January 2020

A trip was made to the Dubai International Financial Centre in 2020 as part of the cohorts site visit. Both DIFC and DIFC Gate Village are very well connected to all of Dubai’s major hubs. DIFC is home to major international investors and managers of capital assets (buildings), fund, construction, insurance, private equity, etc. It is also home to international cultural organizations a number of major galleries and clubs. The location is selected to usefully provoke and influence the investments and approaches to new relationships between Architecture, Ecology, and the City of Dubai. This particular site in Dubai encourages the students to explore innovations for the built environment. Students were asked to develop a holistic understanding of the built environment as a metabolism of natural resources according to scale, system principles and innovation strategies. The suggestion is to reintegrate all aspects of human existence into a natural ecological model that follows a balanced nature. The focus for the project is on design for an ‘ecologically’ integrated world that places emphasis on people, their social value and environmental aspects first.