A journey towards ancient Egyptian culture will be the main theme of the
Grand Egyptian Museum’s exhibition design, writes Nevine El-Aref.

Minister of Antiquities Khaled Al-Enany announced that the German
company Atelier Brückner had won the tender launched six months ago to start
building the exhibition design of the GEM.
The Ministry of Antiquities had launched a tender almost six months ago
among 20 international and local companies. A committee that included Egyptian
and foreign experts in architecture, museology, law and administration had
evaluated the work of the tendering companies and made a short list of four
from the United States, France, Canada and Germany. Atelier Brückner then won the bid.
“The soft opening of the GEM is
scheduled for mid-2018, but we are working hard to reach December 2017,”
Al-Enany said, adding that the official opening was planned for 2022.
Supervisor-General of the GEM Tarek Tewfik said that the winning company
was an outstanding global company in the field of designs for exhibitions and
museums. It has implemented 316 projects in different countries and won more
than 200 international awards in the field.
The company is to design both the grand staircase hall and the two halls
dedicated to display Tutankhamun’s funerary collection at the GEM. The grand
staircase hall will put on show a collection of 100 royal colossi, blocks and
reliefs, among them the gigantic colossus of Ramses II transported in 2006 to
the GEM from Ramses Square in downtown Cairo.
The halls of Tutankhamun’s collection will display the funerary
collection of the boy king, which includes 5,000 artefacts among them 3,000
objects that have never been put on display before. These items, Tewfik said,
were stored in the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square. He told Al-Ahram Weekly
that the new halls were 7,000 metres square and would be divided into four
areas each representing a chamber of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
“This is the suggested idea from
which the main design of the Tutankhamun halls will be created,” Tewfik said,
adding that the cost of the design was included in the overall cost of the GEM
project.
“We were very honoured to be
invited to attend this bidding process, and of course to finally win it. We
will do our best to perform in the best possible way to make the dream come
true,” Uwe Rudolf Brückner, founder and creative director of Atelier Brückner,
told the Weekly.
The company is a leading design office for
museums and exhibitions, architecture, expo pavilions, brand and visitor
centres. “As a general planner we cover all design phases and disciplines —
exhibition design/fit out, architecture, scenography, graphics, lighting, media
and content — through all design phases,” Brückner said. “We have created 11
different designs for museums as well as a number of permanent and temporary
exhibitions worldwide.”... READ MORE.