View from Muscat.

Leaving Muscat Airport to drive to the Barr Al Jissah Resort it soon becomes apparent that the city of Muscat is very different from Dubai; not a tall building in sight. None of the embassies, schools, residential buildings or offices you see as you pass along the tree-lined highway is above nine stories. Few are higher than six, most lower.

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Some stand in white-walled courtyards with shrubs from gardens, most of them feature elements from Oman's architectural past--arched windows, carved doors and friezes, decorated panels, wooden ornamental railings and so forth all constructed in recent years under the present Sultan Qaboos.

In 2003 the sultan's 'Diwan' of Royal Court Affairs circulated a pattern book for architects, called Elevational Guidelines for Buildings in Oman. It suggests that architects look to the existing buildings of the city and its environs as their models, in order to 'impart an Omani character'. With line drawings to illustrate examples of different types of buildings and architectural details, the book is reminiscent of the pattern books of J. C. Loudon or Batty Langley. The only modern Western style building standing in the centre of Muscat, is the Sheraton Hotel which was built in the 1970s, the first hotel in Muscat. Not a sympathetic building, it may well have determined Oman to look to its own heritage for future building.

With the development of tourism now one of the most important ventures for Oman, Muscat's search for an appropriate architecture and a general concern for the environment is having a distinct influence on the place. The Barr Al Jissah Resort and Spa, a ten minute drive from Muscat through a fantastic landscape of barren mountains, has just opened, covering an area of 124 acres with landscaped gardens. Here too, the architects--Wimberly, Allison, Tong and Goo Inc--have also taken their inspiration from Oman's architectural past. With no prototype for a hotel in the Diwan's pattern book, the three hotels here have been carefully themed to represent the architecture which their names invoke. Al Husn (The Castle) clearly dominates the scene, standing on a cliff overlooking the resort. Its inspiration is the seventeenth-century Jabrin Castle, one of the greatest residential buildings in Oman. Al Bandar (The Town) derives its form from the buildings of old Muscat, and Al Waha (The Oasis) has a series of swimming pools, which are to remind you of an oasis. The most successful element is the way it is set closely into the mountains, which provide a magical backdrop.

Both Al Waha and Al Bandar are painted in creams, ochres and earth colours to harmonise with the ochre coloured mountains. Al Husn is the most luxurious of the three, painted a rather too bright pink, which the architect Tom Russell assured me will fade within a year. Passing through its dramatically lit entrance at night, you might almost believe you are entering the opera set for Il Seraglio: Brighton Pavilion of Oman?

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As Tom Russell explained, from the Omanis' point of view, hotels such as Al Husn are palaces and are seen as an expression of Omani heritage and culture. There are few public places to congregate outside mosques; no bars and cafes, so hotel lobbies are regarded as modern meeting places. Even in the ultra contemporary buildings in Dubai the interior design is Gulf-Arab in essence, rather than the modern Western style one would expect from the exterior. 'Oman is in its nineteenth-century Beaux Arts period', says Tom Russell 'with oil doubling in price in the last three to four years, grand public buildings such as hotels are a part of the natural evolution of Omani tradition'. When completed, the Barr Al Jissah Resort will be more like a small town, with residential areas, apartments, an archaeological site, an Omani Heritage village, a souq, a state of the art health spa, and an amphitheatre. Similar resorts are being built all down the coast, one only half a mile away. The topography of the landscape lends itself to this kind of development in that the development will probably be hidden from view by the mountains and only visible from the sea. Omani policy is to aim for high quality tourism, 4 star hotels upwards. Critics might argue that to employ modern building materials and services, and encase them behind facades peppered with Arab-motifs, is pastiche or post-modern. Omanis see it as maintaining their living tradition. For a country which is only 30 years old in modern terms and conscious of the danger of developing too fast, they do not want to lose touch with their past. The concern that they are showing for architecture and their environment, and also in maintaining their own identity, gives real hope that they will not 'kill the thing they love', which tourism in so many parts of the world has managed to do.