The team behind the development of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi have asked contractors to renew their tender bids, indicating the long-stalled development could be about to splutter back into life after several years on the shelf. Speaking to Arabian Business, a senior executive with one of the bidding companies said the Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC) had recently asked them to renew their bid bond. “The commercial bid was submitted

The Los Angeles Planning Commission has officially approved on Star Wars creator George Lucas’ plans to build the long-gestating Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Exposition Park. The decision was finalised yesterday (11 May), according to news service NBC Los Angeles. New renderings and information released by Lucas and MAD Architects, who have designed the spacecraft-like museum, reveal the latest iteration of the green lit project. The museum will have

A seemingly doomed plan to build a new world-class concert hall in the City of London has been given a new lease of life, with an architecture competition launched to find a concept design team. The Barbican performing arts centre, the London Symphony Orchestra and Guildhall School of Music & Drama have together fired the starting pistol on the competitive process for the venue, called The Centre for Music, calling

An international architecture competition has been launched for the renovation of one of Brussels’ modernist masterpieces to create a new satellite for the world-famous Pompidou Center art museum. The Urban Development Corporation of the Brussels-Capital Region is seeking a design team to lead the €125m (US$136m, £104m) Citroën Cultural Centre project. As well as the 15,000sq m (161,500sq ft) Pompidou branch, there will also be a 10,000sq m (107,600sq ft)

Architecture studio Scott Brownrigg have unveiled their design for the proposed new home of the Museum of Military Medicine in Cardiff. The museum’s directors want to relocate the attraction from its current home at Keogh Barracks near Aldershot to Cardiff Bay, and the vision for what the planned new building will look like was presented this week for public consultation. The collections of the four corps of the Army Medical

The Victoria and Albert (V&A) museum is using the £100,000 (US$130,000, €118,000) prize it received in 2016 for winning the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year to launch a programme to support art and design education in secondary schools. Called DesignLab Nation, the scheme is an evolution of the brainchild of former V&A director Martin Roth, which sent touring exhibitions to museums and art schools across Britain until 1977, when

The US$305m (€278.2m, £235.1m) Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science is celebrating its grand opening today following a major expansion and redevelopment. The hotly-anticipated museum – which sits in a prominent location on Miami’s waterfront in the city's Museum Park – has navigated through difficult circumstances to reach this stage. Pharmaceutical entrepreneurs Patricia and Phillip Frost had to step in last year to fill a US$45m (€41m, £34.7m) funding

The architecture practice of Sir David Adjaye will lead the design of a major library and events centre in the city of Winter Park, Florida. Adjaye Associates have been hired by the Winter Park City Commission to work alongside HuntonBrady Architects on the project, which will be located in the northwest corner of the city’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. The building will be the new home of the Winter

Swiss architect Peter Zumthor has presented his designs for the extension of Renzo Piano’s Fondation Beyeler in Basel. The CHF100m (US$101m, €92.2m, £78.1m) project will be constructed on the previously private land of the Iselin-Weber Park. It will see the addition of a simple service building for administration and deliveries, a transparent pavilion for events and a House for Art to display expanded collections of modern and contemporary art. The

A team led by landscape architecture studio Grant Associates with WilkinsonEyre has won an international competition to design a 41 hectare Friendship Park in northern China’s first and largest ‘eco city’. At the heart of the landscape will be a conservatory complex comprising five glass biomes, each housing tropical plant collections and water gardens. A wetland centre, an urban dock, play areas, an event lawn and amphitheatre will also be

Barack and Michelle Obama, the former president and first lady of the United States, have today (4 May) unveiled the design of the planned Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side. Designed by Todd Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the complex will be formed of a museum dedicated to Obama’s presidency, a library of his archives and a forum to advance the Obama Foundation’s public mission to promote global progress. Visitors

David Chipperfield has overcome stiff competition to win the high-profile design competition to create a 1,000-capacity concert hall in Edinburgh. Adjaye Associates, Richard Murphy, Allies & Morrison, Barozzi Veiga and KPMB were all in contention for the commission, but the vision outlined by Chipperfield's practice was enough to sway the developers of the £45m (US$58.1m, €53.2m) venue; the city’s first new performance building in 100 years. The concert hall has

“Endless political wrangling” is responsible for the likely abandonment of London’s Garden Bridge project, its designer Thomas Heatherwick has claimed. Last week London mayor Sadiq Khan said his office will not guarantee to underwrite the bridge’s operational and maintenance costs, if private funding and commercial operations can not cover them. Planning permissions for the bridge require such a commitment from the mayor. In a letter to Lord Mervyn Davies, chair

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has formally withdrawn his support for a Thomas Heatherwick-designed Garden Bridge across the River Thames; bringing a likely end to a project that has fiercely split opinion. In a letter to Lord Mervyn Davies, chair of the Garden Bridge Trust, which has been overseeing the controversial crossing, Khan said the lack of all the necessary land use agreements and a significant funding shortfall mean

A new concert hall will open within the ‘Cultural Palace’ of Dresden, Germany on Friday (28 April). Architecture studio von Gerkan, Marg and Partners (gmp) won an international competition to refurbish and renovate the Kulturpalast, a listed historic monument, in 2009. The 1,800-capacity, multipurpose concert venue suts at the heart of the building, and has been re-developed in a way that is neither secondary to the existing style elements nor

Wynn Resorts has confirmed plans to build a US$500m (€458.7m, £390m) lagoon theme park at the company’s resort complex in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 20-acre Paradise Park attraction, which in the day will hosts watersports and in the evening fireworks displays, will be made up of a lagoon with a white sand waterfront, featuring a host of attractions along a 4,000ft (1,220m) boardwalk. Speaking during an earnings call, Wynn Resorts

To celebrate its 40th anniversary, the foundation of iconic British sculptor Henry Moore has opened a new visitor centre and archive dedicated to his work. The Henry Moore Foundation was founded in 1977 to encourage public appreciation of the artist’s work and to support emerging talent. In the last four decades it has awarded over 2,000 grant awards totaling £31m (US$39.7m, €36.4m). To mark its birthday, the organisation has upgraded

Kodak has announced plans to create a brand home in Rochester, New York, with leading design firm Jack Rouse Associates (JRA) selected to plan, design and implement the 9,000sq ft (836sq m) Experience Centre. Part of a 10-year masterplan to breathe life into the Eastman Business Park, the centre will explore Kodak’s innovations in photography, film, printing, digital imaging, and chemistry. Telling the story of the Kodak brand, the centre

Work is nearing completion on Jamie Fobert Architects’ cliffside extension of Cornwall’s Tate St Ives, with an official opening date now set for 14 October this year. A four-year construction project, the plans go back 12 years to 2005 when the London-based Jamie Fobert was first appointed to double the size of the museum. In addition to lengthy delays because of planning issues, Jamie Fobert lost the project in 2011

London’s upcoming Postal Museum has confirmed that it will open its doors to the public later this year, with the £26m (US$33.2m, €30.5m) attraction set to launch in July. Created to chronicle five centuries of social and communication history across Britain, the Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios-designed Postal Museum has been financed through the Heritage Lottery Fund, Royal Mail and Post Office, in addition to support from a number of individual

Kengo Kuma’s US$33.5m US$33.5m (€31.3m, £26.2m) expansion of Portland’s Japanese Garden, celebrated as one of the most authentic of its kind gardens outside Japan, has opened to the public. The project, Kuma’s first public commission in the US, has seen the creation of a new Cultural Village that provides additional space to accommodate the attraction’s rapid visitor growth and immerses visitors in traditional Japanese arts and culture. To honor the

Vessel, Thomas Heatherwick’s centerpiece for the public square and gardens at the Hudson Yards development in New York, is rising from the ground. The first pieces of the sculptural urban landmark were placed together earlier this week on Manhattan’s West Side. The public will be able to follow construction progress from vantage points on the High Line and from Hudson Park and Boulevard over the upcoming months. Vessel will be

Los Angeles’ Academy Museum of Motion Pictures isn’t following the Hollywood script during its construction, with skyrocketing costs and lengthy delays holding up the long-awaited project, according to new reports. The Renzo Piano-designed museum, which will be dedicated to exploring and curating the history and future of the moving image – was originally budgeted at US$250m (€233m, £195m) when it was first conceived several years ago, but since then costs

International architecture studio Snøhetta are today (19 April) celebrating the official completion of their hotly-anticipated revamp of the most visited destination in the United States – New York’s Times Square. The firm was commissioned in 2010 to find a way of doubling the amount of public space in the square by creating a new 2.5 acre pedestrian-only plaza on Broadway; transforming a congested vehicular district into a world-class civic space

The ever-busy architecture practice of Kengo Kuma have added yet another large-scale leisure project to their growing slate of work: the Odunpazari Modern Art Museum in the Turkish city Eskisehir. A series of overlapping stacked wooden volumes will form the 3,582sq m (38,500sq ft) museum building, which will display collections of Turkish contemporary art. Located in a recently developed area of the city’s Odunpazari district – which is known for

An international design competition is to be held in the next few months for a new concert venue in the heart of Kaunas, Lithuania. Malcolm Reading Consultants (MRC) has been appointed by Kaunas City Municipality to run the one-stage design contest, which will identify an architect to build a world-class music venue, called the M.K. Ciurlionis Concert Centre, with multifunctional spaces for public and community events. The initiative follows the

The West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) has invited young local architects to conceive an eye-catching temporary pavilion for Hong Kong, with high-profile designers including Thomas Heatherwick, Sou Fujimoto and James Corner judging their efforts. The inaugural Hong Kong Young Architects & Designers Competition is is intended as a platform for emerging architects and designers “to showcase their creativity and potential” and gain valuable experience. The competition is open to