Bilbao’s fine arts museum now has a gallery in the air

The Bilbao Fine Arts Museum has completed a major expansion by Foster + Partners and local architect Luis María Uriarte, centred on a 55-metre-long gallery called Agravitas. The new structure sits on large V-shaped columns above the existing complex, deliberately avoiding contact with the original building fabric. It is designed to connect the museum’s various buildings and later additions, bringing more order to a site that had grown into a U-shaped plan with an extended wing.

What stands out is how much of the project is about making the museum easier to move through. Beneath the new gallery, a former outdoor space at the centre of the complex has become a glazed ground-floor hall filled with sculptures, creating a new shared heart for the museum. Upstairs, the gallery spaces are column-free and lit by skylights that can either admit daylight or be blacked out, depending on what is being shown. The extension also adds offices and roof terraces with views across Bilbao.

The material palette keeps one eye on the city around it. Agravitas was built in locally produced steel, a nod to Bilbao’s industrial past, while overhanging roofs provide solar shading and photovoltaic panels sit on the roof. The wider transformation also restores the museum’s existing buildings and brings back its original 1940s entrance for the first time in decades. Worth a look for anyone interested in how a museum can be enlarged without simply swallowing what was already there.

Our summary of a story from Dezeen, published 6 October 2026. Read the original

Photos: Dezeen · See all 5