how the main building of Jean Nouvel is Louvre in Abu Dhabi is ready to receive the first visitors - after ten years instead of the promised five. The museum complex consists of 55 buildings, covered with a huge patterned dome. The Arab Louvre is on the island of Saadiyat ("the island of happiness" in Arabic) is a place in the vicinity of Abu Dhabi, which, by the best world architects - including Norman Foster, Tadao Ando and Zaha Hadid bureau - is turned into a "museum Mecca. "
The author of the Louvre was the French architect, Pritzker Prize winner Jean Nouvel. The task before him was not easy: it was necessary to create a universal museum of world civilizations, which gives an idea of the history of mankind with the help of all possible types of world art. The architect could not create a duplicate of the French Louvre - indeed, as the journalist of the newspaper Le Monde put it, "you can not just transfer to the Persian Gulf shore those models and recipes that work so well on the banks of the Seine"
In search of a compromise, Nouvelle proposed the concept of the oriental palace "with characteristic proportions and materials" and bets on the upper part of the building - a huge (180 meters in diameter) dome that hangs over visitors at a height of 40 meters. Its construction consists of a double steel shell, which is attached to 85 prefabricated elements. The distance between the upper and lower layers is 5 meters.
The dome holds only four pillars. Because of this, it looks almost weightless despite the fact that it consists of several layers of steel. In order for the complex to withstand this weight, a special foundation was required: it consists of a number of steel piles and high-strength concrete, which is not affected by salt water.
The dome is one of the most ancient architectural elements that has been known to people since prehistoric times. It is of great importance for Muslim architecture and for this reason found its place in the structure of the Louvre. Nouvel did not make it kipelno-white - he picked up the shade in such a way that in a few years the building acquired a sand tint and even closer to the local architecture.
"The white dome is one of the eternal forms"
The dome became a reference to traditional forms not only in form, but also in content: all eight layers of the roof consist of patterned star ornaments that are repeated 7850 times. Light flows through them, forming different patterns depending on the time of day and year. Nouvel explains: in the Arab culture it is quite natural to see the world in the light streaming through the carved window lattice - marshabia.
In the game of light and shadow, both Arabic culture and Nuvel's personal handwriting - "rain of light" he used in the lacy skyscraper of Burj Doha, the Qatar museum, installations at the Venice Biennale and other projects were embodied in the play of light and shadow.
4. Tells about the mission of the building
According to Nouvel, it is impossible to build architecture out of context - it should be closely related to what is called the spirit or genius of the place. The Louvre was no exception: it is not "architecture for the sake of architecture". Working on the image of this building, Nouvelle with the help of the dome gave him spiritual meaning - not in the sense of religion, but in the sense of the mission that any museum of art carries.
source: archspeech. com
