CONSTRUCTION & TECHNOLOGY

Hundreds of architects, engineers and consultants packed out Dubai’s Park Hyatt last night for the third annual Middle East Architect awards. Projects from Saudi Arabia to Libya scooped awards, with Dubai’s Burj Khalifa winning project of the year and local firm X Architects winning both Best Boutique Firm and Best Principal, jointly awarded to founders Ahmed Al Ali and Farid Esmaeil.

Mekar, a leading central air-con company, has opened its own dedicated sales and service centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and will soon be opening similar offices in Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Aliseo Group, the Italian company that owns Mekar, recently acquired the company’s distributor in the UAE, Royal Gulf, which was part of regional conglomerate Koohiji Group. Mekar has provided high-end air-con products for many of the region’s iconic projects, including the seven-star Burj Al Arab hotel, the Burj Khalifa, the Yas Marina hotel in Abu Dhabi and Al Wakra hospital in Qatar.

I was recently invited to the pre-launch of the Nokia N8 in the Middle East, which took place in Dubai, and while it was my first time handling the N8 and I came away pretty impressed, one thing I wanted to do was be able to test the camera. You can see the results below, with Burj Khalifa (the tallest man-made structure in the world), the Dubai Marina Walk, and the area around the Dubai Media One Hotel. Now keep in mind, this is a prototype, it wasn’t running firmware PR1.0, and apparently I was using the wide-angle 9MP resolution not the 12MP one.

Sculpted like a sand dune, the much-acclaimed UAE pavilion, which was rated as one of the most popular pavilions at the Shanghai World Expo, has added the immensely popular attraction – a model of Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. Visitors to the UAE’s unique pavilion are mesmerised by the tall showcase displaying the eye-catching model, which was provided by the Burj Khalifa’s developer, Emaar Properties, the global property developer with significant presence in key international markets.

Traffic congestion around the First Interchange (known as Defence Roundabout), on Shaikh Zayed Road near Burj Khalifa, will ease once the project is completed in December this year. Though, some of the bridges on the three-tier interchange have opened, diversions and road blocks cause massive traffic congestion in the area, especially on roads leading to the Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai Mall and Al Safa area.

No great surprise here. The Burj Khalifa burst onto the international scene at the beginning of this year with a massive fanfare, fireworks and festivities at the dawn of the new decade after a much anticipated build. The fanfare wasn't without merit: the building smashing almost every record - and by a considerable margin. What's not commonly known is that the Burj actually bagged several world-topping records when it was opened (see below), and set new heights for others to attempt to surpass.

The 92-storeyed multi-purpose structure will include restaurants, offices, shopping malls, residential apartments and waste-water treatment and desalinization plants. It will be standing 370 meters and is designed to have a double-skinned glass facade mechanism with white silk-screened window system.

And we say these because the plan is to rise a tower over a kilometer tall, measuring in at 1,400 meters to put Burj Khalifa to shame. But the great news doesn’t stop here, this ultimate building construction is actually part of a even greater plan than this. Find out that the tower is part of a bigger marina development in Dubai that is currently in development.

With more than 200 floors, the tower will stand higher than the Burj Khalifa, which is currently the world's tallest man-made structure at 828m. The city itself, part of a larger, multi-billion-dollar project to develop Jeddah, is set to cover an area of 23 million m2 and provide a mixture of luxury homes, hotels and offices.

The 500-acre urban development is anchored by Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, and also features the Dubai Mall, the world's largest shopping and entertainment destination. It includes business, residential, hospitality and leisure properties.