National Gallery, Project Domani
Competition film with Renzo Piano
Building Workshop

Project Domani (Domani being the Italian word for 'tomorrow') is the National Gallery's plan to become the only place in the world where you can see the whole history of Western painting. The heart of the project is a new wing on the site of St Vincent House, behind the Sainsbury Wing. It is the Gallery's most significant expansion in its 200 year history.

In 2025, the Gallery ran an international competition to design it. Sixty-five teams entered and six were shortlisted – among them Renzo Piano Building Workshop in association with William Matthews Associates and Adamson Associates. We joined that team to make their competition film.

Finding the story

RPBW's proposal was made of two volumes. One was a Portland stone cube, an “art vault” for the collection. The other was a glass lobby that glows as a lantern on the street. The two were set around a new piazzetta which would have linked Leicester Square to Trafalgar Square.

Our job was to sit inside the architects' process, listen to how they talked about the building and find the story that held it all together. We found it in the square.

A square within a square: the city square holds the building, the building holds the gallery and the gallery holds the painting. The cube does what a frame does.

Telling it simply

We took the team's thinking and distilled it into a set of key messages, then into a voice-over script for a global audience rather than just the jury. The film moves through light, people and materiality, ending on the heart of the scheme: architecture that's not about making monuments, but about bringing people, place and paintings together.

It was a joy to work with the whole Renzo Piano team on this brief.

Kengo Kuma and Associates won with a very beautiful scheme, and we’re really looking forward to seeing the new wing come to life.