Identity Within Architecture: A Gulf Arabian Visual Rhetoric Project

Abstract

The architecture of Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ), set up under Her Highness Sheikha Moza Al-Misnedd and the Qatar Foundation, spatially embodies new possibilities because AIA Gold Medal award-winning architect Ricardo Legorreta designed buildings that both challenge and encompass Gulf Arabian tradition. The buildings exemplify, enact, and embody new ways of experiencing gendered educational identity that also honors traditional local values. This architecture is important because TAMUQ is a U.S. institution that serves several different international student populations. This article emphasizes how TAMUQ functions as a heterotopia, one which creates embodied experiences of gender, education, and identity and requires what Rogoff termed “a curious eye” to discern how these educational spaces reflect changing identities in the Gulf states.