Revisited Icon | Beatriz Ramo

Dubai is filled with landmarks. How to create an icon that represents Dubai?
Unfortunately, contemporary icons are usually corrupted by trends, framed in time, quickly consumed, economically unsustainable, and irrational.
In the land of excess to go for the tallest, the biggest, and the most expensive yet again would not make sense.
And to avoid the catastrophe that icons create, we strive for the simple.
An icon that represents them all.

I- The pure icon
As colours, black and white.
As form, the square.
…
As process, the extrusion.
As organization, the grid.
…
The seven towers will strongly resist the concepts of time, style, fashion, mode, type…
As if born out of the Theory of Forms by Plato, they exist as the highest and most fundamental kind of reality. The towers will symbolize all the buildings of Dubai, all the colours, and all the plans…

II- The endless icon
This icon cannot be framed. It cannot be limited in time or space. It is timeless because it will never be old-fashioned. It is endless because the water reflects the towers during the day and during the night, the light transporting them to the sky.
It is an icon without end because there are seven towers and the number 7 is used to symbolize infinity.

III- The narrative icon
History:
The most significant aspect of the history of Dubai is the phenomenal level of development and construction activity. This creates a drawing of Dubai. It is leaving its mark on the ground. We use these traces to create the patterns that will be engraved on the facades of the towers.
-Like a column of text, they will tell of history in a language that everybody understands: the image.
We use urbanism as an ornament. Just as with the old temples, where they used figurative, vegetal, or geometric motives to inform the people, the seven towers will tell the history of Dubai by revealing its urban footprints like an architectonic tale.
We reveal in the façade what a pedestrian can never see; what is only visible from a plane, or through aerial viewing applications.
Urban planning elevated to art!

IV- The sustainable icon
How to make a sustainable icon?
The most sustainable icon: Wind, sun and a durable image.
The icon that contributes to the new face of Dubai must not become obsolete or inadequate in the near future. Icons often look outdated the moment they are created given the speed of trends in architecture as in taste and fashion.
We present a design with an environmentally friendly strategy that generates more energy than it needs, and with an appearance that will never look old-fashioned.
Wind:
The seven towers work as a windmill-park. Each tower integrates a wind turbine that generates enough energy for its own lightening needs and services, and generates a surplus that will be transferred to the city. The electricity will be transported to the electrical grid during the day, and taken back at night when the towers light the sky.
Sun:
The towers are orientated in a North-South direction. We will integrate photovoltaic cells in the patterns of the facades. They will be placed proportionally to the best possible orientation.
Style
The seven Towers remain neutral between the past and the future, between day and night, between colour and black & white pictures, and between fashions and trends…
Black and White, a pure shape and a grid…

V- The rational icon
Grid:
The grid is made out of plants, water, trees, sand… The grid follows a North-South direction. It is a delicate layer added to the park. It preserves all its existing elements and integrates them into the squares. This superimposition reinforces the sinuosity of the park and the rationality of the grid. Visitors pass through an architectonic promenade of squares and towers experiencing the contrast of this skyline in a park. City and nature come together in an abstract piece of art.
The visitor will continue on this experience to the viewing platforms in the Towers.