National Museum

A history museum is the ultimate showcase of a nations’ life through centuries. Museums can build morale and shape opinions. They also often create a lasting input on the future.
Following basic thoughts have gone into coming up with the design:
It is of utmost importance for the building to be user friendly. This has been achieved by a regimented and well designed access to various activities and will be explained later in this report. The building should be cheerful and not drab. The form should be such that it is ageless. It engages and excites. At the same time it is conscious of the contours and its context and stands as an un-intrusive structure in the woods of Shakarparian. The flow inside the galleries is regulated yet informal and non-compartmental. It provides flexibility in display spaces that merge into each other. The inspiration for the flowing plan comes from the Rivers that flow through this land. Interior space in the display area although inherently interesting due to varying angles and vistas will be kept neat and uncluttered with straight lines and simple finishes. From inside the emphasis is on the display and not the architecture. The vast cross-section of history that it proposes to display makes it impractical for
the building to reflect one era, even symbolically. So the reference for the form is borrowed not from one of the man-made periods in history but from the land itself. The jagged Potohar Plataue is what inspires the angular, tapering walls. Evoking visions of the first sights of the rising land mass as you come up the motorway near Kalar Kahar area and are encountered by sudden rock formations jutting out of the plains of Punjab. The use of various colored earthly toned bricks as exterior finish reflecting the soil strata that is a witness to thousands of years of history steeped in this part of the world.

National Museum by Anjum Pervez in Pakistan won the WA Award Cycle 2. Please find below the WA Award poster for this project.