Making a masterpiece

It was February 2006, and under conditions of absolute secrecy, when a high-powered delegation from France arrived in the United Arab Emirates. Led by the culture minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, the group included senior officials from the French national museums and advisors. All wanted the same thing.

They had flown 3,000 kilometres to set out a framework for an agreement raised in initial contacts with the UAE that were still only a few months old: to create a world class museum in Abu Dhabi with the support and guidance of one the world’s most famous institutions. It would be called the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

The proposed location was a sandy island called Saadiyat, whose northern tip lay just a few hundred metres from the port of Abu Dhabi. Its Arabic name could be translated, as the marketing and public relations teams loved to endlessly repeat, as “the island of happiness”.

Until that point, the island’s population consisted largely of seabirds and nesting turtles. Archeological evidence suggests Saadiyat had been once inhabited for centuries, but that the population had long since decamped for the comforts of the mainland.

In the 1970s, it had been the location for greenhouses intended to supply the city with tomatoes and cucumbers in an experiment in hydroponics with the University of Arizona. Its most notable visitor was the heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali.

Now it had been decided that Saadiyat would become the keystone in an ambitious project to make Abu Dhabi one of the world’s great cultural destinations, connected to the city by a new bridge and highway named in honour of Sheikh Khalifa, the UAE President. Five-star hotels, luxury villas, shopping malls, a marina and a huge performing arts centre would be built. At its heart would be a triumvirate of museums. The first of these would be the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

It took another year for the news to become public. March 6, 2007, saw the official signing of an agreement between the two countries and the release of the first artist’s impression, along with the name of the architect; Jean Nouvel, first noted for his Institut du Monde Arabe, constructed in Paris in the late 1980s.

Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, the President of the UAE, called it “an important step towards achieving Abu Dhabi's vision in placing itself as a cultural hub in the region and a bridge of communication between different global cultures and civilisations".

Work began. A huge revetment, or sand barricade, was built out into the sea. Millions of tonnes of sand were pumped into the enclosed space to create the museum’s foundations along with concrete columns and steel rods thrust deep below the surface. The museum, it was confidently forecast, would open in 2012. The entire Saadiyat cultural project would be ready in 2018.

Life, as the song goes, is what happens when you are busy making other plans. A global financial downturn that began in 2008, and the Arab Spring that swept through the region in 2010, meant that the UAE suddenly had other priorities and other calls on its financial resources. In 2011, it was announced that the opening date of 2014 had been postponed to an unspecified date. For almost two years, the site literally gathered dust.

There were some who doubted the museum would ever exist as more than an architect’s drawing. They were wrong. In January 2012, Abu Dhabi’s Tourism Development and Investment Company, the Government body charged with building, announced that construction would recommence, under a Dh2.4 billion consortium led by Arabtec, a Dubai-based company whose previous achievements included the Burj Khalifa and the Emirates Palace hotel. Within months, the Louvre Abu Dhabi began to rise again.

It was the second week in December 2013 and even the cool of early morning could not disguise the rising tension at the site of the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

All eyes were focused on a large, oddly-shaped rectangular frame of battleship-grey steel, resting on blocks of wood and concrete.

Above it dangled the hook of a monstrous, 87-metre-tall mobile crane, so massive it had to travel on its own road of steel plates to avoid the risk of collapse on the temporary platform that had been built nearly 100 metres from the main construction area. The engineers in charge had nicknamed this behemoth Decepticon, after the robot antagonists in the Transformers films.

The role of Decepticon this morning was more benevolent. Its task was to lift the steel piece, then inch forward at its top speed of one kilometre per hour and deposit it gently on a row of temporary, tower-like structures, where it would become the first element in the museum's vast dome-like roof.

This was a moment of truth for the builders. The metal frame was one of 85 similar pieces that, connected together, would form the underlying structure of the museum's domed roof.

The operation was fraught with potential disaster. The steel frame, known as a supersized element and weighing 41 tonnes, was unnervingly close to the crane's maximum lifting capacity, running the risk that it might topple forward as the boom swung forward. To move the crane closer, though, created the possibility that its weight could collapse the newly built basement floors.

After eight hours, with the crane's safety constantly monitored by a satellite link to its German manufacturer, the supersized element had moved just 10 metres and the gathering darkness called a halt to the operation.

Yet it had been a success. On the following day it took less than an hour to complete the lift, the slackening of the crane's four lifting cables a sign that the towers had taken the weight – and that the operation had been a complete success.

The lowering of the dome was one example of the unprecedented challenges in constructing the Louvre Abu Dhabi. At one point consideration had been given to building the entire structure next to the museum, then raising it to its full height and effectively sliding it across.

The eventual plan greatly sped the construction timetable but required the museum's main buildings to be built at the same time as the roof, with the result that many of the temporary supports rose through what would eventually be the skylights of galleries.

Such was the complexity of the design and the engineering challenges it posed, that the museum could only be built using advanced computer software and newly developed materials. Even so, some of the knottier construction problems were still being worked out as the building progressed.

In this sense, the Louvre Abu Dhabi was in many ways an impossible building. The verdict of one senior project manager? "You couldn't have done it even 20 years ago."

It was January 7, 2016 when Shehab Taha saw the Louvre Abu Dhabi properly for the first time.

This was not his first encounter with the museum. Taha, the construction manager for Turner Construction, had been involved in the project almost from the beginning.

But this day was different. Over several days, the massive rusted steel temporary towers, once essential to building the dome, had been removed.

In their place was nothing but light. It streamed through the spaces in the complex web of the roof above, but also in a great crescent of light that illuminated a space that was both familiar but utterly changed.

It was, he recalled later, “as if a big load had been lifted from my chest and I could breathe”.

The demands of a structure like the Louvre Abu Dhabi place an immense responsibility on those who have to find a way to build it.

By 2015, it was clear that the initial projected opening date for the museum of later that year would not be met. That there were delays was hardly surprising.

As Taha points out, in the world of engineering construction, there are the "big five" of challenges in terms of complexity; concrete works, marine works, steel structure, complicated finishes and electromechanical works.

Most projects incorporate a maximum of two of these. “Here on the Louvre", says Taha, "we have all of them combined.”

The removal of the towers was a slow, difficult and labour-intensive task that involved cutting up several thousands of tonnes of steel by hand. But the spaces this process liberated were also crucial to the next stage of construction; one of the most dramatic phases of all. It was time to flood the museum.

For the first three years of its construction, the Louvre Abu Dhabi sat on a man-made promontory of sand. This artificial platform was essential to allow the movement of heavy machinery and provide easy access to the external construction areas. One way of describing the process is to think of the museum as sitting in a giant dry dock.

The design for the museum, though, was intended to create the impression that it was floating on the sea. Water would almost completely surround it; in some areas even flow under the dome itself.

To fully launch Atelier Jean Nouvel's vision for the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the final major stage of construction meant that the waters must return.

In preparation for the flooding, a layered system of 278 ­marine piles, concrete breakwaters, ­tidal pools and a specially ­designed "wearing wall" was built to protect the museum from the effects of maritime traffic, the vicissitudes of the Gulf’s weather and any potential security threats that might come from the sea.

Some of this was aesthetic, designed to trap water as the tide receded and maintaining the sense that the museum was surrounded by sea at all times.

Perhaps the biggest ally in the process were the laws of physics. Water was constantly forcing its way into the site, which in parts was 10 meters below sea level. To remove it, 18 pumps had run continuously for six years, removing a total of 13 million cubic metres of water, or enough to fill around 5,200 Olympic swimming pools. Simply turning off 15 of the pumps allowed the water to flood the site at a controlled rate of 15 centimetres a day.

This, of course, is a simplification. As the water returned, it produced an upward pressure on the structure, which is protected by an impermeable waterproof membrane. The 25-metre foundation piles, which first supported the building during construction, now acted as anchors. But as the water and light shimmered together in harmony, the turning of the new year meant the long dream of the Louvre Abu Dhabi was almost a reality. The world waited for the doors to open.