Museum of Islamic Art, Doha

I. M. Pei treated Doha's Museum of Islamic Art as a research journey. Before drawing anything he spent months travelling through the Islamic world looking at buildings, and found his key not in a famous dome but in a modest structure: the ablution fountain of the ninth-century Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo, an austere structure that, in his words, comes alive in the sun through its shadows. That idea of severe geometry animated by light became the museum — a stack of pale limestone volumes, each stepping back from the one below, rising to a central tower and standing on its own island just off the Doha Corniche.

The setting is part of the design. The museum sits on an artificial peninsula near the old dhow harbour, surrounded by water on three sides, so that it reads from across the bay as a solitary sculpture against the sky. Pei chose a creamy limestone for the walls precisely because it changes through the day, pale and almost white at noon, honey-coloured in late light. The geometry is at its most striking at dusk, when the building glows against the darkening Gulf. The museum opened in 2008 and belongs to Qatar Museums.

Inside, the drama turns vertical. A great atrium rises through the central tower to a faceted dome, where an oculus at the top catches the light and scatters it across the facets, and a window 45 metres tall on the north side frames the bay and the city skyline across the water. The galleries around it are hushed and dark, built for the collection: some 1,400 years of Islamic art from three continents, from Spain and Egypt through Iraq, Iran and Turkey to India and Central Asia — metalwork, ceramics, glass, textiles, jewellery and woodwork.

Outside, the crescent of MIA Park wraps around the waterfront, and in it stands Richard Serra's 7, a steel tower of seven plates some 24 metres high, unveiled in 2011 as a tribute to the number's meaning in Islamic tradition.

Getting there

The museum is on the Corniche at the edge of central Doha, about 1.4 km from the city centre and roughly a 20-minute walk from Souq Waqif; the nearest metro station is National Museum of Qatar on the Gold Line. International flights arrive at Hamad International Airport (DOH), about 15 km away by road.