Site Analysis 3

Here I took a closer look at the site, mapping out exactly where the existing structures are as well as the semi-effaced roads. Judging by historical aerial photography, the roads are left to the devices of the sand, reappearing and disappearing between each year's shots. 'Permanent' roads are marked in a heavier gray than off-road paths. While it is difficult to tell, it seems as though most buildings are occupied as the makeshift paths leading to them remain intact year after year. There is one exception, marked in a lighter gray on the map below.

Based on my map, I again adjusted the effective build area, coming to a smaller total of 1.375 million sq. ft., making this area slightly smaller than Souq Waqif. I also designated a potential mosque site in green, placing it along the road and near to the existing upper-class housing to attempt to draw laborers, who live nearby, as well as upper-class Dohans to the site.

Site Analysis 2

This a diagram of the forces at work on the site at the immediate contextual scale as well as small city-scale diagram depicting its relationship to two of the major public/commercial sites in the city.

In the larger diagram, the site is depicted in orange, the al-Saad parking lots in gray (where the laborers play cricket every Friday), al-Saad stadium itself in green, perimeter walls of immediately adjacent ex-pat/upper class housing complexes in teal, and the traffic on al-Waab Street in purple. Finally, the presumed major entry point to the site for a walking laborer is shown with the dashed orange arrow.

In the bottom corner is a small diagram delineating the spatial relationship of the site to Villagio mall to the southwest and Souq Waqif to the northeast. The site is in the approximate middle of the path between the two.

Site Analysis 1

A comparison of the scale of my selected site and the other two Dohan souqs I examined, Souqs Waqif and Najada. Then, taking into account the existing buildings and throughways that existed up until a couple of years ago, I reduced that footprint to understand what constitutes the effective potential building area.

Annotated Bibliography

This has been sitting around for a while, but wasn't posted previously, so here it is. It's a little out of date by now, though.

Precedent #3: Mosque/Market Typology

While I was told that there existed examples of mosques and markets quite literally on top of one another, I could not find examples that closely integrated. However, below are two prominent examples of mosque/market combinations that are much more directly juxtaposed than Souq Najada. This precedent is simply to make the argument for the possibility of a closer integration of the souq and the mosque in this project as it moves forward.

Site/Program Mapping

Having chosen my site, I began to take a look at how the program I have been leaning towards will fit with the location. As a reminder, I had first looked at the market/souq type, geared specifically towards the migrant workers' needs and economic means. A quick study of the locations of laborer housing and existing souqs was a primary generator for choosing my current site.

In conjunction with the souq type, I also was leaning towards a public social (potentially religious) space. As my site is directly adjacent to a parking lot that is used by workers for weekend cricket tournaments, I was leaning heavily towards the addition of a mosque rather than a public activity space (these choices were delineated in Methodology 3).

Thus, the below map of mosque locations overlaid on the previous mappings to understand whether this addition might be suitable for the location:

While this had initially been intended as a more site specific map, I found it interesting that the mosque locations favored the trend line I had identified in my first mapping. I included a 5-minute/quarter-mile walking radius in light green (as well as a circle with a radius half that for summer) to get an idea of how these mosques might work within their neighborhoods. There are very few mosques in the southeastern half of the city, in some parts of the city averaging less than one mosque per super-block. The nearest one to my site is within what is the equivalent of a gated community, so I question how easy it would be for workers to gain access to. Thus, I think a mosque is an appropriate programmatic addition to this project.

Precedent #2: Souq Najada

Similar to (and across the street from) Souq Waqif, this souq exhibits an interesting combination of mosque and market within one complex. This is a programmatic combination that I will be looking into further in the next few days as I try to understand the shape that my program will be begin to take. Additionally, the wind tower is of interest environmentally, though this particular example has unfortunately been sealed off and conditioned now.

Site Selection

Following the site criteria outlined in the previous post, two sites come to the fore that are easily reached on foot from a migrant workers' housing area, are on/near the median line, and would make any project built there quite visible. Both are located on the northeastern end of al-Waab Street, the majority of which defines the median line.

Al-Waab St is a very wide arterial street added to Doha's streetscape to act as a processional axis during the 2006 Asian Games. Al-Waab terminates at the Aspire Sports Complex, which also includes a large park and a mall, the Villagio, both in blue as major public areas in the initial mapping. The street is defined by its unique streetlights, specifically designed to highlight the street literally and figuratively for the Asian Games.

Due to the difficulty (if not danger to life and limb) in crossing al-Waab Street due to heavy vehicular use, I stuck to sites on the southern side, near to the workers' housing area.





Two potential sites are mapped here, one much larger site and a second smaller site broken into two corner lots a block farther down al-Waab. The sites are highlighted in light blue (Villagio and Aspire Park are in the darker tones).

 The first site is located at the very end of al-Waab Street, where it turns into the previously existing street fabric. There is existing construction on site that may be problematic for further development.

It is a very large site with the added bonus of being the closer of the two to the migrant workers' housing. Also, as can be seen from the map above, the site is located next to a major Friday worker's area- in this case, the parking lot of Doha's premier football (soccer) club's stadium, weekly used for round-robin cricket tournaments (zoom in to the picture below).

 

The second site is much smaller, and is about a block longer walk from the workers' housing, but has the advantage of two corner lots that may be able to be developed in tandem.

While the two corner lots could make for an interesting condition to work with, the volume of traffic in the intervening street (zoom into aerial at right) may nullify any benefit, especially if the program is leaning towards a pedestrian emphasis.




While the two sites have their respective benefits, the first seems to me to be pretty obviously the more attractive one to work with, both for reasons of scale and proximity to housing and a Friday area. Existing development may have progressed quite a bit since this aerial was taken, so a back up probably isn't a bad idea.

Understanding Site: Worker's Housing

While the previous map seems to suggest the city is split a little too cleanly between an upper-class north and a working-class south, I next sought to map exactly where, as best I could discern, the migrant laborers lived.

While the area of the city south of the 'median line' plotted in the last mapping does contain all of the laborers' housing, much of the area is filled with gated villa communities. The majority of the migrant workers live off of this map to the southwest in a large complex known as the Industrial Zone. The map below shows a street-adjusted median and also includes the most heavily populated Friday worker's areas defined in the previous map.

In looking for a site, I sought three main qualities- first, that it be within walking distance to at least one of the worker's housing areas; second, that it be within reasonably close proximity to the median line to potentially draw non-laborers to the site; and thirdly, in a similar vein to the second, that it be a more or less visible site, likely located on a major road, rather than tucked within a neighborhood. This can help to attract people, whether laborers or not, to the site from cars or from greater distances.

On a different note, Souq Najada (in blue) was also included on this map (zoom into the crook in the median line). This is because while it is used by tourists, albeit to a lesser extent than neighboring Souq Waqif, it is more open to workers. There may still be some problems with allowing workers in on Fridays, though this is much more difficult to enforce due to the souq's inclusion of a mosque within the complex. Here migrant workers and Qataris alike will go to pray if nearby at any given prayer time. So as not to interfere with the souq's success among the laborers, I will likley place my project farther out in the city, in the intermediate workers' housing area. Sites on this boulevard, al-Waab St will be explored shortly.

Precedent #1: Souq Waqif

A first pass at analyzing Souq Waqif as the first in the 'market' type. Sections look at environmental conditions and/or mediation as well as use to a lesser extent.

Mapping : Major Public Spaces & Friday Worker's Areas

 Major public areas such as parks, malls, souqs, and mosques center around the Corniche while laborers appropriate areas around Grand Hamad Street and Souq Najada- directly adjacent to major tourist or 'family' areas.

Zooming out, there seems to be a trend within the habitation of the city which sees wealthier Qataris, expats, and diplomats becoming more prevalent as one moves north towards West Bay while worker's areas and housing becomes more common as one moves south towards the industrial zone. A red meridian is drawn largely along Al Waab Street that seems to suggest the turning point of this trend.

Revised Methodology

 

Moving forward, I am now shifting towards precedent studies and mappings. Based on the information gleaned from these, I will be able to more intelligently pick my site and develop the program of my proposal.

Proposal : Public Space for Migrant Workers in Doha

Based on my own experience and backed up, albeit in a more dramatic fashion, by news articles* such as Peter Townson's 'Souq shock' piece for the Gulf Times, there is a noticeable absence of Doha's majority class of migrant workers in public spaces around the city. Accepting that a single urban intervention, whether large or small, likely will not change the structure of a society simply through the act of its creation, I propose to create a public urban space that fulfills the needs of migrant workers in Doha for a societally acceptable zone of leisure activity that also addresses environmental conditions as well as the unique economic and urban conditions specific to the labor class. While not explicitly engaging in either polemical or utopian debates by attempting to integrate the wealthiest and poorest members of Qatari society in one stroke, I believe that the selection of a site for the proposal outlined below will allow me to address the disparity between classes in the occupation of social space in at least an oblique or associative manner.

In focusing on the migrant worker class in Doha, three main issues emerge immediately that will inform the programmatic and architectural development of the project as it moves forward- economics, the social (here not synonymous with sociopolitical) element, and climate. The first two are indicative of the labor class- as migrant workers, the majority are in Doha to earn higher wages than was possible in their home countries, with the intent of sending the majority of their earnings back home to their families. As such, there is little disposable income left for these men and women to spend beyond necessities of living (food or cell phone minutes, for example). Secondly, there is a current trend of appropriating public areas such as parking lots or specific sidewalks near banks or outside other public venues on Fridays (the laborers' day off) as a means for the labor population to socialize away from their housing blocks or places of work.

Workers congregating beneath the sculpture on Grand Hamad St. on a Friday.

 The last issue, that of climate, hardly needs explanation, though it is necessary to point out that, as it stands, with laborers largely barred from malls and other large-scale public leisure venues, their are few options for recreation on Friday afternoons in the summer months.

Taking these three issues into consideration, I am proposing to design an outdoor market and social area specifically for migrant laborers that takes full advantage of passive cooling methods such as shading and natural ventilation with the aim of creating a space that can be used year round. The market area will supply the workers with a venue to buy non-grocery necessities or less tourist-oriented items of interest, while a larger public social space such as a playing field or a mosque will meet the need for a large space for the workers to congregate and socialize without blocking whole blocks of sidewalk or appropriating whole parking lots or small green spaces. Finally, by taking advantage of passive cooling techniques, this project can address the need of the labor class for a summertime social venue while setting an example for the city as sustainable initiatives gain momentum.

  
*Note: The article cited above and similar sources are reporting from 2008. When I visited in 2010, there was a noticeable absence of laborers in the more tourist- or family-oriented souqs, though there were no violent altercations between workers and security.

Observations on the State of Public Space in Doha

The above image is a combination of a few of the major issues within the public realm that I have identified- A) physical accommodation, B) social accommodation, and C) climate.
A) physical accommodation- while the city's public areas are largely connected via the Corniche to go to them or to other spaces within the larger city, a car is required. The city is very much organized with the vehicle as the primary urban user over the pedestrian. Small sidewalks and roundabouts make it very difficult to move within the downtown area, while the increasing sprawl negates the pedestrian option as one moves away fro the center. Thus, above, the roundabout acts as the divider (possibly economically as well as physically) between the public spaces on either side.

B) social accommodation- the city's main forms of public space- souq, mall, and park are barred to migrant laborers on their only day off on Fridays, as these are considered 'family days' while on other days the laborers have little available time to utilize these spaces, if they could get to them. In the image above workers are at left, cut off from the basic mall section on the right both by the issue of the car as well as social norms, represented by the red crosswalk hands (there have been incidences of workers being prevented to cross to the same side of the street as public parks or souqs). The result is often that workers create public spaces out of underutilized areas such as the parking lot pictured above.

C) climate- barring workers from public spaces directly relates to issues of climate, especially in the summer- if these men and women are barred from most public air-conditioned places, it becomes somewhat hazardous to their health to be out in public on their days off for months at a time.

Methodology v1.5

This is more of a readjustment of my past methodology based on my recent shift in direction. I plan on doing a more significant overhaul sometime in the near future that will be more specific both as to what I am researching/doing and when. The emphasis here is on the interrelatedness of each of the divisions I've denoted within my thesis method- as I haven't yet gotten to the specifics of site and program, let alone design, these haven't been adjusted much.

Re-proposal

Henri Lefebvre writes in The Production of Space that
           "A social space cannot be adequately accounted for either by nature (climate, site) or by its previous history.... Mediations, and mediators, have to be taken into consideration: the acts of groups, factors within knowledge, within ideology, or within the domain of representations."

The design of public space at the urban scale requires one to address these 'mediators' as they act within space and upon each other (the objects and their relationships in Lefebvre's terms), resulting in a multiplicity of issues: spatial, functional, aesthetic, historical, social, economic, identity. I define this last element as a unique spatiotemporal object that conflates elements of the natural and social, with the potential to exert a specific guiding force on the creation of future public spaces. Identity is an agglomeration of these other contributing factors yet it can also act of its own accord- to make a somewhat simplistic analogy, a palazzo may be a wonderful addition to the public realm on paper, yet it is much more likely to be successful in a Mediterranean city than in Los Angeles. Conversely, it is possible to adjust or even reforge identity with new combinations of its contributing factors, to good or ill effect- for example, Pittsburgh's change in eliminating industrial infrastructure and creating Point Park.

Coming at my initial thesis from a broader angle, I propose to investigate the development of public space within Doha as it relates to its specific socio-cultural issues, such as the relationship between the car and the pedestrian, its climate, and recent local trends in urban development.  This will inevitably lead back to my initial interest in architecture as potential agent of social change, albeit from a wider and more comprehensive perspective as it pertains more directly to architecture rather than sociology, i.e., architecture as a potential influencer rather than as a means to enact social change.

Building upon precedent studies that emphasize particular qualities of Doha's identity such as Souq Waqif (socioeconomic), Al Bidda Park (environmental), and the current Musheireb development (social, environmental, urban), and taking into account the social directives the current leadership is taking to make Doha a more sustainable and accessible global city, I will develop my own design (or re-design) of a public space in Doha in response to my understanding of Doha's developing identity that reacts to or enters into a dialogue with Doha's environmental, architectural, and social contexts.

My initial thinking as of this moment is the redevelopment of Al Bidda Park to (correctly) utilize environmental conditions to create a usable public outdoor space on Doha's prime Corniche area, while entering into a dialogue with nearby Souq Waqif over their respective inclusion and exclusion of the migrant labor class. Obviously this is subject to revision if not outright change.

Making a Left Turn

At this point, this thesis is veering dangerously near to what will amount to at best a top-down authoritarian direction of social interaction in a society not my own. While I am still interested in the social ramifications of what it is I will be designing in the next 9 months or so, as it stands now, my research is less directed towards an architectural thesis than a sociology thesis. Having reached a similar conclusion to some advice given me recently, I am redirecting this thesis to address a need for usable public urban space within the developing city of Doha, in so doing still creating a larger scale urban space that still addresses issues of the pedestrian versus the car and the climate as well as obliquely hitting upon the social issues that I am interested in. In so doing, I think the thesis will become more directly architectural in nature, rather than veering into the polemics of social division in the built realm or a retread of a Modernist utopian architectural agenda.

Avoiding what was described as the Scylla and Charybdis of the polemic and the utopia, respectively.

 The former position is almost wholly undesirable to me- it is not my intent or desire to point fingers or create a bellicose architecture; similarly, it is not my desire to ignore the de facto social situation and in so doing blithely ignore the very people I am designing for. I hope that in taking this new direction, I will create a richer body of research that addresses a wider range of topics that will influence my thesis project, in so doing also leading to a freer, more interesting exploration of the myriad issues, not just the social, that are involved in the creation of successful urban space. I don't see this as in avoiding my original intent, or being an overhaul of my thesis, but rather as a redirection. Thoughts?

Methodology v1.0

The first iteration of how I will go about finishing this project by May 2011.

1 + 3 + 9

Architecture has the potential to be a catalyst for the greater integration of social classes in contemporary urban society.

+

The capitalist urban landscape is increasingly stratified along class lines with the rich, poor, and middle-class insidiously segregated from one another. The results of this stratification are on full display in cities such as Doha where by both custom and by law, the lower classes are kept out of areas of the city more heavily trafficked by the upper classes or tourists. Architecture alone cannot change this situation, but it can draw attention to and comment on social issues such as these.

+

Doha's class divisions are especially clear cut between the (very) wealthy upper class, the large skilled expatriate population, and the still larger population of unskilled migrant laborers. Doha is of particular interest as a case study not only due to the clarity of its class divisions, both socially and physically, but also for the added weight of what it means culturally to have a stratified class society in a largely Muslim city. A large-scale, pedestrian-oriented urban intervention has the potential to bring these groups together within one spatial zone. The emphasis on the pedestrian is important as it not only  reflects a current trend in the development of the city, but it also places all classes on more or less equal ground, as opposed to, for example, what a vehicular-accessible or -oriented space would do. Simply bringing both upper and lower class groups together in a space is noticeable and makes obvious the divisions imposed elsewhere in the city, such as at the Souq Waqif. But simply being undivided is not the extent of what this intervention can do; the opportunity for greater and more meaningful social commentary is something to be explored throughout this project's development. How can this space become at least as desirable to the upper classes as other exclusive spaces, yet still remain usable for migrant laborers? How can this space encourage classes to cohabitate a space, rather than self-segregate? The challenge becomes how to make this zone attractive and accessible to people of all classes simultaneously.

Greenwashing Formalism

Before the world economy stalled, there was an unbridled pursuit of the biggest, the tallest, the strangest form. With an assumed sense of responsibility, architects today are still creating formalist architecture (albeit in smaller numbers), just with a veneer of 'sustainability', resulting in a 'sustainable' ice hotel in Dubai (while proposed in 2007, as of July 2009, the project was still a go) and a 27-story 'sustainable' skyscraper... for one family in Mumbai.

Architecture Is...

            Architecture is the intentional definition of space by humans. The myriad ‘how’s’ and ‘why’s’ behind these interventions is what gives rise to the vast array of architectures found in the world today. Some see architecture as a purely artistic-intellectual pursuit, while for others it is the ever-evolving means of most effectively housing humankind and its endeavors. While neither answer is wrong, to present such a complex undertaking as architecture as either Art or service is reductive. In a way, architecture is the art of service in that the architect strives (or should strive) to define space in such a way that the experience of people using said space is manifestly enhanced or improved in some way over the 'norm'- this could entail an efficient organization and orientation of space or a thoughtful engagement of the body’s senses- even better would be both. An architecture that is beautiful but unusable by people is a largely worthless object; an architecture that is intuitively functional and sensibly organized is a machine in the most basic sense. Architecture combines elements of the object and the machine to become something greater than the sum of its constituent parts.

            But to discuss architecture in this way neglects an essential piece of its conceptual identity- Architecture is humankind’s means of relating to the world it inhabits simultaneously in the past, present, and future. Architecture abhors a vacuum; without people to inhabit it, without a physical site to ground it, and a greater psychological/geographical/historic context in which to place it, there is no Architecture. While synthesizing the functional demands and aesthetic desires of humanity, architecture fundamentally must relate to its context. To avoid getting to far off on a tangent, let me end this point by saying that at the very least, in the most literal and simplistic sense, architecture of a given place must relate to its physical environment- understanding and incorporating natural light or wind into a project serves both aesthetic and functional demands while fulfilling social-environmental needs as well.

            Today, more than ever it seems, architects have a social responsibility to the people who inhabit their architectures and the planet that their architectures inhabit. Let me be clear- architecture cannot save the world, but it can work to affect change on some level. Architecture has the ability to make bold and lasting statements, for good or ill, on environmental, sociopolitical, and economic issues. In this way, Architecture is humanity’s strongest and most lasting form of social commentary.
            I leave off here because it is partially this last idea that I will seek to understand and develop through my thesis research.

The Beginning...

This is my first stab at beginning to tease out what my thesis will become. After spending a semester in Doha, Qatar this past spring, I became interested in the implicit, or at times explicit, segregation of the city on the basis of social class. Having lived and experienced these divisions for a little over four months, I would like to specifically address the division of social space in Doha. These divisions exist at the self-imposed, interpersonal level, for example between myself and some of the maintenance workers at CMUQ, as well as at the urban scale, for instance in Souq Waqif. At this writing, I am interested in a larger-scale urban intervention that addresses issues not only of social class but also climate and the lack of (easy/plausible) pedestrian access to much of the downtown area. My vague and likely naïve initial goal is to mediate and/or make obvious the sometimes unnoticed divisions in the city.