Al Hosn master plan Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
The Qasr Al Hosn Fort in central Abu Dhabi is the city’s oldest and most important building. Originally built in 1760 as a watchtower to protect only the freshwater well on Abu Dhabi island and later extended into a palace, it literally constitutes the birthplace of the modern metropolis of Abu Dhabi. The aim of the transformation master plan is to reinstate the Fort as the cultural heart of the city with a new 140,000 m2 cultural park-scape.
As such, the master plan also comprises conservation of the site surrounding the historical building and the Cultural Foundation, a 1980’s Grade ‘A’ listed cultural centre of Bauhaus origins. Introducing a new type of locally rooted urban landscape, the project combines modernity alongside the Emirate’s maritime and desert heritage in a coherent narrative that communicates between the site’s two contrasting buildings. The project was developed in alignment with the Estidama Pearl Rating System.
Reintroducing the coastal desert landscape
The project emphasises this duality by dividing the site diagonally into two contrasting landscapes. A plain, soft and open desert landscape around the Fort reinstates the building as a free-standing landmark on sand, as it was before the modern city rapidly sprang up. A paved and programmed area with intensified planting surrounds the Cultural Foundation, combining the desert landscape with the modern city grid structure.
The design links the landscapes of the desert with those of the city to emphasise the significance of the relationships between traditional Emirati culture, the nature of Abu Dhabi island and the modern metropolitan identity. The park-scape thus serves to communicate the sites’ immense heritage value and reconnect it with the city and its inhabitants by adding new cultural, social and recreational functions.
The two landscapes are connected by a public urban space emerging from formations of cracks and irregular geometric shapes. Together, they create an architectural interpretation of Abu Dhabi Island’s coastal desert landscape of sandbars, mangroves, and the salt flats’ distinctive mud-crack patterns. These shapes communicate the transition between the natural sand and the urban pavement and formulate a recognisable and scalable narrative rooted in the original landscape.
Both landscape and building
The geometries of the urban landscape intentionally land somewhere between building and landscape, with the tone of the concrete matching the colour of the natural sand. Along the transitional zone, the landscape changes from horizontal planes to slanting surfaces that gradually rise into actual buildings for Food & Beverage facilities, ancillary functions, and culminating in the Al Musalla prayer hall at the northern corner of the site. All components, from sitting bollards, surface patterns, lighting concept and building volumes to the interior’s floor plans, doorways and furnishings, are thus subtly integrated into the overall urban landscape topography and merge with the park to be experienced as natural landscape elements, emphasising the Fort and the Cultural Foundation as the main visual anchors.
Furthermore, the project introduces a meaningful flow through the city by interweaving paths across the site with the adjacent functions and the wider urban fabric, thereby promoting pedestrianism and acting as a dynamo for public life. This is supported by the park’s vegetation, which provides shade along the pathways and pocket spaces, as well as large overhangs created by the landscape's slanting surfaces forming the Food & Beverage buildings along the water feature, which support a comfortable climate for outdoor activities independent from artificial air-conditioning.
Selected references
