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Spanish architect Cruz y Ortiz has completed a new exhibition wing at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the second and final piece of its 11-year transformation.

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Main picture: Philips Wing. Photo: Ronald Tilleman.

The Philips Wing, formerly called the Fragments Building, unites a number of previous expansions to the main building to create a space for temporary exhibitions as well as a new restaurant. It opens on 1 November with an exhibition on 20th century photography, and from February, a showcase of Rembrandt.

Rijksmuseum - 2014 - John Lewis Marshall

Similarly to the main museum, finished last year, Cruz y Ortiz has created a light-filled, double-height atrium with mini versions of the white chandelier-like grates. On one side of the atrium is a 17th century wall, which once belonged to a castle in the Dutch city of Breda, before bring saved and reinstated in Amsterdam by the Rijksmuseum's original architect Pierre Cuypers. The entrance has been reoriented to face the main building and a new Asian pavilion, while a staircase leads up to the exhibition spaces on the first floor.

Philips Wing. Photo: Ronald Tilleman

The 13 exhibition rooms, used for the past ten years as a temporary gallery while the main museum underwent its renovation, have been left as uncomplicated, white spaces, connected on either side of the atrium by a sweeping balcony. Elsewhere, Dutch firm Studio Drift has installed Shylight, a moving light system consisting of five petticoat-like lamps that move up and down an old 18th century staircase at the rear of the gallery.

Philips Wing. Photo: Ronald Tilleman

Director general of the Rijksmuseum Wim Pijbes describes the new Philips Wing as 'an extra surprise' to the museum. 'I see it as a museum itself, it's not just an extra wing,' he says.