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Wednesday 27 May 2009

The Legs, Middle East


"The Legs" was conceived to challenge the convention of high-rise construction and structural limitations which has restricted its own evolution. The project consists of a 5-star hotel, service apartments, residential and offices. The service apartment and hotel both wanted to have the higher floors for views but also can share the lobbies and amenities. The offices and residential components are the financial base for the project which could occupy the lower floors. It was decided that express elevators could take guests up to a sky lobby system for the upper components and then could transfer to their own cores. The design utilises a system called “an exo-skeleton”. This structural approach is based on a tube and uses the skin of the building as the structure and thereby not dependent on the core. The project pursues these two basic principles to produce two legs which bend and sensually interlock around each other. One leg reaches over 330m with the hotel on top. Both legs are organically contained with a structural stocking and linked discreetly in the centre with a sky-bridge connecting the upper lobbies as well aiding the project structurally. The result is two legs which reach into the sky and seem to defy gravity, creating a project which is not only unique for the Middle East but for the entire region of U.A.E.

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