News: these new images show the interiors and exteriors of David Chipperfield's soon-to-complete museum and gallery complex in a converted steel factory in Milan (+ slideshow).

David Chipperfield won a competition in 2000 to design the Città delle Culture (City of Culture) complex in the former Ansaldo factory, located south-west of the city in the creative district surrounding Via Tortona.

Due to open early next year, it will create a home for the Centre for Advanced Studies of Visual Art (CASVA), the Centre of Non-European Cultures and the New Archaeological Museum.

The complex comprises an assemblage of two, three and four-storey volumes, framing a network of courtyards and passages designed to help integrate the new structures with the surrounding industrial architecture.

The central block is a curving opaque-glass hall, creating a glowing beacon at the heart of the site. Around this, the architects designed a series of boxy buildings, featuring a standing-seam cladding of zinc-titanium.

The complex will also accommodate a laboratory for a traditional puppet maker, as well as an auditorium, a restaurant and a bookshop.

British architect David Chipperfield has an office in Milan, in addition to those in London, Berlin and Shanghai. Earlier this month he was also appointed artistic director of Italian furniture brand Driade.

Photography is by Oskar Da Riz.