Sacred Space: Islamic Architecture 2.0

July 1, 2011 | Illume Magazine

Maryam Eskandari interview with ILLUME Magazine


How did you become interested in architecture and why is it important?

I was introduced to architecture through my paternal grandfather. Each summer I would spend time with him in Iran, and got acquainted with the world of construction and architecture. He started off with a few lessons of drawing the living room, gradually we moved towards outdoors and by the end of the summer, he had me designing and I help him redo the interior of his house. That summer I was 15 years old and I knew I wanted to be an architect.

read more of the interview at ILLUME

Gehry Design Plays Fanfare for the Common Man

published in NY Times | By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

MIAMI BEACH — Can an architect save classical music? That seems to be what Michael Tilson Thomas, the artistic director of the New World Symphony, was counting on when he hired Frank Gehry to design him a new music center. Like others running classical music institutions today, Mr. Thomas is struggling to connect to a younger audience. The 81-year-old Mr. Gehry, who used to baby-sit for Mr. Thomas, 66, when both were living in Los Angeles, built his reputation as an architect with a knack for tapping into the popular imagination.

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Redesigning Mecca

November 18, 2010 | Maryam Eskandari

Featured in New York's Elan Magazine

This last week, roughly between two to four million Muslims were honorary guests at the “House of the Divine” to fulfill a spiritual cleansing. Millions of people come each year to visit this architectural wonder, built by the father of the three monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They get to witness the foundation that Abraham laid, in order to build his Ummah or the society of the “Abrahamic Faiths.” This year Muslims visited the Ka’aba, before it goes under heavy renovation by two of Britain’s “starchitects”: Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid.

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The Green Mosque

November 2, 2o10 | Maryam Eskandari

Featured in New York's Elan Magazine

Last week, the Chicago based nonprofit organization, Faith in Place, announced its winner for “Building: Problem or Solution?” competition. 26 design firms, representing 11 states, and six countries participated. Of which, the winner for this year was a team of four young Muslims, from Pasadena, California whose winning entry was the Sustainable Green Mosque. The Sustainable Green Mosque played on the notion of weaving the sustainability concept, along with the traditional mosque elements, into a modern urban context.

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Sand Dunes of China

Oct 10, 2010| Maryam Eskandari

featured in New York's Elan Magazine

This year, Aladdin and his 1001 night’s stories somehow ended up looking for the genie’s lamp in the heart of one of the most architecturally congested cities of the world, Shanghai. Unless, you where busy trying to get your three wishes, you know that this summer was one of the most hyper active summers, where the whole world got together. Despite the fact that Hollywood tried to do us a favor and take us to Iran, with the Prince of Persia, to Abu Dhabi with Sex and the City or the whole world watching South Africa for the World Cup; China just decided to bring the whole world to its back yard with the World Expo. Of which, United Arab Emirates (UAE) audaciously gave a big pile of sand to be displayed.

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Move over Dubai, Saudi is Back

March 25, 2010 | Maryam Eskandari

Somewhere in the heat of the desert, the kings and princes of Saudi are singing to themselves “ if you can do anything I can do better, I can do anything better than you…” obviously in Arabic to be exact and pointing the finger at Dubai. Earlier this year, it became official that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has signed a new contract with Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture. Four years ago, both Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill where former employees of Skidmore Owing and Merrill Architects (SOM); and while working for SOM they designed the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It seems that Saudi Arabia knows who to call and does not really have to go far when searching for the best of the best in architects.

Even though Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture have yet to complete and sign the contract with Saudi Arabia all the excitement and hype has been circulating around them. They have yet to confirm any reports regarding this project, however, all this hype got me thinking, that as architects, we definitely owe it to the Middle East to allow us to become “Stararchitects”. Yes, it true that way back in the 8th century when the Middle East was being developed and re-developed, the tallest “towers” where the minarets, and the architects were not even given any credit. However, with the extreme financial support that comes out of these wealthy countries, allows the architects to push boundaries in both technology and design. And thanks to the Middle East, every architect has a voluptuous budget to play with and the potential to design anything that they aspire without a budget constraint. With such designs, young firms are immediately put on the map and other potential project follow.

The Chicago based architects of Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill were selected by the developing company, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding Company to build the Kingdom Tower skyscraper in Jeddeh, Saudi Arabia which has been proposed to be reach over a height of one mile or 3,281 feet (1,600m) and is to house a hotel, offices and high end residential. While the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, designed by Skidmore Owing and Merrill, which was recently opened on Jan 4, stands at 2,717 feet tall and is currently the tallest building in the world.

Let me put this in perspective for you, the newly built City Center in Las Vegas was a combination of six architects, five building and cost about $8billion. A “simple” project such as the Kingdom Tower can help the architecture economical crises out, and has the potential to perhaps house some of the young graduates to have the opportunity to work on a grand scale project and dream the same dreams that Smith and Gill once had. I mean, when one thinks about what the possibilities of a budget such as $10 billion dollars has the potential of doing, besides rebuilding Haiti, is phenomenal. All I can think about is what kind of design I would create that would resonate in the desert and would be worth $10 billion. I think the pressure is on for Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture and I have yet to figure out if I would want to be in their shoes with a project like this, or bail.

Breaking Grounds

Feb 12, 2010 | Horace Brockington

Architecture informs us about what is happening in our lived environment at a historical moment. In our understanding of architecture we are led by three fundamentals: permanence, distinction, and recognition. Architecture can help reshape our very existence. Buildings symbolically represent an attitude about what is taking place inside. They have certain qualities that can evoke a strong image in an observer; they can be inviting or repelling; they really talk but using a different type of language and a different type of grammar. They have the capacity to unleash feelings, trigger emotional reactions, feed the memory, and stimulate the imagination of the public. While the aesthetic qualities of a building are artistically acclaimed for a complete appreciation, one must go beyond the visual appearance, and examine meaning and content. The inherent meaning of architecture can stand for the representation of place and/or the representation of the people occupying it. Buildings have physical variables that carry symbolic meanings that can impart information, and enhance national and political legibility in a sense that is easy to read.

Nowhere does the role of architecture have such a critical importance as it does in the changing social and cultural transitions now going on in the Middle East. It informs us of the inner life, activities, and social conceptions of those who live and use the environment, as well as how that culture is perceived and understood from within or outside that society. These structures carry with them different meanings to the public, both local and foreign.

The early phase of Modernism promised a sense of political engagement with its call for broad societal change as a fundamental part of architectural practices. Modernist architects aimed to create “universal spaces that would provide opportunity and freedom for everyone.” However, mainstream Modernism as represented by the International Style was eventually viewed as disconnected from the everyday social world. Modernist architecture re-emerged in the 1960s as urban renewal only to be rejected because of contradictions between the goal of social change and those of the market capitalism. The end of Modernism brought with it the end of the “political project” in architecture. Postmodernism introduced a series of variants to replace the Modernist agenda, opening up a place within which to question and debate its inherent intentions. A new utopianism began to emerge that questioned the construction and representation of self and the other. Both Modernity and Postmodernity failed to deliver on their respective promises. By the start of the 21st century it is apparent that we are again on the verge of something new, which is evident in the contrasts of new architecture models in the present-day Middle East.

Recent Middle Eastern architecture addresses complex interactions of past and present, critical geography discourse, and regionalist politics. Postcolonialism, multiculturalism, and globalism have fostered new dialects in the architectural process with much of the concern centered on “Technism vs. Traditionalism” creating a conflict between Traditionalism and the postcritical in the Muslim world. In the Middle East, culture has long been socially and aesthetically informed by constructs that serve political ends that bring into question issues related to identity. Thus, the unique political, cultural geographical position of the Middle East provides for a unique basis for architectural and urban development experimentation where various “isms” are reflective of the compounded meaning and identity in a changing Middle East.

Middle East architecture after many years of being defined by a singular identity is posed to become one of the most active regions for new architecture at the start of the 21st century. In cities such as Cairo, Dubai, and Kuwait, new structures continue changing the skyscape. Dubai is filled with project fostered by the Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC), including Qasr Al Sarab, Desert resort constructed with pioneering engineering methods on the sand dunes of Abu Dhabi’s Liwa Desert, Saadiyat Island, the Louvre Abu St Regis Hotel and residences, Guggenheim Dubai Saadiyat Beach Golf Club, Al batten Wharf, Adbu Dhabi Golf Club, Eastern Mangroves, and Angsana Resort and Spa. Unique complex of residential retail, marina, resort and conference facilities has been designed to reflect the unique natural mangrove setting which will transform Dubai into a new metropolis. Such efforts are countered by a group of younger architects living in the Middle East such as the Atkins group, based in Bahrain. They have transferred the terrain of the Middle East and India with projects such Bombey Dyeing in India, Nomas Towers in Bahrain, Al Sharq and Mahboula Towers in Kuwait.

There is now a more pragmatic approach to architecture. The political remains a subtext to the design concepts. In this new architecture in both varied and codified forms there is a type of multiculturalism that embraces global cultural integration. In this new architecture layers of politics, culture, and economics are intertwined that speak to the traditional methods and design norms, but equally acknowledge and respect how people interact in their environment, as well as the potential of new computer-assisted practices and new materials. Lacking a unifying agenda, new Middle Eastern architecture is posed for the possibility of change and innovation.

There has been a surge in the construction of tourist and cultural facilities along the shaping the skyline and waterfront of the Middle East. In contrast, there has been a rise on the number of projects that are informed by local traditions, many of which are grounded in Islamic culture. Recent Middle Eastern architecture is thus a collective of postmodernism, historical-revivalism, and regionalism. The impact of many of the planned and ongoing construction projects in the region affords a dynamic moment to consider the ongoing confrontations of deep traditions with rapid modernization. This discourse centers on the dialectic relationships between tradition and modernity, the contemporary and the historic, which extend beyond designing the high-tech and the environmentally friendly, the very nature of Islamic cultural identity. While some understand the need to retain a certain ethnic/local tone to the region, other stress the need for the Middle Eastern culture to embrace globalism, many of who question the very need to refer to cultural or religious symbolism in architecture, which is a prime element of traditional Middle Eastern architecture. The very nature of global architecture designs finds itself up against community design and public-interest architecture.

Today, connecting potentials of globalization and regionalism embraces the geographical contexts that were once defined as the “other.” Yet, this has led to new tensions between difference and identity, West and “other,” center and periphery. In order to get hold of a more subtle understanding of globalization, we need to look closer to “other” geographies, to develop new epistemological categories and critical strategies to designed space. Despite the impact of globalized architecture on the Middle East, the cultural politics of the region will continue to have influence on the economy, local development, architecture, urbanism of the region, and the architectural discipline for the next decade.

The Rawdhat Residential Buildings

Feb. 6, 2010 | Maryam Eskandari

In the heart of the Middle East, unlike its neighboring cities, Abu Dhabi, UAE is a booming economy. Among the latest project of the city is the bundle of Rawdhat Developments. In search of alternatives to ensure the individuality of every single lot, the project was developed following all standards and guidelines for Rawdhat Abu Dhabi, an urban district that shares attitudes, sustainable living and an atmosphere of opulence, comfort and tranquility.

Two very modern buildings, are connected to each other with a solid clear mass, breaking the towering vertical lines. 90 residential units are within each tower, from 1-3 bedrooms with living area from 70-182 sq. meters in order to accommodate various prospective families.

The apartments are to open in March of 2012.

Abu Dhabi reveals NEW golf clubhouse

Frank Gehry-designed clubhouse for a golf course in Abu Dhabi have been revealed.

The Saadiyat Beach Golf Course has been designed by South African Gary Player and is being developed by the Abu Dhabi-based Tourism Development & Investment Company.

Covering 18,000sq m, the clubhouse will include a boutique hotel with 26 deluxe rooms as well as two restaurants, a spa and a golf shop.

Gehry said: “We are just at the beginning of the detailed design of the clubhouse and are very pleased with the progress thus far. The design is intended to be an ephemeral mirage floating above the greens.”

New Tower Takes Shape on Columbia Campus

October 13, 2009 | ROBIN POGREBIN

Few sites have proved as challenging for the architect José Rafael Moneo as his latest, a $200 million interdisciplinary science building at Broadway and West 120th Street.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/arts/design/13moneo.html