WA firm wins big Oman deal
A Perth architecture company has been hand-picked by the Sultan of Oman to design the country's new $500 million museum, an international arts destination intended to rival New York's Guggenheim and St Petersburg's State Hermitage.
Cox Howlett & Bailey Woodland, designers of Fremantle's Maritime Museum and the new Perth Children's Hospital, beat international competition this week to secure WA's biggest contract in the Gulf state.
Rising out of the Omani desert encircled by the Al Hajar Mountains, Cox's design for the Oman Renaissance Museum is expected to become a window into the small, absolute monarchy as it increasingly embraces tourism and reveals itself to the West.
Cox design director Steve Woodland said the firm had won major Middle East contracts before, including a tower in Dubai and a university in Abu Dhabi, but the Oman project was special because of its cultural impact.
"It's a huge coup for us," he said. "It is a major cultural project and it does cement us in the international stage."
Commissioned by Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said, the museum is intended to be a celebration of the country's economic, cultural and social renaissance since the 1970s.
Mr Woodland said the 30ha museum site was deliberately in a barren, almost lunar setting inland from the capital Muscat so the building's outline would pick up the crystalline forms of the mountains.
"In the morning the mountains are silhouetted," he said. "In the afternoon they are hit with light and they glow. In a way it has a Kimberley-esque feel."
Building work is due to start this year and be finished in late 2018. Local materials including natural stones shaped by traditional craftsmen will be used for the 50,000sqm museum.
The project is a watershed for Mr Woodland and fellow senior director Greg Howlett, who studied together at Applecross Senior High School and WA Institute of Technology in the 1970s before becoming competitors.
"I realised in the early 90s it was a case of 'get big, get small or get out' and get big was what I aimed to do," Mr Howlett said.
"A while later, I was having a drink with Steve and said if we got our act together we'd have much better success together."
