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The Mastaba will be a work of art made of approximately 410,000 horizontally stacked oil barrels secured to an inner structure.
The grandeur and vastness of the land will be reflected in the dimensions of The Mastaba, which will have two vertical walls, two slanted walls and a truncated top: 492 feet (150 meters) high, 738 feet (225 meters) deep at the 60 degree slanted walls, 984 feet (300 meters) wide at the vertical walls.
Conceived in 1977, The Mastaba will have an overall surfacing of 55-gallon steel oil barrels of various bright colors (the choice of colors and the positioning have been selected by the artists). The colors, as enchanting as mosaics, will give a constantly changing visual experience according to the time of the day and the quality of the light.
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All barrels, on the four sides of The Mastaba and on the top, will be installed so that they are lying on their sides. |
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The two 984 feet (300 meter) wide sides will be vertical showing the circular heads of the colored barrels. |
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The two 738 feet (225 meter) sides will be sloping at the 60 degree natural angle of stacked barrels, showing the cylindrical sides of the barrels. |
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The top of The Mastaba will be a horizontal surface 416 feet (126.8 meters) wide, 738 feet (225 meters) deep showing the cylindrical length of the barrels. |
There will be no ingress inside The Mastaba except for maintenance corridors and passageways to the service elevators.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude had interrupted the work on The Mastaba when the war between Iran and Iraq worsened in the 1980s. In 2007, the artists went back to Abu Dhabi to finalize the location of The Mastaba. The proposed area is approximately 105 miles (170 kilometers) south of the city of Abu Dhabi, near the oasis of Liwa. It will be between Al Janai and Hamim, near Bid Hifayyif. In addition, a visiting campus will be built near the artwork.
In 2007 and 2008, Christo and Jeanne-Claude contracted professors of engineering from ETH Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US, Cambridge University in the UK and Hosei University in Tokyo, Japan, to prepare feasibility studies about The Mastaba. All four teams worked independently and did not know of each other. The artists then hired the German engineering firm, Schlaich Bergermann und Partner, in Stuttgart, to analyze these reports.
The Mastaba, a work of art whose only purpose is to be itself, will be on a rising plain, made from gravel, sloping gradually down away from it for approximately 2,460 feet (750 meters), to allow visitors the full impact of the uniqueness of this work of art, as they approach by foot, automobile, or by air.
The use of oil barrels follows a long tradition in the work of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. For more information about other works of art featuring oil barrels, click here. |
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