New Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, by Jamie Fobert

Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. Photograph: Jamie Fobert Architects

Not an art gallery, but a home for “stray objects, stones, glass, pictures, sculpture, in light and in space,” is how former Tate curator Jim Ede described Kettle’s Yard, the Cambridge house where he arranged his stunning collection of 20th-century art alongside found objects, later donated to the university. Originally extended by modernist architect Leslie Martin in 1970, it has now received a sensitive £8.7m expansion by Jamie Fobert, including remodelled gallery spaces and an education wing, cafe and shop around a new courtyard.

• Opens 10 February, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge.

Hope to Nope: Politics and Graphics 2008-2018 at the Design Museum

Je Suis Charlie, from Hope to Nope: Politics and Graphics 2008-2018, at the Design Museum, London. Photograph: Paul SKG

From the endless imitations of Shepard Fairey’s seminal Hope poster for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, to the inventive plethora of Donald Trump memes, this exhibition will show how graphic design’s engagement with politics has evolved over the last decade. Featuring the work of high-profile and amateur designers, in campaign billboards, T-shirts and cartoons, it will show graphic design’s power as a tool for political discussion, debate and provocation.

• Opens 28 March, Design Museum, London.

Windermere Jetty Museum by Carmody Groarke

Windermere Jetty Museum, in the Lake District. Photograph: Carmody Groarke

A cluster of copper-clad sheds nestles on the edge of Windermere in the Lake District, signalling the new home for the Jetty Museum, a fascinating little institution that has been telling the story of boats and boatsmen since the 1940s. The new £16m complex includes a wet dock, allowing boats to be displayed on water within the museum, and a new workshop for visitors to see the conservation of steam launches, sailing yachts and motor boats in action.

• Opens 2018, Windermere Jetty Museum, Bowness-on-Windermere.

Royal Academy of Arts development by David Chipperfield

The new Lecture Theatre at the Royal Academy, London. Photograph: David Chipperfield Architects

“A small amount of architecture for a profound result,” is how Sir David Chipperfield describes his £50m series of surgical interventions in the Royal Academy’s two-acre site, designed to link Burlington House on Piccadilly with Burlington Gardens, behind it, for the first time. Celebrating the illustrious institution’s 250th anniversary, the project will provide a third run of galleries, including a dedicated architecture space, a reinstated auditorium, more cafe and shop space, and give the RA Schools a more prominent position.

• Opens May, Royal Academy, London.

The Future Starts Here at the V&A

Masdar City, the world’s first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city, from The Future Starts Here exhibition at the V&A Museum. Photograph: Etienne Malapert/The City of Possibilities/ÉCAL

Shifting its role from repository for the past to incubator of the future, the V&A’s major spring exhibition takes a look at the technologies that will radically shift the way we live, work and play. From Facebook’s unmanned solar-powered drone, Aquila, designed to bring affordable internet to unconnected regions around the world, to smart devices that are changing our notions of privacy in the home, the exhibition will provide a glimpse of what tomorrow’s world might look like.

• 12 May to 4 November, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.