The Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Cultural Centre () is a cultural complex located in

Kuwait City Kuwait City ( ar, مدينة الكويت) is the capital and largest city of Kuwait. Located at the heart of the country on the south shore of Kuwait Bay on the Persian Gulf, it is the political, cultural and economical centre of the emirate, ...

Kuwait Kuwait (; ar, الكويت ', or ), officially the State of Kuwait ( ar, دولة الكويت '), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated in the northern edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf, bordering Iraq to the nort ...

, owned by the Amiri Diwan. It consists of six main components; The Natural History Museum, Science Museum, Space Museum, Arabic Islamic Science Museum, Fine Arts Centre and the external spaces known as the Public Realm. The Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Cultural Centre is a 18-hectare site making it the world's largest museum complex. The Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Cultural Centre was inaugurated in early 2018, it was the world's largest single-delivery museum project. The Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre creates a new museum district within Kuwait. Together with the

Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Cultural Centre The Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre (JACC), informally known as the Kuwait Opera House, is a cultural center in Kuwait, located on the Gulf Road in the capital Kuwait City. It is the largest cultural center and opera house in the Middle Ea ...

, the cultural centre is part of the new

Kuwait National Cultural District The Kuwait National Cultural District (also known as the KNCD) is multi billion dollar development project that focuses on the arts and culture in Kuwait. With a capital cost of more than US$1 billion, the project is one of the largest cultural inve ...

. The museums present

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...

ic, and

Arab culture Arab culture is the culture of the Arabs, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. The various religions the Arab ...

and

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

. They also embrace and showcase the rich diversity of the world's finest cultural achievements. The museum is named after the late Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah who was the 11th ruler of Kuwait, the first Amir and the founder of modern Kuwait.

Design

The project was administered by the Amiri Diwan who appointed

i Architects SSH to design and engineer the building envelopes and components, which are connected through glazed wings and a canopy acting as the central spine of the cultural centre. Alghanim International, a local main contractor, were appointed as the builders, tasked with constructing the museum envelopes and undertaking the extensive sitewide landscaping. London-based Cultural Innovations developed the visitor experience design. Exhibits at the Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Cultural Centre cover

science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider ...

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

, and

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...

. The project forms the major part of Kuwait's new national cultural district.

Museums

Natural History Museum

Making up eight of the galleries across the complex, the Natural History Museum (NHM) covers themes including

Prehistoric Life The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and fossil organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as ''Ga'', for ''gigaannum'') and evide ...

Ecosystem An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...

s, The Earth and Environment,

Biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

, and

Arabian The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...

Wildlife Wildlife refers to domestication, undomesticated animal species (biology), species, but has come to include all organisms that grow or live wilderness, wild in an area without being species, introduced by humans. Wildlife was also synonymous ...

and

Geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and ...

. Within the NHM galleries is a South East Asian

rain forest Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainforest ...

with a combination of living trees and plants interspersed with faux, overlooking a 1.4 million liter

aquarium An aquarium (plural: ''aquariums'' or ''aquaria'') is a vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which aquatic plants or animals are kept and displayed. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, aq ...

stocked with live species. The 6m x 6m concave end retaining panel together with the side viewing panels weigh over 65 tons providing a full underwater

panorama A panorama (formed from Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images, or 3D modeling. The word was originally coined in ...

of the aquarium. The Prehistoric Life gallery includes over 30 full size prehistoric creatures both skeletal and full bodied. Each museum has a glass clad wing protruding from the end. The Prehistoric Life wing includes a 17 meter-long prehistoric

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

suspended above four displays of giant beasts from the distant past.

Science Museum

The Transport gallery houses over 200

historical History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

and

contemporary Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from approximately 1945 to the present. Contemporary history is either a subset of the late modern period, or it is o ...

vehicle A vehicle (from la, vehiculum) is a machine that transports people or cargo. Vehicles include wagons, bicycles, motor vehicles (motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, mobility scooters for disabled people), railed vehicles (trains, trams), wa ...

s from full scale planes,

boat A boat is a watercraft of a large range of types and sizes, but generally smaller than a ship, which is distinguished by its larger size, shape, cargo or passenger capacity, or its ability to carry boats. Small boats are typically found on inl ...

s and cars suspended from the roof structure, to full size replicas of the

Bluebird The bluebirds are a North American group of medium-sized, mostly insectivorous or omnivorous birds in the order of Passerines in the genus ''Sialia'' of the thrush family (Turdidae). Bluebirds are one of the few thrush genera in the Americas. ...

and

Bloodhound The bloodhound is a large scent hound, originally bred for hunting deer, wild boar and, since the Middle Ages, for tracking people. Believed to be descended from hounds once kept at the Abbey of Saint-Hubert, Belgium, in French it is called, ...

speed record vehicles and the

Red Bull Stratos Red Bull Stratos was a high altitude skydiving project involving Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner. On 14 October 2012, Baumgartner flew approximately into the stratosphere over New Mexico, United States, in a helium balloon before free fal ...

capsule. The technical installation methodology, coordination and structural challenges were significant within this gallery.

Space Museum

The Space Museum with four galleries and a 110-seat planetarium creates a

futuristic The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ...

museum exploring topics from the Big Bang to space travel, and our place in the

solar system The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar S ...

. At the centre, the planetarium was designed and built as part of the exhibition fit-out including the structural development and engineering for it to traverse the ground and mezzanine floors. A key section of the museum is an immersive model of the

international space station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...

(ISS) which gives the opportunity to learn about astronauts' life in the ISS, and the challenges involved in human living in space.

Arabic Islamic Science Museum

This museum is dedicated to the influences of

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researche ...

s and

inventors An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

over history, and explores how and why Islamic civilization, and particularly the

arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

and

s, flourished through the 8th to the 14th century.

Fine Arts Centre

The fine arts centre is dedicated to fine arts and showcases art exhibitions. In addition, the fine arts centre has an artist in-residency program to support artists in Kuwait.

References

External links

Official Website
{{Kuwait City 2018 establishments in Kuwait Museums established in 2018 Entertainment venues in Kuwait Cultural centers in Kuwait Buildings and structures in Kuwait City Museums in Kuwait Art museums and galleries in Kuwait