Design for the Future: Educational Institutions in the Gulf

Despite a distinguished heritage of learning in the Middle East, the expansion of provision for higher education is currently at an unprecedented scale. The Gulf States, in particular, are seeking to keep up with accelerated population growth and a demographic ‘youth bulge’. Guest-Editor Kevin Mitchell describes the architectural approaches employed in the design of institutions in the region from the first universities in Saudi Arabia to Foster + Partners's ground-breaking sustainable design for the Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi and future projects.     

Urban and Architectural Sustainability in the Gulf

What is the impact of rapid urbanisation on sustainable development, such as that experienced by cities in the Gulf? Robert Cooke , an Associate Sustainability Consultant at Buro Happold, based in Dubai, seeks to answer this question. He asks what the real contribution might be of the implementation of recent sustainable policies and urban projects, and what more needs to be done to improve the Gulf's ecological footprint and the water-energy nexus.     

Fast Forwards: 10 Years of Sustainable Initiatives in the Gulf Region

Over the last decade, sustainable initiatives have proliferated in the UAE through a disparate range of public and private sector efforts. Jeffrey Willis , Sustainability Leader for Arup in the Gulf, provides a comprehensive review of these enterprises, highlighting how momentum has been clustered in three distinct periods of activity: previous to 2006 ; 2006 to 2008 ; and then since the global financial crisis in 2008.     

Museum Development in the Gulf: Narrative and Architecture

How might interpretations of the past be informing the culture of tomorrow? Sarina Wakefield , a specialist in heritage and museum development in the Middle East, provides an overview of the form and function of contemporary museums in Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In so doing, she explores how institutions are drawing on locally specific heritage and cultural objects to develop distinctive identities for an international audience.     

Performative Urbanism: An Emerging Model of the Gulf

With the largest stretch of desert sand in the world, the UAE has an extreme climate and arid ecology. Previous to the postwar discovery of oil in the region, the built environment developed with low or no energy to be responsive to extreme climatic changes. Guest-Editor George Katodrytis looks at the ways that a more performative approach might be employed in contemporary architecture to make it more culturally and climatically relevant.     

The Evolution of Tall Building in the Gulf: From the Sensational to the Sensitive

In just 35 years the built environment in the Gulf region has evolved so rapidly that it has gone from having no high-rise buildings to having the world's tallest building — SOM's Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Terri Meyer Boake , a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and specialist in steel construction and skyscraper design, provides an overview of the fast-paced development of this building typology.     

Drawing on Sand: Cities in the Making

Steven Velegrinis , Director of Urban Design for Perkins+Will in Dubai, and Guest-Editor George Katodrytis liken Gulf cities to the shifting sands that they sit upon. Showing urban development to be in a constant state of flux in the region, they highlight four key eras in the unprecedented rapid development of these cities.     

Recent Developments at Foster + Partners' Specialist Modelling Group

Established 15 years ago under the leadership of Hugh Whitehead, the Specialist Modelling Group (SMG) at Foster + Partners has an unrivalled reputation internationally as an in-house research group. It provides Fosters with expertise in computation, geometry and fabrication, as well as in environmental analysis and simulation. Xavier De Kestelier, co-head of SMG and partner at Foster + Partners, describes how the group has developed and expanded over the last few years, growing the range of its specialist knowledge that informs projects as diverse as the YachtPlus Boat Fleet (2009), Kuwait International Airport (2009-) and Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (2010).     

A Field of Possibilities: The Post-Oil Future of Bahrain

Much of the continuing urban development of the Gulf region rests on the oil economy. What happens, though, when the oil runs out? What is the alternative model? Bahrain is already facing the depletion of the oil that supported its rapid growth. Noura Al Sayeh , the Head of Architectural Affairs at the Ministry of Culture of the Kingdom of Bahrain, highlights how architecture might be developed to generate new urban forms that are economically viable and environmentally sustainable.     

A Sketchbook for the City to Come: The Pop-Up as R&D

Dan Hill , an Executive Director at Future Cities Catapult, is not content to accept that architecture is willy-nilly the carapace for the desires of the society that constructs it. He argues that pop-ups – all too often the tools of corporate branding or the cat's paw of gentrification – should be used to implement overt social initiatives, presaging an architecture of positive change in cities. A member of the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra's Strategic Design Unit from 2011 to 2012, he helped lead the Open Kitchen initiative featured here.     

Inexhaustible Ambition: Two Eras of Planning in Doha,Qatar

Architects and researchers in urban design, Kelly Hutzell, Rami el Samahy and Adam Himes , reflect on how the present structure of Doha in Qatar is a result of intermittent state interventions - failures as well as successes. They explain how these sporadic initiatives manifested themselves in two main bursts of activity: 1971-86 and 1999 to the present day.