The National Museum of Qatar is a museum currently under construction and is located off the Doha Corniche in the Qatari capital, Doha. The building that was built in place of the Qatar National Museum was designed by architect Jean Nouvel. It is scheduled to open in December 2018.
The new Qatar National Museum under construction features an innovative design by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel that was inspired by the desert flower and rose and grows naturally around the palace of Abdullah bin Qassim Al Thani. The historic mansion has been restored by the architecture firm Berlin-Siegert, Roeswag and Siler Architects. This important monument to Qatar's past is now preserved as the heart of the new Qatar National Museum. The relationship between the new and the old building is part of creating the bridge between the past and the present advocated by Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani because it is the way to “define ourselves rather than be defined forever by others…a celebration of our identity.”
The 430,000-square-foot (40,000 m) museum is created by a series of interlocking discs that create recesses to protect visitors from the desert heat. The building is located on an area of 1.5 million square feet at the southern end of the Doha Corniche and the new Qatar National Museum building will rise from the sea and will be linked to the beach by two pedestrian bridges and a car bridge.
