A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go
through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be
unmeasurable
- Louis Kahn
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| Louvre Abu Dhabi - Architect: Jean Nouvel |
THE MUSEUM AND THE SEA
All climates like exceptions. Warmer when it is cold. Cooler
in the tropics. People do not resist thermal shock well. Nor do works of art.
Such elementary observations have influenced the Louvre Abu Dhabi. It wishes to
create a welcoming world serenely combining light and shadow, reflection and
calm. It wishes to belong to a country, to its history, to its geography
without becoming a flat translation, the pleonasm that results in boredom and
convention. It also aims at emphasizing the fascination generated by rare
encounters.
It is rather unusual to find a built archipelago in the sea.
It is even more uncommon to see that it is protected by a parasol creating a
rain of light.
The possibility of accessing the museum by boat or finding a
pontoon to reach it by foot from the shore is equally extraordinary, before
being welcomed like a much-awaited visitor willing to see unique collections,
linger in tempting bookstores, or taste local teas, coffees and delicacies.
It is both a calm and complex place. A contrast amongst a
series of museums that cultivate their differences and their authenticities.
It is a project founded on a major symbol of Arab
architecture: the dome. But here, with its evident shift from tradition, the
dome is a modern proposal.
A double dome 180 meters in diameter, offering horizontal,
perfectly radiating geometry, a randomly perforated woven material, providing
shade punctuated by bursts of sun. The dome gleams in the Abu Dhabi sunshine.
At night, this protected landscape is an oasis of light under a starry dome.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi becomes the final destination of an
urban promenade, a garden on the coast, a cool haven, a shelter of light during
the day and evening, its aesthetic consistent with its role as a sanctuary for
the most precious works of art.
Jean Nouvel
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| Louvre Abu Dhabi |
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| Louvre Abu Dhabi |
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| ©_TDIC._Architect_Ateliers_Jean_Nouvel._Photography_Sarah_Al_Agroobi |
All material in nature,
the mountains and the streams and the air and we,
are made of Light which has been spent,
and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow,
and the shadow belongs to Light.
- Louis Kahn
the mountains and the streams and the air and we,
are made of Light which has been spent,
and this crumpled mass called material casts a shadow,
and the shadow belongs to Light.
- Louis Kahn
