The main artery facilitating blood flow through the Emirates, the E11 is the region’s longest road connecting the UAE to Saudi Arabia. For many, the most conspicuous images of the route recall empty barren landscapes, a long and monotonous journey into a vast expanse of desert and dust, with little else to encounter. But, for Rand Abdul Jabbar, an architect and designer, and Meitha Al Mazrooei, the editor of biannual architecture and design platform, WTD Magazine, the route conjured curiosity.
Their intrigue manifested itself in different ways – a photobook, short film and diagrammatic map documented the places and spaces discovered along E11, exposing architecture only known to a few. “It was a personally initiated project that was the culmination of the various road trips we would take across the UAE in search of diversity,” reveals Jabbar, whose process- driven practice responds to the forces of the city, adding, “In terms of landscapes, but also alternative architectural or urban models.”
Their visual journey reveals the region’s little known experiments in architecture; stark blanched exteriors collide with ornate arabesque details connecting tradition, and development, East and West. “We discovered an interesting model for urban and housing development in Al Ruwais,” Al Mazrooei says of the oil village in the Western region of Abu Dhabi that caters predominantly to the employees of ADNOC. Sir Bani Yas Island was another highlight. “We frequented it as children, only to rediscover and appreciate these places with a new outlook and experience today.”
[pullquotes bg_image_id="35875" quote="Everyone has had some form of interaction with the route and now they see it in a different way" quotee="Meitha Al Mazrooei"]
Indeed, the element of rediscovery is what helps E11 resonate with the community at large. “Everyone has had some form of interaction with the route and now they see it in a different way,” says Al Mazrooei. “It’s a gateway to other regions and it instigates a response to the environment around us.” A response to frustration felt by the lack of critical conversation surrounding architecture in the region, E11 is the inaugural element of a greater vision that began to take shape during 2016. “The vast majority of the projects we observed here were commercially driven and centred around real estate, lacking on the ground research,” says Jabbar.
The newly launched Center for Architectural Discourse (CAD) is the pair’s antidote and deliberate attempt to break from aesthetic clichés that proliferate in the region. Their aim: To engage the creative community in critical conversations around architecture and urbanism, encouraging the public to respond to issues surrounding the built environment and surrounding landscapes. “We found a lot of architects coming to the region and working on projects without a deep understanding of the culture. We are creating a context to counteract these forces,” enthuses Jabbar on the role of the center. “There are, of course, people here looking critically, but there hasn’t been an opportunity for people to engage publicly, until now.”
