This is OMA’s first built project in the United Arab Emirates, and was and led by Iyad Alsaka and Kaveh Dabiri. The interior design and engineering was completed by Dubai-based companies.
Allowing multiple configurations, the industrial-scale space has 8m high ceilings, pivoting and sliding walls, and a translucent façade with full-height doors which can seamlessly connect Concrete’s interior with the complex’s large, central courtyard.
Rem Koolhaas, OMA’s founding partner: “Dubai is one of the cities that has had a deep impact on our work, and I am very happy that this particular building is our first effort here. In Concrete, we are not introducing a new shape but instead were able to infiltrate an existing building with an arts institution. This building is totally produced in Dubai; it is not a foreign ideal, and that I think is significant.”
Iyad Alsaka, OMA’s partner in charge of the project: “The Gulf is an important region for OMA, and we are happy to have been able to collaborate with an organisation like Alserkal Avenue, whose vision is so similar to our own. With this project we wanted to keep the interior as neutral and flexible as possible, while transforming the existing exterior so that it would stand out from the surrounding buildings.”
Description of project by OMA
Located in Dubai’s Al Qouz industrial area, Alserkal Avenue was founded in 2007 with the aim of promoting cultural initiatives in the region. Since then, it has become Dubai’s most important art hub with twenty-five galleries and art spaces. Concrete addresses the district’s growing need for a centrally located public space which can host a diverse program.
The 1,250 m² former warehouse provides a multi-purpose space to accommodate public events, exhibitions, performances and lectures, and continues OMA’s work in the preservation and repurposing of existing buildings.
Interior design
The design for the interior introduces a flexible floor plan to accommodate the required program diversity. Four 8.10m pivoting and sliding walls can create multiple space configurations depending on the type of event. To maintain a fluid space, all the major interior equipment has been integrated into the ceiling, leaving the walls and floors free of any components.
Two linear skylights have been positioned above the movable walls to allow either thin blades of light or full daylight depending on the configuration.
Exterior design
The original front façade of the ware-house has been replaced with poly-carbonate cladding and full height operable doors. When the doors are open, the exterior and interior space can merge, activating the courtyard. The connection to the exterior is reinforced by the translucent poly-carbonate, which brings the view, daylight and outdoor activities into the interior space.
The rest of the original façade has been maintained and sprayed in a customized mix of concrete with glass and mirror aggregates. The rough texture of the spayed concrete and reflections from the glass and mirror aggregates will make the venue stand out in the context of Alserkal Avenue.
Concrete has opened with Syria: Into the Light, which will be on view until 3 April 2017.
Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal, patron and founder of Alserkal Avenue: “Over the last decade, Alserkal Avenue has grown and evolved organically with the arts and culture scene of the United Arab Emirates. The introduction of Concrete marks a new milestone as part of the cultural advancement of the region.”
Vilma Jurkute, director of Alserkal Avenue: “The OMA team has brought their unique aesthetic and thoughtful approach to urban architecture to the Avenue, and, in doing so, they have created a space that has started a dialogue for architectural evolution in the UAE.”
Chronicle by Javier López Rivera
As part of the activities planned for the 1st International Architecture and Design Workshop Dubai Pop-Up, organized by Al Ghurair University, the tutors and students participating in it and coming from 7 universities from 3 different countries, we had the opportunity to attend last friday March 10th to the "premiere" of the first OMA work in UAE. The official opening coincided with a Rem Koolhaas’s lecture, under the title Current Preoccupations, and took place a week later at The Yard, the central outdoor space of Alserkal Avenue to which open the multipurpose interiors of Concrete, the name of this small intervention which derives from the gunite concrete with inlays by hand of tiny mirrors, used to cover the lateral and back facades.
With the help of the local partner Iyad Alsaka, we toured the different spaces of this work, which, undoubtedly, condenses many of the keys that a territory like Dubai offers to the visitor. The intervention is really simple and it, essentially, involves stripping an existing square-shaped steel structure, to completely transform its character after to be coated again with local materials, except the cellular polycarbonate of Italian origin. Something not very far from what they did, in 2006, the Seville’s architects Sol89 in the Center of Formation of Huelva, and that so well reflected in images Jorge Yeregui. The total cost amounts is one tenth of the amount used in the Prada Foundation and the whole process - from the commission to the completion of the works - lasted only one year.
It‘s the concept of time, undoubtedly, one of the variables that most impresses in Dubai. A time that, conjugated in the past, almost does not exist. And Concrete itself and the storehouses that surround it, housing all kinds of spaces for art and culture, have only a little more than two years of life ... and are already considered old, or rather in need of a facelift. We have to keep in mind that there are not just buildings in Dubai before 1960.
And a time that, conjugated in future, does not reach beyond two years, since urban planning does not exist as such and the territory is built and occupied based on the needs of the different investors. Therefore, the present is the only thing that matters, at the same time fleeting and fast, but intense. It’s Dubai a physical space in continuous change, as are the four walls of 90 cm. of thickness and 7 tons of weight that rotate and move to configure the various multipurpose spaces proposed by OMA in Concrete.
Architecture in a transient city was the subtitle chosen for the Workshop. There is no better definition for the OMA intervention, although perhaps the singular would have to be changed by the plural -cities-, because in the immense territory that we know as Dubai many types of urban structures come together, all of them perceptible in some of its parts . And so, we recognize Los Angeles, Chicago, Shanghai, New York, Benidorm, and even Terra Mitica.
Concrete may be the first - and not the last - of OMA's collaborations with the patron and Founder of Alserkal, since him has several buildings in Deira, one of the earliest settlements in Dubai. And on them, will undoubtedly plan the reflection between the permanent and the changing; between the old and the new; and, ultimately, between the art and the life.
