Mohamed EL AMROUSI
(United Arab Emirates University)
Museums as architectural manifestations of elite Muslim communities in Arab cities constitute virtual spaces that accumulate displays of cultural artifacts compressing time and space. This compression of cultural produce exhibits historic artifacts in a space inside a larger space, equally compressed in time by modernity in Gulf cities that are rapidly changing. This dual space, the container of memory and heritage within the urban museum, challenges, and is challenged by intersecting dimensions of the city. Rapidly changing morphologies of emerging cities like Dubai perplex conservative mediums of cultural display within an institution founded upon conventional systems of classification. The House/Museum of Shaykh Saeed, ruler of Dubai in the 19th century, and Dubai’s National Museum—Al-Fahidi Fort offer historiographies of the city hinging historic themes on photographic archives of the pre-petroleum era. Ubiquitous digital mediums and information technologies available within academic institutions in the UAE offer new dimensions to its museum discourse revisit exhibition space and reclassify cultural content. Digital information technologies reproduce legibility of artifacts beyond the boundaries of the two museums subject of study to the Design Studio at UAE University. Academic space functions as ‘electronic space’ with the help of CAD (Computer Aided Design programs) and (ICT) information and communication technologies. Satellite images of the city offer monuments within their contemporary urban context and avail to scholars of architecture data necessary to formulate 3D models. Museums then become subjects of discussion intertwining electronic/historic/cultural space. This research paper assesses possible improvements to exhibition spaces in Dubai’s museums, and explores alternative narratives of Dubai within virtual experience in space rather than place.