Looking At Tomorrow, Today - The Museum of The Future
Dubai Diary - 3
by Devasis Chattopadhyay
E11 is the 559-kilometer-long highway in the United Arab Emirates. This long road stretches from Abu Dhabi to Ras al-Khaimah. Running almost parallel in some places to the Persian Gulf. The route forms the main artery in some of the emirates' main cities, including Dubai, where it is known as the Sheikh Zayed Road.
The highway also connects other vital locations of Dubai - the Dubai Marina and the Palm Jumeirah. In Dubai, much of the road has seven to eight lanes in each direction. Most of the prominent buildings of Dubai are on either side of this superfast highway, including the Emirates Towers Complex.
But to me, Sheikh Zayed Road received a special status once it housed - The Museum of the Future. This $136 million museum gives its visitors a peek into tomorrow. Yes, you read it right. Tomorrow.
So far, we have been taught that a museum houses our past. Look up the definition of a museum given by UNESCO. Even today, on the 9th of September 2022, on its website, it says – 'a museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates, and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment,'. The operative word of this definition, as per my understanding, is – 'Heritage,' which primarily denotes past, or at the most, present, but definitely not something into the future.
In such a context, creating a museum of the future is a massive departure from our conventional way of thinking and a very commendable intellectual exercise.
In one of this museum's galleries, the ancient Chinese proverb in the lavender-green neon display reads, 'The ancestors plant the trees / the descendants enjoy the shade.'. It definitely provides a perspective for setting up this museum.
The Chinese proverb aligns with the three inscriptions adorn the fa?ade of the nine-floor elliptical structure of the museum building in Arabic calligraphy.
These are the thoughts of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the vice president, prime minister, and minister of defense of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as the ruler of Dubai:
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Broadly translating them into English, they will read as below:
We won't live for hundreds of years, but we can create something that will last hundreds of years.
The future will be for those who will be able to imagine, design, and build it. The future does not wait; it can be designed and made today.
The secret to the renewal of life, the development of civilization, and the progress of humanity are in one word: innovation.
The writing on the wall is literally and figuratively clear. Given our planet's multiple pressing challenges, it becomes paramount for the present generation to acknowledge and address these mounting crises to safeguard the world for future ones. It's a task that must undoubtedly be a collective, concerted undertaking.?
The museum has six floors of exhibits (balance 3 floors are service area) that imagine life in the year 2071 ( when the UAE will be 100), including a space station and a digitally re-created Amazon rainforest.
With an elliptical void at the centre of its torus shape — described by some as a giant eye, others as an odd-shaped doughnut — the 320,000-square-foot building has no columns to support its structure. Instead, it relies on a network of 2,400 steel tubes that intersect diagonally in its outer frame and onto which slabs of concrete flooring and almost 183,000 square feet of cladding were attached. Possibly, the most innovative building design suits the unique museum dedicated to our future.
Had anyone told me, even a couple of decades ago, a structure like this would be built in the future, I would have laughed and assumed that they watch too much of a Star Trek movie. Even a decade ago, this building would have been unthinkable.
When I first saw the structure, I thought that the museum would be somewhere behind that large eye. Later on, I was astonished to realize that the design, the eye, was the museum building itself. It is an architectural and engineering triumph made possible only with the latest design technology. How fitting for the museum of the future to reflect the spirit of the city that achieves the tomorrow, today. (end)