Dubai’s thirst for crass civic projects and buildings cannot, it
seems, be quenched. In the last decade, the emirate has cultivated an
utterly strange landscape of isolated icons, each one more
“spectacular”,”daring”, and “different” than the last. From the vacuous
iconicity of the Burj Khalifa to the ludicrous ambition of ”the World“,
Dubai’s tolerance for an asinine and
radically depoliticized architecture has yet to be exceeded. See the
latest conceptual project, Deep Ocean Technology’s proposed Water Discus
Underwater Hotel, another “diamond in the rough (waters)” scheme that
envisions a partially submerged object of vage sci-fi origins. And, by
vague, we mean Star Trek.
According to the sleek initial renderings, the hotel is to be
stranded in a reef, with lodging above and below the waterline. The
structure consists of a system of modular programmatic discs, anchored
to the seafloor by steel legs capable of withstanding tsunami-scale
conditions. The discs can be moved, replaced, and multiplied to alter
the hotel’s composition and respond to the vagaries of sea life.
The skyward discs suspended above the waterline will be programmed with a
helipad, spa, gardens, and terraces that reveal vast panoramas of the
shore beyond, while the underwater accommodations will extend twenty-one
stories down into the water to open up intimate views of the diverse
marine habitat. The project presents an advancement for housing and
tourism in coastal off-shore areas, according to the hotel’s investors,
who also claim that the hotel’s modular structure can double as a
“laboratory tool” with which to further oceanographic research in the
region and work towards creating “new underwater ecosystems and
activities on underwater world protection.”
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