Doha State Hospital

Notes

The design won the RIBA competition for Doha’s first state hospital, and might have been the region’s first architectural project whose design principals included a woman. It was a large complex, in a desert site, praised for its attention to solar positioning and the use of reflective light to minimize interior temperatures.
For instance, as noted by Lockerbie, "the rooms were laid out on a double-loaded corridor system, were relatively deep and lit by light reflecting from the flanks of the projecting fins which were also designed to encourage through or cross-ventilation." 

The establishement of such Britain-associated medical infrastructure not only signaled elevated political standing for the Qatari state and its modernization but also functioned as a showpiece for British expertise and influence. Additionally, it was one of the first major constructions with nearly all its material and most of its equipments imported, namely from British companies and consultancies who had their market reach thusly expanded.

Sources

Todd Reisz, Showpiece City How Architecture Made Dubai, 1999, p. 103, 104, 108, 145, 146.

John Lockerbie, the resident architect and planner for the Llewelyn-Davies team in Doha from 1972 and later chief architect and planner in the Technical Office of the Emir in 1975, https://catnaps.org/islamic/islaurb3.html

The Architect and Building News, vol. 211, 14 March 1957, p. 349

Todd Reisz, "A Cathedral for Coventry, A Hospital for Doha", The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 2020.

Murray Fraser & Nasser Golzari, Architecture and Globalisation in the Persian Gulf Region, United Kingdom: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014.

Udo Kultermann, Contemporary Architecture in the Arab States, 1999, p. 188-189.

Information in this database is updated constantly. Do not hesitate to send us comments, information, or illustrations (with appropriate credits) to database@arab-architecture.org