Palm Islands in Dubai

Posted by admin in Architecture on January 23rd, 2010 |

The Palm Islands are artificial islands in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on which major commercial and residential infrastructure will be constructed. They are being constructed by Nakheel Properties, a property developer in the United Arab Emirates, who hired Belgian and Dutch dredging and marine contractor Jan De Nul and Van Oord, some of the world’s specialists in land reclamation. The islands are the Palm Jumeirah, the Palm Jebel Ali and the Palm Deira.

1.Palm Jumeirah

The Palm Jumeirah consists of a trunk, a crown with 17 fronds, and a surrounding crescent island that forms an 11 kilometer-long breakwater. The island itself is 5 kilometers by 5 kilometers. It will add 78 kilometers to the Dubai coastline. The first phase of development on the Palm Jumeirah will create 4,000 residences with a combination of villas and apartments over the next 3 to 4 years.Residents began moving into their Palm Jumeirah properties at the end of 2006, five years after land reclamation began, according to project developer Nakheel Properties. This signaled the end of phase one of construction, which includes approximately 1,400 villas on 11 of the fronds of the island and roughly 2,500 shoreline apartments in 20 buildings on the east side of the trunk.

2.Palm Jebel Ali

The Palm Jebel Ali Umar began construction in October 2002 and was expected to be completed in mid 2008.The Palm Jebel Ali is expected to accommodate 1.7 million people by 2020.Once it has been completed, it will be encircled by Dubai Waterfront. As of early October 2007, construction of the island was on schedule.The breakwater was completed in December 2006, and infrastructure work began in April 2007.Major construction will not begin until most of the infrastructure work is complete.One of the first buildings on The Palm Jebel Ali is already known. Nakheel invited several architects to design a building on a 300,000 m2 area. The winning design was a building by Royal Haskoning, who also worked on several other projects in Dubai.The building can be seen here.In the first signs of a slowing Dubai property market, the prices of properties being sold on the Palm Jebel Ali were reported to have fallen by 40% in the two months to November 2008, with the fall being attributed to the Financial crisis of 2007–2010.

3.Palm Deira

The Palm Deira was announced for development in October 2004.No timetable for completion has been announced. The first announced design was 8 times larger than the Palm Jumeirah, and 5 times larger than the Palm Jebel Ali, and was intended to house one million people. Originally, the design called for a 14 km (8.7 mile) by 8.5 km (5.3 mile) island with 41 fronds. Due to a substantial change in depth in the Persian Gulf the farther out the island goes, the island was redesigned in May 2007. The project then became a 12.5 km (7.76 mile) by 7.5 km (4.66 mile) island with 18 larger fronds.It will be located alongside Deira.