Arabtec boss slams desire for 'iconic' projects

Middle East master developers are too concerned about making a building “iconic” and should pay more attention to its function and how much power it will consume, a leading executive from Dubai’s Arabtec Construction, which worked on the Burj Khalifa, the Burj Al Arab and is currently building the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum, said on Tuesday.

“I have argued, and this may be a bit controversial, for me there is a balance in any building environment between the function, the overall lifetime cost of running a building and how iconic it is,” Mark Andrews, group chief operating officer at Arabtec Construction Group, said at a conference in Dubai.

“A lot of the architects in the room may disagree with me,” he told delegates at the ‘Construction Week: Leaders in Construction UAE Summit’. “My sense is if you compare this market to say the European market there is still a significant focus on the iconic nature of the building and that inevitably means that you are going to somewhat compromise function and the footprint in terms of power utilisation in the building.

“If I look at the buildings that have been done recently in the UK, in things like hospitals and schools, they are all about function and how much power is going to be consumed in the building. What the building looks like, while it may not be insignificant, is a lot less significant.

“I still feel a sense here that buildings have to be iconic and therefore we are still making compromises with the power consumption that is going to be required to feed it.”

One of the region’s largest construction firms, Arabtec has worked on a number of high-profile construction projects, including the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, the luxury Burj Al Arab hotel, Terminal 1 of Dubai International Airport, the passenger terminal of Dubai World Central International Airport and Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace hotel.

The developer, whose largest shareholder is Abu Dhabi state fund Aabar Investments, which owns a 21.57 percent stake, is also currently working on the Jean Nouvel-designed Louvre Abu Dhabi building on Saadiyat Island and the Palazzo Versace resort in Dubai Creek.

High-profile international projects also include the Hanging Gardens project in Egypt, Doha’s World Trade Centre and is the Okhta Center in St. Petersburg, which will be the tallest building in Europe when complete.