Comeback kids

RELATED ARTICLES: AFR eyes Abu Dhabi success | DIALOGUE: Nicholas Thompson | Top 10 billion-dollar projects in Abu Dhabi

Aukett Fitzroy Robinson may have only opened its Abu Dhabi office two years ago, but the global firm is by no means new to the Middle East.

In the 1970s and 80s AFR designed several high-profile buildings on Abu Dhabi’s Corniche, including the Bank of International Commerce and Credit and Bank of Oman, as well as working on developments in Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman.

The firm’s most recent Middle Eastern foray has been the development of two hotels on Yas Island for Aldar, which were completed just in time for last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. In the shadow of the hotels which were designed, built and opened in just two years, Middle East Architect caught up with Aukett Fitzroy Robinson’s CEO Nicholas Thompson and Stephen Embley AFR managing director in the Middle East.

So tell us a little bit about the Yas Island project.

Stephen Embley: “When we started on these two hotels it was just sand, a desert, I mean, there was nothing here. It was a rapid programme; I think the quickest probably anywhere in the world. From a standing start we completed both hotels in 24 months.”

Nicholas Thompson: “There was literally no scope for missing the date, failure was not an option. It became fairly clear towards the end of the project that while with a retail shopping mall you could be scheduled to open on Friday and push it to Saturday, here you had to open on Friday and that was it. People were going to start arriving.”

What was your motivation for moving back to the Middle East?

NT: “We looked at coming to Middle East some time ago but the mechanics of it didn’t really work, we couldn’t price ourselves into the market and we didn’t have a local partner. Although over the years we bid for work in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi and various places we never got close enough in terms of the economics to make it work. It wasn’t really possible for us until now.”

SE: “We felt it was the right time not only from a strategic, company point of view, but because more generally we see the centre of gravity moving east. We felt it was the right time and that already the signs were beginning to show that you had to diversify your market eastwards.”

So what do you think has changed in recent years that have made this region so attractive?

SE: “I think the economic situation now is going to push the region into a much more mature market because I think people are going to be a lot more discriminating. They’ll still want the quality, they’ll still want fantastic architecture but they’ll want it to work economically, with plans that work.”

NT: “There has been a sea change, which you can see in both the 2030 plan and its equivalent in Dubai. Here in Abu Dhabi, and also in Qatar, they’re taking a realistic approach – they’re trying not to have so many high buildings, not to make development so dense. I think that will open the market up. With high-rise buildings there is a limit on who can work on them, there is a feeling that because a building is very tall the architect has got to be a world-renowned name. If you come down in height it opens the market up to many other firms. I mean, it’s more competitive but from our point of view that’s quite a good thing.”

NT: “It does appear to be a cultural issue, that whoever makes the decision wants these buildings tomorrow. I think even on the more recent projects that we’ve looked at the programs are still what we would consider to be very short, particularly in the design phase. I think there is still an assumption that you can get to the beginning of the building phase in five months. If you do that, quality does suffer.”

Did what happened in Dubai have anything to do with AFR’s decision to choose Abu Dhabi as a base?

NT: “We decided not to base ourselves in Dubai because we didn’t think that market was sustainable.

But we also decided we would build a hub up in Abu Dhabi for geographical reasons. It’s much easier to get from here to Oman, Dubai and Qatar as well as North Africa, Libya and Egypt. This is really a hotspot. Even if there wasn’t any work in Abu Dhabi it would still be a good location for us.”

You have both said that you were somewhat thrown in at the deep end with the Yas Island hotels. Would you do anything different with the benefit of hindsight?

SE: “I’m not sure it would change anything in terms of form, but I think I have developed a greater knowledge of local materials over the last two years, and benefits of using local building techniques over bringing in techniques from the west. Of course there are good things you can bring from the west but equally sometimes you can fight too hard against what people do here. If I was doing it again I would probably use more local materials, and we probably could have done things a bit quicker than we had done.”

In the last 12 months we have seen a lot of UK architects moving to the region – GAJ, Allies and Morrison and Stride Treglown among them – why is that? Is it just a dearth of projects at home?

NT: “It is true that in the UK the market has slowed down quite dramatically and the financial side of projects has dried up. I think government work is going to abate as well, because most of Western European countries have got pretty big debts, so governments can’t keep spending the money. But it’s an obvious place to come too, because Oman, Abu Dhabi and Qatar have all said they are going to increase their capital spending by 10% this year. That represents a huge amount of work.”

SE: “There are fantastic opportunities here for quality architecture, and things happen quickly here. When you think that in two years we have been able to create something out of nothing, while in the UK this project probably would have taken us four years. I think, as an architect, this region provides a fantastic canvas to paint on.”