DOHA | Al Qud's Tower | 1,640 FT / 500 M | 101 FLOORS

[alphawolf]

Originally Posted by JMancuso

i like the massing and it looks like the love child of the sears tower and a mosque.

Exactly.

[Tom In Chicago]

This design is simply awful. . . sadly it's really under construction. . . for the time being at least. . .

. . .

[OneWorldTradeCenter]

Originally Posted by Tom In Chicago

This design is simply awful. . . sadly it's really under construction. . . for the time being at least. . .

. . .

I totally agree with you Tom. It´s simply awful. I hope it´s becoming on-hold soon. Who designed such an ugly tower. This doesn´t look like a skyscraper.

[Tom In Chicago]

Doha has had other super-tall buildings start construction that have been put on hold so I'm not holding out much hope for this. . . but we'll see. . .

[Misterfreeman87]

Originally Posted by McBane

I'm so sick of these "manufactured" skyscrapers built by oil sheiks so they can brag to the world how modern their cities are.

NYC, Chicago, etc. built skyscrapers based on the need that those cities (and similar cities) were bursting at the seams; there was no where else to build but up. True, some of the taller ones were partially about making statements, but for the most part, they were necessary to accommodate the growth of those cities. Same with Toronto, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, etc.

Are you telling me that the "booming" city of Doha has nowhere to build but up? From the images, I see an ugly supertall surrounded by open space. What a joke. It's especially comical if the builders think that throwing money to build skyscrapers in their shiekdoms will make their cities significant. Glad to at least see that Dubai has been exposed for the sham city that it is.

And before someone says it - I am by no means jealous of this hideous tower.

I absolutely agree with you. Skyscrapers in the middle of a desert of empty space look fucking ridiculous. And maybe someone should tell those sheiks that building skyscrapers alone doenst give your city an urban atmosphere.

[Dylan Leblanc]

The design certainly is novel, perhaps in a good way. But hey, at least none of us live in Doha and will have to look at this thing every day! I couldn't care how weird a building looks as long as it's a long distance from me.

[PhxPavilion]

Way too ugly for its height.

[Troubadour]

It has a certain Arabic charm. Though I would locate it at the center of the complex of lower buildings instead of off-set. Of course, it all depends how the thing looks in real sunlight, against real sky.

[gttx]

double-barf

[OneWorldTradeCenter]

I dont like the design itsself. But why do they use this design for a skyscraper of that size. A 100m building for this is enough...

[RLS_rls]

This is so bad it's good.

[Pizzuti]

It's kind of interesting the extent to which Western critics find foreign architectural styles ugly. Seems like a loss of perspective when it comes to aesthetics; I'm sure someone who grew up in Budapest or Istanbul would have found the first World Trade Center or find the Sears Tower to be extremely boring and boxy, and after time we'll grow used to stuff like this.

That said, there's something different about ways many of these towers are built (not the architecture but the purpose) more as monuments of wealth / status symbols than the need to house residents or workers. I can't say that I like the way it's going, but perhaps the totally different kind of city we see popping up in the Middle East and China will be the way most world skylines look in the future and we'll view it as natural. The way it's looking, mid-rises are unheard of and everything is 3-8 stories up to the freakishly tall 200-story city centerpiece, whereas in most cities mid-rises are the most common building you find.

[village person]

^Hungary is in the West. Budapest and Istanbul both have modernist boxes, too. Budapest's tallest couple of high-rises are about as boring and boxy as they get.

[Jobohimself]

Just...ew.

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

Originally Posted by Pizzuti

It's kind of interesting the extent to which Western critics find foreign architectural styles ugly. Seems like a loss of perspective when it comes to aesthetics; I'm sure someone who grew up in Budapest or Istanbul would have found the first World Trade Center or find the Sears Tower to be extremely boring and boxy, and after time we'll grow used to stuff like this.

I despise the way some people try to turn topics like this into an issue of cultural relativism.

It's not.

Most of the "Western critics" are just as appalled by similarly postmodern architecture derived from European sources. Just take a look at the comments in the Elysian thread.

Bad design is universal. This design is universally bad.

[KevinFromTexas]

I like it. It's a classy looking design. It's huge, but not bulky either. I'm less crazy about the base, but even so, it's not too bad. But I actually really like the tower itself. Quite attractive. The top needs a little something more though.

Originally Posted by JMancuso

i like the massing and it looks like the love child of the sears tower and a mosque.

That's what I was thinking. It also reminds me a bit of one of the earlier designs for the 1,200 foot 4 Seasons Hotel & Residences that was proposed for Toronto. The color and top remind me that one. There's almost a Chicago look to this building even without the Sears Tower reference because of the facade detail reminding me of some of Chicago's old beauties around the river. One thing I don't care for about modern glassy towers, is they generally lack any design character on the facade. Shiny blue glass is nice, but it can be pretty bland really when you have 100 other towers just like it. Most of the supertalls being built right now are all very similar. Very tall boxes with glass facades with little variation in the color or texture and even some boring tops. Of course, I wouldn't want to see 100 of these either, but variety is good.

And without going off topic, I think it's funny when people bash supertalls being built when there are few other tall buildings around them. I look at it as a good thing since it shows some foresight in knowing the area will likely be built up. Why cover acres of land with squat buildings now, when you could just build up now taking up less land? It may be different from how we do it here and have done for a century and a half, but really as the world's population grows, building up earlier makes sense. It's also a matter of engineering technology getting more advanced. 100 years ago a 700 foot building seemed outrageous and unnecessary, now days there's almost no room anymore for large towers in some cities. And there's nothing wrong with building very tall buildings to house huge chunks of the market's needed space. Dubai is an oddity, but projects like this one and Taipei 101 do make some sense.

[Cyprose]

The mixing of different window styles, especially how some setbacks emphasize vertical lines while others have square, and more horizontal lines is just plain odd. In some ways it reminds me of the Mcmansions common in the US, with its mishmash of styles and how it appears to have been designed from the inside out - not to mention that the oil sheiks and yuppies share a desire to tactlessly display wealth.


There is plenty of amazing middle eastern architecture, but this is just a mockery of all that history and tradition.

[Pizzuti]

Originally Posted by Ch.G, Ch.G

I despise the way some people try to turn topics like this into an issue of cultural relativism.

It's not.

Most of the "Western critics" are just as appalled by similarly postmodern architecture derived from European sources. Just take a look at the comments in the Elysian thread.

Bad design is universal. This design is universally bad.

How could "bad design" honestly be universal? When we criticize a lot of 1960s architecture as being boring and cubist we're talking about something that was once considered beautiful - and how many ornate historic mid-rises across the world that we consider rare jewels today were buldozed in that era because they were considered ugly?

The fact that our tastes in fashion and architecture evolve through time is proof that there is no universal standard. It's relative even within our own fluid cultures so it's got to be relative globally.

There are very fair ways to criticize foreign architecture. I'm not denying that. And I'm also not denying that Middle Eastern supertalls are popping up at such a rapid pace that each one seems to diminish in importance, as well as the amount of architectural attention paid to each one - they seem to be treating supertalls like they're ordinary mid-rises. (Emphasis on "seems," because I'm viewing this through my own cultural lens so I could be totally off.) If a mid-rise goes up in one of our cities or towns its given less attention therefore we don't anticipate or expect it to be outstanding, and most of them would be considered "ugly" if they were stretched out to be 1500 feet tall without millions of extra dollars in drawing-board work to make sure they are cohesive and attractive.

But there is also this persistent criticism I see of Middle Eastern buildings saying "they look like they belong in Las Vegas" as a criticism. It makes sense that they look like Las Vegas, because if/when Las Vegas builds a middle-eastern themed hotel/resort they naturally appropriate Arabic style architecture in a Western-skyscraper format. And when supertalls go up in the Arabic context they also use traditional regional architecture and put it in a Western-skyscraper format. The fact that they look same is logical and doesn't automatically make Middle Eastern buildings kistchy.

It might just be that modern Arabic architecture is, as a whole, using cultural ideals of taste that Americans and Europeans just don't connect with or find jarring. Take architectural themes from an ancient Hindu temple or Buddhist stupa, morph them into skyscrapers and see if we all don't have the exact same "huh?" response.

Do I know enough about that to write a thesis on it? No. Which is why I just posted it informally in a skyscraper forum as an observation.

[Pizzuti]

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

I like it. It's a classy looking design. It's huge, but not bulky either. I'm less crazy about the base, but even so, it's not too bad. But I actually really like the tower itself. Quite attractive. The top needs a little something more though.



That's what I was thinking. It also reminds me a bit of one of the earlier designs for the 1,200 foot 4 Seasons Hotel & Residences that was proposed for Toronto. The color and top remind me that one. There's almost a Chicago look to this building even without the Sears Tower reference because of the facade detail reminding me of some of Chicago's old beauties around the river. One thing I don't care for about modern glassy towers, is they generally lack any design character on the facade. Shiny blue glass is nice, but it can be pretty bland really when you have 100 other towers just like it. Most of the supertalls being built right now are all very similar. Very tall boxes with glass facades with little variation in the color or texture and even some boring tops. Of course, I wouldn't want to see 100 of these either, but variety is good.

And without going off topic, I think it's funny when people bash supertalls being built when there are few other tall buildings around them. I look at it as a good thing since it shows some foresight in knowing the area will likely be built up. Why cover acres of land with squat buildings now, when you could just build up now taking up less land? It may be different from how we do it here and have done for a century and a half, but really as the world's population grows, building up earlier makes sense. It's also a matter of engineering technology getting more advanced. 100 years ago a 700 foot building seemed outrageous and unnecessary, now days there's almost no room anymore for large towers in some cities. And there's nothing wrong with building very tall buildings to house huge chunks of the market's needed space. Dubai is an oddity, but projects like this one and Taipei 101 do make some sense.

I like your analysis very much, as well as the pro-environment, land-saving approach.

But one thing that I'm wondering if is supertalls are really the best way to manage population growth and limited resources. Building for density is certainly better than an overly-sprawled city, but supertalls end up including a lot of steel/structural materials and the basic physics of scale suggests that you'd need a lot of extra structural material per unit than you would for a mid-rise. Anyone on here who is an engineer should chime in, but I wouldn't be surprised if mid-rises might be the most environmentally friendly and efficient way to build.

[steveve]

I think the design of many of the towers going up in the middle east are very old-fashioned and not very modern... They are very old-looking and they don't seem to design these buildings with the future of skyscrapers in mind...

It's got the height. But not the looks. -imo