Shanghai Grand Opera House by Snøhetta.
Photo: Courtesy of MIR and Snøhetta
The 12 Most Anticipated New Structures of 2025
From an arboreal airport in Phnom Penh to new headquarters for the Fondation Cartier Pour l’Art Contemporain, these are the architecture debuts on our radar this year
Whatever else might be said about 2025, it’s going to be a year of massive, long-awaited projects slated to throw open their doors to a public eager to rethink (or remember) the role of art in their lives, or at least escape the news. From Kazakhstan to Senegal, these are the projects we can’t wait to welcome into the world over the next 12 months.
New Museum expansion by OMA. Photo: Courtesy of OMA, Bloom images
1. New Museum by OMA | New York City
The mesh-wrapped, off-kilter stacks of galleries devoid of both columns and natural light comprising SANAA’s 2007 New Museum building in SoHo might not be to everyone’s taste, but the museum is doubling down on its metallic identity with a seven-story, 60,000-square-foot addition by OMA’s Shohei Shigematsu and Rem Koolhaas in collaboration with Cooper Robertson. A new entry and atrium stairway anchors a doubling of the exhibition spaces and a new restaurant, all within a laminated glass and metal mesh façade overlooking a public plaza at Bowery and Prince Street, to open by year’s end.
Fondation Cartier Pour l'Art Contemporain by Artliers Jean Nouvel. Photo: Luc Boegly
2. Fondation Cartier Pour l’Art Contemporain by Ateliers Jean Nouvel | Paris
The French institution celebrates its 40th anniversary by reimagining the past into an ambitious future, thanks to architect Jean Nouvel’s rethink of the Haussmannian home of the Louvre des Antiquairies slated to open on the Place du Palais-Royal by the end of 2025. Nouvel, who in 1994 designed the foundation’s previous glass-and-steel home on Boulevard Raspail, has created glamorously flexible new center, with tens of thousands of square feet of public, exhibition, and mobile platform spaces—while keeping the façade entirely open to the iconic Parisian streets just outside.
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi by Gehry Partners. Photo: Courtesy of Gehry Partners
3. Guggenheim Museum by Frank Gehry | Abu Dhabi
After more than a dozen years of construction, and its attending controversies, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is slated to finally open before the end of 2025 on Saadiyat Island, the cultural district just off the United Arab Emirates capital’s coast already home to work by Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid Architects, and Tadao Ando. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim is the institution’s fourth and largest iteration, defined by nine conical galleries and glass bridges connected its four levels and atrium paying tribute to the region’s traditional minarets and domes.
Shanghai Grand Opera House by Snøhetta. Photo: Courtesy of MIR and Snøhetta
Shanghai Grand Opera House by Snøhetta. Photo: Courtesy of MIR and Snøhetta
4. Shanghai Grand Opera House by Snøhetta | Shanghai
Snøhetta intends everything—from the helical roof of the 1.6-million-square-foot complex to its radial plaza, the monumental spiral staircase to a new visual identity—of the latest arrival to the city’s Expo Houtan neighborhood to be designed to resemble an elegant fan. And the firm’s collaboration with Shanghai’s own ECADI architects, with its white silk details and red-stained oak interiors, is winning fans, too, as the country has put it at the top of its Five Year Plan to strength the city’s influence.
Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center by Studio Gang. Photo: New York City Department of Design and Construction
5. Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center by Studio Gang | New York City
Brooklyn manifests its respect for the civil rights leader and first Black woman elected to U.S. Congress with a public recreation center near where she grew up. Studio Gang has devised an arched masonry façade to organize fitness spaces, an indoor pool, a teaching kitchen, and a media lab named after community advocate Dr. Roy Hastick. And in an effort to put its money where its mouth is, the city has enlisted the McKissack & McKissack, the country’s oldest minority- and women-owned construction and design firm, as construction coordinator.
Grand Ring by Sou Fujimoto. Photo: Expo Osaka 2025
6. Grand Ring by Sou Fujimoto | Osaka
Expo 2025 might not be attracting much enthusiasm even as construction budgets for its facilities balloon, but its flagship construction hopes to turn things around before its April opening by seizing upon the shape of a circle. Sou Fujimoto found inspiration for the geometric form of the exposition’s home in nearby Kiomizu Temple’s raised platform, while its structure of latticed beams incorporate Japanese cedar, hinoki, and European red cedar, reinforced with metal in case of earthquakes.
Techno International Airport by Foster Partners. Photo: Courtesy of Foster Partners
7. Techo International Airport by Foster + Partners | Phnom Penh
Foster + Partners’ masterplan for the Phnom Penh airport lands aerofoil-shaped piers on either side of a central head house for arrivals, departures, and retail. A solitary roof canopy, with 118-foot-tall structural trees and a steel grid shell, shades the entire exterior, while mature trees keep things cool and breezy inside.
Goethe Institut by Kéré Architecture. Photo: Courtesy of Kéré Architecture
8. Goethe-Institut by Kéré Architecture | Dakar
For the German cultural center’s new Dakar location, Kéré Architecture envisioned a ground-up structure whose shape pays tribute to the site’s canopy of trees while leaving the neighborhood untouched by noise or crowds. Its solid interior and perforated exterior walls are both made of locally sourced BTC bricks, while tree-shaped pillars hold up a roof to create further public space on the roof.
The Studio Museum in Harlem. Photo: Albert Vecerka
9. Studio Museum in Harlem by Adjaye Associates | New York City
Long a cultural anchor for New York City, and reportedly untangled from the troubled architect David Adjaye, who along with his office designed its new home, the Studio Museum in Harlem will greet the autumn with a new home boasting a stepped area that creates new public space on the street. Meanwhile, behind the grey concrete façade, stacks of single- and double-height volumes offer flexible galleries for artwork of any scale.
Almaty Museum of Arts by Chapman Taylor. Photo: Courtesy of Chapman Taylor
10. Almaty Museum of Arts by Chapman Taylor | Almaty
Chapman Taylor envisions this new home for international contemporary art and businessman Nurlan Smagulov’s collection of 20th century Central Asian art as a link between the Kazakhstan city and the nearby mountains. The 107,000-square-foot building orients multiple galleries around an enclosed “art street” that in turn feeds foothill-like exterior parks and plazas for outdoor art exhibits, all due to open this year.
Asiat Darse Bridge by Counterspace. Photo: Courtesy of Counterspace
11. Asiat-Darse Bridge by Counterspace | Vilvoorde
While researching ideas for the Belgian city of Vilvoorde’s competition to design a pedestrian bridge, Counterspace’s lead architect Sumayya Vally learned of the city’s 20th-century horticulturist and activist Paul Panda Farnana, who founded the first Congolese association in Belgium. That African nation’s practice of docking fleets of dugout canoes inspired the form of the bridge, which plants isolated seed beds in each section, acting as pollinators for both plants and knowledge of Farnana’s legacies.
Storm King Art Center capital project by Heneghan Peng, WXY Architecture, Urban Design, Reed Hilderbrand, and Gustafson Porter Bowman. Photo: Courtesy of Storm King Art Center
12. Storm King Art Center Capital Project by Heneghan Peng, WXY Architecture + Urban Design, Reed Hilderbrand, and Gustafson Porter + Bowman | New Windsor, New York
New Windsor, New York’s beloved outdoor sculpture garden will, on May 7, unveil the results of its first-ever capital project: welcoming pavilions serviced by new parking lots prioritizing public transportation; five new acres of art and programming interwoven within more than 650 new trees; and a purpose-built, state-of-the-art conservation and fabrication building. Alongside new permanent acquisitions from Lee Ufan and Arlene Shechet, the center inaugurates the new space with installations by Kevin Beasley, Dionne Lee, and the first U.S. institutional exhibition (and first outdoor installation) by Sonia Gomes.
Cover: Shanghai Grand Opera House by Snøhetta.
Photo: Courtesy of MIR and Snøhetta
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