Arch History

[Image: Spiral Arches by Daydreamers Design].

A project I noted while serving as one of many, many design jurors this year for the Architizer A+Awards used a spiraling outdoor corridor of arches in the United Arab Emirates to tell the history of the Islamic arch.

[Image: Spiral Arches by Daydreamers Design].

The Hong Kong-based team behind the project, Daydreamers Design, explained that they organized the arches into ten typologies, then arrayed those into a much larger sequence, “in historical order.”

[Images: Spiral Arches by Daydreamers Design].

In other words, as you meander down the hallway, you also move forward—or backward—through arch history.

[Images: Spiral Arches by Daydreamers Design].

For what it’s worth, I’d love to see something similar done with Western design orders, or even cathedral buttresses.

In any case, the project did not win any A+Awards, but it remains noteworthy, nonetheless. Watch a short video of the project, below.