Kengo Kuma in London
Architect Kengo Kuma has been named to design a new wing for London’s National Gallery, a move that will shape how the museum presents exhibitions and visitor flow in coming years. (x.com) Kuma’s commissions often blend material tactility with light-driven spaces, so the announcement signals a curatorial as well as architectural shift. (x.com)
London’s National Gallery just picked a Japanese architect, not a house-style British firm, to design the museum’s first major new wing in generations. On 7 April 2026, Kengo Kuma and Associates, working with BDP and MICA, won the competition for the project as part of the gallery’s £750 million Project Domani overhaul. (nationalgallery.org.uk) This is not a small add-on. The National Gallery calls it the biggest transformation since the museum was founded in 1824, and the new building is meant to open in the early 2030s. (nationalgallery.org.uk, theartnewspaper.com) The reason the building needs to change is that the collection is changing too. Project Domani will push the National Gallery beyond its old cutoff of 1900, so a museum long known for Old Masters will start showing modern painting as part of one continuous story. (nationalgallery.org.uk, museumsassociation.org) That shift sounds academic until you picture the visitor route. Instead of ending around Vincent van Gogh and stopping at the door of the 20th century, the gallery wants people to keep walking through the history of Western painting in one sequence. (nationalgallery.org.uk) Kuma’s proposal was chosen from 65 entries, then from a final shortlist of six that included Foster + Partners, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, and Selldorf Architects. The jury said his scheme stood out for its handling of light and materials, which is exactly the part of museum design that changes how art feels in the room. (theartnewspaper.com, timeout.com) The early images show why. Kuma’s team proposes a bridge between old and new wings, a public rooftop, and ground-level routes that reconnect Trafalgar Square to Leicester Square, so the project works like a new piece of city street as much as a museum extension. (theartnewspaper.com, monocle.com) Inside, the new wing is planned to do two jobs that usually fight each other. It will create larger temporary exhibition galleries while also adding spaces that can be divided into smaller shows, which gives curators more freedom over blockbuster loans, focused displays, and visitor flow on busy days. (timeout.com, archdaily.com) Kuma has built a career on making big public buildings feel less like sealed boxes. His museums and cultural projects often use filtered daylight, layered surfaces, and tactile materials like timber to soften scale, and the National Gallery’s director, Sir Gabriele Finaldi, praised this design for its “supremely beautiful handling of light and of materials.” (architecturalrecord.com, timeout.com) The money explains the ambition. The full Project Domani campaign is priced at about £750 million, with roughly £350 million tied to the new wing itself, and the gallery said about £377 million had already been secured when the winner was announced. (nationalgallery.org.uk, theartnewspaper.com) So the real story is not just that Kengo Kuma got a London commission. One of Britain’s most traditional museums is rebuilding itself around a new timeline, a new route through the collection, and a new front door to the city, and the architect was picked to make those three changes feel like one move. (nationalgallery.org.uk, dezeen.com)
