Friday, March 02, 2007

Aedas designs U-Bora Tower at Business Bay in Dubai




The U-Bora Tower Complex is a mixed-use development located in the heart of Business Bay. The design has given equal attention to its three different uses - office, residential and retail, in order to maximize their opportunities and viabilities within the site's context. The 250 meter high U-Bora Office Tower is located prominantly on the main axis. It was designed as an anchor on the axis and within its own development. Along with the 462 meter Burj Alam, located across the street of this main axis, the two towers work together and act as a gateway into the development. In addition, the project weights the office space toward the top by starting with smaller 1,100m² floors at the bottom and slowly increasing toward the top 2,000m² floors. This maximizes prime view space by containing 70% of the office towers 80,000m², in the top half of the office tower. The 30,000m² residential block deliberately does not compete with the surrounding towers in height and instead keeps low and focused to the adjacent water body to the south. By designing the block as a linear bar rising from 12 stories at the tower end to 15 stories at the western end a significantly greater percentage of units get an uninterrupted view of the water. The third component of the project, although relatively small in area, is 7,000m² of retail. All three components are glued together with a 10,000m² public, densely landscaped deck which has accessibility from all three exposed sides of the project.