AAU Anastas

Located at the intersection of the Great Rift Valley and a deep geological depression, the Baptism Site’s extreme environment, marked by intense heat, low oxygen, and vanishing water, shapes its spiritual and historical meaning. Unlike traditional sacred sites, it is not a monument but a place of transformation, embodying passage, exposure, and fragility. The proposed museum responds to this condition not as an object, but as a landscape instrument: a sinuous stone path that guides visitors through light, matter, and climate. Built from local basalt, it blends with the terrain, adapting to native ecologies and environmental extremes. Rather than offer mechanical comfort, it provides thermal awareness – shade, air, and silence – emphasizing the sacred through experience. Sustainability is understood as embodied intelligence, not technological performance. As water disappears, the museum becomes a vessel for memory, registering environmental shifts and sustaining faith not through preservation, but through a dynamic relationship with the land, time, and atmosphere.