Abu Dhabi has unveiled plans for its Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, designed by architects Mecanoo, which will be the new home of ‘Stan’, a mostly complete 11.7-metre-long fossil of a 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex.
Due to be completed at the end of 2025, the 35,000-sq-m campus will be built in the Saadiyat Cultural District, joining the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and other notable exhibition spaces.
It will feature “some of the rarest wonders of natural history ever found”, taking visitors on a “13.8-billion-year journey through time and space”, Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism said.
Alongside ‘Stan’ will be the Murchison Meteorite that crash-landed in Australia in 1969.
As lead architects, Mecanoo designed the museum “to resonate with natural rock formations, reflecting the museum’s goal of improving understanding of and engagement with the natural world”, the department said, adding: “Every element of the design uses geometry as an overriding theme, with pentagonal shapes resembling cellular structures.”
