Cover -- Title Page -- Contents -- Copyright Page -- Editorial: Helen Castle -- About the Guest Editors -- Introduction: The Gulf Urbanisation -- Museum Development in the Gulf: Narrative and Architecture -- Qatar Museums: Nation and Identity -- The National Museum of Saudi Arabia: an Islamic Centre -- Bahrain: Architecture and the Pre-Islamic Past -- Abu Dhabi: Architecture and Global Imagining -- Museums as Agents of Identity-Making in the Gulf -- Cultural Exchange and Urban Appropriation: Spaces for Art in Sharjah's Historical Centre -- Coastal Settlement as a Ground for Exchange -- Extension of Non-Museum Spaces for Art -- Reclamation of the Historical Links and Permeability of Art and Culture Programmes -- Urban Potentialities -- Design for the Future: Educational Institutions in the Gulf -- Early Campus Design -- Contemporary Approaches to Persistent Challenges -- Campus Cities -- Future Projects and Prospects -- A City for Education -- The Insular -- The Connected -- The Public -- The Avant-Garde -- Building Foundations -- The Evolution of Tall Building in the Gulf: From the Sensational to the Sensitive -- Technical Advancements -- The Environmentally Progressive -- The Future of Tall Building in the Gulf Region -- Drawing on Sand: Cities in the Making -- Act 1 -- Traditional Communities of the Region in the Pre-Modern Era -- Act 2 -- Modernist Aspirations from the 1960s to the 1990s -- Act 3 -- Aspirations for Hedonistic Modernism in the Gulf, 1990s to 2008 -- Waterfronts and Coastal Resorts -- Urban Regeneration -- Desert -- Act 4 -- Boom & Bust … and Boom: Looking Forward to Getting it Right -- Inexhaustible Ambition: Two Eras of Planning in Doha, Qatar -- Episode One: 1971-86 -- Episode Two: 1999-Present -- New Hearts for Two Gulf Cities -- Urban Dynamics -- New Hearts -- Complex Challenges -- Broader Consequences.

Future Flyovers: Dubai in 1971 -- Dubai in Question -- The 1971 Plan: an Acceptance and a Refutation -- Planning by Text -- Plan as Image -- Let the 1970s Begin -- Urban and Architectural Sustainability in the Gulf -- Impacts on the Natural Environment -- Policy Responses -- Urban Design Projects -- Observations -- Fast Forwards: 10 Years of Sustainable Initiatives in the Gulf Region -- Pre-2006 -- 2006-8 -- 2008-14 -- Challenges and Successes -- Designs for New Buildings -- The Way Forward -- Performative Urbanism: An Emerging Model of the Gulf -- The Struggle for Integrity: Emerging Local Practices in the Gulf -- SHAPE -- AGi Architects -- Counterpoint A Field of Possibilities: The Post-Oil Future of Bahrain -- The Past that Made the Present -- Scenarios for a Future Without Oil -- In Between the Possible and the Plausible -- Contributors -- EULA.