Pietro Maria Bardi Building, MASP

When Lina Bo Bardi’s vast glass and concrete home for Brazil’s first modern art museum officially opened in 1968, it was hailed as a landmark of modernist architecture. The collection it has assembled since then is a trove of 20th-century Brazilian art by artists including Maria Auxiliadora, Djanira and Tarsila do Amaral. MASP also has perhaps the finest collection of European art in South America, with works by artists ranging from Raphael to Renoir and from El Greco to Van Gogh. On 28 March, the museum is unveiling its new extension: a 14-storey, $43m slender black building, designed by METRO Arquitetos Associados, that will nearly double the museum’s total space. Named after Bo Bardi’s husband – who was also the museum’s first director – the extension stands next to the existing building and the two structures are connected by an underground tunnel that will come into operation later this year.

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Find out more from the MASP’s website

The entrance foyer of the Pietro Maria Bardi Building, MASP. Photo: Leonardo Finotti

Multipurpose exhibition space on the ninth floor of the Pietro Maria Bardi Building, MASP. Photo: Leonardo Finotti

A staircase leading to the Pietro Room in the Pietro Maria Bardi Building, MASP. Photo: Leonardo Finotti

View of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), with the original building at the centre and the new Pietro Maria Bardi Building to the right. Photo: Leonardo Finotti