Most museums prefer to focus on the past, collecting vast arsenals of historical artifacts and relics and putting them on display, but Dubai is spending millions of dollars for a different kind of museum, one that focuses on the future. Appropriately named the Museum of the Future, the building is being constructed in the downtown portion of the city with the hope that it will become a major attraction for those who want to see some of the most impressive scientific breakthroughs and technologies of the future.  

Dubai is building a $136 million Museum of the Future, a shiny, ovular building in the heart of downtown that the Persian Gulf emirate says will house an incubation center for new inventions coupled with a museum of prototyped ideas. Government leaders hope the museum becomes an attraction for tourists and school groups, as well as a place where some of the world’s brightest minds congregate to think up cutting-edge technologies and scientific breakthroughs – and put them into practice, too. Construction on the museum, located next to Dubai’s Emirates Towers near its central financial district, is set to start this week and finish in 2017, United Arab Emirates Minister of Cabinet Affairs Mohammed Al Gergawi said Wednesday. Its curved, steel-clad exterior will feature the Arabic poetry of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The attraction-slash-research-center plan comes as Dubai commits a growing amount of investment to innovation and technology, including competitions for designing drones and robots.