Thyssen Tower Architecture Award

Description

“Cutting edge light technology versus millenar essenciality“

“Tall Emblem Structure for Za’abeel Park in Dubai” is the title of this contest, unmistakably placing its primordial goal in the creation of a landmark.

In a city overloaded with signs and objects that call out to us by their eloquence or remarkable expressiveness, we wonder what can therefore make this object a landmark, a notable point to the collective imaginary. Looking at Dubai, we find an unusual concentration of emblematic works of surprising dimensions, whose design reflects the ambition of inscription in an architectural avant-garde cultural field, but also of stating Mankind’s ability for great works. Therefore, we thought that if this piece chose to follow that statement of extravagance, it would become diluted in this specific context; nor did we choose the statement of height, having limited it to 174 meters (approximately 571 feet).

Dubai tends nowadays to become a sort of civilization synthesis, where we can find present its most extreme expressions; popular and educated architecture; the specificities of the city and of islamic culture, and the diversity of the city and of cosmopolitan life; the “low-tech“ of millenary building techniques and the high-tech of the “ultimate generation”. The simple or the recognizable and the extravagant. The essential and the excessive.

Facing such a reality, we believe that it is important for this landmark to draw its singularity from its almost radical simplicity.  The embodiment of what seems to be the most relevant aspect of Dubai: the “fusion” of Dubai’s and the Emirate’s structuring characteristics of knowledge and culture, the millenary with those most recent, and Dubai’s surprising openness to cutting-edge technologies. We propose something that is based on our vision of millenary aspects of Islamic culture: the universe of simple shapes; the telluric beauty and the sustainable character of building with clay and sand; the extraordinarily filtered and shaped natural light.

But, we propose to explore the intersection of those identitary aspects with the new possibilities of vanguard technology. Being sustainability at the centre of human concerns, we opted for the insertion, in massive scale, of photovoltaic surfaces for the absorption of sunlight energy. However, we didn’t go for the conventional solar or photovoltaic panels, but rather for the election, as working matter, of the ultra-thin, “revolutionary” photovoltaic surfaces created by the Nanosolar Corporation (California-USA / Berlim-Germany): the “nanosolar thin technology”. (*) This state-of-the-art technology allows the transformation of what is nowadays heavy technologic paraphernalia, used sometimes like literal active elements on the architecture lexicon, into a timeless finishing matter, like a sensitive and intelligent “skin” that reacts to the sun, capturing its potential.

There were also, hovering in our minds, some references, external to the strict scope of architecture, but that feed and arouse in us a central reflection for this project: the inner body of the tower as space in the purest abstract sense. We have particularly kept in mind Jorge Oteiza’s “metaphysical boxes” and Eduardo Chillida’s project for intervention at Mount Tindaya, in the island of Fuerteventura, Canary Islands.

Site Specificities

A macro territorial analysis brings out the strategic site for the Za’abeel Landmark Tower. It is located on an urban transition strip, south of the historical centre – Deira – within the vast new city, between the seaside city and the countryside or the desert. It is then a point of sudden change in the design of the long and decisive Sheikh Zayed Road, which cuts through Dubai from north to south and connects it to the neighbour emirates. Right there, this structural highway suddenly forms an arch to which the tower tends to become the centre.
Za’abeel Landmark Tower is therefore thought out to be a sort of “geodesic point” inserted in an imaginary cartographic grid oriented north-south/east-west. From that point, at several levels throughout its height, the visitor can contemplate North (Za’abeel Park – Al Bastakia – Deira – Port Rashid – Sea); South (Burj Dubai – Al Markada – Desert); East (Za’abeel Stadium – Dubai Creek – Desert) and West (Sheikh Zayed Road –Jumeirah Mosque – World – Sea).Concept and structure

As if it were an L-shaped tower, one reaches its ground floor by going through a sequence of horizontal spaces, its roof situated at the height of the surrounding ground. It is the tower’s “subterranean segment”. The visitor suddenly looses the visual relation with the surroundings, and can visit the exhibition rooms, the conference halls and the Kids Place. Here, skylights or yards provide the only source of sunlight, which comes through, to these inner spaces, filtered. The crossing of this first horizontal set is fundamental for the dramatic effect one experiences when getting to the tower’s ground floor, where unexpectedly a mysterious and astoundingly high space (150 m) rises. It is an “abyssal” space pounding through the dilation of its limits, of solids that hang in the void, of filtered light piercing through perforated surfaces or through openings that suddenly give themselves to the light, allowing the eye crossing of the passer-by. At the tower’s feet and at the top, two technical stations receive and process the sunlight energy, assuring both the building’s total energetic autonomy and the necessary electric power of the whole Za’abeel park.

The tower’s inner structure contradicts the apparently severe nature of the quadrangular plan. A spiralling peripheral pathway –allusive to the minarets – follows the solid in all its height, “proposes” a slowly ascension to the top of the building and shapes a radically high inner space. Alternative to this pathway, a stairs-elevators set, connecting every 10 metres to the spiral, allows a fast vertical access to the restaurant and the 360° belvedere terraces with “suspended water tanks“ located at the top. Along its development in height, 7 plus 7 symbolic belvedere allow different perceptions of both the city and the tower’s inner space, as many as the Emirates – 7 – that constitute the United Arab Emirates. From afar, a careful look discovers that there are also 7 fragments composing the Za’abeel Landmark Tower.
In daytime, besides the light piercing through the bays-viewpoints, perforated plans designed from the celestial dome cartography – allusive to the traditional geometrically-ornamented plans, allow the entrance of the filtered light. The visitor may casually find out the constellations that so crucially oriented, for centuries, Dubai’s merchants of pearls and copper, through the desert and the sea to faraway China. At night, more than the object itself, it is the thrusting light shinning from the inside through the belvederes/restaurant, the fracture lines, and the perforated surfaces.

Like Dubai city, a in progress context of continuos development, the tower top seems to the visitor apparently unfinished.

Materiality

For the majority of inner spaces: walls and ceilings in ochre pigmented concrete and pavements in Sand Stone, simply sawn;
For the roofing of the spaces on ground 0: gardened surfaces in the sequence of the surrounding park;
For the façades: projected thermal sheath; slabs/ bricks in terracotta fixed by Halfen anchors in stainless steel; surfaces in oxidised copper and in photovoltaic painting.

(*) “Nanosolar is at the leading edge of new generation solar cell technologies that do not rely on expensive silicon. In fact, their process is less than one-half the cost and only 1/100th the thickness of traditional solar cells. Even more remarkable is that Nanosolar power cells can be “printed” on flexible substrates allowing for rapid scale production“ “Here is how Nanosolar Corporation explain Nanosolar’s breakthrough technology:

The ability to architect and assemble materials on a nanometer scale now makes it possible to optimize solar cells at the very length scale at which the relevant photovoltaic semiconductor quantum-physics occurs. Molecular self-assembly techniques for instance now give us the unprecedented capability of designing and creating nanostructured materials with novel properties. Such techniques generally rely on formulas that control the precise, bottom-up chemical assembly of molecules into geometric structures composed of many molecules, e.g. in the 1nm to 100nm range. In other words, nanotechnology allows them to dispense with expensive, difficult to manufacture elements of traditional solar cells. What remains is easy to produce using thin-film technology.“