Chester Zoo has announced it will build “an extensive African savannah”, designed by Gillespies in partnership with Darling Associates and BDP. The Grasslands scheme will incorporate a restaurant with views across the savannah and overnight accommodation in the form of 28 lodges and 14 safari-style tents. It will be home to multiple rare and endangered species including zebras, giraffes, antelopes and ostriches. The scheme is aimed in part at helping

Austrian artist Klaus Littmann has transformed the Wörthersee Stadion in Klagenfurt, Austria, into a forest as part of an art installation looking to change people's perception of nature. The 32,000-capacity stadium, home of SK Austria Klagenfurt football club, has been fitted with a mini-forest of 300 trees what is set to become Austria’s largest public art installation. Overseen by Enea Landscape Architecture, the “For Forest: the unending attraction of nature"

The transformation project designed to turn Paisley Museum, in Renfrewshire, Scotland, into a world-class tourist destination is moving forward, with the first images of the redesign produced by architects AL_A being released. The town of Paisley is best known for the pattern of the same name – an ornamental textile design using a teardrop-shaped motif with a curved upper end. Renfrewshire Council is planning to invest a total of £100m

Disney Imagineers have promised the biggest ever transformation of any of the Disney parks in announcing a host of new attractions and experiences for its Epcot theme parkin Florida, with many set to open in January or summer 2020. Among the new characters that will inhabit the park are Mary Poppins, Beauty and the Beast, Moana and Guardians of the Galaxy. The location will be divided into four neighbourhoods that

Italian architects firm Archiplanstudio has completed the transformation of a 16th-century building housing a hydraulic water pump into an eco-museum and visitor attraction. The Bondanello Chiavicone, near the northern Italian city of Mantua, was originally built in 1589 to prevent water running down from the provinces of Reggio Emilia and Modena from flooding the area. Work on the building – which first began in 2009 – included the complete renovation

Enhanced designs have been submitted for a £42m waterpark and aquatic complex in Derby, UK. Original plans for the Moorways complex – designed by architects FaulknerBrowns – were approved in early 2018, but the current administration which took control of Derby City Council (DCC) in May 2018 ordered a review of the project. The original plans have now been extended to include more waterleisure space, including a waterpark featuring two

Merlin Entertainments, the world's second-biggest visitor attraction operator after Disney, has revealed plans for the largest new addition at its Legoland California resort since the park launched in 1999. The new Lego Movie World area is set to open in 2020 and will be based on the popular Warner Bros movie franchise. The area is being designed by Merlin Magic Making, Merlin's in-house design team, in partnership with Warner Bros

A major renovation by Cox Architects and Neeson Murcutt will expand touring exhibition halls and create new facilities at the Australian Museum in Sydney. The attraction closed to the public from 19 August for the improvements, that will see storage space being repurposed to give the museum 1,500sq m (4,900sq ft) of additional touring exhibition halls across two levels. This capacity means it could host either one major exhibition or

Car manufacturer Toyota has opened its first visitor attraction in North America – the 44,000sq ft (13,400sq m) Toyota Experience Center (TEC) at its headquarters in Plano, Texas. The company says the centre, which was planned, designed and project managed by experience designers JRA, is intended to educate visitors about Toyota's past, present and future as a mobility company. The centre features a variety of interactive exhibits and displays, all

A competition to find alternative designs to replace the destroyed Notre Dame Cathedral roof has attracted a number of innovative "solutions" – including a rooftop waterway over the medieval cathedral. The People’s Notre Dame Cathedral Design Competition was launched in defiance of the French senate’s plans to restore the roof exactly as it was before the devastating fire earlier this year. Set up by book publisher GoArchitect, the campaign invited

Entertainment venues need to undergo technological and design upgrades to prepare them for the experience-seeking consumer of 2040, according to research by Euromonitor International. Commerce 2040 - Revolutionary Tech Will Boost Consumer Engagement outlines a vision for how consumers might live, work, shop and play in 20 years' time, exploring how technology could change the different consumer worlds of entertainment venues, home and retail. Consumers are already moving towards demanding

A £5m (US$6m, €5.4m) programme of improvements at world-famous Tintagel Castle, Cornwall, UK, has reached a milestone, with the opening of a footbridge that joins the two halves of the castle for the first time in more than 500 years. Designed by Ney & Partners engineers and William Matthew Associates Architectural Practice, the bridge spans a 190-foot gorge between the 13th-century gatehouse on the mainland and the courtyard on a

US waterpark and resort operator Great Wolf Resorts has announced plans to open its first venture overseas, with the Great Wolf Lodge opening in Oxfordshire, UK, in 2022. Great Wolf, which currently has 18 locations across North America, will submit a planning application later this month, with construction on the £200m (US$242.8m, €217.8m) venture scheduled to start in 2020. The London office of EPR Architects is leading the design work

Lendlease has reportedly withdrawn its bid to build the long-planned Sydney Modern expansion at the Art Gallery of NSW in Australia. The AUS$344m (US$233m, €210m, £193m) project was first announced six years ago and has been funded mostly by the New South Wales (NSW) Government, with AUS$100m (US$68m, €61m, £56m) coming from private philanthropy. When announced in 2013 the project cost was estimated at AU$400m. This was revised up to

The Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, has closed to allow a year-long renovation, which will see the facility reopen to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Truman becoming US president in 1945. Museum planning and design firm Gallagher & Associates has created the new designs, and is working in collaboration with Monadnock Media, architectural firm The Clark Enersen Partners, and construction company JE Dunn Construction.

The UK's National Space Centre (NSC) in Leicester is building a new laboratory for the creation of virtual, augmented and mixed reality media, which it says will extend its capacity to deliver community engagement and attract new audiences. Perfect Circle – a consortium comprising Pick Everard, Gleeds and AECOM – is responsible for design, surveying and project management, while Woodhead has the construction contract. The Extended Reality Laboratory (or XR Lab)

Plans to build Europe’s tallest observation wheel in Newcastle, UK, have been given the green light by the city council. The 140m-tall Whey Aye – named after a popular phrase in the local dialect pronounced 'why eye', meaning 'yes' – is being developed by the World Wheel Company and is set to stand five metres taller than The London Eye. Designed by Concept I, the wheel will be built at

Proposals for a new £10m (US$12.48m, €11.21m) ReefLIVE aquarium in Belfast's Titanic Quarter are to be put forward for approval, with hopes that the attraction will draw more than 300,000 visitors per year. Designed by Ethos Design and Architecture, and with planning by consultants Turley, the aquarium would be situated opposite the Titanic Hotel on Queen's Road, which is a short distance from the Titanic Belfast museum. ReefLIVE, a UK

Danish architecture firm Cobe has won an international competition to create designs for a new science museum in the Swedish city of Lund, with the visitor attraction set to open in 2024. Constructed of wood, the museum will be CO2-neutral and will have "the potential to become a future icon of sustainability", according to Cobe. The two-storey building proposed in the successful design has a total floor space of 6,000sq

Architects Wilkinson Eyre are to create a new visitor attraction in the form of a massive biome complex, near Reykjavik. The Aldin Biomes have just received planning permission and when complete, will showcase a tropical environment and local food production methods, as well as a range of wellness offerings, including barfus walks and yoga. The 48,000sq ft structures, designed for client Spor í sandinn, have been conceived as a major

A 170,000sq ft (51,816sq m) vertical aquarium is one of the ideas being considered for a proposed 500ft-high (152m) observation tower at the centre of a development project on the California coast at San Diego. Seaport San Diego, a US$2.4bn (€2.15bn, £1.93bn) scheme that encompasses 70 acres of land and water along Harbor Drive, is currently in the initial planning stages with architects Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and developers 1HWY1.

The first installation of the Museum of Underwater Art – a series of inter-tidal and fully submerged galleries planned for the Great Barrier Reef region of Queensland, Australia – is due to open in December on the coast at Townsville. Ocean Siren will be a solar-powered sculpture of a young girl, which uses live temperature data supplied by the Australian Institute of Marine Science to give a visual representation of

A spectacular light and sound event has launched in Townsville, north-eastern Queensland in Australia. Halo, which is created by Sydney-based AGB Events, will run in the evenings until 4 August, and is being staged in conjunction with the inaugural North Australian Festival of Arts. The event will see Castle Hill, which looms above the city, lit up with a dramatic light and sound show for five minutes, every 20 minutes.

The Horniman Museum and Gardens in London is seeking feedback on concept plans produced by Studio Egret West that are designed to make the museum more accessible, enhance the visitor experience and develop more income-generating opportunities. Overlooking Dulwich in south-east London, the Grade II*-listed building opened in 1901 and houses around 350,000 objects, artefacts and specimens from around the world, with galleries that include anthropology, natural history, music and an

Cultural heritage has become the latest focus for Microsoft in its AI for Good portfolio – a five-year commitment to using artificial intelligence to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. The project will create opportunities for designers and architects to collaborate on projects impacting facilities. "As we have learned more about the dimensions that make up cultural heritage, we've concluded that preserving cultural heritage isn't something that is solely nice

Virgin Galactic believes it has the necessary financial muscle to achieve commercialisation of its space tourism flights, after merging with investment partnership Social Capital Hedosophia (SCH). The transaction, which is due to complete during the second half of 2019, will deliver US$1.3bn (€1.16bn, £1.04bn) of equity to Virgin Galactic, made up of US$1bn (€890m, £800m) in common stock of the combined company (at US$10 per share) and up to US$300m

New Zealand's Auckland Zoo has revealed a timetable for opening each part of its new South East Asia Jungle Track project ‒ a NZ$58m (US$39m, €34.6m, £31m) investment that's part of the zoo's wider 10-year, NZ$150m (US$100.9m, €89.5m, £80.4m) evolution programme, funded by Auckland Council. The zoo has worked with Studio Hansen Roberts on the design of the South East Asia Jungle Track, with NZ Strong (builders), Jacobs Engineering and