The British firm David Kohn Architects has won the competition to redesign SMAK, the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent, in collaboration with the Belgian practices no Aarchitecten and Asli Cicek. The objective is to redefine the museum’s engagement with the Belgian city, which will involve reconfiguring and enlarging a group of historical buildings to give the institution an additional 20,000 square meters of public space and galleries.

The scheme for the Stedelijk Museum voor Kunst includes turning the Floraliënhal, a glass-and-steel industrial building raised for the Ghent International Exposition of 1913, into the museum’s main entrance.

Flanking the Floraliënhal, two existing structures of concrete and brick contain exhibition halls and a café. Their symmetrical facades will be stripped and insulated before reconstruction. Promoting circular construction, decorative elements and materials extracted from those facades will be reused. A new belvedere tower will signpost the accessway into the complex.