It is considered the symbolic birthplace of Abu Dhabi. A striking white fortress dating back to 1760, Qasr Al Hosn was built to protect the emirate's only freshwater well, oversee coastal trade and, as the settlement expanded, guard the community that grew around it. The inner fort is made from coral and stones drawn from the sea, while the outer palace was added by Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan Al Nahyan around 1939.
It housed the ruling family for years before becoming home to Abu Dhabi's National Centre for Documentation and Research. It then closed for a decade, finally reopening in 2018 as an expansive contemporary structure that includes a large new theatre, two exhibition halls, an outdoor gallery, a visual arts centre and a children's library. Throughout, the redevelopment respected the local vernacular, preserving the traditional 'barjeel' ventilation system that moderates the heat. There is also a substantial water feature, a mangrove garden, a prayer area and a 'house of artisans', where visitors can watch live demonstrations of traditional handicrafts.
But the crown jewel in this 140,000-square-metre cultural park is arguably its most recent addition: a sleek prayer hall that pays homage to the native desert landscape. Designed by CEBRA, the Denmark and Abu Dhabi-based architecture firm, and completed in December 2019, it emerges from the water as geometric shapes that could be mistaken for a natural rock formation.
"The geometries intentionally land somewhere between building and landscape," explain the firm's principals, Mikkel Frost, Carsten Primdahl and Kolja Nielsen. "Along the transitional zone, the landscape changes from horizontal planes to slanting surfaces and gradually grows into actual buildings, culminating with the Musallah."
The prayer hall spaces are a series of interconnected forms surrounded by ponds, which create a physical separation from the public park and heighten the sense of privacy and seclusion. "At the same time, the water is used as a symbol of spiritual purification as you move through the light-filled passages from one area to the next," the architects continue.
A roughly symmetrical plan creates two routes into the prayer area — one for men and the other for women. Each leads through wash areas into the two individual halls, oriented in the qibla direction, while a concrete relief carrying inscriptions appears on one of the rock volumes, visible through a window that is concealed from the outside.
"Walking from the open landscape of the park along the narrow passages between the 'rocks', the noise and bustling life of the city slowly fades away, and visitors enter the cave-like entrance halls, where you can rest and talk before prayers," they say.
The geometric shapes of the landscape and buildings are mirrored inside as a suspended landscape of the same mud-crack pattern, which functions as skylights, with small circular openings punctuating the ceilings of the otherwise closed volumes. The holes admit daylight and are combined with suspended pendants. Whereas the entrance halls and ablution spaces feature concrete skylights, the interiors of the prayer halls are clad in copper, creating endless reflections of light that symbolise the cosmos and tie the ceiling detail back into the overall scheme of the project like a fractal.
