Dubai and the Mumbai Egg

A rendering of the ‘Cybertecture Egg’ in Mumbai.

Cityscape 2009 may have been a much more muted affair in its exhibition spaces, but the attendant World Architecture Congress was galvanised by a lively debate about the growing importance of infrastructure and the long-term maintainability of buildings, which are important issues for both MEP and FM.

The congress kicked off with typical Cityscape razzmatazz as James Law, chairman of James Law Cybertecture of Hong Kong (or, as he likes to call himself, ‘chief cybertect’), dazzled the few audience members who had managed to defy the gravitas of Donald Trump Jnr. in the main conference venue with the mind-boggling idea that, one day, buildings would mimic planets.

Law was, of course, referencing his own Technosphere project, a 0.9 million square metre building in Dubai touted as the single largest spherical structure in the world. One of the many startling features of this mooted project is a self-contained, internal river of 500,000 cubic metres of water that would “provide a new way of cooling a massive structure, modelled on the concept of human settlements flourishing around water bodies.” Law then invited his somewhat dubious audience to imagine a city of Technospheres, a veritable Technopolis.

Having tantalised with the seemingly impossible, Law then proceeded to elucidate a very real project, the 32,000 square metre ‘Cybertecture Egg’ commissioned by Vijay Associates (Wadhwa Developers) in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla complex. Wait a moment, Mumbai? “The most amazing thing about this project is that it is not happening in Dubai, but in Mumbai. This shows just how much the world is changing,” commented Law.

What he perhaps meant was that the pioneering spirit of the architectural frontier represented by Dubai (and celebrated yearly at Cityscape) had since been transplanted to other developing countries like India. It also points to a peculiar problem of Dubai, which has almost become a victim of its own success: “The notion of an icon has become almost banal here. You have to build a non-icon now in order to be iconic,” quipped Peter Rees, London’s city planning officer.

Steel diagrid

The ‘Cybertecture Egg’ served to effectively highlight the interlinked issues of energy efficiency and sustainability. Based on a steel diagrid, this egg-shaped structure does not have a single column, which means a floor plate with a 95% utilisation. The ovoid shape also saves 20% on building materials, while the pointy bit is directed at the peak azimuth. The cantilevered structure features a ‘sky garden’ as a ‘solar buffer’. The entire façade is covered in solar panels, while the building recycles its own water and is naturally ventilated. “None of this would have been possible 10 to 15 years ago,” remarked Law.

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