Innovation meeting aspiration: Isozaki and Legoretta in the midst of the Education City campus, Qatar

The recent rapid development of Doha is associated with a fast track urbanization process, marked by large scale office towers and mixed use developments. In its modernization process and the attempt to follow the city of Dubai as an example of a global urban image, the city has adopted international building standards, state of the art glass towers that make little attempt to fuse the modern with the traditional. Large-scale infrastructure projects and high profile institutional and cultural building programs receive government support with most designed by name international firms and star architects. Despite the demerits inherent in any swift urban development process and the resulting architecture, innovative approaches to design and the creation of responsive environments are being developed around the city.