National Museum of Qatar

Star architect Jean Nouvel was commissioned to build the new National Museum of Qatar, which opened its doors at the end of March 2019. Inspired by the local desert rose, he designed a gigantic building complex made of 539 curved disks. On an exhibition surface area of 8000 square metres, the museum is home to a total of twelve topical galleries showing ultra-large-scale film projections that take the visitors on an immersive journey through Qatar’s history. It is the world’s largest permanent video installation.

Role

Re-recording Mix

On-Site Mix

On-Site Project Management

for Idee und Klang Audio Design

Credits

Client: MEJV (MAN / EMPTY Joint Venture)

Architecture: Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Technical planning: Dean Winkler WCI

Projection mapping: RES

Film production: Doha Film Institute

Directors: Christophe Cheysson, Jananne Al-Ani, Abderrahmane Sissako, Mira Nair, Peter Webber, Doug Aitken, John Sanborn

Photography: RES & Idee und Klang Audio Design

Engaged as audio consultants by the National Museum, Idee und Klang Audio Design created the complete sound scenography for the museum – from the early planning stage to the final mix of the audio content on-site. Specifications and positions of a total of 331 speakers were determined based on a complex and detailed acoustic model of the entire exhibition area. A style guide was developed to enable the soundtracks of each gallery’s art films to co-exist within the open architecture. All films were pre-mixed in Idee und Klang’s multi-channel studio and eventually mixed on the large-scale speaker setups on-site.

The holistic approach to exhibition sound (from planning, over styleguide & pre-mix, to on-site mix) allowed the very different film soundtracks to work next to each other to create a seamless audio experience despite the unique acoustic conditions due to the complex architecture.