Dubai: The Latest Architecture and News

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One of the world’s tallest residential towers, Dubai’s Torch Tower, caught ablaze in the early hours of the morning, causing the evacuation of the building’s 676 units and leaving lasting damage to the building and its immediately vicinity

This is the second fire to affect the 79-story building in just two years, raising more questions about safety standards of materials used in highrise construction.

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Metaform architects and The Space Factory scenographers have won the competition for the Luxembourg Pavilion at the Expo 2020 Dubai, which is centered on the theme of “opportunity.”

Inspired by a Möbius strip, in which a twisted and folded ribbon has no beginning and no end, the winning pavilion proposal is modeled around the concept of “cradle to cradle” and the circular economy.

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Mapacad is a website that offers downloads of .dwgs of dozens of cities. With 200 metropolises in their database, the founders have shared a set of their most-downloaded cities.

The files contain closed polyline layers for buildings, streets, highways, city limits, and geographical data--all ready for use in CAD programs like Autocad, Rhino, BricsCad and SketchUp.

A clearer picture of this mornings fire in downtown #dubai. Lots of sirens, fire is still ongoing. Any info on this? #dubaifire pic.twitter.com/aYZ6O7Mo1A

— Anthea Ayache (@AntheaAyache) April 2, 2017

A fire has broken out at a construction site near the Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates. At around 6:30 am (02:30 GMT), flames broke out in the lower levels of the Address Residences Fountain Views towers, a complex of three towers, each 60 floors in height, being built by Dubai developer Emaar Properties.

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Russian designer Konstantin Kolesov has created a collection of finely-crafted souvenirs celebrating iconic architectural landmarks from around the globe. The Jsouv Collection consists of 15 pieces, depicting landmarks from New York, London, Tokyo, Dubai and more. Crafted from solid aluminum, the souvenirs are accompanied by a natural walnut base engraved with a 2D emblem of the city in question. With the souvenirs currently being crowdfunded on Indiegogo, Jsouv is also offering a t-shirt collection with unique prints of each city and landmark.

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Non-profit organization Art Jameel have announced a new Serie-Architects-designed Arts Center in Dubai that will partner with New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to acquire works by modern and contemporary artists from the Middle East.

The 10,000 square meter, three-story, multi-disciplinary space is designed to become a “hub for educational and research initiatives, while its wider programming embraces collaboration and partnerships with local, regional, and international artists, curators, and organizations.”

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Dubai’s newest mega-attraction, a 150-meter-high, 93-meter-wide picture frame structure dubbed the “Dubai Frame” is approaching completion after a nearly two-year delay, and is set for opening in the second half of this year. At a cost of $43.60 million, the new building will stand as a symbol of the city’s rapid rise from modest settlement to gleaming metropolis, giving visitors a panoramic view of the boundary-pushing skyscrapers from the coast of the Persian Gulf.

It also may stand as a symbol of something far less idyllic: intellectual property theft.

In the upcoming years, Dubai may become home to one of the world’s newest radical architectures—the first ever, rotating skyscraper. Designed by Dynamic Architecture’s Davis Fisher, the 80-story, 1,273-foot tower proposal features independent floors that can rotate 360 degrees in both directions, in order to provide more comprehensive views.

A static central core will connect the rotating floors together, each of which will be prefabricated off-site and attached to the tower afterward.

Google Earth has released an update to its Timelapse feature, giving viewers a better look at the rapid expansion of the world’s urban areas between 1984 and 2016.

Originally released in 2013 in partnership with TIME and NASA, the update adds in four more years of data, as well as petabytes of imagery data from two new satellites, Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2, to provide clearer views of new developments and the recent effects of climate change on our natural environments.

Dubai Design District (d3) has announced the opening of offices by 4 of the world’s leading architecture firms – Zaha Hadid Architects, Santiago Calatrava Architects & Engineers, Foster + Partners and Benoy – marking another step towards the city’s goal of becoming a global design hub.

Since first launching in April 2013, d3 has become the region’s preeminent destination for artists, designers and creative types of all kinds to work and collaborate. So far, d3 has welcomed in over 30 architecture firms of medium to large size, including SSH and Viktor Udzenija, RMJM and Wanders Wagner.

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and Hyperloop One have unveiled joint designs for an autonomous transportation system and the world’s first Hyperloop pods and portals in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The designs are being presented as Hyperloop One signs a deal with the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), bringing the project one step closer to reality.

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