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The format of the white-cube art gallery is by design as unobtrusive as possible. Architectural riffing on this template risks the cardinal sin of distracting from the art within—only to be attempted by the most skilled hands. Enter David Kohn, who has carved out a niche in the art of gallery design over the past two decades. His visions are anything but blank-and-block-shaped.

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“It’s a bit like going into a pharaoh’s tomb ... You put the object inside and it becomes timeless,” says the 51-year-old architect from the office of his London headquarters. “Often, someone is stepping off the street, and they’re crossing a threshold, and in that moment, they need to have a different relationship to the objects inside.”

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While Kohn was born in Cape Town, South Africa, it was New York City’s West Village, where he briefly lived as a young adult, that gave him foundational insight into the “industrial” model for art galleries. After moving to London in 1996, he worked at other prestigious architecture firms before he launched his namesake in 2007. Among the architect’s earliest commissions—defined by his attentiveness to the nuance of his culturally dynamic subjects—was for Stuart Shave’s gallery, which opened the following year. Next came the galleries of Thomas Dane and the first of two for Stephen Friedman, both completed in 2011.

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Then, one by one, each of the three gallerists came back to Kohn to design their personal places of residence. Shave wanted a country residence without any art; Dane desired an overhaul of his posh apartment in London with ample art on display; and, in a combination of the two, Friedman looked to Kohn for a home in the countryside with, once again, lots of space for art. In Dorset, South West England, Friedman’s country home combines red brick, laid down in hypnotic geometric patterns, with bright green detailing that creates a minimalist yet organic relationship with the verdant landscape. The property even won the Royal Institute of British Architects House of the Year in 2022. “In the end, this is a house that is full of art,” reflects Kohn. However, the focus was less on creating a home in which to encounter art, he says, so much as “a house that’s designed to be sociable.”

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Among Kohn’s forthcoming projects is a new quad at New College Oxford, which he’s executing in collaboration with the British artist Monster Chetwynd. The pair are collaborating on a series of gargoyles, inspired by mostly endangered animals—from a pangolin to a frog with a butterfly on its shoulder—and the 19th century’s period of expansion into new territories and the “discovery of new species” that followed. This playful yet esoteric spirit translates back to his gallery projects as well. In a newly opened Cork Street space for Stephen Friedman Gallery, Kohn manipulated the architectural features of a staircase to, from certain angles, resemble an elephant. “Why make things look like animals?” he says. “It’s because, genuinely, people light up a bit.”