AL KHUFOOS STREETSCAPE

Activity Corridor

The theme of the Activity Corridor is a mix between healthy community and festive. A cycle track is planned for this area, and the wide linear space provides an opportunity to locate this facility as part of a pleasant and verdant environment, with a range of health related activities to serve the cyclists as well as pedestrians from the nearby houses.

Activity Corridor

The space is a festive area, with small artscape features: Tree like Shading Structure and Red trunk Light Sculptures marking the alignment of the linear space, and distinctive shading patterns. Within the park itself will be the mini fitness hubs, green spaces and sitting out areas.

Festival Walk and Vortices Structure

The landscaping will create the feeling of a spacious public realm space where people can linger and sit, while the Vortices metal structures will reinforce the festive feel of the area. Formal planting rows, in the form of palms, will be created along the road-side.

Festival Walk

The landscaping of the Festival Walk should convey an open, festive atmosphere. The design concept will be to expose the mixed-use frontages of the Aspire Park development and to integrate the public realm with this development and its service road.

Oasis in Al Khufoos Heritage Quarter

Planting is a medium to express different spaces in the public realm, the oasis at the Heritage Quarter, are characterized by dense planting of palm trees. Horizontal layering is achieved by specifying palms of various ages and heights. Micro-grading of Oasis soil should be utilized to retain water and increase soil depth.

Heritage Quarter

The landscaping proposals for Heritage Quarter is to create a local cultural ‘islet’ along Al Khufoos Street, provide an attractive setting for the historical buildings so that they stand out in the streetscape, creating a small piazza distinctively designed in the form of carpet paving that can merge with the buildings in terms of colour and texture, thus reinforcing its identity and sense of place.

Heritage Quarter

To maximize the opportunity for people to appreciate the site by providing seating in the public realm under the trees, as well as creating subtle but welcoming, attractive night-time lighting so that people can comfortably and safely linger in the area, sitting out in full view of the historical site.

Intermediate Area

There are generally two types of planters: local broad-leaf trees and palms. Wherever possible landscaping clumps such as the oases are designed to act as drainage buffers in times of flood.

Park Gateway

The Park Gateway area will be transformed into a bustling 24-hour activity space. To celebrate such a transformation, iconic structures comprise assembled polygons of various heights, with the fabric on these shapes vary through time can provide a colourful, festive image to the urban space near to the park entrance.

Park Gateway

The entrance to the park can be initially marked by a circle sculpture inserted into the paving. This circle can be the start point of the ‘pulse motif’ expressed in the paving to proceed along the southern frontage of Al Khufoos Street.

Al Khufoos Street provides a strategically important link from the prestigious Furosiya Street in the west, a major thoroughfare with an array of important developments such as Doha Zoo, Aspire Park and the Qatar Racing and Equestrian Clubto the centre of Doha in the east. The upgrading of Al Khufoos Street into an Urban Arterial- Major road will therefore allow people to travel between the more central parts of Doha and its western suburbs. Although to be upgraded into a wider Urban Arterial Road, Al Khufoos Street retains relatively narrow, it is therefore important to optimize the design of landscape and artscape features so that they accurately reflect the scale and nature of the road corridor and its surroundings and promote a sense of place and street quality to Al Khufoos.

This 2.5 Km streetscape ties together a residential district, commercial and arts zone, and heritage assets. By maximizing the available area for climate-appropriate planting and active recreation programming, the project attempts to shift typical urban lifestyles back into the outdoor public realm. Paving, custom furniture, and public art draw inspiration from Islamic geometric motifs and traditional textile design. The planting design capture local ecologies of waadi and palm oasis, to create a seasonally vibrant and water-saving green strategy.

Al Khufoos Street corridor shows four sections with different identities, based on the nature of surrounding land uses, but retaining key unifying themes of design, namely:
• The overall pulse motif as expressed through paving and lighting; It is the main linear artscape feature which provides connectivity to the whole of the road corridor. It is the symbolic spine of Al Khufoos and its main unifying motif;
• The allocation of health/community spaces (mini fitness hubs, sitting our areas etc) set out in modular form;
• Active linear activities such as the cycle path, jogging and walking trails or activity plazas. To bring distinctiveness, these can interplay with perpendicular forms of paving design and modular forms of expression such as sitting out areas;
• Festivity nodes at major landmarks, such as junctions, parks or key frontages, and expressed by discreet but distinctive artscape features which can sometime double up as shading structures or other functional community uses. The four areas will be connected with each other with under an unifying overall design strategy.

Client

Qatar City Public Works Authority

Collaborators

CDM Smith Inc., EUASIA Ltd.

Status

In Construction

TYPE

Streetscape, Mixed Use

Size

2.5 km

LOCATION

Doha, Qatar

YEAR

2015 - Current