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

MVRDV’s design for a cultural hub in Zaandstad, Holland, featuring a concert hall, cinema, arts space, dance studio, library and architecture centre, has been given the green light by the municipality. The project, called The Cultural Cluster, can now be pushed forwards into the next stage of design. The Dutch architects have completed the preliminary design phase, which visualises a raised cubic volume with variously coloured silhouettes of traditional Zaan

Canadian practice Diamond Schmitt Architects have released design details for a new arts complex in Texas inspired by the legendary 1950s pop star Buddy Holly. The Buddy Holly Hall of Performing Arts and Sciences will be located in the city of Lubbock, where the singer was born. The multi-purpose centre will be a new home for rock concerts, operas, ballets and touring Broadway shows, as well as large-scale social and

The developers of Rogers Place, a forthcoming multi-use arena and stadium for Canadian ice hockey franchise the Edmonton Oilers, have released new images showing construction progress. Work on the CA$600m (US$470m, €410m, £325m) venue – located in downtown Edmonton, Alberta – started in March 2014 and is scheduled to be finished in time for the start of the 2016-2017 National Hockey League (NHL) season in October. The new images, released

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

Tickets are now on sale for the world’s tallest and longest slide, which will open inside Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal Orbit London tower on 24 June 2016. Known simply as The Slide, the attraction is a collaboration between artist Kapoor and designer Carsten Höller. The 178m (590ft) helter skelter, designed with Bblur Architects, will start 76m (249 ft) above the ground and includes transparent polycarbonate sections allowing riders to look at

Denmark’s Museum of Rock Music opens today (29 April) in the city of Roskilde, marking the latest building from Dutch architecture studio MVRDV. The museum is as striking as you’d expect from the designers of Rotterdam’s famous curved Market Hall. The design channels Mick Jagger, David Bowie and other flamboyant figures from the history of rock music with a textured, spiky golden facade and plush deep red interiors. “The building

The longest treetop walkway in the UK has opened to the public in a botanical garden in Gloucestershire. The twisting 300m (984ft) route weaves through the National Arboretum at Westonbirt, starting and ending at ground level and rising 13m (88ft) in height as it follows the valley floor below. Named the STIHL Treetop Walkway, the installation has been designed by Glenn Howells Architects with engineers Buro Happold. The £2m (US$3m,

HBO has turned to the world of art to promote its latest series of Game of Thrones, hosting a temporary immersive art experience influenced by iconic moments in the hit TV series. Taking place in New York’s Angel Orensanz Center, Art the Throne featured five Game of Thrones -inspired art installations on display throughout the gothic space. For the exhibition, HBO selected a diverse group of artists to reinterpret scenes

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

French studio Manuelle Gautrand Architecture and Australian firms DesignInc and Lacoste + Stevenson have been unanimously chosen by Parramatta City Council to design a six-storey cultural hub for the Australian metropolis. Described by the design competition jury as “an exemplary architectural masterpiece,” the semi-transparent building at 5 Parramatta Square will be formed of a stack of crystalline layers arranged in a wave-like structure extending from the city’s Town Hall. The

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

An open international architecture competition has been launched to design a future Science City in Egypt. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a major library and cultural centre, has organised the single phase, open contest to receive conceptual designs and masterplans for a 125,000sq m (1.35m sq ft) scientific complex designed to promote scientific knowledge to the public. The city will house interactive science exhibitions, a museum, a planetarium, an observation tower, research

The project architect responsible for Zaha Hadid’s Messner Mountain Museum Corones in Italy has told CLAD that cultural buildings have an important role to play in the reinvigoration of ski resorts. Peter Irmsche, who is interviewed in the latest issue of CLADmag, explained how Hadid’s museum – one of her final completed projects before her untimely death on 31 March this year – has increased the popularity of Italy’s Kronplatz

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 founder of design studio Blue Sky Hospitality Henry Chebaane has told CLAD that interior designers should not be afraid of “outside the box” thinking if they are to create livelier and more authentic hotels, bars, restaurants and leisure spaces. Chebaane and his design firm, Blue Sky Hospitality, are known for their creative and unorthodox designs, and have just launched a typically quirky Asian restaurant called Kojawan on the top

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.

Kengo Kuma architects have unveiled their latest completed project: an angular wooden cultural centre near the Japanese Alps in snowy Nagano prefecture. The project was commissioned to coincide with a new high-speed railway line connecting the small city of Iiyama to the Hokuriku region on Japan’s main island. Both openings have been planned to revive the city's economic prospects. Kuma’s building is formed of three volumes: two events halls for

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

The board of the Serpentine Galleries in London – famous for organising the architectural Serpentine Pavilion programme – has announced the appointment of entrepreneur Yana Peel as the organisation’s new CEO, in place of departing director Julia Peyton-Jones. Peel, previously a trustee at the galleries, is the co-founder of the Outset Contemporary Art Fund and CEO of live debate forum Intelligence Squared. In her new role, she will work alongside

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,