The world islands Dubai, UAE

The challenge: designing Dubai’s The World island group to keep it protected from the elements 

The key challenge is reshaping the Dubai Coastline and creating new islands from first sketch up to build, construct and realisation – all while protecting them from the sea.  

Due to the special nature of the environment, our client preferred the islands to have the atmosphere of luxury islands such as Maldives or Seychelles with a natural appearance resulting in extra challenging requirements to the coastal protection. 

Urban development, masterplanning and architecture require a focus on surroundings, understanding of the many functions, an eye to the users, and insight into the financial feasibility of intervention. In other words: it requires integrated planning from the idea to the implementation.  

And – due to the special natural marine environment of the project and to ensure that the occupants will enjoy the pleasant environment of the island – it’s also important to minimise the impacts associated with the design, construction and occupancy of the island.  

The isolated developments in The World also demand a complete self-supporting system, which includes electricity, cooling, water, wastewater, gas, communications, and fire safety. Not having power or water available for developers or residents is simply not an option. 

Careful planning and incorporation of the required utilities within the overall development right from the start delivers a major advantage in terms of costs and time. The big challenge here compared to regular onshore developments is that utility services are not available from a common grid.

The solution: a sustainable design that took aesthetics into account at every stage

Being one of the leading global marine engineering firms we are proud to have firmly established ourselves in Dubai, the most prestigious and ambitious location for waterfront development in the world.

Royal HaskoningDHV has been committed to reshaping the coastline of Dubai since 2001 starting with the ‘edge’ structures of Palm Jumeirah. Korea Island, Borneo Island, Isla Moda Island, Jalashya Island, Oqyana Island and Coral Island are the islands we worked on.

We focus on the core qualities of an area or building resulting in a design with its own characteristics and a recognisable identity. We strive to optimise materials, maximise recyclability, keep energy use down, and minimise maintenance – leading to a minimal environmental impact throughout the lifecycle of a building.

In the Environmental Impact Assessment – carried out for the group of islands as a whole – we therefore focused on the quality of the surrounding waters, marine ecosystems, noise, air and human environments.

We used an integrated sustainable design approach enabling us to position utilities as much as possible within structures or the subsurface. This ensures all required utilities are available and supplied unobtrusively, sustainable, and – above all – comply with aesthetic expectations of architects and clients.

The result: an island group and reef with a natural appearance

We received several design awards for our part in this work. We kept the project’s goals at the heart of our work, always considering the end result.

For example, our extensive underwater ‘berm’ guarantees that the incoming waves are broken before they reach the relatively narrow crest above water, which allows a minimum of visual hindrance towards the open sea. This ensures a natural appearance of the reef and The World as a whole.