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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.”
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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.”
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