Northern Irish architect Alan Jones has been elected the next president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Jones will take over the two-year presidential term from Ben Derbyshire on 1 September 2019. Jones is director of his own architecture practice based in County Antrim. He is also a senior lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast and the RIBA’s vice president for education. Speaking about his aims for his presidency,

Stirling Council has approved plans for a £20m (US$25.7m, €22.2m) transformation of the University of Stirling’s sports facilities. FaulknerBrowns Architects have drawn up plans for an iconic new sports building that integrates with the university's existing world-class facilities, which include national tennis and swimming academies. The University of Stirling Sports Centre will include purpose-built studios, a fitness suite, a three-court sports hall, indoor cycling studio, strength and conditioning area, as

LICAMPA 1617, an enterprise led by Spanish billionaire entrepreneur Juan Roig, has revealed plans to develop a multi-use indoor sports arena in Valencia, Spain. The company is looking to create the region's premier destination for sports, music, arts, and cultural events and has appointed sports architects HOK to design the arena. The main tenant of the arena will be Valencia Basket, a professional basketball team – sponsored by Roig –

The first ever museum dedicated to telling the story of American comedy has opened in Jamestown, New York, US. JRA provided complete master planning, design, project management and art direction for the 37,000sq ft (3,400sq m) National Comedy Center, which took seven years to complete at a cost of around US$50m (€43.2m, £38.6m). As well as featuring 50 exhibits exploring comedy history – from vaudeville to viral memes – the

Plans have been unveiled to build the UK’s first dedicated women’s football stadium at Sheffield Olympic Legacy Park. Scarborough Group International has submitted a planning application for a 3,900-capacity stadium, which would become the new home of Sheffield United Women Football Club. Whittam Cox Architects, supported by Arup Sheffield, have been appointed to design the £5m (US$6.5m, €5.6m) Stadium, which will feature a single grandstand, housing hospitality and conferencing facilities

Construction work has now begun on the £300m (US$393m, €336m) renovation of Borough Yards in London – a series of Victorian-era railway arches that sit near to the River Thames, Tate Modern art gallery and world-famous foodie haunt Borough Market. Due for completion in 2020, Borough Yards will feature five mixed-use buildings that will house a workspace, retail units, gallery, restaurants, cinema and creative spaces. The brick-built railway viaducts will

A new hotel with a striking minimalist design aesthetic and a light-filled, tranquil spa will open this November on the Caribbean island of Grenada. A member of The Leading Hotels of the World, Silversands Grenada will be located on the Grand Anse Beach and include 43 suites and nine residential villas. With architecture and interiors by AW² – Reda Amalou and Stéphanie Ledoux – Silversands Grenada features linear architecture and

Some of the world’s most renowned architectural practices have submitted entries to a design competition for a new building in Melbourne, Australia. Situated in the city’s Southbank area, the new building will be a mixed-use tower development. Six entrants, including Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), MAD Architects, Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and MVRDV have submitted entries. BIG, in partnership with Fender Katsalidis Architects, are proposing a mega 359.6m-high two-building development

The eagerly awaited Bill Bensley glamping resort, Bensley Collection – Shinta Mani Wild, which is set deep within the wilderness of Cambodia’s South Cardamom National Park, will open on 1 November 2018. The resort will offer 14 one-bedroom luxury tents – all sized at 100sq m (1,076sq ft) – and one two-bedroom luxury tent – sized at 140sqm (1,507sq ft). The tents have been designed to evoke Bensley’s vision of

November 2018’s World Architecture Festival (WAF), at the Amsterdam RAI Exhibition and Convention Center, will have a speaker list boasting some of the biggest names in architecture. Adjaye Associates principal Sir David Adjaye, UNstudio co-founder Caroline Bos, Crab Studio founder Sir Peter Cook, OMA partner Reinier de Graaf and AECOM EMEA head of architecture Jennifer Dixon will all speak at the event, among others. WAF attendees will be able to

A 200-hectare, 150-bedroom hotel by luxury brand Anantara is to open in the Chinese city of Chengdu. The hotel will be a fairly low, wide structure with plenty of natural light throughout, owing to the large number of windows all around it. The whole project incorporates a 47-hectare eco-wetland park and, beyond its 150 bedrooms and suites, will have an all-day dining restaurant, speciality restaurant and lobby lounge. Other features

The innovative roof of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, US has been completed and is now fully operational. The roof is made up of eight moveable pentagonal shapes – labelled as “petals” by architects HOK – that join at the centre to provide full precipitation coverage. The eight petals are made from ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) and move together along 16 individual tracks. The mechanism gives the effect of the

Global spa consultancy Raison d’Etre (RdE) has been contracted by the Hard Rock Hotel Davos, Switzerland to design and implement the hotel’s ‘Rock Spa’ which opens on 1 August. Combining spa, fitness and yoga, the new Rock Spa will offer a 360-degree approach to wellness, in keeping with Raison d’Etre’s philosophy to encourage everyone to maximise their potential. The 945sq m spa will boast a series of thermal experiences, including

Asia-based General Hotel Management (GHM) has announced the opening date for its new Sharjah hotel, Al Bait Sharjah, as 1 September 2018. The hotel, which was developed in partnership with Sharjah investment and development authority Shurooq, is marketing its offering as a “refined level of luxury, sophistication and personalised service never experienced before in the Emirate”. In homage to traditional Sharjah architecture, Al Bait Sharjah’s foundations are set into the

The current trend of incorporating wellness into design shows no signs of stopping as renderings and animations from the latest Sir Richard Branson project, Virgin Voyages (a rebrand of the former Virgin Cruises), show a heavy wellness focus in its public areas. Featuring a running track, boxing ring, yoga deck, wellness pool and hydrotherapy pool, the ambitious cruise ship project is looking to change the way people think about sea

English football club Liverpool FC has confirmed plans to redevelop its academy site in Kirkby and the neighbouring Eddie McArdle community playing fields. The £50m project, designed by architects KSS, will see the Reds’ first team and academy football training operations and facilities brought together on one site in a new training campus. The 9,200sq m training centre will create a combined first team and U23 academy facility, each of

Asian hotel interiors specialists AB Concept, co-founded by Ed Ng, have designed restaurant, bar and lounge areas for the new the new Four Seasons Kuala Lumpur. Yun House, the main restaurant, has a decadent courtyard-style reception with an elaborate pewter back panel. Its high ceilings and natural light reference Malaysia’s longstanding tradition of socialising in gardens. The design of Yun House was inspired by legends of Canton voyagers, according to

Architecture and design practice Sam Jacob Studio will give London’s Cartoon Museum "greater flexibility" in displaying its collection, having been appointed to design its new home. The museum, which showcases a collection of cartoon and comic art dating back as far as the 18th century, was founded in 2006 and is "dedicated to preserving the best of British cartoons, caricatures, comics and animation". Following a 25-year lease deal agreed with

A 35-acre public park, which will also complete the Miami Beach boardwalk, will accompany Eighty-Seven Park – Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano’s first foray into the US residential market in Miami, Florida. Eighty Seven Park’s developer, Terra, is putting $10m (€8.5m, £7.6m) towards the North Shore Park transformation with plans to create an environment that will enhance the neighborhood and “bring the North Beach community closer together”. The park project

The latest CLADglobal news roundup video is now live. In this broadcast, we look at OOPEAA’s floating urban swimming pools, explore Margot Krasojevic’s tidal powered, energy saving hotel and discuss AECOM’s new stadium in Cameroon for the upcoming 2019 Africa Cup of Nations football tournament.

Architects Carlo Ratti Associati (CRA) and city transformation company Sidewalk Labs, owned by Google’s holding company Alphabet, have teamed up to create a “prototype for a modular paving system which aims to make streets reconfigurable, safer and more accessible to pedestrians, cyclists and tomorrow’s self-driving vehicles”. Currently on exhibition in Toronto, The Dynamic Street is made up of a series of hexagonal modular paving slabs that can be picked up,

Three concepts have been shortlisted as finalists for the 2018 Radical Innovation Award, a hospitality design award that calls for the “best and brightest” concept ideas. Italian practice Network of Architecture (noa*) have been shortlisted for their striking concept – a hotel designed especially for single or separated parents and their children. With a proposed location in Sirmione, on the south coast of Lake Garda, Le Colline Incantate (the Enchanted

A redeveloped football stadium designed by Italian architectural practice Iotti+Pavarani in Pisa, Italy will blend into its Tuscan surroundings and sit low, so as not to disrupt the skyline of the city, according to the architects. Paolo Iotti, partner at the firm, told CLADglobal : “The architectural intention is to define a ‘new landscape’ establishing strong synergies with its context rather than creating a self-contained object of ‘design’; our main

Amos Rex, a new art museum in Helsinki, is set to open in August 2018, following the refurbishment of the Lasipalatsi Building in the centre of the Finnish capital. The €50m (US$58m, £44.7m) project, designed by Finnish architects JKMM, will house 2,200sq m (23,600sq ft) worth of gallery space created beneath the remodelled public Lasipalatsi Square. The new gallery’s roof, meanwhile, is formed of numerous domes, which contain angled rooflights

Tate St Ives is the only leisure building to find its way onto the shortlist for the 2018 RIBA Stirling Prize for the UK’s best new building. The Cornish museum – designed by Jamie Fobert Architects with Evans & Shalev – is one of the six projects today (19 July) revealed to be in the running for the prestigious prize. The other nominees include student housing, an office building, a

Atelier Chang have designed brightly coloured pods for a 'minimalist luxury' glamping resort near Suncheon in South Korea. The SJCC Glamping Resort consists of 16 living units, with an onsite restaurant and reception. The units are manufactured off-site and connected to the mains electricity and water supply; they feature a living area, two bedrooms and a kitchen and bathroom. They are made from a lightweight steel frame, covered with an

Adriaan Vorster, formerly a partner at international design practice SSH, has been appointed as director for architecture, Africa at global architecture company AECOM. A professional architect of 18 years, Vorster has 10 years’ experience at a strategic, managerial and business leadership level. Beyond this, Vorster has spent 15 years in the delivery of healthcare campuses in the UK, North America, the Far East and the Middle East. His work in