At the foot of the Pyramids of Giza, BESIX has been commissioned to build the Grand Egyptian Museum, which will soon be opening its doors to the public.
It is the world’s largest museum dedicated to a single civilisation. The collection, consisting of Tutankhamun’s tomb and tens of thousands of other rare and unique archaeological finds, has found a new home in a museum built on the plateau of the pyramids of Giza. This highly complex construction bears the signature of BESIX, in collaboration with Orascom, an Egyptian conglomerate.
Exhibition galleries, storage centre, conference centre with 3D cinema, but also retail outlets, restaurants, and ancillary buildings: the new home of the royal mummies and other treasures of ancient Egypt is vast. So as not to disfigure the Giza Plateau, it has been built a small distance away, downhill from the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure. If its size and the complexity of its design match those of the pyramids, so too did the challenges associated with its construction.
The Grand Egyptian Museum is a building of rare complexity. Challenges included a massive roof slab in white concrete, spanning up to 40 metres, as well “silettos”, 30 m high downward pointing structures flanking the grand stairs. Among the peculiarities dreamed up by the architects, a huge, folded cover slab: an elegant 33,000 m² articulated structure, consisting of cascading panels with not one identical square metre. Its dimensions, its complexity and its slopes presented a threefold challenge for the engineers. They had to find a way to produce these extraordinarily complex concrete structures with extreme precision, so as to ensure the perfect alignment of the underside of the roof and its suspended ceilings.
A beautiful showcase designed by Belgium’s professionals that will delight Egyptian art lovers from all over the world!
Source: Focus on Belgium
