Lobby Design

This is a lobby design that I did for the tallest building in Sharjah located next to the Kasbah district in Buhairah.

Eagle Five Plaza is the tallest building in Sharjah.  It looks over Buhairah and Kasbah the two most wonderful places in the United Arab Emirates.

The views are breathtaking.  This is a place where you want to spend all of your time.  Everything is within a walking distance.  Restaurants, cinema, parks, shopping malls, health clubs, amusement park etc.




The idea behind the lobby is to create a feeling of nature as the skylight looks up into an open network of palm trees.  The feeling is that the building is just not there.  You are magically transported to your apartment with the high speed elevators.



The is a view to the front of the lobby.  The canope is stainless steel and is an extension to the wooden trusses in the lobby.


Close by there is the KASBAH which is featured in the panoramic photo next.


The lobby floor is a series of circles, a fishing boat bottom and eagle claws that lead to the elevators.  There is a small resting area with a water screen video projections system.

At night the skylights dim and the star come out.

A lot of effort went into this project.

DESERT CONTAINER CARAVANS

DESERT CONTAINER CARAVANS

SOMALI PIRATES DISTURBED BY REPORTS

DUBAI - Arab Bedouins in the Arabian peninsula are reviving the historical desert caravans. Taking advantage of the high interest rates for shippers plying the waters off of the Somali coast, several Bedouin entrepreneurs have started offering container shipments by camel caravans across the desert from Dubai ports to ports in the Mediterranean.

This has somewhat disturbed Somali pirates as they feel that it is a clear violation of international shipping norms and they plan to protest the move with representatives in the next Gulf Cooperation Council meetings planned for later this year.

When asked why camel caravans and not trucks, Abdullah bin Kamal of Kamal Desert Caravan Lines stated, “Trucks need roads and the trips are much longer, drivers are expensive and diesel is not cheap, so we have a market niche.”

He also stated that unfortunately they have yet to solve problems with the camels sinking into the sand with the heavier containers and are looking into a special sand shoes, similar to snow shoes.