Depot Boijmans

Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen sits in Rotterdam's Museumpark as a giant mirrored bowl, its footprint splaying outward from 40 meters at the base to 60 meters at the top, curving into a 10-meter overhang above the visitors below. The entire form is wrapped in 1,664 double- and triple-curved mirror panels, over 6,600 square meters of reflective glass that dissolve the building into its surroundings — passersby, clouds, the park's trees, and Rotterdam's skyline all bounce back across its surface, making the building's own bulk hard to pin down. A rooftop garden, planted with trees, crowns the structure, softening the building from above.

Designed by MVRDV and opened in 2021, it was conceived as the world's first fully public art storage facility — rather than hiding a museum's reserve collection in a warehouse, the depot puts it on display. Inside, a soaring 40-meter atrium is threaded with crisscrossing staircases and glass-walled storage vaults, letting visitors watch conservators at work and wander past thousands of artworks that would normally never leave storage. It's simultaneously a functional depot, exhibition space, restaurant, and rooftop garden, folded into one continuous public route.