Displaying items by tag: saadiyat island

It’s official: the Louvre Abu Dhabi will open at the end of 2016, a full year later than previously announced and a decade after the contract was signed for the €1bn project on Saadiyat Island. The delay was confirmed on Tuesday, June 16, during a press briefing at the Louvre by the museum’s president, Jean-Luc Martinez.

The Gulf outpost had stalled for almost six years before the project was rescued by Martinez.

On the lunar landscape that is Saadiyat Island, the shape of the Louvre Abu Dhabi is gradually emerging from the sand. On the gigantic shorefront site, work continues around the clock. The 5,000-strong workforce is expected to swell to 7,500 over the coming months. “We shall deliver the building at the end of 2015,” its architect Jean Nouvel tells "The Art Newspaper." “Then a few months will be needed to set up the inner structures and hang the works,” he says. The museum’s official opening date, which has not yet been set, will be in 2016.

The building first has to meet the criteria of “excellence” shared by the architect, the Louvre and the emirate, meaning that the safety of the collections is ensured under extreme climatic conditions.

Abu Dhabi has finally awarded a $653 million contract to build a branch of the Louvre Museum to Arabtec Holding Co., a Dubai-based construction company, which is partly owned by Abu Dhabi. The Louvre has been planning the outpost since March 2007, but was sidetracked by a number of delays prompted by a public spending review of Abu Dhabi’s government.

The Louvre’s new 688,890-square-foot location, which will be designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, is expected to open in 2015. The museum’s inauguration will be followed by the opening of the Zayed National Museum, which is being built in association with the British Museum in 2016 as well as a franchise of New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2017. All three of the museums will be part of a development located off the coast of Abu Dhabi City on Saadiyat Island.

The Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi is part of the country’s effort to establish itself as a cultural hub as well as a noteworthy tourist destination. Arabtec, which won the project after a competitive bidding process, is expected to begin construction on the museum immediately.