Emaar has teased a new project, with founder Mohamed Alabbar posting a video of the Dubai Mall Plaza and Hotel on his verified social media accounts with the cryptic note: “Coming Soon”.
The tease came just hours after Alabbar told a packed hall at the Rise conference in Dubai that Emaar will soon unveil a skyscraper which will be “one of the most beautiful buildings in the world”.
It is not clear whether the Dubai Mall Plaza project is the same building he mentioned on stage.
“We have a unique building that’s fully designed and ready,” Alabbar said at the Rise conference on Wednesday. “We just want to make sure that the logistics operation and our ports are eased a little so that we can tender the job. It’s probably going to be one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.”
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He was responding to an audience question about when Dubai will see another skyscraper as beautiful and majestic as the Burj Khalifa.
When asked when the building would be coming, he responded: “I am just waiting for the Hormuz entrance to open and the situation to improve.”
The hall at Dubai World Trade Centre was packed during Alabbar’s speech, with one attendee telling him she had travelled from India just to hear him speak.
Construction without humans?
Asked by an audience member whether the next 8 to 10 years would bring construction sites with zero human intervention, Alabbar admitted it was a possibility but was sceptical.
He said Chinese technology was closest to achieving this and gave the example of a 15-storey building in Abu Dhabi that was built in 12 days.
“It’s much better than a normal building,” he said. “Energy efficiency is 100 percent better than a normal building. It is four times better earthquake resistant than a normal building. We are going somewhere with this.”
However, he said it was hard for him to imagine. “At the end of the day, we still have humans that have to erect the building,” he said. “My mind cannot think of a building that’s completely built by AI. But then again, what do I know.”
Source: Khaleej Times
