Muscat: His Highness Sayyid Bilarab bin Haitham Al Said will patronise the closing ceremony of the Bilarab bin Haitham Award for Architectural Design on Tuesday at the Royal Opera House Muscat.
Ten projects, submitted by 19 young men and women, have qualified for the final stage. Five of these came from individual participants, while the other five came in the form of team submissions.
The top three winners will be announced during the ceremony and their creators will be honoured with commemorative shields. For the first time in the Arab World, these shields will be delivered in the form of non-fungible tokens, known around the world as NFTs.
“The deadline has ended for the submission of the final designs and 10 projects have qualified,” said the organisers. “The award stipulates that the designs be submitted in the form of high-resolution, A1-size technical drawings, alongside a video clip that includes animations about the project, as well as its technical and construction details.”
The initial review of the projects was conducted before the jury on 27 and 28 February, during their direct presentations.
Initially, 356 entries, which met all the pre-requisites to participate in the event, were received from youth from across the Sultanate of Oman. The theme of participation for this year is development of a site in the neighbourhood of Al Mina by the Corniche in the Wilayat of Muttrah.
The winning project will be a landmark that embodies 50 years of the renaissance of Oman, while also indicating a promising future for the country, through the achievement of Vision 2040. The proposed design area is around 7,500 sqm of land area between Muttrah fish market and the sea front.
Five goals of the award
The Bilarab bin Haitham Award for Architectural Design has been set up to achieve five goals. They include achieving the aspirations of Oman’s Vision 2040 to establish environmentally friendly tourism and entertainment areas that provide attractions to the public and contributes to raising the quality of life in the Sultanate of Oman.
Furthermore, the award aims at investing knowledge and skills of Omani youth specialised in the field of architecture and engineering design and empowering their practical and technical capabilities so that they can positively impact and provide added value to society.
Through the nature of this award, more investment opportunities for owners of small and medium enterprises will be created by contributing to the operation of the award-winning projects and providing them with appropriate services.
The award will also help in investing in some untapped lands in the Sultanate of Oman and transform them into integrated tourism and entertainment destinations.
Practical, innovative and modern projects under the award will act as ideas for the tourism and investment planning sectors, while providing opportunities for real estate development companies in Oman to partner with the creators of some of the submissions.
The evaluation committee for the award includes five judges with vast experience in the field of architecture, urban planning and design: Fuad Abdullah Moosa Al Kindi, who serves as the chairman of the jury and is president of the Oman Society of Engineers; Dr Alya Abdulsattar Al Hashim, associate professor at Sultan Qaboos University; Sultan Hamdoon Al Harthi, the former head of Muscat Municipality; Hamed Nasser Al Hinai, CEO of Arkan Business and Saif Ali Nasser Al Hinai, chief development officer at Omran.
The commemorative shield aside, the winner of the award receives a cash prize of OMR 20,000, second place gets OMR 15,000 and the entrant who finishes third is given OMR 10,000.
