Dublin architects win prize to design Moscow ‘super museum’

Dublin-based Heneghan Peng Architects have won an international competition to build Moscow’s “super museum” — the new National Centre for Contemporary Art — with a design that comprises a series of stacked gallery spaces.

The firm was selected from a shortlist of three that included Moscow’s MEL Space and Madrid’s Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos to design the centre, which will include spaces for exhibitions, lectures, conferences, concerts and performances.

The competition attracted more than 900 submissions, including entries from high-profile architects as Zaha Hadid, for the prestige of building a museum that's expected to draw around 500,000 visitors a year to a former airfield in Khodynskoye Pole.

Heneghan Peng’s portfolio includes two London Olympic Park bridges, a library for the University of Greenwich, refurbishment of the National Gallery Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre in Co Antrim and the yet-to-materialise Grand Egyptian Museum outside Cairo.