Art Mill Museum

Freedom and opportunity of the technology

The idea presented for the Art Mill International Design Competition, won by Alejandro Aravena, was developed together with Eduardo Souto de Moura, Pritzker Prize winner 2011 and Menos é Mais (Guedes + DeCampos). Located between the bay and the city of Doha, the desire is to promote and anticipate the future of Qatar, where architecture is its expression and supreme affirmation. Suspended, it generates a landscape and dreamlike frame towards the large scale of the Doha skyline, dominated by hotels, museums and business centres. The design strategy reconciles the monumentality and long-term will of the large scale with local and specific uses of approximation and human relationship. The monumental and axial portico aims to regulate and stabilize the frontal elevation to the bay, marked by the diversity and disparity of scales.

Ambition is confirmed by the expansion of the soil with promenades that cross parks and gardens of a greater or lesser scale. The museum dominates the animated program and is complemented by other uses, combining the desire to preserve the Qatar Flour Mills with the creation of the Art Mill Museum. The long triangular prism of the main museum building appears to be floating between its vertical support structures. The iconography used for the project is simultaneously rooted in local tradition and global styling, providing textured patterns and shading over the public spaces. The idea is based on the contrast between positive and negative. It is also a hymn to the freedom and opportunity of technology, capable of adopting and generating panoramic views reminiscent of Mies van der Rohe.