The contextual linkage: visual metaphors and analogies in recent Gulf museums’ architecture

Abstract

Museums that have recently been completed in the Gulf present a recurrent strategy. The emphasis is often on the container rather than the content. In this framework, architecture is the language that, through visual metaphors alluding to local traditions, generates a contextual linkage and a sense of place. Therefore, none of these latest museums is designed as a building. Instead, it is a desert rose, a falcon’s feather, a sail, or any other reference to Gulf iconography. The present text analyses the meaning of symbolic language in architecture by comparing a series of case studies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), culminating with Jean Nouvel’s antipodal proposals for the National Museum in Qatar and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The paper argues that the validation of buildings through visual allusions to locality is a recurrent feature of recent Gulf museums, as a response to a fluid context in constant adjustment on the tradition-modernity axis.