Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) officials have revealed their plans for the institution’s expansion. The budget for this extension project is estimated at $6.6 Million. The 32,000-square-foot addition will sit across the Plaza des Angels from the museum’s main Richard Meier–designed building and is expected to be completed by the end of 2023.
The new building—an open, terraced, brick edifice—will be connected by a below-grade link to the 1995 Meier structure and to the fifteenth-century Convent dels Àngels, which houses a chapel currently used for performances, as well as two large halls. It is designed by Basel architecture firm Chirst and Gantenbein (C&G) in conjunction with Barcelona-based Harquitectes.
The chapel will serve as the main entrance for MACBA visitors, with both convent and chapel able to host exhibitions, allowing for a greater portion of the museum’s six-thousand-piece collection to go on display. The new structure will house shops, galleries and public spaces.
“The Meier building made sense twenty-five years ago and was important in creating something fresh to transform El Raval,” Xavier Ros Majó of Harquitectes told Architectural Record, citing the historic neighborhood the museum occupies. The goal of the two architectural firms was to offer a human-scale structure that would render the campus more permeable and welcoming, while establishing a dialogue between the existing historic and modern buildings.