The headquarters of Santander are to be transformed into a public space and art gallery following the move of the Spanish banking giant to new offices. Coming as part of an initiative to bring much of the bank’s vast art collection – currently held in Madrid – to Santander itself, Santander will move its operation to the nearby Banesto building, freeing up its former home for public use. British architect

Designs for The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games Village, released this week, show that the Games will leave behind both a sporting and a housing legacy. The Games Village – comprising accommodation, dining, medical, transport and essential services for athletes and team officials during the Games – will be situated on a 24-hectare site at Perry Barr in the north of the city. The site is the current location of the

Architecture firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners have completed a distillery and visitor experience for whisky producer The Macallan, embedded into the landscape of Scotland’s Easter Elchies Estate. The £140m (US$187m, €160m) project, which took three and a half years to build and opened on 2 June, features an undulating, meadow-covered roof described by the Macallan as “one of the most complicated timber structures in the world” Comprising 1,800 single

Herzog and de Meuron have completed their latest cultural project: a museum and arts complex spread inside a walled compound of heritage justice buildings on Hong Kong Island. A dramatic light show marked the opening of the Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts on 25 May, with 150 guests in attendance, including the administrative region’s chief executive Carrie Lam. Over twelve years, the Swiss architects have carefully restored 16

Marriott International’s W Hotels brand has re-entered the Australian market with the opening of the W Brisbane, a new hotel that features fast-paced urban style and modern design with a “decidedly cheeky Aussie point of view”. Owned by Shayher Group, the 312-bedroom W Brisbane is located riverside in the city’s central business district. With interiors from Nic Graham & Associates, the hotel embraces Brisbane’s connection to Australian identity and uses

Architects Woods Bagot are transforming an abandoned sugar factory in Zhuhai, China, into a cultural, tourism and leisure park that celebrates the city’s industrial heritage and welcomes visitors with a sweet tooth. The Hongqi Zhen Sugar Factory was opened in the 1960s and became a key pillar of Southern China’s sugar plantation and processing industry. However, the industry eventually fell into a decline and the complex closed its doors in

French architect Elizabeth de Portzamparc has revealed to CLADglobal how she wanted to “glorify 21 centuries of architectural history” with her Roman museum in the French city of Nîmes, which opens today (2 June) in the shadow of a real-life Roman amphitheatre next door. The Musée de la Romanité de Nîmes has been designed as a striking, fluid building that forms a contemporary counterpoint to the neighbouring Arena of Nîmes.

Fifa's World Football Museum is opening a temporary exhibition in Moscow, Russia, through the course of this year's World Cup. To be hosted at the Hyundai Motorstudio in the Russian capital, the major exhibition – called The History Makers – will open on 9 June, five days ahead of the football tournament's kick off. The exhibition runs until 20 July, five days after the tournament's conclusion. As part of The

The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is to move to a new home in Costa Mesa, California, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne and his studio Morphosis. Groundbreaking for the new building will take place in 2019 within the Segerstrom Center for the Arts complex – the county’s largest centre for arts. The projected opening has been announced for 2021. With nearly 25,000sq ft (2,300sq m) of exhibition

Wellness design firm A.W. Lake has opened its new headquarters in Northern Colorado, with the building set to become a hotbed of wellness research in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. The monolithic steel building, called the Center for Wellness Strategies, stands 2,000m (6,800ft) above sea level on a 40 acre (16 hectares) site bordering a vast swathe of national forest land. The building will serve as a hub for

Chelsea Football Club has today (31 May) announced that it has put its new stadium project on hold, blaming “the current unfavourable investment climate.” According to the London club, no further pre-construction design and planning work will occur on the Stamford Bridge project, designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron, and no timeframe has been set for it to reconsider its decision. The 60,000-seat stadium was granted planning permission in

Steven Holl has revealed to CLADglobal the role that watercolour painting plays in his design process; offering a rare glimpse of some of the artwork he has created over his five-decade-long career. In a lengthy interview, the architect said he always starts work on new building projects the same way: “Me, alone, my little watercolour pad in front of me, at five thirty in the morning, trying to come up

Marriott International has announced plans to debut its Westin brand in the UK, with Westin London City scheduled to open in 2020. Owned by 4C Hotel Group and managed by RBH, The Westin London City will boast a prime riverfront location in the heart of the City of London. The company said the hotel signing illustrates that the demand for wellbeing continues to propel Westin’s growth. Westin also has upcoming

On the eastern side of the Greek island of Zakynthos, the 93-room design-led Olea All Suite Hotel is set to open in June, with an emphasis on wellness. Architecture practice Block722architects, who have offices in Athens and Stockholm, have created a 4,000sq m (43,000sq ft) artificial lake at the heart of the hotel, surrounded by the scattered suites. There is an almost complete absence of boundaries between the resort’s suites

Global spa consultancy Raison d’Etre (RdE) has been commissioned to design and implement Denmark’s largest spa and wellness facility, which will be situated in a hotel created by Henning Larsen Architects. Due to open early next year in the industrial harbour of Sønderborg, the Alsik Hotel forms part of Frank Gehry’s masterplan for the southern city. RdE’s 4,500sq m (48,400sq ft) component of the scheme will cover a four-storey section

Design firm Chapman Taylor are nearing completion on a 120,000sq m (1.3 million sq ft) entertainment, retail, leisure and dining destination in Azerbaijan a stretch of land reclaimed from the Caspian Sea. The studio first designed the project as a convention centre in 2007. However, the development stalled following the completion of a larger convention centre by Coop Himmelblau, next to Zaha Hadid’s Heydar Aliyev Centre. In 2016, Chapman Taylor

Thailand's famous Chiva- Som International Health Resort has closed its doors for a six-month period to embark on its next phase of renovations. The resort, which will reopen on 1 November 2018, begins the third of four phases of its extensive remodelling, following the launch of the new Ocean Rooms and Suites in January 2017. A fourth and final phase of works will take place at the same time next

Westminster Abbey today (29 May) officially unveiled The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries for the first time, ahead of the museum’s public opening on 11 June. The new gallery spaces, which will display 300 treasures from the Abbey’s collection, are hidden inside the building’s triforium, a loft-like space some 52ft (16m) above the Abbey's floor. The Triforium, unused for centuries and never before open to the public, has been transformed by

Boutique hotelier Ian Schrager’s Edition brand – created in partnership with Marriott – will make its debut in the Turkish Riviera in June. The Bodrum Edition, which Schrager said he has designed as “refuge,” with “everything you need and everything you want”, houses a spa facility complete with 14 treatment rooms. The spa also includes a Turkish hammam, salt treatment room, sauna, steam room and plunge pool. Inspired by local

French rugby legend Sébastien Chabal and French designer Philippe Starck have joined forces to create a range of urban sports equipment which promotes free and accessible sport to everyone. The initiative is part of the Heritage Plan 2024 – one of the legacy projects linked to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Called Station Sport Lib', the equipment aims to "make people embrace movement and encourage them to do sports freely

Architects AL_A have been named as the lead designers for the £42m (US$55.7m, €48m) redevelopment of the Paisley Museum in Scotland. The transformation of the museum is the flagship project of Renfrewshire Council’s planned £100m (US$132.6m, €114.5m) investment in cultural venues in Paisley and forms the cornerstone of plans to utilise the city's cultural assets to transform its future. The museum will close in late 2018 and re-open in 2022

Odile Decq has led a protest today (25 May) at the Venice Architecture Biennale against discrimination faced by women in architecture, releasing a manifesto urging everyone involved in the industry to “make a vow to uphold fairness, transparency and collaboration.” Architects including Alison Brooks, Toshiko Mori, Jeanne Gang, Francine Houben, Louise Braverman and Manuelle Gautrand were among those in attendance as Decq led a flash mob of over 100 people

A US$125m (€107m, £93.3m) proposals to create a leisure development – featuring a world class aquarium and cultural centre in Memphis – have moved a step closer, after the Tennessee city won state approval to expand its downtown tourism zone. In October last year, Jim Strickland, mayor of Memphis, revealed plans for the Mud Island area, focused around the aquarium on Mud Island itself and the cultural centre across the

Pritzker laureate Alejandro Aravena has reflected on the impact of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, which he curated, in the run up to the 2018 edition the renowned international exhibition, which opens to the public on Saturday (26 May). Two years ago, Aravena’s Biennale, themed ‘Reporting from the Front’, considered major challenges facing the built environment – from natural disasters to financial constraints, pollution, crime, housing shortages and a scarcity

The architect behind Italian football club AS Roma’s planned new stadium has told CLADglobal that he is determined to deliver a facility that “creates an incredible atmosphere” and is respectful of Rome’s extraordinary architectural heritage. Dan Meis, founder of Meis Architects, has been involved for over five years in the development of a long-awaited new home for the Serie A team, which will replace the Stadio Olimpico, its home since

Forget the London Eye, Newcastle’s ‘Whey Aye’ is set to outdo its southern sibling by becoming Europe’s tallest observation wheel. The 140-metre-tall (459-foot) attraction, which will be located at the east end of the city’s Quayside and offer 30-minute “flights”, will be five metres taller than the London Eye and takes its nickname from the oft-heard Geordie phrase, “Whey aye, man”. Around the observation wheel – which is expected to

Japanese studio Moriyuki Ochiai Architects have designed a cluster of vibrant, polygonal tea houses that double as a new “sanctuary for stargazing” for budding astronomers. Surrounded by rolling hills in the town of Bisei, Okayama Prefecture, the ‘Constellation of Stargazing Tea Rooms’ has been conceived for visitors who wish to participate in traditional tea ceremonies, watch concerts and plays, and, at night, sit back and look up at the stars.