The wilderness: Mohammed Bin Zaal

A project with more plants than properties is unheard of when it comes to Dubai, but Al Barari chief operation officer Mohammed bin Zaal explains the method behind the "madness"

What stage are you at now?
We are at phase one at the moment. This includes all of the villas and 26 botanical gardens. We have four stages in the first phase and 70 to 80 villas in each stage. We are handing over the first stage in October, the second stage in January and the third in April. The final stage is being altered slightly to accommodate bigger villas.

They are all currently under construction. The second phase includes the boutique hotel, and the healing haven, which has elements of hospitality, healthcare facilities and spa treatments. We also have apartments in phase two as well as the cultural islands.
 

These include a dance theatre, a library, an amphitheatre and art galleries. We have boutique outlets, the grand mosque – which is an architectural piece and is surrounded by water, with a huge courtyard in the middle.

You also have the plant nursery. How is that progressing?
This is also part of phase one and is about 149,000m² and one of the largest nurseries in the Middle East. We have 1800 species of plants, 800 of which are brand new to the region. We have produced about 1.4 million plants in the last few, months from cuttings and various different technologies.
They will be used to keep supplying the development and for other needs in Dubai. Eighty percent of the project is made up of greenery.

How will you maintain so much greenery without harming the environment?
People think that the more plants you have the more water, by default, you will have to use, but this is incorrect. By creating lush areas you create shade and so there is less evaporation and therefore less consumption of water.

Plants also feed of each other. We have expertise to make sure that we are not wasting water. We have invested a lot of money into this and we don’t want to mess it up. When we started the project we found that there wasn’t enough expertise here in the market, especially on the landscaping side, so we started our own sister companies. These are Green Works, which imports plants for the nursery; Second Nature, which deals with landscape design; and Sustainable Earth, a landscape construction company. They will be the companies maintaining the gardens.

How will the project sustain itself?
We recycle our water, we have a sewage treatment plant on site, we have a polishing plant onsite – we are completely self-sustainable. We actually built our own infrastructure and we have a 130KV substation, which we built ourselves.

Furthermore we have an underground waste management system. There are four containers and chutes on top, which are sealed and waterproof. This is something we have thought about long and hard.

How does the project differ from other residential developments in the region?
Nobody really understood us when we first started this development. We bought the land and everyone wanted us to do the same thing as everybody else; put as much as you can on a tiny space. They actually advised us to build 3000 villas on this plot and we said “we know that formula works, we don’t want to do that.” So we put 300 villas on this piece of land.

They thought we were crazy. We always like to challenge things and create a benchmark for other developers. You can create wonderful surroundings, be good to the environment and still make money. It’s not about cutting corners and making homes a little smaller, so you can sell a few more square feet. Al Barari means the wilderness and its all about creating a place where you can live and work. This is the kind of thing that is lacking in Dubai.