marks barfield architects - more than meets the eye
Salaman Oasis
The Prince Salman Science Oasis, a major new Science museum for Riyadh, will be a unique experience, combining science, culture, nature, commerce and faith. It is conceived as a visible expression of this wholeness and a manifestation of unity in multiplicity.
The architectural elements of the brief are woven around a central concept of unity. This unitary perspective exhibits three kinds of order in our proposal – natural, geometric, and harmonic - and finds architectural and landscape expression in the wadi garden, the geometric cracking pattern of the main buildings, and the dna-inspired ribbon-form that weaves its way through the complex.
Our massing principles rely on the symbolism of the traditional forms of architecture, for example, garden, gateway, platform, room, minaret. These forms are combined with the three kinds of order to provide architectural features which will resonate with Islamic culture, traditional settlement patterns, and universal nature - as seen in the structure of space, sense of place, orientation, time-form, rhythm, surface, pattern, colour, geometry and proportion.