DBI Design makes top towers list

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Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi, by DBI Design.

Image: Warren Coyle. Courtesy of DBI Design.

Gold Coast architecture practice DBI Design took third place at the 2011 Emporis Skyscraper Award – announced in December 2012 – for creation of the billion-dollar Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi.

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The Wave apartments, Broadbeach, Queensland by DBI Design.

Image: Courtesy of DBI Design.

Emporis Skyscraper Award is the annual international prize for highrise architecture of new buildings at least one hundred metres high that show outstanding architectural design and functionality. Of the 220 entries for buildings completed in 2011, first place went to New York by Gehry, the 215-metre stainless steel-clad resdential apartment block at eight Spruce Street, New York (Frank Gehry’s first skyscraper), while second place went to Kuwait’s tallest building, the 412-metre Al Hamra Firdous Tower by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM).

Etihad Towers by DBI Design is a major mixed-use project comprising five towers across a built area of 492,084 square metres. The three residential towers house a total of 885 apartments. One tower is for commercial offices, and one tower is a hotel occupied by Jumeirah at Etihad Towers, comprising 382 hotel rooms and 199 serviced apartments.

The five towers range in height from fifty-six to seventy-seven storeys. DBI project director Warren Coyle says: “The buildings’ curved shapes are intended to represent billowing sails, referencing Abu Dhabi’s history as a port.”

This is the second the Emporis Skyscraper Award for DBI Design, having won second place in 2006 for The Wave in Broadbeach, Queensland, a residential, retail and commercial development. The external wave form of the thirty-five-storey tower is designed to give all residents panoramic views of the ocean and surrounding Surfer’s Paradise disctrict.