Two of the most anticipated leisure projects in Dubai are about to spring from the drawing board of architects Shahram Foroughi and Jean-Michel Ruols. Identity finds out why they’ve been a decade in the making.

Identity

June 2005

Back in 1995, architects Shahram Foroughi and Jean-Michel Ruols had an idea that was ahead of its time; the development of a hotel, leisure and entertainment project on the UAE coastline based around a local cultural theme. 10 years ago, there were no takers for what was then perceived as a ‘time wasting’ idea. Business hotels were the thing.

A decade on, the architectural landscape has changed. While contemporary world class business hotels such as Dubai’s Emirates Towers and The Fairmont are still very much required, the appreciative noises that Madinat Jumeirah has drawn from overseas visitors and even the most cynical long term residents have woken developers and entrepreneurs to the possibilities of themed cultural attractions.

Happily for Foroughi and Ruols, two of the largest, most anticipated projects in Dubai are about to spring from their drawing board: Dubai Heritage Vision, which is due to open later this year, and Legends-Dubailand, which is set to outdo Disney with its ambitious three parks in one concept.

“We knew there was potential in projects related to local identity and culture,” says Iranian-born Foroughi, architect and principal at Edifice Design & Project Management, in Dubai. “Jean-Michel and I started working on these projects at a very early stage, even before the Royal Mirage was built.  We still have the perspectives Jean-Michel drew and they reflect the projects you see now.”

The client in 1995 was a Fujairah-based investor who eventually put his money in a Dubai business hotel. “He came to us with ideas for potential land,” says Foroughi. “We said, ‘People coming to the region don’t was to see a building you can find any place else. Let’s develop a leisure hotel that reflects local culture’. But the idea was rejected. People then were only looking at the potential in business hotels. Somebody told us, ‘You’re wasting your time. You should do standard projects’. But we don’t do standard projects.”

Ruols, the architect of France’s hugely popular Asterix theme park, nods in agreement. “It’s easier to make standard projects than pioneering ones.” He says. “To make a pioneering project you must have a great deal of conviction in order to convince the client. In Fujairah, we tried but it was not a success. But it did prepare us for future collaboration around that idea. When Anita Mehra appeared years later and said to Shahram ‘I want to make Dubai Heritage Vision’, for us it was exactly the same as before.”

Dubai businesswoman Anita Mehra is one of the driving forces behind Dubai Heritage Vision, a ‘desert village’ backdrop for nightly cultural shows, comprising of a 5,000 seat amphitheater and souq off the Jebel Ali-Mabab Road on the outskirts of the city.

“What’s very exciting is the overall drive to make Dubai more of a tourist destination, both internationally and regionally,” says Foroughi. “The whole idea for us has been to get involved in this.”

In creating the desert village, Foroughi and Ruols was adamant that they should not copy local architecture. “You need to extrapolate from the features to create an atmosphere,” says Foroughi. “Copying is wrong. Anybody can copy a wind tower. You need to create the atmosphere. The desert was there for many years with no building. Now we need a building. But it should be a real building, not a fake one. We don’t want to make unnecessary cracks, to make it appear old, which is what Disney is doing.”

“We’ve made a collection of different pieces of remarkable Arabian architecture and put them together to create an atmosphere,” says Ruols. “It’s not a museum. It’s an exercise in artistic point of view. We are at the service of one idea, to make something – not old, not new – but something specific to attract customers.  It is theatrical, but there’s no false moustache. It’s a real moustache.”

While the Dubai Heritage Vision project draws on the past, Legends-Dubailand puts a cultural twist on the past, present and future. It, too, originated in an idea Foroughi and Ruols had been toying with for some time.

“I have always considered that this region is under served by quality amusements and this is one of the ideas I was constantly talking to Jean-Michel about,” says Foroughi. “We were looking for the opportunity of doing a theme park here, and doing it right.”

In this case, it was Dubai Development and Investment Authority (DDIA) that enabled Foroughi and Ruols to realise their long cherished ambition. DDIA encouraged them to devise and design not only one theme park, but three in one, as well as residential villas and commercial offices. “It’s more or less a leisure city,” says Ruols. “Really, because we are mixing many things and the life comes from all things.” “It’s not only leisure,” confirms Foroughi. “You need to create the mix. You need to have variety. You need to create the life.”

The eponymous ‘Legends’ are the three theme park elements: ‘Legends of Arabia’, ‘Legends of Nature’ and ‘Legends of the World’. “Legends of Arabia is a theme park as we know it, with different type of rides and a combination of live performances and shops and restaurants,” explains Foroughi. “It’s the sort of theme park we’re familiar with through Disney and the others, but it will have a local identity, reflecting local legends and tales. Aladdin is an example of a local legend, and Disney has used that, but there are so many others that people aren’t aware of. It doesn’t make sense copying what’s in Europe and the States, because people have the opportunity to go to these places.

“For the other two theme parks, we didn’t want to add more roller coasters. That wouldn’t make sense. Legends of Nature, therefore, is a different type of attraction.  With a bio-dome, seaworld, aquariums, and so on it has an educational element, based on the concept of discovery.

“Legends of the World, meanwhile, brings what’s happening around the world to Dubai – it’s a special effects theme park, which plays with images, virtual reality and simulators.”

“We do modern architecture, and we are trained to invent form,” says Ruols. “in the Dubailand project we are going to make futuristic architecture and new concepts. What we’re doing inside is creating a new capacity to attract people.”

“Everything in Dubai is moving so fast we need to consider the future,” says Foroughi. “we projected Legends over the coming years, because from the time you begin work on the design, it will be five years before it opens. So at the outset, you have to recognize that this project is not for today, but for five years time. You should not take current models into account, you should consider what’s going to be around in five years. And for the investor to get a return, the project should survive, in terms of viability, for the next 10 to 15 years.”

The relationship between Dubai-based Foroughi and Frenchman Ruols, whose practice, Jean-Michel Ruols Architectes, is based in Versailles, near Paris, is an unusual one in that, as Ruols declares, “It’s difficult for two architects to work together.”

“They first met in the 1980s, after the creation of the Asterix theme park, which Foroughi was also involved in. “We’re both into very novelty hospitality and leisure projects, projects that are related to visitor attractions – theme parks or cultural projects,” says Foroughi.

Both Foroughi and Ruols compare the relationship they have with each other to a marriage. “When he called me, we got married, with all the problems of marriage,” laughs Ruols. “But I can honestly say that in time we developed the same vision of things. When we speak about things, we anticipate what the other will say.”

“It’s not commercially driven – ‘OK, we’re partners, let’s see how we can make this deal’,” says Foroughi. “A relationship needs more than that to happen. Later, you start learning the way the other person thinks. Like a marriage, you start understanding each other. You understand your weak points, his strengths and vice versa. I meet clients, I go after the project. But we brainstorm together, we build the scenario together, we cook the project together. Then later on, Jean-Michel will take on the design of the project and start drawing. I take on the design development and overall management. At some stage, it merges together.”