Award-winning maritime-themed museum can submerge into the ocean!

Compiled by Team IAnD

Photography: Studio Niko Kapa

 Read Time: 2 mins

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The award-gathering Dubai Maritime Museum & Research Centre is conceived as a building that dives into the ocean and merges with it…

Relating to both the sea and the city and in constant dialogue between them, the building develops as a triangular sharp form, which concentrates the public routes to the museum through an inviting shape, spreading its fragments in the landscape, creating visitors pathways and defining recreation areas that have unobstructed view to the ocean.

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Conceived by Ar. Niko Kapa, the museum itself is an artifact, an artificial underwater environment organized under an immense glass roof designed to give the maximum view of the ocean and intensify the feeling of diving into the seabed.

Interior plan

By optimizing the maritime-themed environment and combining it with breathtaking underwater views, people’s flow inside the building follows a specific pattern in a way that the circulation of public itself is intended to act as experiential content.

Underwater view

The building is simultaneously a vessel that supports the idea of the journey. Interior space is organized through cascading platforms that develop in a successive and continuous manner, allowing visitors to have a panoramic and clear overview of the whole museum’s interior, under a ‘water roof’.

Underwater view

Generous internal height allows the perception of wide interior views and the display of artifacts of significant scale. Entities such as marine life, marine technology, supervisory material, interactive educational and experimental exhibits, aquariums, video projections and digital representations as well as underwater photography exhibitions make up the different collections.

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Since the artificial manmade space is fully integrated into the natural underwater environment, the experience of viewing the collections evokes a descent to the depths of the ocean. Natural light enters the building through the glass ceiling and as the building sinks, space narrows and the light’s intensity gradually reduces, detaching the building from the surface and making it part of the ocean. Concentrative form leads to a chamber at the deepest part of the museum, allowing visitors to experience the submergence environment through a submarine ride around the museum.

Interiors of the museum

Since seawater temperature is always lower than the ambient temperature, placement of the building underwater minimizes energy strain on the mechanical systems used for cooling.  The circulation network is organized by the pathways of staircases, ramps and lifts that act as connection points between the different levels and guide the visitors through the exhibition levels. 

The ongoing project is already gathering accolades – the latest win being the Iconic Award in Germany, 2016