Theme Week Abu Dhabi – Masdar City
Wednesday, 23 March 2016 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Gulf States / GolfstaatenCategory/Kategorie: Architecture, Design & Products, Energy, Building Automation, Green Buildings, Green Technologies, Intelligent Buildings, Living, Working, Building, Materials, Sustainability, Environment, Universities, Colleges, Academies Reading Time: 9 minutes
© fosterandpartners.com
The project is headed by Masdar, a subsidiary of Mubadala Development Company. Initiated in 2006, the project was estimated to cost US$18-22 billion and take approximately eight years to build, with the first phase scheduled to be completed and habitable in 2009. Construction began on Masdar City in 2008 and the first six buildings of the city were completed and occupied in October 2010. However, due to the impact of the global financial crisis, Phase 1 of the city, the initial 1,000,000 square metres (0.39 sq mi), will be completed in 2015. Final completion is scheduled to occur between 2020 and 2025. The estimated cost of the city has also declined by 10 to 15 percent, putting the development between US$18.7 and 19.8 billion. The city is envisioned to cover 6 square kilometres (2.3 sq mi) and will be home to 45,000 to 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses, primarily commercial and manufacturing facilities specialising in environmentally friendly products. In turn, more than 60,000 workers are expected to commute to the city daily. Masdar City will be the latest of a small number of highly planned, specialized, research and technology-intensive municipalities that incorporate a living environment, similar to King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia or Tsukuba Science City in Japan.
Masdar is a sustainable mixed-use development designed to be very friendly to pedestrians and cyclists. Masdar City has terracotta walls decorated with arabesque patterns. From a distance, the city looks like a cube. The temperature in the streets is generally 15 to 20 °C (27 to 36 °F) cooler than the surrounding desert. The temperature difference is due to Masdar’s unique construction. A 45-meter-high (148 ft) wind tower modeled on traditional Arab designs sucks air from above and pushes a cooling breeze through Masdar’s streets. The site is raised above the surrounding land to create a slight cooling effect. Buildings are clustered close together to create streets and walkways shielded from the sun. Masdar City was designed by Foster and Partners. Foster’s design team started its work by touring ancient cities such as Cairo and Muscat to see how they kept cool. Foster found that these cities coped with hot desert temperatures through shorter, narrower streets usually no longer than 70 meters (230 ft). The buildings at the end of these streets create just enough wind turbulence to push air upwards, creating a flushing effect that cools the street.
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A regional headquarters for Siemens has been built in Masdar City. This building is the most energy efficient in all of Abu Dhabi. In 2014, more than 800 staff will start work there. The LEED Platinum building makes use of sustainable and energy efficient materials and building techniques. It was designed to use 45 percent less energy and 50 percent less water than typical office buildings. The Siemens headquarters won an award for best office building at the Mpim Architectural Review Future Projects Awards in 2012. The Middle East Architect Awards named it the both the best and most sustainable office building the same year. The 12,000 m2 (130,000 sq ft) building is built around the idea of a “box within a box”. The structure includes a highly insulated airtight inner façade that insulates from the sun and a lightweight aluminium shading system on the exterior. The plaza beneath the building is funnel-shaped. This shape works to suck prevailing winds underneath the building. Due to the Venturi effect, a breeze flows up to the roof of the building through atria in the buildings structure, cooling public spaces without energy costs. These atria also allow daylight into the centre of the building in order to reduce the need for artificial lighting, further reducing energy consumption. The buildings automation systems are all from Siemens.
The Incubator Building includes retail and office space to house start-ups, small-and-medium-sized enterprises, and regional offices for multinationals. The Incubator Building is designed to accommodate roughly fifty companies. Some of the most notable tenants include General Electric, Mitsubishi, Schneider Electric, and the Global Green Growth Institute. The Incubator Building is also home to the first LEED CI-certified office in Abu Dhabi, Alpin Limited. The Incubator Building houses the General Electric Ecomagination Center. The center offers training and exhibitions on energy and water efficiency. Nabil Habayeb, GE’s president & CEO for the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, said, “Locating the ecomagination Center at Masdar City further delivers on our promise to be an active partner in the concerted efforts of the UAE Government to promote a culture of sustainability. … The Center builds on our long heritage in the country, and our commitment to support the vision of the Abu Dhabi Government to integrate sustainable growth as a key pillar of all its activities. Masdar City’s mission complements our sustainability objectives and is an ideal home for our first ecomagination center.”
Masdar is powered by a 22-hectare (54-acre) field of 87,777 solar panels with additional panels on roofs. There are no light switches or water taps in the city; movement sensors control lighting and water to cut electricity and water consumption by 51 and 55 percent respectively. Gerard Evenden, the lead architect, says that the original plan for Masdar called for powering the entire city through on-site methods such as rooftop solar panels. He said,
“When we started this project, nobody had really looked at doing projects of this scale. Then you realise it’s much more efficient to build your solar field on the ground in the middle of the desert. You can send a man to brush them off every day, rather than having to access everyone’s buildings individually, and you can make sure that they are running at their absolute peak. It’s much better than putting them on every building in the city.”
Water management has been planned in an environmentally sound manner as well. Approximately 80 percent of the water used will be recycled and waste water will be reused “as many times as possible”, with this greywater being used for crop irrigation and other purposes.
Read more on Masdar, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology and Wikipedia Masdar. (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.
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