Museo Internacional del Barroco, Puebla, Mexicoby Toyo Ito & AssociatesThe Museo Internacional del Barroco (MIB), which opened last April near the city of Puebla in Mexico, was built with curved slabs of concrete wound around a central patio. 2013 Pritzker Laureate Toyo Ito meant for the structure, which hosts one of the country’s largest collections dedicated to Baroque culture, to sprout from the earth like a spring, thus exploring the relationship between humanity and nature, leading to its exceptional structure and composition.Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerlandby Christ & GantenbeinSwiss firm Christ & Gantenbein beat titans such as Zaha Hadid and Tadao Ando in 2009, winning the competition for the expansion of the Kunstmuseum Basel, which reopened in April, housing one of the most eminent art collections in Switzerland. “The façades are gray brick walls that exude the timeless and archaic air of an ancient ruin. They were designed to be self-supporting and monolithic, and their emphatic horizontality, with elongated bricks that are just four centimeters high, heightens their presence,” the architects comment on their minimalistic exterior design in a statement. “While the new building does indeed speak the same language as its counterpart, the story it tells is a different and novel one. We understand it as neither a repetition nor a copy of the main building, but rather as an emphatically contemporary, forward-looking building capable of accommodating completely new forms of art and the engagement with it.”San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Expansionby Snøhetta “By all counts, the expansion is weird: its all-white facade, comprising 700 individually-molded fiberglass-reinforced polymer panels, ripples and curves in a way that is totally alien to the building in front of and behind it. This odd appearance, however, is a collection of carefully considered details that address the needs of a 21st-century museum,” Janelle Zara wrote about the Snøhetta-designed, 235,000-square-foot expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which opened to the public in May in direct vicinity of Mario Botta’s iconic original building (read the full article here). The new segment of the San Francisco institution has been praised particularly for its attention to detail when it comes to ensuring an engaging and pleasant art experience, including visual “palate-cleanser spaces,” all-gender rest rooms, and interactive apps in the museum’s Photography Interpretive Gallery.See more photos of the museum here.Tate Modern Switch House in Londonby Herzog & de MeuronHighly anticipated, the Swiss firm’s extension of one of their most famous projects opened in June, a “brick-clad, ziggurat-shaped building, with a perforated brick surface, a reference to the industrial building which houses the museum…. The name derives from the electricity substation to the south of the original building, which still partially operates, preserving the authentic industrial heritage of the complex,” as Jana Perkovic noted. Critics and locals alike celebrated the museum’s new venue, with the exception of the institution’s direct neighbors from the residential Neo Bankside building, who felt their privacy violated by onlookers from the Switch House’s new viewing platform. Tate Modern director Nicholas Serota caused a stir with his recommendation that neighbors should hang net curtains if they desired more privacy. In the meantime waters seem to have calmed again in the dispute.Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center in Athens, Greeceby Renzo Piano“It all seems almost obscenely lavish, given the austerity measures imposed on the country in recent years. But the state applied nearly 10 years ago for the funding,” Rachel Corbett wrote about the €596 million Stavros Niarchos Cultural Center by Italian architect Renzo Piano in Athens, which was completed in June, housing the Greek National Opera and the National Library of Greece (read the full article here). The 226,000-square-foot center comes with a 1,300-foot canal, and a 560,000-square-foot park landscaped with indigenous plants, among other features and will be gifted to the Greek public after its official inauguration next year. In an interview conducted by Mostafa Hedaya in August, SNFCC chief executive Ioannis Trohopoulos discussed how he intended to manage the SNFCC’s transition into a state institution (Read the full interview here).See more photos of the new Cultural Center here.National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D. C. by David Adjaye“It’s a moment where architecture becomes very visible in the consciousness of a collective of people. You’re not just solving problems, you’re also creating ideas about the future,” British-Tanzanian architect David Adjaye said in a conversation with Courtney Willis Blair shortly before the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington last September. The new 420,000-square-foot building next to the Washington Monument was constructed on the last available plot of the National Mall, on a spot that used to serve as a slave market. For his design, Adjaye sought inspiration in Yoruba-style crowns and African-American craftsmanship from the antebellum South, as Blair notes in her piece (read the entire article here).See more photos of the museum here.MAAT–Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, Portugal by AL_A, Amanda LeveteOne of this fall’s most anticipated highlights, Lisbon’s MAAT–Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, a creation of British architect Amanda Levete’s firm AL_A, officially opened its doors to the public in October, with a grand program organized under the leadership of its new director, former MoMA architecture curator Pedro Gadanho. Together with the recently renovated Central Tejo power station, the new museum forms a vast cultural complex on a campus owned by the EDP Group, one of the country’s largest energy providers, which is aiming to create a new cultural hub at this formerly cut-off area of the Portuguese capital, and at reanimating the historic waterfront in the process.See more photos of the museum here.Relocated Design Museum Londonby OMA, Allies and Morrison, Arup, John Pawson“The number of people standing in line this week was unprecedented as London got its second major public exhibition opening of the year. After the reconfiguration of the Tate Modern, we have a new Design Museum,” Mark Beech wrote in his “Front-Line Report” about the institution’s re-opening in November, praising the “exceptional piece of architecture with claims to being one of London’s best of its kind,” as well as finding warm words for OMA, Allies and Morrison and Arup’s restoration of the concrete roof and John Pawson’s sensitive refurbishment. In an interview with Modern Painters’ Scott Indrisek, the museum’s co-director Alice Black talked about the challenges of the relocation and restoration as well as upcoming highlights to expect in the near future (read the full q&a here).See more photos of the museum here.Dialogue Centre Przełomy (Upheavals), National Museum in Szczecin, Poland by Robert Konieczny, KWK PromesThe Dialogue Centre at The National Museum in Szczecin, Poland, by Robert Konieczny (KWK Promes’) took center stage at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin in November, when it won the World Building of the Year 2016 Grand Prix. The subterranean structure, made entirely of pre-cast concrete, is located in direct vicinity to another revered Szczecin landmark: the Philharmonic building, winner of the 2015 Mies van der Rohe Award. “This is a piece of topography as well as a museum. To go underground is to explore the memory and archaeology of the city, while above ground the public face of the building, including its undulating roof, can be interpreted and used in a variety of ways,” British architect David Chipperfield, who chaired the jury at the World Architecture Festival this year, wrote about the Dialogue Center. “This is a design which addresses the past in an optimistic, poetic and imaginative way”.Faena Forum in Miami Beachby Shohei Shigematsu, OMAHeralded as the landmark in Miami Beach’s all-new Faena Cultural District, the Faena Forum opened during this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach with a buzz. At 42,565 square feet, and with capacities for altogether 1,000 visitors, the Faena Forum is the centerpiece of the new district backed by Argentine hotelier and property developer Alan Faena. The structure’s interior features a lobby amphitheater sporting Rosa Portugal pink marble floors (and a technical set-up for surround projections), as well as a 40-foot-high dome with a central glazed oculus and a floor-to-ceiling window that can also be used for loading large scale art. Nodding to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim in New York is the spiraling walkway that takes visitors from street level to the top of the dome. “The Forum represents endless possibilities to host a range of events—from concerts to conventions; roundtable discussion to banquets; intimate exhibitions to art fairs—all within a single evening,” the building’s architect, Shohei Shigematsu, Partner of OMA and the director of the Dutch firm’s New York office, said in a statement.See more photos of the new Faena Forum here.Click on the slideshow to see an illustrated version of this article.  Read more