Dubais Mother of Pearl

The ever expanding skyline of Dubai could finally get its pearl by developer, the Al-Fahim Group.

The project, named the Dubai Pearl was announced way back in 2002 and originally consisted of nine mixed use towers but a lot of water, architects and developers have passed under the bridge since then and now another set of plans has been revealed to the public.

Gone are the nine separate towers to be replaced by a huge, monolithic, 300 metre tall, almost wall like structure. The new project looks like a giant stack of dominos - the towers it is composed of linked together at their roofs and the two side towers rotated to form the box sides whilst the other towers aren't quite aligned adding a slight touch of irregularity.

Much like Koolhaus's design for China ,Dubai's will have cut outs big enough to fly a small plane through making it another candidate to feature in future James Bond films.

The towers will have the usual glass facades we are used to seeing in Dubai and pretty much anywhere a skyscraper is penned as is the city within a city concept which is one of the projects selling points, it aims to provide housing, work and play space for 20,000 people.

The residences will be the height of luxury, condominiums and apartments feature along with the extremely grand sounding Sky Palaces which will probably only be affordable to someone with HRH in front of their names.

Added to the luxury housing will be prime commercial space, 5 star hotels with approximately 2000 rooms, a shopping mall which will be home to big international brands and a 1,500 seat performing arts theatre. The project will also be close to the close to the air port and have an elevated freeway network as well as excellent public transport links.

With its past track record for non starting Dubai will be holding its collective breath to see whether the tower materializes or just remains a pie in the sky idea.