Sharjah, UAE
“Our first sight of Jebel Buhais was in the late afternoon sun, exploring the area after the midday heat,” said Simon Fraser, principal at Hopkins Architects.
“It is an amazingly beautiful, barren setting, with the Jebel providing a powerful backdrop.”
Hopkins Architects with landscape architects Spencer and exhibition designers Ralph Applebaum Associates have completed The Buhais Geology Park Interpretive Centre, which was officially opened by His Highness the Ruler of Sharjah.
The project has been awarded a 2021 Good Design Award by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
The Park lies approximately 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of the city of Sharjah in a region of exceptional prehistoric and geological significance.
The site features an abundance of marine fossils from over 65 million years ago, spectacular mountain ranges, and ancient burial sites from the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages.
Seeking to create a series of exhibition spaces that vividly present the region’s significant geological phenomena—including deep earth structures, plate tectonics, geomorphology, and sedimentation—Hopkins Architects has designed five interconnected pods of varying sizes.
These accommodate exhibition areas, an immersive theatre, a café offering panoramic views of the dramatic Jebel Buhais ridge rising some 100 meters above, a gift shop, and other visitor facilities.
The geometry of the pods was inspired by the fossilized urchins present on-site and developed into a typology that could be sized to suit the Centre’s different functions.
To minimize disruption to the existing fauna, geology, and terrain, the pods were designed as prefabricated concrete structures and only lightly touch the ground on in-situ reinforced concrete foundation discs.
A sixth, unconnected pod is used as a service building.
The pods are clad in steel panels, colored to reference the different hues of the surrounding landscape as well as to shade the precast concrete structures.
These panels are fixed into an array of steel ribs, giving the pods their distinctive sculptural, cantilevered forms and further referencing the exoskeleton of the urchin fossils.
Visitors enter the building along an elegant ramp to the central hub where once inside, they are greeted and guided through the Centre.
The restrained palette of the interior materials complements the pods’ exposed pre-cast concrete shell segments.
In some pods, glazing and oculi have been inserted to control natural light into space, tempering the brightness of the desert sun.
Linking the pods and looping sinuously around the site is an outdoor trail accessed from the main exhibition area.
This trail—designed to encourage visitors to explore the jebel (Arabic for mountain)—incorporates viewing areas, a classroom shaded by a high-tensile canopy, and raised walkways across natural rock formations and ancient burial grounds.
Using a series of model-based interactive displays, the Centre explores the region’s mountains, sand dunes, and the Arabian Gulf as dramatic evidence of the area’s rich tectonic history over time—in particular, the disappearance of an earlier ocean and the creation of the limestone mountain ranges of Jebel Buhai’s.
Visitors and researchers can actively examine local rocks and fossils.
The Geology Park is the latest addition to a suite of learning centres operated by Sharjah’s Environmental Protected Areas Authority who lead conservation efforts in the Emirate, manage protected areas and provide exceptional educational experiences.
“Rarely is an architect offered the opportunity to design a building for such a beautifully barren landscape with so much geological and cultural significance,” states Fraser.
Project: Buhais Geology Park Interpretive Centre
Architects: Hopkins Architects
Clients: Hana Saif Al Suwaidi, Sharjah Environment and Protected Areas Authority (EPAA) with HH the Ruler’s Office
Engineers: GAJ (M&E Engineer), eConstruct (Structural Engineer)
Landscape Architects: Spencer
Exhibition Designers: Ralph Appelbaum Associates
Photographers: Marc Goodwin
