When French architect Jean Nouvel received the commission for a museum in Abu Dhabi, he asked himself: how to create a building that bridges cultures while becoming part of the desert landscape? The answer—a floating dome of 8,000 metal stars, beneath which light plays like in an Arab medina. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is not a branch of the Paris museum; it's an independent project that changed the concept of what a 21st-century museum can be.

Architecture as Art

Rain of Light

Nouvel's main concept—"rain of light" (pluie de lumière). The 180-meter diameter dome consists of eight layers of perforated m...