Few buildings in the Gulf carry the institutional weight of the former Qatar Ministry of Interior, a five-floor Brutalist landmark on the Doha Corniche designed in the 1970s by Lebanese architect William Sednaoui. Its stacked limestone massing, deep-shadowed brise-soleil screens, and hovering roofline give it the gravity of a civic monument rather than a place to sleep — which makes its transformation into The Ned Doha one of the more unexpected hospitality conversions in recent memory. David Chipperfield Architects handled the adaptive reuse of the listed structure with characteristic restraint, adding a rooftop floor and landscaped podium annex without disturbing the building's essential character. At dusk, lit from below along its travertine base, the geometry feels closer to a temple than a hotel. Inside, Soho House Design leaned into the building's era rather than away from it. The coffered concrete ceilings — retained throughout the guestrooms — are painted in warm sand and copper tones and hung with Murano-glass pendants that amplify the 1970s reference without tipping into pastiche. Rooms mix scalloped velvet headboards in teal and dusty rose with parquet floors and lacquered credenzas in celery yellow; the dining spaces wrap guests in walnut burl panelling and geometric patterned carpets beneath striped Murano globe chandeliers. The pool terrace, framed by the building's original concrete louvres overhead, brings a Riviera-inflected calm to a city more associated with vertical ambition than horizontal ease.

No travel notes provided yet.

No description provided yet.