Intertainment Interchange

American University of Sharjah, College of Architecture, art and Design, Sharjah

Project idea

As one drives northward from Sharjah on the E311 the skyline of an unfinished city rises out of the desert. Emirates City in Ajman is a dense cluster of towers in various stages of completion lodged in developmental limbo. The district’s banal, repetitive residential towers perched on top of multi-story parking garages are the architectural by-products of global real estate speculation and local building codes.

“These interrelated large-scale developments tried to emulate the earlier success of developments such as Downtown Dubai or Dubai Marina by way of borrowing, replicating, and amplifying such infrastructural typologies as gated communities, business districts, or waterfront developments. In keeping with this spirit, the master plan of Emirates City envisaged the construction of around seventy-two mostly residential towers bearing evocative names such as Paradise Lake Towers, Goldcrest Dreams, and Fortune Residency Tower. But work on the site commenced only a few months before the onset of the global financial crisis and was soon halted thereafter. A handful of towers were topped out but most were abandoned at half-height, while others barely rose above their foundations. None of the towers sport the advertised glamorous crowns of penthouses or iconic architectural features. The monotonous replication of the same template of podium-towers—bland apartment floors sitting on top of a multilevel parking structure—adds to their alien appearance and disconnection from the desert surroundings.”

This project has sought to provide new visions for urban-scale development by interrogating architectural typology in this region of the world and beyond whilst trying to uncover and better understand the social, economic and political forces that shape the architecture and the built environment of the rapidly growing cities of the UAE and the Gulf region. Looking at examples of architecture across time and around the world for strategies that might yield a more vibrant, dynamic and equitable city in Ajman and the Gulf Region, the project does not focus on the design of a single high-rise tower, but on the design of a tower type; specifically a type of building that when multiplied can create a city that is more than the sum of its parts. The projects operate at the scale of the building and the scale of the city simultaneously to test how we, as architects, can impact the territory beyond our designated building plot.

Project description

Location: Ajman, United Arab Emirates

Intertainment Interchange is primarily directed to use the major component that Ajman lacks to boost its own economy and to create a unique competitive identity that would align it with the more developed emirates, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, etc. This component is what we believe to be a well-rounded and interconnected Entertainment Industry. Ajman’s leisure landscape currently consists of a single shopping mall, a handful of hotels, and a park that does not suit the financial level of most of its residents. This project attempts to create a Bilbao effect in Ajman by creating an Entertainment City Megastructure that interrogates the synthesis of every possible leisure activity with residential programs with the hope of dissolving socio-economic strata amongst residents and visitors. This proposal provides an incentive for Ajman residents to not only stay in Ajman but serves as an attraction for residents of other Emirates and tourists worldwide.

It is important to note that the final projects/result due to the COVID-19 pandemic are presented in the form of a developer brochure that outlines the organization and amenities of each development in a unique way that transcends and illustrates architectural ideas and elements in a way readable and understandable to architects and non-architects alike.

Technical information

This project is based on research and design exercises that range from the scale of the city to the scale of a single dwelling unit. Defining what the site is at a variety of scales (local, regional and global) and categories (economy, housing, industry, infrastructure, environment, demography, and possible futures for the region.) We then carried out a case study analysis for a series of towers around another set of issues including porosity, circulation, connectivity, innovative structural and facade systems, parking, heterogeneity, green systems, hybrid use, and adaptability. Lastly, we incorporated the aforementioned research with design principles to create a cluster of prototypical towers that can either replace or co-exist with the current towers of Emirates City. We were in most cases able to completely redesign the towers and in others, we considered adapting/retrofitting the buildings that are there. These new towers are developed as building types, which when multiplied, create dynamic urbanism. With the research gathered we challenged ourselves to design towers that are resilient in terms of their social, environmental, and economic performance.

Co-authors

Gbadebo Giwa
Shereen Khafagy

Instructor: Jason Carlow