Dakeer Island

Basra /Iraq /International competition for the regeneration of Dakeer Island and its waterfront to diversify the local context.

''Our proposal is quintessentially humanist and cares for people.''

Digital Twin for Early Design /Twinmotion

0:00

/0:58

©airc.design

Our Concept

Dakeer Island is a living organism made of people and places. This ecosystem is the support of many lives using the island to live, work or learn, in short, to exist.

If we refuse as human beings to accept the loss of such an ecosystem to natural disasters like the ones we just witnessed in recent times in Morocco or Libya, why should we accept it under the tutelage of urban design?

Tabula Rasa is a concept of the past. Place Making, its modern counterpart, should be made redundant too. A place is not made, it exists by the combination of what was there, what is and what may be. What may be should increase the resilience of a place.

Place Resilience is therefore what guided us in crafting our proposal for Dakeer Island. We analysed what was and is there through as many filters of subsetting data as possible including build forms, uses, local landscape, climatic data, social interactions, geographical or historical data.

Through this process we identified several locations ready for change to improve the chances of survival of Dakeer Island through adaptation and evolution.

We applied circular principles to retrofit existing buildings to host the proposed brief in order to minimise the use of natural resources. A network of windcatchers grafted to the identified open spaces will redirect the Shamal to naturally cool down ground floor areas. Combined with shaded areas this network will help increase the resilience of Dakeer Island.