Located in Dubai’s bustling finance centre, the Emirates Towers comprises an office tower and the prestigious Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel, which are connected by a 9,000 square metre, two-story retail complex known as The Boulevard.

The office tower reaches 54 storeys/354 metres tall and the hotel tower is 56 storeys/309 metres tall, both rising above most the metropolitan skyline. The towers include a three-storey podium, which is home to numerous luxury retail outlets.

BG&E provided NASA Multiplex with structural design work and construction engineering for the iconic skyscrapers, which helped secure the bid for construction of the office tower and retail area.

Our locally based team provided design alternatives which delivered significant cost reductions due to efficient delivery programme timeframes and reduced resource requirements. A simplified construction process enabled the erection of nine floors per month.

The principle design elements included:

• an alternative floor system utilising precast concrete floor panels acting compositely with a perimeter steel frame, which reduced the amount of steelwork in the typical floors by about 70per cent;
• an alternative design for the principal columns which changed the original from all steel columns into composite steel and concrete, which provided an overall saving in steel weight of nearly 50 per cent; and
• mega trusses at 10 floor intervals were attached to the core elements using post-tensioning, which simplified the truss to core connections.

Construction engineering advice assisted with analysis of the building deformations which occurred during the construction process.

After standing for over two decades, the Emirates Towers remain a prominent symbol of Islamic culture, which firmly established Dubai’s standing on the global stage for structural and architectural excellence.