Shooting Doha Oasis for a Book: Behind the Photography for Works Volume V by nabil gholam architects
- Julián Velásquez
- 7 days ago
- 4 min read
Some projects take a single afternoon to photograph. Doha Oasis took several weeks, from planning and access approvals to the final shoot, and the result is now featured in Works Volume V, the special 30th-anniversary publication by nabil gholam architects (ngª), the Beirut-based studio founded in 1994 that has since built a portfolio spanning the MENA region, Europe, the Americas, and the Far East.
This is one of the most complete architectural photography projects I've worked on in Doha, and I wanted to break down what actually goes into documenting a project of this scale.
The Project: Doha Oasis
Completed in 2020, Doha Oasis is a large-scale mixed-use urban cluster in the heart of the city, combining a hotel, residences, retail, an indoor theme park, a spa, and cinemas across a 29-floor tower, a 9-floor ellipse building, and a 2-floor podium, totaling roughly 422,000 square meters. The complex was developed with local architects Qatar Design Consortium, and its program includes a Banyan Tree hotel and residences, Vox cinemas, an indoor theme park, and one of the largest Printemps department stores in the world.
Architecturally, the project is built around a central elliptical garden beneath a landscaped roof, with large circular skylights bringing natural light down into the colonnade below. The hotel tower's stacked-cube form culminates in a panoramic rooftop restaurant, while vertical louvers across the façades work as sunscreens, shaping how light moves across the building throughout the day.
Weeks of Planning Before a Single Photo
Unlike a standard commercial shoot, Doha Oasis required real logistical planning. Between securing access permits, coordinating shoot days around light conditions, and working within an active mixed-use complex, the project unfolded over several weeks rather than a single session.
Accessing a Vantage Point Several Kilometers Away
Part of the brief was to photograph Doha Oasis from a distance, showing the building within its surroundings and framed against the West Bay Doha skyline. Ground-level photography couldn't achieve that, so I coordinated access to a high floor of a tower several kilometers from the site, securing permission to shoot from that elevated, private vantage point, especially given the strict drone flight restrictions in place across Qatar.
This kind of long-distance architectural photography depends entirely on access. Without permission to shoot from height, capturing Doha Oasis positioned against the wider Doha skyline, with its surrounding neighborhood visible around it, simply wouldn't have been possible.
Working Directly With the Architects
What made this project different was the level of collaboration with nabil gholam architects throughout. Rather than photographing the building purely from my own perspective, the goal was to translate the architects' intent into images: which spaces mattered most, which details defined the design language, and how the building was meant to be experienced by the people moving through it.
That collaboration shaped decisions that aren't obvious from the final images, like which façade elements to prioritize, or how to frame the central garden to communicate the pedestrian-focused design intent behind the project.
Shooting Across Different Times of Day
To fully document Doha Oasis, the shoot was scheduled across multiple times of day, using natural daylight, golden hour, and night photography. Daytime sessions were used to record the sun-shading function, capturing how direct sunlight creates shadow patterns across the façade at different angles. Golden hour sessions were used for the building's material contrast and color temperature. Night sessions relied on long exposure photography to capture the tower's artificial lighting design and the illuminated skylights against the Doha skyline.
This range was necessary for a project of this complexity, since a single time of day couldn't capture the façade detail, the material palette, and the building's nighttime presence within the same set of images.
Context Matters: A Modern Complex Within a Traditional Neighborhood
At the architects' request, part of the shoot focused on contextual photography, images that place Doha Oasis within its surrounding neighborhood rather than isolating it as a standalone object. This meant stepping back to show how a large-scale, contemporary complex sits alongside more traditional, low-rise buildings nearby, and the visual impact that contrast creates within the urban fabric of Doha.
This kind of documentation goes beyond typical architectural photography. It's about capturing how a building actually functions within a city, not just how it looks on its
own.
From Site to Print
Not every project makes it into an international publication. Being selected for the book meant the images had to do more than document the building, they had to hold their own alongside nabil gholam architectects work across the MENA region, Europe, and beyond, in a volume built to represent thirty years of the firm's practice.
That's often the real test for commercial architectural photography: whether the images are strong enough to represent a project in print, in press coverage, or in an award submission, not just on a website. That's the standard I work to on every commercial shoot in Doha, whether or not the project ends up published.
If you're an architecture firm or developer working on a large-scale project in Doha that needs this level of planning and collaboration, I'd love to talk about how we can work together.
