ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Arts & Entertainment

 

Art Gallery

 

The Art Gallery may host a few professional artists shows per year but primarily used to showcase student, faculty, and staff talent from Education City through an application process.

 

Cinema

 

 

The cinema has 216 seats (including 5 handicapped spaces) with surround sound.

 

Black Box Theater

 

 

The Black Box Theater is designed for small events or theater productions and is used by Northwestern University in Qatar for several theater/communication related classes.

 

 

Sculpture Garden

 

The Sculpture Garden is one of the largest sculptures in the world and was installed here to bring art into the heart of the student experience.  The artist who designed it is Jan Hendrix who resides in Mexico City and he titled the work “Helix.”  The idea was to create something that is completely unique throughout the sculpture – thus no pattern is repeated anywhere.  The weaving that you see mimics the geometric shapes so frequently used in Arab art (and seen in the most pronounced EC example in the Ceremonial Court) but “Helix” takes the uniform patterns that you would typically see into the more natural and fluid patterns of vegetation, rivers, or natural and artificial networks.  This intricate design was actually inspired by a vine growing on the walls of the Huntington Museum and Botanical Gardens in Pasadena, California.  In relation to our own local culture, the pattern looks like what you might see in the interlocking branches or roots of a tree – the Sidra tree (serves as QF logo and architectural inspiration for Convention Center).  The Sidra was a shade from the severe weather conditions that are frequently present in the summer; it can also be a place to pause, talk to a friend, and enjoy the simplicity and beauty of nature.  Our sculpture brings light into the building at all time of day or night.  During the day, the sun streams through the branches from different angles as the sun crosses the sky.  At night, the branches are lighted with colorful and changing patterns, creating splashes of color and interest.  One of the most enjoyable things to do is to take a moment to relax by the water and plants inside the sculpture at night.  This is truly an oasis in the center of learning at Education City.

A note from Bill Zahner, the CEO/President of the company that manufactured the sculpture, indicated, “the work was particularly challenging...  There were over 200 plates of solid aluminum plate.  Each plate was custom cut using a large platform water jet.  Each plate took over 12 hours to cut using a proprietary digital interface algorithm, we call ZIRA.  We would take the meticulously drawn, artist’s images and translate them to the cutting path as if the image was one, 360 meter long by 11 meter high, image.  Each panel was individually packaged and shipped from our plant in the central United States.  The entire project took approximately 8 months to engineer and fabricate.