Seeking the sublime: Recontextualising culture through museum designs in 2024

How can architecture shape the way we connect with culture? This question is at the heart of some of the year’s most compelling museums, where design becomes a vessel for storytelling and deeper cultural connection. From Cornwall’s tribute to a forgotten humanitarian to a meditative space in Rajasthan, these institutional structures reshape how we experience history, art and local traditions. An additional dimension in these cultural spaces is the aspect of transformation and a polemic 'opening up' to the public. By transforming private homes, sacred landscapes and artisanal legacies into public cultural spaces, these museums offer new ways to engage with narratives that define us and lend us our cultural identities, invariably tied to histories and collective, communal experiences.

1. The Emily Museum by Stonewood Design

In the village of St. Ives in Cornwall along the UK's rugged Southwestern coast, the Emily Museum celebrates the life of Emily Hobhouse, a British reformer whose tireless advocacy during the Anglo-Boer War saved countless lives. Designed by Stonewood Design, the museum is set in the same restored 1850s rectory that was Hobhouse’s family home where legacy is brought to life through thoughtful design and storytelling. Visitors first encounter Blackthorn Grange, a newly built structure on the site of a former house and cart shed. Its Cornish architecture incorporates original stonework and window details, enhanced by a modern glazed frontage for retail. Inside, scalloped oak joinery and patinated bronze accents create a warm atmosphere, while blue lias stone flooring ties the space to its local roots. From here, a glass corridor leads to the video room, which screens an introductory film before guiding visitors into the War Rooms. These exhibits expose the brutality of war and advocate for the vulnerable. The museum also features a café serving traditional South African cuisine, connecting Hobhouse’s international impact to the local community.

2. Maison S Museum by WIT Design & Research

In the remote Chinese village of Chenjiapu in Zhejiang Province, China, the Maison S Museum reimagines a traditional guesthouse into a public cultural space. Designed by Beijing-based WIT Design & Research, the museum merges hospitality architecture with storytelling, offering visitors a window into rural Chinese life. Housed within a Minsuku, a style of countryside bed-and-breakfasts, the museum showcases artefacts and staged sets depicting everyday activities like cooking, tea drinking and ancestor worship. This careful curation offers insight into regional traditions, presenting a glimpse of a lifestyle overshadowed by urbanisation. The design centres on a glass lantern structure that contrasts with the surrounding shingle-roofed buildings, symbolising the interplay of the contemporary and the historic. By adapting a private home into a communal space, the renovation project preserves heritage while fostering tourism.

3. UCCA Clay Museum by Kengo Kuma & Associates

In Yixing, China’s “ceramic capital”, the UCCA Clay Museum celebrates the city’s millennia-old tradition of purple clay pottery. Designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates, the building’s sinuous, mountain-like form mirrors the nearby Shushan Mountain and integrates harmoniously with the Fangxi River. Beneath its timber lattice roof, visitors encounter exhibition spaces, ateliers and a café interspersed with arched walkways. These pathways connect the museum’s modern interiors with the historical essence of its site, preserving Yixing’s artisanal legacy while inspiring a contemporary revival of craft and culture. The design’s organic forms and natural materials blur the lines between Chinese architecture and landscape, emphasising the symbiotic relationship between human creativity and the environment.

4. Aatma Manthan Museum by Sanjay Puri Architects

Beneath the towering ‘Statue of Belief’ in Nathdwara, Rajasthan, India, the Aatma Manthan Museum by Sanjay Puri Architects invites visitors on a journey of introspection. Designed to explore the connections between the soul, mind and body, the museum’s fluid, cave-like interiors create a meditative atmosphere. Crafted from lightweight foam concrete, its sinuous forms and neutral tones harmonise with the verdant landscape. Immersive exhibits housed within these sculptural volumes guide visitors through themes of self-reflection and healing, making the museum a unique space for personal transformation. The use of natural light enhances a sense of calm and continuity by creating spaces that feel both grounded and ethereal.

5. LA Almazara by Philippe Starck

Nestled in the rugged Serrania de Ronda in Spain, LA Almazara reimagines how architecture can honour local heritage. Designed by Philippe Starck, this olive oil mill and museum is more than a functional building; it is a sculptural celebration of Andalusian traditions and craftsmanship, emphasised through contemporary design. The red monolithic concrete structure features striking surrealist elements; a steel bull’s horn, and a concrete eye emitting black, symbolic interiors. These details weave a narrative of reverence for olive oil production in the region. Starck’s collaboration with cultural advocate Pedro Gomez de Baeza aimed to create a place that respects history while inviting new ways to experience it. By blending modernist forms with agricultural traditions, the museum charts new territory in oleotourism, where visitors connect with the cultural significance of olive oil.

STIRred 2024 wraps up the year with curated compilations of our expansive art, architecture and design coverage at STIR this year. Did your favourites make the list? Tell us in the comments!