THYSSENKRUPP TALL EMBLEM TOWER

Add To Collection

THYSSENKRUPP TALL EMBLEM TOWER

Firm

Type

Commercial › Exhibition Center
Hospitality + Sport ›

SIZE

500,000 sqft - 1,000,000 sqft

Za’abeel Park has been designed to showcase Dubai’s
status as a regional center for the development of high-technology and IT
industries through a unique mix of educational and recreational facilities. The
development of these facilities within a large scale garden-park setting has
created a multi-faceted urban space within the city center for both residents
and visitors alike. This urban idea is fundamental to the “new face of Dubai”
and the future development of the city within an international context. Within this
spirit, the proposed “Emblem” tower for Za’abeel Park should be expressive of
the confluence of these regional ideas, energy, and culture which define the
modern city with an underlying emotional reference to a more universal
iconography.

The tower site within Za’abeel Park is open to the vast central lake, city views to the northwest and
vulnerable to harsh daytime sun exposures, unpredictable evening south easterly winds that carry sand
and dust and the noise and air quality issues associated with the perimeter
roads to the east and west. The prevailing light to moderate northwesterly
winds vary in intensity throughout the year and can bring seasonal sustained
winds, or “Shamal” that impact the city. It is essential that
the tower form should respond to these complex environmental site conditions in
the spirit of the park’s technological theme and promotion of alternative
energies.

TOWER DESIGN

We have taken a fictional point of reference and
constructed a narrative to tell the story of this tower’s origin. A familiar
image found perhaps in a romantic view of the desert is of a solitary figure on
the horizon cloaked in an translucent cloth billowing in the desert wind
(Fig.01). This wind-shaped undulating form whose image is made kinetic in light,
suggests an architectural expression that responds to the complex environmental
conditions of the site as well as the less tangible emotion and spirit of the
city. Our tower is conceived as a free-form sculptural surface billowing in the
park landscape, an instrument of light in the city skyline.

The
proposed tower is formed by manipulating a uniform flat surface into a free
formed u-shaped profile around a central core to create a protective shell to
claim and then protect an interior space or “espace calme”, from specific
environmental factors, both solar and wind that impact the site (Fig.02). The
resulting abstracted airfoil shape opens up to the northwest and establishes a
direct spatial dialogue with the park landscape and city skyline. The smooth shell
is then modeled to create an undulating “wind-formed” surface with dramatically
contoured billowing edges
Ultimately, the tower silhouette is one that is
continually being redefined by the changing lighting conditions and shading
effect of the sun’s movement across the site. This constant state of re-making
gives the tower a kinetic image in the skyline that is both organic and
expressive of a technologically spirited architecture in support of the Park’s
theme. At night, the tower is dramatically transformed with a façade integrated
internal LED lighting grid to create the effect of a luminous surface billowing
in the night sky. This tower of “Ambient Light” is a provocative new symbol for
Dubai.