Building Dubai's Museum of the Future

The shimmering torus-shaped Museum of the Future in Dubai is covered in Arabic calligraphy and is supported not by the traditional columns but by a steel diagrid, with a facade of 1,024 steel panels. The aviation industry provided inspiration for the technology needed to create the exterior that was developed using learning algorithms. “All the parameters structurally were put into a program, and eventually it learned to create this shape,” says architect Shaun Killa.

Opened in February 2022, the building is an iconic addition to Dubai’s already dramatic skyline, which includes the sail–shaped Burj Al Arab and the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. These modern, globally recognizable structures have made a name for Dubai’s architecture, but the story of Dubai’s urban landscape goes back much further. “Often the story is that since the 2000s it’s been a place of gleaming skyscrapers,” says architect and writer Todd Reisz, author of Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai.

But the creative fusion seen in the architecture of structures like Killa’s Museum of the Future goes deeper. “I think what has had the most influence on the city is the fact that it’s an entrepôt, a port city,” says Reisz. “It’s a place of exchange and in–betweenness, where not only things and people come in and out, but so do ideas.” That exchange of ideas has led to some of the world’s most ambitious architectural projects—in which Killa has played an outsize role.

Read more about Shaun Killa and the Museum of the Future : https://time.com/6207438/dubai-archit...
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