Al Gharrafa Park opens with first ever air-conditioned jogging tracks in Qatar

Al Gharrafa Park

The Supervisory Committee of Beautification of Roads and Public Places in Qatar announced opening of Al Gharrafa Park to public, during an event organized on Thursday, December 16, 2021. 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.

The park is located at Al Gharrafa on an area of about 50,000 m2 to serve around 3000 daily visitors of all age groups. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Qatar Day (@qatarday)

First Ever Airconditioned Pedestrian-Jogging Tracks

Ashghal has provided an integrated cooling and air conditioning system for pedestrian and jogging tracks throughout the park, ensuring temperature between 26°C and 28°C. Ashghal has adopted this innovative cooling and air conditioning system that reduces the operational cost by more than 50%, and work is underway 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 using 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 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 based on internal studies carried out by Ashghal team.

Smart environmental design elements

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 rubberized floors are laid with colors 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.

Operation Method 

Solar panels generate electricity to operate air conditioners if the ambient temperature does not exceed 37°C, without the need to use conventional air conditioners, thus saving 60% of required electrical energy.

Eng Yousef Abdul Rahman Al Emadi, Director of Projects Affairs at Ashghal said that 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.

Eng Yasmine Al Sheikh, Project Design Manager, said that Al Gharrafa Park has a special design with Islamic features inspired by Al-Mashrabiya, to give visitors wonderful impressions of the park. Whereas flat colors are chosen in designing the pedestrian path to give visitors a feeling of calm and serenity, and bright colors are chosen in designing cyclist path and children’s games to give feeling of freshness and vitality.

Major Works of Al Gharrafa Park Project

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, enabling park goers to walk during the hot summer, in addition to establishing two exercise areas equipped with fitness equipment, and two children’s 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.

The Park also provides environmental benefits within the quality of two-star green buildings adopted to preserve environment, and due to planting local trees from Qatari environment including wild Ghaff, Samar and Sidra, which in turn provide shade, it also contributes to wind and dust management, help reducing heat in urban areas and reduce air and noise pollution.