Beirut-born, Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh has been selected to oversee the major remodeling of the Western Range at the British Museum in London. The project, announced in February 2025, involves transforming a series of galleries that comprise one-third of the historic institution into what Ghotmeh calls "an extraordinary space, a place of connections for the world and of the world." Her team includes conservation specialists Purcell and engineers Arup.
British Museum Director Nicholas Cullinan praised Ghotmeh's proposals, stating they demonstrated "an exceptional and materially sensitive architectural vision." He emphasized that her archaeological approach clearly understood the project's ambition to be "as much an intellectual transformation as an architectural one." The selection represents a significant opportunity to reimagine one of the world's most important cultural institutions.
Ghotmeh's background uniquely qualifies her for this complex undertaking. Growing up in Beirut during the 1980s, the final decade of Lebanon's civil war, she was initially drawn to medicine and archaeology. Living in a city where ancient civilizations—Phoenician, Greek, and Roman—exist alongside war-scarred buildings and contemporary replacements shaped her architectural philosophy. She studied at the American University of Beirut before continuing her education in Paris at the École Spéciale d'Architecture (ESA), where she developed her distinctive "archaeology of the future" methodology.
From 2008 to 2015, Ghotmeh served as an associate professor at ESA while working with her first practice, DGT Architects, founded with Dan Dorell and Tsuyoshi Tane. The firm executed a highly praised commission for the National Museum in Tartu, Estonia, completed between 2006 and 2016. Following this success, she established her eponymous practice, Lina Ghotmeh—Architecture.
Ghotmeh has gained recognition for her human-centered approach to building design, emphasizing architecture's connection to nature and landscape. Her methodology involves deep research into sustainable materials for each project, close collaboration with skilled artisans, and careful site management. Notable recent works include the Stone Garden tower in Beirut, completed in 2020 with its distinctive hand-combed and chiseled rendered finish, and À Table, the seemingly weightless Serpentine pavilion in central London from 2023, designed as a meeting place open to Kensington Gardens.
Her practice's current commissions demonstrate international scope and innovative approaches. These include a contemporary art museum in AlUla, Saudi Arabia, developed in collaboration with the Pompidou Centre; a new permanent Venice Biennale pavilion for Qatar; and the Bahrain Pavilion for Expo 2025 Osaka. Like the Serpentine pavilion, the Osaka project features intricately joined timber construction requiring minimal foundations.
During French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to the British Museum in July, when he announced the 2026 loan of the Bayeux Tapestry, Ghotmeh expressed pride in working with Cullinan to reimagine the museum "as a place of humanity, heritage and global dialogue." This statement encapsulates her vision for the institution's future role.
In discussing her motivation for entering the competition, Ghotmeh explained that engaging directly with world history through the British Museum was the most exciting aspect. "From the start, one of the central questions in the brief was: what is the museum of the 21st century?" she noted. "Museums should go beyond conservation and the safekeeping of objects; they should be places that foster exchange, reflection and critical thinking."
The project has deepened in focus during the eight months since her selection. Ghotmeh describes an intensive discovery process involving the study of the building's physical qualities, reconstruction of its history, and understanding its essence to determine what must remain and what can be transformed. The goal is bringing lightness and breathing space into galleries while creating extraordinary visitor experiences.
Ghotmeh's archaeological background significantly informs her approach to the British Museum project. Her "archaeology of the future" process treats design as research-driven inquiry, beginning with understanding each project's environment in physical, material, social, and historical contexts. "My fascination with archaeology lies in this: the ability to treat design as a process of inquiry, to work with complexity and transform it into something intelligible," she explains.
Sustainability remains central to Ghotmeh's practice, as demonstrated in recent projects like the Hermès workshops at Louviers in Normandy, France's first passive, energy-positive, and low-carbon industrial building. For this project, she had more than 500,000 bricks made from local earth and retrained masons to build with brick on a large scale. Her British Museum proposal includes using spoil from Portland stone cutting and building rubble to line walls.
Her sustainability approach begins with listening to place and understanding before intervening. At the British Museum, she discovered that Robert Smirke's mid-19th century design for the Egyptian and other galleries relied entirely on natural light, giving each gallery particular mood. "That quality is something we want to retain and elevate, rather than cover up or erase," she states.
The architect emphasizes three key principles in her museum work: humanity, heritage, and global dialogue. Humanity means creating welcoming spaces where all civilizations' objects are respected and the living world is acknowledged. Heritage involves making history visible to help imagine better future coexistence. Global dialogue focuses on creating conversation spaces where architecture helps people feel at ease and ready to engage with differences and shared futures.
Ghotmeh's design philosophy emphasizes human scale and tactile experience. "Whenever I think about a space, I project myself into it as a human being experiencing it," she explains. This approach involves moving beyond architecture as distant object to imagine walking, touching, and engaging with spaces, constantly testing how spaces will feel to people.
Reflecting on unrealized projects, Ghotmeh particularly values the Saradar Foundation project in Beirut, conceived as an archive and museum in the mountains dedicated to Lebanon's history through artists' perspectives. The design featured a traditional Lebanese courtyard typology with interactive rooms making visitors active participants in curation rather than passive viewers.
When asked about architecture's purpose, Ghotmeh responds that "architecture is for people, for nature, for pleasure. It is for imagining a better world—one that is more peaceful, more connected." She views architecture as the landscape we inhabit together, with potential to improve the world. Similarly, she sees art as essential for understanding ourselves and the world beyond rational thinking, connecting to humanity through questioning, feeling, and imagining.
