Abu Dhabi to get its performing arts centre

Some official information has been announced for the long-rumoured performing arts centre for Saadiyat Island. Designed by the late Frank Gehry (and nothing like his Guggenheim, now nearing completion on another part of the island), Dar al Funoon – literally, ‘house of arts’ – looks to be an impressive multi-functional development that should be able to host a range of performance types 365 days a year.

Construction works have already begun, with the completion date forecast as 2030.

Dar al Funoon Abu Dhabi appears to be the last essential piece in the Saadiyat Cultural District plan. We have two different museums – the Zayed National Museum and the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi – alongside two very different art galleries, Louvre Abu Dhabi and the imminent Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, with the quirky but very sexy teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi added to the mix. The obvious omission was a top-end performance venue.

Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of DCT Abu Dhabi, describes Dar al Funoon as “a deliberate investment in the future of our cultural ecosystem, and the scale of our ambition is clear”. As well as providing a permanent space for performance, with “international partnerships … and co-productions with leading global institutions”, there will be a pedagogical element – we’re promised artistic residencies, for example.

And of course there will be F&B and retail opportunities, some 5,000m² of them. In typical Abu Dhabi style, though, there has been no announcement of the overall size or specifications of the building, so we don’t know how impressive this is. But as a pointer, the Red Theater at NYUAD Abu Dhabi – capacity about 700 – is less than 500m², so Dar Al Funoon will have enough restaurants and shops to fill more than ten Red Theaters …

There will also be a rooftop terrace “for special events to enhance the visitor experience”; maybe this is included in the 5,000m².

Generally though the capacity planning seems spot on. Abu Dhabi doesn’t have too many venues with the technical and seating capacity to host a variety of different sizes and styles of performance.

The main hall will have “more than” 2,000 seats, “world-class” acoustics, and an orchestra pit that can take 120 musicians. That’s about the seating capacity of Dubai Opera but with a much bigger band.

Equally important, there will be smaller spaces on site in Abu Dhabi – a 400-seat studio theatre and a 250-seat “jazz venue” (presumably with a bar?). And the big extra is a 3,500-seat open-air amphitheatre, which presumably won’t be used all year round but will be great for the odd Greek tragedy and the better-known-but-still-cool indie bands.

We’ve been here before, of course. Back in the enthusiastic and hectic planning days of the noughties, DCT Abu Dhabi’s predecessor TDIC was set up to develop Saadiyat Island as a tourism and cultural hub. In 2007 Gehry’s Guggenheim and Jean Nouvel’s Louvre were announced, along with a Maritime Museum designed by Tadao Ando and a performing arts centre by Zaha Hadid. (The Zayed National Museum was referenced but hadn’t then been commissioned.)

Two of these projects were later dropped apparently because of the international financial crisis of the late noughties. The Zaha Hadid design was going to have five theatres – a music hall, concert hall, opera house, drama theatre and a flexible performance space with a combined seating capacity of 6,300 – plus “possibly” an Academy of Performing Arts. It looked very much of its time (and very Zaha Hadid) but in the event it was probably overspecified; that’s an awful lot of purpose-specific theatres, for instance.

Gehry’s studio has produced what sounds like a much more versatile building. It will be one of the final completed buildings from the hand of the celebrated architect, who died last December at the age of 96. Renders show a rippling, fabric-like exterior enveloping it (presumably someone has thought about ways to brush off the dust) that is intended to evoke the movement and energy of music and performance; it looks rather lovely, a neat contrast to the more angular Guggenheim.

We do know its location – in Saadiyat’s coming-real-soon-now Marina district, facing Abu Dhabi city directly to the southeast of Sheikh Khalifa Bridge. And beyond that there’s no public information available about the building.

So we decided to see how this all fits into the bums-on-seats options for performance venues in Abu Dhabi:

Dar al Funoon Amphitheatre: 3,500 seats

… no real alternative locally. Etihad Arena on Yas can take 18,000 (so it’s good for pop concerts and sports); Etihad Live claims to be the Middle East’s largest outdoor venue, hosting the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix after-race concerts – which is what it’s set up for. Emirates Palace used to have an open-air performance space (we saw a great show by The Killers there several years ago) but the hotel seems to have a better use for it.

Dar al Funoon main house: 2,000 seats

… Emirates Palace Auditorium, currently the go-to venue for orchestral concerts and touring ballets, seats a maximum of 2,400; but it’s technically and logistically restricted, basically because it’s in a hotel. Du Forum on Yas is larger, seating up to 4,500 or so, but is more of a flexibly-configured space geared to commercial long-run shows and big-ticket events. The Abu Dhabi National Theatre also has a 2,250-seat auditorium but while its facilities have been updated it was built in 1981; it also has a role as a home for Arabic, Khaleeji and Abu Dhabi-specific events. And The Red Theater at the NYUAD Arts Center, which is undoubtedly one of the best-equipped proscenium stages in the UAE with a generous sprung-wood stage that ideal for dance and large-scale productions, tops out at about 700 seats – thus fitting neatly between Dar al Funoon’s studio theatre and the main house.

Dar al Funoon studio theatre: 400 seats

… This is a decent size, especially if it will be as configurable as implied. The NYUAD Arts Center’s Black Box, the only direct local equivalent, has around 250 seats; the Blue Hall, purpose-built for recitals, has a capacity of 150. The Manarat al Saadiyat can do 650 in its auditorium, but this is definitely geared for talks and presentations rather than performance.

Dar al Funoon jazz venue: 250 seats

… With four years of development to come, this could well morph into something else. Presumably it won’t simply be a smaller studio theatre or recital hall; certainly we’d like to see a proper jazz bar, perhaps minus the wreaths of cigarette smoke …