Practice won design job in 2007
Foster & Partners’ Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi has finally opened its doors, 13 years behind schedule.
The 57,000sq m building opened to visitors today following a 17-year construction period and eight years after the collapse of a loan deal with the British Museum due to the troubled project’s repeated delays.
The museum is named after Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founding father of the United Arab Emirates, and features exhibitions of artefacts charting the history of the Middle Eastern country from its earliest evidence of human habitation to the modern day.
Designed for the UAE’s Department of Culture and Tourism, the job was awarded to Foster & Partners in 2007 with construction starting the following year but pausing in 2012, only restarting six years later.
The scheme’s most prominent feature is the 123m-tall ‘wings’, designed as part of the museum’s ventilation strategy, which rise from the building’s roof.
The lightweight structures, which Foster & Partners said were inspired by Zayed’s love of falconry, contain air vents which draw hot air from the atrium spaces below, which in turn pulls up cooled air from pipes buried deep below the desert floor.
The ‘wings’ also contain glazed openings to channel natural light into the galleries below, which are contained within a broad ‘mound’ structure designed to limit solar gain.
The museum contains six permanent galleries, four of which are suspended in ‘pods’ above the central atrium area and linked by sculptural spiral staircases.
Norman Foster said the museum is designed to tell the story of Zayed’s creation of the UAE and his vision of ‘greening’ the desert.
“The building itself is an expression of sustainability, with five aerodynamic wings that are an integral part of the environmental system, acting as thermal chimneys and drawing cool air through the public spaces. They are also symbolic of Sheikh Zayed’s love of the traditional sport of falconry and have become markers on the city skyline,” Foster said.
Mohammed Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism, said the museum “gives our nation’s story a permanent home”.
“Our national museum serves to preserve and share our past while connecting generations. It is where our children and grandchildren will discover the values that built this country: unity, humility, openness, and respect for heritage.
“These are lived principles that continue to guide us, and when visitors from around the world walk through these galleries, they will gain a deeper understanding of the United Arab Emirates – past, present and future”
The scheme spans three storeys and one basement level across an 89,000sq m site which features a 600m-long landscaped garden including 900 species of local trees and plants.
UK firms which worked on the project include structural engineers AKT II and WSP, cost consultant RLB and air flow consultant RWDI. The main contractors were Arabtec and Six Construct-Trojan JV.
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