The Louvre Abu Dhabi museum images show a huge dome made of shining aluminium stars

The Louvre Abu Dhabi museum, which is scheduled to complete by the end of 2017 is located on an archipelago off Saadiyat Island, a man-made island of the coast of the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi. The latest images of the museum that have been shared on Twitter by French Ambassador to the UAE Ludovic Pouille ahead of the building's completion are mesmerising people from all around the world.

The photographs capture the most striking feature of French architect Jean Nouvel's design – a huge domed roof that measures 180 meters in diameter and made of painstakingly crafted huge aluminium stars. Workers clipped aluminium extrusion panels together to form the complex 'stars' to clad the Louvre Abu Dhabi's dome. The fabrication was done at a plant in Musaffah, Abu Dhabi, the same place where the workers manufactured the window frames for the Burj Khalifa and Abu Dhabi’s leaning Capital Gate Tower.  

A reporter from ‘The National’ has penned his experience of reporting on the Louvre Abu Dhabi over the last 5 years as the new museum took shape and is now getting ready to be unveiled.

“I watched men using little more than screwdrivers and mallets transform 500,000 aluminium profiles into the 7,850 stars that now clad the museum’s mighty roof.”

The workers fitted rubber gasket between the aluminium extrusions and the stainless steel panels of the 'stars'. Steel panels were inserted into the aluminium stars to give them the necessary reflective quality aimed by Jean Nouvel. A gasket had to be fitted between the stainless steel and the aluminium panels to prevent the metals from corroding on contact.

The reporter talked about the care that was taken in creating stars with minute accuracy, measured in millimetres rather than centimetres. The large stars were then lifted into place and then fitted on the top and centre of the museum’s canopy, looking back at Abu Dhabi's skyline as a shining metal hemisphere.