Santiago Calatrava’s futuristic tower design for Dubai will ‘be a notch taller’ than the Burj Khalifa, according to its developer Emaar Properties. The real estate giant hosted an event in the city on Sunday (10 April) to officially unveil the project, now named as ‘The Tower’, two months after Calatrava was named as the winner of an international design project for the commission. According to reports in Dubai, the structure

Construction will begin in the next few months on Australia’s first man-made surf park after planning approval was granted for the Melbourne project. Perth-based company Wave Park Group has partnered with architects MJA Studios – who recently unveiled their plan to transform an abandoned sports stadium into an enormous outdoor wave pool near Perth – for the facility, which will be called Urbnsurf. “Surfing is a sport enjoyed by millions

The Center for Architecture in Portland, Oregon, is to launch the first major US exhibition on international architecture studio Snøhetta and their work around the world. Named Snøhetta: People, Process, Projects, the exhibition will explore the practice's culture and design philosophy and follows on from a similar event held last year at the Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen. It will be launched on 17 April 2016 to kick off Design

Memphis Zoo in Tennessee, US, is preparing to launch its new US$22.3m (€19.5m, £15.7m) Zambezi River Hippo Camp at the end of this month, bringing together a collection of animals in the immersive setting of an African fishing village. Created by Ace Torre of zoo specialists Torre Design Consortium, the experience covers 16,000sq m (174,000sq ft) and mimics a river walk through a remote camp. Starring two female hippos with

Besiktas – one of the best supported football clubs in Turkey – has opened the doors to its new 42,000-capacity stadium. The €110m (£88.2m, US$125.2m) Vodafone Arena was unveiled by the club alongside Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu and former president Abdullah Gul last night (10 April). Turkish firm DBArchitects designed the Vodafone Arena alongside local architect Metin Demir. After playing home matches around the country

Timber skyscrapers can improve our built environments and urban experiences, according British practice PLP Architecture and researchers from Cambridge University. To give credence to this theory, the architects and academics have joined forces with engineers Smith and Wallwork to present mayor of London Boris Johnson with conceptual plans for an 80-storey, 300m high wooden mixed use tower integrated within the Barbican arts centre in the capital. The use of timber

Four young American entrepreneurs are building a unique, crowdsourced ski resort on Utah’s Powder Mountain with arts and culture at its core. The collective, called Summit, are overseeing the construction of a new ski village on the site of a mountainside ranch, which will feature restaurants, cafés, artisan stores and artists’ workshops. The village will also house the headquarters of the Summit Series community – a movement formed by the

The on-again off-again merger of Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Marriott International looks set to go ahead after shareholders of both companies voted en masse for the proposed deal. Marriott's cash-and-stock acquisition of Starwood, valued at US$12.41bn as of Thursday (7 April), will create the world’s largest hotel company. Holders of more than 97 per cent of Marriott shares and 95 per cent of Starwood shares voted in favour of

The competitive nature of property developers has benefitted the sustainability of buildings, with rival firms fighting to be “the greenest, the biggest and the best.” That’s the view of Patrick Bellew, founder of environmental design consultants and building services engineers Atelier Ten, who has spoken exclusively to CLAD about how architects are reshaping the ways buildings interact with the environment. He said: “In the early days, we worked with universities

Dutch exhibition designers Kossmann.dejong have created a show celebrating the “spectacular” interior designs of the Amsterdam School of architecture in the early 20th century. The exhibition, called Living in the Amsterdam School: Designing for the Interior 1910-1930, will open in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam tomorrow (9 April). The Amsterdam School – which grew out of international Expressionist architecture – is famous internationally for the progressive buildings its followers produced,

Sports and entertainment architecture studio Populous – designers of the London 2012 Olympic Stadium – will advise on venue design for Paris’ 2024 Olympic bid. The firm will collaborate with international engineering firm Egis to draw up plans for 38 Olympic and Paralympic facilities. Together, they will design new permanent and temporary buildings and ensure existing venues in the French capital are ready for the scale and needs of Olympic

The practice founded by pioneering architect Zaha Hadid, who passed away last week at the age of 65, have invited people to celebrate her life, pay their respects to her family and sign books of condolence at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London, which she designed. The venue’s Magazine restaurant will be open between 2pm and 7pm GMT on April 7 and 8 to host those wishing to pay tribute.

Dutch architects MVRDV have announced an eye-catching temporary installation for Rotterdam: a giant staircase leading from the plaza outside the city’s central train station to the top of an adjacent historic building. Called The Stairs, the 29m (95ft) tall, 57m (187ft) long installation will be open from 16 May to 12 June 2016. It has been commissioned as part of an event called Rotterdam celebrates the city, which marks the

Global experience design and production agency Thinkwell Group have appointed former Walt Disney Imagineering executive Diane Michioka as their new vice president of production. Michioka, who has more than to decade of experience working in short and long-term strategic project planning, show producing, and creative team management, will have a key role in assisting the business development team with client relations and proposal development, as well as guiding, strategizing, and

The development of the new Western Australian Museum building in Perth has reached a significant milestone, with a design team led by international architects OMA now in negotiations to oversee the project. Multi-disciplinary practice Hassell and British constructors Brookfield Multiplex have joined Rem Koolhaas’ studio to design and build the museum, which will house the state’s scientific and cultural collections. The design team overcame competition from firms including Foster +

British designer Thomas Heatherwick will be presented with a lifetime achievement prize at the 2016 Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards on 22 April. The founder and design director of Heatherwick Studio – which has undertaken diverse projects including the cauldron for the 2012 London Olympics and a Bombay Sapphire gin distillery in Hampshire, UK, and has designed the highly controversial Garden Bridge in London – is being recognised for his “ingenuity,

An expensive and long-awaited cultural centre and metro station created by French architects Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti on the site of a historic Paris marketplace has been officially unveiled. The design at Les Halles is known as the Canopy due to its enormous umbrella-like glass roof, which comprises 18,000 pieces of glass supported by 7,000 tonnes of steel. Construction on the €1bn (US$1.42bn, £806.7m) project, funded by the City

Italian Serie B football club Cagliari has been given the green light to build a new 21,000-capacity stadium, designed by Polish architectural studio JSK Architekci. Yesterday (6 April), Cagliari City Council approved the declaration of public interest for the proposal which will see a new ground constructed in the Sardinian city by 2019. The club is ploughing €55m (£44.5m, US$62.6m) into the project and is hoping to sell the stadium’s

A far greater understanding of human behaviour is required if architects and designers are to create successful buildings in the future, according to the head of NBBJ Design’s London office. In an exclusive interview, David Lewis, a partner with the architecture studio, told CLAD how the practice creates data-heavy designs in collaboration with “brain scientist” Dr John Medina, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington. “These days, behaviour

Some of the world’s most acclaimed architects have given their thoughts on the challenges facing the built environment at a Pritzker Laureates' discussion at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The 2016 Pritzker Prize winner, Chile’s Alejandro Aravena, participated in the event – called The Pritzker Laureates' Conversation: Challenges Ahead for the Built Environment – yesterday (5 April) alongside Glenn Murcutt, Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano, Christian de Portzamparc, Richard

The New York office of international architecture studio OMA has unveiled two masterplan concepts to renew a vast sports and cultural complex in Washington D.C. The 190-acre RFK Stadium-Armory Campus would be located in the Southeast corridor of the District of Columbia, on a site which currently houses the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. Events DC, the official convention and sports authority for the District of Columbia, is overseeing the

Bangkok-based interior designer Bill Bensley, UK hospitality designers G.A. Design and international architects Gensler are among the creators of the latest property opened by hotel brand St Regis: a luxury resort in Malaysia’s UNESCO-protected archipelago Langkawi. The St. Regis Langkawi Resort, which opens today (6 April), is the first new high-end resort in the 99-island chain in a decade. It is owned by Indonesia’s Rajawali Property Group. The concept of

Alejando Aravena, who was awarded the 2016 Pritker Prize in New York City on 4 April, has released open-source drawings for his practice's successful social housing designs. Aravena used his appearance at the Pritzker Conversation at the UN on 5 April to announce the drawings from four projects he deems to have been successful are now available to download from the website of his studio, Elemental. Aravena wants the documents

A combination of Scandinavian design and “socially conscious hyperlocalism” has been used for an art-filled new hotel in New York, created by Anda Andrei Design and Danish studio Space Copenhagen. Located in New York’s artistic SoHo district, the hotel, called 11 Howard, is owned by art collector Aby Rosen and features works from prominent US artists including Jeff Koons and Dan Attoe. The design team gutted a “characterless” 1960s structure

The Park, a brand new entertainment district in Nevada, offers visitors a new way to soak up the famous Las Vegas Strip, according to developer MGM Resorts International. The Park, which opened on 4 April and cost US$100m (€88m, £71m), is a dining and entertainment zone located in landscaped gardens beside the 20,000-seat T-Mobile arena. The pedestrianised area offers a sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the busy Strip.

Public consultation is imminent for a new David Chipperfield-designed luxury hotel and spa on the famous site of the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London. The embassy will soon relocate from the Mayfair location to a new site at Nine Elms, and real estate developer Qatari Diar has commissioned Chipperfield’s studio to breathe new life into the building it leaves behind: a mid-20th century listed structure designed by iconic Finnish

US space agency NASA is preparing to explore the feasibility of expandable habitats, or inflatable ‘space houses’, in a new mission that launches this Friday (8 April). A spacecraft supplying the International Space Station (ISS) will take off at 4.43pm ET from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, loaded with research, hardware, supplies and a Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which will be thoroughly tested over the coming years.