Beautiful City Making

​How do we make new pieces of city? How do we deal with contentious issues of density, height and characterisation? In the context of the current debate about beauty and the built environment, kicked off by James Brokenshire’s Commission “to champion beautiful buildings as an integral part of the drive to build the homes communities”, a recent visit to the Middle East raised some interesting issues.

Contemporary views on city-making have been largely influenced by two key texts, the Death and Life of Great American Cities and Collage City by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter. These two reactions to the ‘continuous void’ of the Modernist tendency have led to the contemporary interest in placemaking, to the idea of buildings as containers of external space often created by a comforting bricolage of styles and shapes designed to generate the diversity and liveliness that was so lacking in monocultural modernism.
 
Masterplans once were a recipe for repetition, whether the Bedford Estate (all Georgian), Belgravia (all Regency) or Becontree at Dagenham (all semi-detached suburban), but today they are expected to include a veritable zoo of architects to deliver the required variety. This can be seen in such disparate schemes as Poundbury in Dorset where architectural styles range from the rural cottage to the Victorian town hall and King’s Cross where it is unusual for any architect to design more than one building on the 73 ha site.
 
In that light, it is instructive to study the work for Mshereib Downtown Doha by Allies and Morrison, the master planners of Kings Cross. Mshereib is a development of some 35 acres in the centre of the Qatari capital. Although not yet occupied it exudes a sense of place with streets and squares given coherence through the “architectural voice” set by Allies and Morrison and the collaboration of the team of architects made up of Squire and Partners, Michel Mossessian, John McAslan, David Adjaye, Gensler and Eric Parry.
 
The genesis of the project was the desire of the ruler’s wife  - Sheikha Moza - to reverse the exodus of middle-class Qatari families to suburban areas which was fast depopulating the central areas of the city. The Sheikha set up a research project to set the brief for the redevelopment of the heart of Doha, close to the Royal Palace, based on the ideas of leading Islamic scholars and urbanists from around the world. The aim was to create a mixed-use neighbourhood that would include government offices, a retail centre. residential - houses and apartments - as well as hotels and leisure facilities.
 
The result of the scholars’ research was a set of guiding principles for the development - continuity with the past, present and future by using timeless motifs and techniques; create harmony and cohesion with a common language; a city where buildings are not seen as objects but part of the ‘urban clay’ from which spaces and forms are carved; that includes a sense of community; an environment with pedestrian priority; to create shade, minimise heat gains and harness the natural forces of the sun and wind and to deliver a new architectural language, rich in reference and strong in resonance that can be understood by all.
 
Although I visited Mshreib while the contractors were still tidying up, it felt like a mature and comfortable place. The streets were well proportioned, there is a balance between pedestrian and vehicular space; there is a variety of building heights that address the surrounding city and the materials are selected from a limited palette, all relating to the local pale sandstone that characterises the region.
 
The principles on which Mshreib is built - the seven ‘commandments’, the design codes covering scale, materials,  sustainability and placemaking - have delivered a convincing new quarter of the Qatari capital. It is a process worthy of consideration by Brokenshire and his Commissioners, not just for single ownership masterplans, but also for local pans so that areas of multiple ownership can be coordinated to make beautiful places.