To the frontier and back: Doha and the digital-first world

I will never forget the moment when architecture changed for me. It was when my boss asked me, in his charming South African accent, “do you know anything about special systems?” 

We were walking back to his office inside the site office for the New Doha International Airport (NDIA) in Qatar, which was under construction not far away. He was the Design Director and I was a Project Architect. I had just moved with my wife to Qatar to work on this new state-of-the-art airport being built along the Arabian Gulf. 

When I say “new airport,” I don’t mean a new terminal or concourse. I mean everything, down to the new land that was being formed from the sea floor. New roads, runways, control tower, utilities, data centers, hangars, cargo facilities, fire stations, landscaping, airplanes, and last but not least, the new six million square foot passenger terminal.

Working on this new airport was something else. Together with living in Doha, a city with modest beginnings that was, by this time, sprouting up new skyscrapers on a seemingly daily basis, I felt very much like I was in a new frontier. Many others on the project felt the same way. In fact, “frontier” was the word my friend and I used to describe our experience in a half-joking, half-serious way.

Doha was a frontier because we were building something big from scratch to a level of detail and quality unmatched in the US or western world in general. We knew it then. Our client knew it then. The world would know it much later when NDIA would open as Hamad International Airport and eventually rank as “Best Airport in the World.”

I don’t remember exactly what I said to my boss in return. I know the short answer was “yes.” I had, in fact, helped design a “sally port” on my last airport project. But I’m not sure I knew what the term “special systems” fully meant at that moment. 

Whatever happened next in that brief conversation, I inspired enough confidence in my boss to take on a new and very important responsibility. Little did I know it was a job that no one else wanted. I became known as the “special systems guy.”

I quickly found myself the only architect in a room full of contractors and IT engineers in the weekly special systems meeting. This would become a weekly ritual that would last years, and the one meeting I dreaded the most every week, at least initially. 

These meetings took place in a standalone porta-cabin next to the main office. You almost had to climb into it from a makeshift set of steps made from CMU blocks. The only window was fitted with an AC unit, which was vital to creating environmental conditions well enough to hold a one-hour meeting in the middle of the desert. 

I think my boss introduced me in my first meeting. His introduction was something along the lines of, “This is Jonathan. His job is to make sure you don’t f*ck up the design.” I’m pretty sure he never sat down, and left the meeting right after that.

My first responsibility was to develop a set of aesthetic design guidelines for all the equipment and “field devices” that would be installed, especially those visible in the public areas of the airport. 

Special systems is a term that refers to the broad category of technology systems that make airports function today. Special systems is a domain commanded by IT specialists with engineering backgrounds — in this case, a mix of tech gurus and contractors, people who build things that have a specific purpose and function. To them, the word “design” means “engineering.” They engineer things to do a job – and couldn't care less about aesthetics. 

But back to me, the hero of this journey, my first task was to develop guidelines for a set of people who had a disdain for aesthetics. You can imagine every one of those engineers was eager to hear my opinion. 

In reality, I had to battle for months to achieve what you see today, or rather don’t see, enduring endless jokes about custom colors (a common thing that engineers like to do to architects). In the end, I finally had a great moment of vindication, which… is a story for another time. 🙂

But what started as a weekly ritual of uncomfortable meetings turned into a process of learning the ins and outs of special systems, and what could, and could not, be done with how they looked, functioned, and integrated with the architectural design. I learned a lot, and am forever grateful to those who took the time to teach me. 

Being the “special systems guy” evolved into a bigger role managing the fit-out of the airport’s operations centers – twelve different spaces in total, all decked out with technical furniture and video walls and, most importantly, the full suite of client applications that came with all the new systems being developed. 

Unlike my first task in the NDIA special systems world, this role started as a more traditional one for an architect like myself, which was to oversee construction and make sure it aligns with the design. But when you are in the construction phase like we were, the stakes are high because basically every decision has major cost implications. You learn to cope with that responsibility, eventually.

At this point in time, you can imagine there would naturally be some talk about when the airport would open. Well, there was. You can probably also imagine, on a project like this, there would be lots of fires burning (metaphorically speaking). And yes, there were. 

At this point in time, the operations centers had the distinction of being… not finished. Very quickly, they became the fire of the day, week, and month, for several months. There was a pretty good reason for that – the airport could not open without them.

At some point I realized I was operating in a new world. This new airport — this multi-billion dollar feat of architecture and engineering, of glass, steel, and concrete – could not open without the right software installed on some peoples’ computers. 

The digital world trumped the physical world. 

While Doha offered me that epiphany, at least at the time, the reality of operating in a digital-first world is commonplace today. As far as building typologies go, airports run on software and derive their value from digital technology. But also, more and more building typologies are being shaped by the digital world in similar ways. 

Now, am I suggesting that architecture today should be designed around digital technology? Actually, yes. More specifically, I am suggesting that a digital-first approach in design is necessary to managing its complexity (as in airports), but more importantly to creating the most value, resiliency, and relevance in architecture and the physical world today. 

As the world continues to get more digitally native and sophisticated, I think it is important that we understand how to operate better in this world as architects and designers. It’s a frontier for everyone, but I think we can get there and back.