The office of AA tutor David Kohn, in collaboration with noAarchitecten and Asli Çiçek, have been selected to design the expansion of the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (City Museum for Contemporary Art) – known as SMAK in Ghent, Belgium.

The €90M project will involve designing 20,000m² of gallery to display one of Belgium’s most important collections of contemporary art, as well as being host to temporary exhibitions. Situated in Ghent’s largest park, the proposal repurposes a 1913 World Fair flower hall as a new public space and entrance to the museum. Circular construction will be deployed at a pioneering scale in the museum sector, whereby all the materials of the existing building will be retained on site and used to build the new museum.

A critical friend of the project and Professor of History of Art and Architecture at ETH Zürich, Philip Ursprung writes:
"Artworks like to contrast with the exhibition space. In the late 19th century, bourgeois museums looked like empty castles where the aristocracy had left. In the second half of the 20th century, post-industrial museums looked like empty factories where the machines and workers had left. Works of art shine through their placement in the ruins of an earlier historical phase. They tell us that we have overcome that past and are still connected to it.

What about the 21st century? How to overcome the regime of the ‘contemporary’ that has dominated art for half a century? How to leave the gravity of the white cube. The proposal for the transformation of the SMAK points precisely to this challenge. It shows that the site was an exhibition space – not for art objects – but for flowers, living organisms that bloom and grow. It shows that it is related to the park. It shows the various transformations over the years. The design lets the artworks breathe and visitors connect and reconnect. It lets different histories resonate. It does not aim to say the last word on exhibitions but wants to open the discussion for the future."

For more information about the project, visit the practice’s website.

Image: Courtesy of David Kohn Architects.