National Museum of Afghanistan International design Competition

I was doing some random research for uni tonight when I found these images of the 'National Museum of Afghanistan International design Competition' winning entry. Although it's quite a small scale design, it really took my eye in the way that the architect has approached the project. People generally thing that when they are designing a space that they should start from the bottom and work their way up, yet the architect of this design has decided to flip that and have a completely empty space at the bottom of the building, and create these large airy spaces on the first floor. I like their thinking... 

This is an internal view of the space where you can see that although the room it's self is quite small, there is room for a high curved ceiling with (although you cant see it really well) but quite a dominating lighting feature. I also quite like the plain colour scheme. It has a real feeling of modern clinical-ness that I find really aesthetically pleasing in design. 

Im not entirely sure of the nature of this concept, but putting that aside, this is one of my favourite images that I've seen because it kind of makes you need to do a double take to notice that there are no lower level floors, but instead they are all on the first floor. I could imagine these being some kind of holiday home abroad somewhere which would let the light flood the space with the half glass wall at the opposite end.