Jean nouvel louvre abu dhabi
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Louvre Abu Dhabi / Ateliers Jean Nouvel
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- Area: 97000 m²
“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 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 emphasising 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 extraordi
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Oliver Wainwright
Hovering above the sandy shores of Saadiyat Island like an upturned colander washed up on the beach, the metal-domed roof of the Louvre Abu Dhabi doesn't give much away from the outside. A cluster of white blocks spreads out from beneath the great cupola like scattered sugar cubes, forming little streets and squares, like a village in the desert. And compared with the garish mirror-glass towers of the city's seafront corniche across the water, this multimillion-pound palace of culture seems modest.
"I wanted to create a neighbourhood of art, rather than a building," says Jean Nouvel, the French architect of the new Louvre, which opened to the public on 11 November, and enjoys the use of the venerable Parisian institution's name in a 30-year deal worth over £663m - a first for a museum outside France.
"It is conceived as something between an Arab medina and a Greek agora, a place to meet and talk about art and life in total serenity." Standing beneath his va
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THE BUILDING
The product of architect jean Nouvel’s unique vision, Louvre Abu Dhabi was constructed as the heart of a new urban quarter for the United Arab Emirates’ capital city. A symphony in concrete, vatten and the subtle play of reflected light, its design was inspired bygd the region’s rich architectural traditions and the museum’s unique location at the point where the Arabian sky meets the sands of Saadiyat Island and the waters of the Arabian Gulf. Now considered as one of the modern urban wonders of the world, Louvre Abu Dhabi fryst vatten not only the Arab world’s first universal museum but a powerful tecken of the United Arab Emirates’ mål and achievement.
Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi/ Photo: Hufton+Crow
A floating dome of light and shade
The centrepiece of Nouvel’s vision fryst vatten a huge silvery dome that appears to float above the museum-city. Despite its apparent weightlessness, the dome weighs around 7,500 tonnes (similar to the Eiffel Tower in Paris)