Acclaimed artist Marina Abramovic has presented Lord Norman Foster with a golden replica of his brain. The British architect received the unusual sculpture – derived from a 3D scan of his brain – as part of an awards ceremony at Campus Biotech in Geneva. Foster is one of the 2016 recipients of the Scopus Award – the highest honour conferred by the Friends of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem –

King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands has officially opened the Voorlinden Museum – a modern, minimalist new home for the art collection of industrialist Joop van Caldenborgh. Situated in the southern town Wassenaar and designed by Dutch practice Kraaijvanger Architects with Arup, the museum has parallel symmetrical walls that allow the interior to open to the environment. The simple exterior includes a white colonnade to support the roof and a façade

Wang Jianlin’s public feud with Disney continues to heat up with the Wanda chair’s latest multi-billion Wanda City to open its doors tomorrow (23 September). Located 500km (311m) west of the recently opened Shanghai Disney Resort, the US$5.2bn (€4.64bn, £4bn) Hefei Wanda City has been described as the “first Huizhou culture theme park in the world.” A tribute to the culture of the Anhui province, which dates back more than

New York’s American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has been granted first approval for its US$325m (€288.8m, £248.6m) expansion intended to expand the institution’s role for scientific research and education. AMNH was given the approval when a joint committee composed of members from the Community Board 7 committees on preservation and parks and environment voted in favour of the Gilder Center plans, which will create a new six-storey addition to

The long-awaited opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. will take place this Saturday (24 September), with US president Barack Obama in attendance. A three-day festival of music, literature, dance and film will accompany the opening of the museum, which is dedicated to exploring the story of America through the lens of the African American experience. Obama will lead the museum’s dedication ceremony

The founders of Dutch architecture studio MVRDV believe their project for Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans van Beuningen offers a new model for how museums can take full advantage of their vast cultural collections. Winy Maas, Nathalie de Vries and Jacob Van Rijs – who are transforming what was an art storage depot into an attraction in its own right – told CLAD that rethinking the art storage facility as something that

Renowned street artist Phlegm has created an eight-storey mural in Toronto as part of a giant revitalisation project bringing art to the city’s busiest intersections. The enormous untitled artwork was created by Phlegm over the course of a month-long residency at the midtown Yonge and St. Clair junction, which saw him dramatically suspended 12-storeys in the air outside the 1 St. Clair West building. Small images of the cityscape were

Designer Mathieu Lehanneur’s famous marble sculpture, which mimics the look and feel of rippling water, has gone on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as part of the city’s ongoing design festival. The piece, called Liquid Marble, evokes a surreal vision of the sea by using 3D movie-making software to reproduce the visual effect of the water’s surface on a piece of hand-polished black marble. Liquid Marble

Swiss architect Peter Zumthor has been chosen to build the multi-million Euro extension to the Fondation Beyeler art museum in his home city Basel. An international jury composed of prominent figures from the worlds of art and design – including architects Jean Nouvel, Annabelle Selldorf and outgoing Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota – unanimously selected Zumthor to lead the project, which will add new exhibition and educational facilities to the

British designer Thomas Heatherwick has unveiled a climbable public landmark that will be the towering centrepiece of New York City’s Hudson Yards development. Vessel is a honeycomb-like structure of 154 interconnecting flights of stairs, 2,400 steps and 80 landings. A mile's worth of pathway will rise above a public plaza below. Conceived as a vast interactive sculpture and a new public landmark, it will stand 150ft (45.7m) tall with a

Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha has been awarded the prestigious Praemium Imperiale global prize for architecture. The accolade – among the most valuable in the profession with prize money worth upwards of US$132,000 (€117,000, £100,000) – has been awarded annually by the Japan Art Association since 1989. Winners are also announced in the categories of painting, sculpture, music and theatre/film – areas of achievement chosen as they are not

Architect Asif Khan is bringing tiny forests to the streets of London to address the need for calming “third places” in urban environments. The architect has partnered with car manufacturer MINI for the project, called MINI Living, as part of the London Design Festival, which will run from 17-25 September. “Given the trend of urban densification we need to tap urban potentials in creative ways,” said Oke Hauser, creative lead

Designs have been unveiled for the final piece of Daniel Libeskind’s World Trade Center masterplan, with the US$250m (€222m, £188m) Perelman Performing Arts Center labelled as the development’s “keystone”. The translucent marble cube is a far cry from Frank Gehry’s stacked box concept – a US$400m (€355m, £300.5m) design that was officially dropped after more than a decade of development, with the architect declaring "I don't want to go where

A giant aluminium sphere has been unmasked on the streets of Taipei following the removal of the scaffolding at OMA’s Performing Arts Center for the city. The exteriors of two of the centre’s theatres – the Proscenium Playhouse and Multiform Theatre – can now be seen clearly for the first time. Both venues will seat 800 spectators. An elevated transparent central cube will house the 1,500-capacity Grand Theatre, as well

The first ever London Design Biennale will open to the public on 7 September, with participants from 37 nations using the event to explore the concept of utopia. Brand new work by leading architects, designers, scientists, writers and artists will explore how good design can respond to challenges such as pollution, growing and aging populations and mass migration to create perfect societies. The exhibition will include large-scale kinetic sculptures, immersive

Adjaye Associates, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and AL_A are among the six architecture practices in the running to illuminate 17 of central London’s bridges with permanent light installations. Les Éclairagistes Associés, Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, and a team led by Sam Jacob Studio and artist Simon Heijdens are also in contention for the ambitious £20m (US$26.6m, €23.8m) project. Over 340 firms, grouped into 104 teams, entered the competition to breathe new

Studio Gang have been lined up to produce a temporary installation for the National Building Museum's 2017 Summer Block Party, following in the footsteps of Snarkitecture and Bjarke Ingels. The design concept is being kept under wraps for now, but the studio promised it will “engage the spirit of creative experimentation that has defined the success of the Summer Block Party series.” Previous installations include a complex maze, a huge

Culture, health and movement are the focus at MVRDV’s new community centre in Copenhagen, which encourages adults and children alike to enjoy a better quality of life through physical activity. Slides, fireman's poles, labyrinths, nets and climbing walls provide a means of navigating around the Ku.Be House of Culture and Movement, which is being opened today by Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. The project, designed in collaboration with ADEPT, is

Spanish tenor Placido Domingo will tonight (31 August) officially open the nautically-themed new Dubai Opera House, with developer Emaar stating the venue will rival the Sydney Opera House for cultural impact. The singer, known as “the King of Opera”, will give the very first performance at the configurable 2,000 seat venue, which will host theatre, concerts, art exhibitions, opera, orchestra, film, sports events and seasonal programmes. Architecture studio Atkins were

Ma Yansong, Bjarke Ingels, Rem Koolhaas and Herzog and de Meuron are all in the running for the annual architecture prize awarded by London’s Design Museum. The ninth edition of the museum’s Beazley Designs of the Year will celebrate the best creations over the past 12 months across six categories: Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Graphics, Product and Transport. Yansong and his studio MAD are nominated for the Harbin Opera House; Ingels

Beijing architects Studio Pei-Zhu have developed a reputation for their sculptural leisure buildings across China, and they have just started work on another: a museum for, and inspired, by pottery. The Jingdezhen Historical Museum of Imperial Kiln will be located in China’s ‘porcelain capital’ in Jiangxi province. The building – surrounded by clusters of china workshops dating back to the Ming and Qing dynasties – is designed in the vault-like

Six months on from his death, a tribute to music legend Prince will come in the form of a museum at his Paisley Park home and recording complex in Chanhassen, Minneapolis. First announced after the death of the musician in April, the tribute museum has been given an official opening date of 6 October. First opened in 1988, the studio was designed by California-based architecture firm BOTO Design and was

Two architecture studios hope to show how remote heritage sites can be served by ‘satellite’ visitor centres through their own design for a tourist hub which celebrates an uninhabited Scottish archipelago from a location on a nearby island. Scottish studio Dualchas Architects and Norway’s Reiulf Ramstad Architects, who are working in the UK for the first time, have unveiled their masterplan for the St Kilda Visitor Centre. They propose the

Architecture studio Hassell have unveiled their design to revamp the Geelong Performing Arts Centre; one of the leading cultural venues outside of Australia’s main cities. The studio – fresh from winning a competition to design the Western Australian Museum in Perth – have been commissioned by the Victoria state government to oversee a major upgrade of the 35-year-old building’s facade and interior facilities. The result is a contemporary exterior with

Kanye West fans around the world queued for hours to get into one of the 21 pop-up fashion stores opened by the musician and designer over the weekend. West announced the location of the temporary stores – which sold merchandise linked to his latest studio album The Life of Pablo – on Friday, prompting a surge of interest in cities as varied as New York, San Francisco, Singapore, London, Berlin,

A pop-up preview of James Corner Field Operations’ Miami Underline will open on Tuesday (23 August) to showcase how the landscape architects plan to transform the land beneath the city’s MetroRail into a 10 mile linear park. The pop-up will take place at the Underline’s ‘Brickell Backyard’ fitness area, located at the north end of the Miami River, at 10.30am EDT. Event-goers – who are being encouraged to come to

Architects Höweler + Yoon have proposed an interactive ‘Living Lab’ for the Dubai 2020 Expo, which would creatively explore human empathy. The Empathy Pavilion, designed like a giant elevated cave, would house a 300-person capacity exhibition gallery on the ground floor, several workshop spaces on the second floor and a black box theatre on the top floor. The architects have partnered with the MIT Media Lab’s Opera of the Future