Dubai’s Giant Circle Skyscraper Explained

Everything about the Dubai’s Giant Circle Skyscraper

Dubai has set the internet on fire with another insane project (Dubai's giant circle skyscraper). In a world where Saudi Arabia’s Line appears to be happening, you’d be forgiven for asking just how real this project is. It’s a 550-metre high, three-kilometre-long skyscraper that would form a ring around the Burj Khalifa’s finger. Why on earth would someone propose such a ridiculous idea? What would it take to engineer something like this? And… what could we learn from the idea of Dubai's giant circle skyscraper?

First off, no this isn’t being built. But that’s not the point, so stick with us. You’re probably wondering what exactly we’re looking at here. And… is it even in the realm of possibility or just science fiction? To answer that, we need to look at where these renderings of Dubai's giant circle skyscraper came from. While the project of Dubai's giant circle skyscraper has been compared to The Line in Saudi Arabia, it’s important to note this isn’t a government-backed project.

CGI artists

The renderings were made by CGI artists at Pictown, based on a design from ZNera Space, a Dubai-based architecture studio that specializes in architectural conversation starters. Back in 2018, the studio proposed giant smog-eating towers in New Delhi that would suck in air at their base and filter it skywards – essentially cleaning the atmosphere in one of the world’s most notoriously polluted cities.

It was never built, but it did get people talking about how to address air pollution. This latest proposal aims to start a similar conversation about our cities. Specifically how to manage the density explosion that’s happening across the world. For the first time in human history more people now live in cities than outside of them – and the world’s current urban population is set to double by the year 2050.

The idea

Here are the characteristics of Dubai's giant circle skyscraper:

• Circular Shape
• Mirrored Surface
• Remarkable Height
• Advanced Technology
• City Landmark

By the middle of this century, seven in every 10 people will live in a city. Places like Dubai are going to have to figure out a way to stay liveable while not being swallowed whole by the sheer number of new people populating them. So how does that big old Dubai Downtown Circle figure into this? While not claiming to solve every problem of urban density, it does ask a rather intriguing question:

what if we stopped building vertically and instead went horizontally… in the sky? What could we achieve then? Would it supercharge Dubai’s economy even further?

horizontally construction

Hard to say, but in times like these, nearly every country is desperate to stimulate its economy. The team at ZNera Space has imagined an enormous ring 550 meters in the air consisting of five levels.

They have essentially curled a 3,000-metre skyscraper around the Burj Khalifa. Several interesting things happen now that the skyscraper is lying flat. This may sound obvious, but we, as humans, typically don't tend to move vertically. We’re a lot more comfortable walking, running, and moving through horizontal planes.

Without having to spend time waiting for elevators – at least once you’re up there – this flat skyscraper has now opened up so much more space. And it's using it far more efficiently. Like with this enormous park that would run throughout the entire ring. It would function as the lungs of the building, offering clean, fresh air, abundant natural light, and panoramic views of the city.

If you had that much parkland in an ordinary skyscraper you would have to chop it up into tiny sections and disperse across several, maybe even hundreds of floors. Instead, residents here could ride bikes and take leisurely walks, just like any other park. The skyscraper acts as a series of neighborhoods, separated into “nodes”. Taking its cues from the idea of a “15-minute city” where everything a resident needs or wants is available within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.

15-minute city

Residential, public, and commercial spaces are never far from this central park while within walking distance is almost every kind of amenity a person could need. Instead of elevators, there would be the somewhat terrifying train pods whipping around the structure at 100 kilometers an hour. They’d be suspended below the bottom floor of the ring and offer 360-degree views of the entire city. While nothing like this has ever been built before, these pods would, in effect, function like today’s suspended monorails which typically reach speeds of 80 to 100 kilometers an hour, just without a half-kilometer drop beneath them.

Supporting this mammoth structure would be five towers. They are enormous in their own right and would be skyline-defining buildings in any other city in the world. The towers could be fitted with smog-eating technology like those proposed in New Delhi. Typically that’s where cladding materials coated in photocatalytic titanium dioxide are installed. The coating reacts with natural daylight to decompose surrounding nitrogen oxides, effectively “cleaning” a city’s air.

This may sound ridiculous but neighbouring Doha has already resorted to air-conditioning outdoor public spaces in a bid to fight rising temperatures.

Dubai itself is already constructing what it calls “the first temperature-controlled metropolis in the world” – a 4.5M square meter retail street network that will be covered by an enormous glass dome in the summer and opened up in the winter.

But adding more air conditioning to the problem seems counterintuitive – it produces 2BN tonnes of CO2 a year. It should be noted Dubai's giant circle skyscraper is being pitched as self-sufficient and sustainable with solar panels on its roof. The team claims this could allow them to use solar hydrogen technology, whereby solar energy is converted into water which can then power the air conditioning and provide energy to the building.

prototype phase

But that tech is only in its prototype phase. So, how would this structure be built? Well from an engineering perspective, the ring itself would need to be strong enough to hold all its residents, its sky park, and everything else, while lightweight enough to be supported by the five surrounding towers and bridge between them. There is a rough kind of precedent for this kind of structure. Think of the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore or Raffles City in China.

The Marina Bay Sands

The Marina Bay Sands has a 2.5-acre park and an infinity pool sitting 200-metres above Singapore. It also cantilevers by 67 meters past its first tower. To support this immense weight, enormous trusses, and prestressed concrete slabs were incorporated into the design. Now, every skyscraper in the world naturally sinks a tiny bit throughout its lifetime, thanks to its enormous weight and engineers factor that in.

But each of the towers at Marina Bay Sands would sink at a different rate, and each may eventually rotate slightly, again at differing rates. You can’t expect the ground under each tower to be the same.  Even the wind causes different deflections at the top of each tower and all of this affected how the Skypark would balance on top.

Here is also a video about Dubai's giant circle skyscraper which you can watch:

To accommodate this, a system of primary bridges with steel trusses was designed for the parts between the towers. Shaped like a V, the trusses would extend from the roof of the hotel through the walls of reinforced concrete. The extreme engineering helped make Marina Bay Sands the most expensive building in the world at the time of its construction, coming in at a cool USD 6.8BN. As for the cost of Dubai’s Giant Circle Skyscraper?

Well, it would likely be even more astronomical. Cue builders everywhere doing a sharp intake of breath as they work out a quote. Most governments aren’t going to foot a bill like that to build new public spaces – and as for the private sector, well when a building needs this much money to get built, developers usually go for something that will bring in a lot of money in return – like luxury housing.

But it’s worth noting that Dubai has already built its fair share of government-backed record-setting projects. If any city is going to find a way to bring a crazy rendering like this to life, it’s probably this one. Dubai's giant circle skyscraper isn’t proposing to solve the housing crisis. But it does raise questions about how we build for a changing world.

The coming century is going to radically reshape our cities and our architecture is going to have to be radically reshaped in turn. We will have to face the problems of climate change and rising urban populations with bold new ideas and think more outside the architectural box than ever before. As for whether a giant donut (Dubai's giant circle skyscraper) would ruin the Dubai skyline and the Burj, the architects of the Downtown Circle have asked whether a naked hand looks better with a ring. If we like it, maybe we should put a ring on it.

Here are the main characteristics of Dubai's giant circle skyscraper which are described more specifically in the table:

You can check this article to learn more about Dubai's giant circle skyscraper.