The Silo Hotel – a luxury property located within Heatherwick Studio’s re-imagined Cape Town grain storage facility – opens today (1 March). The hotel is built in the grain elevator portion of the silo complex, occupying six floors above what will become the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA). It has 26 guest rooms, including one bedroom penthouse, that are all more spacious vertically than horizontally due to the

The studio of French architect Stephane Malka have unveiled the latest iteration of their ‘parasitic architecture’ concept, with an ambitious plan to graft extensions, bow-windows and loggias to one of Paris’ lacklustre and poorly-performing 1970s buildings. The project, called Plug-In City 75, will transform an apartment block in the French capital’s 16th arrondissement by ‘plugging in’ custom-made prefabricated elements to the outside of the structure. Old windows, bad insulation and

One of Thailand’s largest hotel and property development companies has announced plans to expand Bangkok’s famous Dusit Thani hotel and develop a new US$1bn (€948.3m, £808.2m) landmark in the heart of the metropolis. The Dusit Thani company has today (1 March) signed an agreement with the quasi-government Crown Property Bureau to extend its lease for the land where its popular hotel stands. It can now develop the site over the

Those eagerly anticipating the colonisation of the Moon will be delighted to know they’ll be able to get a dose of culture 384,400km away from Earth’s atmosphere, after artists Julio Orto and Joey Cannizzaro proposed The Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon, or MoCAM as it would be known. Offering fantastic views of Earth, the duo have already purchased a 20 acre plot of land on the Moon, located

AECOM, the architectural firm behind the Rio 2016 Olympic Park masterplan, has pledged to help the Brazilian government achieve its “legacy goals” despite the widely-publicised pictures showing the development damaged and desolate. Just a few months after the conclusion of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, images surfaced of a looted Maracana Stadium with unkempt pitch, a closed Deodoro sports precinct and a US$20m (£16.1m, €18.9m) golf course that is struggling

A joint venture between Canadian studios HCMA Architecture + Design and NFOE et Associés Architectes have won a design competition to create a striking circular aquatics centre in Laval, Quebec – designed to create an experience of “swimming within a forest.” The competition jury had called for submissions imagining the new Complexe Aquatique de Laval as a vital civic centre, subtly integrated into the site’s woodland ecosystem. Tucked into an

Apple is about to open its new US$5bn (€4.7bn, £4bn) headquarters in April, with the Foster + Partners-designed project in California to include a dedicated visitor centre for tourists and a new theatre named after company co-founder Steve Jobs. Sir Jony Ive, design chief for Apple, played a significant role in the project, working with Foster + Partners to realise the project in a hands-on capacity. The doughnut-shaped futuristic campus,

Wanda Hotels & Resorts will become the first Chinese hotel management company to export one of its brands overseas, following an agreement to open a Wanda Vista property in Istanbul, Turkey. The company will act as the hotel operator, while Turkish development firm Mar Yapi will fund the project. It will be located close to the city’s busiest shopping district and a five-minute drive from Ataturk International Airport. Wanda Vista

Serie A football club AS Roma has moved a step closer to achieving its own stadium after striking a deal with city officials. The Italian team has been trying to develop the 52,000-capacity Stadio Della Roma for a number of years, but has faced several delays. The delays were compounded when the anti-establishment Virginia Raggi of the 5-Star Movement became the city’s mayor last year and began pushing for design

A state-of-the-art attraction themed around the National Football League (NFL) in the US will open in New York City in November under the leadership of former New York Cruise Lines CEO Danny Boockvar. The NFL Experience, which is being created by Cirque du Soleil and the NFL, will feature high-tech displays, interactive media and a 350-seat 4D theatre that will be play 20-minute films immersing visitors on the sidelines or

Too many visual renderings of future architectural projects “do not correspond at all to the real world” because of a lack of diversity among the people depicted occupying these buildings. That is the view of Eric de Broches des Combes, the founder of visualisation studio Luxigon, who has told CLAD “there’s sometimes a preconceived idea about who should and shouldn’t appear in renderings from the people who commission the images.”

Design competition organiser Blank Space has partnered with government authorities in New York to seek a feasible long-term strategy for the city’s response to driverless cars. “Entrepreneurs, innovators, designers, engineers, architects and futurists” are invited to enter The Driverless Future Challenge and pitch concrete design solutions for the cities of the future, which “will be populated with robotic cars chauffeuring their dozing or web-surfing occupants around town.” “The challenge seeks

Budding architects will soon be able to receive tuition from none other than Frank Gehry, who has agreed to organise a new online master class. The Canadian-American architect – best known for his postmodern buildings, including the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao – will deliver at least 15 video lessons sharing his design philosophy using case studies, sketches and models. The course,

The famous Middle Eastern folk tales of One Thousand and One Nights are the inspiration behind a lavish dome-topped hotel opening imminently in Doha, Qatar. Local practice South West Architecture and Dutch interior designer Marcel Wanders – working in the region for the first time – have collaborated to create the “fantasy-like” Doha Mondrian for hotel operator sbe. Design features are inspired by the local patterns, ornate Arabic writing and

For his latest grandiose Southeast Asian resort project, designer Bill Bensley has taken his inspiration from an unlikely combination of themes: the work of pioneering French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the importance of higher education, Lewis Carroll's novel Alice in Wonderland – and mushrooms. Bensley’s typically whimsical design touches feature throughout the JW Marriott Phu Quoc Emerald Bay resort in the south of Vietnam – a project the designer has described

Here are some of the stories that appeared on CLAD this week, from the Serpentine Pavilion’s next architect to the world’s first ‘bird airport’. Monday • In an exclusive interview with CLAD, the architect who oversaw the creation of Lisbon’s sparkling new Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology explains the inspiration behind the acclaimed design. Read here. • Architecture studio HKS have been brought on board to design h.Club LA;

Norwegian architecture firm Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter have won an international competition to design a public trail, amphitheatre and viewing platform along an abandoned railway line in Alsace, France. Described as “a lace undulating in the landscape,” the Chemin des Carrières (or ‘Quarries’ Track’ in English) is designed to remember the history of the landscape and the people who once mined and quarried there. The Rosheim-St Nabor railway, which served the

The extraordinary life and career of music icon David Bowie could be marked with a gravity-defying lightning bolt sculpture in the London district where he was born. Architect Zac Monro, arts collective This Ain’t Rock’n’Roll and sculptor Tom Carter have proposed the three-storey, 9m (29.5ft) tall steel memorial, which reimagines the famous bolt sported by Bowie on the cover of his 1973 album Aladdin Sane as a giant three-dimensional structure

The organisation responsible for delivering the stadiums and infrastructure for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar has appointed the main contractor to build the 40,000-capacity Al Thumama ground. The Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy (SC) has announced a joint venture partnership between Qatari construction firm AlJaber Engineer and Turkey’s Tekfen Construction will build the stadium, which has been designed by the emirate’s oldest building consultancy, the Arab Engineering

A “stadium-like” new aquatics centre in Budapest has been unveiled ahead of the World Swimming Championships, which will be held at the venue in five months. The Dagály Budapest Aquatics Complex, also known as the Danube Arena, has been completed just two years after the Mexican city of Guadalajara withdrew as host of the championships due to financial problems, and Budapest agreed to step in. The facility was originally designed

Scottish football club Celtic have announced plans for a hotel and museum complex to be built next to the 47-time Scottish Premier League (SPL) champions’ home ground. The proposal, which also includes a ticket office and retail store, will be submitted to Glasgow City Council for approval, with the development to come up outside the main stand of Celtic Park. “The application is part of Celtic’s long-standing masterplan for the

The public consultation process for the proposed Hong Kong Palace Museum has been extended and new designs of the building released, as backers of the project strive to win support for the controversial scheme. A 10,000sq m (107,600sq ft) site on Hong Kong’s western harbour front has been earmarked to house the museum, which would display artefacts on long-term loan from Beijing’s famous Palace Museum under the terms of a

Located in Djibouti on the horn of Africa at the crossroads between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, the 740sq m (7,965sq ft) Kempinski The Spa at Djibouti Palace Kempinski, is now open. Managed by spa brand Resense and designed South African studio K/M2K, facilities include six treatment rooms (including one double suite), a fitness centre, two infinity pools, gym, tennis court, relaxation room, and steam and sauna facilities

Architecture firm Benoy have released their latest designs for a retail-led leisure destination on China’s reclaimed Hexin Island in Hainan province. The 32,000sq m (34,400sq ft) project is the second phase of the wider Sanya Eyot scheme – a resort, billed as “the largest of its kind in the world”, being developed by the China International Travel Service to integrate leisure, high-end hospitality and natural attractions. Benoy have visualised a

Increasing crossovers between work and leisure are creating new challenges for hospitality designers, says Conran & Partners' Tina Norden, in an interview with CLAD. "With the boundaries to the way people live becoming more and more blurred, we're starting to explore sectors we haven't worked in for some time," says Norden. The full interview, in which Norden tells the story behind the award-winning German Gymnasium and talks through the practice's

The World Architecture Festival (WAF) is marking its tenth anniversary by publishing a manifesto that identifies the key challenges architects face in the next decade. The ten areas covered in the document are: • Climate, energy and carbon • Water; Ageing and Health • Re-use • Smart city technology • Building technology • Cultural identity • Ethics and values • Power and justice • Virtual worlds The intention is to

Landscape architects McGregor Coxall have won an international competition to design a wetland nature sanctuary envisioned as the world’s very first “bird airport”. Each year more than 50 million birds fly from the Antarctic reaches to the northern tip of the earth along the East Asian-Australian Flyway (EAAF) seeking food and shelter. However, this corridor is under severe threat from coastal urbanisation and the resultant destruction of bird-friendly habitats. In