A giant observation wheel is coming to Moscow, Russia, with the mammoth structure set to overtake the London Eye in terms of size and stature, becoming the largest in Europe. The Giant Wheel visitor attraction is engineered and manufactured by Intamin, the company that created the same landmark for Orlando, Florida. A Russian news service reported that the investment company, Regiony, is aiming to make the wheel one of Moscow’s

Torontonians have flocked to the city’s beach in record numbers to experience the unveiling of eight brand new Winter Stations installations along the shoreline of Lake Ontario. The creators of the attractions, who were chosen in a design competition, were tasked with designing “playful” structures – based around the beaches’ lifeguard stations – capable of drawing people into the chilly outdoors to interact with the icy environment. The installations include

Frank Gehry, the classical music-loving architect behind the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles has completed his latest concert hall: the intimate oval Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin. The single-room facility, which took four years to build and opened on 4 March, is housed within a four-storey building designed by architect Richard Paulick in the 1950s to store sets for the Berlin State Opera. Designed as a modular 360-degree

The Delta Development Group has signed an initial agreement to drive forward plans for a Dutch-inspired theme park and leisure destination near Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The scope of the project has also widened to include plans for on-site hotels providing up to 4,000 rooms. Delta signed the deal with the City of Haarlemmermeer, a large suburb south of Amsterdam and the municipality where Schiphol Airport is located. Concept drawings

British street artist Banksy has returned with his latest politically-minded project: a nine-room hotel located next to the controversial barrier wall separating Israel from the Palestinian territories. The Walled Off Hotel, located in the Israeli-controlled part of Bethlehem, has been opened as both a genuine business venture and a piece of protest art. Work by Banksy and other artists, a themed bar and interactive exhibits all feature. The hotel directly

Canadian architects Lemay have won an international competition to redesign the corniches of Morocco’s Casablanca coast and create a leisure-filled seaside promenade. The contest was launched by real estate agency Casa Aménagement in June 2016, with the intention of prompting a design that can become “a landmark destination in Morocco.” The project is intended to enhance a 5km stretch of Casablanca’s dramatic cliffside pathways and roads, creating “a layered sensory

The Eden Project in Cornwall has been granted planning permission to build a new 109-bedroom on-site hotel. Accessibility, energy-efficiency and sustainability are the key features of the design, by architectural studio Tate Harmer. In order for the £8.5m (US$10.4m, €9.9m) hotel to blend into the surrounding countryside, and with the Eden Project’s famous two plant-filled biomes, its two blocks will be clad with prominent timber poles. Existing features in the

Those eagerly anticipating the colonisation of the Moon will be delighted to know they’ll be able to get a dose of culture 384,400km away from Earth’s atmosphere, after artists Julio Orto and Joey Cannizzaro proposed The Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon, or MoCAM as it would be known. Offering fantastic views of Earth, the duo have already purchased a 20 acre plot of land on the Moon, located

Apple is about to open its new US$5bn (€4.7bn, £4bn) headquarters in April, with the Foster + Partners-designed project in California to include a dedicated visitor centre for tourists and a new theatre named after company co-founder Steve Jobs. Sir Jony Ive, design chief for Apple, played a significant role in the project, working with Foster + Partners to realise the project in a hands-on capacity. The doughnut-shaped futuristic campus,

A state-of-the-art attraction themed around the National Football League (NFL) in the US will open in New York City in November under the leadership of former New York Cruise Lines CEO Danny Boockvar. The NFL Experience, which is being created by Cirque du Soleil and the NFL, will feature high-tech displays, interactive media and a 350-seat 4D theatre that will be play 20-minute films immersing visitors on the sidelines or

Norwegian architecture firm Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter have won an international competition to design a public trail, amphitheatre and viewing platform along an abandoned railway line in Alsace, France. Described as “a lace undulating in the landscape,” the Chemin des Carrières (or ‘Quarries’ Track’ in English) is designed to remember the history of the landscape and the people who once mined and quarried there. The Rosheim-St Nabor railway, which served the

The extraordinary life and career of music icon David Bowie could be marked with a gravity-defying lightning bolt sculpture in the London district where he was born. Architect Zac Monro, arts collective This Ain’t Rock’n’Roll and sculptor Tom Carter have proposed the three-storey, 9m (29.5ft) tall steel memorial, which reimagines the famous bolt sported by Bowie on the cover of his 1973 album Aladdin Sane as a giant three-dimensional structure

Scottish football club Celtic have announced plans for a hotel and museum complex to be built next to the 47-time Scottish Premier League (SPL) champions’ home ground. The proposal, which also includes a ticket office and retail store, will be submitted to Glasgow City Council for approval, with the development to come up outside the main stand of Celtic Park. “The application is part of Celtic’s long-standing masterplan for the

The public consultation process for the proposed Hong Kong Palace Museum has been extended and new designs of the building released, as backers of the project strive to win support for the controversial scheme. A 10,000sq m (107,600sq ft) site on Hong Kong’s western harbour front has been earmarked to house the museum, which would display artefacts on long-term loan from Beijing’s famous Palace Museum under the terms of a

Landscape architects McGregor Coxall have won an international competition to design a wetland nature sanctuary envisioned as the world’s very first “bird airport”. Each year more than 50 million birds fly from the Antarctic reaches to the northern tip of the earth along the East Asian-Australian Flyway (EAAF) seeking food and shelter. However, this corridor is under severe threat from coastal urbanisation and the resultant destruction of bird-friendly habitats. In

Architects Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten of international studio OMA have been announced as the high-profile designers of the 2017 MPavilion in Melbourne, Australia. The duo will work together to create the temporary landmark and events hub, located in Queen Victoria Gardens, which will host a free, four-month programme of talks, workshops, performances and installations. The MPavilion project began in 2014, and is inspired in part by the annual Serpentine

Diébédo Francis Kéré, the award-winning architect from Burkino Faso, has been commissioned to design the Serpentine Pavilion 2017. The Serpentine Pavilion programme, which began in 2000, sees an architect who has never built in the UK create a temporary summer pavilion in Kensington Gardens. Herzog & de Meuron, Jean Nouvel, Sou Fujimoto, SANAA and Bjarke Ingels Group – whose ‘unzipped wall’ structure was visited by more than 250,000 people in

Ambitious US$100m (€94.1m, £80.2m) plans have been submitted to Kentucky’s Department of Tourism to develop a 1 million sq ft (93,000sq m) retail and entertainment centre – part of a larger plan to develop 300 acres (1.2 million sq m) of tourist attractions. Del Spina Enterprises, a locally-based corporation which submitted the plans, want to develop 100 acres for retail and accommodation, while the remaining 200 acres will be used

The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) has released a new video exploring the architectural inspiration and complex engineering challenges facing its forthcoming branch in Dundee, Scotland. The new film features interviews with the building's architect Kengo Kuma, the executive director of Dundee City Council Mike Galloway and some of the engineers and builders charged with realising the ambitious vision for a cultural landmark capable of reigniting the city’s waterfront. They

New York practice Jenny Sabin Studio have won the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) annual Young Architects Program, with their design of a socially and environmentally responsive installation that adapts to the densities of bodies, heat and sunlight. Opening at MoMA’s sister institution, MoMA PS1, in Long Island City on 27 June, the structure – called Lumen – will bathe visitors in a responsive photo-luminescent glow at night, and emit

A Polar Ocean World for Shanghai along with a ski park and planetarium have been identified as part of a larger masterplan to redevelop the city’s Pudong area, drawing up to 10 million visitors annually. The development, which also includes two universities and college campuses will feature the 300,000sq m (3.2 million sq ft) Shanghai Polar Ocean World, housing four interactive animal exhibits, three theatres and 15 further entertainment facilities.

International architects Snøhetta have “blended extroversion and introversion” in their design for the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Saudi Arabia; the very first project of its kind in the kingdom. Project manager Tae-Young Yoon told CLAD that the studio’s biggest challenge was creating both a landmark and a building that “speaks to each individual person” who visits it. “The extrovert part derives from what people want and expect

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) will design a new factory and visitor experience for mineral water company San Pellegrino, after finishing top of an international competition for the project. The studio revealed their sinuous design for the 17,500sq m (188,000sq ft) complex, which will “guide visitors through the 30-year journey of the natural mineral water,” is inspired by “the serpentine run of the Brembo river and the sloping Alpine mountainsides.” San

The reinstallation of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) Aston Webb Screen – previously a solid stone wall hiding the building’s Victorian boilers – has been completed, breaking down the separation between the street and the museum. The last stone has now been placed in the modified, newly-open structure; signalling a major milestone in the V&A’s Exhibition Road renovations designed by architects AL_A. According to the design team, “the screen

Plans have been unveiled in Nashville, Tennessee, for a US$500m (€471m £401m) development set to feature an 829-bedroom hotel and a host of new attractions. To be located in downtown Nashville, the World One Hotel would become the city’s largest, with architects Earl Swensson Associates (ESa) drawing up plans on behalf of the Big T Building Company (BTB). According to BTB, a four-storey video wall would be wrapped around three

Hotel giant MGM Resorts International has opened its latest luxury resort in America; the US$1.4bn (€1.7bn, £1.4bn) MGM National Harbor in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Located on a site overlooking the Potomac River, the 1.7 million sq ft (158,000sq m) mixed-use development took three years to build and is conceived by MGM as “an entertainment destination offering an unrivalled collection of attractions.” Architectural firm HKS Hospitality Group oversaw the project,

Visitors to China’s capital can experience the Beijing National Stadium from a dramatic new perspective following the the opening of a corridor along the structure’s roof. According to the China Daily newspaper, visitors can now ascend to the very top of the landmark ground, which was designed by architecture studio Herzog and de Meuron and artist Ai Weiwei for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. A 200m (656ft) section originally built