by Loredana Mascheroni

It is naturally on the Island of Happiness - the translation of Saadiyat Island - that Sheik Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan intends to realise one of his most ambitious dreams - to build a cultural centre to attract visitors from all over the world. It is no imaginary place but an uninhabited island covering 27 square kilometres just 500 m off the coast of the island of Abu Dhabi.

To make this dream reality, the president of the Arab Emirates has engaged four international architectural stars (including three Pritzker prize winners) for the first four buildings and other big names will be involved in the building of three mega-projects still at the planning stage. The first step in this enormous urban and cultural programme, set up in 2004 by the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA), has been the presentation of the first four projects, that constitute the heart of the cultural district, the Saadiyat Performing Arts Center by Zaha Hadid, that will have five different halls - for music, concerts, opera, a theatre and a multifunctional hall - to hold 6,300 people; the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim Museum by Frank Gehry, that will be the largest Guggenheim in the world; the Classical Art Museum designed by Jean Nouvel and a Maritime Museum by Tadao Ando.

Completing the area will be the Sheikh Zayed National Museum (dedicated to the history and traditions of Abu Dhabi and for which a competition is soon to be launched), a Biennale Park with 19 pavilions that will be connected by a 1500 sailable canal and a long term plan for a creative campus of fine art schools. Around the museums an overall infrastructure will be created, the masterplanning of which has been carried out by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill – to house a community of over 150, 000 people, comparable in size to Oxford in England or Hollywood in America. The opening of the buildings in the area is programmed in three phases, running from 2012 to 2018. The sheik's dream will cost - according to current estimates - twenty million dollars.

https://www.saadiyat.ae