DUBAI, United Arab Emirates

A LINK WITH ISLAMIC CULTURE

The guiding principle of this project is the relation of the place to its inhabitants, the children and families visiting Za’abeel Park.

The project aspires to be a leitmotif that brings the visitors to have an educational experience, deeply connected to Islamic culture.

When people walk toward the panoramic tower they are offered different directions to reach it, these imply the possibility of adventuring into an array of various paths.

As they journey along their chosen trail they will live through a combination of bents that will animate their walkway continuously. This context encourages the visitors to select their own direction, thereby allowing them to experience a personal way to live and enjoy the Park.

The project uncovers a strong link to the Islamic culture through the use of mosaics. Indeed, the use of mosaics in civil and religious buildings of Islamic culture have been used through centuries, developing a sophisticated language that characterizes these buildings.

This is the reason we find mosaics in buildings of Islamic culture in places very far from each other situated in three different continents: Asia, Europe end Africa. The virtuosity reached in the creation of mosaics in Islamic buildings, is unique and the key to understand this language can be found only using an artistic and mathematic approach. Analysing the structure of the mosaics with this Approach, Mathematicians in the last century discovered that there are 17 possible rules that govern the mosaics in the plane. As a result we can catalogue all the mosaics in 17 plane symmetry groups.

In fact it is interesting to notice that the artists, that used mosaics to decorate the Islamic buildings centuries Ago, have used all these rules and infinite variations. Mathematicians were able to demonstrate the 17 plane symmetry groups through mathematic functions that describe the non-Euclidean geometry. In the project these functions become visible through the sculptures that populate the landscape. These sculptures are decorated with mosaics that exhibit all the 17 plane symmetry groups, leaving their creation and consequently interpretation to the contemporaneous artists that will realize them.

The panoramic tower as well is thought like a three-dimensional mosaic. The main structure is designed with reinforced concrete walls that, starting on the vertex of the octagonal scheme, rise up bending themselves in the outward space.

The geometry that we obtain is symmetric, the reinforced concrete walls bending around vertical axis, open and close the geometry giving at the tower air permeability.

The symmetry and air permeability guarantee to the tower structure a good wind-force resistance and seismic behavior.

A different scheme is designed for the surface that covers the two storey podium for cultural and conference facilities. This surface in designed like a concrete perforated slab that draws a mosaic that rises from the grounds with reversals curvature. The excess of sun irradiation present in Dubai is reduced by the shadows obtained by this perforated mosaic. As a consequence the climate underneath the surface is improved giving also a considerable energy saving for the building where the cultural and conference facilities are. The lines that develop with reversals curvature, inspired by the architecture of Islamic tradition and Baroque architecture, become the main elements used in the design. The paths follow this inspiration of Islamic-baroque line drawing and develop in the landscape of the project. The principle that governs this scheme moves off from the mosaic and resonates a musical fugue. Once a main theme is established, this can then be varied and translated into an infinite set of variants subject to the counterpoint rules . Consequently like the melodies that develop from a Fugue, these will not be accidental, but will arrange into a structured complexity. From this angle, the design of the landscape took inspiration from a fugue by composer J.S. Bach, thus associating the lines of Islamic-baroque suggestion to the music voices and the structural steps of the surface that covers the two storey podium for cultural and conference facilities, to the harmony .

As in the civil or religious Islamic buildings in the south of Spain, water is used as a strong symbolic medium; in the project’s landscape design. water plays a central role. When the people walk toward the tower, in itself symbol and representation of the ascension to the skies , they are accompanied by the water. In fact the first fountain stands to symbolize the creation of life and starting from it, along the principal pathway , its waters are seen flowing all the way to reach the Panoramic tower. The water flowing exemplifies the law of nature and just as it happens for water, the people walking represent the human lives moving in harmony with the laws of nature.

However though the water flowing in the canal and the people who are walking along the pathways share a common destination in the direction of the tower, the latter will undergo a variety of twists, turns and intersection. This level of involvedness is once again a symbol that here represents the human pursuit for knowledge and truth. During this symbolic search the walkers move forward and adapt their “findings” as they have to deal with the road changes of direction, intersections or sudden bends.. While they walk along their chosen ways the people will also learn and appreciate the mosaics, an explicit manifestation of science and art, esthetics and history, thereby realizing that any great realization of mankind in all learning disciplines enclose great aspirations. The project being thus conceived with a strong tie to classical symbolism has the Tower rising from the waters; the conference room, the library and parking have consequently been located inside the building that joins to the tower in the landscape project. In conclusion this project as it has been thoroughly described in this section, took wide inspiration from the traditions of classical architecture, reinterpreting them by isolating and applying in a more contemporary style, their symbolic and conceptual values.

Europaconcorsi Beta

A LINK WITH ISLAMIC CULTURE