On the 2nd to last day of our whirlwind tour of the UAE with Meridian International @meridianintl and the UAE Embassy @uaeembassyus, we were lucky enough to adjust our timing to the extraordinary Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque to coincide with sunset and dusk, allowing for low light, long exposures, and some incredible audio tracks of the evening's call to prayer. Definitely on my list as one of the wonders of the modern world, the mosque is the world's second largest, hosts the worlds largest handmade carpet, and the largest Munich made Swarowski glass crystal chandeliers, it was built over the span of 11 years from 1996 - 2007 and employed a crew of over 3,000 intl workers per day! It's design is credited to Yusef Abdelki of HALCROW.
I didn't capture nearly enough views of this fascinating carbon neutral experiment that is Masdar City, master planned by the office of Sir Norman Foster, on the ourskirts of Abu Dhabi, as we raced through in a span of about 45 minutes, between the Louvre Abu Dhabi and our final stop on Day 5 at the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. The use of terra cotta, steel and polycarbonate billowing materials were all employed in building skins, and a self-driving electric blue bus could be seen sneaking by on occasion.
The clear highlight for me on the 6-day whirlwind architecture delegation to the UAE with Meridian International @meridianintl and the UAE Embassy @uaeusaunited last fall, was the day spent at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, whereby we were the first group to venture underneath the massive and iconic steel and aluminum domed roof structure. We were also sheparded through the galleries and plazas via guided tours with the museum's Director General, along with other art historians and experts in the field. This architectural masterwork by Ateliers Jean Nouvelle of Paris fuses indoor and outdoor spaces seamlessly and is cast in a broken light evocative of a desert oasis, all floating in the water as part of a future museum island. It is breathtaking on every level.
With more mid-century modernism than anyone would expect, our group had the pleasure of a walking tour with local Emirati architecture historian and preservationist, Sultan Al Ramahi @vertorsandstuff, through the main business district of old Abu Dhabi, which included the iconic basket-woven Al Ibrahimi Tower, the Madinat Zayed Vegetable & Fish Market, and the Abu Dhabi Bus Terminal.
Qasr Al Hosn, in the heart of central Abu Dhabi, hosts an old fort that is the city's oldest building (1795) that once housed the royal family and is now a museum, the modern mosque by CEBRA Architecture, along with the Cultural Foundation containing a fantastic childrens library. As usual, our group started out behind schedule and arriving near to sunset, ran from one cultural site to the next, trying to soak in as much as possible, including a traditional tea service, a maker session with couturiers from around the globe, a tour and a visit to the sacred prayer spaces (womens side for us), all while attempting to capture views of the beauty and magnitude of all that we were experiencing. Bravo to Dana Al Marashi and Haitham Al Mussawi with the UAE Embassy for sheparding us along this journey! And to Lindsay Amini and TK Harvey from Meridian International as well! @UAEUSAUNITED @uaeembassyus @meridianintl
