The Creative Space: Natalie Douglas, Assistant Designer for Skopos
Dubai really does continue to be at the forefront and the leader in architectural design and the skyline is certainly a place to draw inspiration. Our city theme continues with a young designer who’s recent trip to Dubai helped inspire her work…
Assistant designer, Natalie Douglas went to Dubai in September last year and found it truly inspiring. We wanted to hear more…
Natalie, tell us about Dubai and why it’s your creative space?
The architecture of Dubai truly makes for an inspirational space. With beginnings as a desert land, the landscape has been reinvented, presenting a contemporary urban city. When you review the buildings situated around Dubai you will see a wide variation in structure. Each building has been carefully considered with great attention to detail, to create individual aesthetically appealing forms. The architecture doesn’t just become another Highrise tower, but a work of art, a statement reflecting the luxurious decadence of the interior and the glamour of the lifestyle and people within, buildings that make you look up and admire the fusion between engineering and creativity.
Dubai leads the way in construction innovation, presenting a modern skyline of confident outlines created by optical glass facades. The use of glass in the city creates a clean aesthetic that reflects the blue sky and creates shimmering mosaic patterns. The buildings test and exaggerate the rules of physics with pointed edges, intricate lattice steeples, coiled cylindrical layers, jagged edges, geometric shapes knitted together.
The Cayan Tower (originally known as the Infinity Tower) commands respect in its’ structural expression, built with a 90-degree twist, the building adopts a helical shape. I also need to mention the tallest tower in the world that has broken records and expectations in engineering, the Burj Khalifa. This skyscraper is truly remarkable with its soaring height, totaling 160 floors and tapering it’s structure to a sharp needle point. The sheer size of the building is not wholly appreciated until you are standing below it. But this record-breaking construction will not reign supreme for long with the next tower in the making aiming to reach up even further into the sky.
Flight paths have even been redesigned to cope with the changing skyline. The Dubai architecture needs to be applauded. The fountains, light shows and theatrical music displays are possibly a symbolic pat on the back. Dubai truly continues to be at the forefront as a leader in architectural design, surpassing limits for building construction.