Doha: the Gulf’s open-air art gallery – Financial Times – Partner Content by DesignDoha

Doha: the Gulf’s open-air art galleryHow 100 pieces of public art and a score of sculptural buildings have turned the Qatari capital into one of the most aesthetically exciting cities in the worldDoha is a city with a skyline like no other. There are capitals around the world that have gone through a similarly accelerated change over the last century – from simple vernacular buildings to technologically astounding skyscrapers – but nowhere else has done this while compressing what feels almost like the whole history of architecture into a single century.What sets the city apart is its cosmopolitanism and extraordinary capacity for hybridisation: the way in which it has adapted Euro-American and Indian architectural styles to create its own vernaculars: Arabic Deco and Doha Classicism. “Doha’s skyline is a product of Qatar’s very sophisticated response to international architectural tendencies,” says Glenn Adamson, Artistic Director of the Design Doha Biennial “Not only from Europe but also, crucially, from India. Art deco, for example, came to the Middle East via India and, from the 1940s you start to see really ambitious deco buildings in the city.”

Source: Doha: the Gulf’s open-air art gallery – Financial Times – Partner Content by DesignDoha