Grand Egyptian Museum
Our design for The Grand Egyptian Museum Competition in 2002 placed among the top twenty finalists (the only Asian firm to do so) out of 1557 firms from 82 countries. At 100,000 sqm, it is the largest project we have ever designed.
The site for the museum is located just 2 km from the Great Pyramids of Giza, situated along the boundary between the Giza Plateau and the Nile Valley. For such a massive project we drew upon massive inspirations from the surrounding context. We chose to translate the tortured geometries of the plateau-valley boundary--the ‘natural’ architecture of the surrounding geology--into the museum’s general layout. Next, we synthesized the forms of the neighboring pyramids with those of the surrounding sand dunes and oriented the resulting structures to create entirely different views of the museum depending on whether the spectactor is located on the developed Nile valley or the barren Giza Plateau.
From the valley, the museum appears as a spectacular architectural monument that resonates with those other monuments--the pyramids--behind; if seen from the plateau, the museum will be distinguished from its neighboring sand dune peaks by the architecture’s luminous golden peaks. Nestled between the museum’s pyramid-dunes, we created a large public square that flows across the valley-plateau threshold.
The site for the museum is located just 2 km from the Great Pyramids of Giza, situated along the boundary between the Giza Plateau and the Nile Valley. For such a massive project we drew upon massive inspirations from the surrounding context. We chose to translate the tortured geometries of the plateau-valley boundary--the ‘natural’ architecture of the surrounding geology--into the museum’s general layout. Next, we synthesized the forms of the neighboring pyramids with those of the surrounding sand dunes and oriented the resulting structures to create entirely different views of the museum depending on whether the spectactor is located on the developed Nile valley or the barren Giza Plateau.
From the valley, the museum appears as a spectacular architectural monument that resonates with those other monuments--the pyramids--behind; if seen from the plateau, the museum will be distinguished from its neighboring sand dune peaks by the architecture’s luminous golden peaks. Nestled between the museum’s pyramid-dunes, we created a large public square that flows across the valley-plateau threshold.
