Qatar launches design competition for waterfront art museum

Flour mills on Doha’s coast in the Arabian Sea will be dedicated to a new art museum, and Qatar has launched an international competition to design it.

Qatar Museums authority teamed up with London-based Malcolm Reading Consultants, a strategic architectural consultancy, to launch The Art Mill International Design Competition, seeking to discover emerging as well as established talents in the field of architecture, Trade Arabia reports.

The site is approximately 83,500 sm—the plan is to have 60,000 sm of it to make up the built area. Qatar Flour Mills currently occupies the site, hence the project’s moniker: the Art Mill.

Exhibition space will make up the majority of building use, but developers want to include education and conference facilities, as well.

The museum will house contemporary art to complement the nearby Jean Nouvel-designed National Museum of Qatar under construction, as well as the existing Museum of Islamic Art. 

Doha News reports that eligible architects should have at least seven years experience. The list will eventually be reduced to five architects; each will be asked to draw up detailed designs for the repurposing and extension of structures.

A final winner is planned to be announced by Spring 2016, and construction is slated to begin in 2017.

Read the full story at Doha News.