The Aspen Art Museum has announced that Tokyo-based Shigeru Ban Architects will design a new 30,000-square-foot facility for the institution, his first museum design in the United States.

Director and chief curator Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson said that the design by the environmentally minded architect, part of a five-year plan to relocate the museum from its current location in a 7,000-square-foot converted hydroelectric plant, "assures Aspen an architecturally appropriate, environmentally sound, and culturally significant venue for art."

The new space, to be built and operated exclusively by private funds raised by museum donors, is planned for the Zupancis-Galena site on Aspen's East Main Street, a "green civic campus" near the city's core that will also include an expanded library, protected homestead cabins, the historic county courthouse, affordable housing, and city and county offices.