A Modern Monument

Jean Nouvel’s Louvre Abu Dhabi officially opened to the public last month, becoming the first museum of its kind in the Middle East

- Aidan Imanova

Designed by Pritzker Prize winning French architect Jean Nouvel, the museum complex for Louvre Abu Dhabi is created to embody a ‘museum city’ in the desert, featuring a promenade of white cubic volumes that make up its gallery spaces, and almost entirely covered by a geometric dome which spans 180m. Purposely surrounded by water, the architectural elements are a conversation between the various forms of nature — sky, land, sea. Nouvel explains that the “everything [in the museum] is organised in such a way that you feel like you are in a grand palace. The palace of the Louvre.”

The contrasting series of white buildings take inspiration from the traditional ‘medina’ and low-lying Arab settlements. In total, the complex features 55 individual buildings, including 23 galleries that house the museum’s permanent collection and temporary exhibitions. The facades are made up of 3,900 panels of ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) that allows for various elements, such as wiring, to be concealed within its walls.

Specially commissioned installations are displayed in the semi-outdoor areas of this museum city, shaded by the vast dome, which Nouvel cites as a “symbol of Arabian architecture”. The dome itself consists of eight different layers — four outer layers that are clad in stainless steel and four inner ones in aluminium, separated by a 5m-high steel frame. The frame is made of 10,000 structural components pre-assembled into 85 super-sized elements, each weighing up to 50 tonnes. Additionally, the dome is supported by only four permanent piers, each 110m apart, that are hidden within the museum buildings to give the impression that the dome is floating.