Chipperfield stated new building masking 20,000 sq. meters (215,000 sq. ft) was deliberate across the present nineteenth century neoclassical constructing and would come with new above- and below-ground exhibition areas, backyard area and a brand new entrance entrance.

“Our architectural method has been to create a plinth rising out of the present constructing, due to this fact basically linked to the nineteenth century constructing. However on the similar time that develops into a robust piece of structure,” Chipperfield stated throughout an occasion on the Athens museum late Wednesday.

“The problem, in fact, is to get these two issues in steadiness.”

The Nationwide Archaeological Museum, Greece’s largest, has greater than 11,000 reveals spanning millennia. Its treasures embody the three,500-year-old gold funerary masks referred to as the Masks of Agamemnon and the Antikythera Mechanism, a tool used to trace the solar, moon and planets.

However most guests to Athens favor the extra centrally positioned Acropolis Museum, designed by the Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi and opened in 2009. It’s the place Greece hopes to deal with the Parthenon sculptures, often known as the Elgin Marbles, which are at present within the British Museum in London.

The Acropolis Museum attracts some 2 million individuals per 12 months, roughly 4 occasions the quantity that journey throughout town to go to the Nationwide Archaeological Museum.

That’s one thing Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis hopes will change with the renovation.

“Extra show area shall be created for the good reveals from one of the crucial vital collections on the earth. At the moment we show lower than 10% of what we’ve got in our warehouses,” Mitsotakis stated at Wednesday’s occasion.

“It has all the time troubled me that simply over 500,000 guests come to the museum yearly when it hosts such an unbelievable wealth of world cultural heritage,” he stated.

Chipperfield will work on the Athens undertaking with the Greek architect Alexandros Tombazis, Wirtz Worldwide Panorama Architects of Belgium and German architect and structural engineer Werner Sobek.