The Palm Jumeirah
DUBAI - United Arab Emirates
South
African leads Landscape Architecture Team
From the beginning of time the world has been in constant change. The oceans and continents as we know them were constantly evolving, changing shape, becoming linked or unlinked. The re arrangement of the continents and oceans which began around 200 million years ago continued throughout what is known as the Tertiary period. During this constant change animal remains became embedded, sand and debris was deposited into layers of varying patterns, textures and colors.
As the earth was shaping itself, man has shaped his environment and altered the landscape where they inhabited the earth and created elements of aesthetic beauty and functional use. Shapes varied over time as did decoration, all inspired by the land they were living on.
Man has been in a constant process of developing and creating but in the same time destructing. In parts nature is in constant growth, in other parts we and nature destruct. It is this process of construction and destruction either through the endeavors of man or by natural events that the earth is evolving continuously.
In the same way The Jumeirah Palm is currently changing the shoreline of the Arabian Gulf and slowly becoming a world significant development. As it grows from the sea we extend this growth into the design and draw from the shapes and forms of nature to develop the landscape elements to resemble this growing from the bottom of the sea, revealing captured moments in time.
These changing events, these captured moments of the earth’s evolution inspired the design. The textures and colour as earth revealed them to us as we find in conglomerates, would become an inspiration for hard landscaped areas, the patterns left behind in fossils of shells and marine life would be finishes to architectural elements and site furniture.
Rooted in past events that shaped man and his environment the design evolves to embrace the vision of the development to be a contemporary island style living environment. We find form in nature, traditional architecture and artifacts and stylize these appropriate to our time. Elements are decorated with textures and colors we find in the earths evolution and these are developed to be suitable to its function and appropriate to a contemporary city.
Landscape Architects: Al Khatib Cracknell
Snr. Landscape Architect/ Lead Designer:
Maarten
Completion: June 2006
Landscape Budget: AED 200 000 000 (US$ 55 000 000)
Overall Cost: AED 13bn
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