National Museum of Qatar, Artefactory, © Ateliers Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel‘s new National Museum of Qatar utilizes technology to create a thoroughly new institution. Entire walls become cinematic displays and hand-held mobile devices guide visitors through the thematic displays of the collections. Located on a 1.5 million-square-foot site at the south end of Doha’s Corniche, it will be the first monument travelers arriving from the airport will set their eyes upon. Conceived as growing out of the ground, the building uses rings of low-lying, interlocking pavilions, to encircle a large courtyard area and encompass 430,000 square feet of indoor space. Tilting, interpenetrating disks define the pavilions’ floors, walls and roofs, and the exterior in a sand-colored concrete. Nouvel likens it to a “bladelike petal of the desert rose, a mineral formation of crystallized sand found in the briny layer just beneath the desert’s surface.”
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