Museum of Islamic Arts - competition for the architectural design of Qatar's Museum of Islamic Arts

Architectural Review, The, March, 1998

The competition for the Museum of Islamic Arts in Doha was one of the most thought-provoking and deeply researched ever to have been organized in the Gulf. The al-Thani family, hereditary rulers of Qatar, have long been collectors of paintings, weaponry, glassware, coins, books and manuscripts. Concern for the safekeeping of the collections, and for making them accessible to the public determined the government to set up a museum in the capital. A large almost vacant II hectare site was made available: it is a key element in the city, bordering on the pedestrian Corniche, the harbour to the east and the National Museum to the north. Organization of the competition was delegated to the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and Suha Ozkan, the Secretary General of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture was made-professional advisor to the project. Over 80 responses were received to an announcement in the international press. Entrants were reduced to eight(1) by the organizing committee,(2) and chosen competitors were approached in their 'private capacities', rather than as representatives of their firms. An international jury was set up(3) and after much deliberation, it selected as winners Charles Correa's entry (unanimously) and (by a majority) Rasem Badran's project. The State of Qatar decided to choose Badran's scheme as the one to be built, and inauguration of the first phase of the museum is scheduled for 2000.

The museum is intended to be both a cultural resource for the people of Qatar and a research institute that will attract international interest and attention of a wide range of visitors from tourists to scholars: It is hoped to have the highest and most up-to-date standards of curatorship, conservation and display, all in an extreme climate which ranges in average temperature from 7 degrees Celsius in January to 46 degrees in summer. In the brief, accommodation was broken down into six main elements: reception areas; Islamic arts exhibition spaces with galleries for manuscripts, arms, numismatics and Muslim arts in general; painting galleries which show the Orient as seen by European painters from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries (the collection includes fine works by Delacroix and Lear); an education centre which will offer programmes to Qatar schools; the directorate which will house the administration, and finally, the support services areas which will contain stores, studios, laboratories and workshops. The whole place has to be capable of expansion as the collections grow, but the building was required to respond to 'the architectural heritage and the contemporary urban fabric' of Doha.

1 Rasem Badran (Jordan), Oriol Bohigas (Spain), Charles Correa (India), Zaha Hadid (Iraq and United Kingdom), Hans Hollein (Austria), Arata Isozaki (Japan). Richard Rogers (United Kingdom), James Wines (USA). Hans Hollein and Arata Isozaki dropped out for personal reasons.

2 Sheikh Saud bin Mohammad al-Thani (Qatar), Majdi Bustami (Qatar), Nayyar Ali Dada (Pakistan), Luis Monreal (Spain), Domenico Negri (Italy and Qatar), Suha Ozkan (Turkey and Switzerland).

3 Ricardo Legorreta (Mexico), Fumihiko Maki (Japan), Luis Monreal (Spain), Domenico Negri (Italy and Qatar), Ali Shuaibi (Saudi Arabia)