Jean Nouvel: Desert Rose

He has created a landmark, commissioned by the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, as a rigorous landscape where the sun becomes the director, adding or removing depth in constant pursuit of shadow. The architecture generates shade, which is necessary and mutable across the day, and it generates light, with the grandeur of a symbolic desert rose of 33,618 square meters. The spectacular postcard view of the museum is based precisely on the complex sedimentation of the mineral crystals resembling flowers that grow in the arid coastal desert regions.

“I liked this idea as a starting point for the project,” Nouvel explains, “because since the dawn of time the desert rose represents the first architectural structure created by nature, through the incessant operation of wind, salt water, sand. A poetic, though utopian, vision. To construct a building with a length of 350 meters, that gently rises and falls, suggesting the undulation of the landscape, we had to face enormous technical and technological challenges.”

In the ingenious architectural transposition, the sculptural ‘petals’ of the rose have become 539 disks in sand-color concrete of different diameters and curvatures, some vertical, some horizontal, intersecting to also form inclined planes and overhanging angles, perfectly capable of modulating and mitigating the effects of the sun’s rays.

An architectural, spatial and sensorial whole: the skin of the building, interrupted only by a few recessed openings, has been made in concrete reinforced with high-performance fiberglass, inside and out. In a continuum of nuances as well: neutral and monochrome finishes, floors in polished concrete, walls in Stuc Pierre, a traditional stucco that imitates stone, ceilings in microporous plaster sprayed on mineral wool, glazings with inset frames as infill for the gaps between the disks, where a thermal mass is created that reduces the need for air conditioning.

While listening to the place has given rise to an interpretation on an architectural and sustainable scale of the local landscape, which brings a sense of surprise, tension and dynamism, the exhibits of the museum aptly embrace the temporal dimension.

The protagonist is the history of Qatar, once a land of fishermen and pearl hunters, which after World War II discovered enormous resources of oil and then natural gas: three thematic chapters cross the eleven galleries, with interactive and immersive experiences, as well as the customary works of art, documents, commissioned pieces and rare artifacts.

The environmental galleries connected in a winding itinerary of 1.5 km – with reception areas and a lobby, an auditorium, workshops, offices, catering zones and a restaurant with kitchen – surround the gem of the complex, like a garland: the historic 20th-century palace that belonged to the sheik Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani (1880-1957), son of the founder of modern Qatar.