Veteran Walt Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde has revealed his secret to storytelling in theme parks, saying that to successfully utilise an IP, attractions creators must put visitors at the centre of their own immersive fantasy world. Recently celebrating the launch of his latest Disney project – Pandora ‘The World of Avatar’ at Orlando’s Animal Kingdom – Rhode said that creators of attractions based on film IPs such as Avatar or

Plans for a botanic garden sheltered beneath a duo of biomes in the Omani desert have been unveiled by Arup, Grimshaw Architects and Haley Sharpe Design (hsd). The Oman Botanic Garden spans 420 hectares (1,037 acres) on the Arabian Peninsula and consists of two boomerang-shaped glass biomes, a visitor centre and education and research facilities. Located in the north of the country, 35km (22m) from Muscat at the foot of

Artist Asad Raza has created an indoor tennis court with a difference: it sits within a deconsecrated 16th-century church. Rather than an excitable crowd of spectators, players in the San Paolo Converso arena will be surrounded by murals of Saint Paul. Otherwise, though, the space is set up like a typical court – complete with lines, netting, racquets, chairs, a jug of iced jasmine tea and even coaches to practice

Designs for a new gallery dedicated to ancient Egypt have been released by Bolton Museum and exhibition designers Leach Studio. Work is already underway on the £3.8m (€4.3m, US$5m) addition to the museum, in the English town of Bolton, Lancashire, with the venue set to re-open in 2018 following essential roof repairs and electrical works. The Eternal Egypt gallery will showcase Egyptian artefacts, a replica Pharaoh tomb, and explain how

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London has made an unusual acquisition – a section of a former council estate that’s set to be demolished. The piece of the building that the museum has acquired consists of a three-storey maisonette flat, its exterior walkway and sections of concrete stairway, which was part of Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar, East London. It’s being taken apart and will be delivered to

Architecture and design studio Rockwell Group have completed a 6,000 capacity music and arts venue in Washington DC, anchoring a new mile-long neighbourhood along a channel of the Potomac River. Designed in collaboration with developers PN Hoffman and Madison Marquette, The Anthem is a 130,000sq ft (39,624sq m) space dedicated to indie and alternative music as well as conventions, art exhibitions, seminars, banquets and fashion shows. Rockwell Group were inspired

French architect Jean Nouvel has revealed a preview of the 1,050ft (320m) high tapering tower he has designed for New York, with renderings showing the development that will fill a condo with culture. Building work on the project, called 53W53, has reached the 58th floor, and it is already towering over the adjacent Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which will be incorporated into the new development. New computer visualisations illustrating

American architect and former Disney executive Wing T Chao will receive the Pioneer Award from The International Society of Hospitality Consultants (ISHC) for services to entertainment design. The annual award, established in 1996, recognises an individual “who has made an outstanding contribution, achievement and or improvement in the hospitality industry”. Chao worked for Disney for 37 years from 1972, with his roles including vice chair of development for Walt Disney

Plans have been unveiled in China to build the world’s highest planetarium – set to open at the Tibet Museum of Natural Sciences in 2019. Dubbed “the roof of the world”, the museum in the provincial capital of Lhasa, sits 4,000m (13,123ft) above sea level, passing through the three permanent exhibition halls of the Natural Science Museum, the Science Museum and the Cultural Exhibition Hall. It also features a theatre

Kew Gardens has announced an opening date for its historic Temperate House, which has been closed while undergoing a five-year renovation. The southwest London attraction said the Victorian glasshouse – the largest in the world – will reopen to the public on 5 May 2018, complete with 10,000 rare and exotic plants. The long and painstaking restoration, designed by Donald Insall Associates and costing £41m (€46m, US$54m), is the biggest

New York practice SHoP Architects have completed their expansion of SITE Santa Fe, one of the most respected contemporary arts venues in the US. The museum – which runs year-round exhibitions, artistic residencies and educational programmes to foster avant-garde art – has occupied a former warehouse in the Santa Fe Railyard since its opening in 1995. SHoP were brought in to emphasise SITE’s role as “a progressive and dynamic cultural

Dutch architects MVRDV have completed the Tianjin Binhai Library in China, a 33,700sq m (362,700sq ft) cultural centre featuring a luminous spherical auditorium which doubles as an enormous mirrored ‘eye’. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases cascade organically around the auditorium, forming the building's main spatial device, while also creating stairs, seating, the layered ceiling and louvres on the façade. The five-storey building holds 1.2 million books, which can be taken to a multitude

The David Chipperfield-designed Turner Contemporary is set to undergo a £5.3m (US$7m, €6m) expansion, new plans have revealed. A spokesperson confirmed to CLADglobal that discussions with partners and funders had begun, with the gallery now developing ideas for the attraction. Arts Council England (ACE) has already committed £3m (US$4m, €3.4m) to the plan and Kent County Council will also play a major part in financing the extension, with the authority

Hastings Pier by dRMM Architects has been announced as the winner of the 2017 RIBA Stirling Prize for the UK’s best new building. In a landmark moment for leisure architecture, the public attraction – which was built to restore a seaside pier ravaged by fire – was hailed by the prize’s jury chair, RIBA president Ben Derbyshire, as a “masterpiece of regeneration and inspiration”. “The architects and local community have

Contemporary art museum The Bass has reopened following a US$12m (€10.3m, £9.1m) renovation headed by project architects David Gauld and Arata Isozaki. The privately run, city-owned museum in Miami Beach, Florida, managed to avoid major damage from the recent Hurricane Irma, but the project had been delayed for more than a year.

The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) has announced it has hired David Chipperfield Architects to create a master plan for its expansion ambitions, following “a thorough and inspiring search.” The design practice will develop prospective design solutions to enhance the museum’s visitor experience and to expand public access to the museum as a community resource. They will consider how to improve visitor circulation, create new public gathering spaces, add more

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles (NHM) has revealed its masterplan to transform the 104-year-old institution over the next decade. Designed by Frederick Fisher and Partners (FF&P), the NHM West/South Project will reimagine the physical space and programmes of the museum, which sits on the same site as George Lucas’ upcoming Museum of Narrative Art. The FF&P masterplan focuses on areas that were not worked on during the original

Adjaye Associates, Ron Arad Architects and landscape designers Gustafson Porter + Bowman have been selected to design the UK’s new Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, it was revealed today (24 October). The new national landmark will stand in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament in Victoria Tower Gardens, London. It will honour the six million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered in the Holocaust, and all other

A brightly lit, rainbow-coloured greenhouse has popped up in downtown Tokyo, Japan, inviting guests to step inside and interact with the sights and sounds created by its vegetable inhabitants. Japanese creative studio Party, which is headed up by Naoko Ito, created the Digital Vegetables installation to run over a three-week period until 5 November. Inside the greenhouse, which is covered in LED lights, visitors are invited to “Touch Design. Bathe

Snøhetta have revealed designs for the international architects' latest leisure project – the first underwater restaurant to open in Europe. Located at the southernmost point of the Norwegian coastline, the restaurant, called Under, will double as an aquarium and marine research centre. Snøhetta's design is inspired by the country's rocky coast, with a monolithic structure breaking from the surface of the sea to rest on the craggy shoreline. The bottom

Work is almost complete on a major new museum in Washington that will teach visitors about the Holy Bible. The US$500m (£380.52, €423.53) Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, has been funded by the billionaire president of arts and crafts superstore chain Hobby Lobby, Steve Green. Opening in November, exhibitions will be spread across eight floors, boasting high-tech interactives and topped with a roof garden. Many of the biblical

A striking new museum dedicated to the life and work of French fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent has opened today (19 October) in Marrakech, Morocco. French architecture firm Studio KO designed the 4,000sq m (43,000sq ft) terracotta brick home of the Musée Yves Saint Laurent on a site next to the city’s Jardin Majorelle, a garden the designer acquired himself to save it from being destroyed by developers. Saint Laurent

Aquatis, a groundbreaking new aquarium and vivarium that’s home to some 100 reptile and 10,000 fish species, is set to open its doors this weekend. The largest facility of its kind in Europe, Aquatis is located near Lake Geneva in Lausanne, Switzerland, and promises to take visitors on a journey through 20 different freshwater habitats from around the globe. Designed by architectural studio Richter Dahl Rocha, the circular building is

Dutch architects MVRDV are have announced a large-scale leisure project in Shanghai that will see the firm meld nature, culture and entertainment in a huge public park on an island in the Yangtze River. Zhangjiang Future Park will become a new focal point for the district of Pudong, with communal public facilities built into a series of green landscaped buildings surrounded by 10,000sq m (107,600sq ft) of plazas converging towards

Adjaye Associates have revealed their design for a new spy museum and interactive experience in the heart of New York, which is set to open this December. The studio’s design for the 60,000sq ft (5,500sq m) building, called SPYSCAPE, is inspired by the architectural language of the world’s largest spy organisations and has been developed in collaboration with former directors of intelligence agencies and station chiefs. Conceived as an “iconic

An abandoned planetarium in Jerusalem will be converted into a museum dedicated to Albert Einstein as part of a US$5m (€4.2m, £3.8m) project to showcase his personal archives. Architects Arad Simon are behind the plans, which will see a museum and visitor centre built on Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus in Jerusalem, Israel. Arad Simon were selected from four local firms, with the university saying the winning proposal was “modest,

A futuristic home has been built for a Roman museum in the French city of Nîmes – in stark contrast to the real-life Roman amphitheatre next door. Construction has been completed ahead of the opening of the Musée de la Romanité de Nîmes in June 2018, with 5,000 exhibits from a collection of 25,000 set to move in over the coming months. Architect Elizabeth de Portzamparc is behind the striking,