Design Museum Gent returns with a civic-minded new wing

Design Museum Gent reopens on 3 October 2026 after a four-year renovation and expansion that feels as much about public life as display. Carmody Groarke and ATAMA designed a new 2,200 sq m wing, while RE-ST restored the historic buildings, bringing together a museum complex that spans the 16th to the 20th century. The addition completes the site around its courtyard and uses timber and white brick, with a facade made from more than 82,000 Gent Waste Bricks, lime-cured from locally sourced municipal waste in Ghent.

Inside, the museum is using that new framework to shift how it shows design. Collection. Models from the Past for the Future brings around 500 works from a 24,000-piece collection into five themes: copy, comfort, migration, folds and connections, rather than a straight historical sequence. Public Matter(s): Design and Democracy looks at voting systems, representation and access as designed structures too, with an interactive Democracy Fitness Trail that asks visitors to practise listening, compromise and constructive conflict.

There are also new spaces with a clear public role: a freely accessible Stadskamer reception and shop, the Forum lecture space, Atelier workshops, the Vitrine for temporary exhibitions and a fourth-floor Loft with views over Ghent. In Hotel de Coninck, CO-LAB brings designers, researchers and local communities into eight period rooms, while the AI-powered Searcher opens up the collection through visual and textual associations. Worth a look if you like museums that use architecture and objects to ask bigger civic questions.

Our summary of a story from designboom, published 1 October 2026. Read the original

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