Al Hosn Master Plan

The Al Hosn Master Plan organizes a 140,000 m² site in central Abu Dhabi as a cultural park-scape centred on Qasr Al Hosn Fort, the city’s oldest building. It reinstates the Fort as Abu Dhabi’s cultural heart while conserving the historic setting shared by the Fort and the Cultural Foundation. The project reconnects this site of exceptional heritage value with contemporary urban life through new recreational, social, and cultural functions. 

Two contrasting yet interconnected landscapes shape how visitors experience Al Hosn. Around the Fort, a soft and open desert creates space to approach and view the historic building as a freestanding structure, recalling how it stood in relation to the island before the rapid urbanization of Abu Dhabi. At the Cultural Foundation, paved ground, intensified planting, and a full programme of uses support movement, gathering, and everyday activity. Together, the desert and the paved ground express the relationship between the natural character of Abu Dhabi Island, traditional Emirati culture, and the metropolitan identity that followed. 

A continuous urban space joins these two conditions. Cracks and irregular shapes derived from the sandbars, mangroves, and salt flats of the coast mark the transition from natural sand to urban pavement. Architecture emerges from this zone: horizontal planes gradually rise into slanting forms that accommodate ancillary functions, food and beverage facilities, and, at the northern corner of the grounds, the Al Musalla prayer hall. The same geometry carries through built element, from surface patterns and lighting to building volumes and, inside, floor plans, doorways, and furnishings. Because the new buildings read as extensions of the landscape, the Fort and the Cultural Foundation remain the site’s primary visual anchors. 

A network of pedestrian routes connects the site’s different functions and extends into the surrounding city. Shaded pathways and pocket spaces along these routes provide places to pause, sit, meet, and observe, while generous overhangs create sheltered outdoor areas beside the food and beverage buildings. At the water feature, these spaces support eating, gathering, and informal social activity. 

Rooted in the geography of Abu Dhabi Island, the Al Hosn Master Plan creates a public park where history, recreation, and civic life come together.