Al Hosn landscape Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
The urban landscape design reconnects Abu Dhabi’s significant heritage site surrounding Qasr Al Hosn Fort with the modern metropolis and its inhabitants by introducing a distinctive, locally rooted urban landscape aesthetic that bridges Emirati heritage, nature, and modern city life. The landscape design implements a set of initiatives that build on and specifically adapt to the site, climate and culture. Seamlessly integrated into the park-scape’s overall design language, they serve asboth sustainable urban planning tools and cultural anchors, developing and revitalising the area’s inherent qualities.
Freshwater is a scarce and precious resource in Abu Dhabi. The city’s name – Abu meaning ”father” and Dhabi meaning ”antelope” – origins from the legend of a group of hunters from the inland oasis, who pursued an antelope through the desert. The antelope led them to a spring in the sand, where they dug a well. The well made it possible to settle by the coast and the first structure of Qasr Al Hosn was erected to protect the well and the new settlement.
Building on the site’s history, water constitutes a natural focus point in the design of the landscape surrounding the fort, both for its cultural significance, as an integrated element of the overall design narrative, as a natural cooling element for the project’s microclimate, and to present solutions for minimising water consumption within a public park. The park-scape’s central zone integrates a series of water features that run from south to north, breaking out of the distinctive pavement’s irregular geometries as narrow creeks, canals, streams, and underground passages, which converge into a large water feature around Al Musalla.
Instead of landscaping a traditional urban park with lush vegetation that would require comprehensive irrigation and maintenance in a desert climate, the project aims to create a locally anchored park aesthetic characterised by the use of local materials and indigenous, hardy, sun-tolerant plants that require minimal irrigation. The concrete and sand surfaces of the open hardscape areas are combined with pocket spaces containing exclusively indigenous and culturally significant plants, forming a series of small oases distributed across the site, including Ghaf trees, date palms, and traditional kitchen and medicinal gardens. Rather than using energy-intensive desalinated seawater, the irrigation and surface water systems collect and distribute usable wastewater from the neighbourhood.
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