Architect Lina Ghotmeh to Redesign British Museum Galleries

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French architecture firm Lina Ghotmeh Architecture (LGA) has won the British Museum’s contest to redesign its Western Range Galleries—a project the London institution calls one of the ‘biggest cultural renovations undertaken anywhere in the world’.

Led by Lebanon-born architect Lina Ghotmeh, the firm was unanimously appointed from a shortlist of five for showing ‘deep understanding and sensitivity’ towards the museum and its displays and an ‘archeological approach’.

Ghotmeh’s proposal referenced the building’s past in planning for its future and centred on sustainability and natural materials.

British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan called Ghotmeh an ‘architect of extraordinary grace and gravitas’, adding that she and her team understood the transformation was ‘as much an intellectual transformation as an architectural one’.

Ghotmeh’s recent projects include the Hermès Leather Workshop in Louviers, Normandy, the 22nd Serpentine Pavilion in London, and the Estonian National Museum in Tartu.

Her firm is also working on the AlUla Contemporary Art Museum in Saudi Arabia and the Bahrain Pavilion for Expo 2025.

The Western Range Galleries comprise ten separate buildings that house the museum’s objects from ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, Rome, Assyria, and the Middle East.

English architect Sir Robert Smirke’s original design in the 1820s was meant to accommodate 100,000 visitors, but this has since inflated to an annual six million.

LGA’s final designs are expected by mid-2026. —[O]

Main image: Lina Ghotmeh in her atelier. Photo: © Dion Barrett.