A
Portal - A Cultural Embassy
Navn
Youssef Hussein Attia
Uddannelsesgrad
Kandidat
Fagfelt
Arkitektur
Institut
Design og Visuel Interaktion
Program
Strategic Design and Entrepreneurship - Architecture, Design and Business
År
2025
Portal rethinks museum design through the Nefertiti bust at the Neues Museum, exploring immersive storytelling and global collaboration to address colonial-era artifact repatriation. It proposes a new model of Cultural Embassies to foster shared heritage and dialogue across nations.
The Global Issue - Postcolonial effects
This project confronts the global issue of cultural appropriation through the lens of looted artifacts displayed in Western institutions. At the heart of this exploration lies the iconic Bust of Nefertiti, a contested masterpiece of ancient Egyptian heritage currently housed in Berlin’s Neues Museum.
Revered as a symbol of Egyptian identity and simultaneously enshrined within German cultural history, the bust embodies the complex tensions between origin and ownership, legacy and location. By focusing on this controversial case, the project proposes strategic design interventions to question and re-imagine how museums curate, preserve, and share cultural artifacts.
Through collaborative approaches that unite nations, institutions, architects, and curators, the project advocates for a new model of museum practice—one rooted in transparency, dialogue, and cultural cooperation.
The Nefertiti Bust upclose - The North Dome Room
This proposal draws inspiration from the practice of cultural diplomacy—symbolic gestures of goodwill through shared heritage—as a framework for addressing the repatriation debate surrounding the iconic Bust of Nefertiti.
Rather than removing the bust from the Neues Museum in Berlin, the strategy envisions the artifact remaining in place as a cultural ambassador and gateway to Ancient Egypt, sparking curiosity and deeper understanding among global audiences. Crucially, the proposal advocates for the formal return of ownership to Egypt, empowering the nation to play a central role in the bust’s preservation, interpretation, and curation.
This shared custodianship would pave the way for ongoing collaboration between Egyptian authorities and German institutions, fostering innovative partnerships among exhibition designers, curators, and scholars from both nations. By re-imagining the bust not only as a masterpiece of ancient art but as a diplomatic bridge, this approach champions cultural dialogue and mutual respect.
The Panda Diplomacy strategy for Cultural artifacts
ANT Map - The bust's actors
A visual representation of the Nefertiti Bust through time and space
Nefertiti Timeline
Nefertiti's spacial journey
Research Question
How can Architectural methods and Museology assist in better curating the story of the Nefertiti Bust ?
The Museum Island
The Neues Museum, completed in 1855, is a landmark of 19th-century neoclassical architecture. Severely damaged during World War II, it remained a ruin for decades before being carefully restored by David Chipperfield Architects.
Rather than reconstructing it entirely, the restoration highlights the building’s layered history—juxtaposing original elements like frescoes and columns with contemporary materials such as concrete and steel. This sensitive approach creates a dialogue between past and present, positioning the museum itself as both an artifact and a vessel for cultural memory.
Museum Island - Berlin
Museum Island - Berlin Site Analysis
Blank Canvas - and Adaptable approach
The design adopts an open-plan, minimal approach, enabling flexibility to accommodate evolving exhibitions and multi-functional use. It directly responds to the Neues Museum’s core challenge: integrating contemporary curatorial methods within a protected, historically listed structure that cannot be physically altered.
Each element of the proposed program functions as a narrative device, addressing a different facet of the bust’s misrepresented story. Through distinct spatial qualities and immersive atmospheres, the design fosters a more sensory and engaging experience for visitors, encouraging deeper reflection on both the artifact and its context.
An adaptive museum - exhibitions in rotation
The Cultural Embassy Proposal
This exhibition explores the concept of a Cultural Embassy: an adaptable extension to Berlin’s Neues Museum designed to host rotating exhibitions curated by different nations. The featured proposal centers on a narrative-driven experience dedicated to one of history’s most iconic artifacts: the Nefertiti Bust.
Conceived as a linear journey, the architecture unfolds like a story. Visitors enter via a discreet bridge from the museum’s ground floor, stepping into an immersive spatial timeline that begins in the Amarna period. As the sequence progresses, the narrative traces the bust’s historical arc—from its creation and subsequent destruction, to its rediscovery, looting, and entanglement with colonial legacies.
The architectural language responds to each chapter, shifting in form, materiality, and light to frame the evolving context. The journey culminates in a space of reverence: a setting meticulously designed not to compete with the bust, but to serve it. Here, the architecture withdraws, allowing the artifact to command the room with quiet authority—restored, re-contextualized, and empowered.
This is not just an exhibition of a building—it is an exploration of how architecture can become an active narrator of cultural memory.
The Cultural Embassy
Nefertiti Recontextualised
1:500 scale of the Museum island and the site surrounding the Neues Museum
Credits
Credits
Supervisors: Josep Cayuelas Mateu, Camilla Hedegaard Møller
External Supervisor: Ane Pilegaard
Research: Olivia Zorn (Deputy Director at the Neues Museum in Berlin)
Det Kongelige Akademi understøtter FN’s verdensmål
Siden 2017 har Det Kongelige Akademi arbejdet med FN’s verdensmål. Det afspejler sig i forskning, undervisning og afgangsprojekter. Dette projekt har forholdt sig til følgende FN-mål
