The Great Unbuilt (III)
May
the great unbuilt (III) 25.05.2013
From the land of the unfulfilled drawing board comes Melbourne firm Denton Corker Marshall’s design for a commercial tower/mixed use complex in Dubai in 2011.
This was was the winner in the Tall Buildings category in the MIPIM Architectural Review Future Projects Awards. Cluster Complex scheme is conceived as a striking vertical street in Dubai’s Business Bay district, a micro city to meet the needs of 21st-century creative knowledge workers who characteristically blur their social and working lives.
Rising from a podium, the 75-level office tower is composed of four stacks of individual office buildings clustered vertically up a dramatic 225m atrium. Below the imposing office tower sit smaller blocks of apartments and a hotel. Retail and recreation uses are accommodated in a linear 5-level podium. A continuous mesh canopy envelopes the podium and grounds the towers in a tapestry of green.
According to DCM director Peter Williams…
“The Cluster Complex was designed to provide Dubai’s globally mobile and largely expatriate creative professionals with a home close to work and recreation, with easy transition from one to the other, and back again. This demands an environment as complex and diverse as any city.”
