Toronto & Dubai based Machou Architects Group, founded by Nedal Machou, has designed the world's longest urban agriculture park for Dubai. Designed to transform the city's most vital highway into an eco-valley, the project has been developed in response to the lack of functional public spaces and sustainable outdoor spaces. Reimagining Sheikh Zayed Road, the project centers on Dubai's main transportation artery and its primary link to other cities.
Applications are now open for Dubai Design Week in the United Arab Emirates. Applicants are encouraged to submit ideas and proposals to host an event, showcase a product or stage a creative project during the region’s largest creative festival. Much of Dubai Design Week’s program is made up of partner events and activities, held both at Dubai Design District and at locations across the city and the UAE.
Artist and designer Es Devlin recently joined TED2019 to explore her iconic stage sculptures and upcoming work for Expo 2020 Dubai. Creating works for Beyoncé, Adele, Kanye West, U2 and more, Devlin is known for creating large-scale performative sculptures and environments that fuse music, language and light. Her TED Talk highlights a visual journey of Devlin's work to illustrate her incredible creative process.
Responding to the theme of Expo 2020 Dubai, “Beauty Unites People,” a team led by Dodi Moss imagined a multi-layered architectural experience evoking Italy’s history and identity. The design pulls apart the pieces that make up architectural space, separating the building into its structural volume and its tactile, material components. The proposal won third place in Invitalia’s competition to design the Italian Pavilion at the Expo, behind carlorattiassociati and Gianluca Peluffa & Partners.
OMA and Inside Outside have collaborated on the design of a vast monument in Dubai, titled “Ethar – Honoring Generosity.” The installation consists of a field of 1,680 triangular-shaped recycled aluminum columns arrayed like a magnetic field, engraved with stories from Arabic scholars, scientists, and thinkers.
The installation was designed to celebrate the “unique culture of charitable giving in the United Arab Emirates with a physical installation that is part of the urban landscape of Dubai.” Designed for a site on Jumeirah Beach, the monument’s character can also be adapted for various contexts, whether dispersed throughout the city or appearing in key urban locations as a symbol of Emirati culture.
In the past three decades, Dubai has grown from a dusty desert town to a strategic hub for international business and tourism. As a result, several cities in the developing world have been competing to outdo one another in the race to replicate this development model—an urbanism largely built around the automobile, luxury villas, gleaming skyscrapers, massive shopping malls, and ambitious “smart” cities, designed and built from scratch. Across Africa, these new developments go by different names: Eko Atlantic City Nigeria, Vision City in Rwanda, Ebene Cyber City in Mauritius; Konza Technology City in Kenya; Safari City in Tanzania; Le Cite du Fleuve in DR Congo, and several others. All are mimicries of Dubai.
Dubai Holding has released details of the latest skyscraper planned for the UAE metropolis, designed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill. The Burj Jumeira will soar 550 meters in the air, “inspired by the harmonious ripples of the UAE’s desert sand dunes and its flowing oases.” Inaugurated by the UAE’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum on January 31st, 2019, the new tower will be built as part of a vast development known as Downtown Jumeira, “a city of the future distinguished by its intelligent design and cohesive infrastructure and network.”
The tower’s façade is to be covered in digital displays that can be utilized for various occasions and celebrations, with a 450-meter-high sky lounge and sky restaurant complete with interactive surfaces. The tower will also contain multiple observation decks giving visitors 360-degree panoramic views of Dubai, rising from a base designed in the outline of the Sheikh’s fingerprint.
Clément Blanchet Architecture in collaboration with Etienne Tricaud (AREP) have been shortlisted for the French pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai. The winner will be announced in February. The proposal is intended to enhance both the virtual world and the real to support human communication, cultures and interactions. The pavilion will be built around the themes of Light and Mobility to create a hidden oasis with two vertical gardens facing one another.
Tech giant Siemens is to partner with Expo 2020 Dubai in rolling out a major smart building project, encompassing 130 structures in a digital platform to control energy efficiency, comfort, safety, and security.
As reported by Arabian Business, Siemens will “digitally connect, monitor, and manage essential functions of 137 buildings across the 4.38 square kilometer site, through its cloud-based energy analytics platform, Siemens Navigator.”
Mumbai-based NUDES architecture office have revealed a new design called "Mosque of Light" as their entry in the Dubai Creek Harbor competition. The project was designed as a play in light with a multi-layered geometrical form to filter daylight softly into the prayer hall. The mosque explores the combination of light and built form around a spiritual experience.
Yong Ju Lee Architecture and Atelier KJ have created "Elusive Boundary" for the Korean Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai. The project is designed as a place for radical encounters in different fields. The main theme of the Korean Pavilion, Mobility, is defined as a new space of possibility created by movement between territories and escape/expansion to new territories. The movement defined by new mobility is not linear, but a simultaneous event between territories.
Architect Gabriel Kozlowski has partnered with Gringo Cardia, Bárbara Graeff, and Tripper Arquitetura to design a structure of floating tree branches for the Brazil pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai. The pavilion is inspired by one of the greatest technological achievements of Brazil: the improvement of the Direct Planting System over a straw. The design conceptually mimics this scheme through its layered arrangement - soil, an entanglement of protection, productivity - presenting itself as both a building and a symbolic image.
The Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) has been selected to design the German Pavilion for Expo 2020 Dubai. Designed as a vertical campus that blends nature and technology, the pavilion takes cues from local architecture and Germany’s history of outstanding lightweight pavilion design. Formally, the design features a freeform roof that encloses interlinked floating cubes that house exhibition and event spaces.
British designer Paul Cocksedge's ‘impossible’ living watercolor design was selected as a finalist for the UK National Pavilion during Expo 2020 in Dubai. Every color in the pavilion comes from the flag of a nation exhibiting at the event, expressing unity, partnership and possibility. The overlapping shades reflect the theme of the Expo – Connecting Minds, Creating The Future. At the heart of the building, a sculptural centerpiece envelops visitors in color and light, giving the sense of an ‘impossible’ structure.
