Location | Doha, Qatar
Date | 2018-2019
Client | IMAR Trading & Contracting
Design | KTA Koichi Takada Architects
Turnkey furnishings
The creation of food spaces involves the mixing of materials and processes: wood, fabric, lighting fixtures and glass make up the free-standing items of this restaurant. Devoto Design manages all the processes to provide turnkey furnishings.
Qatar is a peninsula surrounded by sea water. Its pulsing heart is Doha, the capital city situated exactly where desert and sea meet. In the last few decades Doha has radically changed, turning from a small fishermen village into one of the most dynamic cities in the world.
Ateliers Jean Nouvel won the competition for designing the architectural and iconic symbol of this young country on the Persian Gulf: the National Museum of Qatar. The project aims at telling the origins and history of Qatar and the designated location is nonetheless the point where everything started: the Al Thani family palace.
The architectural concept design focuses on showing what is hidden, on revealing a history that hasn’t had the chance to leave a trace behind yet.
The architecture and structure of the museum symbolize the mysteries of the desert phenomena of concretion and crystallization, reproducing the stone petals of the desert rose. The selected materials (steel, glass, fiber concrete, acrylic resins) express a significant inclination towards the contemporary, tempered by the permanent contact with both desert and sea.
The result is a location of 40.000 square meters, including the 8.000 square meters dedicated to the permanent collection, the 2.000 square meters dedicated to temporary exhibitions and showcases. Next to them, a 220-seats auditorium, 2 restaurants, a café, 2 shops, a food forum, a R&S center and laboratories and also a big garden with native plants.
Devoto Design cured the fit-out of the Nomad Café, a scenographic place dedicated to food hospitality. The welcome to the visitor is given through the presence of circular freestanding seating modules, made of solid oak blades that reproduce the configuration of the desert rocks. These islands are conceptually linked to other fixed and free-standing pieces of furniture that complete the fit-out of the café.
This work consisted almost completely of solid oak wood and was so complex that more than 6.800 solid oak strips were used. They were engineered by our team of professionals and thanks to the ultimate Solid Works programs. The strips were cut by our CNC machines that produced the single pieces with their own code and their exact position onto the 1.721 lm of installed wall cladding.