It's been dubbed the "future museum," with institutions all over the globe, including London's V&A, planning to follow in the footsteps of Rotterdam's Boijmans Van Beuningen.

From Saturday, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands will open the Depot, a bowl-shaped warehouse adjacent to the Boijmans museum's original 1930s structure where all 151,000 artworks in its famed collection, from Van Goghs to Magrittes and Dals, will be on permanent exhibit to the public.

The Boijmans, which opened in 1849 to showcase the collections of Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans and Daniel George van Beuningen, has only been able to display only 4% of its treasures in permanent and temporary exhibits for a long period, as is the situation with important museums across the globe.

Visitors wearing protective jackets and limited to carrying a small bag for security reasons will be able to see the whole collection of the museum's crown jewels over six levels starting this weekend for €20.

Visitors will be able to watch the museum's art restorers at work, learn about the institution's internal workings, and travel through five different microclimates designed for metal, plastic, paper, black and white, and color photography as they enter the 40-metre-high structure with its exterior made up of soaring curved mirrors.

The works, which include around 63,000 paintings, photos, videos, pre-industrial and design artifacts, modern art installations, sculptures, and 88,000 prints and drawings, are housed, organized, and presented according to their size and conservation needs rather than by topic or creator.

Due of the absence of curation that one would anticipate in such a collection, it is intended that individuals browsing around would have a sense of discovery and adventure. Things are effectively packed in and shown on moveable racks or in display cases, with objects sensitive to light or heat stored in cabinets and only viewed by appointment.

"You'll go through the collection like you'd go to a library looking for a book and find three others," Sjarel Ex, the museum's joint director, said. "We also decided to accept private collectors, giving them the opportunity to work alongside us in the same building." So, when you go around and look at the floors, you'll see that there are numerous collections that collaborate with the museum."

According to Ina Klaassen, the museum's second joint director, Boijmans is creating a worldwide trend. The Victoria and Albert Museum has been consulting with the Boijman about its own replica, the Storehouse, which will be built in London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. "However, we've had conversations with people from Korea, Stavanger, Norway, Singapore, and a delegation from Qatar came along yesterday," she continued.

“Three months ago, we held a symposium with over 200 colleagues from around the world and their staff,” Ex said. "It's a new typology that all museums are thinking about."

The concept was initially proposed in Rotterdam in 2004 as a remedy to a problem that is all too familiar in the Netherlands: floods. It's been a problem for decades, and a huge flood in the museum's basements, the former depot, in 2009 sparked a series of others. External warehouses were becoming more expensive for the Boijmans.

"So we went to the city and said, 'Well, we've come up with this fantastic concept.' "We think we want to show more collection because the city owns the collection, like 85 percent," Klaassen said. "They said, 'Well, that's interesting, but you should probably start raising money.'"

Thanks in part to a €27 million grant from the De Verre Bergen Foundation, the museum has already invested €55 million (£50 million) in its "open storage" facility. Among the setbacks along the road was having to send back the mirrored glass for the facade when it arrived from China because it was too brown.

The spherical building's footprint is tiny, at only 40 meters, with a 10-meter overhang, as an homage to the dangers of water to art. The reflecting facade is made up of 1,664 panels and 6,609 square meters of glass.

Planting birches, grasses, and pines on the top of the building helps to retain rainfall, which is utilized throughout the structure. The architect, Winy Maas, characterized the Depot as a "Noah's ark."

The Depot, however, is not a replacement for the main museum, which is undergoing renovations and will not reopen until 2028, according to Klaassen. "That's a whole different story," she said. "Without a museum, we can't function." This is just the first step of the future museum."

Thanks to Daniel Boffey at The Guardian whose reporting provided the original basis for this story.