The Sanad Capital investment group is planning an AU$400m (US$302m, €271m, £245.6m) “active lifestyle” destination in Queensland, Australia. Sanad – the Australian offshoot of Dubai-based investment firm Najibi Group – is financing the “never-before seen in Australia” project, which will feature extreme water facilities and an Olympic-standard training centre. The mixed-use project will also have a 4-star hotel, conference and exhibition centre, restaurants and retail elements. The development is expected

Officials have broken ground a new US$70m museum dedicated to the Statue of Liberty on the monument’s home of Liberty Island. Designed by Nicholas Garrison, principal for FXFOWLE, the 26,000sq ft museum is a key part of the beautification plan for Liberty Island, with the building blending into its surroundings, seemingly rising out of the ground with its grass roof. The museum was designed in such a way so as

The University of Iowa will today (7 October) unveil its flagship new arts centre, designed by Steven Holl Architects. The 126,000sq ft (11,700sq m) Visual Arts Building contains galleries, workshops, teaching spaces for Art History and an outdoor rooftop studio. Carvings into the zinc-clad concrete volume form seven terraced ‘cutout’ light courts and multiple balconies, infusing the interior with light. A campus route threads through the largest of these courts,

Newport Street Gallery – Caruso St John Architects’ conversion of almost an entire street of listed industrial buildings in south London into a free public gallery for artist Damien Hirst’s private art collection – has won the 2016 RIBA Stirling Prize for the UK’s best new building. The presentation of the prestigious trophy took place at a special ceremony on Thursday evening (6 October) at the headquarters of the Royal

Washington DC’s National Gallery of Art has reopened its East Building following a three-year, US$69m (€61.5m, £54.2m) renovation process. The I.M. Pei-designed building gains an additional 12,250 sq ft (1,140sq m) of floor space, split between two new galleries to house the works of Alexander Calder and Mark Rothko, and a new rooftop terrace. Katharina Frithsch’s Hahn/Cock – a giant blue sculpture of a cockrel – sits on the new

The Coop Himmelb(l)au-designed Museum of Contemporary Art and Planning Exhibition (MOCAPE) has opened in Shenzhen, China. The megastructure consists of two institutions, a modern art gallery and an architecture-focused meeting and exhibition space, connected by a shared plaza, multi-use conference rooms, exhibit space, auditoriums, a library and lobby. The two institutions are united beneath a transparent facade, which creates a vast column-free space for exhibiting art in the museum section

SantaPark, the award-winning Lapland attraction and “official home” of Father Christmas, is nearing completion on 37 luxury accommodations and bistro-style restaurant and bar. The €20m (US$22m, £17m) Arctic TreeHouse Hotel development – which is scheduled to open on 19th November at the theme park in Rovaniemi, Finland – has been designed by fledgling Helsinki architecture firm Studio Puisto. The rooms boast panoramic floor-to-ceiling windows facilitating views of forest and Arctic surroundings as

Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Science Center has detailed plans for its US$21m (€18.7m, £16.1m) Science Pavilion to include 14,000sq ft (1,300sq m) of new exhibition space. Designed by Indovina Associates Architects, the three-storey building will be built around the existing Omnimax Theater with the pavilion facing out over the Ohio River. In addition to temporary exhibition space, the extension will feature nine STEM learning labs and a top-floor space capable of hosting

London's Design Museum has announced a host of star names from the worlds of architecture and design will help open its new home in Kensington with a special exhibition called Fear and Love - Reactions to a Complex World. Fashion designer Hussein Chalayan and architect Neri Oxman are among the contributors providing eleven newly commissioned installations that will explore a spectrum of issues that define our time, “including networked sexuality,

King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands has officially opened the Voorlinden Museum – a modern, minimalist new home for the art collection of industrialist Joop van Caldenborgh. Situated in the southern town Wassenaar and designed by Dutch practice Kraaijvanger Architects with Arup, the museum has parallel symmetrical walls that allow the interior to open to the environment. The simple exterior includes a white colonnade to support the roof and a façade

Plans are underway to recreate William Shakespeare’s iconic Globe Theatre around the world using nothing but scaffolding and re-purposed shipping containers. The original Globe was built by Shakespeare in 1599 in the London borough of Southwark as a theatre in the round, which allowed huge crowds get as close as possible to the onstage action. The theatre was destroyed in 1644, but a replica was created in 1997 using the

Jiangnan Global Harbor, one of the world’s largest leisure-led retail schemes, has officially opened near Shanghai. The 500,000sq m (5.3 million sq ft), five-level project is located in the city of Changzhou, within the prosperous Jiangsu province. Designed by architects Chapman Taylor, the scheme has a vast Art Deco-inspired atrium with giant LED screens and musical fountains; 60,000sq m (645,800sq ft) of space dedicated to bars, restaurants and cafés; and

Wang Jianlin’s public feud with Disney continues to heat up with the Wanda chair’s latest multi-billion Wanda City to open its doors tomorrow (23 September). Located 500km (311m) west of the recently opened Shanghai Disney Resort, the US$5.2bn (€4.64bn, £4bn) Hefei Wanda City has been described as the “first Huizhou culture theme park in the world.” A tribute to the culture of the Anhui province, which dates back more than

New York’s American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has been granted first approval for its US$325m (€288.8m, £248.6m) expansion intended to expand the institution’s role for scientific research and education. AMNH was given the approval when a joint committee composed of members from the Community Board 7 committees on preservation and parks and environment voted in favour of the Gilder Center plans, which will create a new six-storey addition to

Disney chair and CEO Bob Iger has said that the operator’s new Shanghai venture has “ample expansion possibilities” following a strong opening three months. Disneyland Shanghai, which opened on 17 June this year, has enjoyed a strong start to life as a visitor attraction, with the company reporting 95 per cent occupancy rates and visitors staying two hours longer on average than expected. “We've had a fantastic opening for Shanghai

The long-awaited opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. will take place this Saturday (24 September), with US president Barack Obama in attendance. A three-day festival of music, literature, dance and film will accompany the opening of the museum, which is dedicated to exploring the story of America through the lens of the African American experience. Obama will lead the museum’s dedication ceremony

Plans are in the works to develop a multi-million pound aquarium project in Southampton, combining undersea creatures with a showcase of the region’s strengths and its links to the high seas. Combining an aquarium setting with a maritime center exploring Southampton’s position at the centre of a global story, the development promotes itself as championing “Storylines of Science, Technology and Life: Voyages of Discovery.” The site will also include a

The founders of Dutch architecture studio MVRDV believe their project for Rotterdam’s Museum Boijmans van Beuningen offers a new model for how museums can take full advantage of their vast cultural collections. Winy Maas, Nathalie de Vries and Jacob Van Rijs – who are transforming what was an art storage depot into an attraction in its own right – told CLAD that rethinking the art storage facility as something that

Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects have won an international architecture competition to design “a new public centre” for the city of Stavanger, Norway. Their successful proposal for Breiavatnet Lanterna envisions a large-scale urban redevelopment of the city’s park and the addition of a 101m (331ft) high rise of flexible space for restaurants, cafes, performing arts spaces, exhibitions, green terraces and offices. Multifunctional leisure facilities will be placed around a large amphitheatre

Designer Mathieu Lehanneur’s famous marble sculpture, which mimics the look and feel of rippling water, has gone on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as part of the city’s ongoing design festival. The piece, called Liquid Marble, evokes a surreal vision of the sea by using 3D movie-making software to reproduce the visual effect of the water’s surface on a piece of hand-polished black marble. Liquid Marble

Oslo studio Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter have completed work on the Norwegian Mountaineering Center, which is designed to resemble a snow-topped peak. Reiulf Ramstad won a design competition for the project in 2009 with their vision for a site that captures the experience of mountaineering through form. Located on the harbourside of Åndalsnes in Norway’s mountainous Romsdalen Valley – the completed structure resembles a angular mountain, with pixelated white shingle cladding

Swiss architect Peter Zumthor has been chosen to build the multi-million Euro extension to the Fondation Beyeler art museum in his home city Basel. An international jury composed of prominent figures from the worlds of art and design – including architects Jean Nouvel, Annabelle Selldorf and outgoing Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota – unanimously selected Zumthor to lead the project, which will add new exhibition and educational facilities to the

David Marks, chair and designer of the recently-launched i360 vertical cable car in Brighton, UK, has apologised to its visitors after the observation pod broke down three times in the space of five days. Dubbed a “vertical pier”, the 531ft (161m) tower opened its doors at the start of August – a project 11 years in the making. A spokesperson told CLAD that the breakdowns happened when the tower’s automatic

British designer Thomas Heatherwick has unveiled a climbable public landmark that will be the towering centrepiece of New York City’s Hudson Yards development. Vessel is a honeycomb-like structure of 154 interconnecting flights of stairs, 2,400 steps and 80 landings. A mile's worth of pathway will rise above a public plaza below. Conceived as a vast interactive sculpture and a new public landmark, it will stand 150ft (45.7m) tall with a

Nickelodeon has unveiled plans to build the largest indoor amusement park in the western hemisphere as part of New Jersey’s under-construction American Dream Meadowlands mall and leisure complex. Dubbed Nickelodeon Universe, the 35,000sq m (370,000sq ft) amusement park will feature a number of rides based on iconic Nickelodeon brands, including SpongeBob SquarePants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and newer shows like Blaze and the Monster Machines. In addition to a selection

The British government has announced plans to build a £40m (US$53m, €47m) Holocaust memorial near the Houses of Parliament in London, launching an international contest to find the best concept design. The move came about after a recommendation by the Holocaust Memorial Foundation. Architectural competition consultancy Malcolm Reading has asked interested parties to get in touch by 2.00pm BST on 17 October 2016. No design is required at this stage.

Work has been completed on a unique project for Norway’s National Tourist Route (NTR), with a cluster of prefabricated structures by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor creating a selection of viewpoints and architectural rest stops as part of a project dating back 14 years. Allmannajuvet – which was first conceptualised and commissioned in 2002 by the Norwegian Public Roads Administration – is now open to the public, with the Allmannajuvet zinc