In addition to revitalizing the historic Msheireb neighborhood, bringing greater focus to Doha’s origins, this 31 hectare, $5.5 billion urban regeneration project established a new architectural language built upon vernacular Qatari architecture but applied in a modern context. Burton Studio headed the public realm landscape, lighting, and signing design efforts. As a member of their team Deviation Studio’s founder, Ash Hoden assisted in defining the criteria for modern Qatari landscape architecture.

With little to no urban precedents, this process involved extensive research into the indigenous ecology, plant communities, microclimatic constraints, and land forms, and using that research as a basis for developing an urban design language. Applying a predominantly native planting palette to a high-density master plan built entirely on-structure brought a host of technical constraints related to shading, infrastructural coordination, maintenance, and both pedestrian and vehicular movement.

Ash Hoden served as Burton Studio’s on-site representative throughout the nearly 3 year design development process, defending and coordinating Burton’s work with Msheireb Properties, the master planning team, and over thirty other consultancy firms. This role required the ability to sustain high level theoretical discussions while also resolving nitty-gritty technical queries. It was a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.