[ExI] Defying gravity: How Dubai's Museum of the Future was built

John Grigg possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com
Wed Aug 24 09:36:53 UTC 2022


Most museums show exhibits from the past or the present, so what exactly is
a museum of the future?
"Each of the floors represents the future of healthcare, transportation,
aviation, smart cities, government services, space travel, you name it,"
explains Shaun Killa, design partner of Dubai-based Killa Design, the
architecture studio behind the building. "But it's the future as we
understand it for maybe the next two to three years."
The green mound that the Museum of the Future sits upon represents Earth,
with the main building symbolizing humanity. But the void at the center
represents what we don't yet know about the future. In other words, the
unknown.
"The people who seek the unknown are the people who invent and discover
things," says Killa. "These people will constantly replenish the museum
over time, so there's a perpetual continuum because of the unknown. That's
why the void is there -- you have our understanding of the future, and then
you have something that isn't there."
It's existential stuff.
What that currently translates to is a collection of interactive
experiences that takes visitors into a vision of the near future.
In the cavernous lobby, a penguin-shaped drone swims through the air to a
futuristic soundtrack of bleeps and bloops. An elevator, masquerading as a
spacecraft with screens for windows, shoots visitors upwards on a
four-minute flight to the OSS Hope space station, 600 kilometers above the
earth and 50 years into the future.
There's a library of 4,500 animal DNA codes to "collect" on smart devices.
The future tech area has a touch of "Black Mirror" about it, ranging from
the frankly terrifying CyberDog to under-skin payment chips,
virus-resistant clothing and a falcon-shaped robot designed to control real
bird populations.But the real beauty is the space itself, and the museum's
now immediately recognizable shape. "It needed to be futuristic, and needed
a sense of direction," says Killa. "If it had been a perfect oval, it would
have been stagnant." The torus form and off-center void give a feeling of
perpetual motion. "There's a sense that it's constantly in movement. The
future is always moving, and you've got to keep up with it."
Defying gravity: How Dubai's Museum of the Future was built | CNN Travel
<https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/museum-of-the-future-dubai/index.html>
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