The seven-storey Museu del Disseny de Barcelona is located on the edge of Plaça de les Glories, next door to Jean Nouvel's Torre Agbar office tower. Due to the level changes across the site, the building has part of its volume buried beneath the ground and has public entrances on two of its floors.

MBM Arquitectes divided the form of the building into two halves. The bottom section is a bulky volume with glazed walls and a grass roof, while the upper section is a top-heavy structure clad with pre-weathered aluminium panels on every side.

Set to open in spring 2014, the museum will combine the decorative arts, ceramics, textiles and graphic design collections of four existing museums, which have now closed their doors.

The main exhibition hall will be housed in the lower part of the building, while additional exhibitions will take place in galleries on the museum's upper floors. Other facilities include a large auditorium, a small hall, a public library, education rooms and a bar and cafe.

The area surrounding the museum has been made into a lake, while the grass roof serves as a new public lawn overlooking the water.

The Design Museum in London is also moving to a new home, as British architect John Pawson is developing the former Commonwealth Institute building.

See more recent architecture in Barcelona, including a modular office block by Arata Isozaki and student housing at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.

Photography is by Iñigo Bujedo Aguirre.

Here's some more information from DHUB:

The building is the work of MBM Arquitectes, the architecture studio formed by Josep Martorell, Oriol Bohigas and David Mackay, together with Oriol Capdevila and Francesc Gual. The edifice is made up of two parts: one underground (which takes advantage of the slope created by urban development of the plaza) and another which emerges at 14.5 m (at the level of Plaça de les Glòries).

Construction below the height of 14.5m: Most of the surface area of the building is situated below the 14.5m level and is where the more significant installations are housed. They are distributed over two floors and a gallery, and include the main exhibition hall, rooms given over to management and preservation of the DHUB's collections, the main offices, Clot public library, the documentation centre (DHUBdoc) and rooms for research and educational activities, in addition to high-traffic services such as the bar, restaurant and store. Though below ground level, the basement floor receives natural light from a trench which is worked into the different ground levels and which features a huge lake, creating a dialogue with the outside. Lighting is reinforced with six skylights that look out over the public space and can also be used as showcases for the centre's contents and activities.

Construction above the height of 14.5m: This part of the building projects over the width of Carrer d'Àvila and has the shape of a slanted parallelepiped. In accordance with the general urban plan it occupies a minimum footprint, primarily in order not to reduce the space earmarked for public use, but also because the vicissitudes of plans to demolish the elevated road and change the tramline route severely limit the space available. The building cantilevers out towards the plaça, enabling the construction potential to be met while at the same time establishing a display of urban architecture over the motorway. This block will house the venues for long- and short-term temporary exhibitions, as well as a small hall and a large auditorium.

Entrance to both parts or bodies that compose the DHUB headquarters is gained through a single vestibule with two points of access: one in Carrer d'Àvila and another in Plaça de les Glòries. Passage through this part of the building is almost inevitable, as it forms a kind of corridor connecting Plaça de les Glòries, the 22@ technological district and Poblenou.

All of the services situated in the basement area can be reached from this semi-public plaza, as well as those on the upper floors by means of a system of escalators, staircases and lifts. While the different spaces have diverse dimensions and architectural characteristics, overall they form a conceptual whole in which the auditorium stands aloft as a fundamental and crowning feature.

Only two materials are used in the building's exterior, zinc plates and glass, bestowing an industrial feel with metallic accents on the building. The green carpet of the artificial flooring and bright graphics on the pavement are two of the primary components of the outside surfaces. In both cases, the elements employed (natural and manufactured) ensure sustainability and ease of maintenance. The lake, in addition to visually highlighting the work, creates a link between the different levels.

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News: the Museum of Modern Art in New York is to reconsider its decision to demolish the former American Folk Art Museum next door following an outcry from architects, conservationists and critics.

In a board meeting yesterday, the museum's directors heard that design studio Diller Scofidio & Renfro had been selected to oversee MoMA's expansion and explore the option of integrating the former American Folk Art Museum into the plans.

Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA's director, told trustees and staff that the architects wanted to consider "the entirety of the site, including the former American Folk Art Museum building, in devising an architectural solution to the inherent challenges of the project."

Diller Scofidio & Renfro said the institution's directors had given the design team "the time and flexibility to explore a full range of programmatic, spatial and urban options."

"These possibilities include, but are not limited to, integrating the former American Folk Art Museum building, designed by our friends and admired colleagues, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien," the studio said in a statement.

MoMA had planned to demolish the neighbouring building and replace it with a glass-fronted structure linking the art museum's existing space on West 53rd Street with a planned 82-storey tower designed by French architect Jean Nouvel.

In its initial announcement last month, museum officials said the bronze-clad building had to be pulled down because its facade did not match MoMA’s glass aesthetic and its floors would not line up with MoMA’s.

Designed by US architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, the American Folk Art Museum opened its doors just 12 years ago but was sold to MoMA in 2011 to pay off a $32 million loan.

The museum's collection of paintings, sculptures and crafts by self-taught and outsider artists now resides at a smaller site on Lincoln Square, further north in Manhattan.

MoMA's initial decision to tear down the building was met with disappointment by Tsien, who told the New York Times it was "a loss for architecture".

Later this year MoMA will host a major retrospective of the work of modernist architect Le Corbusier – see all news about MoMA and see more architecture in New York.

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Set to open later this year, the Nanjing Sifang Art Museum forms part of the Chinese International Practical Exhibition of Architecture (CIPEA) programme that will see buildings by both Chinese and foreign architects populate a site within the Laoshan National Forest Park. As well as the museum by Steven Holl, the park will feature a conference centre by Arata Isozaki, a hotel by Liu Jiakun, a leisure centre by the late Ettore Sottsass and a total of 20 houses.

The museum sits at the entrance to the park. Formed of two halves, the building has a two-storey black concrete base that is partially submerged into the site and a translucent glass upper level that is suspended above on a set of chunky columns.

Galleries will occupy all three floors of the building, providing a new home for the Nanjing 4Cube Museum of Contemporary Art. Exhibitions on the lower levels will be accommodated in a series of separate rooms, while on the top floor artworks can be displayed in a continuous sequence that finishes with a view towards Nanjing's city skyline.

Holl was interested in the difference in the use of perspective between Western and Chinese painting when designing the jolting snake-like form of the building. "The museum is formed by a 'field' of parallel perspective spaces and garden walls [...] over which a light 'figure' hovers," says the studio.

A monochrome colour palette was used throughout. The black tones of the concrete are stains left by its bamboo formwork, which has also left a ridged texture.

A courtyard is contained at the centre of the plan and features paving stones recycled from old hutong neighbourhoods in Nanjing.

The CIPEA project was first conceived back in 2003 as a showcase of modern architecture. Many of the buildings are set to open later this year and even the houses will be used as galleries, meant to be visited but not inhabited. See pictures of Blockhouse by Zhang Lei of AZL Architects in our earlier story.

Other recent projects in China by Steven Holl include the Sliced Porosity Block mixed-use complex in Chengdu and proposals for a pair of museums in Tianjin, with one the inverse of the other. See more architecture by Steven Holl on Dezeen.

Photography is by Xia Zhi, apart from where otherwise indicated.

Here are more details from Steven Holl Architects:

Nanjing Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China
2003 - 2013

Perspective is the fundamental historic difference between Western and Chinese painting. After the 13th Century, Western painting developed vanishing points in fixed perspective. Chinese painters, although aware of perspective, rejected the single-vanishing point method, instead producing landscapes with "parallel perspectives" in which the viewer travels within the painting.

The new museum is sited at the gateway to the Contemporary International Practical Exhibition of Architecture in the lush green landscape of the Pearl Spring near Nanjing, China. The museum explores the shifting viewpoints, layers of space, and expanses of mist and water, which characterize the deep alternating spatial mysteries of early Chinese painting. The museum is formed by a "field" of parallel perspective spaces and garden walls in black bamboo-formed concrete over which a light "figure" hovers. The straight passages on the ground level gradually turn into the winding passage of the figure above. The upper gallery, suspended high in the air, unwraps in a clockwise turning sequence and culminates at "in-position" viewing of the city of Nanjing in the distance. The meaning of this rural site becomes urban through this visual axis to the great Ming Dynasty capital city, Nanjing.

The courtyard is paved in recycled Old Hutong bricks from the destroyed courtyards in the center of Nanjing. Limiting the colors of the museum to black and white connects it to the ancient paintings, but also gives a background to feature the colors and textures of the artwork and architecture to be exhibited within. Bamboo, previously growing on the site, has been used in bamboo-formed concrete, with a black penetrating stain. The museum has geothermal cooling and heating, and recycled storm water.

Client: Nanjing Foshou Lake Architecture and Art Developments Ltd
Architect: Steven Holl Architects
Associate architects: Architectural Design Institute, Nanjing University
Structural consultant: Guy Nordenson and Associates
Lighting design: L'Observatoire International

Construction period: February 2005 -
Program: museum complex with galleries, tea room, bookstore and a curator's residence
Building area: 2787 sqm (30,000 sqf)

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The three-storey extension branches out from the southern facade of the 120-year-old Lenbachhaus, which was first constructed as the home and studio of nineteenth-century painter Franz von Lenbach. It was converted into a museum in the 1920s and had been incrementally extended over the years, so architecture firm Foster + Partners was brought in to rationalise the layout, as well as to add the new gallery wing.

"Our main challenge has been to maintain the same amount of exhibition area within the museum's footprint, while creating new circulation and visitor spaces," said architect and studio founder Norman Foster. "Given the way that the different parts of the museum had evolved, there was no such thing as a typical space – every corner is unique and required individual attention and different design decisions."

Rows of metal pipes made from a copper-aluminium alloy clad each elevation of the extension, designed to complement the restored yellow-ochre render on the walls of the original building. Together, the new and old structures frame the outline of a new courtyard with an entrance at the point where they cross.

Beyond the entrance, visitors are greeted with a triple-height atrium that wraps around the corner of the old exterior walls. A long narrow skylight runs along the edge of the roof and is screened by louvres that cast stripy shadows across the walls, while an installation by Olafur Eliasson is suspended from the centre of the ceiling.

"[An] important aspect of our design has been creating new opportunities for works of art to be exhibited outside the traditional confines of the gallery, such as in the atrium," added Foster. "This space develops the idea of the 'urban room'. It is the museum's public and social heart, and point of connection with the wider city."

Galleries occupy the two upper floors of the new wing and are dedicated to the display of the Blue Rider collection of expressionist paintings by artists including Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc.

The ground floor contains a temporary exhibition space and an education room, plus a glazed restaurant that opens out to a terrace around the edge of the building.

As part of the renovation, the architects also addressed the energy efficiency of the existing building. They added new heating and cooling systems in the floors, replaced lighting fixtures and introduced a rainwater harvesting system.

Past museum and gallery projects by London firm Foster + Partners include the Sperone Westwater gallery in New York and the Great Court at the British Museum. The team is also currently developing an art museum with four overlapping peaks for Datong, China. See more design by Foster + Partners.

Other museum and gallery buildings we've featured with golden cladding include a brass arts centre in Portugal and the Islamic art galleries at the Musée du Louvre in Paris. See more golden buildings on Dezeen.

Photography is by Nigel Young.

Here's a statement from Foster + Partners:

Lenbachhaus Museum reopens

The Museum's historic buildings have been carefully restored and the exhibition spaces augmented by a spectacular new wing, which provides an ideal environment for viewing the magnificent 'Blue Rider' collection. As well as radically improving the buildings' environmental performance, the remodelling has created a new entrance and social spaces, including a restaurant, terrace, education facilities and a dramatic full-height atrium, where the old is articulated within the new.

Built in 1891 as a studio and villa for the artist Franz von Lenbach, the Lenbachhaus Museum has been gradually extended over the last century. However, its buildings were in need of renewal and the museum lacked the facilities to cater to a growing audience of 280,000 people a year. Redefining circulation throughout the site, the project has transformed a complex sequence of spaces of different periods into a unified, legible museum that is accessible and open to all.

Peeling away the unnecessary historical accretions, a 1972 extension has been removed to reveal the wall of the original villa, which has been sympathetically restored in ochre render. The different historical elements are then unified along Richard-Wagner Street by a new gallery pavilion, containing two levels of exhibition space. The new building is intended as a 'jewel box' for the treasures of the gallery – it is clad in metal tubes of an alloy of copper and aluminium, their colour and form designed to complement the villa's rich ochre hue and textured facades.

Inside the new building, a sequence of intimate galleries display the Museum's internationally-renowned 'Blue Rider' collection of early twentieth-century Expressionist paintings, echoing the domestic scale of their original setting in the villa Lenbach. As many of the works of art were painted in 'plein-air', indirect natural light has been deliberately drawn into the upper level galleries to create the optimum environment for their display.

A new entrance has been created adjacent to the restaurant, accessed via a new landscaped piazza to the east of the museum – this move reclaims the courtyard garden, turning it from a pedestrian thoroughfare into a tranquil space for visitors. The restaurant is open outside of the Museum's opening hours and its seating continues outside, helping to enliven the surrounding streets and attracting new visitors into the galleries.

The new social heart of the building is a dramatic top-lit atrium, with ticket and information desks, access to a new temporary exhibition space on the ground floor and a grand, cantilevered stair to the upper level galleries. Clearly articulating the old within the new, its impressive volume incorporates the ochre exterior wall of the original villa and is scaled to accommodate large-scale works of art. The Museum commissioned the artist Olafur Eliasson for a site specific work titled Wirbelwerk. During the day sunlight washes the white walls via a long, slender opening at roof level and horizontal louvres cast changing patterns of light and shade within the space.

As well as repairing the fabric of the existing buildings, one of the main aims of the project has been to radically improve the museum's environmental performance. A water-based heating and cooling system within the floors has been implemented – using significantly less energy than an air based heating, this represents an innovative step in a gallery context. Rainwater is also collected and recycled and lighting has been replaced and upgraded with low-energy systems.

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Currently under construction in the north-west corner of the British Museum's Bloomsbury quadrangle, the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre will provide new galleries, storage facilites and conservation studios within a nine-storey structure conceived as a cluster of pavilions.

Referencing both the nineteenth and twentieth century architecture of the museum, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners designed a steel-framed building clad with a mixture of stone and glass. The height of the roof will align with the eaves of the existing building, while three of the storeys are to be buried underground.

The Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery will occupy the ground floor of the new building and will be accessed via the north side of the Norman Foster-designed Great Court. The column-free rectangular gallery will feature a large door to allow access for larger exhibits, as well as a series of floor-to-ceiling windows that can be easily screened to protect light-sensitive objects. The space could also be subdivided to house smaller exhibitions.

Other floors of the building will be dedicated to conservation of the museum's collection. The uppermost floor will contain top-lit studios for working with smaller artefacts, such as metal, glass or ceramic objects, while additional laboratories and offices will surround a two-storey atrium in the lower levels of the building and will be used for examining larger objects.

The three basement floors will function as a storage and lending hub for over 200,000 items. Each floor will contain a study room, plus a 16-metre truck lift will allow items to be transported in and out of the building.

"The World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre represents a vitally important combination of a purpose-built exhibition gallery and a celebration of the amazing behind-the-scenes activities," said architect Graham Stirk. "These facilities will be contained in a bespoke twenty-first century building that provides the next stage of the museum's evolution."

The World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre will complete in March 2014 and the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery is scheduled to open with an exhibition dedicated to the Vikings.

London firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) is led by Richard Rogers in partnership with Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour. Other recent projects by the firm in London include the NEO Bankside apartment blocks beside the Tate Modern art gallery and a fabric walkway over the roof of the O2 Arena. See more architecture by RSHP on Dezeen.

Here's an update from the British Museum:

British Museum celebrates progress on the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre development

With less than a year to go until the first exhibition opens in the new exhibitions gallery, the British Museum today reveals the extent of progress on the construction of its new capital project, the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre (WCEC). Designed by Rogers, Stirk, Harbour + Partners (RSHP) and constructed by Mace, the new Centre will cement the British Museum's reputation as a world leader in the exhibition, conservation, examination and analysis of cultural objects from across the globe. The WCEC will enable the Museum to build on current successes, to store, conserve, study and display the collection for the future.

Located in the north-west corner of the Museum's Bloomsbury estate, the WCEC is one of the largest redevelopment projects in the Museum's 260 year history. The Centre will provide a new public exhibitions gallery, state-of-the-art laboratories and studios, world class stores for the collection, as well as facilities to support an extensive UK and international loan programme. This will rationalise and greatly improve the Museum's operations on-site, and modernise facilities 'behind the scenes'. These will allow the Museum to extend support to our UK and International partners in terms of increasing capacity for staff training and joint projects.

The building consists of five pavilions (one of which is sunk into the ground) and the design is sensitive to the British Museum's existing architecture, connecting to the historic building whilst maintaining its own identity. The exhibitions gallery is due to open in early March 2014 with a new exhibition devoted to the Vikings (supported by BP). It is anticipated the conservation studios, science laboratories, loans hub and stores will be fitted out and occupied by summer 2014.

The total cost of the project is £135 million. The Linbury Trust, established by John Sainsbury (Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover KG), and the Monument Trust, established by Simon Sainsbury have together committed £25 million towards the project, one of the largest gifts to the arts in the UK in recent decades, which will be used to fund the exhibition gallery. The Heritage Lottery Fund has committed £10 million towards the project. Other significant benefactors include the Wolfson Foundation, the Garfield Weston Foundation, the A.G. Leventis Foundation and the family of Constantine Leventis, the Clothworkers' Foundation, the Fidelity U.K. Foundation, Sir Siegmund Warburg's Voluntary Settlement, the Band Trust and others as well as continued support from the Department for Culture Media and Sport (worth £22.5 million over 4 years). A fundraising campaign from the British Museum Members is underway.

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