Building dreams

The Middle East can proudly boast some of the most innovative and ambitious hotel builds in the world.

Now, with the region's building boom in full swing, Lucy Taylor asks just what makes a project a success - and whether the challenges of working under such competitive conditions will eventually see standards slip.

Architecture can define the character and set the tone of a place; it should be simultaneously functional and attractive, sustainable and opulent, and hold appeal for locals and travellers alike.

A successful project can build communities, shape lives and boost a country's travel and tourism market; indeed the Dubai boom over the past decade is a prime example of this phenomenon.

Conversely, an architectural flop will have nowhere to hide, remaining on display for the general public to see and censor for years to come; a fate suffered, some might suggest, by the UK's notorious Millennium Dome.

For a big project, fulfilling all the correct criteria whilst avoiding the pitfalls is no mean feat - particularly in the Middle East.

We are in a region where the tourism industry has received an incredible boost from the surge in iconic architecture, and where the building bug is still spreading like wildfire. But with so many design and time constraints, plus the pressure of regional competition, how easy is it to produce a truly successful development?

Pioneering projects

Research and design firm CivicArts/Eric R Kuhne and Associates (EKA) is an international design consultancy with several ground-breaking projects under its belt.

The company is currently working on a few large-scale projects in the Middle East, one of which is Madinat al Hareer, or the 'City of Silk', located in the Subiya district of Kuwait.

The City of Silk comprises four city centres: the City of Commerce, which EKA managing partner and founder Eric Kuhne describes as "the equivalent of London's Canary Wharf for Kuwait", situated on the bay overlooking downtown Kuwait City; the City of Leisure on the banks of the River Delta, 16 miles from Iraq, containing resorts, an Olympic village built in anticipation of Kuwait eventually hosting the games, an athletics and entertainment centre, and a media district; Ecology City, which includes a 60km² wildlife refuge - a sanctuary for migratory birds as well as indigenous flora and fauna - a desert reclamation centre, a wetlands ecology centre, and a collection of research universities dealing with botanical and zoological sciences; and last but not least the Diplomatic Cultural Centre, comprising higher education, graduate education, a centre for archeology, diplomatic missions, cultural centres, the major opera house and a performing arts centre.

"The original concept for the City of Silk was actually that it would be one of seven city sites to accommodate the explosion of the ex-pat population living in Kuwait, as well as a larger number of Kuwaitis returning after the invasion," explains Kuhne.

"They have an enviable need here, which is to provide major new communities on a scale which is pretty much unprecedented.

The project, set for completion in 2011, will also include the Burj Mubarak al-Kabir, a tower which, standing at an epic 1001m, is set to be one of the tallest in the world.

EKA's Kuhne elaborates: "The tower is actually seven villages stacked one on top of the other - seven thirty-storey buildings on top of one another - and between each of these 30-storey buildings are four levels of gardens, recreation facilities, shops, healthcare facilities, education facilities, police, fire and maintenance facilities.

So they become the town squares and the high streets; they're just vertically stacked as opposed to being horizontal.

"We use the exact same principles in the tower as we're using in the 25 communities, and that is to build self-contained communities with residential, office, hotels and retail and all the support amenities within walking distance," says Kuhne.

Working on such a building, one of EKA's first steps was to consider how to manage the sway that a tower of this height would incur in high winds.

"In terms of its design, it's a three-bladed propeller, sort of like a Mercedes symbol," explains Kuhne. "What that means is it works like a tripod, so no matter which way the wind is blowing, two of the three blades brace it.

"The second thing is that you have to deal with not only the straight-on force of wind but also the turbulent wind that curls around corners of the tower, just like turbulence is a problem on wings.

"So we were talking about this with the engineers and what we came up with was that we'd install vertical wing aerilons, so as the turbulence increases they're counter-balanced to adjust themselves to provide smooth flow of air around the tower; that is a major innovation.

So was the incentive to usurp the Burj Dubai's title of ‘tallest building in the world'? Kuhne says not, adding that it would have been a short-lived title, since Saudi Arabia recently announced its intention to build a mile-high tower.

"When they approached me with this idea, I said they didn't want the tallest building in the world - they wanted a building that would be among the tallest," says Kuhne. "I also told them I knew exactly how tall it should be: 1001m, for 1001 Arabian Nights. So the architecture ties itself in to the folk literature of the entire civilization."

The London-based company is also current working on a project in Kazakhstan. "All the work that we're doing up there is to build a new luxury collection of resorts, with golf courses, in the high mountain lakes on the high steps of Kazakhstan," reveals Kuhne.