Project cover image

06

Silk Road Museum

Silk Road Museum

Silk Road Museum

Samarkand, Uzbekistan

2025

Cultural

Architecture, Interiors, Landscape

We built rooms for objects that have already outlived several buildings.

We built rooms for objects that have already outlived several buildings.

We built rooms for objects that have already outlived several buildings.

A museum of trade routes built as a sequence of vaulted rooms, lit from above and cooled from below.

A museum of trade routes built as a sequence of vaulted rooms, lit from above and cooled from below.

Location

Samarkand, Uzbekistan

Year

2025

Status

Completed

Area

12,800 m²

Client

Ministry of Culture

Scope

Architecture, Interiors, Landscape

Project narrative

A museum for objects that travelled further than the people who made them. The galleries are a run of brick vaults, each lit by a single oculus, each sized to a category of object rather than to a floor plan. Below, a service level uses the ground's thermal mass to hold the collection at temperature with very little mechanical help. The building is deliberately quiet: it is a set of rooms, not a landmark.

Material study

Surfaces were sampled on site before specification. Nothing in the palette was chosen from a catalogue alone.

Surfaces were sampled on site before specification. Nothing in the palette was chosen from a catalogue alone.

In the studio’s words

We built rooms for objects that have already outlived several buildings.

We built rooms for objects that have already outlived several buildings.

We built rooms for objects that have already outlived several buildings.

Drawings

Ground floor

Section A–A

Elevation

On site

A museum of trade routes built as a sequence of vaulted rooms, lit from above and cooled from below.

Credits

Credits

Lead Architect

Lead Architect

A. Saidov

Architecture

Architecture

VOLUM

Interior

Interior

VOLUM

Landscape

Landscape

VOLUM Landscape

Visualization

Visualization

VOLUM Studio

Photography

Photography

Unsplash

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