Barcelona-based architecture firm Barozzi Veiga has been appointed to design a major transformation of the Art Institute of Chicago. Together with the Art Institute, Barozzi Veiga will address the new museum as an interlocking complex–an unfolding series of immersive spaces to welcome the visitors. 

The project will transform the museum, by providing greater access to exhibitions, collections, and programs, with new and expanded art historical and social narratives. 

It will leverage the singular features of the Art Institute, incorporating new architectural revisions and additions. These changes will transform visitors’ experience, heightening the clarity of wayfinding and intensifying the enjoyment of the museum’sexceptional, manifold offerings.

Barozzi/Veiga was founded in Barcelona by Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga in 2004. The practice has since worked internationally in public and private projects and its work has received several prestigious distinctions. Its diverse international work includes mainly cultural and educational buildings. 

Barozzi/Veiga ́s work is characterized by the intention to arrive at solutions that are rooted in place, architectures that can be perceived over time and that have an emotional content. Concepts and ideas able to create particular atmospheres, which are architecturally clear and expressive, and able to have meaning by itself.

Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga. Image courtesy of Barozzi/Veiga

Barozzi/Veiga is behind the projects the new Philharmonic Hall of Szczecin in Poland and Buendner Kunstmuseum Chur in Chur, Switzerland which was listed among the 20 new buildings for the RIBA Awards for International Excellence 2018. Barozzi/Veiga recently completed Tanzhaus Zürich, a new public building resolves the relationship with its surroundings through the definition of its main façade.

All images courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago unless otherwise stated.

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