DOHA: South Korean construction firm Hyundai Engineering & Construction has finally secured the final contract from the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) to build the Qatar National Museum, the company announced yesterday.
The project worth $434m will see the construction of the museum in 33 months.
H E Sheikha Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of the QMA, has hailed the National Museum as "the next world class institution QMA is creating for our people and for the international community."
The new museum will be set up on a 1.5 million square-foot site with 430,000 square-foot of indoor space.
It has been envisaged as a structure that the country can be proud of not only for the exceptional collection it would house in its vast galleries but also because of the unique and innovative design conceptualised by award winning French architect Jean Nouvel.
"The National Museum of Qatar will become Qatar's voice of culture, delivering a message about the metamorphosis of modernity and the beauty that manifests itself when the desert meets the sea," said Nouvel.
Inspired by the desert sand rose, Nouvel's concept reflects the vanishing bedouin cultures of Qatar in an effort to embrace the realities of a rapidly urbanising society. Made primarily from steel and concrete which will be locally sourced, the new building will be constructed from dozens of interlocking disk-like forms, suggestive of the blade-like petals of the desert rose.
Nouvel's design is a manifestation of the qatari identity, through a building appearing as if it is growing out of the ground.
Recently given the sustainability award at the Green Building Solutions Conference and Exhibition, the building will have thermal buffer zones within the disk cavities, reducing the cooling loads of the building. In addition the large overhangs of the disks will create shady areas on the exterior, protecting the interior.
The museum will be surrounded by a 1.2 million square foot landscaped park reflecting the Qatari desert landscape.
A tour of the museum will provides visitors with a look of a group of galleries addressing three major interrelated themes: The natural history of the qatar peninsula, the social and cultural history of Qatar and the country's history as a nation from the 18th century to the present day.
The building will provide permanent and temporary gallery space, an auditorium, TV studio, cafés, restaurants and museum shop.
© The Peninsula 2011
