Sustainability: Tech places first in Dubai

By Lynn Deaton Contributing Writer, The Technique

A four-member student team led by Richard Dagenhart, a professor from the College of Architecture (CoA), put forth the winning proposal for the Dubai Forum on Sustainable Urban Development (DSUD), documenting a renovation of the Dubai Central Business District (CBD). CoA graduate students Shauna Achey, Scott D’Agostino, Chad Stacy and Jeffrey Williams traveled to Dubai in late March to present to the DSUD along with Dagenhart.

The proposal, which won first place, was specifically tailored to the inherent cultural values and lifestyle of the Arabic world.

View a Power Point of the winning presentation. (Adobe Acrobat file, 15 Meg)

“After getting the invitation from Dubai, I asked four students to join me for the project,” Dagenhart said. He had taught the students in previous classes and found that their “enthusiasm, hard work and interdisciplinary orientations” made them perfect candidates for such a complex project.

The downtown area of Dubai, a thriving economic center, is outdated and has fallen into disrepair. The DSUD feels Dubai’s architecture deserves special attention so it can keep up with the rest of the city’s urban development. The competition in Dubai is the first in a series of projects to rehabilitate business districts in cities around the world.

Dagenhart went to Dubai Nov. 2005 for a briefing, and the students worked on their competition entry over Christmas break. All five traveled to Dubai in March to present their plan, where the DSUD awarded them with a cash prize. Part of this prize was split among the students, while the rest will go to the College of Architecture to recruit more students to the urban design program and to endow research in the built environment.

“[Our] proposal attempted to weave tradition with the contemporary by interpreting traditional urban, landscape and building types for contemporary use and expression,” Dagenhart said. The team came up with four distinct icons they felt would propel a sense of place into a sustainable yet culturally identifiable future: greening, cooling, inhabiting and connecting.

“Greening came from the tradition of the oasis or in Arabic, ‘Waha,’ and [it was applied] to landscaped parking areas (parking gardens), street landscaping (an urban arboretum) and small recreational areas in the old city. ‘Cooling’ came from the ... wind towers that directed and cooled air in traditional houses. We created new wind towers as functioning public art to be located throughout the downtown. ‘Inhabiting’ was easy-it meant building new housing above shops, but we interpreted [inhabiting] to be around the traditional Islamic house with a central courtyard-as a common or family space. ‘Connecting’ had to do with improving the connection between the downtown area and the surroundings,” he said.

The competition included four other schools: the University of Pavia in Italy, the University of Aleppo in Syria, Tongji University in China and the University of South Australia in Adelaide. The jury consisted of an international panel: architects, landscape architects and planners from Canada, Australia, France, Malaysia, Egypt and Scotland debated over which team should receive the top prize.

Tech took first place and was followed by Pavia University from Italy. “Our solution was more complete, extending from design principles and strategies to detailed proposals,” Dagenhart said.

The student team focused on differences in the cultural traditions that architecture expresses in the Middle East. Simply put, the program of the built environment changes depending on the daily activities and culture of a region.

“Architecture and urbanism in the Middle East [are] varied across the entire area, but [have] cultural connections to the landscape, tribal traditions and Islam,” Dagenhart said. “....It is something that architects and urban designers struggle with every day in designing new projects.”

Dagenhart described the differences between the architectural styles of the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates.

“[The] front porch, front yard, living room-all are at the front of [the] house. [They] are all ceremonial spaces connecting the lives and stature of the family to the public world of the sidewalk, the street and the community,” Dagenhart said. A traditional house in Dubai, on the other hand, “is inward looking-to the central courtyard with its ‘bent’ entry to assure complete privacy of the interior of the house. The outside is bounded by an enclosing wall that is essentially windowless.”

“These two traditions have a lot to do with the differences in urban form. Of course, those traditions are changing and so is urban form in Atlanta and in Dubai,” Dagenhart said. “Being an architect and urban designer today means we have to try to understand tradition and the contemporary world and try to weave those together in some way that is, perhaps, meaningful, beautiful and pleasurable...and actually works for our day to day lives.”

The forum lasted three days. After presenting to the jury, the team found time to tour the downtown area and other famous architectural precedents, including the Emirates Mall, Ski Dubai, the Burj al Arab Hotel, the Palm and the World.

The team was honored for its achievement April 7 at a reception held by the CoA.