NMoQ gift shops - where Qatar's natural landscapes come alive

National Museum of Qatar’s (NMoQ) gift shops, made of 40,000 pieces of wooden panels, provide an opportunity for visitors to experience and connect to the country’s natural landscapes.

“When I first entered the gift shop, I really had the impression of walking into a cave and it was a powerful feeling, it was inspiring and emotional,” the Italian embassy’s deputy head of mission, Carlotta Colli, said.She was speaking at a workshop held Tuesday at the NMoQ auditorium, organised by Devoto Design in partnership with renowned Japanese-Australian firm Koichi Takada Architects and Obiettivo Qatar – the designers and carpenters of these museum shops and Café 875.Attendees at the workshop represented key design, architecture and engineering sectors across Qatar, as well as 'Starchitects' and other rising stars of the industry and Qatar Museums Culture Pass members.“The fact that the gift shops were made of 40,000 pieces of wood carefully produced and carefully installed by the master art design, really give you that feeling of going into a cave, and inspired people to think about and reconnect to nature and think about the importance of organic-made material,” said Colli, who underlined Devoto Design’s extensive experience in interior furnishing.She noted that Devoto Designs has been working for more than 30 years, describing it as a company that embodies the perfect example of what made in Italy is able to do.These projects, designed by Koichi Takada Architects, were inspired by Qatar’s desert landscapes, which influenced and marked the concept of the interiors, reproducing the striking geometries and chromatism of the desert, its canyons and dunes.Takada presented the design inspiration of the Wooden Cave of Light (Dahl Al Misfir) where museum guests have been invited to “imagine being in a cave, or sand dune, being in this narrow space of a Souq – there’s something that triggers your emotions. You start to connect to the space, to the natural landscape in Qatar”.“After the global attention of NMoQ and our projects, we were asked many questions about how the complex timber works were realised and some of the mysteries relating to it,” Devoto Design’s master carpenter Claudio Devoto said in a press statement.“As artisans, we felt that we would like to share some of our challenges and inspirations and learnings from the project,” he pointed out. "We hope it is useful to some of Qatar’s leaders of the industry and an inspiring experience for each visitor to NMoQ.”The workshop covered case studies of the projects, as well as topics such as 'Facing a complex and strongly double-curved cladding' and 'The solution to slide the double surface into 40,000 wood piecestarget="_blank"'>