One of the Asia Pacific’s most flexible stadiums will open this Sunday (19 January) in Perth, Australia, with an open day welcoming fans into the 60,000 capacity landmark. The AU$1.6bn (US$1.2bn. €1bn, £925m) Optus Stadium – collaboratively designed by architecture firms Hassell, Cox and HKS – is owned by the state of Western Australia and can accommodate athletics, cricket, football, Australian rules football, rugby league and union, and huge concerts

V&A Dundee, Scotland’s first design museum, will open to the public on Saturday 15 September 2018, it has been revealed. New images of the Kengo Kuma-designed building have been released to coincide with the announcement, as have details of the museum’s inaugural exhibitions. Standing at the centre of the £1bn (US$1.3bn, €1.1bn) transformation of the city’s waterfront, once part of the docklands, V&A Dundee has been designed to evoke the

Canadian rapper, producer, actor and entrepreneur Drake is turning his attention to the restaurant business. The rapper, singer and songwriter is opening a high-end restaurant and sports bar in his hometown of Toronto, in a development on the corner of Yonge and Wellington Street. Called Pick 6ix and run by Drake’s OVO brand and record label, the restaurant is due to open in the very near future, with an official

Danish architects COBE and Norwegian beer maker Lervig have unveiled plans for a major waterfront visitor centre and brewery in Stavanger, Norway. Located on a former industrial pier, the 11,000sq m (118,400sq ft) building has been conceived as “a unique attraction for locals and visitors”, with a harbour bath, roof garden and street-food market all incorporated into the mixed-use scheme. COBE have described the design concept as “part architecture, part

Kengo Kuma’s extensive pipeline of public projects just got even longer, with his firm winning an international competition to design an aquatics centre on an artificial quay in Copenhagen’s harbour. The municipality has selected Kengo Kuma Associates to create the 5,000sq m (53,800sq ft) Danish Water Culture Center, ahead of four other shortlisted teams – BIG, 3XN Architects, AART Architects and ALA Architects. The project will be built on Christiansholm

The £1bn ($1.38bn, €1.12bn) project to rebuild Chelsea Football Club’s Stamford Bridge stadium in London has overcome its final hurdle, after a motion was passed preventing a local family from blocking the proposed plans. The Crosthwaite family, whose house is the closest residence to the ground, took out an injunction under their ‘right to light’, stating that a redeveloped East Stand would restrict daylight coming into their home. But at

Hotel and resort operator Starwood is set to open and operate a hotel under its St Regis luxury brand in the heart of Hong Kong. Scheduled for a 2019 launch, the 129-bedroom hotel will be located in the historic Wan Chai district, a commercial and retail hub close to Victoria Harbor. The interiors of the 25-storey St Regis Hong Kong – which is owned by China Resources Property – will

Hotel and resort operator Starwood is set to open and operate a hotel under its St Regis luxury brand in the heart of Hong Kong. Scheduled for a 2019 launch, the 129-bedroom hotel will be located in the historic Wan Chai district, a commercial and retail hub close to Victoria Harbor. The interiors of the 25-storey St Regis Hong Kong – which is owned by China Resources Property – will

Hotel and resort operator Starwood is set to open and operate a hotel under its St Regis luxury brand in the heart of Hong Kong. Scheduled for a 2019 launch, the 129-bedroom hotel will be located in the historic Wan Chai district, a commercial and retail hub close to Victoria Harbor. The interiors of the 25-storey St Regis Hong Kong – which is owned by China Resources Property – will

A team of academic researchers, landscape architects and artists have come together to look at how nature in cities affects mental wellbeing. Researchers at King's College London, landscape architects J & L Gibbons and art foundation Nomad Projects have used smartphone-based technology to assess the relationship between nature in cities and mental wellbeing in real time. Not surprisingly, they found that being outdoors, seeing trees, hearing birdsong, seeing the sky

A science museum in Suzhou, China, is to act as the centrepiece of a new cultural district in the city, with the design celebrating nature while highlighting the role of industrial development. Taking inspiration from its surroundings, the 600,000sq ft (56,000sq m) Suzhou Science & Technology Museum is inspired by the Chinese expression of "shan sui", which means “union of mountain and lake”. Forming an infinity loop, the Perkins+Will-designed building

The creative director of Gucci has opened a restaurant, museum and gift shop dedicated to the luxury fashion house – in a 14th-century Florentine palace. Alessandro Michele decided to open the attraction, called Gucci Garden, as a fun and accessible introduction to the brand and “a hypnotic territory that alters the state of consciousness and perception". The attraction spans three floors within the Palazzo della Mercanzia, which previously housed a

Marriott International has secured a deal to open and manage a 337-room luxury hotel in Japan’s second-largest city, Osaka. Designed by architect Tadao Ando, the 27-floor property will be operated by Marriott’s subsidiary W Hotels Worldwide. Scheduled to open in 2021, the property is owned by real estate giant and house builder Sekisui House and will be the first-ever W-branded hotel in Japan. Facilities will include a large Away Spa

Katherine Lo, daughter of Langham Hospitality Group chair Ka Shui Lo, has transformed the group’s Eaton brand into Eaton Workshop – a global lifestyle business including a wellness component. Lo used her background in activism, anthropology and film to create Eaton Workshop, which includes four distinct parts: hotel, house, media and wellness. The first hotel is set to open in Washington DC early this year, with locations to follow in

Architect Theoni Xanthi has told CLADglobal how her team's vision for the national archaeology museum in Cyprus was inspired by “the materials that gave birth to Cypriot and Mediterranean culture”. The partner at Greek studio XZA Architects is leading the design of New Cyprus Museum – a project the firm won the project in a two-stage international competition held last year. Housing the nation’s treasures, the €49m (US$58.7m, £43.6m) building

A host of luxury leisure amenities have been revealed for the latest high-profile tower designed by architect Rafael Viñoly for New York. Global real estate firm Bizzi & Partners Development are overseeing the creation of the 88-storey, 912ft tall luxury condominium skyscraper, called 125 Greenwich Street, which is situated a block from the Santiago Calatrava-designed Oculus in Lower Manhattan. Viñoly – who is best-known for the Walkie Talkie in London

Former US president Barack Obama has provided an update on his Presidential Center, promising to “create a campus for active citizenship in the heart of Chicago’s South Side”. The design, which was unveiled in May last year, has been created by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects in partnership with Interactive Design Architects (IDEA). According to Obama and his wife, Michelle, the US$350m (€293m, £259.5m) Presidential Center – which is now

Bath Rugby moved a step closer to its new home as the Stadium for Bath project confirmed Grimshaw as lead architect. The project brings together Bath Rugby, Bath Rugby Foundation and Arena 1865 to develop the new stadium in the City of Bath, a certified UNESCO World Heritage Site. Globally renowned architecture firm Grimshaw will begin developing designs for the 18,000-capacity stadium, which will replace Bath Rugby’s facilities at the

Belgian architect Jean-Michel Gathy has been commissioned to create the first Aman Resort in the US, within New York’s landmark Crown Building. The principal designer of Denniston International specialises in 'ultra-luxury' hospitality design, having worked around the world with companies such as Banyan Tree, Mandarin Oriental and One&Only. He has previously collaborated with Aman for resorts in Venice, the Indonesian island of Moyo and Sveti Stefan islet in Montenegro –

The National Railway Museum in York has said its £50m (US$67.6m, €56.7m) masterplan still is still being finalised, following local reports revealing new details about the institution’s redevelopment. Marking the most significant redevelopment since its opening in 1975, the museum’s seven-year masterplan hinges on the wider development of the 178-acre (720,000sq m) York Central brownfield site. Designated an Enterprise Zone in 2015, the site’s regeneration will help fund the museum’s

The Pritzker-winning architect Shigeru Ban has completed the dramatic Mount Fuji World Heritage Center in Japan’s Yamanashi prefecture, with a design that mimics the famous dormant volcano. Located 20 miles southwest of the natural landmark, Ban’s 3,400sq m (36,500sq ft) facility is formed by an inverted latticed timber cone, that appears mountainous when seen in the large reflecting pool at the front of the complex. Inside, exhibitions tell the story

Frank Gehry has revised his design for a two-acre mixed-use leisure development in Santa Monica, following the adoption of a new Downtown Community Plan by the Californian city’s council. The Ocean Avenue Project at 101 Santa Monica Boulevard was first announced by property firms M David Paul Associates and the Worthe Real Estate Group in 2013, after five years spent developing the scheme with Gehry’s practice. Now, in response to

Architecture firm CF Møller have won a design competition to transform an area of wetland in the Danish city of Randers into a public nature park, as part of a climate adaptation project. Randers, like many towns in Denmark, is threatened by the effects of climate change, with its low-lying position in relation to the Gudenå, Denmark’s longest river, putting it at risk from flooding. To counter this, the municipality

Italian design studio Network of Architecture (noa*) have been inspired by the world of the theatre for their latest hotel project: a glass and timber structure looking out towards the Dolomites. The family-run Valentinerhof hotel is situated 1,200m above sea-level in the commune of Castelrotto, South Tyrol. The architects were commissioned by the owners to design two new guest buildings offering views from every point of the nearby Schlern mountain.

Luxury hotel operator Aman is set to open its fourth location in China on Monday (8 January) – the culmination of an ambitious 15-year conservation initiative which saw the relocation of an entire forest and the reconstruction of a historic village. Kerry Hill Architects have restored 50 disassembled antique houses in order to create Amanyangyun, integrating contemporary comfort into the 400-year-old fabric of the buildings. The story began in the

A hub for recreational sports, wellness and civic engagement has opened in St Louis, Missouri, using a design that shelters it from an interstate highway. Architecture and engineering firm CannonDesign were tasked with creating the new home for the Maryland Heights Community Center to replace a facility no longer fit-for-purpose. The brief called for a destination centre for the community of Maryland Heights, offering a variety of uses and preserving

Danish landscape architects SLA have revealed their final design drawings for the rooftop park set to adorn Bjarke Ingels Group’s (BIG) forthcoming Amager Resource Center – one of the most-anticipated buildings of 2018. The centre, located in an industrial area of Copenhagen, is a waste-to-energy plant with unique public offerings – including a climbing wall on one facade and a 500m+ ski slope down its descending roof. Both the slope