“Sometimes it’s difficult to remember this is an extension—it’s not a museum on its own terms,” declared David Chipperfield prior to the October 9 opening of his new building for the Kunsthaus Zürich, the city’s fine-art museum. Though Karl Moser’s original 1910 Jugendstil gallery has already been enlarged three times, Chipperfield’s $222-million, 201,285-square-foot edifice more than doubles the public space previously available, making the Kunsthaus Switzerland’s largest art museum. At such a scale, there was a danger the new might overwhelm the old, especially since the “extension” is an entirely separate structure on the other side of Heimplatz, the traffic-filled square where the museum is located. “We weren’t interested in an architecture of opposition,” explains Chipperfield with respect to this challenge. “I’m less interested in the idea that architecture should be innovative through its formal representation. We sought to respond to this place and especially the Moser Building.”