International architecture studio SOM is set to transform a historic pier in Geelong, Victoria, into a waterfront destination culminating in a rounded high-rise.

SOM recently won the competition to design the 10,000-square-metre development for developers Gurner Group and Costa Property Group, which will add public space, apartments, a 200-room hotel, shops and restaurants over the water at Corio Bay.

The project will involve transforming and extending the existing Cunningham Pier, which was originally built in 1855 to give railway access to docking ships. It underwent major refurbishment in 1929, and now acts as a stretch of car parking spaces culminating in a restaurant and event space.

Envisioned as a pedestrianised waterfront destination, visitors will enter SOM's revamped pier through a public square with water features.

A 34-storey building will rise at the end of the pier, which will surpass the 21-storey Miramar apartment tower to become Geelong's tallest building.

Trefoil in plan, the tower's form will resemble three combined cylinders that taper towards the top and bottom.

Lining the length of Cunningham Pier will be a series of buildings with rounded edges and layered terraces, designed by SOM to reference the movement of water and marine forms.

The luxury development will contain around 280 apartments and 12 waterfront villas with individual yacht berths.

Activity spaces and sports courts will be built on floating platforms.

SOM hopes the development will establish Cunningham Pier as "both a neighbourhood on the water and a destination for Geelong’s residents and visitors".

"An elevated public promenade forms the organising spine of the proposal," said SOM. "By positioning new construction alongside the historic pier, the design preserves the existing structure below while creating a pedestrian environment above."

"Shops, restaurants, and places to gather would line the route, connecting the city to activities and views across Corio Bay."

According to SOM, the redevelopment will involve creating new marine habitats at the pier to support biodiversity.

"This ecological ambition forms part of a broader approach that considers the waterfront as a place for both public life and marine life," said the studio.

Other projects recently unveiled by SOM include a tiered skyscraper that rises on a waterfront site in Chicago, and plans to build a 20-storey data centre in Kansas City.

Pyramidal towers frame pools at the Kai Water Culture House by Japanese studio Kengo Kuma & Associates, which is nearing completion in Copenhagen.

Set to open on the city’s harbour in December, the 5,800-square-metre aquatic centre will contain ten indoor and outdoor pools, alongside wellness facilities and cultural spaces. 

Kengo Kuma & Associates was commissioned alongside Danish firms Cornelius Vöge, Søren Jensen and Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects to realise the new cultural and recreational facility on the city’s artificial island of Christiansholm – known locally as Papirøen, or Paper Island. 

Photos revealed ahead of the opening show the facility's five staggered buildings perched atop a glazed base and fronted by a wooden pier that provides direct access to the sea.  

“The Water Culture House is a significant new landmark on Copenhagen’s waterfront," Kengo Kuma & Associates lead architect Yuki Ikeguchi said. "It is part of the story of the city and the harbour’s transformation from an industrial to a cultural harbour."

"As the cultural cornerstone of Papirøen, the house is a gathering place with water and community as its focal point, embraced by a public harbour bath," Ikeguchi added.

Constructed from 300,000 handmade bricks, the tapered volumes are punctuated by triangular and square openings that filter dappled light into the indoor pools.

“The bricks are arranged in a staggered, stepped pattern, giving the building its distinctive texture and sculptural character,” Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects said.

“A total of 403 windows of varying sizes act as viewing apertures, framing the surroundings and creating captivating experiences of natural light as it shifts throughout the day,” it added. 

The tallest of the five volumes, dubbed the Culture Tower, houses the centre’s cultural programmes, which include a third-floor events space. Meanwhile, the other four towers each house lofty indoor pools. 

Nestled between the five brick volumes on the first floor is an outdoor pool, framed by the building’s sloped facades, and an open-air Onsen – a Japanese-style hot spring – that overlooks the harbour.

The Kai Water Culture House is set to open to the public on 5 December, with its wooden pier slated for completion early next year. 

The facility sits among a wider redevelopment of Copenhagen’s Paper Island led by Danish studio COBE. Recent projects on the island include a 20,000-square-metre apartment complex informed by the area's 300-year-old warehouses.  

The majority of the London-based studios in The Pay 100's fifth annual salary survey are not paying Part I architectural assistants the London Living Wage, as required by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

An engineering firm has topped the leaderboard for the average salaries for UK architects, according to a survey conducted by the anonymous group The Pay 100.

Engineering firm tops architect salary leaderboard

Published over the weekend, the survey provides rough figures only based on the mean figures submitted by respondents. This year's data collected the annual salary of 127 firms in the UK and the mean number of hours of unpaid overtime per week.

Topping the leaderboard with the highest average annual salary for architects with less than five years' experience is BakerHicks, an engineering and design firm, which paid £72,000, according to the survey.

Second on the list is London studio Hawkins\Brown at £63,700, and joint third at £56,300 are London practices Samuel Chisholm Studio and Thomas Alexander Design.

The survey also presented figures for Part I and Part II architectural assistants. Transport for London had the highest wage for Part II roles at £44,000, followed by Foster + Partners at £42,000.

Majority of London firms not paying London Living Wage

The results for Part I roles included salaries from 30 studios, 21 of which were based in Greater London.

Only the top four studios on the leaderboard – Haworth Tompkins, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Studio McW and Studio PDP – paid more than the London Living Wage of £32,136, which RIBA declared a requirement for relevant offices.

Twelve of the 30 studios were paying Part I roles less than the £29,328 UK Living Wage.

Low wages "a threat to the future of the profession"

Alongside its survey data, The Pay 100 wrote an open letter to RIBA, asking it to take action on the financial wellbeing of those working in the architecture industry and to ensure the long-term future of the profession.

"Our aim has always been to create tangible financial incentives for employers to improve pay, empower employees to make informed career decisions, and encourage a healthier, more sustainable profession," said The Pay 100 in the letter.

"We recognise that architecture practices operate within a highly competitive market, often under significant financial pressure themselves," it continued. "Nevertheless, the commercial challenges facing practices should not prevent the profession from addressing the deteriorating conditions experienced by many employees."

"Poor financial conditions for staff are not merely an employment issue; they are a threat to the long-term health, resilience and future of the profession."

It went on to set out two courses of action it called for RIBA to take: establishing "meaningful minimum salaries" for RIBA chartered practices, and taking full ownership of The Pay 100 and its annual salary survey.

The Pay 100 said a framework of minimum salary levels should be established across different architecture roles, increasing year-on-year in line with inflation.

"A profession cannot sustainably advocate for the value of its services while leaving the financial conditions of its workforce to market pressures alone," it said. "The RIBA should take a leading role in addressing this imbalance."

After five years of aiming to improve pay transparency with its annual surveys, The Pay 100 wants RIBA to take ownership of the survey and commit resources to it, developing it into an industry-wide initiative.

"We believe that improving pay transparency across UK architecture should be a core responsibility of the profession’s leading membership body," said The Pay 100.

"Under the RIBA’s stewardship, the survey could benefit from significantly greater reach, sustained institutional support and broader participation across the profession," it continued.

"This would provide a foundation for more comprehensive salary data, stronger engagement between employers and employees, and meaningful progress towards better financial conditions throughout the industry."

The Pay 100 ended its letter by asking for a public response from RIBA by 1 December

As part of Dezeen's Performance Review series, we investigated how architecture fees became so low and the impact this has on professionals.

]]>

The majority of the London-based studios in The Pay 100's fifth annual salary survey are not paying Part I architectural assistants the London Living Wage, as required by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

An engineering firm has topped the leaderboard for the average salaries for UK architects, according to a survey conducted by the anonymous group The Pay 100.

Engineering firm tops architect salary leaderboard

Published over the weekend, the survey provides rough figures only based on the mean figures submitted by respondents. This year's data collected the annual salary of 127 firms in the UK and the mean number of hours of unpaid overtime per week.

Topping the leaderboard with the highest average annual salary for architects with less than five years' experience is BakerHicks, an engineering and design firm, which paid £72,000, according to the survey.

Second on the list is London studio Hawkins\Brown at £63,700, and joint third at £56,300 are London practices Samuel Chisholm Studio and Thomas Alexander Design.

The survey also presented figures for Part I and Part II architectural assistants. Transport for London had the highest wage for Part II roles at £44,000, followed by Foster + Partners at £42,000.

Majority of London firms not paying London Living Wage

The results for Part I roles included salaries from 30 studios, 21 of which were based in Greater London.

Only the top four studios on the leaderboard – Haworth Tompkins, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Studio McW and Studio PDP – paid more than the London Living Wage of £32,136, which RIBA declared a requirement for relevant offices.

Twelve of the 30 studios were paying Part I roles less than the £29,328 UK Living Wage.

Low wages "a threat to the future of the profession"

Alongside its survey data, The Pay 100 wrote an open letter to RIBA, asking it to take action on the financial wellbeing of those working in the architecture industry and to ensure the long-term future of the profession.

"Our aim has always been to create tangible financial incentives for employers to improve pay, empower employees to make informed career decisions, and encourage a healthier, more sustainable profession," said The Pay 100 in the letter.

"We recognise that architecture practices operate within a highly competitive market, often under significant financial pressure themselves," it continued. "Nevertheless, the commercial challenges facing practices should not prevent the profession from addressing the deteriorating conditions experienced by many employees."

"Poor financial conditions for staff are not merely an employment issue; they are a threat to the long-term health, resilience and future of the profession."

It went on to set out two courses of action it called for RIBA to take: establishing "meaningful minimum salaries" for RIBA chartered practices, and taking full ownership of The Pay 100 and its annual salary survey.

The Pay 100 said a framework of minimum salary levels should be established across different architecture roles, increasing year-on-year in line with inflation.

"A profession cannot sustainably advocate for the value of its services while leaving the financial conditions of its workforce to market pressures alone," it said. "The RIBA should take a leading role in addressing this imbalance."

After five years of aiming to improve pay transparency with its annual surveys, The Pay 100 wants RIBA to take ownership of the survey and commit resources to it, developing it into an industry-wide initiative.

"We believe that improving pay transparency across UK architecture should be a core responsibility of the profession’s leading membership body," said The Pay 100.

"Under the RIBA’s stewardship, the survey could benefit from significantly greater reach, sustained institutional support and broader participation across the profession," it continued.

"This would provide a foundation for more comprehensive salary data, stronger engagement between employers and employees, and meaningful progress towards better financial conditions throughout the industry."

The Pay 100 ended its letter by asking for a public response from RIBA by 1 December

As part of Dezeen's Performance Review series, we investigated how architecture fees became so low and the impact this has on professionals.

]]> https://www.dezeen.com/2026/11/02/the-pay-100-architect-salaries-survey/feed/ 0 https://www.dezeen.com/2026/11/02/lacaton-vassal-le-prix-charlotte-perriand-2027/ https://www.dezeen.com/2026/11/02/lacaton-vassal-le-prix-charlotte-perriand-2027/#respond Mon, 02 Nov 2026 05:00:00 +0000 Cajsa Carlson http://www.dezeen.com/?p=2379649

The Créateurs Design Association & Awards has named Pritzker Prize-winning French studio Lacaton & Vassal Architectes the recipient of the Le Prix Charlotte Perriand 2027.

Lacaton & Vassal Architectes, which is led by architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal and known for its social housing designs, was recognised for contributing to contemporary architecture by transforming and improving existing buildings.

The Créateurs Design Associates (CDA) said the studio's work improves "living conditions while preserving resources and architectural heritage".

The duo said it was "very happy" to receive the award.

“Charlotte Perriand’s tireless pursuit of comfort, well-being, and the pleasure of the inhabitant and of everyday life, her modernity, and her political commitment to exposing poor housing conditions and to transmission and education remain profoundly relevant today and are a source of inspiration," Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal said.

"Her manifest spirit of openness and freedom touches us deeply. We are very happy to receive this distinction."

The architects founded their studio in 1989 and have since worked on high-profile projects such as the transformation of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Nantes School of Architecture and the Cité du Grand Parc housing transformation in Bordeaux.

The latter, which was completed with Frédéric Druot and Christophe Hutin, won the European Union's Mies van der Rohe Award in 2019.

Lacaton & Vassal Architectes' other social housing projects include the renovation of the 1960s Tour Bois-le-Prêtre tower block in Paris, also in collaboration with Frédéric Druot, which was completed in 2011.

It also converted and extended a former shipbuilding workshop to create the FRAC Nord-Pas de Calais contemporary art gallery in Dunkirk.

The Le Prix Charlotte Perriand was established in collaboration with the family of the late architect and recognises practitioners whose contributions have advanced architecture and design.

“In awarding Le Prix Charlotte Perriand to Lacaton & Vassal, the CDA members recognise the care and imagination with which they approach the places people call home. Their work shows how much can be gained by understanding what is already there,” Créateurs Design Association co-founder Meredith Xavier said.

The award will be given to Lacaton & Vassal Architectes in a ceremony on 16 January 2027, at the Shangri-La Paris. Architect Kengo Kuma will also be honoured at the event as the winner of the Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award 2027.

Lacaton & Vassal Architectes has previously won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2021, as well as the 2023 Soane Medal for architecture.

Last year, Lacaton won the 2025 Jane Drew Prize for women in architecture.

This week on Dezeen, architecture studio Foster + Partners and US studio Manica unveiled their design for Generali Stadium in Milan, which will become home to local football clubs AC Milan and Inter Milan.

The stadium will seat 71,500 people and be built alongside the 99-year-old San Siro stadium, which will eventually be torn down. Generali Stadium will be defined by a structural facade composed of elongated X-framed concrete supports.

Architect Norman Foster told Dezeen that the Generali Stadium’s design draws on his “great personal connection with the city”.

Foster also made the news this week with the launch of his first watch, which the architect designed for Spanish watch brand Lebond.

The watch draws on aviation design and was designed to be customised, in line with Foster's philosophy that a watch is "intensely personal".

The public vote winners for Dezeen Awards 2026 were announced this week and included Japanese studio Schemata Architects' Uchida Shōten head office, above, in the architecture category.

We also revealed the public vote winners in the interiors and design categories. The public vote is separate from the main judging process, with the overall winners of this year’s programme set to be announced on 16 November.

In Abu Dhabi, a new concert hall by the late architect Frank Gehry was revealed. The Youth Orchestra Abu Dhabi will be located in the Mina Zayed port district.

It will be dedicated to young musicians and contain a 600-seat concert hall and 18 rehearsal rooms.

Technology brand Apple unveiled its new MacBook Pro model, which features its first-ever laptop touchscreen. The brand said the display is "a monumental step forward for the Mac".

Apple Music also showed off a new logo this week. The first rebrand since Apple Music launched in 2015 was made in collaboration with musician Fred Again by passing sound waves through a pool of oil.

KPF completed Texas's tallest skyscraper, a supertall tower called Waterline that is 1,025 feet tall (312 metres tall).

Its developer described the shape of the skyscraper as a "cowboy boot". It will have hotel and office programmes at the bottom, with luxury residences at the top.

Popular projects on Dezeen this week include a pink house that brings a "fairytale flamboyance" to London, an arrow-shaped viewpoint in Denmark and a minimalist house in Japan.

Our podcast this week looked at the Oxford Street pedestrianisation and asked: what happens next?

This week on Dezeen

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week’s top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don’t miss anything.

Apple has revealed its latest MacBook Pro model, which features the technology brand's first laptop touchscreen and what it claims is "the world’s best laptop display".

Sixteen years after Steve Jobs described touchscreen laptops as "ergonomically terrible", Apple has ventured into the market with its new MacBook Pro, which is available from 6 November at prices ranging from £2,899 to £14,549.

As well as being touchscreen, the laptop features a PROLED XDR display, which Apple said is "the world's best laptop display", M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, 128 gigabytes of memory, 16 terabytes of storage, up to 24 hours of battery life and a thinner, lighter design compared to previous models.

It comes in 14- and 16-inch models, weighing three and four pounds respectively. The laptop was designed to be both portable and a powerful tool for professional creatives on the go, whether they're working on 3D models or playing musical instruments onscreen.

“The new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR display is a monumental step forward for the Mac,” said Apple chief hardware officer Johny Srouji.

“PROLED XDR is the world’s best laptop display," he continued. "And with the magic of Touch coming to MacBook Pro, combined with the game-changing performance of M5 Pro and M5 Max, we’ve created a whole new way for pros to interact with their content, taking their workflows to a completely new level."

"The new MacBook Pro is the result of the deep integration between Apple silicon, hardware, and software, and there’s simply nothing else like it."

Aiming to provide an intuitive experience, the Touch technology allows users to scroll through a webpage by swiping, zoom in on a photo by pinching, drag and drop slides in presentations and double-tap a window to fill the screen.

The touch sensor is built into the display panel rather than layered over it, to give the feel of touching the displayed content itself.

To support the Touch feature, Apple redesigned the laptop hinge for better stability and created real-time video stabilisation to smooth the camera feed when using the touchscreen on a video call.

Apple said that the macOS operating system automatically translates touches into clicks, meaning multiple existing apps will work with Touch right away. These include Adobe Lightroom, Blender, Maxon Cinema 4D, Maxon ZBrush, Notion, Canva, Zoom, Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

"Graphic designers can now use the entire display as their canvas, no longer constrained by the area of the trackpad when drawing," said Apple.

"Musicians can play software instruments right onscreen, and app developers can test how Touch performs in their iOS and iPadOS apps directly on the MacBook Pro display."

Apple said the new PROLED XDR display offers "true-to-life colour and unparalleled brightness and contrast", made possible by combining OLED technology with algorithms that control light across the display.

"The PROLED XDR display offers tandem OLED technology unlike any other, with deep innovations in its layers that keep brightness and grayscale uniform across the entire display, while minimising internal reflections common in traditional OLED designs," said Apple.

"It’s all backed by advanced algorithms in the display engine that precisely control each pixel in real time, plus a meticulous manufacturing process and precise calibration of every panel for consistency from display to display."

The MacBook Pro also has a six-speaker sound system, designed for deeper bass and improved sound clarity compared to previous models, and the Dynamic Island search and notification feature currently used in iPhones.

Other recent releases from Apple include its first folding smartphone, the HomeView dashboard for home controls and the budget-friendly MacBook Neo.

The images are courtesy of Apple.

British architecture studio Foster + Partners and US studio Manica have unveiled their design for Generali Stadium, a new football stadium for clubs AC Milan and Inter Milan, set to replace Italy's iconic San Siro.

Planned to be built alongside the 99-year-old San Siro stadium, which will later be torn down, the 71,500-seat replacement will be defined by a structural facade composed of elongated X-framed concrete supports.

Foster + Partners' founder Norman Foster told Dezeen the overarching goal is "to create a new home for two storied football clubs, which captures the unique energy of the city and its distinctive architectural and structural traditions".

"The Generali Stadium celebrates the enduring connection between the football clubs – FC Internazionale Milano (Inter Milan) and AC Milan – and the city of Milano and will drive this shared heritage into the future," he explained.

The design reveal follows the sale of the iconic stadium to the two rival football teams, which was approved by Milan’s city council in October 2025. It is being developed by Foster's firm with the US practice Manica, and the naming rights belong to insurance giant Generali.

AC Milan and Inter Milan will continue to share the existing San Siro venue until the 2032 European Championship, co-hosted by Italy, for which the new stadium is scheduled to be completed. San Siro will then be demolished, according to the BBC.

Generali Stadium's defining feature is its pre-cast structural facade, which will support the stadium bowl and double-curved roof. This will also frame and naturally ventilate a series of lofty loggia-like spaces on its upper levels, intended to feel open and welcoming.

"The structural facade is the defining architectural concept of the stadium: a holistic and monumental piece of infrastructure rising approximately 60 metres in height, composed of interlocking low-carbon precast concrete segments connected through expressed structural joints," Foster said.

"It is a celebration of Milanese and Italian engineering tradition, where architecture and structure become one," Foster explained.

Another distinctive element will be "two curvas" – the curved north and south stands, designed to bring spectators near to the pitch, with opposing fans closely facing each other.

"That relationship of two opposing walls of supporters, each tied to one of the city’s great clubs, is unique to Milan and found in no other stadium in the world," said Manica founder David Manica.

"The whole seating bowl is built around it," he told Dezeen. "Rather than starting with an image or an icon, we began with the experience of the fans. The architecture is a result of that guiding principle."

According to Foster, this design also draws on San Siro's distinctive structure.

"Its seating bowl is inspired by the San Siro itself, with its distinctive ‘curvas’, but with greater proximity to the pitch," Foster explained.

"The external shape is driven by the curvas behind the goals. Here, the north and south ends rise on a 37-degree pitch to house 11,700 at each end – north for Internazionale and south for AC Milan."

The stadium is planned to be all-electric and carbon-neutral in operation, targeting LEED Gold Certification. The roof will incorporate 27,500 square metres of photovoltaic panels, while a "low-carbon precast concrete system" will be utilised to minimise waste and construction time.

The bowl's geometry will be engineered to "amplify the roar of crowds within the stadium, enhancing the atmosphere during events while significantly reducing acoustic spillover and noise pollution", Foster said.

"San Siro is famous for its noise, and the best way to honour that legacy was to capture that atmosphere – and amplify it," added David Manica.

"We treated acoustics as a primary design driver from the very first sketches," he said. "The result is a stadium where the chanting and singing build on themselves, taking the atmosphere Milanese supporters love and making it even more powerful."

The project forms part of a wider 281,000-square-metre masterplan that will combine public spaces with green areas and leisure and retail zones.

Designed by architect Ulisse Stacchini, San Siro, otherwise known as Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, was built in 1925. It has been modified several times over its lifetime, but has remained unchanged since the 1990 World Cup.

The possibility of its demolition emerged in 2019, when AC Milan and Inter Milan announced they were exploring plans to build a replacement venue for San Siro.

The clubs later selected a design by architecture studio Populous, called the Cathedral, but the Regional Commission for the Cultural Heritage of Lombardy blocked its development in 2023 because of the existing building's cultural significance.

Demolition was made possible by the building's sale, which was approved after an overnight debate that took place for nearly 12 hours.

At the time, mayor Giuseppe Sala suggested the sale would prevent Milan from being left "with the burden of an abandoned arena", as the two clubs had begun exploring plans to build two separate stadiums on the city's outskirts.

Reflecting on the project, Foster said the Generali Stadium's design draws on his "great personal connection with the city".

"As a student of architecture, I spent many hours walking through and sketching its heroic public spaces – the urban route of the historic Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II and individual structures such as the Torre Velasca and Pirelli Tower – and studying the pioneering work of Pier Luigi Nervi," he explained.

"The verticality and rhythm of the Duomo, the civic generosity of the city's porticos, and the spatial experience of the city’s great public plazas have all been inspirational and inseparable as a background to the design of the Generali Stadium, which will be a new civic monument for Milano."

Elsewhere, Foster + Partners is also developing its design for Manchester United’s new 100,000-seat stadium in the UK.

The stadium, which is designed with a giant tent-like structure, was described by Foster as “one of the most exciting projects in the world”.

Master plan designs for the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity museum in California have been released, showing galleries connected via a bridge in an adapted 1960s warehouse and a landscape designed by Field Operations.

The updated design for the property in Novato, California, includes the 400-foot-long Great Hall, which the studios said will be "one of the largest single-span spaces for art installations in the country", a 275-seat theatre, a Japanese-inspired garden and children's play spaces.

The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity (the Eames Institute) bought the 88.5-acre property in 2025 to establish a public exhibition space and museum for its collection of furniture and other objects designed by architects Charles and Ray Eames.

The site includes a sawtooth-roofed warehouse and office building designed by architects Jan Lubicz-Nycz and John Savage Bolles, which were originally built for the McGraw-Hill publishing company in 1965.

Shoe company Birkenstock USA operated out of the site until 2019. The Eames Institute now plans to adapt the landscape and buildings for the project.

Architecture studios Herzog & de Meuron and EHDD were signed onto the project when it was first announced last year, and with this most recent update, Field Operations has been announced as the landscape designer.

"What makes this place so extraordinary is the relationship between its remarkable architecture and the landscape of Marin County," said Field Operations partner Richard Kennedy.

"We imagined the grounds as a living extension of the museum. The idea is simple: ten landscapes, hundreds of places, and infinite journeys."

According to the team, the warehouse will contain galleries, maker spaces, a theatre and a cafe, while the former office building will be converted into a pavilion for events.

Visitors will enter the warehouse building past a fountain, into a "warm, wood-clad space" containing admissions and the museum shop.

A grand stair will lead to a 120-foot polished stainless-steel bridge that traverses the gallery spaces below. The renders show the spaces as largely open-plan, with the enormous concrete bevels of the roof exposed above.

Other spaces, such as wood and ceramic workshops, will be distributed throughout the building. According to the team, the material palette will primarily consist of colour-stained plywood and plaster, and aluminium windows to "create a dialogue between old and new".

For the landscape, Field Operations looked to an original plan by landscape architect Tito Patri, which used berms to help bury the buildings into their surroundings, buffering them from a highway which runs directly in front of the site.

The design includes a reconfigured parking and arrival sequence, gardens to the north and south of the warehouse, native stormwater gardens and custom furniture designed by the studio.

Overall, the masterplan will "transform what was once a private, truck-oriented industrial campus into a public cultural destination", according to the team.

"For my grandparents, design was always grounded in curiosity and intention – looking closely, asking questions, embracing constraints, and finding beauty in the practical and the functional," said Eames Institute co-founder Llisa Demetrios.

"The museum carries that spirit forward, and it feels especially meaningful to do so in a building that asked us to do the same: work within a remarkable existing structure to imagine what else it can become," she continued.

Groundbreaking is expected for 2028, with openings projected to begin in 2030.

The project has garnered some criticism for being backed by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who was appointed America’s first Chief Design Officer in 2025 under President Donald Trump.

Dezeen spoke to Gebbia about the appointment in 2025.

The Eames Institute was founded in 2023 and opened a California headquarters in 2024. San Francisco-based design agency Manual created its current brand identity and logo around the same time.

]]>

Master plan designs for the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity museum in California have been released, showing galleries connected via a bridge in an adapted 1960s warehouse and a landscape designed by Field Operations.

The updated design for the property in Novato, California, includes the 400-foot-long Great Hall, which the studios said will be "one of the largest single-span spaces for art installations in the country", a 275-seat theatre, a Japanese-inspired garden and children's play spaces.

The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity (the Eames Institute) bought the 88.5-acre property in 2025 to establish a public exhibition space and museum for its collection of furniture and other objects designed by architects Charles and Ray Eames.

The site includes a sawtooth-roofed warehouse and office building designed by architects Jan Lubicz-Nycz and John Savage Bolles, which were originally built for the McGraw-Hill publishing company in 1965.

Shoe company Birkenstock USA operated out of the site until 2019. The Eames Institute now plans to adapt the landscape and buildings for the project.

Architecture studios Herzog & de Meuron and EHDD were signed onto the project when it was first announced last year, and with this most recent update, Field Operations has been announced as the landscape designer.

"What makes this place so extraordinary is the relationship between its remarkable architecture and the landscape of Marin County," said Field Operations partner Richard Kennedy.

"We imagined the grounds as a living extension of the museum. The idea is simple: ten landscapes, hundreds of places, and infinite journeys."

According to the team, the warehouse will contain galleries, maker spaces, a theatre and a cafe, while the former office building will be converted into a pavilion for events.

Visitors will enter the warehouse building past a fountain, into a "warm, wood-clad space" containing admissions and the museum shop.

A grand stair will lead to a 120-foot polished stainless-steel bridge that traverses the gallery spaces below. The renders show the spaces as largely open-plan, with the enormous concrete bevels of the roof exposed above.

Other spaces, such as wood and ceramic workshops, will be distributed throughout the building. According to the team, the material palette will primarily consist of colour-stained plywood and plaster, and aluminium windows to "create a dialogue between old and new".

For the landscape, Field Operations looked to an original plan by landscape architect Tito Patri, which used berms to help bury the buildings into their surroundings, buffering them from a highway which runs directly in front of the site.

The design includes a reconfigured parking and arrival sequence, gardens to the north and south of the warehouse, native stormwater gardens and custom furniture designed by the studio.

Overall, the masterplan will "transform what was once a private, truck-oriented industrial campus into a public cultural destination", according to the team.

"For my grandparents, design was always grounded in curiosity and intention – looking closely, asking questions, embracing constraints, and finding beauty in the practical and the functional," said Eames Institute co-founder Llisa Demetrios.

"The museum carries that spirit forward, and it feels especially meaningful to do so in a building that asked us to do the same: work within a remarkable existing structure to imagine what else it can become," she continued.

Groundbreaking is expected for 2028, with openings projected to begin in 2030.

The project has garnered some criticism for being backed by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, who was appointed America’s first Chief Design Officer in 2025 under President Donald Trump.

Dezeen spoke to Gebbia about the appointment in 2025.

The Eames Institute was founded in 2023 and opened a California headquarters in 2024. San Francisco-based design agency Manual created its current brand identity and logo around the same time.

]]> https://www.dezeen.com/2026/10/29/herzog-de-meuron-field-operations-ehdd-eames-institute-infinite-curiosity/feed/ 0 https://www.dezeen.com/2026/10/29/montana-takt-acquisition/ https://www.dezeen.com/2026/10/29/montana-takt-acquisition/#respond Thu, 29 Oct 2026 10:30:00 +0000 Jennifer Hahn http://www.dezeen.com/?p=2379600

Montana has announced its buyout of fellow Danish design brand Takt, known for its solid wood furniture and pioneering approach to sustainable design.

Founded in 2019 by trained physicist and former Lego and Bang & Olufsen executive Henrik Taudorf Lorensen, Takt makes modern Scandinavian furniture from FSC-certified wood that is low-carbon, flat-pack and designed for disassembly.

Its future launches and existing catalogue, including products such as the Cross chair by British design duo Pearson Lloyd and Anderssen & Voll's Spoke sofa, will now be sold under the collection name Takt by Montana.

Montana CEO Joakim Lassen said he hopes they will act as an understated counterpart to Montana's existing selection of colourful modular furniture – including the Montana System storage – and bring valuable learnings about sustainability to the table.

"Takt brings experience with materials and the environment, and we are looking forward to bringing our respective experience together and taking this work even further," he said.

Takt is known for its ambitious approach to sustainability, focused on driving down emissions primarily through the design of its products rather than operational cuts, to become net zero by 2030.

The company assesses the carbon footprint of its products throughout their entire lifecycle using the EU's Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) single score, in a bid to bring down its emissions, and claims to be the only design brand to consistently have all of its products marked with the EU Ecolabel.

“I have a background as a scientist, so it was important to me to start measuring things,” Lorensen told Dezeen during our Carbon Revolution series. “The starting point was to get a grasp of the impact of the choices we’re making.”

Lorensen will join Montana Furniture's board, sharing his experience and perspective on sustainability, while Takt employees will be integrated into Montana's organisation "as far as possible", the company said.

By gaining access to the established, international infrastructure of Montana, which has been operating since 1982, Lorensen hopes that Takt's furniture will be able to reach a larger audience.

"The past few years have been an exciting and instructive journey for TAKT," he said. "We have built a brand where materials and the environment have been central, and we have collaborated with a number of talented and celebrated designers. "

"Now it is time for TAKT's next chapter, and we are delighted that it will be written together with Montana."

]]>

Montana has announced its buyout of fellow Danish design brand Takt, known for its solid wood furniture and pioneering approach to sustainable design.

Founded in 2019 by trained physicist and former Lego and Bang & Olufsen executive Henrik Taudorf Lorensen, Takt makes modern Scandinavian furniture from FSC-certified wood that is low-carbon, flat-pack and designed for disassembly.

Its future launches and existing catalogue, including products such as the Cross chair by British design duo Pearson Lloyd and Anderssen & Voll's Spoke sofa, will now be sold under the collection name Takt by Montana.

Montana CEO Joakim Lassen said he hopes they will act as an understated counterpart to Montana's existing selection of colourful modular furniture – including the Montana System storage – and bring valuable learnings about sustainability to the table.

"Takt brings experience with materials and the environment, and we are looking forward to bringing our respective experience together and taking this work even further," he said.

Takt is known for its ambitious approach to sustainability, focused on driving down emissions primarily through the design of its products rather than operational cuts, to become net zero by 2030.

The company assesses the carbon footprint of its products throughout their entire lifecycle using the EU's Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) single score, in a bid to bring down its emissions, and claims to be the only design brand to consistently have all of its products marked with the EU Ecolabel.

“I have a background as a scientist, so it was important to me to start measuring things,” Lorensen told Dezeen during our Carbon Revolution series. “The starting point was to get a grasp of the impact of the choices we’re making.”

Lorensen will join Montana Furniture's board, sharing his experience and perspective on sustainability, while Takt employees will be integrated into Montana's organisation "as far as possible", the company said.

By gaining access to the established, international infrastructure of Montana, which has been operating since 1982, Lorensen hopes that Takt's furniture will be able to reach a larger audience.

"The past few years have been an exciting and instructive journey for TAKT," he said. "We have built a brand where materials and the environment have been central, and we have collaborated with a number of talented and celebrated designers. "

"Now it is time for TAKT's next chapter, and we are delighted that it will be written together with Montana."

]]> https://www.dezeen.com/2026/10/29/montana-takt-acquisition/feed/ 0 https://www.dezeen.com/2026/10/29/buro-ole-scheeren-suseong-continuum-gallery-south-korea/ https://www.dezeen.com/2026/10/29/buro-ole-scheeren-suseong-continuum-gallery-south-korea/#respond Thu, 29 Oct 2026 09:30:00 +0000 Starr Charles http://www.dezeen.com/?p=2379107

Architecture studio Büro Ole Scheeren has revealed designs for the Suseong Continuum, a snaking, concrete art gallery in Daegu, South Korea. 

Set to be built within the city’s Yeonhwaji park, the 364-square-metre gallery was designed specifically for showcasing digital art. 

Berlin-based Büro Ole Scheeren designed the gallery as a continuous space, without any enclosed rooms and or doorways, in a bid to reflect the "flows" of digital art.

“We wanted to build a gallery without traditional thresholds: a gradient of realities that morph into one another as you gradually move through the space,” studio founder Ole Scheeren said.

“The substance of digital art is not rooted in the physical domain of distinct objects and isolated experiences… it exists in a world of overlaps and connections, where one condition potentially flows into the next.”

“Landscape, circulation and exhibition become a continuous experience,” the studio added.

The Suseong Continuum gallery was unveiled as part of this year’s Suseong International Biennale, which invites architects to realise permanent public works across Daegu.

Commissioned by the Suseong District Government, the design by Büro Ole Scheeren is expected to open for the biennale’s 2028 edition.

Once complete, visitors will access the space via a winding path, from which the gallery was designed to emerge as an extrusion. 

Conceived as a “continuation of the landscape”, the gallery’s twisting volume will be partially embedded into the park’s topography and oriented toward a nearby lotus pond.

Its structure will be built using board-marked concrete to create a rough exterior texture. Inside, this textured surface will transition to smooth concrete walls for projecting media onto. 

According to Büro Ole Scheeren, the gallery’s layout and materiality were designed to reflect the transition from the park’s natural landscape to the digital interiors. 

“Technology is often seen as an opposite to nature,” Scheeren said. “With Suseong Continuum we wanted to explore how we can create a way of extending the way we perceive the relationship between both domains – a journey that starts in the park and that seamlessly carries you into the digital realm.”

“There is no single moment where one world ends and the other begins, it is a continuous transformation.”

“What begins as natural landscape gradually transforms into digital media,” the studio added.

Renders of the gallery's stripped-back interior reveal its immersive exhibition spaces framed by curving walls. 

A layered ceiling will run the building’s full length to conceal all lighting and technical infrastructure, which was developed by the studio in collaboration with the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.

“The interior unfolds as a spatial gradient in which light, sound, enclosure and immersion shift gradually along the visitor’s route,” the studio said. 

“Curving walls widen into open spaces and tighten into passages; atmospheres transform rather than switch,” it added. 

The design will remain on show at the Suseong International Biennale until 22 November.

In Shenzhen, China, the studio has revealed plans for skyscrapers with "waterfall" facades and its design for the Róng Museum of Arts is currently under construction.

British architect Norman Foster has unveiled his first watch, designed with watch brand Lebond in a process he said was "very similar to architecture."

The mechanical watch has a sleek silhouette with an integrated strap. According to Foster, the design process began with a reevaluation of what we assume a watch should look like.

"We wanted to look again at something very familiar and reconsider it as a complete object, with the case, the strap, the dial and the movement all part of a system," Foster told Dezeen.

"Normally, you have a watch case and then you attach a strap to it. We started to question the obvious. Why should they feel like two separate objects? Once we began thinking of the strap as a continuation of the case, the whole watch started to come together."

As a result, the Lebond Norman Foster has a 38.5-millimetre-wide Grade 5 titanium case that widens to 40 millimetres where it connects to the integrated strap, creating a streamlined design.

The architect also got rid of the traditional watch lugs, wrapping the strap around the timepiece's titanium case instead.

"Removing the conventional lugs gave us the continuous profile, but it also made the watch more comfortable and more integrated," Foster explained.

The Lebond Norman Foster, with its distinctive rotor, also evokes aviation design – a reference to Foster's interest in flying, as well as to his history of international travel.

This comes across in a very practical way, with the watch's bidirectional rotating 12-hour bezel allowing the wearer to read a second time zone using the main hour hand.

Its dial is protected by a domed sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating, and the watch is water-resistant to 50 metres.

It is currently available in two versions: the Natural Titanium Edition, which has a micro-sandblasted titanium case, a brushed-metal dial and a grey rubber strap, and the Black Edition, which features a matte black DLC-coated titanium case matched with a black lacquered dial and hands and a black rubber strap.

Foster designed the watch to allow people to customise it, swapping cases and straps at will, and more versions will be released over time.

"A watch is intensely personal. You wear it, you travel with it and it becomes part of your everyday life," Foster said. "This led to the potential for a wide range of colour combinations and the ability to customise the watch"

"By designing an easy attachment mechanism, the user is able to interchange elements and create personal versions," he continued.

"I proposed a watch that could move naturally between very different situations, working in the studio, being on a building site, travelling or going somewhere formal. It should not feel precious or limited to one particular setting."

This marks the first time that Foster, who is known as the most successful architect in history, has designed a watch, but he didn't find the process daunting.

"I have never really thought that scale changes the nature of design," Foster said. "Whether it is a city, a building, a chair or a watch, you are still asking the same questions: how does it work, how is it made, and how do all the parts come together?"

"The process is also very similar to architecture," he continued.

"It becomes one of refinement, sketches, prototypes, adjustments and then more adjustments. You explore options to finally arrive at the essential idea and then you keep refining it until everything seems inevitable."

Last year, in celebration of Foster's 90th birthday, we looked at twelve defining projects from his long career. Next month, the architect will give the keynote speech at the Dezeen Awards party.

Abu Dhabi's Department of Culture and Tourism has unveiled plans for a concert hall dedicated to young musicians, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry before his death.

Expected to open in January 2027 in the Mina Zayed port district, the Youth Orchestra Abu Dhabi will contain a 600-seat concert hall and 18 rehearsal rooms.

The orchestra building, designed by Gehry before he died in December last year, will have a more pared-back appearance compared to the fluid, organic forms for which the architect is famed.

Renders show a two-tiered building with long, straight rooflines and tall glass facades broken up by white panels.

Inside, wood will line the staircases and balcony walkways, and the top floor will open onto rooftop terraces.

Youth Orchestra Abu Dhabi will provide free access to musical education programmes for children aged six to nine, with the first cohort enrolling 100 students.

"The Youth Orchestra Abu Dhabi is an important investment in our future and in our commitment to making culture and creativity accessible to all," said Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi chairman Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak.

"Through its free access to world-class music education programmes, we are creating opportunities for young people to discover their talent, develop their potential and experience the lifelong benefits that music can bring," he continued.

"As Abu Dhabi continues to strengthen its position as a global centre for culture and creativity, and as a UNESCO Creative City of Music, institutions such as this ensure the next generation has every opportunity to participate in, contribute to and shape our cultural future, while preserving the rich musical traditions that form an important part of our heritage."

Elsewhere in Abu Dhabi, construction is underway on Gehry's Dar al Funoon Abu Dhabi, a performing arts venue cloaked in a rippling, fabric-like exterior.

The architect's long-awaited Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is expected to open to the public on Saadiyat Island on 11 December.

The images are courtesy of the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi.

Almost a kilometre of Oxford Street in central London has been permanently closed off to vehicle traffic as pedestrianisation of the major shopping street and thoroughfare began yesterday.

Nearly a kilometre of the two-kilometre-long street – the stretch between Orchard Street and Great Portland Street – is now fully pedestrianised.

Traffic, including cars, buses, taxis and private hire vehicles, cycles, scooters and pedicabs, will not be allowed on this part of Oxford Street and will instead be routed via side streets.

Photographs from the unveiling yesterday show the road decorated with a large sign reading "Oxford St" and green bollards keeping out traffic.

The design for the pedestrianisation was made by local architecture studio East, which is working with landscape architecture studio JL Gibbons and urban design studios Gehl and Publica on the project.

Meanwhile, architecture studio Hawkins\Brown has been developing a long-term vision for the entirety of the street, which stretches from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch.

This first pedestrianised section is now undergoing a transition period, during which the East team will add new signage, seating and planters to make the area more visitor-friendly. The full transformation is expected to begin in 2027 and be completed by 2028.

“As we have seen from Borough High Street to Eltham, from Croydon to Green Lanes, London's high streets are the public face of the city in all its diversity, its greenery and its energy," East director Julian Lewis said.

"We design to preserve and support this energy, maintaining the ebbs and flows of these places which make our neighbourhoods unique."

The transformed section of Oxford Street will feature two new squares, one close to Holles Street and the other close to Duke Street. These will be marked with a new surface dressing that will make the ground level across the carriageway.

Trees will also be added in "sculptural pots", East said, before being planted into the ground for the permanent scheme.

London mayor Sadiq Khan had originally announced plans to make Oxford Street traffic-free almost a decade ago, in 2017, but they were blocked by Westminster Council.

East revealed updated renders of its vision for the final scheme earlier this month.

Italian studio Stefano Boeri Architetti has revealed plans to overhaul a former factory on an industrial site in Tbilisi, Georgia, and add a series of colourful housing blocks alongside it.

The studio recently won the competition to design the Loco Park masterplan, which will add housing, green spaces and community spaces to the Georgian capital.

Aiming to celebrate the site's industrial heritage, Stefano Boeri Architetti will renovate an existing Soviet-era locomotive factory, rebuilding some of its former architectural features with a contemporary spin.

"The new Loco Park neighbourhood will combine the memory of the large Soviet-era locomotive factory with a vision of a contemporary, vibrant space that is green and open to everyone," said Stefano Boeri Architetti founder Stefano Boeri.

"The buildings of Loco Park will be islands in an urban archipelago, distinct yet connected by a network of tree-lined pedestrian public spaces for the whole city to enjoy."

A series of new buildings will be built on the site, providing a mix of homes and community spaces dispersed in an open green space populated with sports facilities, parks and boulevards.

Apartments will occupy the upper levels of the buildings, while shops, cafes and workshops will be located on the ground floors.

Landscaping will connect with the surrounding city, providing public space for the wider community in Tbilisi.

Renders of the Loco Park masterplan show a colourful series of block buildings of different rectangular forms, which Stefano Boeri Architetti said are designed to have their "own identity while remaining integrated into the context".

Stefano Boeri Architetti carried out colour mapping research in Tbilisi to identify colours commonly found in the city's architecture, which influenced the brick finishes chosen to clad the buildings, including blue-grey, terracotta, green, taupe and white.

“We set out to capture Loco Park’s identity through a simple, balanced and contemporary design, inspired by Tbilisi’s extraordinarily rich colour palette, local materials and traces of the area’s industrial history," said Stefano Boeri Architetti partner Pietro Chiodi.

"Colour and brick thus give each building its own identity while bringing them together into a coherent whole."

The buildings will also be distinguished by varying roofline silhouettes, including vaulted, sawtooth and pitched roofs, designed to recall the shapes of traditional industrial buildings.

Terraced roofs will be topped with planting and, elsewhere in the development, greenhouses and communal spaces will be created as spaces for residents to socialise.

Other projects recently unveiled by Stefano Boeri Architetti include plans to transform a historic transportation depot in Rome into a greenery-covered public space, and designs for a monastery in Milan with a sail-like roof.

The images are by Stefano Boeri Architetti.

This week on Dezeen, we unveiled the updated Dezeen website, which is "richer and more versatile" while better reflecting what Dezeen is today.

We worked with creative technology studio Made by On to refresh the look and feel of the site, building upon the foundation laid by designer Micha Weidmann, who designed the original Dezeen logo and layout. It is the first time the Dezeen website has been since 2016, after originally being launched as a basic Wordpress blog by our founder Marcus Fairs in 2006.

"The new website is faster, richer and, we hope, more enjoyable to use," Dezeen co-CEO Ben Hobson said. "It also better reflects what Dezeen is today."

In China, international studio Snøhetta unveiled the landmark Shanghai Grand Opera House this week, which it designed to be “as much a civic destination as a performance venue”.

The striking building features a giant spiral staircase that guides visitors to the roof.

The historic town hall in the city of Limoges in France was set on fire, as an estimated 550,000 people in France took to the streets over the weekend to protest the rising cost of living and poor school conditions.

The fire destroyed significant parts of the 143-year-old Limoges Town Hall, with videos showing its slate roofs ablaze and its central bell tower collapsing.

Also in France, architecture studio OMA unveiled the Palais de Justice de Lille, a law court in northern France. The six-sided building has a pointy, hexagonal form, with each elevation finished in coloured glass.

It was designed to mimic a nearby star-shaped fortification, built in 1667 by the French military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban.

Design Miami.Paris took place in Paris this week, with technology brand Apple unveiling its Designers of Tomorrow. Among the pieces on show were a banana-palm-paper lantern and furniture with an acid-etched stainless-steel surface.

We also visited Dutch Design Week, which featured an installation that explored "hydrofeminism" and saw students protest against overcrowded workspaces.

Popular projects on Dezeen this week include a David Chipperfield museum for a single artwork, architect Diana Kellogg's update of her Tribeca home and a textured home in Mexico.

Our podcast this week asked: has Tesla really made a flying car?

This week on Dezeen

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week’s top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don’t miss anything.

US studio Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture has unveiled its latest skyscraper for Miami, designed to display "quiet refinement" on a slender site on the city's waterfront.

Called Lilli, the residential skyscraper development is the latest in Miami from Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture (AS+GG). The studio is known for designing some of the world's tallest buildings, including the world's upcoming tallest skyscraper, the Jeddah Tower.

At 636 feet tall (193 metres), Lilli is planned for a narrow site in Miami's Edgewater neighbourhood.

The luxury skyscraper will feature rounded edges and will have terraces on the water-facing side, with larger patios running up the opposite face.

Its design is characterised by rounded edges and large spans of glass interrupted by metallic floor plates.

"Our vision is for Lilli’s interior design to feel inseparable from its architecture," said AS+GG design partner Juan Betancur.

"The fluidity of the building carries through the interior spaces, while a restrained palette of natural materials allows light, landscape, and views of Biscayne Bay to become part of the experience."

"The result is a sense of quiet refinement that feels distinctly connected to its waterfront setting."

The skyscraper will house 117 residences of varying sizes, spread across its 53 storeys, as well as amenities including lounges, pools and spas.

The ground floor will have a lobby for residents with large metallic columns and minimalist detailing.

At the top of the skyscraper, a pool will sit on the edge of a terrace underneath a bulkhead with the same reflective metal treatment seen elsewhere in the exterior.

Lilli is the latest in a series of residential skyscrapers being designed by the studio, which recently completed a "yacht-inspired" building in the city.

Residential skyscraper development has proceeded at a steady pace in Miami, with Bugatti recently unveiling its first branded skyscraper in the city.

The images are by Darcstudio.

A pair of skyscrapers joined by three bridge elements will form the centrepiece of World Trade Center Yerevan, a development by British studio Foster + Partners set to be built in Armenia.

Situated in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, one of the towers will house offices and the other will contain apartments and a hotel.

Foster + Partners plans to connect the skyscrapers with enclosed bridges that will provide amenities for occupants of both buildings, including landscaped terraces.

Wrapped in glazed facades, the pair of skyscrapers will have a concrete structural frame with steel bracing and a split core, catering for open, flexible interior spaces.

The towers will be angled to give views of notable landmarks, including the National Assembly of Armenia, the Armenian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Armenian Genocide Memorial and Mount Ararat. 

The World Trade Center Yerevan development will also feature low-lying buildings at the base of the skyscrapers containing entertainment, hospitality and shopping spaces arranged around a public square.

"Our new development is in close dialogue with the country's history and culture," said Foster + Partners senior partner Niall Dempsey.

"The low-rise buildings seamlessly stitch into the wider urban fabric, while the towers are elevated above ground level, freeing up 50 per cent of the site and making an important contribution to the life of the city."

The central green axis of the nearby park will be extended to form a route leading to a podium at the base of the skyscrapers.

Foster + Partners aims for the public spaces to reference the area's architectural heritage in its design for World Trade Center Yerevan.

The development is set to be built in an area of Yerevan that was masterplanned in 1924 by Armenian architect Alexander Tamanian, who had ambitions to transform the Armenian capital into a garden city.

"Our scheme celebrates the outdoor life of the city by connecting the urban fabric with public spaces, ensuring our new interventions work in harmony with the historic grain," said Foster + Partners partner Juan Frigerio.

"To the north of the towers, the events plaza responds to the significant St John the Baptist Church and its forecourt, creating a seamless connection between old and new."

Other designs recently unveiled by Foster + Partners include its plans for the Two World Trade Center skyscraper in New York and a masterplan to transform the area surrounding an airport near Luanda, Angola.

The images are by Foster + Partners.

New York technology company Tuesday Labs has debuted its first semi-autonomous robot Voxel Series-1, designed to help with household chores and to avoid the appearance of an "uncanny valley" humanoid robot.

Voxel Series-1 (Voxel) performs tasks such as watering plants and sweeping crumbs, which it currently achieves with a combination of autonomous intelligence and teleoperation.

The robot is counter-height and covered in a colourful matte plastic shell with primarily "cuboid" body parts, LED eyes and 1-DOF grippers for hands. Tuesday Labs founder Rosalind Shinkle told Dezeen that initial designs were informed by home objects such as lamps, chairs and briefcases.

Working with former Pixar character designer Alonso Martinez, Shinkle said the finalised Voxel is a combination of "exceptional capability and charming character".

"We deliberately didn’t build a humanoid," Shinkle said. "We wanted to stay far from the uncanny valley, and far from robots that fill a human-shaped space in the home."

"Instead, we made Voxel relatively small and cuboid, to signal his role in your life: a droid butler, not a human butler."

"We know we don’t want him to feel almost-human, and we know we don’t want him to feel like a toaster," she continued. "A believable character needs every element sitting at roughly the same point on that human–toaster spectrum."

Shinkle said five key principles drove the design of Voxel, including easy integration into the home, a maximalist appearance, simplicity, luxury and playfulness.

Part of the strategy was also "affordance matching", or that, when Voxel is perceived by a human, its capabilities can be inherently understood.

"When someone looks at a robot, they should be able to roughly predict what he’s capable of," Shinkle said. "If you correctly match perceived and actual affordance, you can avoid that constant feeling of disappointment when a humanoid robot isn’t quite as good at doing things as a human."

Voxel's plastic shell and finishes are meant to keep it relatively lightweight, but Shinkle said the external design should also communicate its quality.

Like another home robot that is currently in production, Neo by 1X Technologies, Voxel's initial customers are "early adopters" who opt in to help informally train the robot's autonomous software at home.

"We're starting with a limited number of robots for early adopters who are excited to experience and help shape this technology," she said.

"Voxel’s estimated price is $20,000, so he will be a luxury product. But our ambition is much bigger – as the technology improves and production scales, we want to make household robots accessible to far more people."

Shinkle said her own distaste for household chores was part of what drove Voxel.

"Robots will soon be a part of our homes," she said. "I set out to build the robot that I would actually want to live with."

"Also, I hate cleaning my apartment, and I'd much rather spend my time building something that solves that problem once and for all."

Voxel is powered by a rechargeable battery and will charge in an at-home docking station as part of "his normal routine".

Tuesday Labs is based in New York City and was founded in 2025 by Shinkle, who previously worked as an engineer at Boston Dynamics. The studio is focused on creating "robots that feel natural and delightful to live with".

The combination of advanced technology and autonomous intelligence has made the creation of robots more possible than ever at this point in history.

This has allowed the field to diversify, and technology companies and studios have released a varity of different types of robots in recent years, including all the cute robots from CES 2025 and five that were displayed at Carlo Ratti’s architecture biennale.

Other recent home robots that debuted include Neo by 1X Technologies and CLOiD by LG.

]]>

New York technology company Tuesday Labs has debuted its first semi-autonomous robot Voxel Series-1, designed to help with household chores and to avoid the appearance of an "uncanny valley" humanoid robot.

Voxel Series-1 (Voxel) performs tasks such as watering plants and sweeping crumbs, which it currently achieves with a combination of autonomous intelligence and teleoperation.

The robot is counter-height and covered in a colourful matte plastic shell with primarily "cuboid" body parts, LED eyes and 1-DOF grippers for hands. Tuesday Labs founder Rosalind Shinkle told Dezeen that initial designs were informed by home objects such as lamps, chairs and briefcases.

Working with former Pixar character designer Alonso Martinez, Shinkle said the finalised Voxel is a combination of "exceptional capability and charming character".

"We deliberately didn’t build a humanoid," Shinkle said. "We wanted to stay far from the uncanny valley, and far from robots that fill a human-shaped space in the home."

"Instead, we made Voxel relatively small and cuboid, to signal his role in your life: a droid butler, not a human butler."

"We know we don’t want him to feel almost-human, and we know we don’t want him to feel like a toaster," she continued. "A believable character needs every element sitting at roughly the same point on that human–toaster spectrum."

Shinkle said five key principles drove the design of Voxel, including easy integration into the home, a maximalist appearance, simplicity, luxury and playfulness.

Part of the strategy was also "affordance matching", or that, when Voxel is perceived by a human, its capabilities can be inherently understood.

"When someone looks at a robot, they should be able to roughly predict what he’s capable of," Shinkle said. "If you correctly match perceived and actual affordance, you can avoid that constant feeling of disappointment when a humanoid robot isn’t quite as good at doing things as a human."

Voxel's plastic shell and finishes are meant to keep it relatively lightweight, but Shinkle said the external design should also communicate its quality.

Like another home robot that is currently in production, Neo by 1X Technologies, Voxel's initial customers are "early adopters" who opt in to help informally train the robot's autonomous software at home.

"We're starting with a limited number of robots for early adopters who are excited to experience and help shape this technology," she said.

"Voxel’s estimated price is $20,000, so he will be a luxury product. But our ambition is much bigger – as the technology improves and production scales, we want to make household robots accessible to far more people."

Shinkle said her own distaste for household chores was part of what drove Voxel.

"Robots will soon be a part of our homes," she said. "I set out to build the robot that I would actually want to live with."

"Also, I hate cleaning my apartment, and I'd much rather spend my time building something that solves that problem once and for all."

Voxel is powered by a rechargeable battery and will charge in an at-home docking station as part of "his normal routine".

Tuesday Labs is based in New York City and was founded in 2025 by Shinkle, who previously worked as an engineer at Boston Dynamics. The studio is focused on creating "robots that feel natural and delightful to live with".

The combination of advanced technology and autonomous intelligence has made the creation of robots more possible than ever at this point in history.

This has allowed the field to diversify, and technology companies and studios have released a varity of different types of robots in recent years, including all the cute robots from CES 2025 and five that were displayed at Carlo Ratti’s architecture biennale.

Other recent home robots that debuted include Neo by 1X Technologies and CLOiD by LG.

]]> https://www.dezeen.com/2026/10/22/tuesday-labs-voxel-series-1/feed/ 0 https://www.dezeen.com/2026/10/22/the-beatles-story-liverpool-relocation/ https://www.dezeen.com/2026/10/22/the-beatles-story-liverpool-relocation/#respond Thu, 22 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000 Amy Peacock http://www.dezeen.com/?p=2376090

British multimedia company Apple Corps has announced that The Beatles Story museum in Liverpool will move from its site on the Royal Albert Dock to the St Johns Shopping Centre and former Radio City Tower.

More than quadrupling the footprint of the attraction's current dockside site, the relocation will provide around 9,300 square metres of space for immersive exhibition design, original artefacts and reconstructed sets chronicling different eras of The Beatles as they rose to international fame.

The majority of The Beatles Story will be located in what was formerly St Johns Market in St Johns Shopping Centre, which was designed by English architect James A Roberts and built opposite Liverpool Lime Street station in 1969.

The Grade II-listed Radio City Tower, also known as St Johns Beacon, will be transformed into a Yellow Submarine-themed observation platform with views across the city.

Formerly a communications tower with a revolving restaurant, the transformed 138-metre-tall structure will operate as a standalone attraction complementing The Beatles Story museum.

"Liverpool was, and still is, music city, and now we are expanding The Beatles Story Experience in Liverpool – how far out," said Ringo Starr. "The beat goes on."

“If you’d told us this was going to happen when we were hanging out and getting started, we’d never have believed it," added Paul McCartney. "The extraordinary plans the Apple Corps team have shown me for The Beatles Story take me right back to that journey, from Liverpool to the world and back home again."

"It couldn’t have happened without Liverpool and I can’t wait for people to be able to step into our story and share the experience."

Originally established on the Royal Albert Dock in 1990, The Beatles Story is set to relocate in 2028, aligning with the release of the upcoming The Beatles movie.

Apple Corps, which was founded by the four band members in 1968 to oversee The Beatles' business interests, will take over ownership of the attraction from Mersey Ferrys and oversee the upcoming relocation.

“This is the kind of ambition I want to see more of across Britain – backing the things our great cities do best and turning that global reputation into jobs, opportunity and growth," said UK prime minister Andy Burnham.

"This will be a world-class addition to Liverpool and another showcase for British music and creativity on the international stage."

Past proposals to transform the Radio City Tower included the controversial plan to connect it to the roof of the 19th-century Central Library by a zipwire.

Albania's prime minister has been accused of "sneaky and disloyal" practices to push through contentious plans for a luxury Trump-linked resort, amid fierce protests in the country.

The accusation was made by Dutch member of the European Parliament (MEP) Tineke Strik, who told British newspaper The Guardian that prime minister Edi Rama was avoiding EU environmental rules to build the controversial tourist resort on Albania's Adriatic coast.

As part of the project, thousands of luxury villas are planned for ecologically sensitive sites including Sazan (top image), Albania's only island, and Vjosa-Narta, a wetland known for its pink flamingos.

Jared Kushner revealed the project in 2024

The project aims to establish Albania as a major global tourism destination and is being backed by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the son-in-law and daughter of Donald Trump.

Kushner first revealed the project in 2024, and in May this year, Ivanka Trump excitedly discussed the project in a podcast interview, stating it is "almost daunting in its size".

No architect is currently officially connected to the project. Berlin studio Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) previously developed a proposal for the peninsula site, but is no longer working on the project, while US website Architect's Newspaper ascertained that architecture studios BIG, Kengo Kuma & Associates, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, K-studio and Emre Arolat Architecture had previously been commissioned to develop a framework. BIG has since said it is no longer involved.

"I accuse Rama of serving his own interests"

The Albanian government is under fire for supporting the contentious project and for passing a law allowing so-called "strategic investors" to build in the protected landscapes. The European Parliament applied pressure on the Albanian Government to repeal this law in June.

Dutch politician Strik has since accused Rama of "trying to help realise the megalomaniacal luxury resort plans of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner" and claimed he is fast-tracking the development to avoid EU environmental rules before the country, which is an EU candidate seeking membership, is bound to them.

Albania is expected to join the EU by 2030. Strik suggested its actions could compromise the country's EU accession process.

"I accuse Rama of serving his own interests and the interests of Kushner and not the interests of the environment and the Albanian people," MEP Strik told the Guardian.

"The government clearly intends to finalise the procedures before it is legally bound by EU standards," she continued.

The development is the focus of the Flamingo Revolution

"Such sneaky and disloyal practices should be strongly criticised by the EU. If Albania seriously wants to be a reliable candidate member state, it should respect EU law and not try to circumvent it," added Strik.

The MEP's accusations come amid broader anti-government protests in the capital city, Tirana, which are an escalation of months of peaceful demonstrations linked to the Flamingo Revolution.

The Flamingo Revolution is an environmental movement that began in opposition to the high-profile resort in June after groundworks commenced. It is named after the protected bird species found within the landscapes earmarked for development.

"If the Albanian government had taken the Flamingo Revolution seriously, we wouldn't be here," Strik said.

Resort "would completely destroy that wild region"

The Guardian reported that Kushner has claimed the goal is "to build to the highest design and environmental standards and leave this extraordinary part of Albania greener, more biodiverse and environmentally stronger".

However, an ecologist at the BirdLife Albania organisation who is among those expressing concerns about the project told the BBC that it "would completely destroy that wild region".

In an exclusive interview with Dezeen, Rama spoke of his belief in the power of architecture to make positive change in Albania.

"I am a big believer in architecture and the power of architecture to influence the way we live," Rama said.

"I think that for a country like Albania, good architecture is an uplifting presence – it's a source of extra energy for the society and for the way we envisage our future."

We recently examined why the country's capital Tirana has become an unlikely hotspot for offbeat architecture.

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Albania's prime minister has been accused of "sneaky and disloyal" practices to push through contentious plans for a luxury Trump-linked resort, amid fierce protests in the country.

The accusation was made by Dutch member of the European Parliament (MEP) Tineke Strik, who told British newspaper The Guardian that prime minister Edi Rama was avoiding EU environmental rules to build the controversial tourist resort on Albania's Adriatic coast.

As part of the project, thousands of luxury villas are planned for ecologically sensitive sites including Sazan (top image), Albania's only island, and Vjosa-Narta, a wetland known for its pink flamingos.

Jared Kushner revealed the project in 2024

The project aims to establish Albania as a major global tourism destination and is being backed by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the son-in-law and daughter of Donald Trump.

Kushner first revealed the project in 2024, and in May this year, Ivanka Trump excitedly discussed the project in a podcast interview, stating it is "almost daunting in its size".

No architect is currently officially connected to the project. Berlin studio Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) previously developed a proposal for the peninsula site, but is no longer working on the project, while US website Architect's Newspaper ascertained that architecture studios BIG, Kengo Kuma & Associates, Ateliers Jean Nouvel, K-studio and Emre Arolat Architecture had previously been commissioned to develop a framework. BIG has since said it is no longer involved.

"I accuse Rama of serving his own interests"

The Albanian government is under fire for supporting the contentious project and for passing a law allowing so-called "strategic investors" to build in the protected landscapes. The European Parliament applied pressure on the Albanian Government to repeal this law in June.

Dutch politician Strik has since accused Rama of "trying to help realise the megalomaniacal luxury resort plans of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner" and claimed he is fast-tracking the development to avoid EU environmental rules before the country, which is an EU candidate seeking membership, is bound to them.

Albania is expected to join the EU by 2030. Strik suggested its actions could compromise the country's EU accession process.

"I accuse Rama of serving his own interests and the interests of Kushner and not the interests of the environment and the Albanian people," MEP Strik told the Guardian.

"The government clearly intends to finalise the procedures before it is legally bound by EU standards," she continued.

The development is the focus of the Flamingo Revolution

"Such sneaky and disloyal practices should be strongly criticised by the EU. If Albania seriously wants to be a reliable candidate member state, it should respect EU law and not try to circumvent it," added Strik.

The MEP's accusations come amid broader anti-government protests in the capital city, Tirana, which are an escalation of months of peaceful demonstrations linked to the Flamingo Revolution.

The Flamingo Revolution is an environmental movement that began in opposition to the high-profile resort in June after groundworks commenced. It is named after the protected bird species found within the landscapes earmarked for development.

"If the Albanian government had taken the Flamingo Revolution seriously, we wouldn't be here," Strik said.

Resort "would completely destroy that wild region"

The Guardian reported that Kushner has claimed the goal is "to build to the highest design and environmental standards and leave this extraordinary part of Albania greener, more biodiverse and environmentally stronger".

However, an ecologist at the BirdLife Albania organisation who is among those expressing concerns about the project told the BBC that it "would completely destroy that wild region".

In an exclusive interview with Dezeen, Rama spoke of his belief in the power of architecture to make positive change in Albania.

"I am a big believer in architecture and the power of architecture to influence the way we live," Rama said.

"I think that for a country like Albania, good architecture is an uplifting presence – it's a source of extra energy for the society and for the way we envisage our future."

We recently examined why the country's capital Tirana has become an unlikely hotspot for offbeat architecture.

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