The new Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum is the first dedicated institution to celebrate the work of Indian modernist art master Maqbool Fida Husain. The building, courtesy of Delhi-based architect Martand Khosla and spearheaded by non-profit Qatar Foundation (QF), has just opened its doors, showing off its unique character and playfully volumes.

Inside the Lawh Wa Qalam: M. F. Husain Museum in Doha

The museum's rich and colourful identity is a deliberate and carefully purpose-driven architectural gesture. Khosla, an architect and artist himself, drew on Husain's creative style and approach to craft his design, which indeed mirrors a sketch by the artist himself, which imagined what such a museum might look like.

Khosla explains: 'The architectural challenge – one I enjoyed immensely – was to translate his symbolic vision into a contemporary building that could both house his individual legacy and engage with the context of Education City. The museum’s architectural language evolved into a series of spaces that invite reflection and exchange, with materials that celebrate our shared cultural histories across South and West Asia.'

The building explores Husain's creative journey from the 1950s until his death in 2011. It includes art pieces (well-known and unseen works), as well as personal objects and materials that influenced the artist's output and approach. The Arab civilisation was a particular interest, which led Husain to produce a series of 35 paintings, some of which can be found among the exhibits here.

Alongside the collection, one of the M. F. Husain Museum's highlights is the artist's final work: a 2009 installation entitled Seeroo fi al ardh (‘Walk in the Land’), which will be featured in a dedicated gallery. The building also includes a café, a gift shop, a library and Creativity Hub, and an auditorium set to house various events year-round.

Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation, said: 'Maqbool Fida Husain is a legendary artist – a true master whose artistic works transcend borders and connect cultures, histories, and identities. I am delighted to fulfill the dream of this late, esteemed artist by inaugurating the museum, which will stand as a new landmark in Education City showcasing pages from his life and a collection of his works.'

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The 2025 RIBA Middle East Award winners have just been announced, the inaugural honorees in one of the organisation’s two new territory accolades.

The new RIBA awards, launched this year as part of the UK institution's International Awards expansion, focus on two territories – the Middle East and Asia Pacific – freshly added to its prestigious roster. As revealed today (5 November), nine buildings share the 2025 RIBA Middle East Award top spot, while the Asia Pacific winners will follow in a few weeks.

The 2025 RIBA Middle East Award winners

These Middle East awards, which will be celebrated at an event on 7 November 2025 during Dubai Design Week, were created to put a spotlight on the region's creativity and pioneering architecture. The winners span from the world’s first purpose-built women-only mosque in Qatar, to the world’s largest city park, in Riyadh. Scroll down for the full list.

Discover the winners

• Adaptive Reuse Winner: The Serai Wing, Sharjah – Bait Khalid Bin Ibrahim by Anarchitect
• Design for Living Winner: Al Wasl Plaza, Dubai – Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture
• Future Project Winner: King Salman Park, Riyadh – Gerber Architekten is leading a joint venture with two engineering partners, Buro Happold, and Setec
• RIBA Member Winner: Buhais Geology Park Interpretive Centre, Al-Madam Plan – Hopkins Architects
• RIBA Member Winner: Expo 2020 Thematic Districts, Dubai –Hopkins Architects
• Social Architecture Winner: Al-Mujadilah Center and Mosque for Women, Doha – conceived by Her Highness, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro
• Sustainability & Resilience Winner: Jafar Centre, Dubai College, Dubai – Godwin Austen Johnson
• Temporary Architecture Winner: Singapore Pavilion, World Expo 2020, Dubai – WOHA
• Temporary Architecture Winner: World Food Waste Teahouse: Arabi-an, Dubai – Mitsubishi Jisho Design

RIBA's new awards: an explainer with president Chris Williamson

We caught up with RIBA president Chris Williamson to discuss the institution's new territory awards – their significance, the RIBA International Awards expansion, and how to submit.

Wallpaper*: Why establish The Asia Pacific Award and the Middle East Award?

Chris Williamson: The establishment of these awards marks an exciting new chapter for RIBA’s international engagement. Both the Asia Pacific and the Middle East are regions of extraordinary architectural ambition and diversity, where innovation, heritage and rapid transformation coexist. Launching these regional awards is part of RIBA’s mandate to celebrate design excellence wherever it is found and to be a supportive platform to projects that address pressing global challenges in their local contexts.

These awards are the first phase of our expanded international awards programme, recognising the architectural creativity shaping two of the most dynamic parts of the world today. They create new pathways for projects to gain global recognition and contribute to RIBA’s long-term aim of connecting architects across regions through shared learning, sustainability, and cultural exchange.

W*: What were you hoping to see in the submissions and shortlists?

CW: This year’s process was led by our Middle East and Asia Pacific Award jury panels, whose collective expertise and regional insight have been invaluable in shaping the results.

We hoped to see work that truly reflects the spirit of its place and understands its cultural, climatic and social context while pushing the boundaries of architecture. Both the Asia Pacific and Middle East shortlists deliver exactly that.

They demonstrate how architecture is addressing universal challenges, climate change, urbanisation, and social inclusion, through intelligent and contextually attuned design. What stands out is how architects are drawing on tradition, technology and local materials to create spaces that not only respond to their environments but actively enrich them.

W*: Are there specific highlights and innovations that you would flag as exceptional from the two shortlists?

CW: The juries’ assessments revealed rich and diverse forms of innovation across both regions. In the Middle East, [winning] projects such as the Al-Mujadilah Center and Mosque for Women in Qatar were recognised for advancing new social models through architecture, spaces that integrate spiritual, educational and communal functions in ways that reflect contemporary shifts in society. The King Salman Park masterplan in Riyadh was also commended for its scale and ecological ambition, transforming the city’s public realm and setting new benchmarks for urban sustainability.

In the Asia Pacific [shortlist], the jury identified a distinct movement toward socially and environmentally responsive design. BRAC University in Dhaka exemplifies this with its flood-resilient, low-energy campus that connects learning with nature and community. The Shenzhen Energy Ring reimagines industrial infrastructure as public architecture, turning a waste-to-energy facility into an expressive civic landmark.

As observed by the jury, these projects reflect a regional shift toward architecture that is both technologically advanced and deeply responsible to people and place.

W*: What does the foundation of these two new awards mean for the other RIBA awards’ categories, such as the International Awards, for instance? How do the new honours sit within the RIBA awards cycle?

CW: These new regional awards represent an evolution of RIBA’s International Awards. They strengthen the entire awards ecosystem by providing a more localised and inclusive structure for recognising excellence.

All built projects from the Asia Pacific and Middle East Awards will be eligible to progress towards the RIBA International Prize in 2026, the world’s most eminent prize for architecture.

This creates a more layered, global awards journey, recognising regional talent first before elevating the very best projects to an international stage. It adds depth, context and diversity to the International Awards cycle, ensuring that significant architecture from every region is celebrated, understood and showcased worldwide.

W*: How are the new awards judged, and what do architects need to submit?

CW: The prestige of the RIBA Awards rests on the rigour and integrity of the judging process. Every built project, regardless of size or style, is visited and analysed by an architect with extensive knowledge of the specific region, ensuring that our awards are grounded in first-hand assessment.

The new regional awards follow the same principles. Each jury comprises award-winning architects with deep experience working in the respective regions, capable of evaluating projects within their cultural, climatic and economic contexts.

For this cycle, architects were asked to submit projects they’ve completed between 2020 and 2024 and provide supporting sustainability data. Entries span up to ten categories, from Adaptive Reuse and Social Architecture to AI-powered Design and Sustainability & Resilience.

Ultimately, we assess design excellence in its broadest sense: how a project meets its brief, serves its community, responds to climate, and contributes positively to its environment and future generations.

riba.org

It’s not often that Chicago and Doha are mentioned in the same sentence; both melting pots of culture and economic powerhouses, their contrasting histories and vast geographical distance set them worlds apart. Yet, at the glamorous Four Seasons Resort and Residences at The Pearl-Qatar, guests encounter a delightful fusion in the form of Chicago Rare: prime steaks and classic sips in a 1920s-inspired American-style steakhouse that boasts panoramic views of the Persian Gulf.

Chicago Rare, Doha

Chicago Rare is one of five dining options within the luxurious beachfront Four Seasons property in Doha’s Pearl Island. Unlike its European-inspired counterparts, the vintage-style steakhouse transcends a simple grilled menu, conveying an atmosphere inspired by the Prohibition era in the United States, which gave birth to the concept of speakeasy bars. The project, brought to life by the global firm Avroko, weaves together period inspirations, art deco elements and the ideas of Louis Sullivan, an influential architect from the Chicago School and mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright.

With its dim lighting and a low-ceilinged, tunnel-like entrance that feels like a portal to another era, Chicago Rare unfolds into a bar and restaurant divided by a honey-onyx lightbox. The bar, designed to resemble a polished copper still, pays homage to the production of illicit spirits during the 1920s and provides an intimate wine-tasting room hiding in one of its corners. In contrast, the restaurant presents a more elegant atmosphere; its walls see a meaty, bespoke dark red textured plaster finish, accented with gleaming copper rivets. Here, three large curtained booths are available for more intimate gatherings.

La Pergola is an alternative dining room that breaks away from the restaurant’s moody ambience and offers an outdoor terrace, where a circular banquette encircles the base of a large tree. Inside, the fully air-conditioned space draws inspiration from Chicago’s Greek and Mediterranean immigrant communities, showcasing a lush, overgrown Mediterranean-style garden. Adjacent to this is the Cigar Lounge. Throughout, guests can enjoy entertainment including live jazz performances, swing bands and retro playlists.

Chicago Rare features signature dishes highlighting USDA Prime beef sourced from farms across the USA, whether freshly prepared or aged to perfection. Standout dishes include the Chicago Crusher burger, Black Angus braised short ribs, strip loin, Black Angus tomahawk and braised lamb shank. Accompanying the succulent meats are a range of signature sauces, diverse side dishes and artisanal bread. A live grill showcases the team cooking over live fire, all under the helm of executive chef Christian Gosselin.

Chicago Rare is located inside the Four Seasons Resort and Residences at The Pearl-Qatar, fourseasons.com

Any lingering doubt that the epicentre of contemporary Middle Eastern design and art has shifted away from the Levant towards the Gulf states has been firmly dispelled with the inaugural Design Doha (with programming continuing until 5 August 2024).

Comprising six faceted exhibitions centred in Msheireb – Doha’s 31-hectare mixed-use development and creative hub – alongside a sweep of satellite events, the biennial’s remit is an ambitious survey of the creative talent percolating in Qatar and the broader MENA region; though its artistic director, Glenn Adamson prefers to describe the event as ‘epic and unprecedented, spanning the full breadth of design in the Arab world’.

Design Doha 2024: the highlights

Quite apart from the vast number of designers on show – the marquee exhibition Arab Design Now, alone, features nearly 100 creatives and studios – what impresses most about Doha Design is the range of disciplines canvassed. 

At the John McAslan-designed M7, a rugged low-slung pile in the centre of Msheireb whose stone-clad galleries are awash with natural light, the installations and exhibitions offer a thoughtful progression of materiality viewed through the lens of culture and history, through to contemporary storytelling and questions of the future. 

As curator Rana Beiruti points out, the answer to the question ‘What is Arab design?’ is not a disconnected discourse. Rather, it is one coloured by globalism (literally, in the vivid celebration of graphic design in ‘100/100 Hundred Best Arabic Posters Round 04’) through collaborations with the Arab diaspora living, working and creating abroad, and with the expatriate community in the Middle-East and North Africa. 

Which perhaps explains why ‘Sites - New Sites’ (2023), Netherlands- and Bahrain-based Studio Anne Holtrop’s monumental rust-red resin casts, are suspended from the triple-volume height and bring to mind magnified fragments of desert earth; ‘Eleven’ (2024), Jordanian architect Sahel Alhiyari’s eleven towering terracotta columns evoke both classical antiquity and contemporary materiality; and Studio EF’s 3D-printed ‘Jalset Sawa’ transforms recycled plastic into an elegant modular lounge whose silhouette echoes Doha’s sand dunes.

Another show at M7, ‘Colours of the City: A Century of Architecture in Doha’ is a fascinating study in 3D models, photos and film that traces the country’s architectural progression from Arabic deco to brutalism, culminating in the Omani architect Ibrahim Al Jaidah’s mesmeric Al Thumama Stadium – staging ground for 2022’s FIFA World Cup (on the occasion of which we presented a guide to Doha) – which combines millennial technology with regional heritage accents.

Perhaps Design Doha’s most powerful moment, though, comes in ‘Weaving Poems’, an extraordinary installation which is staged in an unfinished concrete auditorium in M7, its vast mood-lit interiors draped with 24 massive rugs, their muted colours and hypnotic patterns inspired by the colours and patterns of nature, and handwoven by women weavers in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan region. ‘All the sketches were photographed and manipulated digitally,’ says its designer, the Afghan-born, Amman-based Maryam Omar. ‘These were then printed on large-scale paper from which the weavers read and hand-knotted the carpets by eye.’

Accompanied by the soundtrack of the clacking looms and the unguarded, melodic chatter of the Afghan weavers, the installation is, in a sense, a meditation on a centuries-old art form; but more than that, it also somehow becomes a conduit between traditional and contemporary design practices. 

It may not fully capture the ephemerality of cultural identity, but if the curators behind Design Doha have anything to say about the matter, it is, particularly for a first edition, an extraordinary start. 

designdoha.org.qa 

The Ned Doha, a new boutique hotel and urban retreat in the heart of the Middle Eastern city, has opened its doors; the result of an elegant transformation of the former Ministry of Interior building of Qatar by Chipperfield Architects. 2023 Pritzker Prize-winning architect David Chipperfield and his team worked in collaboration with Soho House Design on the interiors and the adaptive reuse of one of the oldest and most historical brutalist architecture structures in the country – dating from the 1970s. 

The Ned Doha by David Chipperfield

The Ned Doha is housed in a building originally designed by Lebanese architect William Sednaoui. Placed next to Al Bidda park, and in close proximity to the Diwan (the Emir's seat of government) and the Grand Mosque, the structure is not only part of the city's heritage but also one of its most prominent 20th century structures – as well as a fine example of brutalism worldwide. 

The ministry's generous four storeys were renovated and redesigned over a period of two years. While adaptations were implemented as necessary to fit its new use and 21st century requirements, key elements of the building's identity were carefully maintained – such as the geometric façade and the original concrete waffle ceilings in the bedrooms. 

Meanwhile, a selection of new, high-quality materials, such as green Tinos marble for stairs and lift cores, white Calacatta marble for the interior walls and light-coloured travertine for the podium, were added to wrap the space in subtle luxury. 

David Chipperfield said: 'Transforming the striking former Qatar Ministry building – one of the earliest in Doha’s urban development – has been a rewarding process. We are excited to see how our project demonstrates the value of reuse and contributes towards the growing movement to preserve Doha’s architectural heritage. Ensuring continuity and diversity in the built environment is fundamental to our sense of place, identity and quality of life.'

davidchipperfield.com 

thened.com 

With its futuristic architecture and spectacular views of the Persian Gulf, Doha, on the eve of FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 (20 November-18 December 2022), is proving a golden destination, not only for football fans but also art aficionados and devotees of luxury. In late October, the fashion cognoscenti flocked to the sun-kissed city for Fashion Trust Arabia, an award celebrating young fashion designers in the Middle East and North Africa region, as well as the opening of the exhibition ‘Forever Valentino’. The demanding crowd sampled and embraced multiple new art and hospitality hotspots. We tasked one of the participants, Paris-based fashion and culture journalist Minako Norimatsu, with writing the latest in our ‘Postcard from' series, a design-minded guide to what to see and do in Doha right now.

Doha: 8 things to see and do in the city

Museum of Islamic Art

Founded in 2008, the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) has just reopened its doors after months of renovations, and a refreshed collection display including newly acquired artefacts. Architect IM Pei’s postmodern edifice, clad in limestone, was inspired by the ablution fountain of the Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo, while the permanent-collection galleries are by Wilmotte & Associés. Take a moment to admire the sea views through huge glass windows from the spectacular five-storey atrium. In its adjoining waterfront space, MIA Park, a monumental sculpture by Richard Serra appears to emerge from the bay. 

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Northern Heritage Site

Only an hour’s drive from Doha brings you to Al Zubarah, where Shadows travelling on the sea of the day, 2022, by Olafur Eliasson has been freshly unveiled. The site-specific public art installation in the middle of the desert consists of a series of steel circular shelters, with mirrored round ceilings measuring around 5m in diameter. Following a conversation with a local archaeologist, the artist was lured by this flat expanse, which offers views over the ancient Al Jassasiya rock carvings. Shadows travelling on the sea of the day is the climax of The Northern Heritage Sites circuit, which includes a 19th-century fortress, an installation by Ernest Neto, and a monolith by Simone Fattal. 

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M7 

In the heart of the eco-responsible Design District of Msheireb stands the fashion and design hub M7, designed by John McAslan + Partners and fusing modernism with a nod to the Arabic traditional majlis (an open space for group activities). Bruce Nauman’s geometric sculpture in the forecourt cannot be missed. M7 houses two things that are rare in the city: a casual café with a minimalist Scandi-style interior, and a concept store stocked with local fashion and lifestyle brands. ‘Forever Valentino’, a major perspective of the house of Valentino, is on view through 1 April 2023 in the gallery space.

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The Ned

Doha’s buzziest members’ club, The Ned is housed in the city’s former Ministry of the Interior building, originally designed by Lebanese architect William Sednaoui in the 1960s. The five-storey, 500,000 sq ft property was transformed by David Chipperfield Architects into an exclusive hotel with public restaurants and bars, a health club and event spaces. Compared to its sister outposts, The Ned London and the New York location, The Ned Doha leans more toward 1970s glamour, with a hint of Halston. It also boasts an art collection showcasing a selection of local contemporary artists, curated by the co-founders of Mathaf (Arab Museum of Modern Art).

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Lobito De Mar

Dani Garcìa, the Michelin-starred chef known for his refined take on southern Spanish cuisine, is a key player on Doha’s culinary scene. Having opened his Andalusian brasserie Bibo in early 2020 to great acclaim, he is now replicating its success with Lobito de Mar. His modus operandi is simple: extremely fresh seafood, prepared in varied, creative ways. Among the range of rice dishes, octopus paella and lobster creamy rice are must-haves. The restaurant, which is replete with playfully aquatic design details, spreads in the shape of a fan within the garden of the Kempinski Marsa Malaz. It also includes a sea-view terrace and a tapas bar. 

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Heenat Salma Farm

An eco-farm and camp with an ethical and holistic approach, Heenat Salma is located in the middle of Shahaniya, a 40-minute drive from Doha. Activities range from basket weaving, pottery workshops and holistic wellness programmes to bike trips and yoga retreats. Swing by the kitchen and watch the chef Ivan Dubkov prepare seasonal, farm-to-table delights, such as cauliflower soup, and labneh and beet salad. The traditional nomad-style tents are beautifully decorated with a slightly contemporary touch – a perfect getaway in a desert environment.

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Stadium 974

Among seven new stadiums that were built especially for FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, Stadium 974 is the architectural highlight. Linked to the stadium’s location in the neighbourhood of the city’s industrial port, the Spanish firm Fenwick Iribarren Architects smartly used recycled shipping containers and modular steel elements, saving on time and construction costs. If Empire, Huang Yong Ping’s installation made up of shipping containers dazzled us at Monumenta 2016 in Paris, here, the concept has been supersized with a total of 974 containers. The number also stands for Qatar’s country dialling code.

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Place Vendôme

Regardless of your shopping habits, Qatari malls are worth experiencing for their sheer scale. The latest opening of this kind in Lusail, a newly developed hyper-modern district on the outskirts of Doha, is named Place Vendôme. Obviously inspired by the French luxury sanctuary, its architectural look is French neoclassical, while its esplanade channels the Grand Canal of Venice, with boats ferrying passengers arriving through the West Bay. Don’t miss the ‘Montaigne’ section in Gate 4. Seeing the signage of all the luxury brands spread under the monumental dome is nothing short of awe-inducing.

@placevendomeqatar

‘Forever Valentino’, a new exhibition in Doha, Qatar, marks the Italian house’s most comprehensive exhibition yet, leading viewers on a colourful journey through Valentino past and present with over 200 pieces which span its beginnings in 1959 to the current tenure of creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli. Held at M7, Msheireb Downtown Doha’s design hub, it also coincides with the continuing birthday celebrations of house founder Valentino Garavani who turned 90 this past May.

‘The title of the exhibition says it all. Forever,’ Piccioli tells Wallpaper*. ‘The value of maison Valentino is timeless, it reveals its authenticity by constantly evolving. 60 years of this experience were made possible by the work of a couturier named Valentino Garavani, whose vision is still meaningful for today. Our conscious heritage has always moved forward, towards the future and the complexity of humanity. This balance moved my aesthetic idea of the exhibition, which is a perspective, not a retrospective, an act of love.’

’Forever Valentino’ at Doha’s M7 hub

‘Forever Valentino’ is curated by artistic director of the New Museum New York, Massimilano Gioni and fashion critic Alexander Fury, in collaboration with Piccioli. The panoramic installation – featuring mannequins by La Rosa, known for its made-in-Italy recycled and sustainable designs – features both recognisable and rarely seen pieces, designed over the years for Elizabeth Taylor, Jacqueline Kennedy and Zendaya, among others. Valentino’s home city of Rome is a particular focus, evoked in the exhibition’s scenography, but also in the pieces themselves which trace the house’s roots in Romanesque design, architecture and la dolce vita.

‘The legacy of Valentino Garavani – and therefore the meaning of Valentino – is to celebrate beauty, in all its incarnations, from every walk of life and every period of time,’ adds Fury. ‘That noble quest, that ceaseless search for and celebration of beauty to better the world is, for me, Forever Valentino.’

The collaboration comes as part of Qatar Creates, a year-round cultural movement aimed at championing arts, culture and fashion in Qatar led by Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, sister to the Emir of Qatar, who is tasked with boosting Qatar’s cultural programmes. Earlier this week, the Fashion Trust Arabia Prize 2022 also took place in Doha, celebrating young fashion talent from the MENA region, for which Piccioli was a judge.

Forever Valentino runs at Gallery 1 and 2, M7, in Msheireb Downtown Doha, from 28 October 2022 to 1 April 2023.

valentino.com

From a monumental Richard Serra installation in the desert to a 40,000-seat fully demountable stadium, Qatar sets the bar high for contemporary art, architecture and design. Ahead of the 2022 Fifa World Cup, we visit the Gulf state to witness the latest chapter of its cultural transformation.

Discover our visual diary here.

INFORMATION

A version of this article appears in the June issue of Wallpaper*. Subscribe today!

Few places rival the intensity of Doha. Even in late November, your face is cocooned in heat; the horizon wobbles, sizzles and steams. Somewhere between England and Qatar, the colours have turned from green to gold. Doha emerges like a gilded, water-encircled canvas, primed for anyone with a creative vision as vast as its landscape. 

I’m with a small group of journalists at the invitation of Qatar Museums. We’re here to witness the fruits of the country's cultural transformation; one born with the discovery of oil in the mid-20th century, and that has since evolved into a contemporary Renaissance that has the attention of the world. 

Day 1 in Doha: Jeff Koons, lunch at the Culture Pass Club, Christian Dior

At Qatar Museums’ Gallery Al Riwaq, we find Jeff Koons: ‘Lost in America’. This is the artist’s first show in the Gulf, and its significance is not lost on Qatar.

Curated by Massimiliano Gioni, the show is presented as part of the Qatar-United States 2021 Year of Culture. Koons has conceived it as an expanded self-portrait of sorts. We’re greeted by a photograph of him aged five, earnest, doe-eyed, and with that unmistakable, ready-made beam that’s followed him throughout his career. He wears the same expression at the press conference, where he quotes The Beatles’ ‘I am the Walrus’: ‘I am he as you are he as you are me’, and reasserts his well-trodden principles: transcendence, transformation and self-acceptance.

These days, the locations of Koons’ exhibitions feel just as significant as their contents. As a concession to regional norms, the show is devoid of the raunchier facets of his work, yet it doesn’t feel deprived. 

The sheer enormity of the museum means the pieces are socially distanced. Until now, I had never quite appreciated the extent of Koons’ calculating precision, his ability to optically toy with the viewer and suspend disbelief. He metamorphoses materials: bronze resembles vinyl, plaster looks like a cotton-covered inflatable, and, in his newest works, marble is dressed down as though an oversized ceramic trinket. These replicas of replicas reflect just how easily we fall for artifices; rather than critiquing consumerism, they celebrate it. 

At lunchtime, we head to Qatar’s first members-only arts club, Culture Pass Club. Think Soho House, but if every house consisted of multiple houses encircling an idyllic courtyard and had interiors by the likes of India Mahdavi, Rossana Orlandi and leading local designers including Aisha Al-Sowaidi and Wadha Al Hajri. 

Next on the itinerary is M7, Qatar’s 312,000 sq ft hub for fashion and design innovation. Earlier in November, the fashion world elite gathered at the art centre for the Fashion Trust Arabia prize, recognising emerging talent in the Middle East and North Africa region. 

Following a momentary distraction from a thorny Isa Genzken sculpture in M7’s atrium, we shift our focus to ‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’. It’s a reinvention of a resoundingly successful exhibition that previously showed in Paris, London, Shanghai and New York, and features pieces from the private collection of Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, mother of the Emir and long-time Dior client. 

In the evening, we head back to Gallery Al Riwaq for the ‘Lost in America’ reception. It’s disorientating and refreshing to mingle at an art world vernissage unaccompanied by flutes of champagne (In deference to Sharia law, the Qatari government places strict restrictions on the availability of alcohol). But what it lacks in booze, Qatar makes up for in juice, offered liberally, and in most shades of the rainbow. Armed with hyper-real sobriety and tripping on a sugar high, we’re all ready to focus on the art. 

It’s dinnertime, and presumably owing to good behaviour, we’ve been invited by Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa Bint Hamad Al-Thani, chairperson of Qatar Museums (and cultural arbiter of the nation) to attend the official dinner for Koons. I’m sartorially ill-prepared for the occasion, but manage to dress up my practical desert-wear to a passable standard. 

We’re ushered to a palatial first-floor courtyard at the IM Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art – which is officially closed for renovation. The architect, who was 91 when he was coaxed out of retirement for the project, was given free rein to choose any spot in Doha for the museum, and he insisted that future buildings could not encroach on its space. The solution? Qatar gave the building its own island. 

There’s more multicoloured juice on silver platters, and American-themed food on the menu. There’s also a photo booth for the star-studded guest list. (Photo booth is an understatement, I mean a self-contained studio where Brigitte Lacombe, portraitist to superstars, is taking the photographs).

After dinner, we’re taken to the underground conservation laboratory. An expert restorer shows us to his workstation, where the magic is happening. We swarm like insatiable magpies around a falcon from 17th-century India: solid gold and laden in rubies, emeralds, diamonds and sapphires. It’s impossibly beautiful, priceless beyond comprehension, and shimmers to the point of hypnosis. Suddenly, this begins to feel rather familiar – Jeff Koons would be all over this! Right on cue, he arrives at the lab for a closer look. 

Day 2: Sport, Virgil Abloh, a history of Qatar

I have a hangover. Not the post-alcohol kind, but a juice-induced sugar comedown of epic proportions. But enough whining, it’s time for sport. 

Today is the first day of the inaugural Qatar Grand Prix Formula One and sport is on the agenda. Around Doha, construction is in abundance as Qatar spruces up to host the 2022 World Cup, which will kick off in precisely one year. It’s a palpably exciting crescendo, but has not been without controversy. Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers responsible for World Cup-related infrastructure has been under intense scrutiny. The Qatari government disputed a 16 November 2021 report by Amnesty International claiming that labour reforms have not translated into changes on the ground, but also stated that ‘Qatar has never shied away from acknowledging that its labour system is still a work in progress.’ 

We are treated to a preview tour of the soon-to-open 3-2-1 Qatar Olympic and Sports Museum, sited adjacent to the Khalifa International Stadium. As an arts journalist, I’m a little out of my depth, but nonetheless an eager student. The museum aims to educate and entertain, offering a history of Qatari sport while providing family-focused interactive games to encourage physical activity. 

Next, we head to the W Hotel for another dose of Jeff Koons. This time, he’s in conversation with Sheikha Al Mayassa as part of the Art for Tomorrow Talks, in association with The New York Times. Just as I reflect on how, in the last three months, I have spent more time in the physical presence of Koons than I have my own mother, it’s time for art by Virgil Abloh. 

Like Koons’, this is Abloh’s first museum exhibition in the Middle East. Held at Fire Station, an arts hub and artist residency centre, ‘Figures of Speech’ offers a deep dive into Abloh's pioneering media practice spanning visual arts, music, fashion, architecture and design. (Since our visit, the show – a mid-career retrospective  – has taken on a new poignancy. On Sunday 28 November, in a moment that shook the world, the celebrated artist Virgil Abloh passed away from a rare cancer, aged 41.)  

The next stop is the Jean Nouvel-designed National Museum of Qatar, which blooms from the landscape like a desert rose. This extraordinary building comprises flying saucer-like discs of varying diameters, which engulf the restored palace of Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani, son of the founder of modern Qatar.

The galleries tell us about the history of Qatar, without following the conventional museum formula. Here, everything from the natural history of the Persian Gulf to the establishment of the Qatari state, and to the discovery of oil is narrated via innovative audiovisual elements, seamlessly integrated into Nouvel’s design. The museum celebrates the heritage of Qatar, but also puts a spotlight on its rapid modernisation, growth and extraordinary cultural change. 

We head back to the hotel on Doha’s gleaming new UNStudio-designed metro. Completed in 2019, the network is divided into three travel sections: Standard, Family (for solo women and anyone commuting with children) and Gold (for Goldclub Travel Card holders). Boasting rapid speeds, onboard Wi-Fi and USB charging for Goldclub members, this is surely the envy of the subterranean world, and makes most of the London Underground look and smell like Dante’s Inferno. 

Day 3: Kader Attia, a palace of books, and the desert sun set on Richard Serra

We arrive at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. Following a momentary malfunction of the Ehteraz app (Qatar’s mandatory Covid-19 contact-tracing service), I’m soon in the clutches of ‘Kader Attia: On Silence’, a show of staggering scale, depth and intensity. Attia turns his focus to the complex histories of the Middle East and North Africa, and Doha itself, a multicultural global city of migration and constant social and political evolution.

At the centre of the show is the title work, On Silence. One of two new commissions for the exhibition, it comprises a room filled with prostheses suspended from the ceiling. Though unsettling in their number, they are presented as objects of restoration and optimism for those who have lost limbs in conflict. Attia uses silence as a vehicle for communication: silence to cut through the noise of human suffering (colonialism, political oppression and environmental devastation), enforced silence as a catalyst for trauma, voluntary silence as a conduit to reckoning and repair. 

In the 1970s, Doha was but a few modest buildings surrounded by desert. Its statement piece was the spaceship-esque Sheraton Hotel, a striking example of modernism by architect William L Pereira (who also designed San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid) that perfectly straddles utopia and dystopia. These days, the skyline is a tapestry of architectural delights, particularly in the Education City.

We’re here to visit the Rem Koolhaas-designed Qatar National Library, a vast, tiered, glass-clad palace of books and artefacts fit for the digital age. This high-tech sanctuary for research also functions as a custodian of Qatar’s heritage by preserving and making accessible the country’s recorded history. 

As the sun sets on our tour of Doha, there is one final stop, the middle of the desert. Our Jurassic Park-style off-roaders jiggle over the undulating dunes through the Brouq Nature Reserve. After 20 minutes of dizzying motion, we reach our destination: a natural corridor formed by gypsum plateaus, home to one of the most triumphant examples of public art: Richard Serra’s East-West/West-East (2014). The installation comprises four vertiginous slabs of Corten steel, each 14m high, with rusted-matte surfaces absorbing the ethereal orange sun.

Spanning more than a kilometre, East-West/West-East slices up the sky like an oversized game of dominoes being played by some higher, much larger power. If an epiphany could occur anywhere, it’s surely here.

INFORMATION
qm.org.qa

At the heart of the new National Museum of Qatar is a platform displaying the components of a traditional bait al-sha’t, or ‘house of hair’, the tents Bedouins constructed and dismantled as they roamed the peninsula. Resembling long Persian rugs, they were knit by women from the hair of black goats for their ability to protect from harsh, unpredictable weather.

The message, that architecture here in Qatar must work hard, is as true today as ever. Like the skyscrapers of Doha’s West Bay area, Jean Nouvel’s latest feat, a blast of interlocking concrete discs, is tasked with ‘bridging the sea and desert’ (or, as it were, the city and motorway). But it also must project and shape the nation’s cultural identity, draw publicity to a tiny country growing in geopolitical heft, and help develop a new cultural industry to mitigate the dominance of oil.

Nouvel’s design nails a tough mission: to balance, superlative for superlative, IM Pei’s pyramidal Museum of Islamic Art, down the road. Not to mention Nouvel’s own Louvre satellite next door in Abu Dhabi. The architect takes as his inspiration a naturally occurring phenomenon of the ‘desert rose’, a layered crystallisation of minerals occurring in salty sand. He designed 539 conical discs to act as ‘petals’ and cast them in glass fibre-reinforced concrete. The neutral-toned finish will provide a foil for the scourge of flying sand that ends up coating even Doha’s steeliest towers after a storm. ‘They symbolise at once the eternity of the desert and its link with the sea,’ he says.

Driving Doha’s palm-edged Corniche is how most visitors will approach the NMoQ – the building creeps up on you that way. But taking the narrower inland roads allows it to properly surge into view. The nimbleness and litheness of the forms belie the heavy brutality of the material, which is supported by deftly placed vertical volumes that form a steel superstructure, anchored into the grainy public plaza.

At the entrance, petals fly outward into archways, and as you pass under, the arrangement appears to blossom before your eyes. The complexity, says Nouvel, is in the connections at each node. Arup engineers in every timezone worked to control the forces at those intersections. ‘The structural system is a mystery,’ concludes Nouvel.

Indoors, the first curiosity you’ll encounter is an escalator, leading up to a second lobby and corridor. Windows, set deep within the voids to minimise harsh light and heat, work with inward-slanting walls to suppress the visitor experience slightly. The wonky walls deliver an effect not unlike walking through a series of Bedouin tents; instead of bearing the brunt of the artefacts, they bear giant, high-definition screens broadcasting historical video reenactments by seasoned directors like Mira Nair and Peter Webber.

Moving into the centre of each gallery are the actual artefacts: tools and runes from prehistory, falconry gear and pearl-fishing equipment from the early years of this 200-year-old nation and finally extraction machinery from Qatar’s recent arrival as a world leader in liquid natural gas. They go on nearly a mile, culminating at the largest artefact of all: a century-old palace once inhabited by the late Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani, now under restoration.  

Nouvel says ‘architecture is the testimony of an epoch,’ and he believes his building and this collection ‘will help develop better understanding and communication between civilizations and political entities.

INFORMATION

For more information visit the The Ateliers Jean Nouvel website

Ten years in the making, the National Museum of Qatar (NMoQ) by Ateliers Jean Nouvel is intended as an important new display case for the country’s history, archaeology and contemporary culture. The massive structure houses 11 interlinked galleries, with visitors taken on a winding 1.5km route from prehistory through to the present day and beyond.

The new building’s dominant feature is its roof – winner of the Wallpaper* Design Award for Best Roofscape. It is a multifaceted sculpture inspired in part by ‘desert roses’, clusters of interlocking crystals that emerge out of the sand to form striking, bloom-like outcrops. Nouvel describes how the concept was created in 3D from the outset, rather than through his conventional sketch-driven approach. ‘To formalise a rose was very diffcult,’ he says, ‘so the whole project was done in software.’

Once the client, the influential Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, chairperson of Qatar Museums, had approved the design, the task of shaping the immensely complex structure was done in collaboration with engineers Arup in London. The NMoQ’s form comprises some 539 discs, ranging from 14m to 87m across, mirroring what Nouvel calls the ‘miniature architectural events’ of the gypsum crystal formations.

‘With its great curved discs, intersections and cantilevered angles, the museum is a totality, at once architectural, spatial and sensory,’ the architect writes. And at 33,618 sq m, it is also substantial. Home to thousands of artefacts and documents, as well as specially commissioned site-specific pieces by artists from Qatar, France, Iraq and Syria, it is set to be the jewel in Doha’s museum district.

The museum is clad with faceted panels of fibre-reinforced concrete, 76,000 in all. These add another layer of geometric complexity to the discs, breaking up their surfaces and bringing a more intimate feel to the clusters of canopies and courtyards they create. Nouvel points out that the ‘contextual approach’ to the building’s design takes centuries of desert living experience and gives it a contemporary twist.

As if to underline the evolution of architectural form, the NMoQ’s spectacular roofscape stands alongside the restored Palace of Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani, once home to Qatar’s royal family and the location of the original National Museum. In Qatar, Ateliers Jean Nouvel has once again gone for scale, perhaps even trumping the mighty dome of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. As presumably intended, the NMoQ simultaneously evokes heritage, place and modernity.

As originally featured in the February 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*239)

See more from the Wallpaper* Design Awards here

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Ateliers Jean Nouvel website and the National Museum of Qatar website

As anyone familiar with Mondrian hotels knows, understatement is not the chain’s defining trait. From outside – and especially at night – the group’s latest property in Doha resembles something dreamed up by Hayao Miyazaki, and this hallucinogenic quality continues within.

The 270-key property comes with seven in-house eateries, including the craft beer and burgers spot Hudson Tavern, Japanese restaurant Morimoto and, more intriguingly, Walima, which promises a taste of Qatari cuisine.

Its most spectacular moments include a spiral lace-work staircase that touches down in the atrium like a Chinese dragon, a bold black-and-white indoor pool that appears to shelter under a titanic Tiffany lampshade and a mini-forest of soaring cloud trees in the almost all-white lounge.

Like the rooms – essays in opulent restraint that feature decorative arabesques and striking re-workings of the Persian miniature, and which exude a distinctly Scheherazade vibe – it is all the work of Marcel Wanders, Holland’s most playful designer. Here, he’s worked in collaboration with local consultants South West Architecture.

Rounding off the Mondrian’s Alice-meets-Arabian-Nights excess is the region’s largest ESPA spa, a psychedelic extravaganza of bubble-clad chambers that would do Verner Panton proud.

ADDRESS

West Bay Lagoon

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