Shemagh. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
LASD Studio works across garden design, landscape architecture, urban design, and regional landscape design. Our goal is to live in balance with nature. With landscape design, we have to close the cycle of clean water, fresh air, ready to plant soil, and other vital resources for the next generation.
The Shemagh Project is a holistic approach towards mitigating the urban heat island effect, providing comfort to public. The Shemagh Project proposes to target the urban heat island effect by active and passive design approaches. An active part of the design includes the Urban Cooler that directly catches CO2, cleans the air of hazardous chemicals, viruses and bacteria, and significantly cools down the air; and pavilions that reduce UV and IR solar radiation, providing shade from the sun, serve as refreshing areas for the public, and providing useful urban facilities such as restrooms, storage, etc.
The passive part of the design involves using special coatings for the surrounding parking areas, as well as permeable pavement to increase the albedo ratio. The active part of the design project to lower air temperature in a range from 7 to 13 °C locally, depending on the urban cooler setup, while the passive design will reduce surface heat in the range of 5-12 °C. The holistic combination of active and passive approaches allows us to predict that we will be able to cool down the current area to about 13-16 °C from the original site under the no-wind urban environment condition.
The Shemagh Project is replicable and adjustable for other locations across the city. The establishment of a Shemagh Grid around the city center will create more powerful conditions of mitigating the urban heat island effect of the city and reduce the temperature to the level of ‘moderate heat stress’ and ‘no thermal stress’. We propose that such a solution should be implemented in a walkable distance grid across the city not only to mitigate the urban heat island effect on the larger area, but also to provide vital refreshment of public spaces for urban life.
Our landscape, ecology, civilization, and the future of the planet are at risk. We aim to create, shape, and restore the landscape and urban environments for the sustainable continuation of life on our planet. Our goal is to live in balance with nature and provide clean water, air, soil resources for the next generation.
We cannot achieve our goal alone. Whether you are an individual, commercial business, an NGO, or governmental institution, you are welcome to join our mission.
Life begins with you. Join our mission today.
Shemagh
Abu Dhabi