World Horticultural Expo, Doha

Text and photos: Pál Lővei

In 2023-2024, Qatar will host the first horticultural exhibition in the Middle East. In one corner of the 170-hectare exhibition, which is dedicated to the topic ‘Green Desert, Better Environment’, the bleak grey sands of the Wadi Al Sail Nature Reserve are a reminder of what the whole area looked like in places two or three decades ago. The three parts of the exhibition are bounded and separated by a series of dual carriageways leading from the sea to the mainland neighbourhoods, but the wide footbridges that cross over them organically link the cultural, family and international zones. Most of the design work for the expo was carried out and organised by Dar Al-Handasah (DAR), a firm which was founded in 1956 by Kamal A. Shair, an engineering professor at the American University of Beirut, and now it employs more than 9,000 professionals in fifty-four offices across Asia, Africa and Europe. It is specialised in all aspects of architecture. This included the long-term infrastructural development of the park, the design of Expo House and the Qatar Pavilion, which will remain after the exhibition, the construction of several individual country pavilions to be demolished, and the erection of buildings of various sizes and structures in the gardens of most of the exhibitors.