Architect Jean Nouvel discusses the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi

Architect Jean Nouvel discusses the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
Poised on the northwest corner of Saadiyat Island at the intersection of land, sea and sky, the Louvre Abu Dhabi has been designed as a very different type of institution, a universal museum for the 21st century built at one of the historic crossroads of humanity.
Thanks to a collection of interconnected galleries that will take visitors on a chronological journey through the history of art, the museum complex is said to echo the design of a traditional Islamic town, complete with small plazas and alleyways, sheltered in the shade and the micro-climate created by its overarching roof.
180 metres wide and rising to a height of 30 metres at is apex, this 7,000 tonne steel and aluminium canopy appears to float, miraculously, like some giant flying saucer above Jean Nouvel’s serene archipelago, which is permeated by neon tides like some miniature Venice on the Arabian Gulf.