The exhibition showcases how the design process must build local trust, collaboration and capacity within the local community to ensure that Al Khor’s future remains faithful to its past, while being adaptable yet innovative. It is the fruit of a collective effort between designers (Kéré Architecture, Materia), institutions (QM Heritage Cluster, NMoQ) and the community (Al Khor Content Committee).
The visitor is invited to discover three interconnected experiences that are part of the regeneration process. EXPERIENCE casts light on Al Khor and its community, exhibiting photographs, oral histories, objects, sounds and accounts of everyday life that account for the community’s shared heritage. IMAGINE presents urban regeneration as an adaptive and collective framework connecting the city’s social, cultural, spatial, ecological and economic dimensions. DESIGN exhibits how these relationships have been translated into plans, projects and programmes that can be tested, discussed and refined over time. A central canopy designed by Kéré Architecture becomes the centerpiece that brings together the different parts of the exhibition, while showcasing an experimental canopy for the Al Khor Heritage Trail.
The exhibition is therefore an invitation rather than a finished proposition, and its ambition is twofold: to present to the wider public the process through which the involved parties have established a common vision for the city of Al Khor; and to establish a community majlis in Doha to further engage with the vision, impart knowledge and provide feedback.
The futures of Al Khor must be co-created with its residents, businesses, youth, schools, cultural and public institutions alike.