Ecologies of scale: strategies for designing culturally and environmentally relevant neighborhoods in Doha, Qatar

AbstractIn the past decade, Qatar's population has experienced unprecedented growth. The country has nearly trebled in size, from 522,000 residents in 1997, to over 1,500,000 today. Of that total, 82% is said to live in the metropolitan area of Doha. As phenomenal as this growth may be, however, it is both environmentally and culturally unsustainable. Until now, the tendency has been to build in a speculative manner — a tendency to build all at once without full consideration of how to fill it. As a result, a sprawl of air-conditioned two and three story buildings dominates the landscape. The climatic constraints are real: while the weather is quite livable for half the year, the hottest four to six months of the year can be difficult to bear, with little rainfall to offset the extreme temperatures.Architects and urban designers address these issues in a manner that is unique to the design field, an approach that can be termed ‘design research’. It is both quantitative and qualitative in nature, and neces...