To infinity and beyond

Kasem points out how the rotation of the Infinity tower is achieved.
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“This was our biggest challenge of all,” insists Kasem. “We brought in three top suppliers of the building maintenance unit (BMU) in the world and it took six months to get right.”

Unlike on a vertical building, where a cleaner would go straight up and down, he or she has to attach his or herself to each floor and follow the spiral line, according to Kasem.

“You can’t just come down the building in a matter of minutes and going back up is a real hassle.”

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The building takes months to clean and has to be cleaned four times a year. So, in effect, it will be cleaned all year, every year.

Elevators, on the other hand, are not affected by the spiral shape and move up and down at 7m per second inside the core of the tower.

Another obvious concern for Cayan is on site safety and security, and the company is keen to reiterate the importance of such issues to its workers.

“We will not allow anybody to smoke on site and anybody that goes onto our site, no matter who it is, will not be allowed to enter without hard hats and safety shoes etc.”

Cayan and Arabtec carry out weekly safety reports and take note of any incident that occurs before finding out why it happened and how to prevent it from happening again. Further, safety meetings with workers are carried out regularly.

So far, there have been seven lost time injuries during the 3.7 million man hours worked on site.

So what’s next on the agenda for the Infinity Tower?

The coming months will see the completion of structural and cladding work at infinity tower, and interior fit outs will follow.  “Just imagine putting the Grosvenor House on top of infinity as it stands now and that is how much more work we have left to complete,” says Kasem.

With the trials and tribulations the tower has been through so far, however, constructing a few extra floors shouldn’t be too strenuous for the Infinity team.

INTERVIEW
Ross Wimer, of architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is the design partner for Infinity Tower. CW chatted with him about the distinctive design.

What inspired you to create the rotating structure?
The shape of the Infinity Tower is twisted to maximize the views out of the building. At the lower floors there are more units oriented toward the Dubai Marina, near the top of the tower they face the Arabian Gulf.

What seismic provisions have been implemented? If this is a unique structure, how do you know that it will resist ground movement and strong winds?
Our design for the tower structure is based on over 75 years of engineering experience. As with all of our high rise designs, it was tested both in computer models and in a wind tunnel. One thing we discovered in the testing is that the twisted shape performs better in the wind than a rectangular extrusion of the same proportions.

What challenges did you face when designing this building?
One of the challenges was to keep the geometry of the condominiums as regular as possible, in spite of the tower’s external shape, and to be sure that the tower could be built quickly and efficiently.

We achieved this by stepping the structure of the tower and designing the framing, so that the same formwork can be used for all of the floors in the building. The formwork is simply rotated about one degree at each successive floor level.

Have alterations been made to the design over the last couple of years?
The tower design has remained unchanged, relative to our original plans. The podium building has been adjusted slightly to allow for additional parking spaces.

How would you compare the Infinity Tower to your Burj Khalifa project?
The Burj is a achievement by virtue of its remarkable height. The Infinity tower represents a new trend in tall building design where sculptural shapes are now possible.