The desert has been a great source of inspiration lately. After Richard Serra’s sculpture installation and the headline-making portrait of Sheikh Zayed in the desert, Thomas Heatherwick’s new architecture project for Abu Dhabi is just another cherry on top—and if Dubai has its Sunken City (a.k.a. Atlantis), Abu Dhabi might just get its Sunken Oasis (a.k.a. Al Fayah Park).
Conceived as a 125,000 square meter sustainable park in the heart of Abu Dhabi, the Al Fayah park, a shaded garden with fragmented canopies that resemble a cracked ground, will shelter several community gardens, picnic spaces, playgrounds, a restaurant and cafés, a library, a mosque, several pools, as well as performance arenas.
“Designing a park in the desert presented the studio with a series of challenges, the most serious of which was how to provide protection from the hot desert sun for the visitors, as well as for the park plants and vegetation,” explained Heatherwick in an official statement on his website. “Instead of denying the presence of the desert that the city is built on, we set ourselves the task of making a part out of the desert itself.”
According to the latest news on the architect’s website, Abu Dhabi residents and tourists can expect the completion of the Sunken Oasis in 2017.
