their first proper look at Marks Barfield Architects’ Brighton i360 vertical cable car, following the removal of the structure’s jacking tower. Standing 162m (531.5ft) high on Brighton beach, the i360 will be the UK’s tallest visitor attraction outside London when it is completed in in summer 2016. It has been designed and engineered by the team behind the London Eye. With the tower structure

Moscow’s radical urban regeneration programme has taken another step forward following the announcement that Sergey Skuratov Architects have been selected to design a large leisure and residential complex opposite the Kremlin. Describing the site of the project in the capital’s Sofiyskaya Embankment, Skuratov said: “It’s a wasteland overgrown with weeds, forgotten by residents, concealed from the glances of passers-by and completely separated from the city life still flowing around it.

Hungary’s government has finalised and approved plans to create a new museum quarter, significantly inflating the previous budget by around three times to HUF200bn (US$710.3m, €643.3m, £464.3m). The cultural quarter known as Park Budapest, has been designed by multiple architects narrowed down from more than 500 anonymous applications. The Museum of Ethnography will be built in line with plans by French architecture practice Vallet de Martinis DIID Architectes, while Japanese

Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities has said it is reviving ambitious US$150m (€136m, £97.8m) plans to develop 'the world’s first underwater museum', which will showcase the submerged ancient ruins of Alexandria. Announced by minister of antiquities Mamdouh al-Damaty, the plans have been in the works for more than seven years after the government decided to turn the ruins, which date back to 365 AD, into a tourist attraction. According to Youssef

The New York architects working to create the Lowline – the world's first underground park – have launched a scaled down version of the project as a test bed. The Lowline Lab, launched this week by RAAD Studio, will act as a research laboratory, enabling the team to explore which plants grow in the darkened conditions. The experiment has been funded through the Kickstarter crowd funding platform. When complete, the

Over 3,000 people have attended the topping-out ceremony for the Bjarke Ingels-designed Lego House, a visitor attraction made to resemble a giant stack of Lego bricks. Local citizens and Lego employees in the Danish town of Billund were invited to tour the construction site now the keystone brick has been set in place. According to the Lego Group, the completed experience centre will open to the public in the second

Global theme park and attractions operator, Merlin Entertainments, which is number two in the world to Disney, has revealed plans to build a Legoland in Shanghai. The US$300m (£194m, €265m) Legoland Shanghai is a joint venture between Merlin and Chinese investment firm China Media Capital. The popular Lego-themed attraction has been making headway in the Asian market in recent years, with Legoland parks under construction in Japan and South Korea,

An expert in the field of architecture and heritage has said that Microsoft’s HoloLens will play a huge part in the future of the sector. Speaking at CyArk’s annual summit, Adrian Ferrier – who heads up product development in visual intelligence solutions for California-based mapping company Trimble Navigation – envisioned an exciting future. He said when applied to the world of architecture, engineering and construction, the HoloLens device can extend

Japanese architecture practice Kengo Kuma & Associates has revealed radical designs for the new Museum of Indigenous Knowledge, to be built in Manila in the Philippines. The museum will cover 4,000 years of history, enabling visitors to experience the cultural and religious heritage of the islands’ indigenous peoples, starting from the Neolithic age. The design has turned traditional museum architecture on its head by creating a jungle-inspired building inside an

The Musée de l'Homme (Museum of Mankind) has reopened in Paris after undergoing a €90m (US$103m, £66.9m) interior redevelopment. The relaunch comes six years after the institution closed and almost ceased to be amid uncertainty about its future under former President Jacques Chirac. The new design by Bordeaux-based Brochet-Lajus-Pueyo, in conjunction with architectural studio Emmanuel Nebout, takes note of the original design, retaining certain elements while increasing entry of natural

Visitors to Paprocany Lake near the Polish city of Tychy are finding time to relax by lying in specially-created nets suspended over the water. Architecture studio RS+ incorporated the nets into their €85,000 (US$96,600, £62,600) design for a wooden walkway that extends 400m along the bank of the lake, occasionally meandering into the water itself. In the evenings, the promenade is illuminated by energy-saving LED lights. The company were tasked

Three high-profile projects designed by architecture studio Caruso St John have opened in the space of just two weeks. Two private art galleries designed by the firm have opened their doors in London; Damien Hirst’s £25m (US$38.2m, €33m) Newport Street Gallery and Larry Gagosian’s third – the largest gallery in the capital. Work has also been completed on a large-scale refurbishment of the 1939 Grade II-listed Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. The

The Frank Gehry-designed Fondation Louis Vuitton has been awarded the prize for ‘Best Architecture & Spatial Design’ at the 2015 Leading Culture Destinations Awards in London. The 126,000sq ft (11,705sq m) museum, which houses Vuitton’s private collection, has become a popular Paris attraction since opening in October 2014. The €100m (US$132m, £80m) building won the prize for Gehry’s famous ‘glass cloud’ design. The ceremony, which took place on 9 October

French-born London artist and designer Henry Chebaane has said he wants his surreal and surprising new bar in Baku, Azerbaijan, to become a word-of-mouth sensation. Pivnaya Apteka – conceived and designed by Chebaane’s Blue Sky Hospitality design studio and operated by Azerbaijan’s Saffron Restaurant Group – is a mind-bending blend of bar, bistro, brewery and a pickling lab that can "both create and cure hangovers". Speaking exclusively to CLAD, Chebaane

After a near two-decade delay, Cincinnati Zoo’s US$34m (€30m, £22m) Africa exhibit will enter its final phase of development after meeting a US$7.3m (€6.4m, £4.7m) target to build a new state-of-the-art hippo exhibit. Set to house two Nile hippos, the paddock – designed by architects Cornette-Violetta – will include an underwater viewing area for visitors, employing a multi-million dollar bespoke filtration system designed to manage the large amount of waste

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) have designed a new art gallery for a Norwegian sculpture park which will twist across a river below. The firm’s founding partner, Bjarke Ingels, described the design as the group’s “first experiment with social infrastructure – a building that serves as a bridge – or a cultural institution that serves as a piece of infrastructure.” The 1,400sq m (15,000sq ft) museum will be the new centrepoint

The New-York Historical Society, the city’s oldest museum, has commissioned Czech architect Eva Jiricná to create a new permanent gallery to house its 100-strong collection of Tiffany stained glass lamps. Eva Jiricná Architects Limited (EJAL) were initially appointed by the museum to redevelop the masterplan of its fourth level, which houses a collection of art, furniture and artifacts related to New York. They were then commissioned to design the museum’s

The SANAA-designed Grace Farms complex – a multipurpose facility which features a gymnasium, library and several performance spaces – officially opened on 9 October in New Canaan, Connecticut, US. The Grace Farms Foundation – a non-profit organisation established in 2009 to support initiatives in the areas of faith, the arts, justice and community – celebrated the milestone with a two-day celebration, which included a special performance by the Paul Taylor