What difference can seven years of planning and design, three years of construction and Dh179 million make?
Visitors will be able to judge for themselves today when the new Mushrif Central Park finally opens to the public.
“I’ve been working on this since 2008, from the initial planning, and here we are seven years later about to open,” explains ValleyCrest’s Brent Lloyd, the Denver-based landscape architect who has overseen the team behind the park’s design. “That’s fantastic to see.”
The product of an international team of contractors, architects, engineers, botanical consultants and the locally based developer Al Ain Properties, the 14-hectare park replaces the old, women-and-children-only park that was first built at the junction of Al Karamah (24th) and Mohammed bin Khalifa (15th) streets in 1982.
Walled, gated and entirely closed to men, the original Mushrif Park was a very different kind of space from the one that will greet visitors this afternoon.
“When I came in the first time, if it wasn’t turf grass, it was probably a pathway or a water feature,” Lloyd explains, describing an early site visit. “There were three really major water features that might have been 70 or 80 metres across.”
These have now been replaced by a park that has been designed to provide as many opportunities for play, entertainment, education and relaxation as possible, in what promises to be one of Abu Dhabi’s most refined open spaces.
“It can be about landscape, it can be about education, there can be an art programme here, it can be about food [or] there can be a concert or a movie on the lawn,” Lloyd explains. “The client wanted to create a really diverse range of events and opportunities out here, so what we created was a range of structures and spaces ideally that are very flexible and useful to achieve that.”
Among its many features, the new Mushrif Central Park contains a botanical garden planted with arid and desert plant species including acacia, agave, barrel and prickly pear cacti, a children’s play area that has been designed to mimic Bedouin camps and the UAE’s wadis and mountains, and an Evening Garden that has been designed for quiet contemplation.
At the very centre of the park sits the Wisdom Garden, a memorial to Sheikh Zayed, the founding President of the UAE, built around a central water feature and a carefully composed grove of palms.
“The reflection pool and some of the plant material in there is intended to be symbolic of the Al Ain Oasis, where you would see the water, the Ziziphus trees and the palms,” Lloyd explains.
The Wisdom Garden is framed by a black granite propylon, a kind of inner gateway or frame that greets visitors as soon as they enter the park.
The Wisdom Garden is formed from a series of arches and panels, washed with water and engraved with quotes from Sheikh Zayed on subjects ranging from the role of education and women in society to his love of the desert.
The propylon is just one of several classical structures in the park that have been given a contemporary twist by its designers.
The roof of the glazed glass cube that forms the park’s main entrance is crowned by an oculus that frames a perfect circle of sky; its Great Lawn, capable of accommodating audiences of up to 2,500 people, is serviced by an amphitheatre; and the park’s main boulevard is punctuated by a colonnade of palms.
The boulevard not only offers visitors the opportunity to take a stroll, but is also capable of hosting markets and special events while connecting the quieter Evening Garden with the more active children’s area at its opposite end.
That zone features a giant LED screen for interactive games, water fountains and the Animal Barn, a petting zoo that houses camels, donkeys, ponies and goats.
It’s here, more than anywhere, that visitors who remember the old Mushrif Park are likely to be struck by the profound differences between the new park and its predecessor – or any other green space that’s currently open to the public in Abu Dhabi.
“This is a pretty unique facility in terms of the level of programming and buildings and structures and the capability of the park,” says Lloyd. “In some ways it works like a botanic garden and in some ways it works like a very traditional park. There aren’t many places that are exactly like this.”
The only similarity between the new park and the one it replaces are its location and more than 900 mature trees that were saved and either protected during the construction process, or transplanted and then replanted in locations more suited to the new design.
The rescued trees – which include native ghaf (Prosopis cineraria), samar (Acacia tortilis) and sidr (Ziziphus spina-christi) – provide an immediate sense of maturity for the new park and a sense of continuity with the wider landscape in one of Abu Dhabi’s most verdant and established neighbourhoods.
For walkers, joggers and drivers who use the roads and pavements in this part of Al Karamah, clues and hints of the park’s contents have been visible for quite some time.
As soon as the park’s construction hoardings came down, its LED outdoor cinema could be seen broadcasting the latest children’s movies across its carefully manicured lawns and snippets of the park’s likely soundtrack – yes, it will have one – could be heard through the 299 speakers of its outdoor sound system: traditional Emirati songs and oud music for special occasions and a mix of atmospheric, ear-friendly mid-1990s electronica and samba jazz for the evening.
Despite being bathed in eye-catching washes of coloured light each evening, the park’s main structure, which soars above its tree canopy like a giant sail, has proved more difficult to read.
The 28-metre-high, multistorey structure is the park’s Shade House, which houses a collection of more than 30 tropical palm and shrub species that benefit from the shading and cooling effect of its enormous louvres and the clouds of irrigation mist that regularly fill the air.
Sheltering a palette of tender plants that include coconut and Cuban royal palms (Roystonea regia) and the wide, fan-shaped foliage of the Madagascan triangle palm (Dypsis decaryi) and traveller’s tree (Ravenala madagascariensis), the Shade House is a contemporary, open-air take on the kind of traditional 19th-century palm houses that can be found in botanic gardens from Brooklyn to London and from Vienna to Adelaide.
The Shade House also acts as a viewing platform, and from its upper floor, visitors are offered the only opportunity to see all 14 of Mushrif Central Park’s hectares in one go – when they are seen from this vantage point, the successes and the limitations of the new Mushrif Central Park immediately become clear.
Only time will tell whether its current positive qualities can be maintained in the face of the visitor numbers it will undoubtedly attract, but if the park can evolve and respond to the needs of its users, it has the potential to become a great success.
“Great parks evolve,” Lloyd insists. “Read about [the landscape architect Frederick Law] Olmsted and his views on Central Park in New York. He never wanted things like a baseball field, but the population said: ‘Well these are the things that we want to do’ – and now there is.”
The other important thing for Lloyd is the need to understand the new park in a broader context. “I think you want to view parks as a part of a larger system,” the landscape architect explains. “How does this park connect to the Corniche or to the small neighbourhood park down the road?
“Great cities build great networks of parks, a really solid green infrastructure,” says Lloyd. “Think how all of the really wide medians on Al Saada Street, for example, could connect to become one great park. I think Abu Dhabi has a great opportunity to capitalise on that.”
• Mushrif Central Park will open to the public Friday, March 20, from noon to 6pm and thereafter daily from 7am to 10pm. Entry costs Dh5 but is free for children aged three or under. Visit www.mushrifcentralpark.ae
nleech@thenational.ae
