middle east architect - july 2010

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NEWS, DATA, ANALYSIS AND STRATEGIC INSIGHTS FOR ARCHITECTS IN THE GCC

JULY 2010 / VOLUME 4 / ISSUE 7An ITP Business Publication | Licensed by Dubai Media City

PORTFOLIO

A Qatari restaurant, Saudi apartments and a new UAE city

KSA FOCUS

MEA visits Saudi Arabiato see what all the fuss is about

Is t

he e

ra o

f su

per

talls

now

ove

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JULY | CONTENTS

www.constructionweekonline.com | 07.10 | MIDDLE EAST ARCHITECT 1

2

JULY 2010 VOLUME 4 ISSUE 7

WHAT’S ON THE WEB See more of MEA online, with up to date news and

an archive of projects and case studies

6OPINION Gensler’s Hisham Youssef says Cairo needs its very own 2030 plan

9SNAPSHOT

A short sharp summary of industry news from the last

30 days, including Saudi Arabia’s green future

12ANALYSIS Critics argue that solar panels are not as sustainable as they look

16WORK IN PROGRESS

MEA visits Abu Dhabi to see how work is getting on at

Sowwah Island

22THE INTERVIEW HOK vice president David Hajjar discusses the benefi ts of master planning in the development of the Gulf

26COVER STORY

52THE WORK A detailed reference section covering all the regional projects MEA has looked at in recent months

54CULTURE

Cool products, clever ideas =and some of the latest books

in the world of design

56THE LAST WORD CTBUH’s Jan Klerks tellsus about working in the world of supertalls

WHATSee mowith u

an arch

32KSA SPECIALMEA visits Cityscape Jeddah, meets local Saudi fi rms and laments the loss of the city’s historic old town

43CASE STUDIES

A new city in the UAE,luxury apartments in Saudi

Arabia and a new designer restaurant in Qatar

What role is there for tall buildings in a green-focused,

money-conscious age?

n

MIDDLE EAST ARCHITECT | 07.10 | www.constructionweekonline.com

ONLINE | JULY

2

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GREEN QATAR BOSS DEFENDS RANKINGSQatari green building council say awareness is growing in the Gulf.

WOODS BAGOT IN 0% EMISSIONS TARGETThe fi rm’s development in Chongqing, China, could be a world fi rst.

GHOST BUILDINGSUnfi nished projects pose risks for designers looking to pick up where others left off .

SUSTAINABLE BY DESIGNCW columnist Ilham Kadri says the Burj Khalifa is a great example of sustainability.

IN PICTURES: THE 7 WONDERS OF THEMODERN WORLDThe Channel Tunnel and the Toronto CNN tower are included in the American Society of Civil Engineers list.

CONSTRUCTIONWEEKONLINE.COMONLINE

COLUMNS & FEATURES

EDITOR’S CHOICE

• Bahrain’s midday work ban starts in July 1

• Schon: Dubai Lagoon is making impressive progress

• Saudi Arabian prop-erty investments likely to reach over US$150bn by 2012

FOR BREAKINGNEWS, ANALYSIS,

INTERVIEWS, TENDERS, AND PROJECTS, LOG ON

TO: CONSTRUCTIONWEEKONLINE.COM

MOST POPULAR

• Kilometre highKuwaiti tower ‘willget built’

• AED 4bn Khalifa Port contracts still up for grabs

• All systems go at re-gion’s largest airport

• World’s largest solar hot water project in Saudi Arabia

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COMMENT | EDITOR’S LETTER

4

The boost in web traffi c that follows a story from Saudi Arabia on Construc-tionWeekOnline, Middle

East Architect’s sister website, proves conclusively that in 2010, Saudi sells.

While other GCC markets are expanding fast it is the KSA that our readers are most interested in, and MEA’s trip to Cityscape Jeddah last month only re-affi rmed this view. The vast majority of fi rms which are not already in the kingdom, are on their way in, and there were as many designers and architects at Cityscape as there were developers, if not more.

When you ask people why Saudi Arabia is such an attractive market, the reply usually involves the fi gure 27 million, which is the expected

Luxury apartments do nothing to ease the KSA’shousing shortage, and if locals won’t buy them,

it’s hard to see who will.

SAUDI ARABIA

population by the end of 2010, and is quickly followed by the number 80, the percentage of the population under the age of 39. Delve further, and the kingdom’s need for housing, as well as the ambition of the royal family, will soon come up too.

The perception is that once the country actually writes and passes its long awaited mortgage law, a massive number of young Saudis will go out and buy their fi rst home and develop-ers will be overwhelmed by cash-rich young families. Designers and con-tractors, for their part, will be drafted in their droves to make their client’s plans reality, and everyone, everyone, will get fi lthy, stinking rich.

But a quick look at many of the projects on the boards for Saudi

ARABIAN SIGHTS

reveal that there is a signifi cant mis-match between the kind of properties that developers and designers are working on in the kingdom, and the kind that are needed. Developers seem ever-willing to point to Saudi’s need for housing, while erecting tow-ers and villas that none but the richest of the population can aff ord.

In an excellent article last month in the Saudi Gazette, a journalist went stand to stand asking Cityscape exhibitors how much of their develop-ments were put aside for aff ordable housing – not one of them could give an answer.

This is not just a moral issue either. The fact of the matter is that the emphasis on luxury developments in the KSA is unsustainable, and justify-ing these developments with Saudi Arabia’s housing shortages is not just shortsighted, it’s dangerous. Building luxury apartment blocks does noth-ing to ease the kingdom’s housing shortage, and if locals won’t buy them, it’s hard to see who will.

This is the real challenge for Saudi Arabia. How can the country house the vast majority of its population who cannot aff ord to live in luxury fl ats? How can it eff ectively repair the infrastructure in run-down cities like Jeddah? How can it renovate its beau-tiful architecture without bulldozers and dynamite?

This kind of work may not be glam-orous, and it may not make anyone rich, but it is what Saudi Arabia really needs – and surely that has to count for something.

Luxury fl ats and giant glass towers may not be what the KSA needs

GOT A

COMMENT?

If you have any

comments to

make on this

month’s issue,

please e-mail

orlando.

crowcroft

@itp.com

Cities like Jeddah lack aff ordable

homes, not luxury fl ats.

10th - 12th October 2010

P

The Middle East Parking Symposium is owned by Island Media FZE, PO Box 35013, Dubai, UAE

@parking-me.comTel: +971 50 5652519

@parking-me.com


COMMENT | CAIRO

6

Once a fl ourishing city on the banks of the Nile, Cairo has today argu-ably grown to become

one of the ugliest urban metropolises in the world. Construction in the city has long gone unchecked, while the semblance of regulations that existed have been poorly enforced. Those who can aff ord it have fl ed to the lush gated compounds on the outskirts of Cairo, but the majority of residents still live in the cacophonous metropolis.

While there have been commend-able eff orts to revitalise parts of the old city like al-Darb al-Ahmar, thanks to individual actions of many who care, and support by organisations like the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, there is still no overall vision. As the most

As the most populous capital in Africa and the Arab world, Cairo deserves better”

OPINION

populous capital in Africa and the Arab world, Cairo deserves better.

There is an urgent need to develop a Vision for the City – Cairo 2030. This must be a bold overall strategic and cohesive vision, within the ring road and not just downtown. Cairo is expected to have a population of close to 30 million by 2030 and the govern-ment needs to take responsiblity for the mess the city has become. This is about both national pride and heritage which, once gone, are irreplaceable.

While there are eff orts by govern-ment bodies to develop ideas for the revitalisation of Khedival Cairo, and by the National Organisation for Urban Harmony, to develop guidelines for the ‘beautifi cation’ of the mod-ern downtown, these eff orts remain

separate. They are necessary, but a cohesive integrated solution for the entire metropolis is urgently required beyond the CBD. In order to achieve these goals, the government must get serious. Cairo needs to create a semi-governmental corporate body, I propose the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), to be responsible for facilitating the re-development of existing buildings, and mediating be-tween investors and the city agencies and municipalities. The government can therefore create both the right environment for development and restoration, as well as for investment. A critical ingredient to the proposed UDC remit is to empower it to be the sole conduit for coordinating the vari-ous eff orts and agencies, to ensure a cohesive approach and make develop-ments fi nancially viable.

The government must set the stage for sustainable developments by the private sector, but no funding will be required. With well over 15 million people in Cairo, the government’s eff orts are better served focusing on in-frastructure, education and healthcare.

The real role for the government is to demonstrate leadership through vision and enforcement. Such eff orts will go a long way to restore lost cred-ibility, and provide clarity for develop-ers architects to shape the 2030 vision.

Cairo is not a tabula rasa like, say, Dubai or Doha. The task is a complex one given that the city is inhabited and densely developed already. It will be no walk in the park, but Cairo must start now, before it is too late.

Cairo needs its very own 2030 plan

FUTUREFORTUNES

Hisham Youssef

is an architect

at Gensler,

responsible

for the fi rm’s

projects in

Egypt and

North Africa.

Cairo’s historic areas are a far

cry from the rest of the city.

Alumil Gulf fzcsubsidiary of ALUMIL in the Middle EastTechnology Park, RAK FTZ, RAKtel +971 7 2444106, fax +971 7 2444107email [email protected], [email protected]

JULY | SNAPSHOT


THIS MONTH’SNEED TO

KNOW

The

expe

cted

hei

ght

of K

uwai

t’s

Cit

y of

Silk

tow

er (P

age

24)

“On a tower on Sheikh Zayed Road, solar panels are just saying: ‘Here is my nod to the environment’.”Nicholas Lander, Inhibit

(Page 12)

“The idea is that architects

coming in will

have a base

standard of

great quality,and then they can expand upon that as much as they want.”

Abdullah Al Shamsi, Mubadala

(Page 16)

The size of RNL’snew city in theEmpty Quarter(Page 44)

“There are a lot of consultants who fl y in in the hope of winning work, but we don’t expect to win work until we have a presence in the kingdom.”Charles Collett, Aedas (Page 32)

BRIDGES WILL JOIN SOWWAH ISLAND WITH ABU DHABI (Page 16)13

“If a client wants a modern design we do a modern design, if he wants something that refl ects the region, then we do something that.”

Ammar Al-Sabban (Page 40)

THE NUMBER OF CATEGORIES IN THIS YEAR’S MIDDLE EAST ARCHITECT AWARDS

()

14“The amount of rating systems in operation in the last two to three years is not healthy.”Sultan Faden, Saudi Green

Building Council

(Page 10)

The number of projects that RMJM architects have underway in the Middle East(Page 11)40

MIDDLE EAST ARCHITECT | 07.10 | www.constructionweekonline.com10

SNAPSHOT | JULY

The multitude of ratings systems for sustainable building has been a ‘fi asco’ for the GCC, according to one pioneer for green construction.

Sultan Faden, an architect, former consultant and founder of the Saudi Green Building Council, said that although he and the council are generally in support of systems that measure a building’s carbon footprint, the plethora of diff erent criteria to choose from has confused the market just as the idea is taking hold in Saudi Arabia.

His comments come just one month into his membership of the Gulf-wide Green Buildings Com-mittee, which is seeking to create a better criteria for assessing a build-ing’s energy and water use, given the Middle Eastern climate, than the

MULTIPLE GREEN RATINGS ‘A FIASCO’ IN KSASaudi sustainability body hits out at ‘confusing’ plethora of green accreditations

LEED or BREEAM rankings. “Today we have a number of

diff erent systems from diff erent backgrounds,” he said.

“The amount of rating systems in operation in the last two to three years has been confusing. It is not healthy. Most of these systems are similar.”

He added that sustainability is not high enough on the agenda of the Saudi government, pointing out that the new rules will be tailored to the government in that they will set a benchmark by which developers and planners must comply.

“With government-related proj-ects the guidelines for sustainability are slightly diff erent,” he said.

Discussions around green building have reached a high point in recent

years, with a number of projects pushing for LEED accreditation.

However some say that any rat-ings system adopted from the US or Europe is unsatisfactory as criteria for regional developments, even if schemes such as LEED or BREEAM have adapted their criteria suit the climate. This is particularly true when considering water use and cooling, which are far more onerous in the Gulf climate.

The amount of ratings systems in the last two to three years have made things confusing. It is not healthy.”

Sultan Faden, Saudi Green Building Council (SGBC)

Cities like Riyadh

need their own

standard for

green design.

JULY | SNAPSHOT


GOING FOR GLORYNominations for the Middle East Architect Awards 2010 need to be submitted in advance of the awards ceremony at the end of September. There are 14 catego-ries this year, including awards for individual architects, projects and sustainable initiatives. Visit www.constructionweekonline.com/meaa for more information.

TALL ORDER Dubai’s Burj Khalifa was

crowned best tall building of 2010 by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). CTBUH announces four winners every year, one from the Americas, Asia and Australasia, Europe and the Middle East and Africa. The Burj will feature at the CTBUH 9th Annual Awards Ceremony in Chicago in October, when one of four winners will be chosen.

HOWDY SAUDIA redevelopment programme tar-geting Jeddah’s slums was unveiled at Cityscape Jeddah last month. The scheme will see hundreds of thousands of residents of the city’s so-called ‘unplanned settlements’ relocated while buildings are torn down and redeveloped.

IN BRIEF

ABU SAVVY Multi-disciplinary engineer-

ing consultancy Buro Happold is expanding its Abu Dhabi offi ce as it contends with a surfeit of projects from the Corniche to Sowwah Island and the Louvre. “Our offi ce in Abu Dhabi is full now, so we took the decision to invest in additional space and people,” said director Kevin Mitchell.

BUSY BODIES Global design fi rm RMJM cur-

rently has 40 active projects in the UAE, as well as work underway in Bahrain, Turkey, Sudan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Oman, Nick Haston, the company’s CEO, has revealed. “We have had some great success with new business both in the UAE and the emerging markets of the Middle East and North Africa over the past few months. Many of these we are unable to talk about at this stage but we hope to an-nounce some major developments in the near future,” he said.

PISA MIND ADNEC’s Capital

Gate tower in Abu Dhabi will be included in the Guiness Book of Records as the furthest leaning man-made tower in the world. Capital Gate has been built to lean 18 degrees westwards - more than four times that of the world famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. The tower has been under construction since 2007 and will be completed later this year.

12 MIDDLE EAST ARCHITECT | 07.10 | www.constructionweekonline.com

FEATURE | SOLAR

13www.constructionweekonline.com | 07.10 | MIDDLE EAST ARCHITECT

SOLAR | FEATURE

Solar panels may look the part, but critics feel there are better ways to help buildings save energy

BLACKHOLE SUN

Forget grey water re-use, pre-cast concrete and carbon off -setting, there are few things that scream sustainability like solar panels.

But critics argue that it is a misconception that the Middle East is a natural home for solar power, just as it is that solar panels can substantially reduce the energy gain of a building. Solar may help boost a build-ing’s green credentials, but in terms of energy saving

there are far better options available. “Developers like photo-voltaic (PV) solar panels

because they are visible, and people look at them and say: ‘Hey, check out that building, it’s got

solar panels so it must be green’,” said Nicholas Lander, senior associate at Inhabit.

“Well that’s not the case. On a tower on Sheikh Zayed Road it’s just saying: ‘Here

is my nod to the environment’.”Lander points out that on a

large scale residential or offi ce building, even

covering the

entire façade with solar photo-voltaic panels will likely only succeed in providing 2% of energy needs. The real drain on most offi ce developments is lighting, which can account for up to 50% of a building’s total power output.

“If you are looking at a small building with no local power access then PV panels can be an excellent source of power for the building. But if you are talking about commercial, PV panels are only useful as part of large scale power plants,” he said.

It is not that solar panels are inherently useless, if every home was to install them the eff ect could be dramatic, but currently there is little fi nancial incentive to do so. One of the problems in the Middle East, and particularly in the UAE, is that excess power generated by PV panels cannot be fed back into the country’s national grid. This does not incentiv-ize people to install panels, as they know that the power they don’t use will be wasted.


FEATURE | SOLAR

“You’re better off improving the effi ciency

of the systems in your building. You will spend a lot

less money doing that,” he said.It is an attitude that Jacob Zukek,

principal architect at Henning Lars-en, the fi rm responsible for the master plan of the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) in Saudi Arabia, shares. In its plans for the KAFD, Henning Larsen has stressed that sustainability is not about installing token green measures after a building is constructed, it is about planning from the earliest stages.

“If you are looking from an indi-vidual building point of view then adding solar panels will only give you maybe 2 or 3% reduction in energy consumption,” Zukek said.

Rather than looking to initiatives such as PV panels, Henning Lar-sen requires architects working on parcels of the KAFD site to design buildings that are appropriate for the climate. Shading, in addition to the increase of natural light in an offi ce

development, reduces heat gain and artifi cial light use, and is far more valuable than solar power.

This is a view that Till Stoll, CEO of green consultancy www.greendes-tinations.ae, agrees with. He believes that many architects look at energy saving initiatives as an afterthought, rather than part of planning at an early stage. Despite claims to the con-trary, aesthetics still often come fi rst.

“When we have a piece of land the fi rst thing we do is measure the wind direction and strength and how much water we have available – those fac-tors really limit our design, but they have to come fi rst if you’re serious about building green,” Stoll said.

Heating water is an area where so-lar panels in the Gulf can be valuable. At the KAFD, Henning Larsen esti-mate that solar panels could provide 80% of hot water, seriously reducing the need for gas or electric boilers.

But even then, Stoll adds, there is a misconception that because of the region’s constant sunshine, panels have a major role in a green building –

actually, because of the dust and sand in the UAE, solar only has a limited impact on overall energy reduction.

He gives the example of a signifi -cant hotel in Dubai which purports to use a few solar panels to heat its water, when in reality the building would need some 7,000 panels. At the same time, Stoll said, the hotel in question has to regularly hose down the panels from dust and sand.

Henning Larsen’s Zukek agreed. “You get so much dust out here that solar panels require a lot of mainte-nance. After a week or two the dust seriously minimizes the effi ciency.”

Bassam Elassaad, business devel-opment director for the Middle East at GEA Consulting, goes further. He argues that even using solar panels for heating water is unnecessary during the hot summer months in the Gulf.

“Anybody who has taken a shower from May to October can tell you that the sun heats the water on the roof of buildings and your cold tap becomes the source of hot water,” he said.

Conversely, one area where solar can be useful, Elassaad said, is in cooling water and the air inside a building. He said that new technologi-cal advances in solar energy actually allows panels to do this.

Elassaad explained that desiccant materials, which absorb moisture and then can be dried by adding heat, can be used to aid cooling in a building. These systems use a wheel containing the desiccant material turning slowly picking up humidity and discharging it to the outdoors. The energy to drive the wheel and the heat needed to dry the material can be supplied from solar panels making the system virtu-ally operation cost free.

“Such systems are a boost to solar and renewable energy in general. By expanding the use of solar panels in residences beyond heating water, so-lar energy will increasingly contrib-ute to smart and environmentally-friendly homes,” he said.

You get so much dust out here that solar panels require a lot of maintenance. After a week or two the dust seriously

minimizes the effi ciency.”Jacob Zukek, principal architect, Henning Larsen

2-3%LIKELY REDUCTION IN

ENERGY CONSUMPTION FROM USING PV PANELS

ON AN OFFICEBUILDING

Despite their pitfalls, PV panels

remain popular in the GCC.


AEDAS | ADVERTISEMENT

Aedas provides consul-

tancy services in archi-

tecture, interior design,

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39 offi ces in Asia, the Middle East,

Europe and the Americas.

Aedas’s new offi ce in Riyadh will

be its fi rst in the KSA, led by Saudi

Arabia Country Manager, Charles

Collett. Aedas plans to use Riyadh as

a base for expansion into a number of

markets, including master planning,

hospitality, transport, healthcare, edu-

cation, civic and sports projects.

As part of its continued expan-

sion, Aedas will open more offi ces in

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rienced senior staff will be located in

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Aedas provides international

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East. Aedas have over 150 highly

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offi ces in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Doha,

Dubai and Riyadh,

In 2009 Aedas celebrated their win

of Best Urban Design and Master

Planning at the Cityscape Saudi

Real Estate Awards for the New

Jeddah mixed-use commercial and

residential development. The project

is designed to be a sustainable and

eco-friendly oasis in Jeddah.

Charles Collett Country Manager KSA

Bahrain Tower, 2nd Floor, King Fahad Road, Riyadh 12214-2393, PO Box 8953, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Tel: +966 1 279 5235 | Fax: +966 1 279 5101 | Mob: +966 55 952 2026 | [email protected]

Lucy Casey Business Development Manager - MENA

8th Floor, Burjuman Business Tower, Trade Centre Road, P.O.Box 49927, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Tel: +971 4 3557 233 | Fax: +971 4 3557 232 | Mob: +971 (0 )507089386 | [email protected]

SIGHTS ON SAUDIAEDAS OPENS ITS FIRST KSA OFFICE IN RIYADH, PLANS A SECOND IN JEDDAH

“We are enthusiastic about the Aedas offi ce opening in Riyadh, re-affi rming our efforts in the

region. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has much to offer both in terms of development and culture

and we are very pleased to now reside andbe part of the community here.”

Charles Collett Country Manager, KSA

1. Mandelina Marina, Sibenik, Croatia 2. Salalah Hasik Resort Hotel, Oman3. New Jeddah Masterplan, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

1.

2.

3.

3.


WIP | SOWWAH ISLAND

S owwah Island is one of the largest ongoing proj-ects in Abu Dhabi so it is little surprise that the site

is a hive of activity.The fl agship development, Sow-

wah Square, has rocketed up since work started last year, with three of the four commercial offi ce towers reaching their fi nal heights, and large portions of the façade now installed.

Meanwhile, construction work on the Cleveland Clinic hospital

Middle East Architect took a tour of the island set to become Abu Dhabi’s new CBD

WORK IN PROGRESS SPECIAL

SOWWAH ISLANDis beginning, with workers laying the foundations of the 260,000sq2 building after enabling works were completed earlier this year. The core of the Rosewood Hotel – the third building on the island with work un-derway – currently juts out in the site on the other side of Sowwah Square.

Four other developments have been confi rmed for phase one of the three phase development of Sowwah, although construction work has not yet started. These include two more

hotels, the Four Seasons and the Viceroy and two commercial towers planned by the National Bank of Abu Dhabi and Al Hilal Bank.

As for phase two and three, they are still very much in the planning stage. Phase two will eventually feature residential and commercial buildings as well as community fa-cilities and parks while phase three, in the north of the island, will be home to Sowwah’s transit centre.

All in all, Sowwah is a massive

SOWWAH ISLAND | WIP



WIP | SOWWAH ISLAND

18

development for Mubadala Real Estate and Hospitality, the company behind the development of the island on behalf of the Abu Dhabi govern-ment, and not just above ground. The entire island is being built on a 14 metre podium, with roads, pave-ments, lobbies and pedestrian access above ground and utilities, storage and maintenance access below.

Much of the infrastructure, including a number of bridges and main thoroughfares, have now been completed, and work is underway on the utilities and substructure below ground. Eventually the low level will include pedestrian walkways and retail outlets, providing access to other parts of the island.

In terms of design, Abdullah Al-Shamsi, a senior architect at Mubadala, is tasked with ensuring that the individual buildings – which were planned and developed by

the site owners – match the overall master plan for the site. Mubadala require individual designers to fol-low a set of architectural guidelines, that tackle the style of design and include requirements for sustainable initiatives.

“We’re going through the process of developing an architectural guide-lines manual set which essentially goes from plot to plot and maintains base guidelines for the developer. When they buy the plot or they bring somebody else in to develop a plot, the guidelines allow for cohesion to happen,” he said.

“Within every site the environ-ment is going to be diff erent, the orientation of the buildings is diff er-ent, the reaction of one building to the ones adjacent to it is diff erent. We’re not limiting the mate-rial use but we’re limiting the greater material so

that the design is relative, and can have a fl air to it without losing touch with its direct surroundings.”

Al-Shamsi said that the impos-ing such guidelines on developers in designers is nothing new, plenty of cities set out detailed master plans to ensure that buildings relate to their neighbors. This is all the more true when considering sustainability, a hallmark of the design so far and an important factor for Abu Dhabi’s green conscious government.

The three buildings currently under construction on the site were designed before the onset of Abu Dhabi’s ‘Estidama’ framework, but Al Shamsi said that Sowwah Square building is likely to get a two or three pearl rating when completed. It has

also been LEED gold certifi ed.

“Because there were no (Esti-

DEVELOPMENT SO FAR…Sowwah Square

Sowwah Square comprises

four offi ce towers and the new

headquarters of the Abu Dhabi

Securities Exchange (ADX). As

of June 2010, 3 of 4 commercial

towers have reached their fi nal

heights, façade installation is

underway and retail podium

and car parks are structurally

complete.

COMPLETION DATE: Towers 1 and

2 due for completion in Q1 2011.

ARCHITECTS: Goettsch Partners

THREEOF THE FOUR TOWERSAT SOWWAH SQUARE

ARE NOW ATFINAL HEIGHT

SOWWAH ISLAND | WIP


DEVELOPMENT SO FAR…Rosewood Abu Dhabi

This business-focused luxury

hotel is located on the waterfront

adjacent to Sowwah Square.

It will be 34-storeys high and

include 189 guest rooms and 139

serviced apartments. Enabling

works are now complete and

construction work on the site has

recently commenced.

COMPLETION DATE: 2012

ARCHITECT: Handel Architects

SOWWAH IN NUMBERS

75,000The expected working population

of the island once complete

13The number of bridges linking

Sowwah with the rest of Abu Dhabi

5.4the length of the boardwalk that

will surround the island

5,200The number of off -street parking

spaces included at Sowwah Square

30,000The expected residential

population of the island

105The size in hectares of the site

The core of the Rosewood Abu Dhabi is starting to emerge.


WIP | SOWWAH ISLAND

20

dama) standards at that time we took it upon ourselves to bring on the best standards that we knew out there, which

was the LEED system, and apply that on Sow-wah Island,” he said.

The Sowwah Square towers feature a double glazing system with a built in air pocket that allows for a

reduction of heat transfer from the exterior. It also

has condensation units in between the panes, so any condensation runs into a collection system which is used as gray water within the devel-opment as a whole. Floor to ceiling glass allows more light to come in, and shades on the western elevation reduce the heat gain of the building.

“The idea is that these architects coming in will have a base standard that is of great quality, and then they can expand upon that as much as their respective developers would want,” Al-Shamsi said.

Despite the pace of development of phase one, Al-Shamsi said there is little worry that phase two and three

DEVELOPMENT SO FAR…Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi

The award-winning Cleveland

Clinic will serve local and

international patients, and is due

to be Abu Dhabi’s fi rst high-end

medical facility. Enabling works

are complete and construction

has now commenced and is on

schedule for completion in 2012.

COMPLETION DATE: 2012

ARCHITECT: Henningson, Durham

and Richardson International and

Aedas Architects

will lag behind, leaving a half fi n-ished development, the sort of which can be seen all over Dubai. Mubadala has clauses written into the con-tracts that stipulate a strict timeline of planning, design, construction and completion for developers.

“In general, within the sale of ev-ery plot we’re given the owner or de-veloper a fi ve year life span, to start working, get things on the ground. So there is not situation where you left with empty lots,” Al-Shamsi said.

“We won’t sell the land to somebody and have them wait to see whether the price will improve, we’re doing it the other way around. We take longer to sell and reach an agreement, until we know that they want to build. We’ve learned from some of the master developments in the UAE that went wrong, and are working very hard to prevent that happening,” he said.

12,000THE PEAK NUMBER

OF WORKERS ON SITE AS OF JULY 2010

Work is underway on the foundations of the award winning Cleveland Clinic hospital.

We wanted to bring on the best standards that we knew, which was the LEED system. ”

Abdullah Al-Shamsi, Mubadala

Do Business in the Education Sector

21-22 NOVEMBER 2010ADNEC, ABU DHABI, UAE

ENDORSED BY

BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE ORGANISERS OF:

ORGANISED BY

CO-LOCATED WITH

To discuss exhibition, workshop involvement and sponsorship opportunities contact:

Matthew Robarts, M: +971 (0) 50 1142303 [email protected] or

Ahmed Zakaria, M: +971 (0) 50 6114469 [email protected]

*MEED Education Special Report, January 2010

United Arab Emirates • Saudi Arabia • Egypt • Qatar • Oman • Jordan • Kuwait • Libya • Bahrain

Billions of dollars are being invested in the Middle East and North Africa education sector, with $36 billion in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia alone.*

Building Future Education MENA, exhibition and conference allows:

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INTERVIEW | HOK

Middle East Architect spoke to HOK vice president Daniel Hajjar about the new role for master planning in the Gulf

THE INTERVIEW: HOK

WELLS PR E AD

With the emphasis on building faster, higher and taller, thinking big never

came easy during Dubai’s construc-tion boom – resulting in a city that lacks public space and is so often all too reliant on the car.

But this attitude has changed since the fi nancial crisis, with other GCC countries keen to learn from Dubai’s mistakes. Saudi Arabia has a number of master planned mega-projects on the boards, while Abu Dhabi has put big picture-thinking at the centre of its 2030 plan.

It is a good environment to be in for a fi rm with a track record like HOK. The design fi rm responsible for Dubai Marina, Festival City and, most recently the King Abdullah University of Science and Technol-ogy (KAUST), HOK does not need to go far to point to its credentials.

But Daniel Hajjar, HOK’s Dubai-based vice president, believes that it is not just attitudes to the impor-tance of master planning that have changed, but the nature of master planning itself.

“Master planning has really become more than an engineered


HOK | INTERVIEW

statement. It has become about looking at how you can create qual-ity within the urban environment, as opposed to looking only at how to break a development up into the most convenient grid,” he said.

It was something that HOK tried to achieve with its Dubai Marina framework, one of the few new residential sites in Dubai that is not dissected by highways and unbear-able outside in the summer heat.

“It was perhaps one of the fi rst ones that responded to the public realm, within the city. In the sense that it really was, and remains, truly public. People can go down, walk along the waterfront, and you have these pockets of urban space where you can relax and watch the world go by,” he said. “In that sense I think it’s done very well for itself.”

Of course, the Marina is very much an exception to the rule in Dubai, a lesson not lost on the rulers of Abu Dhabi. The emirate’s 2030 plan has set down guidelines for ev-erything from building height to the width of pavements, and ensured that the planned metro system ef-fectively links the city.

“The thing that should be admired with Abu Dhabi is the fact

that the political will is there to ad-dress some of the issues that we con-tinually talk about but that we never do anything about,” Hajjar said.

“It’s going to be an interesting exercise primarily because no other place has done it in the Middle East. We’ve had master-planned communities but never a master planned city.”

It is well-known that the climate is one of the biggest challenges for designers in the Middle East, and creating habitable outside space is one of the aims of Abu Dhabi’s plan.

Hajjar pointed out that since HOK fi rst started planning communities and developments in the Middle East in the 1980s, people’s attitudes to the heat, and what temperature is bearable, have changed.

“When I fi rst came to Dubai no one would sit outside in March, April, May, now you see people quite often sitting outside. As long as it is comfortable,” he said.

“If you actually take away the humidity, it is hot but you don’t need very much to make it comfortable for yourself.”

Sheikh Zayed University in Dubai was designed to use ‘spill air’ to cool outside areas.


INTERVIEW | HOK

24

HOK has looked at a number of strategies within particular projects to tackle the issue of heat. One of which, using spill air to cool down outside areas, has proved eff ective at Zayed University, where a large outside ‘quad’ area is cooled using air from the classrooms.

And then there is KAUST, of course, the current poster boy of sustainable development in the Middle East. KAUST was designed by a joint eff ort of nine HOK offi ces across the world in order to deliver it on a tight time frame.

“KAUST was specifi cally de-signed with the classrooms quite tight together primarily because we did not want a lot of sun penetration between the blocks, because that would go against the whole philoso-phy of providing shaded alleyways and pedestrian access between the buildings,” he said.

But aside from the signifi cant achievements made at KAUST in terms of sustainability, Hajjar

believes that it is a truly master-planned development, a campus designed on a similar idea to univer-sity towns in the US or Canada.

“I think the interesting thing behind that project is there is a tre-mendous affi nity between the diff er-ent components, it’s not just some campus stuck out in the middle of nowhere without residential or commercial to support it, it has al-most become the classic university town,” he said.

Like many fi rms, HOK sees a future market in Saudi Arabia, a place that has money, ambition and a very real need for infrastructure, housing, schools and facilities for its growing population.

“I don’t think anyone in this part of the world can ignore the Saudi market, and we never have actually. The Saudi market has always been an important market for us,” he said.

Qatar too will be an important market for HOK, and Hajjar points to the country’s focus on education

Providing habitable outside space is essential when designing communities in the Middle East.

and the gas industry. Qatar also has ambition, demonstrated by its audacious bid for the 2022 World Cup and its plans for the new Doha International Airport, which HOK will be the design architect for.

Wherever HOK is working in the next few years, Hajjar thinks that the market in the Middle East, and the mindset of developers here, has changed since the fi nancial crisis. Developers no longer want to replicate the growth seen in Dubai in 2009, so designers are no longer required to fulfi ll their clients’ weird and wonderful demands.

“One of the issues that became extremely acute was that when the boom was happening many people looked to Dubai and said: ‘We want to develop like that.’ We even had people calling from as far as Central Asia who wanted to develop like Dubai,” Hajjar said.

“But Dubai developed like that because of certain conditions. I think there is a change of attitudes now. Muscat is not Dubai, Manama is not Dubai and Abu Dhabi is not Dubai. There is a very real charac-ter within each of the countries in terms of how it should be looked at, what it needs to be looked at as, and how it needs to develop as well.”

We even had people calling from as far as Central Asia who wanted to develop like Dubai.”

Daniel Hajjar, vice president, HOK Architects

HOK master-planned Dubai Marina.


COVER STORY | SUPERTALLS

Because the City of Silk was conceived as much as a diplomatic

symbol as it was a functional piece

of architecture, it mobilises more

capital.” Eric Kuhne, Civic Arts


SUPERTALLS | COVER STORY

With fi nance hard to come by and sustainability paramount, supertalls seem to have the odds stacked against them in 2010

hen Dubai’s Burj Khalifa reached its

fi nal height of 828 metres – becoming the tallest building

in the world by over 200m – it did so against

a background of global fi nancial un-certainty. As a result, by the time the iconic tower was fi nished most of its competitors had fallen by the wayside.

Among them were plans for a 1,001m tower in Kuwait and Dubai’s Nakheel Tower, also clocking in at over one kilometre. Another kilo-metre-high tower, in Saudi Arabia’s coastal hub of Jeddah, is alleged to be ongoing, but information about the project is limited.

But building supertalls is an ex-pensive business, and with fi nancial uncertainty ongoing, it would be no surprise if the Burj holds onto its world’s-tallest crown for some time. At over 800m, the Burj is signifi -cantly bigger than the Taipei 101, the current world’s second tallest, and the Shanghai Tower (632m) cur-rently under construction in China’s fi nancial hub.

“It is likely that the global fi nancial crisis, current problems with rentals and asset values, and the lack of capi-tal generally will mean that building super-tall will be out of fashion,” said Richard Marshall, an engineer at Buro Happold.

Marshall added that if anyone is going to buck that trend, it is likely to be either China or certain areas of the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia.

“With capital and a relatively unconstrained decision making elite, they are more probable locations for the next generation of super-tall buildings,” he said.

Although it will clock in at a good few metres lower than the Burj, Gen-sler’s Shanghai Tower, in the city’s Lujiazui district, is already proving that point. The tower will overshadow the Shanghai World Financial Centre (492m), currently the third tallest building in the world, by some 150m.

Gensler’s Chris Chan, who de-signed the tower, admitted that fi nan-cial considerations are paramount when drawing up a design for a tall building, but he added that in a city where space is seriously constrained



28

in comparison to the population, tall towers become all the more viable.

“Pound for pound a tall building will cost more in terms of construc-tion, but you also have to factor in the amount of land area you are creating,” Chan said, adding that the Shanghai Tower is creating 380,000m2 of space on a tiny footprint.

It is an argument that Eric Kuhne, the designer behind the proposed City of Silk tower in Kuwait, agrees with. “They are hugely expensive, but because the City of Silk was conceived as much as a diplomatic symbol as it was a functional piece of architecture, obviously that mobilises more capital,” he said.

Kuhne’s tower is planned to be the centrepiece of a 250km2 develop-ment on the Kuwaiti coast, which will include a new airport, a business district and thousands of units of new housing, offi ces and commercial units. It is made up of seven 30-storey buildings, separated by four-storey sky-gardens and supported by twist-ing three towers together. The project was commissioned by the Kuwait government before the fi nancial crisis shook the country, and is currently

still in the design phase. Financial constraints are some-

thing that Woods Bagot, the fi rm behind the 1,000m Nakheel Tower, knows about fi rst hand. Half of build-ings foundations had been built when it fell through at the end of last year. More than six months on the fi rm is still hoping that the tower will eventu-ally be fi nished.

“As always it comes down to some-one wanting to do it. Clearly going up to this kind of height is extreme and the way that a project like this stacks up fi nancially is not just the tower, it’s all the other stuff around it,” said Alfred Seeling, design director at Woods Bagot.

The Nakheel Tower scheme included a signifi cant amount of real estate surround-ing the building, including housing, of-fi ce and retail space – like Downtown Dubai, the value of this real estate would be boosted by the presence of the world’s tallest

The Nakheel

Tower is

strengthened

by six sky

gardens.

City of Silk, Kuwait(1,001m)

COMPLETION DATE: Unknown

DESIGNER: Civic Arts

THE BLURB: The tower is made

up of seven 30-storey buildings,

separated by four-storey sky-

gardens and supported by

twisting three towers together.

Once fi nished, the tower will be

the tallest in the world by a long

shot, and form a centrepiece to a

whole new business, residential

and transport hub in Kuwait City.

THE TRICKY BIT: Currently in

elevator design cables can’t be

effi ciently manufactured and

maintained for more than 500

metres. To get around this, the

designers put the elevators inside

the centre of the tower, where

the three blades overlap in the

center of the plan. The express

lift will operate like an express

train, you get out at your sky

garden and take another elevator

to your home.

KEEPING GREEN: Civic Arts, the

fi rm that designed the tower, is

planting seven million trees in

the area surrounding the tower

to off set the carbon used by an

estimated one million inhabitants.


SUPERTALLS | COVER STORY

building, helping pay for it. “This is one of the only places where you can get hold of these large parcels of land, you couldn’t do this in New York, you just couldn’t make it stack up on a small fl oor plate in Manhattan,” Seeling said.

But it is not just the fi nancial crisis that has taken the wind out of the sails of tall buildings in 2010. The ongoing focus on green design has also played a role. Governments, developers and designers are keener than ever to boost their sustainable credentials, and building supertalls is not seen as a way of doing it.

“There is an argument that tall buildings are unsustainable, but there is also the reverse – if a tall building is designed sustainably and in particu-lar if there is an associated reduction in infrastructure and transportation usage as a consequence then ‘real’ en-ergy use could be considered lower,” said Buro Happold’s Marshall.

City of Silk’s Kuhne is fi rmly in the latter camp.

“When you concentrate people in a central space you get the highest effi ciency of sustainability because of the fact that you have more people

Nakheel Tower, Dubai(+1,000m)


DESIGNER: Woods Bagot

THE BLURB: The Nakheel Tower

was to be built on a plot close to

Jumeirah Lake Towers in Dubai,

and clock in at over a kilometre

in height (although the final

height was never revealed).

Made up of four towers, joined

by sky bridges every four

levels, the tower allows wind

to flow through the middle of

the building.

THE TRICKY BIT: Financing

the tower has been a nightmare

for Nakheel in light of of the

financial crisis. Launched in

2008, the project was officially

cancelled in December 2009,

and as of July 2010 there

remains little chance that it

will get built any time soon.

KEEPING GREEN: Waste air from

the towers 200+ floors would

be forced down through the

tower and re-used to cool the

basement and car parks.

in one place and their movement, which is the biggest negative of energy consumption is reduced down to the most effi cient level,” he said.

But Kuhne is not hedging his bets either. The City of Silk designers have calculated how much carbon will be used by an estimated one million people that will use the tower and sur-rounding area, and planted enough trees to off set it.

“We know that in the Middle East it takes three trees to carbon balance for every individual. We pushed the tree proportion per person to seven, so for that group estimating a million people that’s 7 million trees that we’re going to plant there,” he said.

Woods Bagot’s Seeling also be-lieves that the argument depends on how narrowly you defi ne sustainabil-ity. Unlike some other supertalls, the Nakheel Tower contains more than 200 fl oors of usable space, with fl oor plates around 3,600 m2.

“You’re not taking up so much land, a building like this has got a population of 12,000. If you were to spread that out over a normal density it would take up a lot more land all your infrastructure has to be much

“It is likely that the global fi nancial crisis will mean that building super-tall will be out of fashion.Richard Marshall, Buro Happold



more spread out,” said Seeling.The last challenge for the next

generation of supertalls is engineer-ing, and fi rst among these practical concerns is wind. As a tower rises, the impact of wind increases, with gusts varying in direction from top to bottom. The Nakheel Tower and Kuwait’s City of Silk have devised very diff erent solutions.

“The way the tower is designed with the three blades like the three spokes, that come out are like a tripod, bracing the building against the wind. So instead of tapering to a sharp point, we’re got these blades that are orientated towards the prin-ciple wind directions and they help brace the tower,” Kuhne explained.

The designers also fashioned aerolons that imitate the technology used on airplane wings and move dynamically with the wind on the six corners of the tower.

Woods Bagot came up with a diff erent solu-tion to the problem of wind. Rather than

allowing it to go around the tower, it goes through the middle. A close look at the Nakheel Tower reveals that it is in fact four towers, joined together at 25 fl oor intervals by sky gardens. The wind fl ows through the center of the tower, and the sixteen corner walls that form the core of the building.

Of course, it remains true that despite the detail and ambition of current plans for supertalls, none are underway in any tangible sense. The question is whether, with the economic and environmental factors stacked against them, there is still a future for tall buildings.

Gensler’s Chan feels sure there is. “If history is an indication of what

our future will be like, then there will always be new technology and new techniques for making buildings taller,” he said.

“Since the dawn of mankind, since the Pyramids, there’s always been

something in our human condi-tion that makes us want to

build higher and taller, in order to reach the skies.”

Shanghai Tower(632m)


DESIGNER: Gensler

THE BLURB: Once completed

the Shanghai Tower will clock in

at 632m, have 128 storeys and

contain an area of 380,000m2.

It will be the tallest building in

China and the second tallest in

the world, at last allowing China

to at last overtake Taiwan’s Taipei

101 tower.

THE TRICKY BIT: Shanghai has

an exceptionally high water level,

meaning that Gensler had to do

one of two things: drive pylons all

the way down until they reached

bedrock, or use a fl oating

platform as an artifi cial bedrock.

They decided to do both.

KEEPING GREEN: The tower’s

twisting feature allows rainwater

to be collected and used in the

tower’s air-conditioning and

heating systems. 632M

THE HEIGHT OF THE SHANGHAI TOWER

WHEN FINISHED


KSA SPECIAL | CITYSCAPE JEDDAH


CITYSCAPE JEDDAH | KSA SPECIAL

Middle East Architect reports from Saudi Arabia, the new frontier for designers, contractors and developers in the GCC



t was no surprise when City-scape Jeddah was billed as the best yet, with Saudi Arabia remaining the region’s most attractive market for developers, designers and contractors. The presence of the Gulf’s major

architectural fi rms, as well as prominent developers refl ected the excitement that those in the Middle East feel about the Saudi

market. The event saw old Saudi hands, new kids on the block and

local fi rms rubbing shoulders with the Saudi money-men who are

fi nancing the kingdom’s seemingly unstoppable

construction boom.

It is an exciting time to be making a move into Saudi Arabia, explained Charles Collett, Aedas’s man in the kingdom, from the fi rm’s large stand in the Jeddah Exhibition Center. While Aedas has worked on design projects in Saudi Arabia, its opening of a new offi ce in Riyadh last month demonstrated a its focus on KSA.

“The plan here is similar to the way we go into many countries, we create a local presence fi rst and I think the projects follow from that – rather than having a lot of big projects,” Collett said.

Collett said that in order to crack the Saudi market, fi rms had to have a hands on approach to the kingdom,

to be able to meet people and have a solid base in the country. He added that Aedas plans to open an offi ce in Jeddah within a year.

“There are a lot of consultants who fl y in with the hope of winning work, but we don’t expect to win work until we have a presence in the kingdom,” he said.

“We want to get things really moving. This is a great time to be entering the market but there’s a lot of competition.”

A design fi rm with a fair bit of experience in the kingdom is DWP, the Bahrain-based architects behind a number of developments in Al Khobar. Kristina Zanic, execu-

Saudi Arabia is opening up to the world and there are a lotof opportunities. They have these really huge visions and

they are looking for something mega.”Kristina Zanic, DWP

CITYSCAPE JEDDAH | KSA SPECIAL


Exhibitors were

positive about

the large turnout

in Jeddah.

tive director and founding partner, points out that Saudi Arabia not only has the money to fund massive construction projects, but it has the will to see them through.

“They have the space so they are going to look at things that are more ambitious but I also think that Saudi Arabia is opening up to the world so there is more opportunity for consul-tants here. They have these really huge visions and they are looking for something mega,” she said.

Zanic, whose fi rm has offi ces in a number of challenging markets, including Vietnam, China and Thai-land, said that developers in Saudi Arabia tended to have a real respect for foreign designers, making work-ing in the kingdom far easier than in other areas of the world.

“There are a few diff erent chal-lenges to working in Saudi Arabia, but not as great as other countries in Asia. I think Westerners are really accepted in terms of design and architecture and people are looking

for good advice and good design,” she said.

She added that the new focus extended to the style of design, with Saudi Arabian developers keen to see new, ambitious projects rather than only those that refl ect the past.

“I think with Saudi opening up they are receptive to looking at things with a very modern approach,

not looking at everything look old. They’re opening it up to the world so they want it to be iconic,” she said.

Meanwhile, Emaar’s Middle East CEO Dia Malaeb, speaking from the company’s huge stand in the middle of the exhibition centre, said that Saudi Arabia remained a key market for the fi rm. Emaar won three awards at the Cityscape

“Their vision and long term strategy tells them that they should hire companies like us to come and establish here and help this development reach its target in the shortest time.Dia Malaeb, Emaar



36

Awards, including one for the Jeddah Gate development and another for Economic City. Dia said he expected Saudi Arabian growth to continue.

“Saudi Arabia is growing, and it is taking care of its people. They need to build new homes as soon as possible. Their vision and long term strategy tells them that they should hire companies like us to come and establish here and help this develop-ment reach its target in the shortest time,” he said.

Dia was upbeat about the recep-tion that Emaar got at the event, where it showcased its part in the soon-to-be-fi nished Mecca Clock Tower, the second tallest building in the world, and Jeddah Gate.

“We have a good response from people, many people didn’t know about our profi t and now they do. This is the pur-pose of Cityscape,” he said.

In terms of project launches, Cityscape

Jeddah was still lacking, although a massive redevelopment scheme for the city’s downtown area was unveiled by the Jeddah Develop-ment and Urban Regeneration Company (JDURC).

The scheme will see hundreds of thousands of residents of the city’s so-called ‘unplanned settlements’ relocated while buildings are torn down. The JDURC will seek public private partnerships (PPPs) with a number of developers in Saudi Arabia to redevelop over 50 sites, the area of which amounts to 22 hectares of land and is home to around one mil-lion people.

The 54 unplanned settlements have been grouped into four

categories, ranked according to their attractiveness to

private developers on a sliding scale. Those believed to be the most attractive will be redeveloped fi rst,

while some category four sites will be developed by Jeddah’s municipal-ity itself.

At the close of the event, organis-ers announced that Sumou Real Estate and Development Company has signed up to be the Principal Sponsor for Cityscape Jeddah for the third consecutive year in 2011, while Emaar Middle East has commit-ted to being the Principal Sponsor for the Riyadh leg of Cityscape in December of 2010.

There are a lot of consultants who come in, fl y in,in the hope of winning work, we don’t expect to win work until we have a presence in the kingdom.”Charles Collett, Aedas

ONEMILLION

SAUDI RESIDENTSWILL BENEFIT FROM JDURC’S HOUSINGREDEVELOPMENT

ZFP’s Ammar

Al-Sabban

meets punters

on the Saudi

fi rm’s stand.

Tel: +971 4 267 2499 | Fax: +971 4 267 2492P.O.Box 86972, Dubai, UAE | Email: [email protected]

• Soft and hard landscape construction

• Automatic irrigation

• Preserved palms

• Indoor plant arrangements

• Planters

• Maintenance services

We provide


KSA SPECIAL | LOCAL PARTNERS

ocal partnerships are an essential part of doing busi-ness in Saudi Arabia, and as a result local design fi rms continue to benefi t from the construction boom.

Saudi law requires international designers to either go into partner-ship with a local consultant, or set up their own offi ce in the kingdom with a Saudi representative, and both strategies have been widely used by international fi rms.

But while international fi rms have little choice but to take a Saudi part-ner if they want to operate in the king-

dom, these relationships are not only driven by necessity. A global fi rm can benefi t from having a partner with a local focus, while a local partner can benefi t from an international fi rm’s wide-ranging experience.

“They need each other, it is a two way benefi t,” said Yasser Hejazy, director of Saudi Arabian fi rm Yasser Hejazy Consulting Engineers.

“Saudi fi rms can gain experience, learn about the industry and also learn to think outside of the box.”

Yasser Hejazy has just signed a partnership agreement with DEP, a Lebanese engineering company

ZFP’s design for the SABIC

Research Center in Riyadh.

Saudi architects have benefi tted as international fi rms seek local partners, but are partnerships more than marriages of convenience?


LOCAL PARTNERS | KSA SPECIAL

with offi ces in Paris, Dubai and now Jeddah. Hejazy explained that Saudi Arabia can sometimes be a tricky place to do business, and partnerships help to bridge that gap.

“International fi rms can often be unfamiliar with Saudi Arabian culture and the way that people think here. Joining with a Saudi fi rm helps them understand Saudi culture, so they are much more likely to be able to penetrate the market,” he said.

For Zuhair Fayez Partnership Consultants, Saudi Arabia’s largest architectural fi rm, working with international fi rms has become a part of life. Founded in Jeddah some 30 years ago and now employing upwards of 3,500 people, Zuhair is currently working on some massive projects in Riyadh and Jeddah, as well as overseas.

Ammar Al-Sabban, head of landscape architecture at ZFP, said that rapid change has occurred in the Saudi market, leading to many fi rms who previously worked on small, individual projects suddenly getting involved with major developments.

“When we used to work it was just the Saudi fi rms working here, all the international fi rms were based in their own countries,” he said.

“But what happened with the economy and globalisation the world

just became like a small city. So now clients of ours are just looking to mix up the talent, to look at some new looks for their projects.”

Al-Sabban says that international fi rms also benefi t from getting an on-the-ground understanding of how to do business in Saudi Arabia.

“The Saudi fi rms are giving them more knowledge of the market itself. We have a lot of areas that people do not know how to deal with: how to get your pay, what the client really wants, and how to get that message across,” Al-Sabban said.

Hejazy goes further. He believes that a local fi rm’s knowledge about design and Islamic architecture is an asset to a fi rm that is new to the re-gion. This is particularly true in Jed-dah, where a unique ‘Hejazi’ strain of architecture has evolved.

“The architecture of the area has a mixture of diff erent cultures, because of Islam and even before Islam pil-grims used to come to this area from all over the world,” Hejazy said.

“When you look at the courtyards, and the mashrabiyas, they provide privacy but they also provide a space that people can use to sit in. The nar-row pavements create shade and air movement. A lot of people don’t notice that the new modern buildings do not create the same feeling.”

But Al-Sabban feels that while local design knowledge is valuable, Saudi Arabia is changing. The days when the architecture in Riyadh, Jeddah and the east is drastically dif-ferent is likely over.

“We were established in Jeddah but we are doing projects in Damman, in Riyadh, in Sudan and in Dubai, so we’re taking that style and applying it to our designs,” he said.

In the end, Al-Sabban added, it is the person who is paying the bills that is the boss.

“If a client wants a modern design we do a modern design, if he wants something that refl ects the region, then we do something that refl ects the region,” he said.

“Saudi fi rms can gain experience, learn about the industry and also learn to think outside of the box.Yasser Hejazy, director, Yasser Hejazy Consulting Engineers

ZFP’s plans

for a mosque

at the new

King Abdulaziz

International

Airport in

Jeddah (LEFT)

and SUDATEL

Offi ce Building in

Sudan (CENTRE)

and Islamic

Center Mosque,

Australia

(RIGHT).


KSA SPECIAL | JEDDAH

eddah’s old town is a far cry from the modern malls and air-conditioned offi ces of the city suburbs.

The old souks and neighbourhoods that have

for so long attracted pilgrims from across the Arab world now suf-fer from alarming neglect, rubble lines the streets and the traditional buildings – bar a few token restora-tions – are partly collapsed into the surrounding streets and roads.

But despite the squalor, the Hejazi architectural traditions that have thrived in the city can still be seen on the dilapidated buildings. In some cases vast wooden mashrabiya cover entire façades, and shuttered window boxes, known as roshan, provide cooling and privacy for inhabitants in the summer.

The narrow and winding streetscape, which is interspersed with communal, tree-shaded court-yards, is noticeably cooler than the main roads a few metres away. The breeze races down the narrow lanes, taking the edge of the oppressive humidity of the Red Sea coast.

The architectural diff erences between Jeddah and the northern cities of Saudi Arabia date back centuries. The word Hejaz means ‘barrier’ in Arabic, and represents

the fact that the cities of Jeddah, Mecca and Medina are cut off from the rest of the Arabian peninsula by mountains. In terms of construc-tion, Jeddah used coral to build its fi rst houses instead of mud, while in design terms Hejazi architecture is a true melting pot. The infl ux of pil-grims over the centuries has led to hints of Syrian, Iraqi and Egyptian design on Jeddah’s narrow lanes.

It is unfortunate that so much of what makes Jeddah unique has been ignored in the old town, and even in the government-approved ‘tourist area’ the buildings are in a state of disrepair. That the wooden window boxes and screens have lasted as long as they have is testament to the craftsmanship with which they were fi rst built, but unfortunately nobody in Jeddah seems to have shown the same dedication to restoring these historic buildings.

We can only hope that the Jeddah Development and Urban Regenera-tion Company (JDURC) plans for the city’s unplanned settlements will provoke a similar regeneration of the old town, but few here hold out much hope. The sheer amount of work, and lack of profi t, that would be involved in reversing the tide of neglect is likely to be great even for wealthy Saudi Arabia.

Jeddah’s architecture has always refl ected the city’s cultural diversity, but much of its historic heart is sadly being left to rot


JEDDAH | KSA SPECIAL


52/53THE WORK

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RUWAIS CITYArchitect: RNLClient: Abu Dhabi Urban Planning CouncilLocation: Abu Dhabi

THE PROJECT This massive master plan project

has been drawn up by design firm RNL for Abu Dhabi’s Urban Plan-ning Council. The 27km2 develop-ment will be a brand new city for Al Gharbia, including a harbour and marina, as well as housing, schools, retail and recreation facilities capable of supporting a growing population. Ruwais will also continue to be a support centre for the tourist islands of Delma and Sir Bani Yas, as well as a national hub for the energy industry. The development is in line with the Al Gharbia 2030 plan, which seeks to increase the population by creat-ing a new industrial hub in the Western Region. The Urban Plan-ning Council (UPC) will invite developers and designers to submit proposals for each of the individual plots at the end of the summer.


CASE STUDY


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THE CONCEPT Ruwais City will include a town

centre, a waterfront district and hill top neighborhoods, catering to a varied range of inhabitants, from large families to single profession-als. The plan will offer a range of residential options, with a spread of price points that will attract a di-verse population. The centre of the city and the waterfront is designed to be pedestrian friendly, in line with the Abu Dhabi and Al Gharbia 2030 plans, while transport links to residential areas are paramount. The waterfront will include a mari-na and ferry facilities to the Delma and Sir Bani Yas. A minimum 100 metre-wide coastal preservation buffer will be established along the gulf foreshore, providing a recre-ation amenity and protecting the fragile coastal eco-system.

THE SITE Al Gharbia is already home to

some 16,000 workers and their families employed at the nearby ADNOC oil company headquarters, but the Ruwais City site is cur-rently an empty tract of desert some 240km west of Abu Dhabi. Situated on the sea front, RNL hopes that the city will become a regional hub,

expanding alongside the region’s main industry,

energy.

27KM2TOTAL SIZE OFRUWAIS CITY

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The Ruwais development will be a pedestrian oriented multi-modal community, with transit, pedes-trian and bicycle access integrated into the circulation plan. A clear

THE DETAILS Patrick McKelvey, senior princi-

pal at RNL, explained that Ruwais City fit in well with the Al Gharbia 2030 plan. “There is a lot going on out there,” he said. “It has become a focal point for planned expansion, and this is one of the first steps of the 2030 plan, to put together these frameworks.”

The plan incorporates passive sustainability strategies based on local wind and solar conditions. Streets and open spaces have been aligned and sized to chan-nel breezes, improving air quality, thermal comfort and minimising heat build-up within the city. They also will f lush the city with cooler air at night for energy savings and improved thermal comfort through the earlier portion of the day. The RNL-designed Ruwais Masterplan limits the use of water, a defining characteristic of sustainable com-munities in Al Gharbia.

hierarchy of streets and access al-ternatives will form the framework of the Masterplan. Walk-ability is key, particularly in the town centre and waterfront areas.

The marina, or waterfront district, will include tourist- based leisure facilities, recreation and medium-to-high density residential housing as well as retail.

2 MILLIONESTIMATED

INCREASE IN ABU DHABI’S POPULATION

BY 2030

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NOBU DOHAClient: Nobu Designer: Rockwell GroupLocation: Qatar

CASE STUDY

THE PROJECT Created by New York design firm

Rockwell Group, the Nobu Doha is a brand new 26,000ft2 restaurant planned for the waterfront of the Qatari capital. The freestanding, three-storey building includes pri-vate and public dining for over 100 guests as well as a bar and rooftop terrace capable of holding a further 125 people. The restaurant, due for completion in late 2011, will be the second Nobu in the Middle East, after the Japanese chef opened an outlet in Dubai.

THE SITE The restaurant will anchor the

northern end of Doha’s grand Corniche and will be set on a peninsula on Doha bay that forms part of the Four Seasons Hotel. Overlooking Doha’s harbour, the rooftop terrace provides excel-lent views of downtown Doha and the Corniche.

264TOTAL CAPACITY,

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The interior of the building has been a major focus for the design-ers. It draws its inspiration from the sea, using shells as cladding in the main dining room while the curved walls of the private dining room will feature hand-painted murals of koi fish and natural abstractions by Japanese artist Hideki Kimura.

THE CONCEPT Shawn Sullivan, principal

designer on the project, said that the design for the Nobu Doha was intrinsically linked to the sea, and the role that it plays in Qatari life. “The façade resembles a coiled shell, with elliptical ribbons of

river stone that, when lit at night, create a magnificent waterside façade,” he said. Sullivan added that the perimeter of the building will be surrounded by a reflecting pool that accentuates the building’s close relationship with water.

From a distance, Sullivan ex-plained, the restaurant appears to be f loating, an effect achieved by cladding the ground floor in glass. “As people approach and see the building from a distance, it will ap-pear to f loat above the glass entry lobby and pools surrounding it,” he said. “It is a complex structural system, which goes along with all the co-ordination issues involved in creating a building surrounded by the sea on all sides.”

26,000FEET2

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JENAN CITYClient: Jenan Real EstateArchitect: NORR ConsultantsLocation: Saudi Arabia

THE PROJECT Jenan City is a 44,655m2 mixed-

use development in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, which will include of-fi ces, apartments, a mall and a hotel. Spread across two adjacent sites, Jenan City will provide upwards of 100 luxury apartments, a 250-room hotel and a mall on the fi rst plot and a medium density residential de-velopment on the second, providing homes for Saudi Arabian families. It has been designed by NORR consultants, and it is one of two major projects the fi rm is currently working on in Saudi Arabia.

CASE STUDY

THE SITEThe 340,000m2 site is split into two plots on the main thoroughfare in Al Khobar. The commercial component of the project – including the mall and hotel – fronts onto King Saud Road, while the residential section, targeting Saudi nationals, is to the east of the site. By splitting the devel-opment 50/50 across the two plots, the architects have created a shared open space running east to west through the centre of the site.



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THE CONCEPT The buildings have been

conceived as abstract sculptural masses, and the exterior expression of these forms is a play between solid and transparent materials. NORR’s concept combines horizontally massed low-rise buildings punctuated by seven towers, varying in height from 12 to 37 floors as they move from east to west across the site. The office and hotel towers anchor the master plan and are designed to prominently identify Jenan City as a landmark for Al Khobar and the larger region.

THE DETAILS The designers had to balance lo-

cal cultural needs for privacy with the constraints of a high-density development. They focused on pro-viding both shared areas between the buildings as well as private roof terraces. Yahya Jan, design director at NORR, explained that external areas had to be usable, and simply providing balconies would not suffice. “We have proposed solu-tions that celebrate both indoor and outdoor spaces,” he said.

The designers sought to take into account Al Khobar’s hot and dry climate from a very early stage. To reduce the impact of solar gain to the interiors the buildings are rectangular in plan, and oriented to reduce the extent of their east and west facades. “We have worked closely with our environmental con-sultant to study the impact of the environment, including land and sea breezes,” Jan said. The massing of the project, with the highest build-ings in the west and building heights progressively decreasing to the east, is intended to help make the most of the cool east winds.

VELOCITY CONTOUR PLOT AT GROUND LEVEL

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TILAL LIWA DESERT HOTEL

Client: RoyaArchitect: DSA Architects InternationalLocation: Madinat Zayed, Empty Quarter

This project in the UAE’s Empty Quarter resembles a traditional desert fort, and is situated some two hours from Abu Dhabi. The 40,500m2 hotel includes 120 guest rooms, a restaurant and a health club set around traditional courtyards. DSA Architects incorporated a number of traditional elements into the design, including thick walls and small windows enabling the building to keep cool in the summer months.

DJAMAAEL DJAZAIR

Client: Government of AlgeriaDesigner: Jurgen Engel ArchitektenLocation: Algeria

Due to become the third biggest mosque in the world, the Djamaa El Djazair in Algiers has been designed in a joint eff ort by Jurgen Engel Architekten, Drees & Sommer and engineering consultancy Krebs und Kiefer. The project will include a prayer hall holding 35,000 worship-pers, as well as the tallest minaret in the world, due to stand at 264 metres. The mosque will take more than four years to complete.

SALAMCENTRE

Client: Emergency Ong OnlusDesigner: TamassociatiLocation: Sudan

Italian architecture fi rm Tamasso-ciati used discarded cargo contain-ers to build staff accommodation in Sudan. The fi rm had used the containers to transport materials to the African nation, and chose to re-use them rather than shipping them back. The buildins house 60 staff , set around a leafy courtyard in which the designers planted 100 trees to off set the carbon they used shipping materials to Sudan.

THEWORKPROJECT UPDATE


150TREES WERE PLANTED

TO OFFSET THECARBON USED

TRANSPORTING MATERIALS TO

SUDAN

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www.constructionweekonline.com | 07.10 | MIDDLE EAST ARCHITECT

3000CAPACITY OF THEGRAND MOSQUE’S

PRAYER HALL

RUKN AL AQEEQ

Architect:Maan Alsalloum, CowiLocation:Saudi Arabia

The Rukn Al Aqeeq is a mixed-use development incorporating a 21 storey hotel and 12-storey offi ce tower, linked by a single storey of retail space. The entire building will be clad in stainless steel mesh and is designed to be elliptical, with the ho-tel and offi ce towers joining together at the fourth fl oor with an open-air garden area in the centre. The steel mesh is designed to help the building obtain a LEED ranking.

BRITISH EMBASSY ALGIERS

Client: British Foreign Office Architect:John Mc Aslan+ PartnersLocation: Algeria

This project in the Algerian capital saw a thoroughly modern embassy building incorporated into the site of a colonial residence. The British For-eign Offi ce had strict requirements relating to cost, use and security, all of which had to be balanced against design considerations by John Mc Aslan + Partners. The eco-friendly building also had to fi t into a tight 1,800m2 footprint, without obscur-ing views across the Bay of Algiers.

COPENHAGEN GRAND MOSQUE

Client: Bach Gruppen A/SArchitect: BIG-Bjarke Ingels GroupLocation: Denmark

Denmark’s fi rst purpose-built mosque is being built in coop-eration with the Muslim Council of Denmark, an umbrella organization representing 13 diff erent Muslim organizations. The mosque is part of a 124,000m2 religious complex that will include a prayer hall, shops, confer-ence facilities, an auditorium and an Islamic library. Work on the project is ongoing.

ABU DHABI INVESTMENT COUNCIL HQ

Client:Abu Dhabi Investment CouncilArchitect: Aedas ArchitectsLocation:Abu Dhabi

Touted as the new gateway to Abu Dhabi, the ADIC headquarters will provide 350,000ft2 of offi ce space, as well as retail and food outlets for an estimated 2,000 workers. Designed by Aedas Architects’ London offi ce, the two 25-storey towers utilize a number of high-tech green initia-tives, including a mashrabiya screen which shifts in order to protect against direct sunlight. The towers will be completed in 2011.


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BATHROOMTOP BIMATERICOTechLab Italia

TechLab Italia has mixed stain-less steel and DuPont Corian to create the innovative Top Bima-terico. The collection of kitchen surfaces combines the tactility, beauty and mouldability of DuPont Corian with the practicality and high temperature resistance of stainless steel. Large sheets of

LIKEWANTNEEDCULTURE

stainless steel are set f lush into slabs of DuPont Corian, using an exclusive f lush-mounting system that gives the surface exceptional stability and solidity, and is easy to install. The collection of kitchen surfaces combines the tactility, beauty and mouldability of DuPont Corian with the practicality.

BOOKSBUILDING ARABIAWhite Star Publishing

Building Arabia is an examination of contemporary architecture in the Arabian Peninsula, looking at how ar-chitects deal with designing buildings for the region’s inhospitable climate. Many of the designs in the book feature technologically advanced systems that embrace the infl uence

of the local, traditional culture along with centuries-old solutions for sustainable climate control. The book has been written by Oscar Eugenio Bellini, architect and researcher, and Laura Daglio, architect and profes-sor of architectural technology, both of the Politecnico of Milan.


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GADGETSLASER GUIDED SCISSORSThinkgeek.com

Let’s face it, we all hoped that by 2010 everyone could have their own lasers for doing all sorts of things, cutting through steel, heat-ing food (a la Robocop) or waging war against each other, but alas we don’t. What we do have, thanks to the boffins at Thinkgeek.com, is laser guided scissors, which while

ARTVIVID, VIBRANT AND IRANIANTotal Arts

This dazzling display of contemporary Iranian art is on display in Dubai this month. It includes work by emerging artists such as Mansour Rafi e, Mohsen Jamalinik and Shahpour Pouyan, who tackle traditional Islamic culture and society in their thor-oughly modern work. The work of all three artists is up for sale at the exhibition, which is being held at the Total Arts Studio on Sheikh Zayed Road until 31 August.

not as impressive as the ones in 1990s sci fi movies, could prove pretty useful for accurate project preparation, allowing you to see exactly where you are cutting in paper, fabric and even hair.


LAST WORD | JAN KLERKS

56

In the spirit of our cover story on tall buildings this month, Middle East Architect caught up with Jan Klerks, editor of the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) journal.

THE LAST WORD

STANDING TALL

The best thing about my job is getting paid to be busy with tall buildings in a Chicago offi ce. That is mighty fun.

I think the great thing about the CTBUH is that it brings together many professions, such as architects, engineers, contractors and urban planners on a global level, so we always have a very mixed crowd.

I hope that there will be a shift away from the all enclosed boxes and that buildings will have a far more permeable appearance, such as double facades, balconies, sky courts and sky bridges.

Tall is not only about being iconic, it also should be about creating pleasant densities.

I live in a tall building that doesn’t have a sustainable certifi cation, but it allows me to get around without a car, enjoy the shared amenities and have a $35 per month utility bill.

The most serious contender to the Burj Khalifa at the moment is the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which is said to be 1,001 metres tall.

Some people don’t understand how spires are included in our rankings, so here it is: If a spire is strictly architectural, it is included in the height but if it is functional, such as antennas and fl ag poles, it is not.

Tall buildings, and especially supertall buildings, are not really an urban necessity, they are more of a statement.

Being part of a tall and iconic project is always a very intense but also rewarding process.

To me the Empire State Building is still the most quintessential skyscraper in the world.

There is nothing I would change about the CTBUH, although I think our offi ce should have been up a tall building.

DCX2176-1_DCCS_BA_K20_5771_v2a.indd KEYLINE 20

Saved: 5/18/10 Prepared by: Sarah Elwyn

312-970-5800

CLIENT Dow Corning BLEED 215mm x 285mm CREATIVE DIR Matt Finizio

DESCRIPTION BA - Through these windows, … TRIM 205mm x 275mm ART DIRECTOR Vicky Boehmer

COLORS 4CP LIVE 185mm x 255mm COPYWRITER Mike Ritt

DESTINATION Middle East Architect LINE SCREEN N/A TRAFFIC Matt Vander Weit

ROUTE SIGNOFF AS_________ AE__________ CD__________ COPY__________ AD__________ AAD__________ PROOF__________ PROD__________

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middle east architect - july 2010

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