The Spain-based practice of Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga – in collaboration with the Swedish architects Hermansson Hiller Lundberg and the landscape architect Peter Korn – has won the competition to revamp the Göteborgs Konstmuseum.

A half-buried elongated plinth in front of the south facade of the historical building establishes a respectful and complementary relationship with the existing museum. The new volume, sensitive to the specific characteristics of the place, works out a rapport between the Gothenburg Museum of Art and the neighboring small-scale development.

The abstract and low-key facades, which present few openings, give the complex a certain continuity, but also produce a certain contrast with the existing edifice. The result is a dialogue between two architectural styles.

The distribution of the different uses generates a compact and flexible project that avoids any overly vertical organization. At a new main public level, the space between the old building and the extension becomes the institution’s central square, around which all the exhibition galleries are laid out.