The effect of the 2022 FIFA World Cup on Doha’s skyline.

The twin Katara Towers in Doha’s gleaming new Lusail City neighbourhood are the architectural representation of Qatar’s national emblem, which depicts two scimitar swords.
The gleaming, 40-story curvilinear buildings are symbolic of both Qatar’s past and its future. Each tower, designed by the West Asian architectural firm Dar Al-Handasah, contains a five-star hotel connected by an indoor walkway.
Attractions for visitors and localsThe iconic Al-Janoub Stadium, designed by the late Zaha Hadid and resembling a traditional dhow boat, and the futuristic Lusail Stadium attest to the architectural grandeur of the country. Deepshikha Barretto, who has lived in Doha for over 20 years, asserts, Overall, these FIFA-mandated changes have helped modernise and improve Doha’s infrastructure, making the city a more attractive tourist destination.
Numerous new museums in the city are another prime example of this FIFA-inspired boom. For example, at the National Museum of Qatar, which opened in March 2019, the French Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jean Nouvel incorporated the country’s nomadic Bedouin past with the present and future to create a grand concrete structure resembling the desert rose crystal.
It is composed of thousands of interlocking discs that Nouvel designed to resemble the gypsum crystal he discovered on the museum’s site. Sindhu Nair, architect and founder/editor of the digital architectural magazine Scale, has been a permanent resident of Doha for the past two decades and has witnessed the urban scale’s recent dynamism.
Of course, the stadiums and the new hospitality buildings were a result of FIFA requirements. Buildings that had been perpetually in various stages of construction have finally shed their covering.
Qatar Museums announced some time ago that the city would be transformed into an outdoor museum. And true to its word, each day leading up to the start of the FIFA matches, public art was unveiled here, says Nair. Approximately forty newly commissioned public artworks were installed in Doha and the rest of the nation.
Old wine in a new bottleThe Ned hotel is one such new old building that Nair mentions. This 500,000 sq. ft. building, which formerly housed Qatar’s Ministry of the Interior, is a tribute to the Soviet Brutalist architecture style of the mid-20th century, with its right-angled cuboid structure and neo-buttressed windows.
It is situated in the middle of the iconic waterfront promenade of Doha Corniche. The Ned Doha embodies the adage new wine, old bottle to the fullest with its retro-chic appeal, despite being a brand-new hotel that opened in November 2022 to house the FIFA group.
source: Al Jazeera EnglishThis 40,000-seat FIFA stadium gets its name not only from the international dialling code for Qatar, but also from the 974 shipping containers used to construct it. Just like London’s Millennium Dome, the IBM Traveling Pavilion, and Christchurch, New Zealand’s Cardboard Cathedral, this stadium is based on the ‘evanescent’ or ephemeral architecture model, says urban planner Renil Fernando, formerly of Doha.