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Business Bay Towers
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2006-ongoing

Zaha Hadid’s design for the Dancing Towers confirms the role of Business Bay Development at the very forefront of Dubai’s rapidly changing future. The three towers rise above the creek and project themselves as an icon for the surrounding developments and for the gulf region. The tower’s striking design creates a new presence that punctures the skyline with a powerful recognizable silhouette. The fluid character of the towers is generated through an intrinsically dynamic composition of volumes. The towers are inter-twined to share programmatic elements and rotate to maximize the views from the site towards the creek and neighbouring developments. The design quality of the towers to act as a symbol and icon extends beyond their scale and location. These qualities are derived from the boldness of the architectural concept, from the ‘choreographed’ movement that combines the three towers in one overall gesture and ‘weaves’ with a series of public spaces through the podium, the bridges and the landscape beyond.

Context
There will, in the future, be a silhouette of towers, whose pinnacles will represent the hearts of the new districts within the greater metropolitan area of Dubai. On the ground, the Business Bay development site will become stitched into the proposed extended road and infrastructure network of the enlarged metropolitan area. The new pedestrian routes and roads passing under and around the Towers’ development will extend across the creek, bringing people directly from Sheikh Zayed Road via a grid of major and minor thoroughfares and boulevards.

Fig 01: Site Plan [Image ©: Zaha Hadid Architects]

Connectivity and Public Space
The site is composed by 4 different parts: (A) central circular plot, (B) an elongated park plot, (C) the surface of the creek on axis of plot A and (D) a rectangular plot across the creek at the west margin. Connectivity between these parts becomes therefore central to the project; in order to produce an articulated design that encompasses both the scale and the different qualities of each of the parts, transforming them into a coherent scheme. The circular shape of the plot and attached vehicular circulation layout creates a barrier of vehicular traffi c around the site, generating an island that detaches the plot from the waterfront promenade. By incorporating the design of two new link bridges and a new ground the project effectively multiplies the potential and connectivity of the site, linking the park at the East - via the towers with the water’s edge at the West margin of the creek.

Programme
Programming of public and private life is an active tool to inject life into the space, integrating new layers of activity and landscape, creating a network of synergetic uses that can develop a new urban ecology.

The programme was addressed as a whole with the three towers corresponding directly to the three main functions: offi ces, hotel and residential. Together, the towers generate a critical mass of sustainable programmatic relationships. The towers share a common base / podium, designed as a materialized shadow of the towers and programmed with retail, restaurants and amenities that support the demand from the tower’s population. The three towers are conjoined two by two, the Offi ces and the Hotel at the base and the Hotel and the Residential at the top. Through these adjacencies, the towers are strategically organized in a symbiotic relation, sharing certain segments of the programme. The advantage of joining the three towers in one organism, allows the development to be lived in a full day cycle: anchored in it’s residential population, it reaches the peak of activity during offi ce hours and it mutates through the diversity of the ever-changing population of the hotel. The heterogeneous population mix creates a cosmopolitan urban environment, constantly energized and renovated through it’s own life.

Fig 02 [Image ©: Zaha Hadid Architects]

Fig 03 [Image ©: Zaha Hadid Architects]

Fig 04 [Image ©: Zaha Hadid Architects]

Fig 05 [Image ©: Zaha Hadid Architects]

Program:
Mixed-Use Development Competition; Offices, Hotel, Residential, Retail, Bridge, WaterfrontPark and Promenade.

Client:
Dubai Properties, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Architect:
Design Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher.

Project Architect:
Tiago Correia.

Project Team: Ana Cajiao, Saleem Abdel-Jalil, Sophie Le Bienvenu, Hooman Talebi, Mathias Reisigl, Diego Rosales, Tyen Masten, Daewha Kang, Renos Constantino and Graham Modlen.

Total Area:
560,000 m2

Credits:
All photographs and article are courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects.