National Gallery to be redesigned by architect behind 'concrete UFO' cathedral that sparked fury in France

Peter Stevens
Wed, 08 Apr 2026 02:24:17 +0000

A new wing of the National Gallery will be designed by a Japanese architect who covered a French cathedral with a controversial "concrete UFO".

Kengo Kuma will lead one of largest and most significant transformations of the gallery, which was first built at its current site in 1838.

The new wing will, for the first time, include artwork from the 20th and 21st centuries.

The National Gallery said with the transformation it will become the "only museum in the world which exclusively displays paintings, where visitors will be able to view the entire history of painting in the Western tradition".

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In awarding Kengo Kuma and Associates the competition to design the new wing, the gallery said his design was "innovative and beautiful", and found the submission "exemplary".

Earlier this week, Mr Kuma was criticised for his 450-tonne concrete gallery covering the Saint Maurice Cathedral in Angers, France.

The gallery, constructed using an "on-site concrete precasting process", has been called a "wart" and a "reinforced concrete UFO" by French paper Ouset-France.

The gallery was designed to protect multicoloured sculptures dating back to the 12th and 17th centuries.

The sculptures were previously protected by a porch, but it was damaged by lightning in 1617 and was pulled down in 1807.

Mr Kuma's €5.5million French project is set to be unveiled on Thursday by Catherine Pegard, Culture Minister.

His new gallery wing is part of a £720million campaign - Project Domani - which will "will redefine the National Gallery for the next century".

Early artist renditions of Mr Kuma's new gallery wing features a bridge connecting old and new parts of the museum, and a roof garden which creates a "generous presence".

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The Jury Panel of the National Gallery said the interior of the new wing would be "very simple and clean".

It added the new gallery wing "presents a continuum with the Sainsbury Wing and North Galleries, but the upper floor has its own style, which adds variety and a change of design pace to the overall scheme".

The jury also considered social value in the proposed designs, saying Mr Kuma had a "robust and measurable social value delivery plan", which was "strengthened through the inclusion of the bespoke Climate & Social Action Design Framework".

Among the firms Kengo Kuma and Associates beat out for the project include Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Foster + Partners, and Selldorf Architects, who previously renovated the Sainsbury wing.

Previous renovations of the National Gallery - founded in 1824 - have not been without criticism.

The renovation of the Sainsbury Wing was not without critics, with some alleging the designs looked like "a circus clown wearing a tutu".

Charles, then the Prince of Wales, denounced the original choice of architect for the Sainsbury Wing in 1982 after he said it was "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend".

The construction was then completed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, whose installation of false columns was criticised by Lord Sainsbury in a note hidden inside one of them.

The note said: "If you have found this note you must be engaged in demolishing one of the false columns that have been placed in the foyer of the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery.

"I believe that the false columns are a mistake of the architect and that we would live to regret our accepting this detail of his design.

"Let it be known that one of the donors of this building is absolutely delighted that your generation has decided to dispense with the unnecessary columns."