Hotel @nyware

Malls may be dying across the U.S., but in the grandiose desert capital of tiny, petro-rich Qatar, they are sprouting up left and right. Consider the 5.4-million-square-foot Mall of Qatar, which will boast the country’s first Cheesecake Factory, or the open-air and yet air-conditioned Katara Plaza, to house a designated Children’s Mall shaped like a giant gift box. Dreamed up by the Qatari real estate mogul Mohamed Abdel Karim Al Emadi, the soon-to-open Alhazm is taking a more rarefied approach. “Mr. Al Emadi is passionate about classical architecture,” says Georges Bou Ibrahim, the mall’s creative director. Thus, he hired 15 architects to create a modern Middle Eastern version of Milan’s 19th-century Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II — with a domed-glass roof, Tuscan marble walls and arches featuring hand-carved Arabian motifs — surrounded by temperature-controlled gardens with fountains, gazebos and 200-year-old olive trees imported from Spain. Inside, a range of retailers and restaurants from the Continent will make their Doha debuts alongside Italian and Qatari kitchens, a women’s spa-slash-social-club and a library with rare editions of Arabic and English classics. Bou Ibrahim says, “Alhazm is not only about shopping; we are a creating a new lifestyle destination” — presumably for the sort of locals who regularly go on shopping sprees in Europe. A glass pyramid serves as a V.I.P. entryway, offering access to an underground auction house, personal shoppers and butler service.