Louvre Museum, Abu Dhabi
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is an art gallery in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The name is derived from Paris’s Musée du Louvre and the two galleries work closely together. The French architect Jean Nouvel designed a new building to house the museum on the island of Saadiyat. The French President Emmanuel Macron attended the inauguration by Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan on 8 November 2017. The official opening took place on 11 November 2017.
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is located directly on the Persian Gulf coastline. The owner commissioned Jean Nouvel to design a museum that would combine modern architecture and traditional Arab building styles. To achieve this, Nouvel developed a building complex consisting of 55 rectangular buildings that are arranged next to and on top of one another. With their flat roofs and series of paths running between them, the buildings were designed to be reminiscent of an ancient Arab city; they are also surrounded by several bodies of water. To create a striking, eye-catching feature, Nouvel stretched a flat 180-metre-diameter dome across the complex: this multi-layered, mesh-style dome is made from 7,850 metallic stars which let dappled light fall into the buildings and water below. The overall effect is designed to “mimic rays of sunlight shining through date palm fronds in an oasis.”
The museum covers a total area of 97,000 square metres, 6,400 of which are used for permanent exhibitions and 2,000 for temporary exhibits.
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