Qatar Museums has unveiled new details of the Lusail Museum through new renderings and a virtual flythrough video showcasing the building’s design. The museum, designed by Herzog and de Meuron, situated on Al Maha Island, will house the largest collection of Orientalist paintings in the world.
The building’s precise geometric shape is both unique and universal, taking the form of a truncated sphere that seems to be partially embedded in the ground. In response to its coastal location, the exterior of the building has a rough, sandy texture, giving it the appearance of being a natural part of the landscape.
The building’s volume is shaped by three intersecting spheres, creating two distinct sections: the first resembles a full moon, while the second is a crescent moon that is offset from the full moon. A crescent-shaped internal street lit from above connects the entrances of the museum to the central lobby and other public spaces such as a library, auditorium, shop, café, and prayer room. The museum is organized internally like a vertically layered souk, containing a miniature city with complex spaces and uses dispersed throughout the building, providing visitors with a multifaceted experience.
“Nothing is given forever; there are areas like these coasts that are more ephemeral, more transformable, something between water and land. Al Maha Island is man-made — a work of land art, actually. In the same way, we wanted the Lusail Museum to be a piece of earth, as if growing out of Al Maha Island. Not just a building, but a world in and of itself, almost like a planet.” stated Jacques Herzog.
The interior spaces of the building allow daylight to enter through deeply recessed windows that are cut out of the facade. This design helps to protect the interiors from direct sunlight while still allowing the surrounding sea and city of Lusail to be seen. The building also includes several accessible terraces that are similarly carved out of the facade. These spaces can be used as landscaped gardens or as outdoor galleries.
The top gallery floor of the building contains four abstract replicas from the interior of important historical buildings. These replicas serve as anchor spaces and include the dome covering Murat III’s bedroom pavilion in the Palace of Topkapi in Istanbul (1579), the dome of the Jameh Mosque in Natanz (1320), the Ablution fountain in the courtyard of Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo (1296), and the Aljafaria dome in Saragossa (1050).
Project Info
Partners: Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, Ascan Mergenthaler
Associate, Project Director: Enrique Peláez
Associate, Project Architect: Michael Bekker, Aurélien Caetano, Raymond Gaëtan
Project Architect: Paulo Horta Rodrigues, Marta Colón de Carvajal Salís
Visualization: Bruno de Almeida Martins, Michal Baurycza, Mikolaj Bazaczek, Miriam Fitz, Vasileios Kalisperakis
Team Members: Paul Kath, Daria Kleymenicheva, Johannes Rudolf Kohnle, Mai Komuro, Maria Krasteva, Carla Krehl, Pawel Krzeminski, Marcin Kurdziel, Juan Laborda Herrero, Matteo Lattanzio, Victor Lefebvre, María Luisa León Palacios, Xin Li, Ines Li-Wearing, Christina Liao, Nicholas Lyons, Nelson Manuel Magro, André Manso, James Albert Martin, Francesca Mautone, Marcin Ernest Mejsak, Elie Metni, Franca Miretti, Sina Momtaz, Jon Morrison, Takuji Murakami, Niklas Nordström, Colm O’Brien, Leticia Olalquiaga Cubillo, Cristian Oprea, Yousef Oqleh, Keisuke Ota, Vladimir Pajkic, Felipe Pecegueiro Curado, Enrique Peláez, Gonzalo Peña, Francisco Ramos Ordóñez, Nuno Ravara, Cristina Roman Diaz, Tomás Roquette Rodrigues, Amro Sallam, Ken Sheppard, Jorge Sotelo de Santiago, Mahfuz Sultan, Andrew Tétrault, Antonio Torres Tebar, Axel Vansteenkiste, João Filipe Varandas, Jonas Vistesen, Olesya Vodenicharska, Matthew Webb, Tiffany Wey, Jason Whiteley, Kenneth Wong, Human Wu, Xi Yi
Copyright: © Herzog & de Meuron
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