Design Museum Gent Reopens After €20m Green Rebuild

The Design Museum Gent in Ghent, Belgium is back after four years, and even its toilets are part of the show.

The museum reopened on 3 October after a €20 million, four-year expansion and renovation, as reported by The Art Newspaper. It returns to its historic site with a new wing, a new entrance and a deliberately low-waste approach.

The centrepiece is DING, short for Design in Gent. It is a new five-level wing with around 2,000 sq. m of flexible space. That space will host exhibitions, lectures and workshops.

London studio Carmody Groarke led the design with Antwerp firm RE-ST and Gent-based ATAMA. They turned a vacant lot on Drabstraat into an enclosed atrium, a light-filled courtyard under cover, which now works as the main entrance and central foyer. The new extension is faced in pale brick.

The facade uses more than 82,000 Gent Waste Bricks. The bricks were made locally from lime-cured municipal waste. It makes a white-brick building that still carries the city’s rubbish in its walls.

Inside, Brussels-based Bureau Bas Smets built a shaded, planted room. Its air and temperature sit close to the edge of a woodland. It is cool, still and dim.

The bathrooms continue the material experiment. One has panelling made from seaweed. Another has walls made from recycled household plastics. A third has floor tiles made from volcanic ash.

For visitors, the opening programme is straightforward. Two temporary exhibitions, Public Matter(s): Design and Democracy and CO-LAB, run until 11 April 2027. They sit alongside a new collection display, as reported by Dezeen.

The City of Ghent organised 120 activities across the city to mark the return, according to the city’s announcement. The museum offered free admission on 3 and 4 October for the reopening weekend. The date had been fixed since August, when the museum confirmed 3 October 2026 for the reopening.

The closure was long. The museum shut its doors on 6 March 2022, then worked for about two years as a wandering museum without a fixed home. Director Katrien Laporte is leaving after the reopening, the City announced in July.

What makes this stand out on a day out is scale. Big moves like the brick facade sit next to small ones you can touch. Children who like counting can start with 82,000 bricks.