Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, president and then founding father of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), envisioned in 1983 the creation of a recreational complex that at the time was to be dedicated exclusively to the officers of the country’s armed forces and their families. As is often the case with the imaginations of sheikhs in those geographies, Al Nahyan’s finally came to fruition, on a 75-hectare site, on 1st December 1997. It was then that the Armed Forces Officers’ Club and Hotel was inaugurated. However, the complex ceased to be the exclusive preserve of Emirati army officers and their families in 2003, when it opened its doors to the public. In 2021 it was renamed Erth Abu Dhabi – “erth” means “legacy” in Arabic – the name by which the sprawling resort in the country’s capital is known today.
The French architect Roger Taillibert, famous for his design of the Parc des Princes football stadium and sports complex in Paris, France, challenged the formal conventions of architecture when, in the mid-1980s, he was commissioned to design the main building of the resort to which these lines are dedicated. Its silhouette evokes a falcon in flight and also a monumental Bedouin tent, representing a kind of architectural metaphor for the connection between earth and sky, but also nomadism and sedentism. Under the broad curvilinear roofs, Taillibert integrated a microcosm of sports, cultural, hotel and religious facilities with a holistic perspective. Local materials and earthy tones, in a contemporary reinterpretation of traditional regional elements, dialogue with the original structure.
Opening in 2021, the resort gained 13 villas of 1, 2 and 3 bedrooms along a 1 km long beach, as well as 237 rooms and 42 suites with a modernised design and renovated facilities. But it also added 6 restaurants, gardens, swimming pools, a gym, a 631-seat theatre and a sports centre with martial arts studio, tennis, squash and basketball courts, indoor and outdoor football pitches, including one to FIFA standards, and even a bowling alley and shooting range.
‘We are starting a new chapter in the history of the Armed Forces Officers’ Club, but we don’t want to lose what we have, that legacy of a quarter of a century,’ Amit Arora, chief operating officer of Erth Abu Dhabi, told The National after the reopening. He was referring to the gardens that recreate the wadis (Arabic for the dry valleys or rivers typical of the region) and are populated with indigenous flora, the local cuisine offered in the restaurants, and also the presence of the mudeef (a kind of butler), reminiscent of the Bedouin tradition of hospitality, in the context of the contemporary luxury of Erth Abu Dhabi.
Sources: Erth Abu Dhabi, Wikipedia, The National.
Images: Erth Abu Dhabi.
