Ghent’s Design Museum reopens after a four-year renovation: a new wing of white bricks made from construction waste

The Design Museum Ghent, in Belgium, reopened to the public on 3 October 2026, after a four-year closure and a €21 million rebuild. The architectural project was led by the Carmody Groarke studio in collaboration with ATAMA, while the restoration of the historic buildings was carried out by the RE-ST studio, as designboom reports.

The heart of the intervention is the new 2,200 m² wing, organised into six zones: the art storage in the basement, the reception hall and “Stadskamer” shop, the “Forum” lecture hall, the “Atelier” workshop, the “Vitrine” temporary gallery and the “Loft” event space on the fourth floor, with panoramic views over Ghent. The white facade is built with “Ghent Waste Brick” — bricks produced with low energy from construction waste collected locally in Ghent, more than 82,000 bricks in total; according to the studios, they have only a third of the embodied carbon of a typical Belgian clay brick, while the timber structure has been left exposed, Dezeen writes.

The opening programme includes the exhibition “Collection. Models from the Past for the Future”, curated by Evelien Bracke, with around 500 objects from the 24,000-piece collection on the themes of copy, comfort, migration, folds and connections; as well as “Public Matter(s): Design and Democracy”, curated by Amelie Klein and Vera Sacchetti, open until 11 April 2027, which explores the design of democratic systems themselves. The new space is also joined by “CO-LAB” by Siegrid Demyttenaere and the artificial-intelligence installation “Searcher” by Jon Stam, Valentin Vogelman and Boris Smeenk.

The museum is directed by Katrien Laporte. The opening weekend, on 3–4 October, is free of charge, with a makers’ market and brunch in the historic courtyard turned into a garden, while Design Fest Gent continues until 11 October. The building runs without fossil fuels, turning the reopening into an example of sustainable European architecture.