An international architectural team of Japanese Shigeru Ban, French Jean de Gastines and British Philip Gumuchdjian won the design competition among 157 competitors. The museum features three exhibition spaces that are identical shoebox-shaped rectangles, each 262ft-long, stacked on top of each other at 45 degree angles, the huge picture windows at their short ends frame different city landmarks, most notably the Gothic cathedral. The innovative architecture of the museum is visible from a high balcony above the top-most gallery that provides views of the three boxes stacked on top of each other, with none touching the roof.

A fourth space, called the Grand Nave, is on the ground floor. It is a vast room with a wall that reaches almost 60ft-high for oversize artworks. With a combined area over 54,000sft, almost equally divided among the nave and the three galleries, it is said to be the biggest temporary exhibition space in France.

The conical roof of the museum is designed as a free-standing, waterproof fiberglass and Teflon membrane in the shape of a Chinese hat. Spread over an area of 8000sqm, the roof is supported by latticed wood columns that rise to form the underside of the translucent roof. Rain collected on the roof runs down the outside support columns and is redistributed to the surrounding museum garden.

The design of the new museum reminds of the first satellite of the Paris Pompidou opened in 1977, which featured futuristic glass, exposed pipes and industrial vents. Remnants of the Paris Pompidou are visible in the structure with exposed pipes and the roofless, ground floor Nave. The outside terrace is the same size as the plaza in front of the Pompidou, and the hexagonal 77m-high elevator tower that rises through the building and pierces the roof like a mast, references the year the Paris museum opened.

The new museum’s opening exhibit showcases almost 800 works starting with the Middle Ages to examine what makes great art. Seven hundred of them came from the mothership in Paris, with the rest borrowed from other museums in France and elsewhere, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The museum has been under construction for almost seven years and cost €69 million ($89.49 million).