Open-air air conditioning in Qatar

Qatar is where outdoor cooling stopped being a thought experiment. The spot-cooling technology developed for the 2022 World Cup stadiums showed the world that open-air spaces could be made comfortable in extreme heat, and Katara Plaza in Doha is billed as the world's first open-air air-conditioned commercial plaza.

Green Square worked on one of these pioneering open-air cooling installations, among the first projects of its kind anywhere in the world. The brief sounded impossible: keep guests comfortable in a completely open outdoor space, through a Qatari summer, without enclosing it.

The answer was precision rather than brute force. Cooled air is delivered exactly where people actually are, at ankle and seating level, and allowed to escape upward. Supply grilles, concealed ductwork, and a chilled water plant sized for the worst week of August all had to disappear into the landscape design.

Commissioning a system like this means measuring comfort, not just temperature. Our teams mapped air velocity and temperature gradients across the space through successive summer nights until the design targets held, then handed the client a system their FM team could actually run.

Details of the specific installation, client, and measured performance figures will be published here once cleared for release. Ask us about it in the meantime; it is our favourite story to tell.

Cooling a room is engineering. Cooling the outdoors is a statement.