Nakheel Tower was a proposed hyper-tall skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The building was once intended to become the world's first building higher than one kilometers.
Below are some facts about Nakheel Tower.
Name:
Nakheel Tower, the building is named after its developer Nakheel Properties, which is currently the third largest real estate developer in Dubai, only after Emaar and Damac.
The tower was originally called Al Burj, which means The Tower.
Height:
Nakheel Tower would be about 1,400 meters(exact height is not revealed) tall and contain 200 stories. If built, it would replace Burj Khalifa as the tallest building in Dubai and the whole world.
The tower is not the tallest building ever envisioned in the history, but it is considered the tallest building that began construction but never to be completed.
Nakheel Tower is so tall that it will experience five different micro-climatic conditions from top to bottom of the tower.
Location:
Nakheel Tower was planned to be built at the intersection of Sheikh Zayed Road and the planned Arabian Canal, near Jumeirah Lake Towers and Dubai Marina.
The tower is designed to be the centerpiece of a 270 hectare development called the Nakheel Harbor and Tower, which would contain a wharf and about 20 other smaller towers ranging from 20 to 90 stories high. The development is located next to the Ibn Battuta shopping mall, it will also complement some other nearby developments developed by Nakheel, including Jumeirah Park, Jumeirah Islands, Discovery Gardens and Palm Jumeirah.
When Nakheel Tower was first proposed in 2003, it was initially planned to be built on a plot on the man-made islands Palm Jumeirah, as the centerpiece of the islands. The plot is at the center of a canal on the trunk part of the Palm Jumeirah.
In 2005, the plot for Nakheel Tower was replaced by Trump International Hotel & Tower, which is also never built due to the financial crisis.
In 2008, Nakheel Tower revived as a part of the Nakheel Harbor & Tower project, the location is no longer on the Palm Jumeirah, it was changed to a plot near the Dubai Marina and Jumeirah Lake Towers.
Uses:
Nakheel Tower would be mixed use, it is designed to contain spaces for a variety purposes that include residential, hotel, office, observation, retail.
The top of Nakheel Tower would be occupied by a luxury hotel that has 100 rooms.
The whole complex of Nakheel Harbor & Tower would be home to more than 55,000 people and provide office space for more than 45,000 people, as well as 100,000 square meters of retail space. It would also have parks, canal walks, and other public space.
Design:
As a skyscraper to be built in United Arab Emirates, the design of Nakheel Tower is heavily based on Islam architecture.
The tower features an Islamic building typology, it is composed of four individual towers within one single structure, making the tower approximately 100 meters in diameter.
The four towers are linked by several sky bridges at various levels, the sky bridges act to tie the four towers together, providing the necessary structural support for such a tall building.
There are gardens on these sky bridges, the inspiration of these gardens is drawn from the gardens of Alhambra in Spain. An open atrium is at the center of four towers, if built it would be the highest atrium in the world. To make the tower stable, each of four towers has its own individual concrete core, which rise to a series of vertical wind slots in the top section of the tower.
The wind slots allow wind to pass through the building, reducing the wind load, hence allow the diameter of building's floor plates to keep same the whole way up without tapering. The total floor area of the building is 900,000 square meters(9,700,000 square feet).
There's a distinctive crescent-shaped podium encircling the base of the tower, the crescent shape can be found on many Islam architecture, for example, the Abraj Al Bait in Mecca is topped with a crescent.
Nakheel Tower would be a economic friendly building that is designed to LEED standards, the tower uses solar panels, wind turbines and high-voltage power distribution to save electric energy.
The tower would have 156 elevators to carry residents, employees and hotel guests up and down in the tower through its 200 floors. The high speed elevators that travel to the observation deck at the top of the tower can lift people from ground to the top at over 1000 meters in just four minutes.
Development:
The state-owned developer Nakheel Properties in Dubai announced on October 5, 2008 that they would start a large development called Nakheel Harbor & Tower, stating it would become the capital district of Dubai, with places for living, working, relaxing and entertaining concentrated in a single area.
The development occupies an area of 270 hectares, it includes a man made inland harbor that would become the world's first inner city harbor, and many other buildings along with the Nakheel Tower at the core of the complex.
Nakheel Properties had developed many other famous projects in Dubai, including the Palm Jumeirah, the largest completed man-made island in the world.
It was estimated that the tower would take 500,000 cubic meters of concrete to construct, and the development would take 10 years or more to complete.
The pilings for Nakheel Tower were drilled in 2008, not long after the developer announced the project.
But due to financial problems, after one year, in January 2009, the developer announced that construction of the tower would be put on hold until they are in a better economic position to complete it. The situation didn't become better, Nakheel Properties' financial problems increased because of the 2009 debt standstill of Dubai World (Nakheel's parent company of that time), resulting in the cancellation of the tower in late 2009.