Drawing board for perfection

While the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi may be more than a year away, a series of now-completed mock-up galleries are ensuring that there will be no surprises in completing what will undoubtedly be one of the UAE's most iconic buildings, James Langton reports

The design details for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, ranging from the tiles to be used to the integration of lighting into the building, among others, have been recreated at a temporary mock-up gallery. SilviShow more

A large brushed-steel door, its outer surface heated like a griddle in the midday sun, eases open with a gust of cool air to reveal a high, well-lit room with white-panelled walls and a contrasting floor of black marble slabs.
On the right wall are signs, the letters elegant in their simplicity and in three languages, Arabic, French and English. One reads "Tickets/Billetterie", another "Prayer Room/Salle de Priere". A third, illustrated by a tiny cut-out figure of a coat hanger, points to the cloakroom.
Against the wall is a stylish black rectangular waste bin with an extra slot for recycling, and facing it another doorway to a short passage leading to a much larger gallery where the light spills like a waterfall from the ceiling.
All of this is an illusion.
The building is real enough but what it simulates will not exist until the end of next year, at least for most of us, when the Louvre Abu Dhabi is scheduled to open its doors to the world.
These mock-up galleries are as important as the real museum, which is taking shape several hundred metres away. Not just a taste of what is to come, they are a crucial tool to ensure that the vision of the architect, Jean Nouvel, is not diluted or distorted by the reality of construction.
In the past month, Nouvel has given - barring a few tweaks - his stamp of approval to the mock-ups. They are now complete in every detail except, of course, for the works of art they will never contain.
Here is the proof of the meticulous design and planning that has gone into the first of the museums on Saadiyat Island, down to the buttons on the lift panels and the handrails on the interior staircases.
They are the sort of details that will pass largely unnoticed to the thousands of visitors to the museum, yet collectively they will create a building so jaw-dropping that it is likely to become as much of an attraction as the objects it will contain.
Joyce Moutran is the senior design manager for Turner Construction, the project manager for the consortium building the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
A civil engineer from Lebanon, Ms Moutran has previously worked on the Ibn Battuta Mall and the Burj Khalifa, as well the Shoreline Apartments on the Palm Jumeirah.
Colleagues joke that she has invested so much time and energy on the mock-up galleries that they have become her second home.
The mock-ups, she explains, are designed "to translate all the designs, sketches and drawings into reality".
These include the structure - for example, the museum's facade and the plaza on which it will sit - and the interior, including something called "museography", the practice of how museums are organised and arranged.
Here it has been possible to review all of the details, says Ms Moutran.
"The interfaces between different materials, floor, the integration of the lighting, all the details executed in the mock-up have been lessons learnt for the main construction."
Easily the most impressive part of the building is the two galleries; the larger "glass" gallery, and the smaller "bronze" gallery. The names are a reflection of their most distinguishing characteristics.
In the glass galleries, of which there will be 13, there is a skylight surrounded by a frame of glass panels of varying textures. There are 40 different types of glass, which will be arranged in a unique combination for each gallery.
Controlling and manipulating light is a key component of the building's design, not just through the constantly shifting "rain of light" that will stream through the museum's vast dome, but also in the interior of the exhibition structures.
The unforgiving Arabian Gulf sunshine poses a threat to many of the centuries-old objects in the collection, so an ingenious system of blinds will keep them safe.
Sensors in each gallery will measure the intensity of the sun, automatically triggering a series of blinds that can cut the amount of light entering though windows and skylight by anything from 10 to 100 per cent.
Humidity is as big a threat as the heat, particularly as the museum's interior must remain constant temperature throughout the year, with a further complication that the galleries have exterior and interior connecting corridors. The solution is two sets of double doors that create an airlock between the exterior and interior doors. Instead of blinds, the outside doors feature glass louvres, their precise angle different to each gallery depending on its alignment to the passage of the sun.
The airlock is an illustration of why the mock-up galleries matter. The doors, as it turns out, are too heavy for many people to open easily, so motors will be added.
To prevent the accidental squashing of people or arms being trapped, a cut-off mechanism will also be installed. All are lessons learnt after the drawing board.
For the museum's bronze galleries, of which there will be nine, the mock-up is an opportunity to get the right shade of paint that gives them their name.
One of the panels in the room opens on a hinge to reveal a small flight of stairs that leads to nowhere. There are two handrails, one brushed steel, the other recessed in the wall. After seeing both on a recent visit, Nouvel decided he preferred the former.
These are the kinds of decisions that can often only be made when one-dimensional theory is translated into three-dimensional reality. The mock-up gives options; they allow for small mistakes rather than expensive big ones.
The fit between the bottom of the window blinds and the floor, for example, turns out to be not exactly parallel. On the real Louvre Abu Dhabi it will be perfect.
Another example is the exterior walls of the gallery. They are covered with ultra-high performance concrete panels, ideal for the punishing Arabian Gulf climate and a building whose lifespan may be measured in centuries.
Originally, the plan was to use the same concrete panels on the interior. Some of the mock-up walls have this feature. The real museum, however, will use a pre-formed drywall that does the same job but is lighter and cheaper.
Such a decision could only be made after it was possible to show that drywall would have exactly the same appearance and finish as concrete. It could, as long as the joints between the panels were also pre-formed.
Other decisions are more subjective. The floors of the mock-up feature several types of marble.
It was only by seeing them in place that Nouvel, who likes his building materials to appear as natural as possible, could decide which one worked best. So the real museum will feature floors of peitra black marble quarried in Oman.
The mock-up building also incorporates a sliver of the museum's cafeteria area and two floors of offices, incorporating screens that use a traditional Arab mashrabiya for shade, and a paralum ceiling, a Nouvel design that reflects light through metal to create what the architect calls a "metallic sky".
Amer Kharbush, the project manager for Turner Construction, calls the mock-up "a place to learn".
"Everyone is learning how to do things a little bit better, design a little bit better," he says.
So attached has Mr Kharbush become to the structure that he wondered if it could eventually be re-used, perhaps as a temporary exhibition space. But as the real museum takes shape, the mock galleries must eventually be demolished.
The reason speaks to the much larger Saadiyat Island cultural project. The land where they stand will eventually form part of the entrance to the Zayed National Museum.
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