We cannot be done

Well, Middle East Architect’s 2009 awards have come to a close.

On the night, we saw X-Architects’ ‘Xeritown’ concept design beat out multinational firms GAJ, Broadway Malyan, The Metropolitan Workshop and KEO in one of the most hotly contested categories (Best Mixed-Use Development). We watched the RTA accept a well-deserved award for its vision and efforts on the Dubai Metro. We witnessed Woods Bagot—2008 winner for Best Overall Project with QSTP and 2009 shortlistee for The College of the North Atlantic—come up short in a very competitive category that ultimately went to IM Pei’s Museum of Islamic Art, Doha.

In a surprising and delightful twist, this year’s Young Architect of the Year went to a woman from a small design studio in Bahrain and the 2009 Architect of the Year went to Khalid Alnajjar—Emirati principal of dxb lab, a small Dubai-based firm that he started in 2000.

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Needless to say, the 2009 awards provided some interesting and memorable moments. But we’re not done. We cannot be done. Our work isn’t finished when the region’s only proper award ceremony for specifically Middle Eastern architecture has trouble garnering nominations for Green Project of the Year. In these times, in this region, under these climatic conditions, this category should be a no-brainer, still only a handful of nominations came in.

Something similar can be said of the category for Conservation/Restoration Project of the Year. In a region that clings to its history so tightly and argues so passionately for its historical legacy, how can all of the nominations in a category designed to recognise and celebrate that heritage come from projects within the same three-square-mile area? We are not done. We cannot be done.

While the industry is showing signs of improved sensitivity to culturally-relevant or eco-friendly architecture—and awards ceremonies are recognising that commitment—the onus is on us to do our part to make sure that what is being designed and built achieves those goals.

Carolyn McLean, partner at Woods Bagot and this month’s main Q&A, talks about how sustainability is often stifled by a ‘cycle of inaction’ in which users, designers, developers and builders all blame each other for the inability to get green buildings built.

There’s a cycle of inaction running rampant throughout the industry and it doesn’t end with the debate on green architecture. The cycle of inaction includes the unwillingness to insist on proper build quality. It includes bulldozing heritage sites before the authorities find out and before they can properly document them. It includes specifying materials that are not only eco-insensitive but downright destructive. We are not done. We cannot be done.