Today, the Seasons of the Year cafeteria is enclosed in a skin of glossy poly-carbonate. This semitranslucent box, designed by OMA, is utterly inscrutable, and yet it could only be one thing: a gallery. A raised cargo door signals the entrance to the hangar-like building'as though industrial motifs are de rigueur even when the original building was not technically industrial.

In the central atrium the remains of the restaurant are plainly displayed'the old brick walls, patchily covered with lovely green ceramic tiles, and a Socialist Realist mosaic depicting autumn. The two brick cores'one of which used to house a vast kitchen and the other the staircase'now contain an auditorium, education spaces, and a small caf'. The exhibition spaces wrap around these cores on two levels, accessed by restored terrazzo staircases with new black-steel railings. What has been preserved here is the texture of the interior and the public-minded generosity of space.

The shell, however, is uncompromisingly new. The relatively cheap polycarbonate skin was chosen because this was supposed to be a temporary home for Garage in advance of the move to the tractor temple, but it became permanent. Koolhaas has presented the modesty of materials and form as the antidote to so much 'spectacular' architecture, but it is also practical. One meter deep, the translucent double skin contains the services that provide the necessary climatic conditions for showing art. And thus'much to the bemusement of the Russian contractors'the wires, pipes, and such remain visible through the facade. The architects describe this skin as the 'machine' that enables a ruin to work as a museum.

And that is what this now is. Garage has become the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art'a shift from private gallery to the status of a public institution. Consequently, the program also has a new orientation toward research and education, with archival exhibitions exploring Soviet-era art and international cultural relations.

Whether this is a good space for showing art is not yet proven. Apart from the open central spaces'in one of which artist Rirkrit Tiravanija has installed Ping-Pong tables and old ladies serving dumplings'the galleries are slightly cramped. There is much less exhibition space here than in the 1926 Konstantin Melnikov'designed bus garage where Garage began (and got its name). And the curators are a little anxious about the lack of white-cube spaces. Hinged display panels can be raised up to the ceiling to offer a choice of white-wall or exposed-brick hanging surfaces, a nice idea that may not stand the test of time.

Still, the building feels good. The glazed ground floor is entirely open to the greenery of the surrounding park, and the expansive sense of space is inviting. Perhaps not quite a contradiction, it is certainly curious to see a relic of Soviet public-spiritedness transformed into a symbol of oligarchic patronage. But in the new Russia, it seems, it falls to billionaires to create the public institutions of contemporary culture.

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