Creativity and healing
Influenced by poetry and inspired by geology, Saudi-born architect Sumaya Dabbagh works to craft buildings that create experience and meaning.
By Charles Shafaieh
A curved sandstone structure rises gently from the ochre desert floor outside Mleiha, a small town 67 kilometres southeast of Sharjah City and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Rather than assert itself loudly in the landscape, the understated building is hardly visible against its Fossil Rock backdrop except when approached at close range. The sandstone takes on silver qualities in the light, while its jagged copper roof references both the area’s ancient copper deposits and the mountain outcrop. The humble primacy of the the Mleiha Archaeological Centre’s materiality directs attention towards the Centre’s focal point: the Umm an-Nar Tomb. Constructed around 2300 BCE, it is the most important of the area’s numerous funeral sites.
The 2,000-square-metre project’s quiet dialogue with its surroundings exemplifies the practice of its designer, Sumaya Dabbagh, a Saudi-born architect who in 2008 founded her own firm, Dabbagh Architects, in Dubai. Last October, she added an Architecture MasterPrize to her collection of awards for the project, which was completed in 2016.
“I didn’t want the building to overshadow the tomb, which has to be honoured and celebrated, so we gave it space around it in the form of a mini amphitheatre,” Dabbagh says. “A professor of mine once said, ‘If you have a hill and you put a building on top of it, it’s no longer a hill because you’ve lost that profile.’ This is the same idea. I wanted to add something without taking away anything. What’s new has to build on what was there, rather than erase and start again. It’s about creating a new memory for the next generation, too. I imagine this place in some years’ time being deserted and people wandering around as if it’s a ruin.”
Dabbagh began cultivating this sensitivity towards her surroundings in her early childhood. Born in Jeddah on the kingdom’s west coast, she recalls the frequent journeys her family took by car to her maternal grandparents’ home in nearby Taif. The steep, winding road brought her through the rocky Hijaz Mountains, which spurred an interest in their geology. “That was the origin of my awareness of how geology and forms define the space around you and inform the way you are within that space,” she says. She even studied geology initially. “Then, growing up, I found similarly fascinating that buildings have become the geology of our cities, so that early interest led me to architecture.”
Mleiha Archaeological Centre, a curved sandstone structure that rises from the ochre desert floor. Photos: Gerry O’Leary
Entering the field was not a simple task. Dabbagh spent her teenage years in the United Kingdom and, in 1983, received a scholarship from the Saudi government to study at the University of Bath. She enrolled as an architecture student, but two years into her education the kingdom, which banned women from studying or practicing architecture from the mid-1980s through to the late 2000s, said they would revoke the funds unless she changed subjects. Fortunately, her parents supported her decision to continue as planned and helped pay the remaining tuition.
That she is so unique amongst her peers is no cause for celebration though. “A generation of women weren’t allowed to study architecture, which was a loss for the upcoming generations,” she says. “I didn’t have any role models, and they don’t either. Gender is not always relevant, but in my case it was, because it impacted my opportunities and education.” This lack of diversity applies elsewhere in the region too. Just last year while walking onstage to accept a prize at the Middle East Architect Awards, Dabbagh realised she knows no other female architects with their own firms in the UAE. “Because it’s relatively easy to work here, I assumed there would be more, but sadly there aren’t.”
Her determination to commit to her goals regardless of norms or boundaries, such as simply being a Saudi female architect, has continued in her practice. Consider her Mosque of Light, currently under construction in Dubai. The sleek structure made of sustainable, locally made glassfibre-reinforced concrete contains a delicate pattern of triangular openings. A deconstruction of traditional Islamic designs, these features scatter light within the mosque and help cool its interiors. This novel modern design, however, violated Dubai’s strict regulations for mosque architecture. “The main objection was that we have very few external windows. We have windows in very specific places, because if you control how light comes into a space, you create drama,” she explains. “It didn’t make sense for a progressive city like Dubai to single out one building type and freeze it in an outdated mode of thinking. But our client was happy with our design and was able to take it higher up in government, and I believe those guidelines are now being reevaluated and, hopefully, updated.”
The jagged copper roof references the area’s ancient copper deposits and the nearby mountain outcrop. Photo: Gerry O’Leary
This sensitivity to drama and light speaks to the importance Dabbagh places on the intangible in architecture, which transcends the visual iconicity of glass towers and other ostentatious buildings that define so many contemporary skylines. “Like with any form of art, you want to be moved,” she asserts, passion audible in her voice as she describes her inspirations who include architects Alvaro Size, Peter Zumthor, and Zaha Hadid. “I’m influenced by poetry and how it evokes feelings. Walking through a threshold, brick and mortar evoke feelings, too. Some places have taken my breath away. I wrote my dissertation on Carl Jung and visited his house in Switzerland, which was built in several stages and reflected his internal development. For me, design is about the experience and meaning you create for users that stay with them.”
Good design concerns the entire body as well as the mind. It is unsurprising then that, since university, Dabbagh has practised Iyengar yoga and even taught it for many years. This type of yoga “emphasises alignment and is very precise. It’s actually a bit like architecture in that way,” she says, smiling. “It gave me so much awareness of my physicality on one level and my thoughts on another. It’s continuous awareness, a self-discovery, and something you never stop learning, because bodies are so complex.” She sees even more parallels between her two practices, which unite her passion for creativity and healing. “My interest in yoga is with my internal landscape and environment—the way I perceive the world and my relationships. That was kind of an internal search, and architecture was a way to put that in physical form with the sensations, feelings, and experience that physical form can bring.”
Photograph of Sumaya Dabbagh by ASSIYA JAGADEESH / ITP
