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Albert Abut's Egyptian prototype
by Mathias Debureaux
extract from Citizen K International 2002
The architect Albert Abut dreamed of drilling into the sea of sand, within yards of the pyramids. Tourists would have dropped their camcorders in surprise. An oil platform nearly sprouted from Egypt's sands. At least that's what the rejected proposal put forward for the Grand Egyptian Museum competition by French architect Albert Abut amounted to. Albert Abut, an architect based in Japan for more than 20 years, has a particularly strong interest in maritime development and hence naturally dreamed up a type of floating museum livitated above the sand like a floating oilrig above the sea. A striking contrast with the stiking bulk of the pyramids. "Man still hasn't sorted out his problems with water", declares Abut. Everything is liquid. And what are we but beings composed of 3 parts water perpetually struggling against the laws of gravitation? So what could be more natural than than to want to conquer the sea in the middle of the desert? It's the same for maritime architecture as it is for space stations. They all float. Albert Abut's proposal for the monument is pure "science fiction". Mere mention of it must have caused the Pharaohs to turn in their sacophagi. Two midnight blue monoliths planted in a sea of sand, in defiance of 3000 years of history. Inside, five huge elevators heave culture's conscripts towards hundreds of thousands of museum pieces. The offshore museum concept also conceals a subrerranean maze ventilated the same way it would have been a thousand years ago. The glass (i.e. sand) facade is designed to cope with desert storms. A cone-shaped receptacle open to the outside, collects the sand brought by the wind and trickles it out like an hor glass. Here is Egypt such as you'll never see it. Not even on a mug or a key ring. It's a shame. A crying shame.
Albert Abut cut his architectural teeth in Japan with a dozen footbridges and a few kilometres of avenues in Yokohama. He was the first foreigner to be commissioned by the Kodan, the Japan Highway Public Corporation. A singular achievement for which he fully deserves to don his ceremonial robe. A highly respected representative of French architecture in Asia, he went on to create the head offices of various major corporations in Tokyo, such as Saint-Gobain, Shiseido, or AXA. His Christian college in Okinawa is the longest building ever erected by a Frenchman in Japan. Now head of the Atlantis Associates & Co firm, this former pupil of Paris' highly academic Janson de Sailly lycée and music academy student hardly lacks allegretto in fast-moving Tokyo, a city under constant construction. "Even as we speak," some 30 tradesmen are laboring away under the roof of a new symphony hall bang in the middle of the fashionable Shibuya district.
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