Zayed National Museum

Client
Zayed National Museum

Location
Abu Dhabi, UAE

Collaborators
Foster + Partners
Idee Und Klang

Sector
Cultural Institutions & Museums

Zayed National Museum is the national museum of the United Arab Emirates and a cultural jewel of Saadiyat Cultural District in Abu Dhabi.

Designed by Foster + Partners, the landmark institution celebrates the life and values of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the Founding Father of the United Arab Emirates, and the stories of the nation he shaped.

Journey’s most ambitious project

Throughout the museum, we help to tell the story of the UAE with over 200 exhibits ranging from intimate single-speaker soundscapes to vast 11-metre-wide LED screens.

Spread throughout six main galleries and across 16 interior and exterior spaces, this is the most ambitious project in Journey’s history – driven by cultural integrity, immersive storytelling, and the desire to enable visitors to connect with a nation’s history.

“Zayed National Museum presents the story of our land, our people, and our heritage in a way that is alive, evolving, and open to all.”

— Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism, Abu Dhabi.

Each gallery within the museum is designed as a narrative environment, blending spatial design, sound, film, archival material, and interactive experiences. Featured galleries are: 

To Our Roots – reflecting on the diverse landscapes of the UAE, and the unique cultures found across each of them.

Al Masar Garden – honoring Sheikh Zayed’s transformation of the UAE.

Our Beginning – exploring Sheikh Zayed’s ancestry, early life, leadership and the path to nationhood.

Through Our Nature – an exploration of the UAE’s diverse landscapes and how they shaped Emirati culture. 

To Our Ancestors – tracing archaeological discoveries and ancient life-ways.

Through Our Connections – telling stories of trade, innovation, and cultural exchange.

By Our Coasts – detailing the history of early navigation, maritime traditions and coastal life of the Emirates.

To help bring the stories of the UAE to life, Journey combined film, animation, sound, interactivity and spatial design, creating a seamless dialogue between technology, storytelling and architecture.

Magan Boat

A key exhibit focuses on the ”Magan Boat”, developed through a research project with the museum, Zayed University and New York University, Abu Dhabi. Using experimental archaeology, teams rebuilt the bronze age vessel from fragments, testing ancient boatbuilding techniques, using natural fibres – and even sailing the completed boat successfully. 

Journey interpreted this process, creating an interactive ‘table’ encouraging visitors to explore the many layers of scientific experimentation and archaeological studies that shaped this project. The table merges 2D, 3D and media content seamlessly and displays artefacts and digital layers, bringing the boat’s story to life in unexpected ways.

Our Beginning

In the ”Our Beginning” gallery, we explore Sheikh Zayed’s ancestry, life and legacy, using archive imagery and maps to give historic material a new life. Using a 2.5D approach, with touches of 3D, familiar and well-loved imagery was reinterpreted for large-scale screens. AI tools helped extend backgrounds and landscapes while maintaining authenticity, enabling us to animate and add depth to archival photographs and upscale them for monumental display.

Throughout the gallery, visitors encounter ‘windows’ into key moments from the nation’s past – agricultural, educational and social milestones presented as portals through frosted glass. Using 4D scans of real people, we constructed layered scenes that respond to light and movement. A subtle blur effect keeps the human figures lifelike yet ethereal, allowing the line between past and present to dissolve. 

Through Our Nature

The ”Through Our Nature” gallery film, showcasing the nation’s natural landscapes and stories, spans an 11×11-metre LED wall, moving from the microscopic to the monumental. The surrounding six displays integrate 3D, illustration and animation to deepen the narrative. A dedicated children’s area features playful, interactive animation based around flora and fauna, layered over the large film in the background. When creating the experience, the Journey team used VR to recreate the gallery space, to ensure the films were showing in the right scale.

Technology 

Within the museum’s multitude of spaces, projections fill the walls with dappled light and delicate line drawings. We integrated bespoke illustrations and animations into these projections, maps and digital interactives, ensuring the visual language remained unified and expressive throughout.

Every exhibit reveals a different story through layered technologies. For example, the “Blue Qur’an” explores the story of science through interactive media, using multispectral imaging techniques. Researchers from Zayed National Museum have unveiled text concealed beneath an intricate decorative layer of gold leaf on a page of the Blue Qur’an – one of the world’s most well-known and recognisable Qur’an manuscripts and most important examples of Islamic calligraphy.

“Diet in the Pre-Islamic Era” allows visitors to learn and discover about the foods people ate, while cooking a dish digitally.

A key technological feature throughout the museum are smart-glass transparent screens, with over 120 distributed. The smartglass allows visitors to explore the collections in the showcases while media is playing, and invites interaction with the objects.

The Platform

On the museum’s distinctive roof, the sculptural fins have been reimagined as playable instruments, with 130 speakers at the base of fins. Journey developed an audio concept to “play” the fins in collaboration with sound artists Idee Und Klang in Basel. Working with a Swiss percussionist, the building itself was turned into an instrument.

Archaeology 

”Visualising Past Inhabitants” is a story told through an archaeological narrative: a burial site on Marawah Island containing the remains of a woman from 5800 BCE, adorned with feathers, weapons and shark-tooth jewellery. Using existing film footage, we developed an interactive experience showing how scientists reconstruct her identity from archaeological evidence. A life-sized replica of the woman is displayed in the museum, surrounded by the objects she was buried with – a window into Neolithic life.  

3D technology also plays a major role in reconstructing the past: ruins are digitally rebuilt into complete buildings, and visitors can take part in games that let them recreate physical objects, such as moulding and designing bricks, before seeing them virtually assembled in animated form. 

Filmmaking

Filming across all seven Emirates, the team captured performances, landscapes and people – from oases to mountain peaks. Among the highlights is the ‘Al-Shihuh’ community performing the Nadba war cry on a mountain side, transforming real moments and reactions into a welcoming performance to greet visitors. Another film with a female camel herder and falconer shows the traditions passed down through generations. An interactive using the film footage then translates into a ‘how to train your falcon’ game for visitors. 

Zayed National Museum is a vital platform for civic pride and education. It sets a new benchmark for museum storytelling in the region – and stands as a testament to the power of collaboration, craft, and cultural stewardship. It is a holistic storytelling experience grounded in research, creativity, and respect. Every piece of content – from a child-friendly interactive, outdoor soundscape, to a contemplative archival film – has been designed with intent, care and cultural nuance.