Design Museum Gent: A New Chapter Built From the City’s Past

By Lise Luxury · Architecture & Design

A museum devoted to design faces an unusually revealing challenge: its building becomes part of the argument. Every doorway, material and place to sit expresses something about what design should offer. Following its reopening on 3 October 2026, Design Museum Gent brings that question into focus through a new wing and the restoration of its historic buildings. Here, the story extends beyond the objects on display. It concerns how architecture can reconnect a place with its city, and how materials that already exist can become the beginning of something new.

A New Wing That Reconnects the Whole

Designed by Carmody Groarke and ATAMA, alongside heritage work by RE-ST, the transformation brings together buildings accumulated across several centuries. The new five-storey wing occupies the museum’s last vacant plot and completes the fourth side of its courtyard. Its significance lies in the relationships it makes possible: a new entrance on Drabstraat, accessible routes through the museum and connections between previously fragmented spaces. For architects and interior designers, this is a useful example of how an addition can improve the experience of an entire property. A successful new room changes how the older rooms are understood.

The Façade Carries a Local Story

The pale façade introduces the project’s most compelling material decision. Its Gent Waste Brick was developed using local municipal waste streams, including crushed concrete and white glass, with lime as the principal binder. The bricks gain strength through curing rather than conventional kiln firing. ATAMA reports an embodied-carbon figure approximately one-third that of the Belgian fired-clay brick used for its comparison; this is a material comparison, rather than a claim about the whole building. The architectural interest is equally important. A façade can carry evidence of local resourcefulness while maintaining a carefully considered colour, texture and civic presence.

Timber Makes Space for Changing Uses

Behind the brick, timber construction responds to demanding museum requirements. Project engineers describe long-span ribbed floors with beech laminated veneer lumber, creating exhibition spaces without intermediate columns, while cross-laminated timber contributes to the upper structure and interventions within the existing buildings. These decisions connect material selection to the practical freedom of the interior. Open spaces can accommodate different exhibitions, gatherings and arrangements over time. For hospitality and residential projects, the lesson is worth considering: the most valuable material choices support the life a building will lead, as well as the appearance it presents on completion.

The City Remains Part of the Interior

The new wing negotiates between the scale of neighbouring houses and the public character of a museum. Its upper volume turns towards the historic centre, with four pitched roof forms and windows that establish different relationships with Ghent. Lower views connect visitors with the street and neighbouring buildings; higher views open towards the skyline. This suggests an approach to interiors in which the surroundings remain active participants. For a hotel lounge, apartment or restaurant, a carefully positioned opening can give a room an identity that furnishings alone cannot provide. The view becomes part of the composition.

Design Is Something Visitors Can Use

The museum also integrates commissioned design into everyday experience. Furniture, acoustic curtains, a pocket garden and a 3D-printed aluminium entrance gate bring contributions from designers into the building itself. Visitors encounter design through use as well as observation: entering, sitting, gathering and moving between activities. This relationship is particularly relevant to hospitality interiors, where a beautiful object must also participate in a comfortable experience. The project invites a useful question for any design brief: which details will people remember because they helped them feel welcome, rather than simply because they attracted attention?

What This Means for Contemporary Luxury

At Lise Luxury, we see a meaningful connection between this project and interiors shaped around craftsmanship and material character. The museum offers an example of how provenance, proportion and adaptability can enrich a space. That interpretation does not make recycled brick a universal prescription, or timber the answer to every structural brief. It encourages closer questions about each material: where it comes from, what it contributes and how it will age. Whether choosing a natural-stone table or planning a bespoke interior, those questions can help create rooms whose appeal deepens through everyday use.

The renewed Design Museum Gent gives us a timely building through which to explore these ideas. Its strongest lesson may be that a new chapter can begin with careful attention to what is already present: existing structures, local resources and the people who will use the space. For designers, architects and hotel owners, that is a generous way to approach a project. Before adding a defining feature, consider the connections it could create. An interior gains depth when its materials, setting and daily rituals belong to the same story.

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