Barzan Towers Ceramic Mural — Ahmed Allawi's First Major Public Art Project in Qatar

Every artist has a work that marks a turning point — a commission that announces, to the world and to the artist themselves, that something serious and lasting is underway. For Ahmed Allawi in Qatar, that work was the Barzan Towers Ceramic Mural.

Completed in 1999, the year Allawi arrived in Doha, the Barzan Towers project was his first major public art commission in Qatar. It established, from the very beginning, the scale of his ambition and the depth of his artistic language.

Barzan Towers: An Iconic Qatari Landmark

The Barzan Towers — also known as the Umm Salal Mohammed Fort Towers — are among the most recognisable historic structures in Qatar. Rising from the desert landscape north of Doha, these ancient watchtowers are symbols of the country's pre-oil heritage: of a time when the Gulf was navigated by pearl divers and traders, and when the tower on the horizon meant home, safety, and the continuity of community life.

To be entrusted with a major art installation at a site of this cultural significance, as a newly arrived artist, was a commission of extraordinary weight. Allawi understood it as such from the first conversation.

The Mural: 45 Metres of Heritage

The ceramic mural stretches 45 metres in length and 3 metres in height — a total surface area of 135 square metres of handcrafted ceramic, each panel made individually and installed with the precision that a site of this cultural prominence demands.

The visual language of the mural draws directly from Arabic and Islamic heritage: geometric patterns rooted in the mathematical traditions of Islamic art, arabesque forms that flow without beginning or end, and calligraphic elements drawn from the living tradition of Arabic script. These are not decorative choices. They are a considered act of cultural continuity — a statement that the artistic traditions of the Arab world are not museum pieces but living forms, capable of speaking to the present from deep within the past.

The Material: Handcrafted Ceramic

Ceramic is the oldest of the Islamic decorative arts — a material with an unbroken tradition stretching from ancient Mesopotamia through the great ceramic cultures of Persia, Egypt, and al-Andalus. To bring this material to the Barzan Towers was to create a conversation between two ancient things: the towers themselves, survivors of centuries of Gulf history, and the ceramic tradition that has accompanied Arab civilisation across the same span of time.

Each panel was formed, dried, bisque-fired, glazed, and glaze-fired by hand — a process that Allawi has continued to develop and deepen throughout his career. Explore his ceramic works available today.

The result is a surface that responds to light in the way that only handmade ceramic can: varied, warm, alive to the shift of the sun across the desert sky. At a historic site where the quality of light is part of the experience, this responsiveness is not incidental. It is essential.

A Beginning That Set the Standard

The Barzan Towers mural was the first of what would become a sustained practice of large-scale public art commissions across Qatar and the Gulf. In the years that followed, Allawi would go on to create:

• The Passport Tunnel Decoration — 2,500 m² of ceramic murals, commissioned by the State of Qatar (2003, renewed 2019)
• The Tawar Mall Large-Scale Art Collection — including stainless steel columns of 15 metres, the Gate of Qatar at 24 × 14 metres, and bronze horse sculptures (2018)
• The Al-Haram Boundary Wall Decoration in Makkah — 180 × 9 metres in ceramic and stainless steel (2010)

Each of these works is different in scale, material, and context. But each shares the quality that was established at Barzan in 1999: a deep rootedness in the visual and cultural heritage of the Arab world, executed with the highest standards of craft, at a scale that commands the space it inhabits.

The First Work in a Long Relationship

The Barzan Towers commission was not simply a first project. It was the beginning of a relationship between Ahmed Allawi and Qatar that has deepened and grown across more than two decades of artistic practice.

That relationship is visible today in the public and private spaces of Doha: in hotel lobbies and mall entrances, in civic spaces and private residences, in the bronze horses that stand in some of the city's most significant settings. It is a relationship built on trust — the trust of institutions and individuals who have seen, at Barzan and in the works that followed, what it means to commission art with genuine ambition.

Commission a Work for Your Space

Ahmed Allawi continues to accept large-scale commissions for public and private settings across Qatar and the wider Gulf. For institutions, developers, hospitality groups, and architects considering art for significant spaces, the studio welcomes enquiries at any stage of a project.

View the Art for Architecture collection or visit the commissions page to begin a conversation.

Ahmed Allawi is an Iraqi contemporary artist based in Doha, Qatar since 1999. His public art practice spans monumental bronze sculpture, large-scale ceramic installation, and Arabic calligraphy. Read more about public art in Doha or his ceramic practice.