The mixed use residential, commercial, and office structure will be part of the Nakheel Habour & Tower development. The iconic structure soars up from a Podium at the heart of the Harbour community, a vibrant new hub of commerce, entertainment and culture.
The design challenges are met by an innovative solution in shaping the tower geometry to provide a highly robust and redundant structure, at the same time as creating an aerodynamic effect to minimize the effect of local wind storms. The cylindrical tower is 95m in diameter, but in actuality is four towers encircling an internal void, linked at intervals by ‘sky bridges’. This design mitigates the effects of the wind load, allowing the air to pass freely through the building. The ‘slots’ in the building have been proven to reduce the windload by three-fold. An added benefit of this design is to allow large floor plates at high levels, as the building does not have to taper to counter the wind effect.
WSP Cantor Seinuk is using existing technologies and design practices in unique ways to create a straightforward and efficient structure. The innovative geometry employed makes the structural design a relatively simple and efficient solution, which will make the building easier to build, since there will be enough challenges just to deal with the height.
The weight of the structure also presents a significant challenge. Nearly 400 huge foundation barrettes, capable of carrying forty 50-storey buildings, support the weight of the building. Specialist concrete technologies have been employed to produce concrete that is strong and at the same time able to be pumped to a great height. Whilst the vertical elements of the construction are concrete, floors are steel framed with composite metal decks to minimize weight.
Structural redundancy is very important in high rise structures. The sky bridges are a key structural feature in the design, serving as the link between the four towers, giving the building the stability and rigidity to enable it to cope with extreme event-scenarios as well as providing safe crossing points if one of the towers were disabled due to an emergency.
Client: Nakheel
Architect: Woods Bagot