Cover An aerial view of the Shenzhen Science and Technology Museum by Zaha Hadid Architects, with its stacked curvilinear forms set within landscaped terraces in the city’s Guangming District (Photo: Virgile Simon Bertrand)
An aerial view of the Shenzhen Science and Technology Museum by Zaha Hadid Architects, with its stacked curvilinear forms set within landscaped terraces in the city’s Guangming District (Photo: Virgile Simon Bertrand)
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The Prix Versailles’ shortlist of the world’s most beautiful museums features seven buildings across seven countries, where architecture does more than house a collection
The Prix Versailles has been recognising outstanding architecture in collaboration with UNESCO since 2015. Now in its twelfth edition, the award spans categories including hotels, restaurants, airports and museums, with an emphasis on what it calls intelligent sustainability: buildings where cultural ambition and environmental thinking are treated as the same brief. The 2026 museum shortlist, announced on 4 May, spans seven countries and ranges from a Holocaust memorial in rural Lithuania to a posthumous civic landmark in Texas. Three of the seven will receive a World Title, Prix Versailles, Interior or Exterior, later in the year.
Several entries were commissioned by governments, and the exterior design in each case is doing legible identity work, from falcon wings in Abu Dhabi to 95,000 steel panels calibrated to Shenzhen’s subtropical climate. These are buildings that, in the words of Prix Versailles Secretary General Jérôme Gouadain, possess “extraordinary narrative power” — the quality that makes a museum worth the journey in the first place.
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Zayed National Museum, Abu Dhabi, UAE by Foster + Partners
The exterior of the Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Cultural District, with all five falcon-wing towers visible above the sandstone-toned entrance facade
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Inaugurated on 3 December 2025 in Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Cultural District, the museum is a tribute to the UAE’s founding father, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. Five steel towers, rising to 123 metres and shaped after a falcon in flight, also function as passive ventilation stacks. Six permanent galleries cover more than 300,000 years of history.
Above A curved gallery interior at the Zayed National Museum, with its layered ceiling and sweeping white walls designed by Foster + Partners
Above A reconstructed Arabian sailing vessel on display within one of the museum's six permanent galleries, housed beneath a glazed oculus
A curved gallery interior at the Zayed National Museum, with its layered ceiling and sweeping white walls designed by Foster + Partners
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The building joins Jean Nouvel’s Louvre Abu Dhabi in a cultural district that has been under construction, in ambition if not always in concrete, for nearly two decades.
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Science and Technology Museum, Shenzhen, China by Zaha Hadid Architects
The museum’s street-level exterior at dusk, its layered steel volumes extending horizontally across the site with residential towers visible in the background (Photo:Virgile Simon Bertrand)
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Above A close detail of the museum’s facade, composed of 95,000 irregularly shaped stainless steel panels whose colour shifts between deep blue and grey depending on the light (Photo:Virgile Simon Bertrand)
Above The museum’s interior atrium, where white curvilinear ramps and LED-edged balustrades spiral upward through multiple gallery levels (Photo:Virgile Simon Bertrand)
A close detail of the museum’s facade, composed of 95,000 irregularly shaped stainless steel panels whose colour shifts between deep blue and grey depending on the light (Photo:Virgile Simon Bertrand)
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Opened on 1 May 2025, the museum was designed as the cultural emblem of the Greater Bay Area, the Pearl River Delta metropolitan region with a population approaching 100 million. Zaha Hadid Architects, now led by Patrik Schumacher following Hadid’s death in 2016, clad the building in 95,000 irregularly shaped stainless steel panels whose colour shifts from deep blue through various shades of grey depending on the light. The facade was calibrated against the site’s solar radiation, humidity and prevailing winds.
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Xuelei Fragrance Museum, Guangzhou, China by Shenzhen Huahui Design
The exterior of the Xuelei Fragrance Museum in Guangzhou, its eight red-brick cylinders rising above a glazed ground-floor base and landscaped surrounds
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The world’s largest fragrance museum, as confirmed by Guinness World Records, organises its programme around eight red-brick cylinders whose form references the vessels and stills used in distillation. Around 300 interactive scenting stations trace the history of perfume from ancient ritual to contemporary production, culminating in a rooftop garden. It is among the few museums in the world devoted entirely to an intangible, invisible heritage.
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MoN Takanawa: The Museum of Narratives, Tokyo, Japan by Kengo Kuma
MoN Takanawa seen from across the railway lines, its spiral wood-and-glass form low against the surrounding residential and commercial blocks of Minato ward (Photo:Yasuyuki Takaki)
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Opened 28 March 2026 on the exact site of Japan’s first railway line, MoN Takanawa spans 29,000 square metres within the Takanawa Gateway City development. Kengo Kuma also designed the adjacent Takanawa Gateway Station (2020) for the same JR East project.
A rooftop terrace at MoN Takanawa, with a curved timber bench, a narrow reflecting pool and planted beds set against the Takanawa Gateway City tower development and the wider Tokyo skyline (Photo: Yasuyuki Takaki)
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The building’s ascending spiral facade is made of wood and layered glass, and it is seeded with more than 200 plant species. This is designed to ensure the building changes visibly with the seasons, in direct contrast to the surrounding tower development.
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Lost Shtetl Museum, Šeduva, Lithuania by Rainer Mahlamäki with Enea Landscape Architecture
The museum’s white-tiled exterior at dusk, its irregular roofline rising and falling across the flat Lithuanian landscape amid the wildflower planting of the Memorial Park (Photo: Enea Landscape Architecture)
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Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamäki was asked to build a museum for a world that no longer exists. Before the Holocaust, Lithuania had more than 200 Jewish shtetls; the country now has none.
A dimly lit gallery room within the museum presents a holographic Torah scroll, with arched windows and wooden pews referencing the interior of a synagogue (Photo: Andrew Lee)
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The building’s grey-tiled roofline is shaped to evoke the silhouette of a village; its interior unfolds as a sequence of individual houses, each presenting a distinct chapter of the exhibition. An adjacent Memorial Park by Enea Landscape Architecture extends the project into the surrounding plains.
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National Medal of Honor Museum, Arlington, Texas, USA by Rafael Viñoly Architects
Above The National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, Texas, its steel-clad Exhibition Hall suspended 12 metres above the open-air Field of Honor courtyard on five megacolumns, with a spiral staircase visible beneath (Photo: Corey Gaffer)
Above The Field of Honor courtyard at dusk, looking up at the underside of the suspended hall, with the central oculus visible above and the spiral ramp curving towards the gallery entrance (Photo: Corey Gaffer)
The National Medal of Honor Museum in Arlington, Texas, its steel-clad Exhibition Hall suspended 12 metres above the open-air Field of Honor courtyard on five megacolumns, with a spiral staircase visible beneath (Photo: Corey Gaffer)
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The steel-clad Exhibition Hall is suspended 12 metres above an open-air courtyard, the Field of Honor, supported by five megacolumns each representing a branch of the US Armed Forces. A central oculus floods the interior with natural light, and sculptural spiral staircases carry visitors up from the courtyard into the galleries.
The museum's ground-level entrance lobby, its glazed ceiling admitting natural light alongside a curved interior wall bearing the names of Medal of Honor recipients in gilt lettering (Photo: Corey Gaffer)
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The building was the final commission of Uruguayan-American architect Rafael Viñoly, also responsible for 20 Fenchurch Street in London and the expansion of the Cleveland Museum of Art, who died in March 2023 at the age of 78, before it was completed.
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Islamic Civilization Center, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
The Islamic Civilization Center in Tashkent at dusk, its monumental portal and turquoise dome reflected in the forecourt water feature
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Initiated by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the Centre draws its architectural language from the Timurid era, the fifteenth-century Central Asian empire whose monuments, including Samarkand’s Registan, are among the most studied examples of Islamic architecture. A 65-metre dome anchors the complex; the Qur’an Hall uses light, sound and multimedia across five halls.
Above The Center’s turquoise-tiled dome is seen above a reconstructed historic street within the surrounding complex, referencing the architectural scale of Timurid-era Tashkent
Above A close detail of the Center’s main portal, its pointed arch recessed within layers of hand-laid blue and white geometric tilework in the Timurid tradition
The Center’s turquoise-tiled dome is seen above a reconstructed historic street within the surrounding complex, referencing the architectural scale of Timurid-era Tashkent
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A research programme involving approximately 1,500 scholars from more than 40 countries underpins the visitor experience. The building arrives as Tashkent positions itself as a regional cultural capital, a strategy with clear parallels to Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat and the bet both governments are making on architecture.
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Jennifer Choo is Regional Managing Editor of Tatler Homes, covering architecture, interior design, and art across Asia. Based in Malaysia, she oversees regional content on luxury residential design and contemporary art collections. Legally trained but choosing to pursue her passion for design, she previously led notable design publications and worked as an interior stylist and art consultant for property developers, design firms, and private clients.
