Oman Across Ages Museum, designed by Cox Architecture, has won the Special Prize for Exterior at The Prix Versailles, a world architecture and design award celebrating the ‘world’s most beautiful’ achievements. 

Held on 2 December, the 10th Prix Versailles World Ceremony officially revealed the 70 winners across the categories of Museums, Hotels, Restaurants, Emporiums, Airports, Campuses, Passenger Stations and Sports. The awards considered several factors, including innovation, creativity, reflection of local, natural and cultural heritage, social interaction and participation values, and ecological efficiency. 

Oman Across Ages Museum takes home ‘Special Prize for an Exterior’

Oman Across Ages Museum (OAAM) by Cox was among a select few competing for three coveted world titles: the Prix Versailles, Interior and Exterior. The project was ultimately awarded the ‘Special Prize for an Exterior’ on the ‘World’s Most Beautiful Museums List 2024’. 

This represents Cox’s second Prix Versailles title, with Optus Stadium in Perth previously awarded ‘Most Beautiful Sporting Facility’ in 2019. 

Cox directors Steve Woodland, Amanda Ainslie and Greg Howlett were on stage this year to receive the award.

“We are extremely honoured to be recognised by such a globally significant award,” Woodland said.

“The beauty of the museum is very much bred out of the extraordinary beauty of the Oman landscape. We found both the land and the people to be a rich and evocative source of creative inspiration… This is truly a place of great, contemporary storytelling by and for the Omani people, particularly its youth. This is the true role of museums in society.”

Prix Versailles secretary general Jérôme Gouadain spoke on the growing significance of museum architecture in promoting intercultural dialogue and immersive experiences. 

“Museums provide singular settings conducive to intercultural dialogue. Bolstered by technology, they now deliver ever more immersive experiences, participate in the dissemination of knowledge, and help form the tastes of their visitors,” Gouadain said. 

Taking cues from the desert landscape

OAAM has a mission to promote an appreciation of Oman’s unique character, history and renaissance. It is strategically located near Nizwa, a historic trade centre and a major tourist destination, ensuring a steady flow of locals and visitors throughout the year. 

The museum is inspired by the extraordinary landscape and geometric profiles of the neighbouring Al Hajar Mountains and its canyons, emerging from the desert floor as a series of angular forms that sit in dialogue with the backdrop of peaks and ridges. 

“The composition is abstracted from those extraordinary forms and translated into this unique structure,” Cox said in a statement about the winning project. “The building form grows up and out of the earth from the south, rising into its mountain peak at the northern end.”

The overarching philosophy for the landscape was “very much a light touch”. 

“The natural landscape is an extraordinary circumstance that we wanted to nurture rather than unnecessarily intervene with,” Cox’s statement continued. “To that end, the bulk of the site has been left in its raw form, as a beautiful, broad gesture. As one moves toward the more intimate spaces closer to the building the landscape becomes a more manicured outcome, creating a series of outdoor rooms and spaces extending the storytelling experience of the museum into the landscape.”

The museum is chameleon-like under the influence of the ever-changing light conditions. Just as the mountains change their mood throughout the day under the shifting sunlight, so too does the building.  

A strong architectural journey

At 600 metres in length, the grand scale of the building takes visitors on a vast, sweeping journey through time. It holds galleries, a library knowledge centre, an auditorium, a workplace, artist-in-residence accommodation and studios, conservation workshops, cafés and social and research spaces. 

The permanent exhibition space alone is 9000 square metres and some galleries stretch more than 20 metres high. In harmony with the architecture, the exhibition design uses immersive technologies to celebrate Oman’s 800-million-year history.

OAAM’s overall structure sets up curated and largely intuitive journeys for visitors, offering a progression of narratives from pre-history to current day.  According to Cox, OAAM constitutes “a new paradigm in the museum experience”. 

“Its design uses the full array of architecture’s potential for expression and communication, including scale, geometry, form, light and vistas both as purely expressive devices, and to offer a wide range of possibilities for installations, displays and performances across its varied spaces,” the statement concluded.

Photography by Sami Khamis Sanjor Al Qawal and Phillip Handforth.

Read more about Cox in our interview with director Brooke Lloyd.