Entry Title: "Museum of the Built Environment"
Designer(s): OWNER Rayadah Investment Company (RIC) ARCHITECT FXFOWLE Architects, LLP Sudhir Jambhekar, FAIA, RIBA, LEED AP, Senior Partner Heidi Blau, AIA, LEED AP, Partner Edward Mayer, AIA, Senior Associate Kevin Cannon, AIA, LEED AP, Senior Associate Heng-Choong Leong, AIA, Senior Associate Nicholas Cates, AIA, LEED AP Lucio Santos Brian Foster Nobuhiko Arai, LEED AP Alvaro Quintana Pascale Saint-Louis, Assoc. AIA Tingxing Tao Kazuhiro “Kaz” Adachi Chaim Zeitz , United States
Company:FXFOWLE
Category: Institutional, Professional
About the Artist

Entry Description: The Museum of the Built Environment is a key public building within the King Abdullah Financial District, a new 5,109,667 square-meter mixed-use urban community. Sited on a large plaza bisected by a sunken Wadi—a pedestrian park that flows through the district—the museum serves as a primary transportation hub; housing a network of public skywalks and a monorail station to connect the building to neighboring sites. Exhibitions will interpret the historical development of Arts and Architecture in the Arabian Peninsula focusing on the role that social, economic, and environmental issues have played in the region. Varied program elements include a series of public spaces, street- level retail, permanent and temporary galleries, a 150-seat auditorium, a destination restaurant and an outdoor terrace, administrative offices, a VIP Lounge, and underground parking. The programmatic distribution is also expressed in the massing by creating greater solidity and opacity on the museum’s upper levels while maintaining transparency on the lower public levels. Facade on the upper levels is made of prismatic laminated glass panels creating a varied textural quality and allowing daylight at select controlled locations and reduce heat gain. The Saudi Arabian world heritage sites of Madain Saleh and At-Turaif inspired the museum’s formal concepts of erosion and chiseling of crystal rock. Estimated date of completion is 2014.