The Desert Rose

After more than a decade in the making, the National Museum of Qatar in Doha is now open, sporting a dramatic facade designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel. The clusters of sand-coloured discs, which cover the colossal 52,000 sqm museum, were inspired by the desert rose — a rose-like formation created when minerals crystallise in arid areas. “Nobody knows what the inside of a desert rose looks like, and we created a typology of intersections that makes you question what is inside it,” says the architect during the inauguration.