ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the making of Doha’s Corniche and the processes behind the modern state-institutional buildings – the Sheraton hotel, the Ministry Complex, and the Museum of Islamic Arts – that marked the waterfront’s architecture landscape. Against an urban examination of the undertaken strategies to define the modern architecture along the Corniche, it traces how the built environment was integral to political ambitions and nation-building. The Sheraton would represent the ideal type of architecture for future planning of the waterfront, known as the Corniche. The Corniche is a place of layered historical imaginaries and visions. The Corniche became a place of site of experimentation and architectural invention, distinct from the rest of the city. The reclaimed land has been the locus for the articulation of social, spatial, and symbolic structures across different stages of the city’s growth and remains an important site for the state until today.
