This is a project for two separate destination retail stores, side by side, in the new Abu Dhabi International Airport. Two distinct concepts were presented, a modern Contemporary Arabian Souq and a Traditional Arabian Souq.
Traditional Arabian Souq
The Middle Eastern souq traditionally comprises pockets of retail intensity lining streets, abutting city walls and taking over any available corner of the urban fabric
These stores, although identifiable and separate, all have a similarity that unifies and connect the overall bustling souq experience. Traditionally the trading stores moved around and were packed up at night and out again the next day, sometimes moving from town to town, so by their nature were made of easily dis-assembled and re-assembled components.
Modern shopping centers generally don’t do justice to the inherent richness of the souq experiences on the visual, olfactory and tactile sensory levels. Al Souq al Arabi attempts to capture this experience for the modern air traveller, giving them a memorable and lasting ‘last Arabian experience’.
Geometry was born in Arabia and matured with their mathematicians and astronomers. Geometry mimics the building blocks of the universe, a tiny elemental thing that, thru repetition and manipulation, can give rise to an infinite number of created possibilities which still carry their original geometric fractal properties.
In reverse order, geometrically complex elements can be reduced down to their simple geometric building blocks which have, by their nature inherent structural stability, ease of manufacture due to repetitive behaviour.
The hexagon is the fingerprint of our Traditional Souq design concept. The geometry expands and contracts its scale according to design need and is used to generate elements from the smallest scale, such as fine, soft metal mesh screens, and at the largest scale the geometry forms larger, separately defined pod spaces or merchandise areas.
The larger pods are joined into a kind of chain link corridor diagonally through the store. Edges of the pods are left open in places to balance the thrust through the store and to encourage visual connections thru the store for deeper shopper penetration and exposure thru the entire store.
Contemporary Arabian Souq -
The store seeks to emulate the qualities of the ancient souqs, in a new, exciting and unashamedly modern way.
Born out of a hexagonal fingerprint, the basic six sided geometric unit is multiplied, enlarged and combined to form the strong shapes that provide specific merchandise areas shapes that define movement and sight-desire lines like a kind non-linear medieval street.
Streets that encourage shortcuts or 'desire lines' through the store, allowing visual penetration through the store and the traveler bustles in a direction only to be encouraged off his path by the exiting product on display and entranced by the inherent richness of the souq experiences on the visual, olfactory and tactile sensory levels.
Souq Abu Dhabi is modern, slick and captivatingly. It’s a modern signature and like calligraphy it attempts to capture the spirit of the modern, innovative Abu Dhabi while still offering an authentic traditional experience for the modern air traveler, leaving them a memorable and lasting modern Abu Dhabi experience’.
The fingerprint of the store is the geometric pattern making of the Arabian mathematicians and astronomers. Simple repetitive shapes that when combined can result in increasingly complex and exiting forms. The hexagon is a kind of design DNA code that gives rise to wonderfully innovative forms and shapes, which still carry their original properties inherited from the smallest geometric piece. The geometry expands and contracts its scale according to design need.
The geometric order allows the elements created to have inherent structural stability and a naturally simpler way of manufacture due to their repetitive nature.
The hexagon is the fingerprint of the design concept, utilised in at the smallest scale as fine soft mesh screens, and at the largest scale as movement routes that contain separate spaces or defined zones of merchandise. The larger spaces leave their containing geometry's edges linking these to the next space and so doing create better visual connections thru the store, encouraging deeper visual penetration and maximum visitor exposure thru the entire store.
Separate yet connected throughout, the overall geometric order is always present in the patterns of the ceiling overhead and in the floor tile patterning like a kind of code, a universal ordering devise soft and complex.