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RELATED ARTICLES: The Pearl is his oyster | Dubai Pearl to award sub-contracts in Q3 of 2010 | Pearl Qatar can learn from Dubai's Palm Jumeirah
After meeting foundation work milestones last year, Dubai Pearl can forge ahead in 2010, with several building innovations along the way
Dubai Pearl is well signposted for about half a mile around the site along Sheikh Zayed Road and the ringroads and has been for some time, something amounting to a visible anticipation for the extraordinary mixed-use project.
Reaching the site is still something of a challenge for the uninitiated, as each maroon sign on the side of the road eventually leads to a road block. But from above what is striking about the 6.096 million m2 site is the variety of development: a residential tower that has reached four floors, a square plot with freshly finished piling work, and lanes of winding roads in wide enough for vehicles to pass each other side by side.
The project is encircled by a main road that will be equal in height to five floors. The centerpiece for Dubai Pearl is the four 73-storey towers that will be joined by a single roof top, known as Sky Palace. But unlike the average tower along the Financial District, each tower is rectangular, with the long sides of the outside towers 1 and 4 at a right angle to the coast line, and the inner
towers parallel.
Residents will look out onto Palm Jumeirah and, to the left and right, Dubai Marina and the Dubai downtown skyline. To the north of the towers (closest to the Palm Jumeirah) will be four hotel and residential complexes, including one that will be branded by legendary French crystal manufacturer Baccarat. The latest incarnation by Las Vegas hotel Bellagio will also feature in the end project.
The south will be the majority of the entertainment-based podium buildings, which will eventually include a 1,800-seater opera house, retail outlets, a sports centre and another Las Vegas hotel, MGM Grand, and the Skylofts apartments.
The project is nestled in between Dubai’s Media City and Knowledge Village, which gives the dual benefit of giving the eventual residents access to innumerable companies and entertainment venues, as well as acting as a demonstration for all those involved with the building what mega projects can achieve in the emirate.
2009 saw the completion of the piling and between August and November the raft pour for the four towers was completed, along with their necessary waterproofing. With the ground work complete the four towers are at a similar stage, though Tower 1 is ahead by two floors, closely followed by Tower 3.
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Syed Irfanullah Hussainy, senior vice president of programme management at Dubai Pearl, stands beside Tower 1 and explains that after earlier completing the shoring process for the perimeter of the site, the raft pour took as long as 30-36 hours straight. “That was a huge process,” he says, “with 2,500 tonnes of reinforcement.”
The raft for Tower 1 was 3.5 metres in total, most of it below ground level. At the edge of the raft are the columns for the building, with a ‘core’ wall a few metres in to take the majority of the weight of the building.
That the columns are on the outside will be important for the interiors of each space, particularly those designated for office use.
“With the columns on outside of the building you have a beautiful apartment or office,” says Wayne Holder, executive vice president for sales, marketing and client relations at Dubai Pearl. “It in some ways makes it easier if you’re putting in flooring, as you don’t have to stop and start every time you have a column and you need to cut the tiles accordingly.
It would suit tenants such as drafting companies, he adds, who may require a lot of natural light.
Further, a company can rearrange their entire interior layout easily without columns in the way.
To build the walls and pour the concrete into them the company uses jump form, a jacking system allows the entire assembly to be raised to the next floor level using one operator to elevate the entire system. The wall form is thus ‘jumped’ from one lift to the other. The system is supported by the lower lift of concrete and forms are released and stripped after the concrete has cured. Embeds are provided in the concrete to receive the form system when it is jumped up to the next floor. This is opposed to slip form, where concrete is placed continuously in side form which moves at a set rate and forms are not removed but slip over the concrete which can support itself by the time it is out of the form.
This core wall will take 1,400 tonnes of weight, says Husseiny, and the jump form technique optimises time. “We will pour on the 14th and 16th of June,” he says.
The outer casing of columns have ‘nibs’ running across the top, upon which the pre-cast slabs that run between the outer wall and the core wall will rest. “In some areas we have used in situ casting, in other areas the pre cast. For the sink slab – needed for the building’s drainage among other things – you will need casting in situ. The mechanical work will be particularly important. The buildings will have an optimised façade, with glass that will meet the requirement of green building standard.”
At Tower 3, adjacent to Tower 1 and the closest, Husseiny explains that their work on the core wall is just a little below that of Tower 1, which is the most advanced. “We are progressing from towers 1, 3, 2 and 4, in that order, but we have electricity in all of them already.” Health and safety signs and related equipment is abundant at the site, and all along the towers and along the roads in which vehicles can pass there are walkways marked with dark green netting along with concise information: ‘Accidents do not just happen, they are caused’ says one. “Accident awareness is forming a greater part of HSE,” says Husseiny, “and the company is very particular about things like that.”
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