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Oman’s capital of Muscat is set to get an expansive $1.3 billion waterfront development, designed by globally renowned Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA).
The 3.3 million square-meter Al Khuwair Muscat Downtown and Waterfront development will include a residential complex, a marina, a cultural district, numerous canal walkways and a ministerial campus. Work is set to start at the end of this year and the area is expected to house more than 60,000 people when completed.
ZHA’s associate director, architect Paolo Zilli, told CNN he spent around a year finalizing the model he presented to Oman’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning.
Central to ZIlli’s design was facilitating access to public transport. “The vision is actually to remove all the cars, to remove all the fences and to create a campus of the ministry with many functions that can attract families and a new generation,” he said.
ZHA says it will encourage pedestrians by providing shading and passive cooling, and incorporate infrastructure to improve cycling safety. The use of onsite solar power will be “maximized” and native plant species will be conserved and restored.
Oman’s economy has long depended on oil, but it is now investing heavily in real-estate projects to drive more foreign investment, and ultimately boost non-oil revenues, part of the country’s National Vision 2040 strategy. In Muscat, the population is projected to increase from 1.5 million to 2.7 million by that year.
“There are a lot of changes,” Dr. Khalfan bin Saeed bin Mubarak al-Shueili, Oman’s Minister of Housing and Urban Planning, told CNN. “We [are] going to change the economy based on talent and capability skills and maybe also the digital sector.
“In Muscat itself, we anticipate the requirement of another 300,000 homes. And if we are doing good, then … this probably could expand to 600,000 homes.”
UK-based Zaha Hadid Architects is named after its storied founder, who in 2004 became the first woman to win architecture’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize. She died in 2016, having designed high-profile buildings from Guangzhou Opera House, in China, to the Phaeno science centre in Wolfsburg, Germany. Since then, ZHA’s designs include the BEEAH Headquarters in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, which is partly powered by Tesla battery packs, and in 2022 it unveiled plans for a virtual city in the metaverse, intended to be a cyber libertarian utopia.
