QNA
Doha
The Supervisory Committee of Beautification of Roads and Public Places in Qatar opened the Al Gharrafa Park to public on Thursday.
Students with special needs from Al Shafallah Center participated in the event and planted trees in the park, as part of "Qatar Beautification and Our Kids Planting Trees” campaign to "Plant Million trees”, implemented by the committee in cooperation with the Ministry of Municipality.
Al Gharrafa Park is of the new central parks that serve residents in multiple areas, including Al Gharrafa, Garrafat Al-Rayyan, Izghawa, Al Kharaitiyat, Al Luqta and Al-Rayyan. The park is located in Al Gharrafa on an area of about 50,000 m2 to serve around 3000 daily visitors of all age groups.
To encourage exercise, Ashghal has provided an integrated cooling and air conditioning system for pedestrian and jogging tracks throughout the park, ensuring temperature between 26 degrees C and 28 degrees C.
Ashghal has adopted this innovative cooling and air conditioning system that reduces the operational cost by more than 50 percent, and work is under way to obtain a patent in this regard.
Ashghal engineers were able to design and implement the economic, safe and environmentally friendly cooling and air conditioning system working by solar panels, as the tracks are designed to automatically reduce the temperature.
The system also relied on a design that ensures use of environmental elements such as some types of trees and climb vines, which in turn work to circulate cool air and reduce its leakage to maintain cold air inside the tracks, reducing temperature by 10 degrees without mechanical intervention, in addition to installing specially modified air conditioners.
The Islamic Mashrabiya-style structures are installed to allow air circulation from air conditioners, with a solar panel cover that serves as a cover along the corridor and generates electricity and providing a plant fence at a suitable height along the corridors, in addition to planting fast-growing climber veins that cover the pedestrian tracks from all directions.
It is worth noting that rubberised floors are laid with colours that help reducing absorption of temperatures.
It also includes provision of vacuum seats that can be used to sit and circulate air inside the corridors. Multiple tests were conducted to determine the air-conditioning devices to automatically match the temperatures and distribute them in an appropriate manner and certain openings.
On this occasion, Director of Projects Affairs at Ashghal Eng. Yousef Abdul Rahman Al Emadi clarified that Ashghal is working on implementing the projects of the Supervising Committee for Beautification of Roads and Public Places in Qatar including construction of parks, green spaces and planting trees in various parts of the country in line with the government strategy to achieve environmental sustainability, one of the important pillars of Qatar national development strategy to achieve Qatar National Vision 2030.
Al Gharafa Park is distinguished as a central park such as Rawdat Al Hamamam Park, Rawdat Al Khail Park and Umm Al Seneem Park, serving many areas, besides providing vast green spaces.
It also provides various facilities that serve all visitors, such as the first ever air-conditioned tracks for pedestrians and joggers, and another path for cyclists, kids play areas, facilities for people with special needs, yards for economic activities, besides provision of vast green spaces.
In turn, Chairman of the Supervisory Committee of Beautification of Roads and Public Places in Qatar Eng. Muhammad Arqoub Al Khalidi, expressed his delight for opening of Al Gharrafa Park, which is a step in achieving the committees goals to build central parks distributed across Qatar, especially since the park includes the first ever air-conditioned tracks for pedestrians and joggers, and as the park serves residents of several vital areas in Qatar.
He also indicated that the committee is making every effort to achieve the goals entrusted to it in providing welfare amenities for the people of Qatar.
"The opening of the first park that includes air-conditioned tracks is a great achievement that we are proud of, and we have been keen to provide the park designed to be a tourist and recreational destination for all the people and visitors of Qatar, with separate cyclist path, areas for sports and large green spaces, to encourage visitors to follow a healthy lifestyle, and contribute in improving the quality of life.”
On her part, Project Design Manager Eng Yasmine Al Sheikh, said Al Gharrafa Park has a special design with Islamic features inspired by Al Mashrabiya, to give visitors wonderful impressions of the park. Whereas flat colours are chosen in designing the pedestrian path to give visitors a feeling of calm and serenity, and bright colours are chosen in designing cyclist path and children’s games to give feeling of freshness and vitality.
Al Gharrafa park, the first of its kind in this area is situated overlooking Umm Al-Zubair Street, and it serves people of Al-Gharrafa and surrounding areas, providing a healthy environmental outlet away from the daily routine life and containing various services and utilities for all visiting age groups. The park is located on an area of about 50,000 square meters, and the works included planting 343 trees, making it good outlet for visitors, especially for families of Al-Gharrafa area, with air-conditioned pedestrian tracks with a length of 657 meters; another 639-meter bike path, in addition to establishing two exercise areas equipped with fitness equipment, and two childrens play areas divided according to age groups from 2-5 years and 6-12 years, considering children with special needs as well and promoting the growth and well-being of children. The Park is also provided with various service kiosks such as 4 restaurant kiosks, bicycle rental kiosk, green wall in the facades of male and female toilet building, bicycle parking, as well as garden furniture from locally manufactured fiber-concrete benches made of GRC and glass-reinforced plastics (GRP), garbage cans, shades and drinking water basins.
The locally made materials used in the works include cycling tracks, pavement Interlock, shot plastered, granite floors, and installation of 47 light poles to enable night visits to the park.