Burj al-Arab
The Burj al-Arab (“Tower of the Arabs”) is a luxury hotel in Dubai, the second largest city of the United Arab Emirates, and was briefly marketed as “the world's first seven-star hotel”. It was designed by Tom Wright of WS Atkins PLC. At 321 m (1053 feet), it is the tallest building used exclusively as a hotel. It stands on an artificial island 280 m (919 feet) out from Jumeirah beach, and is connected to the mainland by a private curving bridge. It is an iconic structure, expected to symbolize Dubai's urban transformation.
“The client wanted a building that would become an iconic or symbolic statement for Dubai; this is very similar to Sydney with its Opera House, or Paris with the Eiffel Tower. It needed to be a building that would become synonymous with the name of the country.” -Architect Tom Wright
Construction of the hotel began in 1994, and its doors were opened to guests on December 1, 1999. It was built to resemble the sail of a dhow, a type of Arabian vessel. “Two wings spread in a V [to] from a vast “mast”, while the space between them is enclosed in a massive atrium.” The design features a steel exoskeleton wrapped around a reinforced concrete tower, which “connect along a shored, reinforced concrete spine at the base of the V.” The building contains over 70,000 cubic meters of concrete and 9,000 tons of steel. The property cost $650 million.
A Teflon-coated fiberglass sail curves across the front, creating an atrium inside. The sail is made of a material called Dyneon, spanning over 161,000 square feet, consists of two-layers, and is divided into twelve panels and installed vertically. The fabric is coated with DuPont Teflon to protect it from harsh desert heat, wind, and dirt; as a result, “the fabricators estimate that it will hold up for up to 50 years.” During the day, the white fabric allows a soft, milky light inside the hotel, whereas a clear glass front would produce blinding amounts of glare and a constantly increasing temperature. At night, both inside and outside, the fabric is lit up by color changing lights to enhance the atmosphere and distinctive look of the structure
The interior of the hotel is dominated by a massive atrium formed between the V shaped structure and its fabric sail, the tallest lobby in the world. The atrium takes up over one-third of interior space, and is over 182 meters tall. The atrium is so large, in fact, that designers had to take special action during the installation of the sail. To lower the interior temperature, the building was cooled by half degree increments over a period of three to six months. This was to prevent large amounts of “condensation or in fact even a rain cloud from forming in the hotel during the period of construction.” This task was accomplished by several cold air nozzles, which point down from the top of the ceiling, and blast a 1 meter cold air pocket down the inside of the sail. This creates a buffer zone, which controls the interior temperature without massive energy costs.
Other features include a helipad, suspended near the top of the building, and a restaurant called Al Muntaha, (Arabic meaning “Highest“ or “ltimate”), which is 200 meters high and supported by a full cantilever that extends 27 meters from either side of the mast.
Rather than construct the hotel on the mainland, the design plan calls for an artificial island 280 meters offshore. The building is on its own island simply to encourage its sense of exclusivity, privacy, and opulence. To secure a foundation, the builders drove 230 40-meter long concrete piles into the sand. The foundation is held in place not by bedrock, but by the friction of the sand and silt along the length of the piles
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