Dubai’s thirst for crass civic projects and buildings cannot, it seems, be quenched. In the last decade, the emirate has cultivated an utterly strange landscape of isolated icons, each one more “spectacular”,”daring”, and “different” than the last. From the vacuous iconicity of the Burj Khalifa to the ludicrous ambition of ”the World“, Dubai’s tolerance for an asinine and radically depoliticized architecture has yet to be exceeded. See the latest conceptual project, Deep Ocean Technology’s proposed Water Discus Underwater Hotel, another “diamond in the rough (waters)” scheme that envisions a partially submerged object of vage sci-fi origins. And, by vague, we mean Star Trek.
According to the sleek initial renderings, the hotel is to be stranded in a reef, with lodging above and below the waterline. The structure consists of a system of modular programmatic discs, anchored to the seafloor by steel legs capable of withstanding tsunami-scale conditions. The discs can be moved, replaced, and multiplied to alter the hotel’s composition and respond to the vagaries of sea life.
The skyward discs suspended above the waterline will be programmed with a helipad, spa, gardens, and terraces that reveal vast panoramas of the shore beyond, while the underwater accommodations will extend twenty-one stories down into the water to open up intimate views of the diverse marine habitat. The project presents an advancement for housing and tourism in coastal off-shore areas, according to the hotel’s investors, who also claim that the hotel’s modular structure can double as a “laboratory tool” with which to further oceanographic research in the region and work towards creating “new underwater ecosystems and activities on underwater world protection.”
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