Championed by Nobu Hospitality founding partners chef Nobu Matsuhisa, actor Robert De Niro and Hollywood producer Meir Teper, a 321-key Nobu Hotel – designed by Rockwell Group – has opened in the leisure-focused City of Dreams Manila, in the Philippines. The Nobu Hotel was developed by Melco Crown (Philippines) Resorts Corporation – a subsidiary of the leisure city’s operator Melco Crown Entertainment. International design firm Rockwell Group is responsible for

Inspired by the movement of athletes, New York-based Diller Scofidio + Renfro has revealed its preliminary designs for the United States Olympic Museum. According to partner Elizabeth Diller, the museum – which will be located in Colorado Springs – “spirals up and outwards from a central atrium, drawing the public in at its base and propelling them up through the galleries”. She said the building would be “expressed in two

Merlin Entertainments has continued its policy to turn its major attractions into multi-day features by debuting its new Legoland Hotel at Legoland Florida. The multi-coloured exterior and entrance, conceptualised by Merlin’s Magic Making team, is the gateway to 152 Lego-themed rooms and suites, interactive play areas, a pool and a restaurant. The hotel features suites across four themes – Pirate, Kingdom, Adventure and Lego Friends. Each room can sleep up

The Gainsborough Bath Spa, the first UK hotel to be owned and operated by YTL Hotels, will soft open on 1 July. The facility will feature Spa Village Bath – YTL’s international brand concept of a thermal Romanesque bathing circuit. Designed by London-based EPR Architects along with New York-based Champalimaud Design in collaboration with a number of other interior designers, the hotel will retain its Georgian characteristics and will have

A pair of architecture graduates have teamed up with Airbnb to create one of the more pleasant objects likely to be found floating on London’s River Thames – a buoyant guest house. Twins Nick and Steve Tidball – who graduated from London’s Bartlett School of Architecture and now work as creative directors in advertising – have paired up with the accommodation giant to create a city crash pad described as

Los Angeles Football Club (LAFC) has announced plans to build one of the most expensive privately financed soccer-specific stadiums in the US. Designed by L.A.-based architects Gensler, the $250m (£160m) downtown stadium is set to become the first open-air professional sports arena in the city since baseball's Dodger Stadium opened in 1962. LAFC, which will enter Major League Soccer (MLS) as an expansion team in 2018, revealed designs for a

Middle Eastern developer Nakheel is moving forward with plans for the Deira Island development in Dubai, with the announcement that it will build a 750-room, four-star beachfront resort as part of the new mixed-use waterfront city. The property will be developed in partnership with Spanish RIU Hotels & Resorts, which will also act as operator. Nakheel Chairman Ali Rashid Lootah said: “This is a major milestone for our growing hospitality

Middle Eastern developer Nakheel is moving forward with plans for the Deira Island development in Dubai, with the announcement that it will build a 750-room, four-star beachfront resort as part of the new mixed-use waterfront city. The property will be developed in partnership with Spanish RIU Hotels & Resorts, which will also act as operator. Nakheel Chairman Ali Rashid Lootah said: “This is a major milestone for our growing hospitality

London-based architectural firm Adjaye Associates have designed a temporary pavilion to house a selection of works at the 56th Venice Art Biennale. The biennial event, which was first held in 1895, is a major contemporary art exhibition showcasing creativity from across the world including art, contemporary dance, architecture, cinema and theatre. The vast exhibition is made up of a central pavilion and the Venetian Arsenale (a complex of shipyards and

The opening of the hotly-anticipated M+ Museum in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) has been pushed back to 2019 after a delay in funding held up the construction process. Originally set for opening in 2017, the museum – designed by Herzog and de Meuron in partnership with TFP Farrells and Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong – is now scheduled for completion in Q4 2018, with the public

US design firm Lunar is aiming to launch its design expertise into new spheres following its acquisition by global management consultancy McKinsey & Company. The California-based firm, which offers full-service product development and has created designs for Apple, Cisco Systems, Nike, Tera, and BodyMedia to name a few, says the move to join giant consultancy McKinsey will ‘turbocharge’ its mission. Lunar president John Edson says its clients will benefit from

Equinox Holdings, parent company of high end US health club chain Equinox Fitness, is preparing to launch an upscale hospitality brand. Plans are afoot for 75 hotels worldwide, each with a fitness facility within the hotel, or very close, which would be open to hotel guests as well as members. The first site is slated for Manhattan in 2018, as part of the massive Hudson Yards scheme. It is a

Hollywood bigwigs look to have gained the vital stamp of approval needed to proceed with Renzo Piano's US$300m (€263.5m, £190.4m) development of Los Angeles’ Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. To be located next to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which is currently undergoing an expansion, the Academy museum has been designed by award-winning architect Renzo Piano. Contemporary architect Zoltan Pali had been working on the project but

Jack Rouse Associates (JRA) is finalising work on a science and technology focused children’s museum in the US ahead of its opening in Q3 of this year. JRA is providing final concept, schematic and detail design for the 8,000sq ft (743sq m) exhibit space at the US$6m (€5.3m, £3.8m) Children’s Museum of Siouxland in Sioux City, Iowa. Targeting children aged between six months and 10 years, the 15,000sq ft (1,394sq

LDA Design has been selected to masterplan a university campus at London’s Olympic Park, featuring a museum, collections libraries and performance spaces. A team led by the practice, which also includes Nicholas Hare Architects, will develop the 125,000sq m (1,345,489sq ft) campus for University College London (UCL), called UCL East. It will be located south of the ArcelorMittal Orbit and the Zaha Hadid-designed London Aquatics Centre at the Queen Elizabeth

HOK has signed a groundbreaking, multi-year partnership with North America-based United Soccer League (USL). The deal will see the global architects conduct a stadium development, design and standards programme, supporting the league’s strategic initiative to house all USL clubs in soccer-specific stadiums across US and Canada by 2020. As the league’s official stadium design partner, HOK will apply its venue design expertise to guide soccer-specific stadium development for expansion clubs

Guy Hollaway architects have revealed plans for a unique, multi-level skate park to draw international skaters and spectators to Folkestone, UK. The plans outline a 1,000sq m (10,700sq ft) three-storey skate park for the seaside town in the south east of England, the first multi-story facility of its kind. The sports park will also host a variety of popular urban sports including skateboarding, BMX-ing, rollerblading and scootering, with additional trial

Netherlands-based architecture practice MVRDV is to turn an abandoned station overpass in Seoul, South Korea, into a public park and garden. The studio won the Seoul Metropolitan Government competition to transform the 938m (3,077ft) long elevated highway, next to the city’s Central Station, in a similar fashion to the High Line in New York City. MVRDV’s proposal, Seoul Skygarden, will see 254 types of trees, shrubs and flowers used to

Regular architecture exhibitions will take place in dedicated new spaces after the £50m (US$78.3m, €69.7m) redevelopment of London's Royal Academy (RA) in 2018. Plans by architect Sir David Chipperfield for the historic London site, where art has been created and displayed for nearly 250 years, show the creation of new spaces dedicated to art, and old areas being made newly accessible to the public for the first time. The RA

Neutelings Riedijk Architects have revealed final designs for the merger of three Dutch museums in Leiden, incorporating a central atrium to seamlessly blend old with new. Combining the Natural History Museum ‘Naturalis’, the Zoological Museum in Amsterdam and the National Herbarium of Leiden and Wageningen, the existing 20,000sq m (215,000sq ft) museum will be renovated with further construction adding another 19,000sq m (204,500sq ft) of space. The design includes a

Four companies have made it on to a short list of potential operators for a new AU$1bn (€706m, US$795m, £508m) stadium in Perth, Australia. One of the quartet – AEG Ogden, Nationwide Venue Management, Perth Stadium Management and Stadium Australia Operations – will be selected to manage the 60,000-capacity Perth Stadium, a multi-purpose stadium which will form the centrepiece of a new sporting precinct at Perth’s Burswood district. Due to

The SANAA-designed Grace Farms complex – which features an amphitheatre, gymnasium and library – will officially open on 9 October. Located in New Canaan, Connecticut in the US, it is being built for the Grace Farms Foundation, a non-profit organisation established in 2009 to support initiatives in the areas of faith, the arts, justice and community. The complex will be open to the public. The 86,000sq ft building is known

Malaysian property developer Cahya Mata Sarawak Berhad (CMSB), has won the right to build the proposed RM308m (US$105.8m, €93.4m, £69.5m) Sarawak Museum Campus and Heritage Trail in Kuala Lumpur. The project, awarded by local government for the Sarawak region, comprises design, construction, fitting out and exhibit design for the 30,000sq m (323,000sq ft) museum development. PPES Works – a subsidiary of CMSB – has signed a design and build negotiated

A grand hotel considered one of Malta's major landmarks is among a portfolio of properties that will be redeveloped by CampbellGray Hotels as the first of a partnership with Jordanian-based trading company Audeh Group. The Phoenicia, in Malta’s capital Valletta, will undergo a phased re-launch starting in summer 2015. Peter Young Design and Mary Fox Linton will completely refurbish the hotel, while staying sympathetic to its Maltese heritage. A health

World renowned artist Christo is creating a temporary 3km (1.8mi) floating pier which visitors can walk over onto the island of San Paolo in Italy's Lake Iseo. In his biggest project since Christo and late wife Jeanne-Claude created The Gates in 2005, The Floating Piers will be constructed of 200,000 high-density polyethylene cubes covered in 70,000sq m (7,534,737sq ft) of shimmering yellow fabric. Visitors will be able to experience this

The multi-million dollar Indian Heritage Centre (IHC) has been opened in the Little India district of Singapore by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The four-storey building, designed by Singapore-based Greg Shand Architects, in collaboration with URBNarc, incorporates modern and traditional Indian architecture, and is inspired by the “Baoli” – a well in which water is reached via a descending set of steps. With its translucent, shimmering facade, the design creates

Foster + Partners’ Crossrail Place development has opened at Canary Wharf in London. A curving timber lattice roof wraps around four levels of leisure and retail facilities and a rooftop public garden. The opening comes three years before Canary Wharf Crossrail Station itself throws open its doors in 2018, serving the new Crossrail railway line. Fosters said the public garden is densely planted with trees and plants and is interspersed