The Palestinian Museum, designed by Heneghan Peng, has opened its doors today (18 May) without any exhibits. The US$60m, (€55m, £40m) project, located in the West Bank north of Jerusalem, has the intention of creating an iconic building to act as a beacon of hope for the Palestinian people. It was first mooted in 1999, but has been stalled multiple times due to political tensions in the region. The building

The reimagined Helsinki City Museum in Finland has reopened to the public following an €11m (US$12.4m, £8.7m) refurbishment and expansion of its new premises. Moving from its former home in Helsinki’s historical district to a new location in Senate Square, the 105-year-old museum now occupies five historical buildings surrounding three inner courtyards, opening up spaces never previously accessible to the public. The 18-month renovation by Arkkitehdit Davidsson Tarkela incorporates the

US real estate developer iStar has detailed its ambitions to reinvigorate the struggling New Jersey town of Asbury Park, the economic plight of which has been documented in song by Bruce Springsteen. The firm has announced “a multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan” to transform a 1.25-mile stretch of the park’s waterfront with new public realm, hotels, cultural facilities and residencies. The town was once a popular beach resort, but has fallen

French conceptual artist Daniel Buren has brought vibrant colour to the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, by temporarily adding colourful patterned filters to Frank Gehry’s glass-covered building. Gehry’s building, which opened in 2014, features 12 glass sails formed by 3,600 pieces of glass. In his work, titled Observation of Light, Buren has added staggered filters to each sail, punctuating them with alternating white and empty bands placed an equal distance

The Palestinian Museum Hub – the flagship for a planned network of museums – opens on 18 May in the West Bank north of Jerusalem. The US$60m, (€55m, £40m) project has the intention of creating an iconic building to act as a beacon of hope for the Palestinian people. It was first mooted in 1999 but stalled multiple times due to political tensions in the region. Heneghan Peng were appointed

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced a star-studded shortlist in its bid to celebrate the best building in the world. Zaha Hadid, Bjarke Ingels, Shigeru Ban and David Chipperfield are among the architects in contention to win the first RIBA International Prize. Thirty projects from 50 countries have made the shortlist and will be visited by the RIBA Awards Committee in the coming months. In its inaugural

Stella McCartney, Thomas Heatherwick, David Adjaye and Antony Gormley are among the designers, artists and architects whose time or work has been auctioned to fund the creation of a new home for one of the world's biggest design museums. The sale, hosted by auction house Phillips, raised over £1.1m (US$1.6m, €1.4m) towards the renovation costs of the Design Museum’s forthcoming building in Kensington, London. A total of 55 pieces were

Minnesota’s Bell Museum of Natural History has broken ground on a new US$79.2m (€69m, £54.7m) complex near the State Fairgrounds on the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis campus. To be renamed the Bell Museum and Planetarium, a 120-seat domed planetarium and theatre will be one of the main new features, in addition to expanded galleries and a host of interactive exhibitions. Minneapolis-based architecture firm Perkins+Will have created the box structure, which

After nearly two years of legal wrangling, George Lucas looks to have given up on Chicago as a viable option for his Museum of Narrative Art, with the filmmaker’s wife saying they were “seriously pursuing” alternative locations. With more installments than his famous Star Wars films, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art saga reached a significant landmark in February when a judge ruled in favour of legal action taken by

Parisian billionaire and philanthropist François Pinault, is taking over a historic commercial building in Paris to showcase his €1.2bn (US$1.4bn, £950m) modern art collection to the public. Pinault, who once ran a fashion empire including Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Puma and Balenciaga before handing the reigns over to his son François-Henri in 2001, follows the likes of Louis Vuitton and Prada in opening public museums to store their collections. “It

Architecture firms Cubo and jaja, along with a team consisting of VMB, Schul, Søren Jensen and Mogens Morgen, have been named winners of a competition to revitalise a 15th century castle on the Danish island of Funen. The medieval Nyborg Castle – the site where Denmark’s first constitution was signed in 1282 – will feature a new exhibition wing and visitor centre, as well as bridges for visitors to approach

Stockholm City Council has approved David Chipperfield’s controversial design for a permanent home and museum for the Nobel Foundation. Under the proposals, a 25,000sq m (269,000sq ft) golden, cuboid facility will be constructed to house nearly all the foundation’s activities, including the Nobel prize ceremony, and to stimulate ideas and knowledge through a museum. However, the new headquarters will be located in an inner-city Blasieholmen district surrounded by many of

The team behind Rio’s recently opened Museum of Tomorrow has said that they want the museum to act as a hub of culture, information and science, inspiring the local community to great things and to leave a lasting legacy in the build up to this year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games. Speaking exclusively to CLAD, Luiz Alberto Oliveira, chief curator at the museum, said that the Santiago Calatrava-designed structure was a

Sheila E, long-time collaborator with Prince, has said there are plans to turn his Paisley Park home and recording complex in Chanhassen, Minneapolis, into a museum dedicated to the musician’s career. First opened in 1988, the studio was designed by California-based architecture firm BOTO Design and was the home of Paisley Park Records until the music label folded in 1994. After its closure, Prince continued to live and record at

The second phase of a 15-year restoration and redesign programme at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) is nearing completion, with construction progressing on the new entrance, open courtyard and underground gallery designed by architecture studio AL_A. The £49.5m (US$71.4m, €63.5m) Exhibition Road Building Project – the V&A’s largest architectural scheme in the last 100 years – is expected to open in 2017 now that 95 per cent of its

Kengo Kuma has won the first prize in an architecture design competition to create a new fairytale-themed home for the Hans Christian Andersen Museum in Odense, Denmark. A peaceful garden and tall trees will surround cylindrical timber-clad volumes that house 6,000sq m (64,600sq ft) of new floor space, including an underground level. The complex, which will also include the Tinderbox Cultural Centre for Children, is designed to create empathy, imagination

Entertainment mogul David Geffen has donated US$100m (€89m, £69.5m) to New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the largest donation yet to MoMA’s funding campaign for its large-scale expansion. MoMA unveiled revised US$445m (€407.3m, £310.6m) plans to redevelop and expand the facility in January, with the design by Diller Scofidio + Renfro streamlining the museum experience to work better for both visitors and curators. Geffen – who has a net

A shortlist of eight celebrated and emerging architecture practices has today (21 April) been announced for the final stage of an international architecture competition to design a waterfront arts district in Doha, Qatar. The studios of Pritzker winners Alejandro Aravena and Renzo Piano are in the running for project, called Art Mill, alongside other big names including EAA Emre Arolat Architecture and Atelier Bow-Wow. The site of the new district

The Association for the Promotion and Exhibition of the Arts in Lebanon (APEAL) has revealed the shortlist for an architectural design competition to build a new “modern and contemporary” art museum in the heart of Beirut, Lebanon. The contest was open to architects of Lebanese origin from around the globe, and 66 submissions from 16 countries were received. These were whittled down to a final shortlist of 13, who are

Acclaimed artist Cornelia Parker has taken inspiration from the paintings of Edward Hopper and the ominous Bates mansion from Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho to create a large-scale roof garden commission for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. For the fourth year running, the Met has organised a site-specific rooftop exhibit mixing architecture, art and design. The Roof Garden Commission: Cornelia Parker, Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), which opens to the

The first ever project of pioneering engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel – London’s underwater Thames Tunnel – has this week opened to the public as a new cultural attraction and concert hall. The 19th century tunnel – the first in the world built underwater – is now used as part of the city’s rail network. It was built in 1843 by a teenage Brunel with his father, Marc, to connect the

A floating park designed by Thomas Heatherwick for New York’s Hudson River has overcome a major hurdle after a judge in Manhattan dismissed a lawsuit seeking to halt the project. According to the New York Times, civic group City Club of New York filed the action, claiming the US$130m (€1115.4m, £91.8m) project was not transparent, had not been subjected to enough public scrutiny, and should face a new environmental review.

While the Smithsonian is stalling on plans to move to London’s Olympicopolis site, the British Museum is looking at the possibility of a satellite site at the upcoming cultural hub. For the Washington-based Smithsonian, which has 19 affiliates in the US, uncertainty over costs to open a new 3,750sq m (40,300sq ft) satellite facility within the new cultural quarter on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park has delayed a final decision.

A controversial restoration of an ancient Spanish castle has been awarded an international architecture prize, despite being lambasted by a national heritage group as “lamentable”. Spanish studio Carquero Arquitectura’s modernist reinterpretation and renovation of Matrera Castle was the Popular Choice winner at the Architizer A+ Awards, which promotes and celebrates “meaningful architecture”. The 1,000 year-old stricture, which was falling into ruin, was propped up by a white cuboid structure, formed

Ground has broken on the latest project of Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron: a new home for the National Library of Israel. The new building – which will replace the library’s current 1950s home, described as “outdated and barely serviceable” – is located in Jerusalem’s National District adjacent to Israel’s parliament building. When it opens in 2020, it will protect, preserve and showcase the country’s cultural and intellectual books,

Danish studio AART Architects have been named the winners of an international competition to design a new extension for the Viking Age Museum in Oslo, Norway. The firm were chosen ahead of 11 rivals to create a “new signature, forward looking setting” for one of the country’s most popular museums – which exhibits a number of Viking Age boats and artefacts – after the judges unanimously approved the bold, circular

Daniel Libeskind yesterday (11 April) publicly revealed for the first time that he has been developing a Kurdistan Museum in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region. The Polish American architect spoke out about the secretive, long-gestating project during an appearance at Bloomberg Design Week in San Francisco. The project was commissioned by the prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani – who approached Libeskind seven years ago