The Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian (CAM) reopened to the public in September of this year following the completion of an extension led by acclaimed Japanese architects Kengo Kuma & Associates, marking the firm’s first completed project in Portugal. Conceived by British architect Sir Leslie Martin, the original building opened in 1983 to house one of the world’s most significant collections of modern and contemporary Portuguese art. The architects have retained the existing concrete structure but updated it with an extension defined by a sweeping timber canopy that draws on Japanese architecture.
According to the architects, the Gulbenkian Museum project in Lisbon embraces the Japanese concept of Engawa, a transitional space that lies between indoors and outdoors. In traditional Japanese architecture, the Engawa acts as a threshold, allowing a seamless connection between the interior and nature. Engawa is an invitation for visitors to experience the quiet harmony between architecture and landscape, fostering interaction with the environment. An Engawa can also create connection, which is really important for the future of the museum. As such, the architects tried to connect the garden and building by adding new Engawa spaces.
One of the primary goals of the project was to create a harmonious relationship between the museum and its surroundings. By opening new pathways and lowering the old surrounding walls around the garden, the design strengthens the connection between the garden and the city of Lisbon. This approach invites the public to move freely through the garden to the museum, establishing an ongoing dialogue between art, nature, and urban fabric.
Accessed through a new entrance, the gardens have been extended to create a fluid and dense urban forest conceived by landscape designer Vladimir Djurovic (VDLA)
“In our vision for CAM, we craft a seamless fusion where architecture and nature converse in harmony. Inspired by the essence of the Engawa, we unveil a new outdoor narrative, inviting visitors to slow down and make this space their own. The idea of softness and transition is extended to the CAM interior where we created new spaces by subtraction, replicating the building connection to the garden and exterior light,” stated Kengo Kuma, Architect, Kengo Kuma & Associates.
The landscape design complements the architectural vision by transforming the museum grounds into an immersive urban forest. By densifying the vegetation and allowing varying concentrations of greenery, the visitor is invited to meander through the landscape that unfolds at each turn, revealing a series of hidden jewels: clearings and meadows, garden pockets, and reflective water elements. This beautiful and well-crafted garden over the course of the years is expected to develop into a more natural and poetic environment. The rich, natural environment creating a sensory experience that deepens the connection between the built environment and nature.
At the center’s southern edge, a 4.5-metre-high boundary wall has been replaced by a lower wall and gate to help establish a connection with the adjacent street. This gate leads into a 7,515-square-meter garden, which features native plants. Weaving walkways wrap around the site’s existing vegetation, while weathered-steel benches, gates and ornaments are dotted throughout the open space. Large granite steps lead down from the garden into the extension, which is marked by the 107-meter-long and 15-meter-wide sweeping canopy. This space serves as both a social space for visitors and a ‘transition space’ linking the south gardens to the main entrance.
The curved canopy is perched on a series of steel columns that frame views of the garden and rise from two meters in height at the garden edge to 10 meters at the building’s facade. The architects have used the canopy’s materiality to reference the long history between Portuguese and Japanese cultures – with wooden ash tiles on the underside of the structure and larger overlapping ceramic tiles cloaking the top.
The roof, adorned with white, hand-crafted Portuguese tiles, stretches across the grounds, sparkling with reflections of moving leaves, drawing visitors in and as they approach, the experience transforms into a warm, sheltered space, thanks to the ash wood beneath. The roof not only provides protection but also creating a warm, inviting atmosphere where visitors can gather and explore the outdoor spaces in comfort. These materials, rooted in both Portuguese and Japanese traditions, reflect a shared cultural respect for craftsmanship and nature.
“The engineering of the roof was an exercise in the pursuit of simplicity. The aim was to achieve a slender, minimal structure that gives the impression of a curved floating plate. The roof is a key element in the formal and poetic dialogue between the refurbished museum building and the newly landscaped park. Its structural design offered us the opportunity to focus on beauty, detail and spatial impact simultaneously, from the earliest concept through to the construction phase,” concluded Florian Foerster, Associate Director, Buro Happold.
In addition to the roof, Kengo Kuma & Associates, while retouching to the existing museum, aimed to celebrate the building’s original beauty by exposing the structure through minimal intervention while creating seamless sightlines to the gardens from all sides. They opened up the walls of previously enclosed spaces, such as the atrium and technical areas, which serve as the new atrium, main core, and shop are now visually connected to the gardens. Furthermore, a new gallery was added on the B2 floor, situated directly beneath the Engawa, expanding the museum’s capacity to display more of Gulbenkian’s extensive art collection and support the new collaborations with the artists.
This project has transformed the Gulbenkian campus, benefiting both the environment and the local community. Dramatic changes have been made to what was already there, but with a lightness of touch, as the new design updates the original to create a seamless transition between the site’s various spaces. The Gulbenkian Museum is not just a building; it is an integrated environment where art, architecture, and landscape coexist in a harmony and with this new redesign, it surely will become a model for such a museum of the future.
