Brief
I was asked to visit a place called "Souq Waqif" to look, record and explore to find a unique insight into a material that promotes the place.
The description of the location "Souq Waqif"
(Souq means a market and waqif means standing)
Souq Waqif is an important heritage market in Qatar and also a major tourism landmark. It is called (waqif) standing because the sellers used to stand at the entrance to display their products to visitors. It is a historical place so the government ordered the restoration of it in 2000 following the traditional architecture to link the past with the present.
Process
I visited the place and collected some photos and voice memos. What attracted me when I was taking the photos, was the wooden sticks protruding from all the buildings in the market. I liked them visually, their shadows on the buildings, and the relation between the sticks, each stick has a different shape and length. From this point, I decided to do more research about the usage of these sticks.
Unique solution
My idea was “a campaign” that called (WHY IS THAT). It can be a series of flyers describing something we used to see and use, now and maybe in the future without knowing the story behind it. Especially because modern architecture still uses these protruded beams and some of these traditional architectural elements in different buildings artificially as decorative tools referring to their history.
These wooden sticks are the base of the roofs in their traditional architecture. The first step in making the ceiling was to lay these sticks on the top of the walls and they had to be protruded out of the building for safety reasons. Then continue the installation of the walls above the sticks to stabilize them. After that, they install the ceiling components (split bamboo, woven reed, and then a palm mat known as a manghrour) above the sticks.
I used an Arabic pattern in the background to add a reference to the location and the photo I used on the back page of the flyer shows an iconic building from the country behind the wooden sticks referring to the location as well. The colours I used were all natural and from the captured photo, either sky, soil, or wood colours.
