The Art Mill Museum+
2015-
Doha-Qatar
70.000 m2
We are in a fantastic location, between the sea and the land, occupying a fragment of the port of Doha that served as a place of exchange and communication between different people and countries.
We strongly believe that today a museum should be exactly this, a place of cultural exchange, of exchange of experiences, where the encounter becomes the main engine of the museum’s life. Encounter not only of people belonging to different cultures, but of people belonging to different times. To create a place to dream, a cultural epicenter in which to develop a torrent of activity for the city of Doha. This is the goal.
At the same time, the proposal is committed to freeing up the entire seafront and creating vast green parks, accentuating the strong relationship of the site with the sea.
We do not think of the project for the Art Mill Museum and the surrounding park independently, but rather as one and the same project. That is why the Art Mill Museum is conceived as a piece that rises above the level of the plot, to highlight and enhance the continuity of the park and the public space that penetrates the building and becomes a fundamental part of it, overlooking the exhibition areas through the large courtyards that ventilate, illuminate and cool the large shaded space created on the first floor.
The project is conceived as an important roof that protects a fresh and well ventilated square where the meeting and relationship spaces, workshops, stores… everything of a more open character and that does not imply a visit to the interior of the museum are located. A square open to the sea recalling those docks that once represented the contact with what was “beyond”. From this space, access is gained to the large roof which, structured according to a grid that recalls the urban organization of the old city of Doha, contains all the exhibitions and meeting places looking, in the distance, at the new city and the horizon. The old mills, the most attractive and best preserved, remain incorporated into the museum’s use as special exhibition spaces.