Well spread

Daniel Hajjar
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HOK has looked at a number of strategies within particular projects to tackle the issue of heat. One of which, using spill air to cool down outside areas, has proved effective at Zayed University, where a large outside ‘quad’ area is cooled using air from the classrooms.

And then there is KAUST, of course, the current poster boy of sustainable development in the Middle East. KAUST was designed by a joint effort of nine HOK offices across the world in order to deliver it on a tight time frame.

“KAUST was specifically designed with the classrooms quite tight together primarily because we did not want a lot of sun penetration between the blocks, because that would go against the whole philosophy of providing shaded alleyways and pedestrian access between the buildings,” he said.

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But aside from the significant achievements made at KAUST in terms of sustainability, Hajjar believes that it is a truly master-planned development, a campus designed on a similar idea to university towns in the US or Canada.

“I think the interesting thing behind that project is there is a tremendous affinity between the different components, it’s not just some campus stuck out in the middle of nowhere without residential or commercial to support it, it has almost become the classic university town,” he said.

Like many firms, HOK sees a future market in Saudi Arabia, a place that has money, ambition and a very real need for infrastructure, housing, schools and facilities for its growing population.

“I don’t think anyone in this part of the world can ignore the Saudi market, and we never have actually. The Saudi market has always been an important market for us,” he said.

Qatar too will be an important market for HOK, and Hajjar points to the country’s focus on education and the gas industry. Qatar also has ambition, demonstrated by its audacious bid for the 2022 World Cup and its plans for the new Doha International Airport, which HOK will be the design architect for.

Wherever HOK is working in the next few years, Hajjar thinks that the market in the Middle East, and the mindset of developers here, has changed since the financial crisis. Developers no longer want to replicate the growth seen in Dubai in 2009, so designers are no longer required to fulfill their clients’ weird and wonderful demands.

“One of the issues that became extremely acute was that when the boom was happening many people looked to Dubai and said: ‘We want to develop like that.’ We even had people calling from as far as Central Asia who wanted to develop like Dubai,” Hajjar said.

“But Dubai developed like that because of certain conditions. I think there is a change of attitudes now. Muscat is not Dubai, Manama is not Dubai and Abu Dhabi is not Dubai. There is a very real character within each of the countries in terms of how it should be looked at, what it needs to be looked at as, and how it needs to develop as well.”