Doha’s summers keep producing record heat, and the designers in this year’s Design Doha are looking backward for answers through its design doha public commissions. The second edition of Design Doha runs until 31 January 2027. It brings more than 20 exhibitions and over 300 multidisciplinary designers and studios to the Qatari capital.
The most closely watched strand is the design doha public commissions. Five winning spatial installations, all designed for public use, draw on regional knowledge of water, materials, craft and climate. The programme is curated by Javier Peña Ibáñez and powered by the Public Works Authority (Ashghal).
Design doha public commissions in Fereej Al Asmakh
The installations stand in Fereej Al Asmakh, a historic neighbourhood of about 60 heritage houses, courtyards and shaded passageways that are being restored for cultural use.
Salsabil: cooling with ceramic spheres and mist
Courtyards and gardens across the Arab world once held salsabils, water features that cooled the air as water ran across their surfaces. Meriem Chabani, an award-winning Algerian architect and urbanist, builds her project on that tradition.
Her installation, also called Salsabil, uses dozens of deep royal-blue ceramic spheres that work as architectural bricks. The spheres were developed with SACO, a Doha-based brick maker, and can be reassembled to suit each site. Fine mist and shade combine to form a shelter meant to make pedestrian spaces cooler, a model for other shade installations.
Chabani describes the salsabil as more than a decorative object. In her account, these devices reflected a working understanding of climate, architecture and hospitality. She wants to use that knowledge as a practical tool, not a nostalgic reference, for today’s urban heat.
The same respect for regional craft appears in a Dubai workspace that blends Emirati making into modern office design. Dubai workspace weaving in Emirati craftsmanship shows how local materials and techniques can shape contemporary interiors.
Chabani also notes that planting and maintaining trees is not always possible in Doha. Her answer is to create small microclimates instead. The water misting turns a static structure into an active device that regulates temperature.
Cooling Pots: earthenware that cools by evaporation
Architects Haitam Daoudi and Óscar Cruz, working as +.atelier, turn to an everyday object: the earthenware vessel. Across the region, clay pots have long been used to store and cool water. Their installation scales that principle into a large passive cooling project.
Porous terracotta pots hang from a lightweight, modular steel frame at different heights. The pots absorb water and release it slowly, which cools the surrounding air. Together they filter sunlight and form layers of shade.
Rugs cover the ground to keep visitors off the heat that radiates from the paving. The designers describe three linked zones. The Forest is a dense ring of pots that offers shade and privacy. The Walkway guides visitors through, and the Chamber is a central space for pause and conversation.
The duo link the layout to the narrow lanes and closely spaced buildings of traditional Arab towns, where shaded, protected space arises naturally. As a temporary intervention, the project tests how minimal, adaptive methods can create shared space.
Shoreline: a playground built like a dhow
Lebanese studio Platau traces Doha’s former coastline. Land reclamation has pushed the shore further into the Gulf over the past century. The studio’s installation rises from sand as a playful shelter that invites visitors to rest and reflect on the city’s maritime past.
The leisure area doubles as a playground. Modular wooden elements, timber columns, sail-like canopies and thick maritime ropes give it the outline of a traditional dhow fishing boat.
Platau co-founder Sandra Frem says the shore once served as a working space for dhow making, pearling, fishing and trading. Reclamation changed that. The studio set out to combine that history with today’s leisure use of beaches, using sand, wood and the shape of the land itself.
Mast-like pillars and beams connect to rows of rope that form a shaded canopy. Frem notes that dhow building is now a dying craft, no longer part of the living fishing and trading economy. The team studied dhow types in Doha’s museum collections. They built the boats’ reference forms with teak, a wood historically shipped from Africa.
Falajscape: gravity moves water through steel channels
Eugenio Fernandez and Victor Nouman of Dubai-based Studio By Three look to the falaj, a gravity-fed irrigation network that has supplied water across the Arabian Peninsula for centuries. Their installation, Falajscape, applies that logic to a public square.
The sculpture is built from stainless steel channels and paddles. Gravity moves water through the network with no pump. Rocks strung onto the upper channels act as counterweights, swinging as the channels fill and empty.
Fernandez says the team wanted to carry the old principles into a contemporary outdoor form. He argues the vertical piece shows these systems can work in modern cities, including roundabouts and plazas, as micro oases.
The water recirculates in a closed loop. Its sound and cooling create a calm moment for people, while stray droplets water wild plants and provide water for birds. The modular pieces can be arranged to fit spaces of different sizes.
Palm Construct: date palm as a building material
Emirati architect Abdalla Almulla asks what date palm can build. Palm Construct reshapes rigid palm elements into fluid forms, drawing on traditional palm weaving and the region’s vernacular building methods.
Almulla works with khoos weaving of palm fibre and with blocks of the palm wood itself. Khoos, the woven palm mats, complete the enclosure. The result is a lightweight, breathable shelter of the kind that suited the desert climate in the past.
Almulla says the team cared less about the palm’s appearance than about how it is built. They studied its structural properties and how far it could be worked. The project aims to show that a familiar material can carry new uses without losing its cultural roots.
Almulla hopes visitors will sit under the shelter and reflect on how traditional craft and contemporary public space relate. He sees the installation as a conversation between past and present, and proof that local knowledge can still shape the places people use.
A similar urban shade idea appears in Riyadh, where a parking lot became a gathering space under red scaffolding and tents. Riyadh café transforms parking lot with scaffolding is worth a look for its temporary, people-first approach to Gulf public space.
Across the five design doha public commissions, older tools return as working parts of the city rather than museum displays. Whether these shelters keep visitors in Fereej Al Asmakh through the hottest months will show how far that approach can go.
H/T wallpaper.com
Frequently asked questions
Until when does the second edition of Design Doha run?
The second edition of Design Doha runs until 31 January 2027. It brings more than 20 exhibitions and over 300 multidisciplinary designers and studios to the Qatari capital.
How does the Salsabil installation in Doha keep areas cool?
The Salsabil installation uses dozens of deep royal-blue ceramic spheres that work as architectural bricks. Fine mist and shade combine to make pedestrian spaces cooler, and the spheres can be reassembled to suit each site.
How do the Cooling Pots installation’s terracotta pots reduce heat?
Porous terracotta pots hang from a lightweight steel frame at different heights. The pots absorb water and release it slowly, which cools the surrounding air, while they also filter sunlight and form layers of shade.
Who curates and powers the Design Doha public commissions programme?
The programme is curated by Javier Peña Ibáñez. It is powered by the Public Works Authority (Ashghal).
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