Qatar Museums has revealed images of Herzog & de Meuron’s proposals for a landmark art institution that will be the “cultural anchor” for Lusail City, north of Doha.

The concept for the practice’s Lusail Museum is described as a “vertically layered souk, or miniature city contained within a single building”. The five-storey, 52,455sq m building will house Orientalist art and aims to explore the movement of people and ideas across the globe.

The top floor of gallery space at the museum will feature four abstract replicas from the interiors of important historical buildings inserted as anchor spaces. They are the dome covering Murat III’s bedroom pavilion in the Palace of Topkapi in Istanbul; the dome of the Jameh Mosque in Natanz; the Ablution fountain in the courtyard of Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo; and the Aljafaria dome in Zaragoza.

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