Avoid Midday Heat Places in Abu Dhabi

ADGM Building (Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange)

A glass hall the size of a football pitch, lifted 27 metres into the air on four granite piers above a circular pool.

Abu Dhabi

ADNOC Headquarters

342 metres of granite-framed restraint on the Corniche — a monumental arch standing against the Gulf.

Abu Dhabi

Abrahamic Family House

A mosque, a church and a synagogue as three identical 30-metre cubes — equality argued in Omani limestone.

Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi Central Bus Station

Mint-green concrete wings folded over a 1989 terminal — Gulf modernism still doing its day job.

Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi Corniche Promenade

Eight kilometres of reclaimed waterfront on an undulating line — the city's front room, facing the Gulf.

Abu Dhabi

Al Ain Oasis & the Falaj Channels

147,000 date palms watered by channels dug three thousand years ago — and still running.

Abu Dhabi

Al Bahr Towers Responsive Façade

Twin cylinders wrapped in 2,000 folding umbrellas — a mashrabiya that opens and closes with the sun.

Abu Dhabi

Al Fay Park

The Middle East's first urban biodiversity park — 2,000 native trees, textile canopies, and a hundred-per-cent birdsong guarantee.

Abu Dhabi

Al Gurm Corniche & Eastern Mangroves Promenade

3.5 kilometres of continuous shade pushed six metres out over the water, facing the mangrove forest.

Abu Dhabi

Al Maryah Island Waterfront Promenade

A financial district with a waterside walk around its edge — planned to ring the whole island at 5.4 kilometres.

Abu Dhabi

Al Qana Waterfront Promenade

2.4 kilometres of canal-side promenade with buildings cantilevered twenty metres into the air above it.

Abu Dhabi

Capital Gate (The Leaning Tower of Abu Dhabi)

An 18-degree lean, four times Pisa's — a skyscraper built deliberately off-balance and held there by steel.

Abu Dhabi

Mamsha Al Khair

A granite monolith and limestone blocks along the Corniche, carrying a quotation every thirty metres.

Abu Dhabi

Marsa Mina Murals

1,163 metres of painted wall along the old port — the longest continuous mural in the capital.

Abu Dhabi

Masdar City Central Park Camel Sculpture

A camel in twisted metal with an impossibly stretched middle, standing in a solar-powered park.

Abu Dhabi

NYU Abu Dhabi Campus

Twenty-nine buildings, one shaded pedestrian street grid — a liberal-arts campus built as a small city on Saadiyat.

Abu Dhabi

Sheikha Fatima Park

A ladies' park from another era rebuilt as an urban forest of reclaimed materials, skate ramps and an open-air amphitheatre.

Abu Dhabi

Special Olympics Gardens

Six permanent commissions in a garden outside Manarat Al Saadiyat — including a mirrored bridge you can walk across.

Abu Dhabi

The Humans by Fatspatrol

A hundred metres of black-and-white figures in profile — dreamers, visionaries and jokers on a nightclub wall.

Abu Dhabi

The Liwa Desert

The northern edge of the Rub' al Khali — the largest continuous sand sea on Earth.

Abu Dhabi

The Wisdom Garden, Umm Al Emarat Park

Thirty of Sheikh Zayed's sayings cut into ten marble walls, in a garden of native planting and water.

Abu Dhabi

Tolerance by Eduardo Kobra

Two thousand square metres of kaleidoscopic portraiture wrapped around a building — the largest mural in the region.

Abu Dhabi

UAE Pavilion

A gold steel sand dune shipped from Shanghai in 60 containers and rebuilt, panel by numbered panel, on Saadiyat.

Abu Dhabi

Wahat Al Karama (Oasis of Dignity)

Thirty-one aluminium tablets leaning on one another — the UAE's first war memorial, facing the Grand Mosque.

Abu Dhabi

Yas Bay Waterfront Art Trail

Twelve works along one promenade — Murakami, KAWS, four astronaut cats and a row of painted electrical substations.

Abu Dhabi