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 creative industries and a Dhow Center with help from Swiss landscape designer Gunther Vogt.
“We have never done a museum before, and so we ourselves are examples of the creative economy as something that requires trust,” the 2016 Pritzker laureate said. “One of its opportunities is that you can bet on people. With the Art Mill, we are trying to trigger some consequences for local industry even before construction starts. The [museum] will not just be a perfectly finished object but an opportunity for young designers, artisans, craftspeople in Qatar to come together to deliver the knowledge they have accumulated and contribute to the building, so that it not only houses a great collection but expands to more popular audiences.”
Likewise, the new Lusail Museum will add an additional 52,000 square meters (559,721 square feet) of galleries and educational spaces to the overall development. The museum is dedicated to the cultural exchange between East and West as demonstrated by a collection featuring four millennia of fine art and rare texts alongside the four-story structure’s auditorium and library.
“The building is a kind of vessel that inside has a complex topography, a clash of fragments of different places and functions,” said Swiss architect Jacques Herzog. “What we have learned during this process, to make space for that aspect of dialogue, is what will make the project important for Qatar and for us.”
Finally, OMA’s contribution will place the new Qatar Auto Museum along the existing Lusail Expressway in between Doha’s 5/6 Park and Katara Cultural Village. Occupying 40,000 square meters (430,556 square feet), the museum includes a car restoration center, galleries, and interactive spaces all centered around a theme that examines the role car culture has played in the development of the nation overall.
Qatari officials are hopeful the trio of museums will combine with other recent cultural developments such as the Jean Nouvel-designed National Museum of Qatar, the Museum of Islamic Art, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, the Fire Station, and the brand new 3-2-1 Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum to complete a “cultural ecosystem” for the rapidly changing country.
Additional information about the new museums will be revealed in the months to come. Archinect will share any project updates as they are made available.
12 Comments
Aravena, Foster, Koolhaas etc build in Qatar no controversy but when Zaha was commissioned to do anything there was a-lot of outcry about the use of slaves. Funny how only slaves worked on her projects...
She's the closest the profession has to a mainstream celebrity besides Gehry - thus a lightning rod.
Since when is Koolhaas, Foster, H&dm and Aravena not celebrities? Where is the outcry that they are using slaves to build their projects?
It is the elephant in the room that no one wants to see or talk about. This isn't the only place either.
It would be an interesting sociological experiment to determine what level of profligate opportunism would trigger a relative morality argument.
Didn't the outcry only start because of hundreds of worker deaths? If people start to die in mass on these projects we'll start to hear about the MDS again. Or maybe this is just the first we've heard of the projects so the momentum to take issue with it hasn't built up yet.
Erm OMA and Fosters and Partners definitely had projects completed before ZHA did in Qatar (and most likely they have even more work then ZHA in Qatar), not sure about H&DM. Furthermore I am sure the amount of deaths that occurred on an OMA or Foster´s project is the similar as an ZHA project.
Weird career arc for Aravena.
As Philip Johnson famously said "I am a whore"
I really don't think ELEMENTAL deserves the prizes and accolades for the strength of its design alone.
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