Castleford Tigers CEO Steve Gill has said the weather damage caused to Wheldon Road stadium last weekend highlights the club’s “great need” to find a new home. The Super League club was forced to close its Princess Street stand for Sunday's match against Bradford after a retaining wall collapsed. The 4,000-capacity stand will remain closed for Tigers’ next two pre-season games against Widnes and York. Gill said the ageing Wheldon

Bjarke Ingels, head of architecture practice BIG, has been explaining his masterplan for Europa City in a newly-released video. The scheme will be one of the largest leisure developments in Europe over the next five years. Developer, Alliages, will begin construction in 2017 and the city will open in 2020. The development is 16km (10m) from Paris. Ingels says the scheme will combine “authentic, lively, dense urban environments and streetscapes

West Ham United Football Club (WHU) will begin selling season tickets for the 2016-17 season – its first at the Olympic Stadium – this April. The club announced that the seat selection process for current season ticket holders will run from April 2015 to February 2016. Those who want to guarantee their seats at the 54,000-capacity arena for WHU’s first game in August 2016 will also have to commit to

The city of Vilnius in Lithuania is stepping up its push into the European ski market with the announcement it will build a new cultural/sports venue – the Vilnius Beacon – with design by Studio Libeskind. This is the first ski resort by the practice. The development is backed by the City of Vilnius, the State Trade Co and Start Vilnius Co, which took over responsibility for the location –

The Dalian Wanda group has launched its latest theme park project – a US$1bn (€839m, £659m) movie park in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Designed by Stufish Entertainment Architects and located at either end of Wuhan’s cultural district – an US$8bn (€6.7bn, £5.3bn) development project in the city – the indoor movie theme park comprises six attractions which combine 3D effects, live actors, props, stunts and special effects. The park

The Six Senses Zil Pasyon resort, located on the private island of Félicité in the Seychelles, is scheduled to open in July 2015 with a Six Senses Spa and a yoga pavilion on the granite boulders that punctuate the shoreline. Designed by Richard Hywel Evans of Studio RHE, the resort will comprise 28 one-bedroom villas, two two-bedroom villas and 17 private residences – all with private pools. Six Senses will

Damian Rogers Architecture, in partnership with Arup, has unveiled a concept for a beach and surf park for Melbourne’s Central Pier, Australia. The development would be based on a floating wave pool, with filtered water from Victoria Harbour, and a sandy beachfront. Offering surfers a chance to catch waves between 1-1.8m (3-6ft) high, the heated wave pool would be one of several attractions in the 16,000sq m (172,222sq ft) development.

Plans to create a €400 million (£314m, $489m) metropolitan theme park on the outskirts of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, are being developed by a caucus of leading design firms. The project – Park 21 – would be a 1,000-hectare (3,000 acre) cultural, recreational urban parkland, with landscaped and leisure elements. Facilities such as shops, restaurants, hotels and attractions are central to the proposal, which would offer a ‘cluster concept’ where visitors

Virgin Hotels and owner/developer Lam Group have revealed building designs for their first project together in New York City, expected to open in 2017. VOA Architecture has been appointed as architect and interior designer for the new structure, which includes a street-long high-end retail space, 457 guest rooms, multiple food and beverage outlets – including a rooftop bar – plus an outdoor pool and spa. The spa’s details have not

Edinburgh’s imposing Royal High School could be transformed into a multi-million pound arts hotel under new plans outlined by developers. Proposals from Duddingston House Properties (DHP) detail a development plan – designed by architect Gareth Hoskins – backed by £55m ($86m, €70m) from a consortium of institutional investors led by DHP’s Bruce Hare and David Orr of the Urbanist Group. Hoskins was appointed to oversee a major four-year refurbishment of

Major League Baseball (MLB) team Atlanta Braves has released new renderings of its planned SunTrust Park stadium in Cobb County, north of Atlanta, showing the mixed-use elements surrounding the venue. The new plans shed light on the number of restaurants, bars and retail outlets to be built on the site, while also show a hotel and office building towering beyond the 41,500-capacity venue. The properties will form an important revenue

Designs for a new MX$863m (US$60m, €48.5m, £38.3m) 13,000-seat baseball stadium to be home to the Los Diablos Rojos in Mexico City have been revealed by Chicago-based JAHN and Santa Fe-based ADG architects. The 70,000sq m (753,000sq ft) stadium, which resembles the team’s trident logo, has a roof composed of lightweight steel wrapped in PTFE textile material. According to JAHN, the roof will “become an iconic symbol for the great

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has green-lighted more than £21m in funding for a variety of heritage projects across the UK, including the renovation of a World War One social club, construction of Scotland’s first building conservation centre and the creation of an aerospace centre. Among the projects that have received funding, some of the most notable include: Bristol Aerospace Centre Bristol Aerospace Centre gained the largest slice of the

Work has started on South Korea’s first integrated resort – Paradise City in Incheon – which is scheduled open next to Incheon International Airport in the first half of 2017. A number of the industry’s leading architecture and design practices have been working on the US$1.7bn (€1.4bn, £1.1bn) casino, hotel, spa and theme park project, including WATG, GA Design International, Hirsch Bedner Associates, Hawkins Brown, Lifescapes International and Gansam Architects.

Designs have been revealed for the third out of five stadiums being built for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Multinational consultancy Dar Al-Handasah is behind the designs, which will see a complete revamp of Doha’s existing Khalifa International Stadium. Dar Al-Handasah, run by the Dar Group, operates as an international consultancy with five different design centres across the world. The group intends to transform the dated Khalifa International Stadium, originally

The owner and chair of Queens Park Rangers Football Club (QPR), Tony Fernandes, has said the club must move away from its Loftus Road home if it is to exist as a top flight club. Fernandes’ comments come as QPR is in the midst of a drawn-out legal planning process over a possible new site for a 40,000-capacity stadium at Old Oak Common in West London – three miles away

AFC Wimbledon has submitted a planning application to Merton Council for a new stadium at Plough Lane in South London. The League Two football club is planning to build a 11,000-capacity stadium on the site of Wimbledon Greyhound Stadium – a location the club calls its “spiritual home”. The application has been submitted in partnership with residential builder Galliard Homes and seeks permission to build 600 residential units along with

Real Madrid FC is pressing ahead with plans for a full redevelopment of the iconic Santiago Bernabeu stadium, complete with a skin of LEDs around the stadium, museum and nearby theme park development. Expected to take six years to complete, Real Madrid’s home stadium, redesigned by architectural firm GMP-Architekten, will be wrapped in LEDs – which will effectively operate as a huge TV screen to air the club’s greatest moments

Emaar Properties and Dubai Holdings have announced plans to build “the tallest twin towers in the world” as part of a 2.3sq m (6sq km) mega development in the Dubai Creek Harbour district, UAE. The development will encompass the two towers – which will have to stand higher than 88 storeys to beat Kuala Lumpur’s current record – and six other luxury residential towers, each 40 storeys tall. As well

Jumeirah Group, the international luxury hotel chain, has announced the renowned architecture firms Foster + Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects and Denniston International as the designers of three luxury hotel developments the company will operate in China. Subsidiaries of Yuexiu Group, a Guangzhou-based property development company, own two of the properties, which are being built in the cities of Haikou and Wuhan. They reached a deal whereby Jumeirah will manage the

The £8bn (US$13bn, €10bn) redevelopment of London's iconic Battersea Power Station has received another boost after the Frank Gehry and Norman Foster-designed mixed-use high street won planning approval. The phase three plans – which will see a new pedestrian high street running from Battersea Park Road to the existing power station building – feature a new public park and glass cube-shaped community hub building, in addition to bars, shops and

The World Architecture Festival, held in Singapore from 1 to 3 October, ended on a high note, with awards distributed to firms from all over the world. The awards are some of the most prestigious in the industry. Here’s our pick from leisure architecture’s big winners. Winner of World Building of the Year: The Chapel, Vietnam, by a21studio A community space on the outskirt of Ho Chi Minh City for

Plans for the first phase of a £100m regeneration project in South Shields have been approved by South Tyneside Council's planning committee. The 365 Master Plan project, drawn up between Muse Developments and South Tyneside Council, will see the transformation of South Shields town centre over a series of phases. Construction work can now begin on the first phase, which features the construction of a new FaulknerBrowns-designed Central Library and

Developer British Land has signed an agreement with Plymouth City Council to develop Drake Circus Leisure, a £40m leisure scheme next to its Drake Circus Shopping Centre in Plymouth city centre. The proposed development will include a 12-screen cinema operated by Cineworld, 13 restaurant units and 450 car park spaces, while the site’s current coach station is to be relocated. The move comes as the owners of the Drake Circus

Anantara Resorts Hotels & Spas will operate a luxury waterfront hotel in Dubai’s Culture Village district to launch in early 2018, directly facing the Dubai Creek. The 270-bedroom hotel is being developed by Dubai Properties Group, a subsidiary of state-owned Dubai Holding and is being designed by lead architecture company DAS. The project will break ground in Q4 of this year. This will be Dubai Properties’ third project after the

The Urban Resort Concept-operated (URC) PuShang Hotel and Spa in Xiamen, China, is set to open in Q4 of 2016 with a Water Palace Spa, based on the importance of bathing in Chinese culture. The 175-bedroom hotel’s 3,200sq m (34,445sq ft) URSPA will include 12 treatment chambers – two of which are double treatment suites. The chambers, which occupy 2,717sq m (29,246sq ft) of the spa, are lantern-like cubes dispersed

A consortium of Chinese investors is backing plans being put forward for the creation of a new £65m leisure, residential and business district in the steel city of Sheffield. Headed by businessman Jerry Cheung, managing director of Sheffield-based developer New Era Development, the project has evolved out of original plans to create a Chinatown in the city back in 2005. However, the six Chinese backers who have put money into