The winning design, by the husband-and-wife firm Moreau Kusunoki Architectes, was chosen from 1715 anonymous submissions.

The design features a series of connected pavilions and plazas organized around an interior street. The tower is connected to the nearby Observatory Park by a pedestrian footbridge and served by a harbor promenade.

“It kind of undoes the monumentality of most museums,” Mr. Wigley said, adding that the main concern of the 11-member jury “was to find a design that was open to an evolution — that wasn’t frozen in its own beauty — because for sure this project will change.”

The architects said they had tried to integrate the design of the building into the existing landscape of forest and sea and to use indigenous materials.

“Our approach was to try to make a building that is closely linked with the city, with the way people use it,” said Nicolas Moreau, who founded the firm with Hiroko Kusunoki, his wife.