Dubai World Trade Centre

Location

A MODERN LANDMARK ON HISTORIC DUBAI CREEK Inspired by a graceful sailboat, Intercontinental Dubai Festival City stands tall amid the business and shopping districts. If you’re in town on business, you’ll appreciate the proximity to Burj Dubai, the Business Bay and Dubai World Trade Centre, but leisure options are also convenient. Bastakiya, Dubai Museum and Al Mamzar Beach Park are nearby.

Dubai World Trade Centre
Dubai World Trade Centre
Dubai World Trade CentreIntercontinental Dubai Festival City boasts a total of 121 luxury Suites, the top suites located on levels 20, 21 and 22 will feature stunning 180 degree views of the Dubai Creek and Sheikh Zayed Road skyline. Club Intercontinental rooms offer complimentary access to Club Lounge including: snacks & drinks; welcome & airport transfers; breakfast; high-speed Internet; morning & afternoon tea; evening cocktail dinatoire; 3-hour Boardroom hire; late checkout until 4:00pm subject to availability. Spacious room 43 m² / 474 sq ft, with modern European style décor and views of Festival Marina, historic Dubai Creek or city skyline.
Dubai World Trade Centre
Dubai World Trade Centre
Dubai World Trade Centre
Dubai World Trade CentreDubai World Trade Centre District designed by Hopkins Architects

Hopkins Architects have been appointed for the first Phase of the Dubai World Trade Centre District, which is at the heart of the new business district in the city. This is arguably the most important area of real estate in the Gulf and the Middle East.

The design will feature a balance of public and private spaces creating a unique mixed-use urban quarter of offices, apartments, hotels and retail use. The design includes a series of internal and external public spaces with treelined streets, light filled atria and rooftop gardens; places for people to live, work and enjoy life. The project will provide a unique human-scaled urban environment with over 1 million square metres (10 million sq ft) of developable area. The office buildings will be designed to the best environmental standards to achieve “LEED Platinum” status.

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Dubai World Tower

Burj Dubai, world's tallest tower, is slated to go as high as 200 floors, a company official revealed. "It has reached floor No 40. It is over 20 per cent of the total habitable floors," Abdullah M. Bin Lahej, Director of Construction for Emaar Properties, developer of the tower, told Gulf News.

This translates into nearly 200 habitable floors, dwarfing all other man-made structures and nearly double the height of the 442-metre Sears Tower in Chicago, which has the highest habitable floor at the 108th.

Dubai World Tower
Dubai World TowerThis means the building's height, which remains a well-kept secret, could go well beyond the estimated 750 metres if calculated on the standard height of an average floor.

Construction of the tower's superstructure, which began on April 15 last year, has reached the 40th floor, at a rate of more than nine days per floor.

This time-frame is expected to fall significantly as the higher the building goes, the narrower it becomes, thus reducing the amount of work per floor.

Bin Lahej said major components of the tower have already been sold out.
Dubai World Tower
Dubai World Tower
Dubai World Tower
Dubai World Tower
Dubai World Tower

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Dubai World

Due to debt problems, Dubai has halted their World Island construction last November. Lately, the International Space Station has captured series of satellite photos exposing portions of island constructions that show sinking trends. Nature’s response to this event has revealed the winner in the showdown between economic development and environmental protection.

After the Palm Islands artificial island project’s completion, Dubai released a 14-billion-dollar “The World” construction, 300 islands constructed in the rough shape of a map of the landmasses of the Earth in May, 2003. The World is a symbol of rank and honor: each island is 50-100 meters apart; people have to use yachts or helicopters to reach the neighbor island. There are personal vacation housing, fancy hotels and high class shopping malls located on islands; each island even has an individual maritime customs.

The rise of seawater temperature and salt concentration is the main reason for coral reefs’ massive destruction. Human beings’ overdevelopment of the ocean is also exacerbating the oceanic ecology. When dredging has been completed, there will be 321 million cubic meters of sand and 31 million tons of rock in The World Islands. Although these fillers are not artificial or chemical materials, the clear Dubai Gulf is being dragged into sludge due to the construction. Environmental scholars noted that the construction has disturbed the oceanic ecology, drowned the coral reefs, oyster beds and algae. The disrupted food chain and decreasing living space has threatened the existence of local oceanic species. Also, construction has caused disorder of ocean gyres which then erodes the coastlines.




In face of environmentalists’ criticisms, the Dubai government aimed to reduce the impact of the World project by suggesting a post-construction plan, including measures like fostering artificial coral reefs, recovering destroyed coral reef colonies with the help of oceanic specialists and funding related research projects. However, environmental scholars do not have high hopes.


Dubai is one of United Arab Emirates’ seven kingdoms; it accomplished the 50-year process of metropolis development in a matter of ten years. On this small territory, the world’s tallest building arise again and again—from the “seven star” Burj Al Arab Hotel to the newly finished Burj Khalifa. On the basis of developing their high-speed financial and service industry, real estate has become the core source of the “Dubai version” development, filling many pockets of its city managers. Dubai real estate markets do not need pre-sale licenses; all the investors need for starting a construction is to pay 2% of the total construction budget, another 3% for selling the uncompleted sites, and 5% to sell officially. This liberal way of managing real estate as well as overflowing investment money has spiraled up the Dubai real estate market—direct yields are as high as 100%. Ever since the real estate developers have promoted the World, some of its island prices have increased up to 5 times its base price. The purchaser of the “Shanghai island” claims that once people knew islands will have villas built the royal family booked 20 sets in advance while 5 Russians also waved a check around for purchasing a 20-set. People all over the world are rushing to grab a piece of this windfall profit.

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