Alejandro Aravena previews ELEMENTAL's massive Qatar Art Mill project in Doha

2022-12-27T18:00:00-05:00

“The aim is for the building to last, and to do that it needs to be suited to the context,” he says. “But we also want the visitor to feel reflected and interpreted by this building. I want to capture this society’s sensibility and sense of pride. This will be a calm building.”

The Art Mill Museum project represents 21-year-old ELEMENTAL’s first-ever museum commission and will be joined by designs from Herzog & de Meuron and OMA upon its completion towards the end of the decade. Aravena said he wants to “create something reversible,” looking to the existing silo structures as “clues for how to proceed” that can ultimately be altered by subsequent generations of designers, adding, “What works today for a museum might not work in the future.”

“We came in with no bias about museum architecture, and no real knowledge of the region,” he added (although he mentioned his experience designing with seismic and climatic considerations in his native country as informing the nearly one-million-square-foot design.)

Revisit Archinect's 2019 interview: The War on Cliché; A Conversation with Alejandro Aravena

“Much as we continue to pursue projects around housing and community and slum upgrading, we also like to tackle these big projects, to keep our design tools sharpen...

Qatar will receive three new museums from a trio of Pritzker Prize winners

2022-03-28T19:24:00-04:00

Three new major museum projects were announced yesterday at the 2022 Doha Forum in Qatar.

Qatar Museums Chairperson Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani was on hand to premiere the new initiative, which is meant to kick off the next phase in the country’s development goals propelled by a continued investment in the cultural economy.

Al Mayassa was joined by two-thirds of the architects for the museums: Jacques Herzog of Herzog & de Meuron, who will design the Lusail Museum, and ELEMENTAL director Alejandro Aravena, whose firm will be responsible for the Art Mill. OMA’s Rem Koolhaas, who will design the new Qatar Auto Museum, was the lone holdout.

The Art Mill represents the 21-year-old ELEMENTAL’s first foray into the museum typology. Envisioned as a fusion of performances spaces, contemporary art galleries, and dedicated areas for artist residency programs, what was formerly the site of a historic flour mill will now be transformed into an anchor for various Qatari c...

Archinect - News

Alejandro Aravena previews ELEMENTAL's massive Qatar Art Mill project in Doha

Qatar will receive three new museums from a trio of Pritzker Prize winners