Oxygen Park, Education City, Doha

2017Landscape & Planning · Public ParkHospitality + Sport

Year: 2017
Category: Landscape & Planning · Public Park
Type: Hospitality + Sport
Status: Built
Firm: aecom
Location: Doha, Qatar

Project Credit

Client: Qatar Foundation, Education City AECOM Design Director: Erik Behrens (Architecture Design Lead), Mark Blackwell, James Haig Streeter (Landscape Design Lead), Warren Osborne, Kevin Underwood Taking the elemental life-force of oxygen as its inspiration, Oxygen Park, is a unique public space designed for health and wellbeing in a desert environment. It has been created with the local community in mind, providing an open space in which to exercise, rest, and play. Oxygen Park is inspired by the wind eroded rocks and fluid land formations of the desert.

The path and running tracks are embedded in the topography to create an exciting training ground with looping tracks, cooled tunnel segments, and steep hills. The night-time lighting scheme and refreshing water features provide an attractive setting for evening sports activities and individual work-outs during cooler hours of the day. Oxygen Park features shaded running tracks, subterranean pitches for team sports, equestrian facilities, as well as more gentle recreation areas with a series of soundscape-filled, refreshing folly spheres.

The ‘balloon lights’ floating above the subterranean grounds make the park visible from afar and add a touch of magic to the setting. Oxygen Park is a man-made ‘green lung’ with a design inspired by nature. It is an antidote to the generic indoor gym environment and helps people to get back to nature, while fostering social engagement and promoting active healthy lifestyles.