Doha// Call it the fourth power.
Along with diplomacy, media and sport, Qatar is promoting culture as another facet of its budding regional and international reach, and as part of a long-term plan to diversify its economy.
This small, wealthy emirate has in recent years organised successful negotiations on Darfur and Lebanon, built Al Jazeera into a leading global news source and, after hosting the Asian Games in 2006, is now bidding to host the 2022 World Cup.
Spearheading its cultural ambitions is the Qatar Museum Authority. The brainchild of Sheikha Mayassa, the US-educated, 26-year-old daughter of Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani and his second wife Sheikha Mozah bin Nasser al Missned, QMA was created in December 2005 to oversee the museums of Qatar, rediscover the country's national heritage and transform Doha into a regional arts hub.
“They see culture as a leading aspect of their vision for the growth and development of this country,” Roger Mandle, QMA executive director since July 2008, said in a recent interview.
Their flagship is the Museum of Islamic Art, a $1.6 billion, I.M. Pei-designed, cubist masterpiece set on its own island across from the skyscrapers of Doha's West Bay. The museum's 700-object collection is worth hundreds of millions and includes an amulet of Mughal ruler Shah Jahan and a 9th century white earthenware bowl from Iraq.
In the 18 months since it opened the museum has had more than half a million visitors, or nearly a third of the country's total population. Half of them have been Qatari. “We've established a very high level of quality and expectations,” said Mr Mandle. “Out of that is a challenge, in that every building we build has to be that good or better.”
Up next is the Qatar National Museum, set to begin construction later this year. Designed by another Pritzker-winning architect, Jean Nouvel, the building reflects a strong sense of place: its shape mimics that of a desert rose, small, naturally occurring formations of gypsum found in arid deserts.
When the museum opens in 2013, interactive displays will detail Qatar's history, geology, and cultural life, from Bedouin times to seafaring and pearl diving, and from contemporary Qatar to the near future. At 40,000 sq metres, it will be larger than the Museum of Islamic Art.
QMA is looking to build a dozen new museums and expand its cultural education efforts. There has been talk of photography and contemporary art museums, but plans have yet to be finalised.
With the future museum designs Mr Mandle hopes to move away from international names and nurture young local talent. “They're not limiting their search to exclude well-known architects,” said Mr Mandle. “But surely one of our responsibilities is to promote artists, architects and designers from this region.”
Qatar has some company on that score. Abu Dhabi is spending billions to create its own cultural mecca on Saadiyat Island, with four museums and a performing arts center. Local versions of the Louvre and the Guggenheim designed by Jean Nouvel and Frank Gehry, respectively, are set to open in 2013.
Wooing similar crowds, the two cities often appear headed in the same direction. Phillipe de Montebello, the former director of New York's Museum of Modern Art who is now a special adviser to New York University Abu Dhabi, has been in talks with Mr Mandle, an old friend, about contributing to QMA in some capacity.
And while Mr Mandle has often described his mission as “building a Smithsonian from the sand up,” the Smithsonian Institute, based in Washington, DC, is a key adviser to Abu Dhabi's Bedouin Heritage Museum.
Yet rather than competition, QMA sees opportunity. It has hosted two conferences for Gulf arts and cultural leaders. The most recent, held last month, was attended by cultural representatives from all GCC countries but Oman. “We've taken the initiative to invite our colleagues to discuss how we can work together, not how we're competing but how we can cooperate,” said Mr Mandle.
The group hopes to create a joint cultural calendar so events complement rather than collide and develop joint training and education programs.
“Anywhere in the world, you have the best result if people collaborate rather than compete,” said Antonia Carver, who has been working in the UAE art world for nearly a decade and will take over Art Dubai next month.
“There's a huge difference between Doha and Abu Dhabi,” she said. Doha has focused on heritage and Islamic art and uses the emir's family collections, says Ms Carver, while Abu Dhabi's museums reflect greater international influence.
She envisions Western tourists visiting museums in both Doha and Abu Dhabi on a single trip. “If they start to replicate then it's maybe self-defeating,” said Ms Carver.
One advantage Abu Dhabi might have over Doha is the proximity of major arts shows like Art Dubai and the Sharjah Bienniale. Still, despite the presence of highly regarded international universities like NYU and Carnegie Mellon, the two cities have few art schools, curators, writers and studios.
“Building a complex and beautiful building is nothing compared to connecting to the local population and building a vibrant arts community,” said Ms Carver. “That's infinitely more challenging.”
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originally ran in the July 2, National, www.thenational.ae
Showing posts with label abu dhabi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abu dhabi. Show all posts
1.01.2010
A new urban paradigm in Doha
Doha // Tim Makower recalls the moment he and the Qatari first lady, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al Missned, came up with the central theme for a government-backed, US$5.9billion (Dh21.6bn) plan to remake Doha’s city centre into a pedestrian-friendly urban idyll.
“We were discussing this whole issue of how can we bring Qatari families back into the city centre,” said Mr Makower, a partner with the UK-based Allies & Morrison and among the project’s lead architects. “We told her Highness we think we should be creating town houses, we should be clustering them around communal, private gardens and she said, ‘Oh, that’s a fereej’.”
By mingling modern architectural ideas with Qatari traditions, such as crossing the contemporary town house with the Gulf fereej, or courtyard village, “the Heart of Doha” aims to create a rooted yet original sensibility. “That’s a fundamental part of this,” said Mr Makower. “Learning from the past, reflecting the past, but doing it in a new way.”
Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani and his wife Sheikha Mozah first conceived the idea to rebuild central Doha around 2004. Within months they selected a 35-hectare downtown site and hired international architecture and design firms including Arup, Aecom (formerly Edaw) and Allies & Morrison to devise a master plan.
For more than three years, professors from Harvard, Yale, MIT, and the Aga Khan Professoriate of Islamic Architecture reviewed, challenged and finally approved the plan. After months of razing buildings to prepare the site, Heart of Doha’s official groundbreaking arrives later this month. Construction is to take place in five phases and should be completed in 2016.
In a quarter set between the Emiri Diwan, or ruler’s palace, and the recently rebuilt Souq Waqif, Heart of Doha will coalesce around two main thoroughfares: Kahraba, or “electricity” Street, which was Doha’s first high street, and the old wadi.
Computer renderings of the completed project offer a glimpse into an ultra-modern Gulf future: solid, stone-clad façades give way to secluded courtyard gardens; pretty shopping arcades lead to pleasant green plazas; and sleek streetcars glide past smart-looking residents strolling though compact neighbourhoods.
The development, an endowment for Qatar Foundation, is being managed by Dohaland, a Qatar Foundation subsidiary. To many involved, the Heart of Doha is not a simple construction project but a blueprint for contemporary urban living in Doha and beyond.
“The Heart of Doha aspires to regenerate the historic core of the city and to act as a stimulus for future wider city renaissance,” said Issa Mohannadi, executive director of Dohaland. “The ultimate objective, however, is to propose a new paradigm of architecture and planning for the cities of the Arabian Gulf.”
In creating that paradigm, Mr Makower and his fellow architects laid out seven key steps to create a Qatari architectural language. The first is timelessness, or linking Qatar's past to its present and its future. The second step is coherence. Rather than dominate and divide, the buildings, streets and spaces should link and build communities, as well as integrate with a vast underground infrastructure of roads, parking areas, and utilities.
A team of engineers, planners and architects, including Allies and Morrison, Porphyrios Associates, the Jordanian firm Dar Al Omran and Adjaye Associates, has had to set personal goals aside. “There are some disharmonies,” said Mr Makower. “It’s like a choir. We all want to sing different parts and hopefully it will work well together at the end.”
Another step focuses on building a home. “The home is very important because we are building the Qatari family back into the city centre,” said Mr Makower. The completed project includes housing for up to 10,000, including fereej-style town houses allocated to Qataris. These include a majlis and courtyard, but also a gym and underground parking.
The fifth step is the street. Unlike many urban settings in the Gulf, the Heart of Doha will welcome pedestrians with retail and store fronts, streetcars, open plazas and shade. Much of the vehicular traffic will be kept underground. “You will be able to cross the street without being run over,” said Mr Makower.
Most homes will be within walking distance of schools, shops, mosques and public spaces. But since Doha is too hot for street activity for much of the year, step six focuses on adapting to climate.
Most major streets run north-south to take advantage of Qatar’s northerly breezes. Buildings, some of which are certified by the environmental building standard LEED, are designed to keep sunlight out and to catch and scoop wind down into spaces. Many roofs have solar-panelled canopies that provide shade, create terraces and provide energy.
Even the grand civic space at the heart of the Heart of Doha incorporates concerns for climate, with a shading structure than can be raised and lowered to allow more or less sun in.
Barahat Al-Naseem Square, designed by Michel Mossessian, is an urban version of the majlis, with a carpeted floor and sides faced inward.
Though far from fruition, the project has drawn raves. “The plan and the architecture appear intelligent, restrained and distinctive,” the architecture critic of the Financial Times wrote in November.
He compared Heart of Doha favourably to regional efforts like the Burj Dubai and Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island and Masdar City. “If there is one scheme in the region to keep an eye on,” he wrote, “this is it.”
-- this story originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae)
“We were discussing this whole issue of how can we bring Qatari families back into the city centre,” said Mr Makower, a partner with the UK-based Allies & Morrison and among the project’s lead architects. “We told her Highness we think we should be creating town houses, we should be clustering them around communal, private gardens and she said, ‘Oh, that’s a fereej’.”
By mingling modern architectural ideas with Qatari traditions, such as crossing the contemporary town house with the Gulf fereej, or courtyard village, “the Heart of Doha” aims to create a rooted yet original sensibility. “That’s a fundamental part of this,” said Mr Makower. “Learning from the past, reflecting the past, but doing it in a new way.”
Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani and his wife Sheikha Mozah first conceived the idea to rebuild central Doha around 2004. Within months they selected a 35-hectare downtown site and hired international architecture and design firms including Arup, Aecom (formerly Edaw) and Allies & Morrison to devise a master plan.
For more than three years, professors from Harvard, Yale, MIT, and the Aga Khan Professoriate of Islamic Architecture reviewed, challenged and finally approved the plan. After months of razing buildings to prepare the site, Heart of Doha’s official groundbreaking arrives later this month. Construction is to take place in five phases and should be completed in 2016.
In a quarter set between the Emiri Diwan, or ruler’s palace, and the recently rebuilt Souq Waqif, Heart of Doha will coalesce around two main thoroughfares: Kahraba, or “electricity” Street, which was Doha’s first high street, and the old wadi.
Computer renderings of the completed project offer a glimpse into an ultra-modern Gulf future: solid, stone-clad façades give way to secluded courtyard gardens; pretty shopping arcades lead to pleasant green plazas; and sleek streetcars glide past smart-looking residents strolling though compact neighbourhoods.
The development, an endowment for Qatar Foundation, is being managed by Dohaland, a Qatar Foundation subsidiary. To many involved, the Heart of Doha is not a simple construction project but a blueprint for contemporary urban living in Doha and beyond.
“The Heart of Doha aspires to regenerate the historic core of the city and to act as a stimulus for future wider city renaissance,” said Issa Mohannadi, executive director of Dohaland. “The ultimate objective, however, is to propose a new paradigm of architecture and planning for the cities of the Arabian Gulf.”
In creating that paradigm, Mr Makower and his fellow architects laid out seven key steps to create a Qatari architectural language. The first is timelessness, or linking Qatar's past to its present and its future. The second step is coherence. Rather than dominate and divide, the buildings, streets and spaces should link and build communities, as well as integrate with a vast underground infrastructure of roads, parking areas, and utilities.
A team of engineers, planners and architects, including Allies and Morrison, Porphyrios Associates, the Jordanian firm Dar Al Omran and Adjaye Associates, has had to set personal goals aside. “There are some disharmonies,” said Mr Makower. “It’s like a choir. We all want to sing different parts and hopefully it will work well together at the end.”
Another step focuses on building a home. “The home is very important because we are building the Qatari family back into the city centre,” said Mr Makower. The completed project includes housing for up to 10,000, including fereej-style town houses allocated to Qataris. These include a majlis and courtyard, but also a gym and underground parking.
The fifth step is the street. Unlike many urban settings in the Gulf, the Heart of Doha will welcome pedestrians with retail and store fronts, streetcars, open plazas and shade. Much of the vehicular traffic will be kept underground. “You will be able to cross the street without being run over,” said Mr Makower.
Most homes will be within walking distance of schools, shops, mosques and public spaces. But since Doha is too hot for street activity for much of the year, step six focuses on adapting to climate.
Most major streets run north-south to take advantage of Qatar’s northerly breezes. Buildings, some of which are certified by the environmental building standard LEED, are designed to keep sunlight out and to catch and scoop wind down into spaces. Many roofs have solar-panelled canopies that provide shade, create terraces and provide energy.
Even the grand civic space at the heart of the Heart of Doha incorporates concerns for climate, with a shading structure than can be raised and lowered to allow more or less sun in.
Barahat Al-Naseem Square, designed by Michel Mossessian, is an urban version of the majlis, with a carpeted floor and sides faced inward.
Though far from fruition, the project has drawn raves. “The plan and the architecture appear intelligent, restrained and distinctive,” the architecture critic of the Financial Times wrote in November.
He compared Heart of Doha favourably to regional efforts like the Burj Dubai and Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island and Masdar City. “If there is one scheme in the region to keep an eye on,” he wrote, “this is it.”
-- this story originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae)
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