Dubai Plans Raft Of 600m Super Towers

Renowned already for its love of the super tall, super cool, super eco hugging skyscrapers it looks like Dubai could be in line for not only the most stunning skyline award but also the most supertalls squeezed into one place award.

Development details of a new master plan are to be released later in the year and will include several super tall skyscrapers all designed by architects Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill, names that will undoubtedly be on everyone's lips once all the juicy details of the plan are revealed.

With the massive plan comes of course a massive price tag, and all financial peeps involved will have to reach under the mattress and scrabble about checking the sofa for loose change to make up the expected Dh 25 billion. If converted to dollars it becomes a slightly less heart attack giving sum of $7 billion US dollars.

The government has already given the plans a green light and so far the projects have been given the rather non awe inspiring names of AC Towers, EP Site 07, 09 and 15, the bland names can be forgiven though as the towers designs are quite simply stunning, the EP 09 Tower is perhaps the most eye catching of all.

A cluster of six towers which all have glazed facades are set in three pairs and joined by glazing which forms a massive glass archway between the towers. lighting from within the towers will give them an almost ethereal glow at night. It will be a mixed use tower standing between 30 to 40 storeys and have a built up area of 450,000 square metres.

The EP 15 tower will be a stand alone super tall which will have angled glazed facades and looks like an a series of undulating prisms. It will stand at 101 storeys which will be somewhere round the 600 metre tall mark. This will be another multi-use tower giving about 300,000 metres square of built up space.

EP 07 will be another stand alone supertall and really does raise the questions what was on the mind of the architects at the time of drawing the plans up?

It's another whopper, coming in at 125 storeys which will take it over 600 metres, the glazed facades are wrapped around the tower but don't quite meet up in places giving an interesting curved, textured look for extra pleasure.

Finally we move from the stunning to the space age with the AC Towers. This is a cluster of three towers organically joined that would look at home on Martian skyline. Set on an arched podium the two shorter towers join together to form an inverted arch on top of its podium, the third tower, tallest tower is set behind.

The three towers are linked by three sets of sky bridges set in a triangular pattern between them a further sky bridge is set alone on the left. Steel cabling fans out between the towers making it look like a giant Martian spider has been making webs. Smokey coloured facades also add to the off-world look. Again offices, residential space and retail space will all be included and the tower will stand at over 600 metres.

Driving the project is a new found lust from for Dubai to finally build eco-friendly buildings. As one of the least energy efficient places on earth it has a poor reputation but the architects have looked closely at these new proposed towers and with the help of sophisticated computer wind modelling, come up with ususually shaped towers that have the minimum solar gain, strong and minimal superstructures that require modest amounts of material by having wind tunnels integrated into them.