A garden pavilion fabricated by robots has opened to the public in the grounds of the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London. The Elytra Filament Pavilion is formed of tightly-woven carbon fibre cells, inspired by shells of flying Elytra beetles. The pavilion has been created by experimental architects Achim Menges and Moritz Dörstelmann in collaboration with engineers Jan Knippers and Thomas Auer and researchers from the University of Stuttgart.

French architecture firm Studio KO have teased the first design images of their forthcoming Yves Saint Laurent museum in Marrakech, Morocco. The renderings reveal a terracotta brick structure, formed of curved lines and straight edges. The building will span 4,000sq m (43,000sq ft) on a site next to the city’s Jardin Majorelle – a garden much loved by Saint Laurent, who was a regular visitor to Marrakech before his death

David Rockwell has collaborated with seven famous street artists to create VANDAL; a new street food restaurant in New York. Located on Bowery Street in Manhattan, the bi-level, 350-seat restaurant is a labyrinthine web of private rooms, secret catacombs, hidden gardens and surprising art installations. Rockell’s design team planned VANDAL’s interiors and British street artist Hush curated the wallscape. He created seven huge murals for the space and commissioned six

Investment firm Legal & General Property has committed more than £53m (US$78m, €69m) to acquire and fund the development of a new retail and leisure scheme in the heart of Dover, UK. The project has been in the works for over a decade, and forms part of the local council’s regeneration work to support the coastal town’s growing population. Called St James, Dover, the project will provide 157,000sq ft (1.7m

Lanserhof Lans, the world-famous Austrian destination spa, is undergoing a major renovation between May and December 2016. The existing facility will be extended and a new building by German-based architect Christoph Ingenhoven will also be added. Ingenhoven is one of many regular guests to the detox retreat in the alpine state Tirol. The new structure – an oval building with a wooden façade and a grassy roof – will have

New video footage has been released providing the first extensive look inside David Adjaye’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. Builders are putting the final touches to the museum, which will be opened by US President Barack Obama on 24 September 2016. The video, released by The Washington Post, shows construction workers installing the display cases in readiness for the first exhibits – which will focus

Italian brewery Peroni will tomorrow (May 19) launch a six-week residency in London, transforming a café and restaurant into The House of Peroni – a “multi-sensory destination of Italian sights, smells and tastes.” The residency, named Amare l’Italia (For the love of Italy), will temporarily take over the Proud East restaurant in Haggerston. Designer Margherita Maccapani Missoni, heiress to high-end fashion house Missoni, is the residency’s “Master of Style.” She

Hollywood legend Robert De Niro is planning to build an 83-room luxury boutique hotel in London’s Covent Garden. The actor has partnered with development firm Capital & Counties Properties (Capco) and hospitality operator BD Hotels for the project, called The Wellington Hotel. A planning application has been submitted to Westminster City Council for consideration. The proposed hotel, designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, would span six adjacent buildings within the Covent

Hungarian architects Napur have won the international design competition to design the new Museum of Ethnography building in Budapest. The firm – who worked in collaboration with architects and designers Rudolf Mihály, Orfi József, Bodonyi Csaba, Dávid Papp and Exon 2000 – overcame high-profile competition from 14 other design teams, including the likes of MVRDV, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. The winning scheme is a

Upmarket London gym chain Third Space will debut its new boutique studio concept next week (23 May), targeted at “fitness-savvy, fashion-conscious Londoners.” Dubbed Another_Space, the spin-off is a 7,582sq ft (704sq m) site in Covent Garden’s Seven Dials area. Spearheaded by Colin Waggett, founder of boutique concept Psycle and CEO of Third Space, the Goldstein Ween-designed studio offers a range of class-based fitness training programmes. The studio is split over

The newly launched InterContinental London – The O2 hotel, has opened its 1,000sq m (10,764sq ft) spa, created by ESPA. The spa includes a 17m (56ft) indoor swimming pool, a relaxation pool fitted with cannon neck massage jets, sauna, steamroom and ice fountain, as well as eight treatment rooms and a relaxation lounge. Taking inspiration from the hotel’s location within the historic Royal Borough of Greenwich and the influences of

The Palestinian Museum, designed by Heneghan Peng, has opened its doors today (18 May) without any exhibits. The US$60m, (€55m, £40m) project, located in the West Bank north of Jerusalem, has the intention of creating an iconic building to act as a beacon of hope for the Palestinian people. It was first mooted in 1999, but has been stalled multiple times due to political tensions in the region. The building

Architecture studio Farrells have been honoured with an NEC Award for their delivery of a waterfront swimming pool in Hong Kong. The firm, led by Terry Farrell, won the NEC Award for Large Project Of The Year 2016 – which recognises excellence in project delivery and good practice. They were commissioned to build a new home for the Kennedy Town Swimming Pool, after its former facility was demolished to make

Australian hospitality operator The Star Entertainment Group has designed a masterplan for a multi-billion dollar “globally-competitive integrated resort” on the country’s Gold Coast. The group is working with the City of Gold Coast Council and Queensland State Government to significantly expand an existing hotel and casino property, called Jupiters, located on Broadbeach. At the heart of the proposal is a new 200m (656ft) tower, featuring luxury apartments and a 700-room

Architecture practice Close to the Bone have blurred the boundary between a stairway and an observation tower by building a gravity-defying monument in a Belgian forest. The studio were commissioned to build an observation point in the municipality of Tielt-Winge, after a popular wooden lookout tower was destroyed by arsonists. The brief called for a new landmark that could survive the elements and attack from vandals. Their solution was Vlooyberg

A sub-species of sea urchin has inspired a group of German architects, designers, engineers and biologists to develop an intricate robotically-produced pavilion. The Sand Dollar’s two-layered shell is formed of extremely thin fibres and stretching plates, connected in such a way that the integrity of the shell remains strong even as the urchin grows. This realisation prompted researchers Achim Menges and Jan Knippers to explore how robotic biomimicry could be

The City of Ryde has announced the shortlisted winners of its international design competition to create a new regional gateway for culture and commerce. The following architecture teams will now proceed to the second stage of the Design our Ryde contest: • Team2 in collaboration with Arcadia Landscape Architecture • MORQ • Architensions • Beijing Institute of Architectural Design The competition launched in February 2016 to find a design able

The reimagined Helsinki City Museum in Finland has reopened to the public following an €11m (US$12.4m, £8.7m) refurbishment and expansion of its new premises. Moving from its former home in Helsinki’s historical district to a new location in Senate Square, the 105-year-old museum now occupies five historical buildings surrounding three inner courtyards, opening up spaces never previously accessible to the public. The 18-month renovation by Arkkitehdit Davidsson Tarkela incorporates the

A vast San Francisco residential and leisure project designed by Foster + Partners and Heller Manus will be built, after the city’s Planning Commission granted permission. Construction of the Oceanwide Center – a 2.3m sq ft (214,000sq m) development featuring hotels, public space, residences and offices – will begin in the city’s South of Market neighbourhood in November 2016. The scheme, first unveiled in 2014, comprises two mixed-use towers –

Miami architects Arquitectonica have collaborated with Los Angeles design group Studio Collective and New York’s Clodagh Design for a the first Swire Hotels property in the US. After three years of planning and construction, the hotel – named EAST, Miami – will open in the Florida on 31 May. Located in Miami’s Brickell district, the hotel is an anchor for a 5.4m sq ft (502,000sq m) mixed-used development being bankrolled

Five architecture practices have been shortlisted to design a major new leisure centre in Islington, north London. Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Grimshaw, Hawkins Brown, Pollard Thomas Edwards, and Henley Halebrown Rorrison were all successful in the first stage of a design competition – organised by Islington Council and the Royal Institute of British Architects – to replace the existing 1970s building for Finsbury Leisure Centre. The design ideas of

UPDATE: Snøhetta's striking and hotly-anticipated new building for San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) opens today (14 May) in the US city. The international architecture studio have been working on the project, one of their largest to date, over the past three years. They have added an abstract, fog-like 10-storey extension to the museum's existing building on 151 Third Street, designed by Swiss architect Mario Botti in 1995. Their

This week leisure architecture was celebrated in two high-profile competitions: RIBA’s first International Prize and the Aga Khan Architecture Award. The first is seeking the best building, anywhere in the world, created in the last three years, while the second celebrates projects that exhibit architectural excellence and improve the overall quality of life. Between them, the two competitions have shortlisted public buildings, housing, schools and hospitals alongside acclaimed leisure buildings

Architecture, design and engineering firm BDP have unveiled their plans for a 300,000sq m (3.2m sq ft) leisure extension to the Meadowhall shopping mall in Sheffield, UK. London property company British Land are investing £300m (US$432m, €381m) in the project, which will go for public consultation next month. The extension, called the Leisure Hall, will include a host of dining and entertainment amenities, including a gym, cinema, restaurants, a café

A crowdfunding campaign will be launched today (13 May) to revive a historic lido in Peckham, South East London, with a new design by architecture practice Studio Octopi. The original 50 metre (164ft) outdoor swimming pool, called the Peckham Rye Lido, served swimmers and sunbathers from 1923 until 1987 before closing. The pool was filled in and now only a crumbling fountain remains where it once stood. Community group Peckham

A design team led by French architects Agence Ter has won an international competition to revitalise the Pershing Square public park in downtown Los Angeles. The contest, called Pershing Square Renew, was organised by a consortium of government, community and business leaders seeking to create a world-class public space for those who “live in, work in, visit and love” the heart of LA. Agence Ter and project partners SALT Landscape

Construction has been completed on a meandering ’Sky Walk’ and observation deck towering 55m (180ft) above a forest valley in the Czech Republic. Local studio Franek Architects created the dramatic timber and steel structure for a ski and wellness resort in the mountains near Dolni Morava. The Sky Walk provides a constantly shifting view as you ascend to an altitude of 1,116 meters above sea level. A number of ways