Project at UNESCO World Heritage Site to take visitors on an allegorical journey celebrating the story of Jesus’ baptism
A Niall McLaughlin Architects-led team has been named as the winner of an international competition to design a new museum in Jordan dedicated to the history of Christian baptism.
The Stirling Prize-winning practice is working with landscape architect Kim Wilkie Landscape, exhibition designer Nissen Richards Studio, engineer Arup and lighting consultant Studio ZNA on the Museum of Jesus’ Baptism.
The scheme will be located on the east bank of the Jordan river at Bethany, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which is reputed to be the location of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. It is due to open in 2030 to mark the bimillenial of the event.
The appointment of Niall McLaughlin’s team concludes a six-month competition run by Malcolm Reading Consultants with the practice beating a shortlist of seven including teams led by Ireland’s heneghan peng architects and US-based Toshiko Mori Architect.
The competition brief asked entrants to design a concept which ‘evokes wonder and humility in the visitor and responds sensitively to the site’.
The project client, the Foundation for the Development of the Lands Adjacent to the Baptism Site, said it had been impressed by the Niall McLaughlin team’s “flair for multi-layered and immersive storytelling that focuses on communicating baptism’s power to offer spiritual renewal and new life”.
The winning concept envisages the museum as an allegorical east-west journey which will see visitors descending into the earth from an arid wilderness garden, encountering a water-filled rift symbolising the Jordan river and re-emerging into a “fruitful paradise garden”.
The eastern entrance and western exit will face each other across a public square containing an open stepped landscape leading onto the roof where visitors can view the valley of the Jordan River and the pilgrimage route to the Baptism Site.
The concept has been inspired by local Jordanian architecture, using locally sourced stone and rammed earth techniques to create the form of the museum structure, which sits low in the landscape.
Dr Tharwat Almasalha, chair of the competition’s Advisory Panel and chair of the Foundation’s board, said the proposal “responds sensitively to the luminous setting in the wilderness and the adjacent UNESCO site.
“Though modest in size and form, the design has exceptional resonance: it will be attuned to human and divine connections,” Almasalha added.
Niall McLaughlin Architects founder Niall McLaughlin said: “We are delighted to receive the news that we are the winners of the competition for the Museum of Jesus’ Baptism at Bethany, Jordan. It is an extraordinary site with a profound history. The brief was beautifully written, and the shortlist was exceptionally strong.”
He added: “The challenge of the design was to find a way to allow the architecture to mediate between a charged landscape and the sacred narratives that arose within it.
“It demanded a building that could work with allegory. At the same time, the project needed to use local labor, skills, and resources to achieve something with a sense of social responsibility and low carbon expenditure.”
The firm’s appointment comes two weeks after McLaughlin was announced the winner of RIBA’s 2026 Royal Gold Medal in recognition of his “resounding impact spanning architectural practice, thinking, writing and education”.
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