In the shadow of the Pyramids - the Grand Museum

As building sites go, it is unmatched. What could present more of a challenge than to design a major new structure to sit beside the world’s most iconic buildings, the Pyramids of Giza?

That new structure is the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), which, when complete, will be the biggest museum of Egyptology in the world, and (it’s claimed) the largest archaeo-logical museum of any sort.

It is long overdue. Egypt already has the world-famous Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. When completed in 1902 by French architect Marcel Dourgnon it was meant to exhibit 10,000 antiquities, but today there are more than 120,000 pieces on display with tens of thousands more in storage. Few of these warehoused items have been seen since being deposited on their cobwebby basement shelves. The museum’s galleries have also changed little over the past century: they are dingy and severely lacking not just in information about the exhibits, but also in such rudiments as adequate toilet facilities and, in a city where summer temperatures can reach 40˚C, air conditioning.

Providing a spacious new home for Egypt’s unparalleled collection of antiquities is one thing, but what sets the GEM project apart from all other recent high-profile museums is the proximity of its ancient neighbours.

Contrary to the standard postcard views – all shot from carefully selected angles – the Pyramids no longer loom majestically above the desert. Cairo’s rising tide has all but engulfed them in shanty villages while braiding the Giza Plateau, the rocky outcrop on which the ancient monuments sit, with traffic-choked ring roads. The new museum, which will join the Pyramids up on the plateau, will transform the visitor experience, replacing the shabby gauntlet of postcard sellers and insistent touts offering camel rides (US$5 to get up on the beast, a further $10 to be let off) with spacious esplanade approaches and carefully framed views. The success of this dialogue between the ancient and new was a vital factor when it came to selecting the museum’s architects.