Doha's new airport city: Koolhaas upgrades Qatar's gateway

Early last month, Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam (OMA) announced that it had been selected as the masterplanners for Doha, Qatar's new "Airport City" development.

The 10km-square development is on a 30-year schedule, but the majority of the major projects will be complete in time for Qatar's hosting of the 2022 World Cup. The masterplan consists of four interconnected zones for business, aviation, cargo and warehousing, and residential. In addition to the airport, a new Doha Bay Marina will be built.

OMA's founder and principal Rem Koolhaas is one of the reasons the design world has the word "starchitect" in its vocabulary (earlier this winter, a caricature of Koolhaas appeared in a Batman graphic novel). Koolhaas and OMA's designs never fail to impress at international design competitions and the structures that do get built dominate the conversation in architecture publications. The Doha project will be the first airpot masterplan for OMA; it has received commissions for airports in Seoul and Jeddah that have not been built. Late last week, OMA also announced it had won a competition for urban redevelopment for a neighborhood in Bordeaux, France.