French president Francois Hollande inaugurated the Foundation Louis Vuitton contemporary art museum on October 20. The private contemporary art museum was financed by Bernard Arnault, who heads up the LVMH luxury goods empire and whose net worth is estimated at almost US$ 30 billion by Forbes. The foundation was designed by 85-year-old architect Frank Gehry who wanted to "design, in Paris, a magnificent vessel symbolizing the cultural calling of France". Gehry is best known for designing the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum building in Bilbao, Spain. Spain Museum of Modern Art Guggenheim Foundation aroused the admiration of the French billionaire who wished to have the building constructed in a similar aesthetic. Anchored by imposing iron and wood girders that evoke Belle Epoque steelwork, and relying on aerospace technology for its construction, Gehry's masterstroke is the building's 12 undulating sails covering an area of 13,500 square meters. The rectangular panels of glass made in specially created ovens in Italy reflect the light in different ways as they appear to twist this way and that. They float over the body of the building, "the iceberg," constructed of fiber-reinforced concrete known as Ductal. Construction and designing of the private museum has taken more than 12 years and Mr. Gehry had to design almost 60 different layouts. The ambitious project took 100 engineers assembled by Gehry and a total of 3,000 workers. The museum is as ambitious as anything Gehry has ever produced but also, surprisingly, as refined. Covering 11.700 square meters and holding 11 separate galleries on four levels as well as a sizable auditorium, space for concerts and so on. At the moment they are exposed not more than a dozen contemporary installations, specially created for the opening, and 60 architectural layouts of Gehry. The main collection will be placed in the halls only at the beginning of next year. The center formally opens on Octtober 27. Admission will be free for a few days and then rise to nearly US$ 18 for an adult. In 2062 the building will revert to public ownership, becoming property of the city of Paris.

The Dubai Frame, a 150-meter-by-105-meter window-frame like structure in the emirate's Zabeel Park, will be completed by the end of next year. The US$ 32.3 million project, which won the ThyssenKrupp Elevator International Architecture Award in 2009, will feature a museum and is expected to attract up to 2 million visitors per year. The Dubai Frame is intended to highlight both the old and news sides of the city, with newer icons such as the Burj Khalifa visible through one side, and older parts of the city such as Dubai Creek and Deira on view through the other. The structure will be completely transparent, with elevators that will take visitors to a viewing deck located at its peak. A terrace cafe on the top cross-beam and a 150-meter-high glass floor bridge are the major highlights of the project, which will include an observation deck at the top of each vertical shaft. The ground leg of the Frame will include a museum that tells the story of the development of the city and information on its past and present.

Abu Dhabi staked its claim as the cultural capital of the Middle East on January 8 with the final go-ahead for its most eagerly anticipated landmark project. The main contract for the Louvre Abu Dhabi was awarded to the Dubai builder Arabtec. Construction of the US$ 653 million development will begin immediately and the new museum is expected to open in 2015. The Louvre Abu Dhabi, which arose out of a 2007 cultural partnership between France and the United Arab Emirates, won't look anything like the lavish 12th century building where Louis XIV once lived. The mushroom-shaped building designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, the Pritzker Prize winner, is slated to be part of a cultural district planned for Saadiyat Island. The architecturally stunning complex will consist of 64,000 square meters of pavilions, plazas and canals, two-thirds of it shaded by a 180-meter wide cupola that appears to float in mid air. The new museum will form the heart of the Saadiyat Island cultural district alongside the Zayed National Museum planned to open in 2016 and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi the following year. The construction challenges are considerable. A 180-metre wide cupola supported at just four points around its perimeter will shade two-thirds of the museum campus. Perforated to cast an intricate "rain of light" below, the dome will be made of more than 100,000 individual elements in 10 layers that will overlap to form a pattern inspired by Islamic geometry and the palm fronds of traditional Arish dwellings. The Louvre Abu Dhabi will be housed in 9,200 square meters of gallery space spread across almost 30 separate buildings. Planned like a town, these range from one to three storey in height and are linked by a network of gardens, plazas and watercourses inspired by traditional Arabian falaj. The scope of the architecture and public areas may sound prodigious, but these pale in comparison to the design, engineering and infrastructure challenges that have been overcome to get the project to this stage. The museum requires a 10-metre deep waterproof basement for emergency access and plant rooms that measure 31,500 square meters. In 2009, walls were buried in the sand 40 meters deep to ensure the construction site stays watertight. Once works are complete, these will be removed to allow seawater to flow between the museum precincts in a series of canals. In 2010 alone, contractors drove 4,536 piles into the ground - 2,958 steel and 1,578 concrete - the length of which, if put end to end, is the distance from Abu Dhabi to Dubai. Most of this work has gone unnoticed. The only visible sign of progress thus far has been a curious, wedge-shaped chamber on Saadiyat in which a 1:33 scaled model of the museum's canopy, made of 15,000 aluminum and steel parts, has been light-tested to ensure its performance. But behind the scenes an international team of architects and engineers has been working for almost five years, testing the dome for factors including its ability to cast the right type of shade, and its resistance to wind, explosions and fire. Most of the preparatory work associated with the Louvre Abu Dhabi is already complete. All that remains is the small matter of delivering the more tangible parts of what will be one of the early 21st century's most anticipated architectural projects.

When I. M. Pei's glass pyramid opened at the Louvre more than 20 years ago, many argued that this 21.3 meters tall structure had destroyed the classical beauty of one of the world's great museums. But today, as crowds wait on long lines outside the pyramid, which serves as the Louvre's main entrance, what once seemed audacious has become as accepted a part of the city's visual landscape as the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe. Now the museum is again risking the public's wrath as it introduces the most radical architectural intervention since the pyramid in 1989. Designed to house new galleries for Islamic art, it consists of ground- and lower-ground-level interior spaces topped by a golden, undulating roof that seems to float within the neo-Classical Visconti Courtyard in the middle of the Louvre's south wing, right below the museum's most popular galleries, where the Mona Lisa and Veronese's "Wedding Feast of Cana" are hung. This deftly engineered design is the work of two architects, the Italian Mario Bellini and the Frenchman Rudy Ricciotti, who won an international competition to create the new wing in 2005. Seven years in the making, the US$ 125 million project, which opened on September 22. When the plans were first unveiled, the architects said, the roof resembled "a scarf floating within the space" - a somewhat loaded description, perhaps, considering that last year the French officially banned full veils in public places. The museum's "luminous veil," or "flying carpet" as it has also been called, covers some 2790 square meters of gallery space on the ground and lower floors. The new galleries, roughly four times as large as the space previously devoted to Islamic art at the Louvre, house a collection spanning 1,200 years of history, from the 7th through the 19th centuries, and includes glass works, ceramics, metalwork, books, manuscripts, textiles and carpets. The roof is actually constructed of a free-form lattice composed of 8,000 steel tubes and glass covered by gilded metal. The undulating canopy contains the open floor plan gallery space where objects are displayed in glass cabinets. A large staircase descends to the lower level where natural daylight seeps in around the edges. A significant amount of work for the project required the team to excavate down 12 meters without disturbing the palace's original foundation. The result is a cavernous space reminiscent of a tent illuminated with a soft golden light.

Construction has begun on the Foster + Partners-designed Art Museum in Datong's New City, in China. The distinctive 32 thousand square meters museum will be largely submerged into the ground, with the four large interconnected steel pyramids which form its roof appearing to erupt through the surface of the surrounding plaza. The dramatic, unusual structure also assists with the museum's passive energy savings, as skylights placed within the north and north-west facing pyramids allow for maximum natural light while minimizing the impact of solar heat. Since the roof dominates the Datong Art Museum, comprising 70 percent of the building's exposed surface area, Foster + Partners added double insulation to the panels of the roof. This measure further reduces energy consumption while maintaining the precise climate control required within an art museum. The relatively narrow skylights which follow the roof line of each of the four interconnected pyramids allow for maximum natural light for appreciation of the art work, as well as serving as a "beacon" for the museum, illuminating the night sky. Forming only 10 percent of the overall structure, maintenance requirements will be minimal. The earth-toned Corten steel panels which encase the visible exterior elements of the museum will naturally weather over time, enhancing the impression that the museum has somehow erupted from the cultural plaza. The smooth, sloping entrance to the museum will lead visitors in the Grand Gallery. Separate areas, including a children's gallery, group entrance lobby, cafe, restaurant are arranged within sunken court yards, again provided with focused natural light. The interior can be additionally subdivided to allow for event and exhibition appropriate usage of the space. Scheduled to open next year, the Datong Art Museum will be one of four new buildings constructed in Datong's Cultural Plaza. When complete, Datong's new quarter will be the centre of the city's cultural life, with the new museum as its 'urban room' - a dynamic space, open to everyone to meet and enjoy its different displays and activities.