Exhibits will include pieces by Charles and Ray Eames, Ron Arad and Tom Dixon

Nord’s dedicated Furniture Gallery will open at the Victoria and Albert Museum in December.

It will be the first gallery anywhere in the world devoted to furniture, according to the curators.

The competition was won 18 months ago by Glasgow-based Nord and London-based Block which had previously designed the museum’s Porter contemporary gallery.

The practices have since merged and Graeme Wiliamson, founder of Block and now Nord’s London director, said the commission had made a London office for the Scottish practice possible.

He said one of the key challenges in designing the furniture gallery was the fact that it will tell the story of 600 years of furniture making. The museum’s other galleries are devoted to specific periods.

“We had to find an architecture that can support a piece from the 15th century as easily as a piece of contemporary furniture so we went for a very monochromatic and muted palette,” said Williamson.

“Unusually, we were also working with six or seven curators and balancing their views and vision for their particular specialism and allowing all those to sing independently and collectively was the most difficult challenge.”

The gallery will focus on the manufacture and craft of furniture but will also house a collection of more than 200 pieces of furniture.

The museum previously displayed its exhibits, which include items by Chippendale, Charles and Ray Eames, Ron Arad and Tom Dixon, around the building.

The new gallery is part of the museum’s FuturePlan which has seen a number of leading architects create new spaces for the various collections.