Engineering for the climate in Abu Dhabi

"Sometimes projects take a long time to be completed, and this one was over ten years to see that, actually, the ideas that we have as engineers can be manifest to make the world a better place." Prof Shaun Fitzgerald, Director of the Centre for Climate Repair, recalls seeing the new Zayed National Museum on paper many years ago, and thinking about how to make it as sustainable as possible.

I just want to tell you what I was up to last week. I was in Abu Dhabi for a series of meetings and a workshop on a topic of engineering. But I had the opportunity to spend one late afternoon heading to the Zayed National Museum.

This was a building that I had followed for a number of years, and was a really good example of engineering and what we can do to try and make the world a better place.

The museum roof is designed to look like falcon feathers - but can be used for natural ventilation, too.

The Zayed National Museum is designed by Foster + Partners, and I first saw this building when it was just a drawing on a bit of paper about ten years ago. One of the ideas was to use the roof, which basically looks like falcon feathers – because falconry is a really important part of the heritage of the United Arab Emirates, and in particular Abu Dhabi – as a symbol of the culture of the country, and also to remember Sheikh Zayed.

But they wanted to look at what those feathers might actually do beyond being an architectural masterpiece. We looked at whether we could use those as a function to reduce the energy consumption of the building.

The United Arab Emirates isn't the first place you would naturally go to to explore the role of natural ventilation. Well, you wouldn't do it all the time, but at certain parts of the year, certain parts of the day, the conditions may well be sensible to explore using natural ventilation rather than just lots of fan power to ventilate the building.

So that building went through a series of design changes and iterations to try and make it as sustainable as possible. I followed that with a keen interest during the design phase, by Foster + Partners, and I went last week to see the finished item.