Natural History Museum of New Alamein City

Faculty of Fine Arts, Alexandria University in Alexandria

Project idea

The concept of this project is derived from sand dunes found in the Egyptian Western Deserts and the organic lines found in topographic maps, with neutral muted colors to imitate the raw materials found in nature to blend effortlessly with the displayed rocks and fossils.

The museum is located in New Alamein city since it is known to be a tourism center, featuring different types of rocks, stones, gemstones, meteorites, fossils and dinosaur skeletons/reptiles/birds from all over Egypt, allowing people from all over the world to fathom the Egyptian natural heritage.

Moreover, in an attempt to enhance the visitor's experience, a dim lighting system is used, merging natural and artificial lighting, focusing only on the displayed items all over the museum to create a sense of depth and to indulge the visitor in a desert-like atmosphere.
The floor and ceiling designs are also inspired by sand dunes, giving the visitors a sense of direction to explore all of the museum areas, ensuring a full experience.

Project description

The project mainly consists of two floors with two double height areas, allowing the museum's visitors to view the displayed items and big skeletons from different areas.

The first floor consists of the main entrance hall and the reception desk next to the gift shop, different display areas with a focal point including two huge dinosaur skeletons -that can be seen from both floors- in their natural habitat including suspended birds, rocks and different plants. In addition, there's an exit and a staff entrance next to the staff and museum facilities with several elevators to provide easy access away from the visitor's zones.

The second floor consists of the information desk (facing the stairs) next to the offices area, in addition to a cafeteria and a bar facing the double height areas to ensure a good view.
There are also display areas surrounded by sketching areas for visitors to capture the essence of the displayed items each in their own way. In addition, there's an interactive hologram unit with seats to offer the visitors a chance to get to know more about any of the museum items.

Technical information

The original building adopts a space struss structure while the renovation design retains the reinforced concrete structure and adds a steel structure roof, the large span truss is used to strengthen the reticulated shell structure.
The exterior roof form is achieved without relocating the original base and structure of the main building and the plaza surrounding the building is retained.

The building's main facade consists of aluminum plastic sheets, high precision steel, column connectors and Low-E tempered hollow glass, making the sloped curtain wall in addition to landscape pebbles, while the metallic hyperbolic roofing system adopts a hexagonal steel truss structure covered with grey and dark grey aluminum plastic sheets and pressed plates.
The building adopts the HVAC ventilation system with AHU rooms.

Documentation

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