SECOND NATURE

A remodelled museum in Lisbon, by Kengo Kuma & Associates, meshes Japanese and Portuguese influences to create a space that sits in harmony with its surroundings

- AMAH-ROSE ABRAMS

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation's complex in Lisbon has been one of the city's best-loved landmarks since it opened in the 1960s. The foundation aims to improve quality of life through art, charity, science and education, and its Lisbon campus encompasses a main office, library, scientific research centre and contemporary art museum, Centro de Arte Moderna (CAM), which reopens this month following an extensive four-year renovation by Japanese studio Kengo Kuma & Associates. Designed in collaboration with landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic, the update cleverly reconfigures the space and extends the foundation's gardens to craft a more cohesive relationship between the existing structures.

The original CAM building was designed in 1983 by British architect Leslie Martin, who led the team behind London's Royal Festival Hall, completed in 1951.

The museum already holds almost 12,000 artworks, spanning paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs and films by some of the country's most renowned artists, such as Helena Almeida, Joana Vasconcelos, Paula Rego and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, as well as a significant collection of works by international and British artists, including Sonia and Robert Delaunay, David Hockney and Bridget Riley.