Blossoming Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Opposing designs for ThyssenKrupp Architecture Award winner emerge
Following the announcement of the winning design for the ThyssenKrupp Elevator Architecture Award, featured on WAN, several projects also in the running are emerging and offer a very different approach to the brief.

What could be described as an oversized goal post set in Za'abeel Park in the heart of Dubai, Dubai Frame by Fernando Donis has proven to be a controversial winner of the award, one architect commenting through WAN that: "Dubai's complete lack of any coherent plan never ceases to amaze me. The title of the 'winning' scheme should be called 'The Emperor's new clothes'. Dubai = Disneyland/Las Vegas." One of the competing architects, Bill Badrick labelled the project, perhaps ironically, 'hollow' and sent WAN images of his design (thumbnails 1&2).

Asked to design a 'Tall Emblem Structure to promote the new face of Dubai', Dubai Frame presented an artistic take on the brief by literally framing Dubai in the structure. But Blossoming Dubai by Petra Architects took a different approach.

"A landmark is more than just a tall building," says a spokesperson for Petra Architects, who submitted this competing proposal (main image). "It is a structure that becomes the emblem of a new era, trying to capture the vitality of an emerging society. Dubai’s urban growth in the last decade resembles the same growth of a flower blossom in the middle of the hostile desert. This growing is of a dynamic kind and what more dynamic than a spiral across the sky, a symbol of the new face of the city that arises from the ground of an old civilization.

"The proposed building combines the elegance of a symmetrical geometry with a challenging spiral direction."
source: www.worldarchitecturenews.com
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