Toronto citizens will soon be able to take an intergalactic journey on their way to work, thanks to a sci-fi tinged public art installation that will encourage placemaking in one of the city’s burgeoning neighbourhoods. Artistic collective Blue Republic will create a pair of 15ft (4.5m) alien characters to stand guard over the cafes, offices and a new residential development on Redpath Street. The group won the contract after coming

A video has been released providing an insight into the design process behind Shigeru Ban’s Aspen Art Museum (AAM), which opened to the public last year. The film, released by Redsquare Productions, features interviews with Ban and the museum’s director Heidi Zuckerman about the museum’s striking design and its impact in the city.

International architecture and design practice The NRA Collaborative have outlined their masterplan for a sweeping new entertainment district in Brisbane, Australia. The proposed precinct, called Brisbane Live, would create an area around the city’s Roma Street featuring entertainment venues, commercial buildings, hotels, residences, restaurants, a retail zone and 12 hectares of parkland. At the heart of the design is a 17,000-seat arena able to host a multitude of events from

A pair of artists have given visitors to Italy’s Lake Iseo the opportunity to walk on water. The duo, known as Christo and Jeanne-Claude, have created a temporary 3km-long installation called Floating Piers, which stretches from the commune of Sulzano in the province of Brescia to the island of San Paolo. Created using 100,000sq m of shimmering yellow fabric – carried just above the water by a modular floating dock

Today (17 June), the British public can finally see for themselves the long-gestating expansion to London’s Tate Modern art museum, masterminded by Herzog & de Meuron. The architects transformed the derelict Bankside Power Station on the River Thames into the museum in 2000 to house the UK’s collection of international modern and contemporary art. The Tate was expected to receive two million visitors each year, but was soon welcoming closer

A passion project of the late Zaha Hadid has been unveiled to the world, with her exhibition design for a major retrospective of artist Kurt Schwitters opening in Zurich this week. Schwitters was well known for his poetry, music and Dadaist-flavoured art. His most famous work is an installation called Merzbau – described by critics as “a living, inhabited, ever-expanding collage” – which spread over eight rooms in his Hanover

Wolfgang Buttress’ multi-sensory celebration of bees will open to the public this Saturday (18 June) in London’s Kew Gardens. The Hive is a pavilion inspired by scientific research into the health of bees and their role in pollinating crops essential to human survival. The 17m (55.7ft) high, 40 tonne aluminium structure takes visitors on an experiential journey through the life of a bee colony, from an outside meadow into the

The architecture studio of David Adjaye have won the international competition to design a new contemporary art museum for the centre of Riga, Latvia. The Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation today (16 June) announced that Adjaye Associates’ vision for the museum – which imagines a highly-animated tilting roof geometry – has been selected ahead of six rival submissions, including from Caruso St John Architects and Henning Larssen Architects. Adjaye

New London mayor Sadiq Khan has claimed culture will be as important as housing, transport and the environment in his administration. Speaking at the press opening of the new Tate Modern in the UK capital, Khan vowed to increase the number of cultural facilities and public spaces by “embedding culture in London’s planning system.” “For too long culture has been merely a nice-to-have,” he argued. “We’ve got to change that.”

Tadao Ando has told CLAD about his design for a new contemporary art museum in Paris which will house the vast collection of billionaire businessman François Pinault. Pinault’s plans to transform the French capital’s historic Bourse de la Commerce into the museum were unveiled in April this year. Ando was selected to work on the project following a previous collaboration with Pinault to renovate Venice’s 17th century Punta della Dogana

Mark Wray Architects have won an open design competition to design a visitor hub for an ancient forest site in Surrey, England. The firm’s design for the project – which will be located in 640 acre Langley Vale Wood – was described by judges from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and Britain’s Woodland Trust as an “imaginative and beautiful scheme that demonstrates well how mankind and nature can

The Rothschild Foundation has backed an international design competition to create a £20m (US$29.2m, €25.7m) light installation on the 17 central London bridges crossing the River Thames. Chaired by Lord Rothschild, The Rothschild Foundation gives grants to a variety of charitable initiatives, also supporting artistic and cultural ventures across the UK. With the foundation’s backing, the Illuminated River contest is searching for ‘elegant and charismatic’ proposals to transform the Thames

Designs by a number of architects competing to design a €30m (US$34m, £23.6m) contemporary art museum in Latvia have been unveiled. The seven teams – shortlisted from an invited list of 25 global architecture firms and each paired with a local design team – include Adjaye Associates and AB3D; Caruso St John Architects and Arhitektu birojs Jaunromans un Abel; Henning Larsen Architects and MARK arhitekti; Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects and

The Museum of London is looking into the possibility of opening a viewing gallery at the top of London’s upcoming 1 Undershaft. The towering skyscraper – which will be as tall as the neighbouring Shard if approved to open in 2022 – will be located in the heart of the capital's financial district. When Eric Parry Architects unveiled the plans in December 2015, the design envisioned large areas of public

The leader of South Korea’s newly-created Administrative City has launched an international architecture competition for a National Museum Complex (NMC) that will help make the destination “a global culture city”. Choongjae Lee, the city’s administrator, has vowed to build “the world's most beautiful and liveable city” through investment in architecture, technology, urban planning and design and environmental sustainability. The Administrative City, also known as Sejong, was established in 2007 and

Zaha Hadid’s Mathematics Gallery for London’s Science Museum will open to the public on 8 December 2016, it has been announced. Hadid studied mathematics at university, so the project was close to her heart. Called The David and Claudia Harding Gallery in honour of two of its major donors, the space will explore how mathematicians, their tools and ideas have helped to shape the modern world over the last four

The president of France Francois Hollande was on hand yesterday (31 May) for the pre-opening of La Cité du Vin; a new international cultural wine centre for Bordeaux, France. Designed by Paris studio XTU Architects, the complex is a permanent 13,000sq m (140,000sq ft), €136m (US$151.3m, £104m) visitor experience celebrating the history of winemaking. It opens to the public today (1 June). The building’s curving form was designed by architects

The British Film Institute (BFI) has unveiled ambitious plans to build a new world-class International Centre for Film, TV and the Moving Image – a move heralded by the great and the good of British cinema. The BFI has revived a long-gestating plan to create a flagship national home for the film industry on the site of an existing car park on London’s South Bank, near its current cinema venue.

Zaha Hadid Architects have been appointed to design a landmark cultural quarter overlooking the seafront in Bournemouth, England. Initial proposals for the site, which is currently home to a car park, include a multi-use performance space, a hotel, restaurants and new public realm linking the cultural quarter to the beaches, town centre and forthcoming Winter Gardens scheme via a new Grand Garden Walk. The project will cost a reported £25m

New York’s Bronx Museum of the Arts has announced plans for a multi-million dollar architectural overhaul, resulting in more space for the institution’s public programmes and exhibitions. A public-private partnership between the museum and city of New York, the US$25m (€22.4m, £17m) project is being funded by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and overseen by the NYC Department of Design and Construction. Venezuelan-American architect Mónica Ponce de León and

Danish company Kvorning Design & Communication are simultaneously developing projects across all of Norway’s World Heritage sites, creating bespoke exhibitions for each site celebrating the country’s history. Kvorning beat a number of Norwegian architecture firms in a design competition for the contract, which includes the DKR24m (US$3.65m, €3.25m, £2.55m) development of a visitor centre at each of Norway’s eight World Heritage sites. Included in this list is Struves Geodetic Arc,

25 years on from its inception, work is nearing completion on Newmarket’s £14m (US$20.4m, €18.2m) National Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art, which sees the Palace building and stables transformed to create a state-of-the-art museum dedicated to the sport of horseracing. Celebrating more than 350 years of sporting history, Mather & Co are behind the plans, which gained Heritage Lottery funding in 2012 to the tune of £4.25m (US$6.2m,

David Chipperfield Architects have presented the schematic design for the new Nobel Center in Stockholm to the public, weeks after the controversial project received the green light from the city council. While the architects have maintained their initial concept for the building – which will house the Nobel Foundation headquarters and a museum for the organisation – the design has been developed in order to “strengthen its public character” The

Lausanne in Switzerland has unveiled plans to combine the city’s three major art and design museums into a single cultural hub, with all three institutions getting new homes as part of the landmark development. Known as Plateforme10, the three museums will sit on 22,000sq m (237,000sq ft) of repurposed industrial land next to the city’s main train station. Laid out as “an open terrace, an esplanade revealing the scope of

The first images of the long-awaited extension to the Tate Modern art gallery in London have been released ahead of its official public opening on 17 June 2016. The Tate Modern was created in 2000 by Herzog and de Meuron, who transformed the derelict Bankside Power Station on the River Thames into a home for the UK’s collection of international modern and contemporary art. The architects reunited eight years ago

German architecture studio von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (GMP) have won an international competition to design an Urban Concert Hall in the Chinese city of Chengdu. The firm’s vision for the project was chosen by city officials ahead of competing entries from Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid Architects, Nikken Sekkei and Aedas. They will now set to work completing a final design for the building, which will have opera and concert

The completed first phase of redevelopment at Chicago’s Navy Pier will be officially unveiled on 27 May, kicking off a year-long programme of celebrations. Landscape architecture and design firm James Corner Field Operations have been revamping the pier since winning an international design competition for the US$278m (€255.9m, £197.6m) project in 2012. Phase one includes new arts and cultural programming, restaurants and landscape design across nine acres. It has been