David Kohn wins international contest for Belgian ‘Tate Modern’

The team’s winning design for the €95 million project for the museum – known locally as SMAK (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst) – reconfigures and extends a cluster of historic buildings in central Ghent.

The London-based practice was picked from a five-strong shortlist, which also included Caruso St John (see full list below), for the 20,000m² scheme, similar in scale to London’s Tate Modern.

Those finalists had been chosen from a longlist of 53, which included Sanaa, Zaha Hadid Architects, Sergison Bates, 6A and Tony Fretton.

The winning designs will overhaul a city-centre complex that originally opened inside the 1949 Casino building at the eastern end of Ghent’s historic Floraliënhal in 1999. Its collection focuses on contemporary art work since 1945, featurinog important works by Francis Bacon, Luc Tuymans, Tracy Emin, Anthony Caro and Andy Warhol.

David Kohn Architects’ winning design will repurpose the linked but ‘largely redundant’ Floraliënhal – a monumental glass and steel structure built for the 1913 World’s Fair – to create the main entrance to the museum.

The ‘most radical element’ of the proposals will be a ‘deep retrofit of the two existing concrete and brick structures at either end of the Floraliënhal to create new display spaces’.

The team said: ‘A circular approach to construction sees the retention of these structures with their façades becoming a “quarry” from which materials for the new building are extracted.’

The winning scheme will also revamp the surrounding Citadelpark – Ghent’s largest park, laid out in the 19th century along English ‘picturesque’ landscape principles. The 1856 Citadel Gate, an overgrown folly structure at the edge of the park, will become an entrance to the cluster of buildings, while a new belvedere tower will mark the complex entrance.

David Kohn Architects director David Kohn said: ‘The project is ambitious in its approach to experiencing art within a park setting and to addressing the climate crisis through circular construction. This is our first major international museum project and we are looking forward to working with the SMAK team to realise all of its potential.’

The practice is already working in Belgium alongside Bovenbouw Architectuur to regenerate a former historic beguinage in Hasselt as a new home for Hasselt University’s architecture faculty.

The SMAK victory is the latest in series of project wins by UK firms in Belgium (see AJ 23.05.24). Earlier this month Sergison Bates won a separate competition for a £19.2 million project to convert two separate buildings into a new single business hub for the Hogeschool PXL university in Hasselt.

The David Kohn contest win also comes three years after Carmody Groarke revealed its final designs for a contest-winning planned extension of Ghent’s Design Museum, 2.5km north of SMAK. That scheme is due to complete in 2026.

DRDH won an international competition for a major restoration and transformation of the Opera Ghent in 2019.

The winner and shortlist:

• WINNER: David Kohn Architects / noA architects (in collaboration with Asli Çiçek)
• Xaveer De Geyter Architectenbureau BVBA / ALTSTADT office for architecture
• aNNo architects / FELT architecture & design / MONADNOCK
• Caruso St John (in collaboration with De Smet Vermeulen architects)
• Christ & Gantenbein AG / Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen