Friday 03 / January / 2025
Muscat: The Bilarab Bin Haitham Award for Architectural Design concluded the overseas excursion of the ten project owners qualified for the final stage of the award. The aim of the trip was to visit a number of museums in the French Republic and the United Kingdom (UK).
This trip comes at the initiative of the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism, which will supervise the implementation of the project that won first place among the competing projects to design the Museum of Maritime History in the Wilayat of Sur.
The participants started the trip by visiting the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations in the French city of Marseille, and were briefed on the architectural and structural aspect of the museum, which embodies the civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean countries throughout different historical eras, as the museum is distinguished by its unique view of the Mediterranean Sea.
The second stop was a visit to the National Maritime Museum in the British capital, London, one of the oldest and most famous museums in the UK, whose opening dates back to 1937. The museum reviews the history of maritime work in the UK and the world, including more than two million artifacts related to the history of maritime navigation in Britain and various European countries during the seventeenth century, and other holdings related to sailing.
The participants were keen to make the most of the trip by visiting museums and other buildings characterized by different architectural styles. They also visited the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is one of the world's leading museums in art and design. It includes more than 2,800,000 museum pieces, books, and permanent and diverse archives from various civilizations of the world.
Their passion for architecture led them to study and analyse some of the architectural models that they had seen, and exchange views on them, as well as how to benefit from them architecturally in developing their posts or even enhancing themselves with knowledge.
The participants expressed their happiness with this trip, which represented an enriching addition to them in the field of museums. They extended their thanks and appreciation to the Bilarab Bin Haitham Award for Architectural Design, and the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism for adopting the idea of this trip and preparing for it.
The participants stressed that they would benefit from developing their projects with some of the ideas that they learned during the visit, especially due to the similarity of the museums with the Maritime History Museum project in Sur in terms of idea and content.
