The immense, white hull that’s risen along the ports in Liverpool, England isn’t a groovy new ocean liner. It’s the Museum of Liverpool, a building designed by Danish architecture office 3XN that will open in July. The canted walls of this gently twisted structure are clad with triangulated stone tiles that give it a rich, scale-like texture. It opens up at the bottom into pedestrian ramps and stairs, and houses a swirling, central staircase that will pull visitors inside and through exhibits that highlight the city’s unique cultural history. Liverpool is most famous as a way station. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was one of the world’s major ports, a crucial hub for colonial shipping routes, the slave trade, and European emigration. Then in the twentieth century the city became famous for cultural exports like The Beatles and, later, New Wave acts like Big in Japan, OMD, and Echo and the Bunnymen. Two enormous, Cyclops-style windows at each end of the museum speak to the city’s unique history. The north one looks into Liverpool’s city center, and the south one looks out into the world.