Crystal Fountains wins Masdar design contract

Water feature specialist contracted to work on headquarters of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi.

Water feature specialist Crystal Fountains has secured the contract to design and build the water displays of the headquarters of Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City, Commercial Outdoor Design can reveal.

Further details about the contract could not be released at this stage, the company said.

“We just signed the brief last week,” Michael Denman, director of overseas operations at Crystal Fountains said in an interview with COD.  “We are very excited about this, we recently had a meeting and we will be able to initiate many of the green technologies we have been developing over the last year. Masdar City is a project that is forcing sustainability, creating discussion and thinking about new ways to approach design and construction.”

Denman said Crystal Fountains is working in close collaboration on the water feature design with Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architects, the architecture firm contracted to do the design of the Masdar City headquarters, and with international landscape and urban design firm EDAW, which has been contracted to do the landscape design for the headquarters.

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He said that one idea that the firm was exploring for the Masdar project was the use of  gravity and hydro-static pressure in the creation of the water features.

Crystal Fountains is currently working on a number of projects in the GCC region including Emerald Gateway in Abu Dhabi, and Abu Dhabi golf course for Abu Dhabi’s Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC) for which it has been commissioned to design 12 water features.

The Canadian company, which has operations in Dubai and Qatar, has already completed a number of projects in the region including the design and provision of water features at Al Kout mall in Kuwait, and Sharm Al Sheikh in Egypt.

Internationally, Crystal Fountains’ project portfolio includes the Crown Fountain in the Millennium Park in Chicago, US, and  the Gateway Theatre of Shoppers Boulevard in Durban, South Africa.

Located in Abu Dhabi near to Abu Dhabi International Airport, Masdar is a planned city currently being developed under the initiative of the Government of Abu Dhabi, and masterplanned by architecture firm Foster + Partners.

The zero-carbon, zero-waste city is estimated for completion by 2016.

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