The National Museum of Qatar

Introduction
Located in Qatar’s capital of Doha, the National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ) is an institution that celebrates
the culture and heritage of Qatar and embodies the pride and traditions of its people while offering
international visitors a dialogue about Qatar’s rapid change and modernization.

The National Museum of Qatar generates a national spirit of participation

and promote a cultural legacy.

“Eighteen years in the making, the National Museum of Qatar was a

fiendishly complex idea to realise. The 539 discs are clad with 76,000
glass-fibre-reinforced concrete panels..... it balances the rough with the
smooth: while the discs have a crystalline precision, tapering to razor-
sharp edges, the courtyard has been left with a pleasingly sandy surface,
as though ready to host a caravan of itinerant traders.”The Guardian

The museum honors the traditions of the past, while embracing the future
of Qatar through exhibitions, educational activities, cultural site visits, and
technology-based programming.

The museum aims to develop, promote, and sustain the cultural sector at the highest standards, in addition
to creating, supporting, and inspiring the next generation of cultural audiences.

The museum is divided into three chronological chapters of Qatari history that are showcased across eleven
galleries. The galleries include a research center and laboratories that provide new study opportunities for
students and dedicated researchers.

An Embodiment of the Desert Rose: a look into the Museum’s design

“Everything in this museum works to make the visitor feel the desert and the sea,” said Jean Nouvel, the
Pritzker Prize-winning architect who designed the innovative museum. Nouvel’s design was inspired by
the Qatari “desert rose” with its curved disks, intersections, and cantilevered angles that grow organically
around the original Emiri palace, a much-loved local landmark where the original National Museum was
housed.
Not to be confused with the plant of the same name, the Qatari “desert rose” is a natural
phenomenon found in the deserts of Qatar where arid conditions create these unique
clusters of gypsum crystals underground.

Nouvel hopes the design will have visitors questioning the mysteries of the desert’s
concretions and crystallizations, bringing new meaning to the desert rose, all the while
marveling at the Museum’s employment of futuristic design and modern innovation. “This
Closeup of a “desert rose” building is at the cutting-edge of technology, like Qatar itself,” remarked Nouvel.

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 The National Museum of Qatar

When planning the design of the Museum, Nouvel envisioned

a site that would symbolize the growth and evolving identity
of Qatar since the 1950s. It is for this reason that the Palace
of Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al-Thani sits in the center.

Originally built during the early 20th century by Sheikh

Abdullah bin Jassim bin Mohamed Al-Thani, the Palace
has served as both a family residence and the seat of
government.

“from a little village, [Doha] has become a capital. What

could be more natural, then, than the desire to testify,
to talk about identification, about the evolving identity of
this country as it reveals itself on the sensitive paper of
history?

And what could be more logical than to give concrete

expression to this identification process in a National
Museum of Qatar that will relate the physical, human
and economic geography of the country, together with
its history?”
Jean Nouvel

“We believed we had the potential to go beyond even the most exciting existing museum displays and develop something truly
immersive. And we believed the substance of those experiences ought to come from the Qatari people themselves.”

Sheikha Amna bint Abdulaziz bin Jassim Al Thani, Director of the National Museum of Qatar

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