A design competition to transform the 1.33-mile, fire-damaged Southend Pier in Southend-on-Sea has been launched by the borough council. In collaboration with the Landscape Institute and the Royal Institute of British Architects, Southend-on-Sea Borough Council has created a design brief with the intentions of re-establishing the pier as a "must-see destination for all visitors". The council wants to transform the Grade II-listed pier, built in 1830, into a cultural destination

Swansea Council has announced that plans for the restoration of Mumbles Pier in South Wales are to move forward, after it was recommended that a development framework for the area be adopted. An extensive public consultation has been held to gather the opinions of local residents on the proposed £39m mixed-use scheme, which is designed to transform the historic site into a visitor and tourist attraction. Proposals for the pier

The US$300m (£193.5m, 220m euro) Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago, US, has opened to public this week. The 24,500sq m (264,000sq ft) extension, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano has increased the museum's floor space to more than a million square feet, making it the second largest art museum in the US. The three-storey extension, which is covered by a sun-shade system allowing natural light to

Lakeland Motor Museum at Holker Hall in Cumbria will be relocated to a new purpose-built premise at Backbarrow near Newby Bridge. Former Blue Mill carton packaging sheds have been redeveloped to provide a larger display space for the museum's 30,000 exhibits, which tell the story of more than 100 years of motoring history. A new exhibit on all aspects of road transport history will now be presented, while existing displays,

Merlin Entertainments has unveiled plans for a £12.5m upgrade of the London Eye in a bid to improve customer experience and to 'future-proof' the attraction in the lead up to the London 2012 Olympics. The wheel's 32 capsules will be removed one at a time in order to undergo work to install new, environmentally-friendly heating and ventilation systems, while one of the upgraded capsules will also feature ceiling-mounted TV screens

A new visitor attraction, based on the English Premiership football club Manchester United, has opened at The Venetian Macao-Resort-hotel in the Chinese special administrative region of Macau. The £1.5m, 1,000sq m indoor attraction was designed by UK-based MET Studio. The walk-through attraction offers guests a number of interactive stations as well as exhibits portraying the history of the club. Facilities at the attraction also include a large retail area.

The National Children's Museum (NCM) - formerly the Capital Children's Museum in Washington - is set to reopen at its new home in Maryland, US, in 2013. Part of the National Harbor development in Prince George's County, the 150,000sq ft (14,000sq m) building will represent six core content areas: the environment, health and well being, play, civic engagement, the arts and world cultures. Designed by Connecticut architect Cesar Pelli, it

The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Centre has opened in Skokie, IL, US. Around 12,000 people attended the US$45m (£30m, 34m euro), 65,000sq ft (6,040sq m) museum, which features 2,000 survivor testimonies. The museum – designed by architect Stanley Tigerman – houses artefacts such as Simon Wiesenthal’s eyeglasses, an original volume of the Nuremberg Trial transcripts, Kindertransport lists and artwork made in the concentration camps. Its Room of Remembrance honours

The completed £13.5m expansion of east London's Whitechapel Gallery is expected to open 5 April. The gallery, re-designed by Belgian architects Robbrecht & Daem and Witherford Watson Mann, is almost double the size after it merged with the adjacent Passmore Edwards library (built in 1892) increasing the 3,000sq ft space by 78 per cent. New features include three galleries dedicated to international art collections, new art commissioned by the gallery's

Plans to renovate the Sydney Opera House in Australia are threatened after the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd refused to back the estimated AUS$900m (£433m, €466m, US$630m) project claiming there was better use for the money. The announcement came the day after the New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees said the restoration was under "active consideration" by the budget committee. If the seven-year-long renewal project was to go ahead, the opera

The first sod has been cut on the £13.6m redevelopment of Bath’s Holburne Museum of Art. When it reopens, the Holburne will house a collection of fine and decorative arts, and will be fully accessible for the first time. A new garden café will also be built. The scheme has already received £10.6m of funding, comprising grants form the Heritage Lottery Fund, Lord and Lady Sainsbury’s Linbury Trust and Bath

Italy's newest art gallery, Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (MAXXI) in Rome, is set for a 2009 launch. Zaha Hadid Architects have designed the museum to be reminiscent of an ‘urban campus’, a building that goes beyond interior spaces to include the entire city. The project includes two museums – MAXXI art and MAXXI architecture – which will revolve around a full-height grand hall that connects with a

The Dreamland Trust is to unveil its plans to establish the world's first heritage amusement park in Margate, Kent, on the site of the former Dreamland Amusement Park. Levitt Bernstein Architects, together with Paris-based theme park designer Jean-Marc Toussaint, is behind designs for the proposed £12m attraction, which will be built around the Grade II-listed scenic railway, one of the oldest rollercoasters in Britain. The trust, which administers the Save

North Somerset Council (NSC) has approved plans for two new visitor attractions to be established in Weston-super-Mare, which it said will contribute towards the transformation of the town's seafront. Plans for the redevelopment of the 104-year-old Grand Pier, which was severely damaged by fire in July last year, were given the green light by the council's West Area committee, as were proposals for a new 40m (131ft) observation wheel. A

The architectural firm in charge of redesigning National Wildflower Centre in Knowsley, near Liverpool, has been selected by environmental charity Landlife. Ian Simpson Architects won the international open competition along with Adams Kara Yatlor Engineers and Hoare Lea Engineers to create a new educational attraction around wildflower gardens. The competition was funded with a £100,000 grant from the Northwest Regional Development Agency. The attraction, which originally opened in 2001, is

Southampton's oldest museum has been awarded a £3.5m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) in order to carry out restoration work that will safeguard the attraction's future. Tudor House, which dates back to the late 15th century, is set to undergo an extensive refurbishment programme that will enable the Grade I-listed building and Scheduled Ancient Monument to be removed from the 'Heritage At Risk Register'. The former Tudor merchant

Science Oxford Live, a new cultural centre for science and enterprise in Oxfordshire, has opened to the public following a £250,000 refurbishment. The ground floor of the venue, which has been closed for the last two months while work has been carried out, offers a meeting area, a chill out refreshment area and a permanent exhibition space for adults and older children. A discovery zone for children and families also

A new museum, designed to act as a symbolic reminder of the Asian tsunami in which more than 200,000 people were killed, has been opened by Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Banda Aceh. Situated on the northern tip of Sumatra, the province of Aceh was devastated by the 2004 disaster, and is considered to be the nearest land point to the epicentre of the earthquake that triggered the destructive

A £1m Concorde Visitor Centre is to open at Manchester Airport’s Aviation Viewing Park. Work on the 68m x 38m glass, steel and PVC structure was due to be completed last July, but was delayed to December last year following the discovery of a colony of protected newts. The now-grounded Concorde G-BOAC is the central attraction at the park, which attracts 250,000 visitors a year. The new development will also

Architects have been appointed for the proposed redevelopment of Helsinki Zoo, on Korkeasaari Island, in Finland. The project is intended to improve the zoo's profile internationally and to develop the island as a centre for education and research concerning nature and conservation. The winning design, called Beluga, was created by French architect group Beckmann-N'Thepe and comprises new animal enclosures and viewing rooms, greenhouses, auditoriums, an outdoor theatre, a reception, offices,

Proposals to build a £35m museum at the site of the 16th century Mary Rose warship in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard have been met with approval by the city council. The permanent museum — designed by architects Wilkinson Eyre and interior designers Pringle Brandon — will house the ship within a structure akin to a black, wooden, jewellery box. Almost 70 per cent of the artefacts (19,000) recovered from the Tudor

New revised plans have been announced to build a £200m tourism and leisure attraction on the site of three former mines in Northumberland. According to Widdrington Regeneration Partnership (WRP), the joint venture behind the scheme, the development will now include a holiday village with chalet accommodation, an indoor leisure complex with a 50m swimming pool, a man-made sailing lake, a 150-room luxury hotel, a health spa and a championship golf

A decommissioned German U-boat has opened to the public as a visitor attraction on Liverpool Docks. One of only four remaining in the world, the vessel was acquired by Merseytravel when its previous owner, the Historic Warships Museum in Birkenhead went into voluntary liquidation. The ship has been completely restored and cut into four sections with glass panels at the end of each section to allow visitors the chance to

David Chipperfield Architects has revealed its winning design for an extension to the Kunsthaus Zurich art gallery in Zurich, Switzerland. The early 20th century building will continue to house the Old Masters, Giacometti collection, Swiss art and popular large-scale exhibitions, whereas the new 20,500sq m (220,660sq ft) extension will display classic modernism and art starting from the 1960s, as well as the Bührle collection. Photograph: courtesy if David Chipperfield Architects

Designs have been unveiled for a landmark oil & gas museum and exhibition centre set to be built in Al Ahmadi, Kuwait for the Kuwait Oil Company. The 8,800sq m exhibition and display centre has been designed by UK-based Architect Morgan Professional Services (MPS) and will be arranged over three floor levels with a viewing tower above. Nine interactive exhibition spaces will form an integral part of the building and

The Tempe Historical Museum in Arizona, US, is closing its doors to undergo a US$4.1m redevelopment. Weddle Gilmore Architects (WGA) has been selected as the architectural consultant for the project which will see the main gallery and entrances completely refurbished. According to museum officials, the redevelopment will redefine the exhibit area to feature flexible spaces with changing exhibits; integrate new technology with innovative interpretation; increase programming space; and create a

A new £18m visitor centre is set to be built at the Giant's Causeway World Heritage Site after the scheme was approved by the Northern Ireland Executive's environment minister, Sammy Wilson. Plans for the new centre, which was designed by Dublin-based architects, heneghan.peng, were submitted by the National Trust in June last year to replace a previous facility destroyed by fire eight years ago. Moyle District Council is also involved