The Grand Egyptian Museum

Permanent Exhibition Concept Design/Modelmaking

Between 2003 and 2011 Metaphor was masterplanner and lead designer for the exhibitions/interpretation in this new national museum. As one of the largest museums planned anywhere in the world our task was arguably on the scale of ‘landscape’ rather than ‘interior’ and involved a close collaboration with architects Heneghan Peng and academic teams in Cairo. At the early stages of the project I worked on concept design for the display of up to 50,000 Pharaonic objects, including the treasures of Tutankhamen. This included design for the ‘Pharaonic Stair’, a stairway gallery on a vast scale and an ‘extended entrance threshold’ conceived to acclimatise visitors’ eyes from external desert brightness to museum lighting levels, while taking them up 3 storeys in a ‘journey back in time’ through the Pharoahonic ages, before entering the main exhibition floor. 

Heneghan Peng and Metaphor