I LANDMARK
The men who made Dubai’s twisted bridge and the women who inspired them The UAE is synonymous for its rapid urban development and bold, iconic architecture. And while many of us can quickly name the impressive structures and developments in the city skylines, the names of the architects and urban planners behind them are often unknown, regardless of whether they’ve designed the world’s tallest tower, planned the first sustainable city in the desert, or crafted some of the world’s most stunning mosques. In 2017, the landmark Dubai Water Canal development was completed. Since then, millions of UAE residents and tourists have passed over the series of stunning pedestrian and motor bridges that link the city, including the “Twisted Bridge” which was named among the world’s most beautiful bridges earlier this year by leading travel magazine Conde Nast Traveller. Yet most have never heard the story behind these bridges and the legacy of their architects—two best friends, Ismail Kerem Şerifoğlu and Tamer Fawzi Ismail, who started their careers 20 years ago in the design studios of American University of Sharjah’s (AUS) College of Architecture, Art and Design (CAAD). Kerem, UK-born to a Turkish family, and Tamer, who was born and raised in the UAE with his Egyptian family, met in 2001 as 18-year-old students and became inseparable throughout their five years of intensive architecture study at CAAD. As members of the first few graduating classes of AUS, they and their wives Yusrah Mazen Saleh and Lamees M. Khalid Himmo are among some of the regions most highly regarded and award-winning architects, interior designers and visual artists.
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“We cannot separate our success and our story from CAAD,” said Tamer. “It’s where Kerem and I became best friends, brothers, even where we met our wives, Yusra and Lamees, and where we received such a solid foundation and preparation for our careers.” “Sincere passion in work, formidable teamwork, reaching out to others at all levels are all important principles we learned in CAAD, and we took these dogmas as values for our work and life,” he said. Graduating in 2005, the two friends secured work, together with Tamer’s wife Lamees, on the $1.3 billion Dubai Autodrome, a mixed-use development and showroom project with global architecture and planning firm Burt Hill. The team became a formidable force, going on to design and realize major healthcare, commercial, residential, hospitality, retail, education and master planning projects across the Gulf region. “Since 2005, we have worked on over 30 projects, many of which have surpassed our client’s expectations in the way they have been both designed and realized. As a team, we are often acknowledged for our extraordinary design solutions for large-scale projects,” said Ismail. One of these large-scale projects is the monumental Dubai Water Canal development, which they started working on in 2014, only a decade into their professional careers and completed in record-time in 2017. A jointventure of Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) and developers Meydan and Meraas, the project involved the massive task of connecting Dubai Creek to the Arabian Gulf. The development effectively cut one side of the city
