London practice Serie Architects have revealed new images of their design for the Jameel Arts Centre (JAC) in Dubai and confirmed the facility will open next year.
Located at the tip of Dubai’s Cultural Village, overlooking Dubai Creek, the 10,000sq m (107,000sq ft) non-profit centre will house art galleries, studios, an artist residence, a creative enterprise incubator, a sculpture garden, a roof terrace and a restaurant. It will present curated exhibitions that draw from the Jameel Art Collection, as well as regional and international shows.
To create a sense of intimacy, alongside curatorial flexibility, the design has been conceived as a series of boxes bound together by a one-storey high colonnade, which works as a social space bringing life to the site’s waterfront promenade.
Courtyards will be inserted between the different boxes, becoming spill out spaces for users and visitors, “offering a space of repose as one moves from one gallery to another.”
“As each gallery is contained within a box of varying dimensions, it offers a flexible and rich curatorial potential – from small intimate gallery for enjoying smaller works to large galleries with soaring height for large sculptures,” said Serie Architects in a statement.
“The massing of the building, its spatiality, and its façade articulation draws from the rich architectural tradition of the region and yet interpreted with the simplicity, elegance and intelligence.”
The studio won the design competition for the project in March 2014. They are collaborating with engineering firm Buro Happold and landscape architects Gross Max and Anouk Vogel. The client is Abdul Latif Jameel Community Initiatives.
According to
The National newspaper, Art Jameel director Antonia Carver said: "We hope it will greatly enhance the cultural landscape of the city. Dubai is known around the world as a commercial hub but now for the first time the city will have an open access, contemporary, cultural institution."
The JAC was established to promote and create Middle East and North Africa art and connect this to the wider global arts movement. It recently formed a partnership with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to fund acquisitions of Middle Eastern art for the American museum’s permanent collection.
Several innovative arts and cultural facilities are currently being developed in Dubai. Most recently,
OMA completed work on Concrete – a large arts centre in a former warehouse on Alserkal Avenue. To enhance flexibility, the interiors can be configured in multiple ways due to the building’s enormous pivoting and sliding walls and 8m high ceilings.
