“We hope this will be a really empowering experience for people to start to see their world differently, see themselves differently, and understand how the types of skills that spies use can be relevant to their daily lives,” says Shelby Prichard, SPYSCAPE’s Chief of Staff. “We show how the world of espionage is all around you.”

Adjaye Associates consulted former members of renowned hacking collectives, station chiefs, and intelligence directors when designing the museum. The goal was to have visitors catch on to its mysterious atmosphere as soon as they walked through the door. The resulting space boasts a highly futuristic aesthetic, as characterized by dark concrete walls, polished concrete floors, dim rooms illuminated by LED lighting, and high-tech information displays. Smaller interior features like weathering steel drums, smoked glass, gray acoustic paneling, and mirror-polished steel only serve to further connect patrons with their inner undercover agents as they explore the various exhibits.

The museum has been open to the public since February 17th, 2018. Upon arrival, visitors are handed “identity bands,” digital wristbands that allow patrons to take part in a series of interactive, multisensory challenges meant to put their spy skills to the test. Once the tour is complete, the crowd is moved to the debriefing room, where everyone is given an assessment on which of ten total spy roles they would be best suited for.
“We worked for a couple of years on our profiling system with [a] former head of training for British intelligence, as well as some top industrial psychologists,” explains Prichard. “So it really is a very authentic look at how the spy world thinks about what it takes to be different types of spies.”

Before players are given their respective spy roles, they’ll watch a briefing on secret intelligence in the central theater. From there, they’ll move to an interrogation booth, where they’ll “learn the art and science of spotting lies,” and a room filled with 360-degree projections of both live and pre-recorded CCTV footage, which itself is meant to mimic a surveillance mission. Later on, the visitors’ agility and reaction times will be tested as they creep through a laser tunnel.

Apart from participating in the spy games themselves, guests are also encouraged to peruse a selection of spy gadgets and smart tech in the gift shop. If you’re feeling hungry, you might stop by the museum’s café, where you can enjoy a cup of coffee and a bookshop with over 1,000 rare and first-edition spy books. There are also multiple event spaces on-site, where organizations can host private parties for as many as 600 guests.

Admission currently costs $39 for adults and $32 dollars for children. If you’re planning on visiting, head on over to SPYSCAPE’s official website for more information.

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Completed by Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning studio SANAA eight years after the Japanese firm’s proposal won an international competition for the new building, Sydney Modern adds 7,000 square meters (about 75,350 square feet) of gallery space to the existing Art Gallery of New South Wales. It officially opened to the public on December 3rd.

The new addition connects to the original art gallery, a neoclassical-style building designed by British architect Walter Vernon and completed in 1909, via a public garden “land bridge.” It consists of a series of stepped platforms that give it a stacked, low-profile appearance from a distance — certainly a contrast to the bold, graphic Opera House and its unforgettable silhouette.

For SANAA, the point wasn’t to rival that monument. It was to create an appropriate building for the site, with its stunning views of Woolloomooloo Bay and a backdrop of the city skyline. SANAA principal architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa wanted the building to be harmonious with its surroundings, “one that breathes with the city, the park, and the harbor.”

“There are two ways to create a landmark, which depends on the landscape,” says Nishizawa. “If you are in an open site, a landmark can appear with a positive form and clear outline, like a rock. But if you are in a forest with all its trees, this doesn’t work. You have to create a clearing and allow the sunlight in. But the light in the forest doesn’t have a clear outline. This is a very different way to create an icon.”

The effect may be subtle architecturally, but its impact on the museum certainly isn’t. The addition’s rectilinear pavilions are arranged around a central glass-walled atrium with views of the water. Courtyards and rooftop terraces grant the upper levels a series of outdoor areas for open-air events, and the lower levels are made with rammed earth, anchoring them to the site.

Interior spaces include large exhibition rooms, including one solely dedicated to aboriginal art and another two with soaring 18-foot ceilings. Smaller exhibition rooms are devoted to children’s learning spaces and a studio for creating multimedia artworks. A large, columned underground art space repurposed from a decommissioned World War II naval oil tank will offer another 2,200 square meters (23,680 square feet) for special commissions and performances.

The new land bridge reconnects the art gallery to the city’s Royal Botanic Garden, allowing pedestrian movement from the Woolloomooloo to the city center and creating an entirely public space in the process. The garden atop the land bridge is named “bial gwiyuno” (the fire is not yet lighted) and includes both indigenous plant species and an installation by Australian artist Jonathan Jones.

“The Sydney Modern Project allows us to engage our audiences and work with our artists in thrilling new ways,” says Maud Page, Deputy Director and Director of Collections for the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

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The translucent white shingles are counter-weighted and attached to the exterior of an open-air gabled building frame using bolts that allow them to flutter up and down. When the wind blows or rain falls onto the shingles, they move, either slowly or rapidly, all together or in waves. This “shivering” makes the cabin seem like it’s directly responding to the weather conditions.

“She seems to have a personality: sometimes calm when the breeze seems to make her breathe, sometimes angry when the gusts agitate her in all directions…This animal character binds us to her and encourages us to spend time on the spot to observe its constant transformation,” the designers explain.

“It anchors visitors in the present moment. Its movements allow us to see, hear, and feel the wind more acutely. We are also connected to the surrounding trees, whose simultaneous agitation we perceive more clearly. Thus, Shiver House makes us aware of the natural world around us. By anchoring us in the present time and connecting us to nature, this cabin does us good!”

The movement keeps the installation in a constant state of transformation, holding visitors’ attention and hopefully creating a closer emotional link between them and the natural world where the hut is located. The structure builds on the success of previous iterations of Shiver House installed in Finland. This one is designed for longer-term use, and will sit within the park of Louvre-Lens for years to come.

The installation is the result of a collaboration between engineers Elliott Wood, NEON, and Odysee des Cabanes, a project that invites architects, landscape architects, designers, and visual artists to interpret landscapes through specially designed cabins, offering users the possibility of sharing moments of play, relaxation, discovery, or discussion.

NEON artist Viliina Koivisto and architect Mark Nixon founded their studio as a way to encourage playful interaction between art and everyday people. “We empathize and listen to ensure our projects resonate with people who use them,” they say. “We manipulate familiar materials in ways previously unimagined. We design with every sense in mind. We deliver once-in-a-lifetime emotional experiences.”

Inaugurated in 2012, the Louvre-Lens was created as a new off-site museum where an innovative approach to art could be developed from scratch. Located in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, the museum was designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa from Japanese architecture studio Sanaa, and its main exhibition space, the Galerie du Temps, houses over 200 artworks on loan from the Louvre in Paris. Additional works like Shiver House V2 are located on its grounds.

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The high and low points of the installation seem to shift as they catch the light from different angles, creating a dynamic, almost kinetic effect. Designed by famed Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, the British Antique Museum opened in September 2022, honoring the close relationship between the town of Kamakura and Great Britain.

Just a one minute walk from Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine and a seven-minute walk from Kamakura Station, BAM exhibits British antiques collected over the years by museum director Masaomi Dobashi. The museum consists of four floors, each representing a different era and theme. The first floor is the museum shop, featuring a London taxi and telephone box. On the second floor, visitors will find Georgian-era antiques, including leather trunks, red cloaks, and bearskin hats worn by the Royal Guard.

On the third floor, visitors step into the world of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels with a Sherlock Holmes-themed exhibit that recreates the fictional detective’s study and living space down to the most intricate details. The museum explains that “in the front, there is an armchair that invites clients in, and the gourd-shaped gasojin (soda water maker) that appears in Holmes’s story, as well as antique microscopes and physics and chemistry equipment, are reproduced as they were at the time.”

Standout objects on the museum’s Victorian-themed fourth floor include a John Broadwood & Sons piano, an extra-large gramophone made in 1935, a fireplace from a Kensington mansion, and stained glass featuring an image of Queen Victoria.

“As a connection between Kamakura and England, there is the National Trust movement that started in England in the Victorian era,” Dobashi explains on the BAM website. “It is the permanent preservation of historically significant land and assets through donations, and many scenic spots have been preserved as heritage. Kamakura is the place where the idea of the National Trust was introduced for the first time in Japan. ‘Kamakura’ is linked to the desire to cherish the good old British things, and the wonderful cultural heritage is still inherited.”

Kuma’s process of designing the British Antique Museum is documented in the book Kengo Kuma: Creating a Small British Antique Museum in Kamakura by Masaomi Dobashi, revealing more details about the connections between Kamakura, Great Britain, and Kuma, who also designed V&A Dundee, a branch of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum located in Dundee, Scotland.

“British antiques and modern electric cars are exhibited there, and it can be said that it is a timeless fusion of old and new,” Kuma says. “This time, the British Antique Museum BAM, which stands on the approach to Kamakura’s historic Dankazura, is lined with pure antiques that have absorbed more than 100 years of time collected by Mr. Dobashi. In that sense, I thought that the design of the building should be as pure as possible. As a result of repeated deliberations, we eliminated all the windows and made it simple, adopting a facade inspired by Kamakura-bori, which symbolizes the traditional culture of Kamakura.”

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Titled “Figures of Speech,” the exhibition is a reimagined iteration of Abloh’s first show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, featuring over 100 works by the late artist as curated by writer/critic Antwaun Sargent. Originally planned before the pandemic and Abloh’s death in 2021, the show is a carefully concocted mishmash of Abloh’s genius. Works of both fashion and design converge on an elevated, scene-stealing runway. An array of colorful sneakers marches across a table. Architectural sketches and fashion prototypes share space with a model of Chicago (Abloh’s hometown), including a proposed skyscraper he submitted for his master’s thesis in 2003.

While all this all might seem incongruous, the placing of Abloh’s extraordinary works is deliberate, and meant to express the artist’s work as a means to “[break] down hierarchies, especially within the creative world,” according to Sargent.

Sargent also explains that Abloh’s original goal for the exhibition was to re-conceptualize the show’s previous iterations from a more New York point of view, as the city “had special meaning for [Abloh], in the sense that it really was the place that he…became the artist that we have come to know.” One of the most significant ways the current Brooklyn exhibition has departed from its predecessors is its emphasis on Abloh’s many forays into architecture, including early sketches he completed while training to be an architect at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Appropriately enough, the show’s main attraction does reflect Abloh’s architectural bent, in the form of a full-sized house dubbed “Social Sculpture.” Built into the museum itself in order to fully integrate it with its surroundings (including the addition of new walls and existing columns), the display is eye-popping and dramatic, to say the least. According to Sargent, it showcases Abloh’s “spatial thinking as [both] an artist and designer.”

But like many of Abloh’s impressive art and design feats, Social Sculpture is so much more than just that. It’s a social commentary, “a representation of Black space, a living monument that holds the potential, through the exchange of ideas, to inspire the creation of more Black space,” as the Brooklyn Museum said in a statement.

This re-examination of Black space is exactly what makes the new exhibition so distinctive. The layout is dynamic and fluid, building relationships between disciplines as it simultaneously works to break down the barriers between them. And because Abloh himself had a hand in envisioning and conceptualizing the exhibition, as Sargent says, “‘[Figures of Speech]’ should be considered [Abloh’s] last living work…not at all a memorial…[but] a show by a living artist.”

“Figures of Speech” will be on display at the Brooklyn Museum through January 29th, 2023.

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“Indeed, the arch connects the dots of the various periods of the building’s architecture,” the firm explains. “It is also linked directly to the museum’s collections as the arch is showcased in the Mesopotamian section, but also in the Assyrian, Egyptian, Etrurian, and Roman collection, amongst many others. Regarding its shape and position, the Louvre Pavilions will fit naturally in Paris’ Royal axis, a tribute to the perspective of L’Arc de Triomphe and La Grade Arche de la Defense.”

“It creates a new connection to Paris’s architectural major landmarks such as the arcades located on the rue de Rivoli, la Seine’s iconic rivers bridges, or la Tour Eiffel just to name a few. Resolutely timeless and yet contemporary, these 21st-century arches are in direct continuity to those built in Le Louvre since the 12th century, enlightening the Louvre’s fundamental DNA.”

The arch modules are designed to connect to each other in various ways, including face-to-face, back-to-back, and at right angles. Some are vertical, creating alcoves within which visitors can shelter. Others are horizontal, encircling guests within intimate banquette seating areas. These configurations echo the geometries of the museum, including its vaults and domes. The arches’ acoustics also provide another practical function: noise reduction. Sit within one of the vertical arches and you’ll find that it offers a micro-environment with reduced distractions (a nice accommodation for visitors with autism and sensory processing disorders, whether the architects actively considered those needs or not).

Studio Malka also envisions the pavilions as adaptable modules that can respond to future needs, such as new pandemic-related distancing regulations that might arise. “We must be able to prepare for various possibilities and create suitable scenarios in order to be able to welcome users in the best possible conditions,” the architects explain. “This is also why our reception pavilions are not only modular but also mobile; Thus, their positioning and combinations may evolve depending on the different requests, but also at the rate of peak periods, like celebrations or school holidays.”

The new pavilions look like they’ll be a great example of temporary, modular, and mobile interventions that have a low impact on the historic buildings they occupy. Instead of permanently altering the Louvre itself, they respectfully augment its functionality and the way it serves the roughly 10 million visitors who pass through its doors each year. When they’re no longer needed, they can simply be removed, leaving the museum as it was before without a trace of their former presence.

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It took 18 months just to install the robotically manufactured exterior panels on the 322,000-square-foot museum, which is spread out over seven column-free floors. The unusual structure is a torus shape with an ovoid cutout in the middle, described by some observers as a massive eye. Its structural design relies on a network of 2,400 steel tubes intersecting diagonally in the outer frame, which supports slabs of concrete flooring and 183,000 square feet of cladding.

Designed by Emirati artist Mattar bin Lahej, the three-foot-tall text on the outside is a message of hope for the future from Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. It’s incised into the panels, allowing sunlight and LED lighting to outline the shapes by day and night.

“Standing 77 meters tall, the avant garde facade is made of stainless steel and glass, consisting of 1,024 separate panels, each one specially created by robots and algorithms,” explains a press release by the Museum of the Future. “The number of panels has its own significance. It represents a basic unit of the digital information storage system of computers, which is a kilobyte, and each kilobyte is equal to 1,024 bytes. The Arabic script windows cast light into the interior by day and at night illuminate the city’s iconic skyline with 14 kilometers [8.7 miles] of energy-saving, resource-efficient LED lights.”

“Due to the building’s complex geometry and flowing calligraphy, each separate panel is unique. No two are alike. Each piece had to be individually precast and produced, with numerous prototypes designed and manufactured before a winning formula could be achieved. Every single panel was produced using automated robotic arms. Each panel is made up of four layers and was created following a complex 16-step process. The precision and focus required to create each panel meant that only several could be produced per day.”

Inside, visitors will find a mix of traditional exhibitions, immersive theater, and themed attractions. It’s also home to Dubai’s “Great Arab Minds” initiative, which aims to identify 1,000 exceptional Arab talents across key fields. The museum is envisioned as “a gateway to the world 50 years from now,” demonstrating how next-generation solutions like artificial intelligence and augmented reality can enhance our lives. Each floor is designed like a movie set brought to life by storytellers, technologists, and artists, focusing on topics like space travel, climate change, ecology, health, wellness, and spirituality.

Tickets for adults are 145 AED (about $39 USD) and free for kids under three years old.

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The 42-year-old architect will helm the $500 million, 80,000-square-foot addition to the museum’s Fifth Avenue building. Though her designs have not yet been revealed, Met director Max Hollein has praised her potential to “challenge the embedded hierarchies of our history and chart a more accessible trajectory for the new wing.”

The path of the addition has been rocky since its announcement in 2014, when sluggish fundraising delayed its progress. Chipperfield’s firm was initially selected to design the expansion in 2015, but when its plans pushed the cost up to $800 million, the project was reconsidered. The addition was originally supposed to be completed in time for the Met’s 150th anniversary in 2020.

COVID also resulted in a $150 million budgetary shortfall for the museum. Last December, trustees Oscar L. Tang and his wife Agnes Hsu-Tang gifted the museum $125 million, the largest donation in its history, allowing the project to move forward. The new wing will thus be named the Tang Wing.

Escobedo founded her studio in 2006 and previously gained attention for becoming the youngest architect to ever design the Serpentine Pavilion in London in 2018. Her focus on simplicity eschews luxurious and expensive materials, instead elevating ordinary materials like concrete blocks to craft sophisticated atmospheres. That gives her projects a sense of monumental minimalism full of pattern, repetition, and clean lines. The Met commission will be her largest and highest-profile project to date.

“[Escobedo] wields architecture as a way to create powerful spatial and communal experiences, and she has shown dexterity and sensitivity in her elegant use of material while bringing sincere attention to today’s socioeconomic and ecological issues,” Hollein said in the Met’s official statement. “The new wing will be a vibrant, exhilarating space that meets the Met’s current and future needs while promoting a lively representation and reevaluation of the art of the 20th and 21st centuries in the context of 5,000 years of art history.”

Hollein’s approach to the renovations is guided by a desire to create more inclusive exhibitions and find homes for works like a collection of Cubist paintings gifted by Leonard A. Lauder in 2013. The director has previously spoken about the art world’s failure to include non-Western contemporary artists in museums.

The Met is currently working to repatriate colonial objects like 45 artifacts from the Khmer Empire believed to have been stolen from Cambodia between 1970 and 2000 during a period of civil war and genocide, along with other objects obtained via colonization. Museums in the United States and Europe are also facing a reckoning around racism in the wider art world, and the ways it affects what we ultimately view on museum walls.

“The Tang Wing presents an opportunity to give new life to the museum’s art from the 20th and 21st century; to celebrate the dynamics we can find within art of different times, geographies, and ideologies; and to uncover new spaces for self-reflection and connection with others,” Escobedo said in a statement.

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“We wanted to design a museum that not only eliminated physical barriers but created a completely shared experience, as well,” said Benjamin Gilmartin, a partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the Manhattan-based architecture firm that designed the building.

The accessible experience begins in the lobby, where visitors can request transport chairs, noise-canceling headphones, assistive listening devices, touchscreen styluses, and sensory-input items like fidget tools and weighted lap pads. Additionally, before they get started, patrons can customize their museum tour by adding preferences to an electronic tag. They can select aids like audio-described videos, high-contrast or enlarged fonts for captions, and text-to-speech screen readers. As the visitor enters each exhibit, the programmed tag automatically turns on the desired effects.

The tour starts with an elevator ride to the top floor and works its way through the exhibits, descending each floor with accessibly sloped ramps that are wide enough for two wheelchairs to comfortably pass. “From the earliest stages of design, the team consulted a committee of Paralympic athletes and persons with disabilities to ensure that, from entrance to exit, all visitors with or without disabilities could tour the USOPM facility together and share a common path,” the architects say on their website. In a cool symbolic way, that common 400-foot-long path also allows people to emulate the journey of an Olympic skier on their downhill run to glory.

All the flooring in the 60,000-square-foot museum is a uniform polished concrete, eliminating mobility obstructions. Plus, all videos play with open captions and American Sign Language translations. All touchscreens have tactile keypads to assist the visually impaired.

The 12 gallery halls housed within the museum’s three floors tell the story of Olympic contenders stretching back as far as the first Greek Games in 776 B.C. Visitors can read about each of the 154 inductees to the Olympic & Paralympic Hall of Fame, race against their favorite animated athlete on an interactive track, take on the giant slalom via simulator, and see a collection of modern Olympic torches. And of course, there’s also a plethora of gear, uniforms, and inspirational quotes from many beloved athletes throughout the space.

Outside, in keeping with the athleticism of the Olympians, the multi-angled facade of the exterior structure and its nearly 9,000 reflective anodized aluminum panels continue the feeling of motion. Across a pedestrian and wheelchair-friendly plaza, Diller Scofido + Renfro also designed a multipurpose structure with an outdoor amphitheater. The interior contains a café, a flexible theater that can accommodate up to 26 wheelchairs, and an event space with mountain vistas and a 500-square-foot terrace.

Nestled in the shadow of Pikes Peak, the Colorado Springs museum is located just three miles from the Olympic Training Center, where more than 15,000 Olympic and Paralympic athletes hone their skills each year. While the OTC is not currently accepting visitors due to the COVID-19 pandemic, patrons at the new museum are welcome seven days a week from 10 AM to 5 PM.

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This year, the prehistoric theme has been drawn outdoors among the plants for “Evolution on a Path to Enlightenment,” a gorgeous illuminated exhibition filled with ghostly hand-painted silk sculptures made by Sichuan-based company China Lights. Some of these creatures tower several meters into the air, gently billowing in the wind so they almost seem to be alive.

A Spectacular Voyage Through Time

The installation follows the evolution of biodiversity through the ages, created through the research and reconstruction work of the museum’s paleontologists. Over a hundred luminous structures represent the many species that have inhabited the Earth over the last 600 million years, including not just dinosaurs, but also lesser-known creatures that went extinct long ago.

The journey starts from Place Valhubert with the Origins of Life (3,700 to 490 millions years ago) during the Precambrian and Cambrian times, and moves into the Primary Era (490 to 250 million years ago) and Paleozoic times when organisms first started to adapt to the terrestrial environment. Then comes the Secondary Era (250 to 66 million years ago) in Mesozoic times when dinosaurs appeared. Finally, the Tertiary Era (66 million years ago to the present time) presents the Cenozoic era, in which many of these animals became extinct and mammals came to dominate the planet.

The inflatables are pretty noteworthy in their own right for the artistry that went into them. Lit from within, each one dazzles against the dark backdrop of the nighttime gardens. Naturally, an enormous T-rex with wide-open jaws is the star of the show, but even the delicate invertebrates are strikingly beautiful. It would be fun to take in this artistic display at dusk after spending the afternoon looking at all the skeletons and fossils inside the museum.

“Evolution on a Path to Enlightenment” opened November 21st, 2021 and will close on January 30th, 2022. It’s hosting visitors every day, and you can buy tickets online for €12 to €15.

A Must-See Paris Attraction

If you’re not familiar with the Jardin des Plantes, you’re going to want to add it to your dream tour of Paris. Founded in 1626 as a royal garden of medicinal plants, it opened to the public in 1650 and became associated with scientific study of botany and zoology in the late 1700s. It covers over 68 acres and houses 6 greenhouses for display and 22 for research, along with 23,500 species of plants like bromeliads, orchids, ferns, aroids, alpine plants, confers, cacti, grasses, and more.

There’s also a zoo on site with Art Deco buildings like the Vivarium, Monkey House, and Big Cat House. One of the oldest zoos in the world, second only to Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna, Austria, The Ménagerie opened in 1794 and still hosts many animals. The most popular is Nénette the orangutan.

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In 2013, Italian architect Dario del Bufalo, an expert on ancient stone and marble, was in New York to give a lecture and sign copies of his book Porphyry. Included in the book was a photo of a red and green mosaic that had once been part of the dance floor on one of emperor Caligula’s extravagant “party ships.”

“There was a lady with a young guy with a strange hat that came to the table,” Del Bufalo told CBS’ 60 Minutes. “And he told her, ‘What a beautiful book. Oh, Helen, look, that’s your mosaic.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, that’s my mosaic.’”

The architect chased down the young man, who led them to art dealer and gallery owner Helen Fioratti, who did in fact own the ancient tile work and had mounted it to a pedestal as a coffee table decades earlier. The artwork was subsequently confiscated by New York authorities and returned to the Italian government.

Emperor Caligula, one of the most despised Roman rulers, was known for his violence and over-the-top opulence. Among other things, he commissioned two giant pleasure barges (one was as long as an Airbus A380 plane) to sit on Lake Nemi. After his assassination in 41 A.D., the ships were sunk and remained at the bottom of the lake until the 1920s, when Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had the lake emptied. Hundreds of artifacts were recovered over the following years and put in a museum, but as the Nazis retreated from Italy in 1944, both the ships and the museum were destroyed by fire.

Because the mosaic-turned-coffee table shows no signs of fire damage, authorities suspect it was either stolen from the museum before the blaze or taken for a private collection before it could ever make it to the museum.

“These items may be beautiful, storied, and immensely valuable to collectors, but willfully disregarding the provenance of an item is effectively offering tacit approval of a harmful practice that is, fundamentally, criminal,” New York County District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. said in a statement speaking of the mosaic, as well as two other artifacts recovered and returned to Italy.

“It was an innocent purchase,” Fioratti told the New York Times in 2017. “It was our favorite thing and we had it for 45 years.”

She and her husband reportedly bought it from a Roman noble family in the 1960s, through a sale brokered by an Italian police official known for finding Nazi-looted art after World War II. When the millennia-old artifact was seized, the Fiorattis were not prosecuted, and although they still feel they have a legitimate claim to it, they did not fight the confiscation.

“I felt very sorry for her,” Del Bufalo said of Fioratti, “but I couldn’t do anything different, knowing that my museum in Nemi is missing the best part that went through the centuries, through the war, through a fire, and then through an Italian art dealer, and finally could go back to the museum. That’s the only thing I felt I should have done.”

At any rate, Italy is happy to have reclaimed one of its priceless pieces of history.

“The mosaic testifies how important and luxurious these imperial ships were,” Nemi Mayor Alberto Bertucci said in March, when the artwork was installed at the Museum of Roman Ships. “These [boats] were like buildings: They were not supposed to sail and they confirm the greatness of this emperor who wanted to show the greatness of his rule of the Roman empire through these ships.”

“This is a great day for Nemi and our entire territory!” the mayor added.

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In fact, there’s now such a huge selection of strange Chinese buildings to choose from, Archy.com started an annual Ugliest Building Survey, and its 12th annual contest has a whopping 87 contenders in the running. That number may dwindle in the years to come, since President Xi Jinping issued a government directive calling for an end to “oversized, xenocentric, weird” projects, and that’s part of the point of the contest. The organizers hope pointing out ugly architecture will “promote architects’ social responsibility” and cut back on wastefulness.

Voting is open until December, when a commission of architects will select the final 10 winners. Here are some of the projects currently in the lead:

Donping Poly Plaza, Foshan, Guangdong

Nobody really wants a big imposing building in their city to look sort of like a modernized Eye of Sauron, do they? Incorporating a four-story atrium with a flying staircase design, a basement level, and four towers, this complex is supposed to be a lively gathering place for residents of Foshan New City. The reasons Archy listed for nominating this project include “extremely inharmonious with the surrounding environment and natural conditions,” “idolizes Western culture,” and “weird and vulgar.” Voters mostly just think it’s depressing.

Xi’an International Children’s Art Museum, Shanghai

Some people think this school inspired by the “Arabian Magic Carpet” is cute and fitting for its purpose, with its undulating roof and facade full of round cut-outs. Others seem to be experiencing a touch of trypophobia (fear of holes). It has been called “really psychologically uncomfortable,” “disgusting,” “vulgar” and even “secret terrorism.” One voter wrote of the building’s pale beige curves and orifices, “it’s like a breathing monster composed entirely of flesh and blood.”

Glass Bridge Tower of Jiuhuanghsan Mountain in Mianyang, Sichuan

Something about the monumental figures standing on either end of this glass bridge in the Jiuhuangshan Scenic Area seems to make it extra terrifying for many onlookers. Comments include “Really insulted the beauty of this mountain,” “nightmare-inducing,” and “don’t look at me, I’m afraid.”

Hainan Danzhou Hengdahaihua Island Complex

There are so many outlandish structures on this series of three manmade tourist islands that the Ugly Buildings contest organizers couldn’t choose – they just lumped them all together as one big anger-inducing mass. “This is the garbage dump,” wrote one voter. “A game of capital, making a pile of rubbish, what a bad thing to do with this money,” wrote another.

Violin Church, Yanbu, Foshan, Guangdong

This local church isn’t even the only violin-shaped building in China, but locals hate its garishness, its overuse of concrete, its high cost, and the way it has apparently overshadowed more demure adjacent buildings. It was nominated because “the function of the building is extremely unreasonable.” Fair enough.

South Gate of Zijingang Campus, Zhejiang University

You might be surprised to learn that this comparatively tame-looking structure has earned the most votes by far. But Chinese voters are annoyed that such a high-cost, high-profile project is both painful to look at and dysfunctional. Apparently, the unnecessarily extravagant gate impedes both vehicular and pedestrian traffic, forcing everyone to stare at it even longer while they’re stuck in the area. “When the design plan came out, the teachers and students in the school objected to the curse,” wrote one voter.

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Originally announced in 2006 and slated to open in 2012, the project has suffered a number of setbacks over the years. Located on Saadiyat Island, a cultural sector off the coast of the UAE meant to establish Abu Dhabi as a top cultural destination worldwide, the museum will comprise part of a larger community of arts and cultural institutions there, which currently includes Jean Nouvel’s Louvre Abu Dhabi, the first outpost of Paris’ famed Musée du Louvre that exists outside of France.

Set to be the largest of the four currently existing Guggenheim outposts, the museum will be a sprawling complex consisting of approximately 42,000 square meters of galleries, exhibition spaces, a center for art and technology, a conservation laboratory, a children’s educational facility, and a theater.

Operated by the Guggenheim Foundation but owned by Abu Dhabi’s Tourism Development and Investment Company, Gehry’s latest Guggenheim (he also designed Guggenheim Bilbao) is described by the architect himself as “intentionally ‘messy,’ moving into clarity.” And truly, upon first glance it does appear to be a bit messy, a cluster of cones and structures of varying sizes seemingly stacked at random like a child’s tower of building blocks gone awry.

Of course, the genius of Gehry is that his masterpieces often rise from a foundation of stylistic chaos – a randomness that is, in truth, quite intentional. The same can be said for the upcoming Guggenheim outpost. Like the architect’s past projects such as The Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, or the Stata Center at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, its features contain a synchronistic flow that challenges the eye into accepting the structure as more than the sum of its parts. Angular, conical, and at times appearing to defy gravity, the museum is destined to become a landmark in a country already world-renowned for its stunning architecture.

Other buildings slated to join the new Guggenheim include Zaha Hadid Architects’ Performing Arts Center, a maritime museum by Tadao Ando, Foster + Partner’s Zayed National Museum, and The Abrahamic Family House by Adjaye Associates. But the new Guggenheim will surely outdo them all with its shapely, angular grandeur and intentionally stylistic randomness.

Gehry says of the project: “It is truly thrilling to see this project enter a new phase…I hope that this building is embraced by the people of the UAE and that this work will endure as a landmark for the country for years to come.” And with the 92-year-old architectural legend at the helm, there’s no doubt that the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will live up to (and exceed) all expectations. Already described by Guggenheim’s Director Richard Armstrong as”challenging” and a “big late masterpiece,” the project, when it finally comes to fruition in 2025, will certainly prove the old adage that “good things come to those who wait.” In this case, nearly 20 years.

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Recently, in Denmark, artist Jens Haaning took the relationship between art and social commentary to the next level by submitting two empty canvases to a Danish museum. Originally paid approximately $84,000 to create new works of modern art, Haaning instead submitted the two blank canvases titled “Take the Money and Run,” insisting that they are a commentary on poor wages.

However, The Kunsten Museum of Modern Art begs to differ, arguing that Haaning didn’t fulfill his contract to deliver the art and return the money, though they have since displayed the pieces as part of their exhibition dubbed “Work It Out,” itself a larger exploration of people and their relationship with work.

The ensuing controversy has sparked debates over Haaning’s methods. Did he, in fact, create anything? Is the statement itself the art? Or did he simply, as his canvases suggest, take the money and run?

The commission from the Kunsten Museum was part of an agreement with Haaning, and the money (more than half a million kroner) was intended to be framed as a reprise on one of the artist’s earlier works, “En Gennemsnitlig Dansk Årsindkomst.” Translated as “An Average Danish Annual Income, 2010” that piece consisted of around 280 banknotes, approximately $53,000 USD. The work was displayed alongside a second piece illustrating the annual income in Austria, and was itself controversial at the time, as viewers and critics alike were both enthralled and somewhat mystified by the seemingly ambiguous nature of the pair. Was the material representation of annual income meant as a commentary on wage gaps in Denmark (and the European Union at large)? Or was it simply a way to shock viewers through a garish display of money in its physical form?

Either way, the pieces did spark interest and debate. This, paired with Haaning’s reputation for dynamic modern art that raises larger societal, cultural, and political questions, was enough for the Kunsten to provide him the dough with the goal of creating a reprisal of his earlier work for their “Work It Out” exhibition.

Though there were mixed reactions to the blank canvasses, those at Kunsten do admit that Haaning’s work was provocative. “It wasn’t what we had agreed on in the contract, but we got new and interesting art,” Kunsten CEO Lasse Andersson admitted in a recent exchange with NPR.

For his part, Haaning was transparent in his messaging. Unlike his previous money-laden pieces, “Take the Money and Run” did not lack ambiguity. “The work is that I have taken their money,” he states. Through the blank canvasses, he wanted to comment on his own work situation as an artist, and on the “miserable working conditions” whereby he alleges he would have actually had to pay money out of this own pocket to recreate his own work for the Kunsten. Though the museum disagrees, the piece has certainly stirred controversy within the art community, both in Denmark and throughout the world, reinforcing the power of art as a successful and effective way to shape perceptions and opinions. Even if it is just a blank canvas.

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The curved walkways orbit you around circular buildings and a planet-like dome rising from the horizon. As you follow the path, you are pulled into the gravity of the massive 420,000-square-foot building that is the latest addition to the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum association. Designed by Ennead Architects, the astronomy structure is said to be the largest of its kind on Earth.

“In making this building, we wanted to create a place where the institutional mission is fully enmeshed with an architecture that itself is teaching and finds form in some of the fundamental principles that shape our universe,” said Ennead partner Thomas J. Wong in an interview with Dezeen. “The big idea of the Shanghai Astronomy Museum was to infuse a visceral experience of the subject matter into the design, and to deliver that before you even enter the building, and at the end of your visit, there is this culminating moment directly with the sky, which is framed and supported by the architecture.”

Wong explained that his company focused on three main elements for this extra-terrestrial project. First, visitors pass through the Oculus, a skylight surrounded by gold plating that allows brilliant sunlight to move in its trajectory throughout the day across the courtyard and over the reflecting pool.

“We are within a universe that is continuously in motion, something as essential as it is easy to overlook,” says Wong. “The notion of orbital motion and its relationship to time became a primary source of architectural inspiration.”

The second crucial design element was the planetarium sphere, which appears to be suspended in air at the far end of the building across from the main exhibition halls.

“Embedded in the roof plane of the lower museum wing, as if rising out of the Earth-bound horizon, the sphere gradually emerges into view as one rounds the building from the outside, the drama unfolding as though one were approaching a planet from one of its moons,” Wong explains.

Finally, the inverted dome completes the visitors’ journey through space, giving them an unobstructed view of the heavens.

“The approach and entry sequence were carefully crafted choreography, where one senses the force of compression while traveling underneath the entry cantilever, only to emerge in a light-filled swirling space that brings your gaze upward,” Wong explains.

The New York-based Ennead Architects won the bid for this project because of this focused plan to envelope patrons in a cosmic atmosphere.

“To the extent possible, we wanted this building to echo the essence of the universe and there are no straight lines or right angles in space,” Wong continues. “Whatever their age or education level, people can observe and hopefully understand more about some very basic underpinnings of astronomy through a series of direct, physical experiences. Space can seem so abstract — we wanted to provide something that was tangible and exciting.”

This stunning museum, including views from its 78-foot-tall solar telescope, is now open year-round to the public each Tuesday through Saturday.

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Though it may be invisible to some, racial segregation, separation, and violence form the framework of the American built environment, and Reconstructions unveils it and then casts it aside to make room for more just and poetic alternatives. Calling themselves the Black Reconstruction Collective, the exhibition’s participants envision interventions for 10 cities, including Oakland, Syracuse, and Miami, at times imagining alternate pasts that might have led to an altogether different present. What if, for instance, Black Americans had been able to participate equally in rebuilding the nation after the Civil War? What if we didn’t collectively view architecture and our built environments through the lens of Eurocentrism? What might Black communities have looked like without the racist practice of redlining?

Emanuel Admassu, Germane Barnes, Sekou Cooke, J. Yolanda Daniels, Walter Hood, Mario Gooden, Felecia Davis, Olalekan Jeyifous, Amanda Williams, and V. Mitch McEwen have each created a new architectural concept for spaces of various scales: kitchen tables, porches, sidewalks, neighborhoods, and even entire cities. These urban spaces become “sites of resistance and refusal, attempting to repair what it means to be American.”

V. Mitch McEwen’s proposal develops a fictional version of New Orleans founded by freed slaves, now known as the city-state of Republica. Interwoven bamboo structures rise from intact wetlands in place of all the concrete, levees, and oil rigs for which the real city is known. Similarly, Olalekan Jeyifous’ concept presents an optimistic vision of New York built atop the ruins of the real city.

Walter Hood’s “Black Towers/Black Power” makes the influence of early Black designers and architects on Oakland, California more overtly visual with abstracted totem-like structures. The MoMA website explains that, “Paired with statements that formed the Black Panthers 10 Point Program, the towers are gathered in the gallery evoking active bodies, gesturing, their connectivities revealed through enigmatic structures, fluid transparency, and undeniable presence.”

Here’s a snippet of the collective’s manifesto. Read it in full and view each project at MoMa.org.

“A nation constituted in conflict with its own ideals would need to be reconstructed before it could be fully constructed. It would need to go to war with itself and win, then reconstruct itself differently. This is not rebuilding but reconstructing to the core of governance, citizenship, history, infrastructure, and the distribution of land. Paradoxically, the people who did the constructing and must now do the reconstructing are likely to be the same — laborers in one instance and authors in another — designers of this nation and of themselves.”

“We reject the boundaries established by nation-states, challenge the spatial manifestations of anti-Black racism, and encourage creative agency and liberatory practices. This collective portal unites activists, scholars, architects, artists, and organizers across time and space. With this commitment to Black freedom and futurity, we dedicate ourselves to doing the work of designing another world that is possible, here, where we are, with and for us.”

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