In this architecture workshop, participants won’t be asked to design something from scratch. This one asks something a little harder: return to a structure that has already been built, lived in, weathered, etc., and redesign for it!

TARABOT is a large-scale steel dome pavilion commissioned by Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai in 2023. It was conceived as an interspecies structure: a built environment designed not only for human use but for active occupation and ecological support by non-human species. It was documented internationally and celebrated for its ambition. It also revealed, over time, something that most interspecies architecture projects quietly avoid admitting: that without sustained human stewardship, ecological design intentions do not self-execute. Species do not simply arrive. Systems do not simply perform.

TARABOT has a predetermined afterlife. Its steel frame is destined for submersion in the Gulf of Oman, off the coast of Fujairah as substrate for coral reef rehabilitation. Before it goes into the water, this workshop uses the structure’s final terrestrial weeks as a live research site, being open to sky, heat, dust, and scrutiny.

Over two weeks, a small cohort of students will conduct a systematic forensic audit, environmental and results driven, of TARABOT’s actual performance against its original interspecies intentions. They will identify, collectively, its single most critically failing component. They will then design and fabricate a precise architectural correction: a prototype inserted directly into the dome’s steel framework, and test it against measurable environmental and ecological criteria before the structure is dismantled and released to the creek.

The prototype does not go into the water. TARABOT does. The prototype’s output is a drawing set, a dataset, audiovisual and written documentation, and a public exhibition of it all with the 1:1 in place on the existing structure.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Upon completion of this course, students will have:

• Collected environmental data on-site using various physical computing environmental sensors.
• Applied results-management tool as a spatial and ecological performance audit, identifying where the interspecies intentions succeeded or failed.
• Learned how to convert performance data into a design position, then integrate that position into an architectural thesis process.
• Designed a 1:1 architectural prototype with a package of fabrication-ready drawings and material specifications for digital fabrication processes.
• Produced a thesis, diagrammatic design, architectural drawings, render, and audiovisuals, from design development.
• Fabricated and installed a full-scale prototype on-site at Jameel Arts Centre in coordination with the Centre’s operations team.
• Learned how to curate the produced knowledge for a public professional exhibition at one of the Gulf’s leading contemporary arts institutions.

SCHEDULE

READINGS & INSPIRATION

ZAHRA MANSOOR

Exhibition Designer

Zahra Mansoor is an exhibition designer at Art Jameel, where she delivers exhibitions, commissions and public programmes; translating curatorial concepts into spatial, technical and material outcomes. Trained in architecture, her practice spans research, sculpture and film, examining how bodies and built environments are shaped by time, migration and social expectation. She works with clay, wax and found materials, making change tangible through transformation, erosion and reuse. She co-founded Another Empty House, a recognised project on vacant domestic houses in Kerala and Gulf migration.

Mansoor was a researcher and curator on TARABOT in 2023, working alongside Nader Akoum. For this workshop, she will also be bringing direct knowledge of the structure’s original intentions by guiding the participants through it, in addition to a site introduction. She will be leveraging extensive experience in exhibition design to co-curate the school’s outputs into the aspired multimedia public exhibit. 

Adithya Suresh

Environmental Sensing Specialist

Adithya Suresh is an emerging multimedia designer, and a graduate of the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation. His research sits between product design, systems thinking, prototyping, and material exploration, with a focus on understanding how people, objects, and environments interact. Physical computing is central to Adithya’s work, and his thesis was a multidisciplinary study that explored how design can be a problem-framing tool for observation and transformation, translating complex conditions into tangible products and systems that include sound, touch, and experience.

For this workshop, Adithya will support the processes of environmental data collection via physical computing and sensor-based observation. He will be helping participants to assemble environmental sensing kits, collect data, visualize it, and translate it into design decisions. 

Jameel Arts Centre

The workshop takes place at Jameel Arts Centre, situated on the Jaddaf waterfront on the edge of Dubai Creek, the same waterway into which TARABOT will eventually be submerged. Students will have full access to the TARABOT structure in its outdoor plaza, use of Jameel Arts Centre’s workshop and indoor facilities, and the run of the Centre’s gardens and public spaces throughout the two weeks.

The site is the only place where this workshop could take place. TARABOT was built here, has weathered here, and will leave from here. The Centre’s waterfront position also means the creek, TARABOT’s next home, is always present as context and horizon.