Mestre, to borrow an architectural metaphor, is the Brick House to Venice’s Glass House. Just as Philip Johnson’s workaday masonry structure houses all the support systems that allow his minimalist crystal box to function, so the municipality of Mestre and its neighboring mainland boroughs—which are officially part of the Comune di Venezia—contain all the gritty bits that permit a major modern port to operate: passenger and container docks, Marco Polo international airport, oil refineries and other industry, not to mention the majority of Venice’s 260,000 inhabitants. But it is of course to the historic center—home to just 51,000 people at the last count—that all the tourists flock: 4.4 million of them in 2017. It was partly to redress this imbalance that the Fondazione di Venezia, which supports cultural initiatives in the city, decided to devote $126 million to creating a new museum district in Mestre, the Museo del Novecento, meaning Museum of the 20th Century but abbreviated M9, for novecento, which also means 900. Unveiled in December, it is billed as Italy’s first museum with entirely virtual displays. It is housed in a startlingly polychrome building by Berlin-based architects Sauerbruch Hutton (SH), who beat David Chipperfield, Mansilla+Tuñón, and Eduardo Souto de Moura in a 2010 competition for the commission. Its construction cost $40 million (with the rest of the funds covering exhibitions and operations).