Dubai is a city growing day on day. Over the past twenty years it has tripled in size with no end in sight to its growth. Martha Camarillo, travel correspondent for Travel and Leisure commented, "The scale and volume of construction dwarfs humanity. Looking up at the rising skyline from any given intersection, you feel a rush of sci-fi vertigo."
Dubai has caught the eye of the entire world over the past ten years with massive investment and grandiose construction feeding a burgeoning tourist trade and continuing economic bloom. Benefiting from rises in oil prices like no other country, and helped by a lack of government intervention and tax-free environment, Dubai's Black Gold has fuelled massive developments including man-made islands, luxury hotels, multi-purpose resorts, shopping malls and sports complexes.
Recently, the city has seen a mass influx of people moving to the desert, drawn by its free market economy and the promise of year-round sunshine. But Dubai is still massively under-populated meaning it's an attractive site for both investment and a place to live. Aside from its oil exports it's the emphasis on resort tourism that has further fuelled the blossoming economy. And finance experts believe the growth is sustainable, predicting many years to come of financial prosperity.
The Financial Times commented that Dubai represented "time and time again, what can be achieved when oil resources are invested wisely." They went on to say however, "the city's growth is no longer dependent on natural resources. In 2003, tourism overtook oil revenues as the prime source of income. Dubai's annual gross domestic product is now approaching US $20 billion, with annual foreign direct investment inflows of more than US $2 billion."
The city's diverse designs and rampant construction work is largely due to the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates. His family owns the emirate and he is at the top of all development that goes on in Dubai. The city's ever-changing skyline, futuristic innovations, and growing scale is down to Sheikh Mohammed's unending riches and his whimsical belief that construction holds no boundaries, both metaphorically and geographically.
Already nearing completion are two of his dreams made reality. Palm Jumeirah is an artificial island created using sand dredged from the sea bed. The island is formed to look like a giant palm tree when viewed from the sky. The first residents moved in during 2006 with the island also containing Donald Trump's luxurious Trump International Hotel and Tower along with many other luxury hotels. The second dynamic structure is the Burj Dubai, the world's tallest skyscraper. Expected to open in 2009, the tower will reach a height of 2,684 feet (818 metres), costing in the region of 2 billion. This will make the tower around 30% taller than Taipei 101.
In 'Dubai Rising from the Sands and the Seas' I take a look at the futuristic Rotating Tower from concept to construction, I examine the potential of Dubai's upcoming driverless rail network, take a sneak peek at the city's answer to Disney World, and check out future concepts and planning including an underwater hotel and city in the sky.
Chapter 2 - David Fisher spins you right round
I sat in awe watching architect David Fisher's potent infusion of artificially lit night sky and grand cityscape anchored by a towering structure reaching to the heavens. The film, an artistic interpretation of his proposed skyscraper-with-a-difference, blasts the words 'Dynamic' and 'New Era Architecture' at you like George Lucas welcoming cinemagoers to the world of C-3PO, Luke Skywalker and that pesky Star Wars. Spotlights beam shafts of light over the building like a Hollywood star walking down the red carpet. The structure - the first of two Dynamic Towers - is the star of the show. It's the result of modern architectural dreams that strive to walk a path where money is no object, where the sky is no limit, where the aspirations of investors, clients and inhabitants have no boundaries. It is Dubai's Rotating Tower - a futuristic creation with movable floors that can change your view of the world at the flick of a button; that can simultaneously bathe one person in sunlight while providing another a calming view of the ocean. It's a building, indeed a living space, that is shaped by your mood.
If it sounds like the stuff of dreams - not the sort of Frank Gehry incarnations that have a twisted but practical quality - but the sorts of future-based fantasies seen in those old television shows like Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica you may not be far wrong. Indeed, many industry insiders are quite sceptical about the project. One structural engineer questioned what might happen if there was a serious sandstorm, or a fire, or a glitch in the waste valves. Another devalued Fisher's role as an over-zealous architect with little thought to how his pretty pictures would become reality. Deidre Wollard, writing for Luxist, said, "This is Fisher's first skyscraper project so many are wondering if this will ever be built. As a cynic who has seen a lot of flashy projects debut and disappear before construction, I'm tempted to agree with the sceptics."
The proposal which Fisher believes will see the building erected by 2010 calls for eighty floors of office, hotel and residential space. The top ten floors will be luxury villas with up to 12, 900 square feet of space. The most innovative addition to those willing (or more importantly the resources) to shell out the cash needed to buy or rent one will be the ability to manually rotate their personal floor space. The rest of the building's rotation will be in the charge of the building's management.
The structure will be built using off-site pre-fabricated units (the first skyscraper to be built this way) attached to a central core constructed on-site. Fisher's belief is that buildings should be dynamic, factory-built, and environmentally-friendly. Architecture of the future should be "designed by life, shaped by time," he said.
If built, the rotating tower will be the first of its kind. Each floor will have the ability to rotate 360 degrees so that not only will those in the building get a constantly changing view of the world outside, onlookers will see an ever-changing faade. Fisher's drawings show the building in different stages of rotation. At times it can look conventional - a sort of sloping, modern-looking skyscraper. At other stages it can look like anything from the undulating, curved body of a millipede to unevenly stacked boxes.
Another area of concern for sceptics is the building's 'green' credentials. It isn't that the Rotating Tower isn't environmentally-friendly, it's more to do with the fact it appears more ozone-happy than possible. Fisher believes the building can generate enough renewable energy to power itself and the surrounding neighbourhood. The proposal states that around fifty wind turbines will be fitted between each floor as well as solar panels positioned on the roof. It's a brilliant marketing tool of course, after all, green-energy and saving the earth is something we've all had to come accustomed to after Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth and the push to hit Kyoto targets. But is Fisher's environmentally-friendly creation even feasible? Apparently, it is, at least according to him.
The wind turbines will be mounted horizontally between the floors and the photovoltaic cells located on the roofs of each apartment. The "special shape" of the turbines, made from carbon fibre, guarantees best results, and because of their design, reduced acoustic noise. Maintenance will be made via dedicated elevators for each one. The photovoltaic panels will only cover 20% of each floor but due to the rotation they will be exposed to enough sunlight to create energy. It is estimated that the building's wind turbines alone will produce 24,000 kilowatts of electric per hour, enough to support fifty families.
When completed the tower will reach 1, 027 feet high, featuring a six-star hotel amongst the offices and apartments. The building's luxury additions include personal parking spaces for owners of villas allowing them to bring vehicles up to the floor they live on via specially-designed elevators. The roof of the penthouse villa will have a pool, a garden and an Arabian Majlis. The building will also house a retractable heliport extending only when helicopters are landing/taking off, maintaining the tower's dynamic aesthetic.
Expected to complete construction in 2010, the Rotating Tower opened its reservation list for those wanting apartments in June of this year. If you'd like to reserve your place in history, point your web browser to dynamicarchitecture.net for further details.
Chapter 3 - Size does not matter: The city prepares for Dubailand
Imagine self-contained worlds where everything you desire is in one place and your whims are provided for at every turn. In another scheme to promote, sustain and increase the tourist trade, Sheikh Mohammed has set his sights on holiday resorts that provide everything your heart desires.
Dubailand is set to become an unrivalled collection of recreational attractions and luxurious accommodation that will quite possibly change the way tourist resort communities are designed forever. If you imagine Disney World in Florida with its theme parks, hotels, and restaurants all located in one place, you'd be close to Dubailand's objectives but nowhere near its scope. This self-contained resort will have everything Disney's got and more.
Take, for example, Dubai Sports City, a 'world' devoted to sport. It's one part of Dubailand - a significant part but one part nonetheless - taking up around 50 million square feet of land. This huge area will be home to an 18 hole golf course personally designed by Ernie Els, a 25,000 seat, state-of-the-art cricket stadium, a 60,000 seat football and rugby stadium, an indoor arena for ice hockey, a tennis academy, and a Manchester United football school among many other attractions. Accommodation for 65,000 people will also be built along with a kilometre-long canal and huge shopping mall.
If sport is too broad an attraction for your whims, why not try The Tiger Woods Dubai. Yes, you've guessed it, like its counterpart at the Sports City, Tiger Woods like Ernie Els has given his name, and his creativity, to Dubai's fantastic construction endeavours. The Tiger Woods Dubai is a championship-quality 18 hole golf course designed by the world's greatest golfer. Surrounding the golf course will be a professionally staffed golf academy; an iconic clubhouse; a suite boutique hotel with private bungalows; a well-being spa; a fine-dining restaurant; high-end luxury residences and relevant upscale community services for residents and guests. The unique desert course will feature streams and over 100 feet of elevation change throughout.
If sport isn't your cup of tea why not browse the Dubai Outlet City, a 4.3 million square foot shopping mall. To see the entire city, and only if you don't have a fear of heights, head up the Dubai Wheel which is expected to be bigger than the London Eye offering panoramic views of the city. If theme parks and rides are your thing, check out Dreamworks, a 5 million square foot entertainment and leisure complex from Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks Animation. This is in addition to Legoland Dubai, Six Flags Dubai, Universal Studios Dubai, and others including Water Parks, Giants World and Sahara Kingdom all offering rides, rollercoasters, 3-D cinematic extravaganzas, eateries and restaurants, and all manner of thrill-seeking, escapist entertainment.
The three billion square foot DUBAILAND, when completed, promises to be one of the world's largest and most popular tourism destinations. It will play a crucial role in attracting 15 million tourists as envisioned by the Dubai Strategic Plan, and generating niche employment opportunities in the city.
Chapter 4 - What architectural wonders are next for Dubai?
Recently a newspaper printed an article about the most challenging and outlandish project yet to be envisaged for Dubai. The development - called Bubble City - called for an entire city to be suspended above Dubai by two huge helium balloons. The city would be entirely powered by solar energy. Of course the project was a fakery, a journalistic joke inspired by the city's continuing self-indulgence and the entertaining of every architectural day dream.
The story - as sensational as construction and design journalism can be - was amusing for a couple of reasons. It highlighted the extreme nature of both buildings and developments already constructed in Dubai, as well as the diverse nature of current proposals. It also showed, largely because it took many people a while to work out the news story was a prank, that the world is ready to believe Dubai's endeavours have no boundaries.
Next to the Rotating Tower, the cloud-piercing Burj Dubai skyscraper, the man-made islands and the indoor ski resorts, nothing will look out of place in Dubai's expanding metropolis. So, forget about the space-age Bubble City, it isn't going to happen, at least in our lifetime. However, two developments that are already in design stages and remain equally as unlikely as Bubble City are The Cloud and Hydropolis Hotel.
The Cloud is, believe it or not, a suspended resort situated 300 metres in the sky, standing on legs made to look like rain. From a distance the city looks like - you've guessed it - a cloud. The project, designed by Nadim Karam of Lebanese architect Atelier Hapsitus, is currently in early development stage but was presented to the International Design Forum in Dubai 2007.
Atelier Hapsitus say, "The Cloud is a trip, a playful adventure in the city. It is a horizontal presence on an elevated platform, an antithesis to the sum of skyscrapers spreading over the entire region. The Cloud is a dream, suspended between artificiality and reality."
Hydropolis Hotel is based on another unusual idea - a resort under water. The hotel was scheduled to open in 2006 but land issues have caused the development to be put back until sometime in 2009. The design calls for a luxury resort situated 66 feet below the Persian Gulf, just off Jumeirah beach. Rooms will be below sea level allowing patrons views of marine life. A concert hall will be positioned above sea level with a retractable open-top roof. The hotel is expected to cost in the region of 300 million.
"There have been many visions of colonising the sea - Jules Verne, Jean Gusto and several Japanese architects - but no one has ever managed to realise this dream," says architect, designer and, fantasist Joachim Hauser. "That was the most challenging factor, and that's what makes it so fascinating. Despite being a dream of mankind for centuries, nobody has ever been able to make living underwater possible." Hauser hopes to see a chain of underwater hotels built with the Hydropolis setting precedent.
Other projects currently in development include The Opus, a giant cube-shaped building designed to look like the middle has been cut out, Dubai Towers which ascend snake-like into the sky, and the Dubai Grand Pyramid, seemingly inspired by the Las Vegas equivalent only much bigger.
Dubai is a rich, indulgent construction site on a scale not seen for centuries. Everywhere you look something is being built. The population will continue to grow apace over the next few years, as will the tourist trade, and as such, the construction industry will have its work cut out.
As the sun begins to set on a horizon flooded with the twisting metal girders of construction cranes I begin to think the rumour is true: that a quarter of the world's monster-sized cranes are now living in the desert heat of Dubai. Maybe by 2015, you could double that figure.