The SANAA-designed Grace Farms complex – a multipurpose facility which features a gymnasium, library and several performance spaces – officially opened on 9 October in New Canaan, Connecticut, US. The Grace Farms Foundation – a non-profit organisation established in 2009 to support initiatives in the areas of faith, the arts, justice and community – celebrated the milestone with a two-day celebration, which included a special performance by the Paul Taylor

The UK’s first glow-in-the-dark skateboard park has opened in Liverpool ahead of the city’s 2016 biennial arts festival. The permanent sculpture, which is named Evertro, opened to the public on 6 October. It has been designed by South Korean artist Koo Jeong A in association with developer Wheelscape Skateparks. The central bowl of the facility is coated in a phosphorescent paint, so when evening falls, the park glows a luminous

Dutch architectural firm Groosman has unveiled a new Rwandan art and cultural centre which will feature two huge cantilevered wings. The Rotterdam-based studio worked with engineers Geelhoed Group on the design of the Kigali Art & Culture Centre, which will be located on the outskirts of Rwanda's hilly capital. The cross-shaped block will be decorated with traditional African geometric patterns and will feature two cantilevered sections overhanging an elevated plaza,

Ground has been broken on a US$45m (€40m, £29m) immersive arts facility in Meridian, Mississippi, designed by Gallagher & Associates and dedicated to film, literature, music, art, dance, theatre and visual arts. The 58,500sq ft (5,435sq m) Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience has been designed to be “totally immersive”, according to principal architect Cybelle Jones, who said the plans would incorporate media, hands-on experiences and interactive art. "What is so

US architects ArandaLasch have unveiled plans for a contemporary arts complex and gardens in Bali, envisioned as a place to experience “art within nature”. Revealed at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Budidesa Art Park – funded by Chinese-Indonesian entrepreneur Budi Tek – comprises a series of art gardens, a museum complex and residences surrounded by rice paddies near the country’s capital of Denpasar. Budidesa will act as a new

The work of the late Mark Fisher has been realised with the opening of Stufish Entertainment Architect’s Dai Show Theatre in Xishuangbanna, China. Fisher, who died in 2013, drew the initial concept designs for the Dai Show Theatre, which hosts a permanent 75-minute acrobatic water display created by show producers Dragone. Key to the Xishuangbanna’s cultural offering, the 19,500sq m (209,900sq ft) theatre is inspired by the natural and cultural

London’s Natural History Museum (NHM) is to undergo a multi-million pound transformation of its grounds as part of an overall redevelopment of the popular tourist attraction. Niall McLaughlin Architects, in collaboration with Kim Wilkie, won a competition to redesign the grounds of the London attraction in April 2014. As part of a larger strategy, NHM is adopting "three great narratives", which will guide visitors around the museum based on the

Oscar-winning filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki has revealed plans to create real-life versions of the landscapes from his imaginative anime films, with designs for a 10,000-acre (40,000sq m) nature park on a remote island off the coast of Japan. Miyazaki, who retired from filmmaking in 2013, will recreate the magical worlds seen in classics such as Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and My Neighbour Totoro, at the theme park on Kume Island

A £215m (US$329m, €296m) extension for London’s Tate Modern will open next year, the gallery’s director has said. The announcement should assuage fears that construction work for the popular visitor attraction was running behind schedule. The designs have been on the table since 2008, and the extension was originally slated to open in time for the capital’s 2012 Olympic Games. The 11-storey addition, designed by acclaimed architecture firm Herzog &

The architectural team behind director George Lucas’ Museum of Narrative Art have revealed revised renderings of the plans, which have been drawn up to counter a lawsuit filed by green space advocates. Images by Beijing-based MAD architects, which will be officially presented to the City Council this week, show a significantly smaller but similarly-designed version of the lakefront buildings, with more green space for recreational use. Earlier this month, a

The Broad, a new contemporary art museum, has become the latest addition to the Los Angeles cultural sector, with the free-to-visit attraction opening to the public on Sunday (20 September). Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) in collaboration with Gensler, the museum cost US$140m (€123m, £91.6m), with funding coming from billionaire philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, founders of the The Broad Art Foundation. The dramatic honeycomb structure cladding the

Swiss-based architecture firm Savioz Fabrizzi have repurposed a number of shipping containers, inserting them into an existing venue in the town of Sion in Switzerland to create a grunge-style music hall. The two-storey Le Port Franc, which is centred around a 300-seat concert hall, also includes a rehearsal space, dressing rooms and a breakout lounge. The containers have been converted for multifunctional use, with one being transformed into a bar.

A popular Snarkitecture-designed exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, drew to a close this week, attracting almost 200,000 visitors in just two months. The temporary interactive exhibit, entitled BEACH, was installed in the museum’s famous Great Hall and made from a mishmash of construction materials and an ocean of 750,000 recyclable plastic balls. “We had around 182,000 visitors total,” a spokesperson for the National Building Museum told

Antoni Gaudí's Casa Vicens in Barcelona, Spain, is to be turned into a museum celebrating his work. It will open during the second half of 2016. The house was built in 1889 and is a UNESCO-listed World Heritage site. Gaudí, who lived from 1852 until 1926 is the best known practitioner of Catalan Modernism – a style centred in Barcelona and expressed mainly through architecture. Casa Vicens is the first

After drawing the ire of the Egyptian government when it created a replica sphinx last year, a Chinese theme park in Shijiazhuang has added to its collection, creating a 1:1 replica version of Paris’ Louvre Pyramid. Not sharing quite the same iconic locale, the replica Louvre Pyramid – the original of which first opened in 1989 – sits in the overgrown field of the unique amusement park/movie set in Shijiazhuang,

Croatian-Austrian design collective numen/for use have unveiled a new installation at Aut. Architektur und Tirol museum in Innsbruck comprised of a series of interactive, explorable, stitched safety nets. The temporary exhibition, which closes on 10 October, uses elastic strings tethered to the ceilings and walls of the exhibition space, forming a fluid tunnel for intrepid visitors to traverse through. The architect’s design uses dispersed structural support to allow for an

SO-IL has revealed its design for an art gallery in Brooklyn, New York, which explores the relationship between both exterior and interior, and light and dark. The four-storey Artes Amant – expected to complete by 2017 – is a haven for modern art, where artists can create, display and store their work. The designs for the 1,320sqm (14,250sq ft) Artes Amant began with the inside, looking first at the functionality

Global design, architecture, engineering and planning firm HOK has redesigned 42 suites at the Mandarin Oriental New York hotel to offer guests a unique experience of the city. The HOK-designed one and two-bedroom suites feature panoramic views of Central Park, the Hudson River and the Manhattan skyline and aim to invoke New York City life through the course of a day with their distinct theming. To achieve this, the project

More than 100,000 visitors have visited an unusual seaside-inspired installation at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC, causing online ticket sales to be ceased to ensure current ticket holders can be accommodated. The temporary exhibit, entitled BEACH, has been installed in the museum’s famous Great Hall and is the work of architecture practice Snarkitecture. The Brooklyn-based firm’s 10,000sq ft (929sq m) interactive architectural exhibit – made from a mishmash

Rumours that urban artist Banksy is behind a pop-up visitor attraction in Weston-super-Mare, England, were given further credence today (20 August) as Dismaland’s website went live, revealing a cavalcade of counter-culture contributors. Dismaland, a twisted version of a Disney theme park, has been installed at the town’s Tropicana lido, which has been derelict since 2000. According to the website, hosted at dismaland.co.uk, “Dismal Land is a festival of art, amusements

Gucci has become the latest fashion powerhouse to bring its brand into the restaurant business, opening 1921 Gucci in Shanghai, China. The chic new eatery, which can only be accessed via an elevator inside the Gucci Shanghai boutique, follows in the footsteps of Armani's Fifth Avenue restaurant in New York City and Ralph Lauren's Polo Bar, as fashion giants seek to harness their brand power in new markets. Although Gucci

Having recently chosen Chicago, Illinois, as the host location for Barack Obama’s presidential library, The Barack Obama Foundation is now launching a competition to find an architect for the US President’s legacy project. The presidential library – a repository for preserving and making available the papers, records, collections and other historical materials of every President of the US since Herbert Hoover in 1929 – will be developed in partnership with

Banksy has reportedly created a twisted version of a Disney theme park, which the anonymous street artist is planning to open this weekend as a pop-up visitor attraction in Weston-super-Mare, England. The subversive theme park-cum-art exhibition has been built over the past several months under the guise of a movie set at the 10,200sq ft (950sq m) abandoned Tropicana lido. Signs at the site indicated Grey Fox Production were shooting

A former salt depository has become one of Ibiza’s most prominent art galleries after renowned New York-based collector Lio Malca converted the former warehouse into a contemporary arts venue. Known as La Nave, the 8,000sq ft (743sq m) conversion on the south-east coast of Ibiza – founded by the Colombian-born Malca who also runs a modern and contemporary art gallery in New York – debuted with an exhibition profiling Brooklyn

Singapore’s National Gallery will open to the public at the end of this year with a new S$532m (US$379.6m, €344m, £243.7m) development housing the world’s largest public collection of Singaporean and Southeast Asian art inside two of the country’s most historical buildings. Designed by Studio Milou Singapore, in partnership with CPG Consultants, National Gallery Singapore is housed within two heritage buildings in the city’s Civic District. Taking up the former

Shanghai’s G+PARK museum cluster has unveiled a colourful new wedding chapel, creating a kaleidoscope of colour for adventurous couples to tie the knot. Designed by Coordination Asia, the Rainbow Chapel is made up of 3,060 glass panels painted in 65 bright translucent colours, surrounded by a square white structure partially open to the surrounding museum park. Both shapes are traditionally important in Chinese symbolism, with the circle representing fullness and

Shigeru Ban’s latest project – the Oita Prefectural Art Museum – has opened in Japan, becoming an artistic piece in its own right to inspire the local community, acting as a “cultural catalyst.” Located on the southwestern island of Kyushu, the building’s timber-lattice clad structure – in reference to the region’s history of producing fine wood crafts – covers three floors and is designed so the external walls, comprised of