Adjaye Associates and AB3D Picked to Design the Latvian Museum for Contemporary Art

British firm Adjaye Associates and Latvian firm AB3D have been selected to design the Latvian Museum for Contemporary Art, a €30-million ($33 million) museum building proposed for Riga, Latvia. The museum’s mission is to house national and regional art from the latter part of the 20th century and later.

The website for the competition, organized by Malcolm Reading Consultants, describes the winning design:

“The form resonates with traditional domestic Latvian architecture, like a simple wooden house, elevated to an institutional architecture. This suggests the idea of the museum as a home for the collection, inviting a wide audience to participate in the cultural and civic exchange it will offer. The roof structure refers to a distinctive architectural trope of the region. Each tilt is a highly specific geometry designed to sculpt the pure northern light in order to define the interior organisation and flexibility of the museum.”

Launched in 2015, the design competition invited 25 firms to participate, and seven shortlisted firms then partnered with local firms. In addition to the winning team, the shortlist also included: Caruso St John Architects and Arhitektu birojs Jaunromāns un Ābele; Henning Larsen Architects and Mark Arhitekti; Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects and Made Arhitekti; Neutelings Riedijk Architects and Brigita Bula Arhitekte; Sauerbruch Hutton and Arhitekts Ingurds Lazdiņš; and Why, OutOfBox Architecture, and ALPS.

Adjaye Associates, led by David Adjaye, Hon. FAIA, is working on several other cultural projects, including the Studio Museum in Harlem and the soon-to-open National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. The firm is also in the running to design the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.