Location: Qatar, Alberta
Deliverable: master plan
Key Features: sustainable infrastructure master planning, integrated design renewable energy
The Al Shamal New City Master Plan was created as part of Qatar’s World Cup Host City bid for FIFA 2020. The Client’s objective was to create a modern and sustainable city at the northern tip of Qatar which would provide the foundation for future growth while carrying on the legacy of its FIFA roots. The New City is meant to be a mixed-use, semi-self sufficient community with rail connection at the national and regional scale.
Designing a future city from scratch is an ideal opportunity to be innovative and incorporate cutting edge technologies. Preliminary design inventory showed that large tracts of the site were sabkha, or salt flats, leading the design team to allocate these areas as open space with the intention of stacking functions and integrating energy infrastructure. Onshore winds were strong enough and appeared consistent enough to recommend wind farms within the near shore areas and Qatar is sunny on average 359 days of the year, leading to the second recommendation of concentrated solar thermal farms with associated steam powered turbines to generate electricity. First approximation calculations using 25% efficiency revealed that the Master Plan’s energy fields could generate sufficient electricity to meet the community’s needs, with the assumption that all buildings would be energy efficient.
Integrating renewable energy infrastructure into the Master Plan and using the open space as a platform for the Al Shamal New City energy infrastructure provides an identifiable and educational public realm character while reducing emissions from energy generation to almost nil.
