Middle East Experience

Engr. Saeed Al Kuwari, Director of our Doha, Qatar Middle East office

To better manage our increasing number of Middle East projects, in 2005 we opened a Middle East office in Doha, Qatar managed by Engr. Saeed Al Kuwari as its director.

As of early 2006, we are working on the feasibility, design and consulting for:

• Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – Smart Kids children's edutainment and enrichment center.
  
• Manama, Bahrain – a 3.700 square meter children's edutainment, entertainment and enrichment (play & discovery) center that will include a discovery play garden and rooftop zero-depth spray grounds (spraypads) in the Seef District.
  
• Amman, Jordan – mixed-use family-oriented center that will include retail shops, restaurants, family entertainment center, birthday party center and cinemas, in both an enclosed mall and outside landscaped garden settings.
  
• Doha, Qatar – mixed-use mall type project with retail, restaurants, cinemas, children's edutainment and enrichment, family entertainment, amusement, bowling, ice skating, a party and celebration center and waterpark.

The Middle East, and especially the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman, is undergoing rapid growth and expansion with many new entertainment and leisure projects. Different than projects in Dubai that target the tourist market, most of our projects are designed to target the local Arab population. Unlike many design and consulting firms who sell Middle Eastern clients standard Western design solutions, we pride ourselves in our practice of not literally exporting Western designs and concepts for our Middle Eastern projects. Instead, we take pride in being culturally sensitive and custom designing projects to meet the needs, tastes, values and customs of the Locals. For most of our projects, we undertake extensive ethnographic and focus group research with mothers to understand the local area's unique culture, including its traditions, customs, values, and traditions of leisure, so we can design the projects to maximize their appeal to the local residents. Our staff has worked with many ethnic groups and Islamic cultures, and is culturally competent to recognize and respect the unique attributes of Arab and Islamic cultures and design a project that is appropriate and respectful to that culture. A number of our projects are actually designed to help preserve local culture and traditions.

Also see:

• International Leisure Project Experience
• Designing FECs for the International Market: Imitation is the Quickest Course to Bankruptcy
• The Role of Culture in Location-Based Leisure Design
• Beware of the Western Conquistadores
• A Multi-cultural Challenge: Designing for Children in Dubai 
• The Importance of Cultural Competence to Location-Based Leisure Projects