Architects hail Egyptian museum

After years of delay, the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo was unveiled in a limited soft opening on Wednesday last week, finally giving people a peek at the design concept of Taiwanese-American architect Peng Shih-fu (彭士佛) and his wife, Roisin Heneghan.

Initially scheduled to be completed by 2013, what is expected to be the world’s largest archeology museum faced countless delays, primarily due to environmental, financial and political hurdles.

The design that allows visitors to experience ancient Egyptian values was conceived more than 20 years ago.

The design was finalized in 2003, when plans from Irish firm Heneghan Peng Architects was chosen out of 1,557 submissions from 82 nations in what was documented as the second-largest architectural competition in modern history.

The Irish company was founded by Peng, a Taiwanese immigrant to the US, and his wife, Heneghan, from Ireland.

Based on the architecture firm’s design, the museum sits squarely between the Giza Plateau and the Nile Valley Plain in what Peng said was an intentional choice he made in reflection of ancient Egypt’s concept of life and death.

According to the architect, only his firm among the 1,557 entrants in the competition, which was launched in January 2002, proposed to build the museum between the plateau and the plain to embrace the beauty of life and death, as well as the unique geography of the locations.

The other competitors recommended that it be erected either on the plateau or on the plain, he said.

“Architecture needs to respect the environment,” Peng said in an interview. “The design concept is presented in two parts through the main construction of the architecture and its surrounding landscape. The main body of the museum reflects the past, while the outdoor scenic area presents the rich lives of modern-day humans.”

“The entire compound blends together the interior and exterior; the past and the present; death and life,” he added.

While designing the museum, he did a lot of research on ancient Egypt, its culture, and the relationship between its heritage architectures and the civilization’s geography, Peng said.

“It is because of this geographical location that Egypt was able to embark on a 5,000-year journey through history,” he said.

Ancient Egyptians saw the sun rising in the east as a metaphor for birth and the sunset in the west as a symbol of death, which is why ancient temples were historically built on the eastern bank of the Nile, while the monuments for deceased pharaohs were traditionally erected on the western bank.

In honor of the cultural concept, Peng and his firm have visitors enter the museum from the proximity of the Nile Valley Plain and gradually move in a westward direction toward the Giza Plateau.

Moving from the fertile east to the royal tombs of the west, visitors will experience the crossroads that is life and death, Peng said, adding that a design that can showcase geographical uniqueness and local history is pivotal to a museum.

In the soft opening, up to 4,000 pre-registered visitors a day are given private tours of the museum’s commercial area, exterior gardens, Grand Hall, Grand Staircase and main galleries.

The flagship exhibit, the Tutankhamun Galleries, as well as its Children’s Museum and Khufu’s Boat Museum, remain closed to the public.

Once the museum officially opens, which could happen before the end of this year, more than 100,000 artifacts from ancient Egyptian dynasties are to be displayed over the museum’s 81,011m2 of floor space.

The most popular gallery is likely be the complete King Tut collection that consists of about 5,000 pieces, many of which are to be revealed to the world for the first time since the first items were unearthed in 1922.