By Nick Leech
May 14, 2014, The National
Mahra AlShaya has a very special bond with her work, and she needs it. The 27-year-old architect commutes from Sharjah to Abu Dhabi every day.
“I feel like I’ve become part of Louvre Abu Dhabi. You can’t imagine how close the relationship is,” says Ms AlShaya, the senior development officer in the museum team from TDIC, the capital’s Tourism Development and Investments Company .
She is responsible for coordinating many of the key stages in the design process that is helping to take the Louvre Abu Dhabi from a vision to reality.
“I’m responsible for monitoring the design very closely and for seeing how the design is being delivered. It’s like watching a small baby growing, you become so attached to it.”
Put simply, Ms AlShaya is responsible for ensuring that the drawings that leave her office contain agreed and finalised designs that can actually be built.
“As the development team, we are responsible for coordinating the design. The delivery team are responsible for overseeing the construction,” she says.
“All of the coordination within the design process falls to us. We coordinate the design workshops, we obtain approvals from the authorities and we present the design to the project’s stakeholders.
“After we get full design approval, the responsibility for the project passes to our delivery team.”
Ms AlShaya visits the museum site once a week and attends monthly workshops where all of the project’s design consultants – including the architects and structural and mechanical engineers – meet representatives from the TDIC, Tourism and Culture Authority and Agence France-Museums. Read more…