/ Citymakers - Five Days in Msheireb: Lessons from Msheireb
What lessons can be learned from a new sustainable project at the heart of a growing Gulf City?
In the process of designing and building Msheireb Downtown Doha, the entire team together generated 220,000 drawings, 16 million square feet of space above and below ground, 2 million square feet of offices, 860 apartments, four hotels, three mosques and a school. There were, in total, 100 contractors and specialist sub-contractors on this 12 year project.
Over the first four sessions of the 2020 Citymakers conference, we visited Msheireb with presentations and conversations exploring its origins, the masterplan and its delivery and eight Pecha Kucha presentations by the architects of its buildings.
For the last instalment, a roundtable of ten guests joined us to look back at the project and debate what lessons can be learned from it.
Talking about take-aways for the longer term, the evening's key commentators are Peter Oborn (President, Commonwealth Association of Architects), Ricky Burdett (Professor and Director, LSE Cities), Laura Petrella (Leader, City Planning and Extension Design Unit, UN-Habitat) and Helen Logan (Partner, Allies and Morrison).
Further participants include Ali A Alraouf (Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, Hamad Bin Khalifa University), Tim Makower (Principal, Makower Architects), Rami El Samahy (Principal, Over Under and Visiting Lecturer, MIT), Sarah Prichard (UK Managing Director, Buro Happold) and Simon Gathercole (Partner, Allies and Morrison).
Image courtesy Sebastian Spengler
