Dubai is to build the world's largest retail development (over five million ft²) alongside Burj Dubai (Dubai Tower). Burj Dubai is expected to be the world's tallest building when it is completed in 2008–2009 (although there are a lot of contenders for the title). Expected investments of Dh800 million and Dh3.9 billion, respectively, have been reported by EMAAR Properties PJSC, the real estate company behind both ambitious projects.
The Burj Dubai is designed to be at the centre of a large mixed development including 30,000 homes, nine hotels, six acres of parkland, 19 residential towers, and the 12ha Burj Dubai Lake. The whole development including the Burj Dubai and the Dubai Mall is exepcted to cost about US$8 billion.
DUBAI MALL PROJECT
The Dubai Mall project comprises a five million ft² mall, and residential and retail facilities. The actual mall will cover the equivalent of 50 international-sized soccer pitches and will be the largest shopping space in the world, larger than any existing malls in the USA. When completed in 2008, it is expecting to receive 35 million visitors in the first full year of business, followed by annual increases of 20%–30%.
Known affectionately as 'the Emerald Necklace', the 3km-long Burj Dubai Boulevard (located on the interchange between Sheikh Zayed Road and Doha Road) will incorporate a 73m right-of-way, three traffic lanes on each side, a landscaped parkway, pavement and plaza. The pedestrian pavement will be lined by date palms and shrubs and will feature outdoor cafes and restaurants. There will also be 16,000 underground car parking spaces, with further parking above ground.
The Burj Dubai Boulevard pedestrian pavements will open out at intervals in four main piazzas (named Piazza of Water, Wind, Fire and Earth), each one accommodating events and activities to suit the diverse tastes of visitors.
The Boulevard will lead to Tower Park, which surrounds the Dubai Tower. Tower Park will amount to 15ha of land containing water cascades, manicured lawns and exotic plant terraces. The Boulevard will also lead to the Island Park, a 2.6ha site laid mainly to lawn where visitors can relax, picnic and participate in outdoor sports.
Resembling an ocean liner from the outside, the interior of the Mall will accommodate over 1,000 individual shops located in between 10 and 15 distinct 'malls-within-a-mall'. The three-storey glass façade Mall will house the world's largest gold market and will be adjacent to a 12ha artificial lake.
The main centrepiece, Waterworld, will incorporate a water terrace, fountain oasis, waterfront atrium and an aquarium. The aquarium will be three storeys tall and feature glass 'walk-through' tunnels that will contain sharks, stingrays, turtles and other exotic marine life.
Construction started in late 2004, for completion in 2008. The mall construction is well underway according to the latest (2006) reports. Dutco Balfour Beatty-Al Ghandi & Consolidated Contractors International Company (DBB/ AG & CCC) are the main contractors for the Mall development. The architects are DP Architects PTE Ltd. The Civil and Structural Engineer is Meinhardt (Singapore) PTE Ltd. The main roof contractor is Arabian Profile.
DUBAI TOWER
EMAAR Properties contracted architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (Chicago, USA) to design and engineer the Burj Dubai. Located on Sheikh Zayed Road, it will be the centrepiece of the mixed development that will combine residential, commercial, shopping, hotel, entertainment and leisure outlets with open green spaces.
The Tower topping-out is expected in late 2008 and the tower will be ready for occupation in early 2009. Its height is being kept a well-guarded secret until completion (the architects have planned extra-deep foundations to enable more storeys to be added if another skyscraper under construction threatens to be taller) thus ensuring that when Burj Tower is completed, it will be the world's tallest building. It is estimated that the height will be approximately 810m.
Ground breaking occurred in September 2004 and the Burj Dubai has been under construction properly since 15 April 2005. The total number of habitable floors will be around 160. As of 26 June 2006, the Burj is at 50 stories and well over 190m high.
The height to the roof of the final building is likely to be around 575m while the remaining spire from the 156th floor onward to the top, will be a steel frame structure, unlike the lower portion's concrete. Emaar has stated this steel section may be extended to beat any other tower to the title of tallest, however once the tower is complete the height cannot be changed.
The tower design is derived from the geometries of an indigenous desert flower, as well as incorporating patterns found within Islamic architecture. The design was originally proposed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill for the Grollo Tower in Melbourne, Australia.
Designers shaped the structural concrete Burj Tower – which resembles a fat 'Y' in cross section, with a stepped-back profile – to dramatically reduce forces on the tower, keeping the structure simple.
The Tower has 15 tiers or groups of commonly-shaped floors over 100 storeys. They are staggered in a spiral stepping pattern as you go up the building. This causes the Tower's width to change at each setback – designed to 'confuse the wind', therefore keeping forces weaker. The building will use DOKA formwork systems for its initial structure.
INTERIOR DESIGN OF THE BURJ DUBAI
The interior of the tower will be decorated by Giorgio Armani. An Armani Hotel (the first of its kind in the world) will occupy the lower 37 floors. Floors 45–108 will have 700 private apartments on 64 floors (which, according to the developer are already sold, having been bought within eight hours of going on sale).
Corporate offices and suites will fill most of the remaining floors, except for a 123rd-floor lobby and 124th-floor indoor/outdoor observation deck. The spire will also hold communications equipment. An outdoor zero-entry swimming pool will be located on the 78th floor of the tower. The tower will also feature the world's fastest elevator, at 18m/s (40mph).
TOWER CONTRACTORS
Bauer Spezialtiefbau of Germany, along with Middle East Foundations (UAE), was awarded a €14 million contract to construct the foundations of the tower. A deadline of mid-July 2004 was set for the foundation and this was completed with little delay.
Samsung Corporation of South Korea along with Besix and Arabtec are the general contractors for the project, with assistance from Grocon of Australia and Turner Construction Corporation.
OTIS and Lerch, Bates and Associates Incorporated will provide the elevator engineering, installing double-decker elevators. Otis of the US has been awarded a contract to supply and install up to 54 lifts, while Switzerland's Schmidlin has won a contract for the tower's cladding. Construction subcontractors include Al Naboodah and Laing O'Rourke.
COOLING SYSTEMS AND HVAC
Trane, the air-conditioning systems and services business of American Standard Companies, was awarded the supply contract of one of the biggest district cooling networked systems in the world for the whole Burj development. Trane will provide 20 CenTravac centrifugal chillers (four were ready for installation in November 2005 and the remainder were delivered in January 2006).
EMAAR has also instigated an ambitious project to build three district cooling plants (DCP), designed by Allied Consultants, at the Burj Dubai site. These will support a sophisticated system that will offer a total capacity of 145,000t of refrigeration. An estimated 41,000t of air conditioning equipment will be involved in servicing the Burj Dubai tower and The Dubai Mall.
Due to the height of Burj Dubai, in order to achieve design temperatures at the top of the tower, Allied Consultants decided to use special low-temperature chillers. The ice storage will serve as a back-up cooling system in case of a major failure.
The central cooling plant will use the latest technology, based on low temperature chillers run on a special glycol solution, to deliver chilled water to the buildings. Emaar District Cooling, a newly established company, will be operating and managing these central plants. The Burj Dubai's water system will supply an average of about 946,000L (250,000gl) of water per day.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
Eight international chain and boutique hotels will be an integral part of the 500-acre Burj Dubai development. These will add over 2,000 rooms to the Dubai hotel industry. Emaar Properties has recently signed an agreement with Southern Sun Hotels, the leading hotel group in the southern hemisphere, to manage and operate two hotels within the prestigious development (these will be opened by 2007).
The Business Park at Burj Dubai will consist of a number of commercial towers. Bu Haleeba Contracting and Al Nakhreh Contracting have been awarded two packages for the construction of office towers (each contract is worth Dh300 million).
