Saadiyat Island developers have offered a new look at three exhibition spaces in the Cultural District, including the secretive groundwork for the Zayed National Museum.
The design for the 12,000 square metre museum has not yet been unveiled, although the Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) displayed an aerial photograph showing preliminary construction.
“The enabling works were finished in January, which was basically setting up a shoring line to protect us from a big canal that surrounds the site,” said Felix Reinberg, the director of museum projects delivery for the TDIC.
The architectural design of the museum was created by the London firm of Foster and Partners and chaired by Lord Foster, the British Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate.
Bassem Terkawi, a TDIC spokesman, said a final design existed but the agency was waiting for an “interesting moment” to unveil the project.
The Zayed National Museum is expected to open in 2013, around the same time as the Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by France’s Jean Nouvel, also a Pritzker winner. The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is expected to open roughly three months afterwards. The final design for the Louvre was completed this month. Nearly 500,000 cubic metres of earth was excavated in December for the 24,000-square-metre institution, which will sit on reclaimed land.
The Louvre’s porous dome, 180 metres in diameter and described by Mr Reinberg as “a very complex architectural wonder”, would allow light to filter in through perforations in 10 layered roofs. Mr Reinberg said a prototype scaled to six metres in diameter had been updated with the aluminium cladding that would be used for the dome.
Like the Louvre, the Guggenheim will also occupy reclaimed land. The 100,000-square-metre site is undergoing construction of a basement structure and a permanent seawall. That work should be completed within two months.
The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, designed by the Canadian architect Frank Gehry, will be the largest Guggenheim in the world, occupying more than 80,000-square-metre. The gallery space will take up over 13,000sqm.
If you can’t wait for a bit of culture, a new, free exhibition, The Saadiyat Story, to educate visitors about the development of Saadiyat Island, opened yesterday and is open daily from 10am to 8pm.
