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 is 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 lumiere). The 180-meter diameter dome consists of eight layers of perfora...