Family time invested in the design of cities

On the 23rd of April 2006, with my first-born son only 15 days old and in his first week out of hospital, leaving my wife behind with no help in China (where we were living at the time), I got on a plane for EDAW AECOM to Qatar to take part in a 5-days planning and urban design workshop. It was for the development of 31 ha of land for a new Down Town in Doha. The ruler's wife chose one of our three design concepts.

This project was instrumental in me being asked a few months later by Jo Brown (CEO of EDAW at the time), to move to the UAE and start up the Middle East office for EDAW.

Today, 11 years later, still living in the UAE and back in Qatar for a few days (attending a conference), I saw from the window of my taxi what was our master plan and guidelines, now fully constructed. While I am sure that a great deal more sacrifice from fellow professionals made it happen, the development, now known as Msheireb Downtown Doha, stayed faithful to the original ideas we presented in the workshop all those years ago. Thank you Chris Choa, Kevin Underwood, Bill Hanway and everyone else who made this possible!