dubai
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A new record-breaker was achieved on Dubai’s skyline, and it was almost by accident. Ciel Tower, the world’s tallest hotel, towering 377 meters of glass and ambition above Dubai Marina, has officially opened. That height was not planned. When the blueprints were torn up and redrawn, they grew larger than expected.
“We wanted to build something great,” says Rob Burns, CEO of project developer The First Group. “But we didn’t set out to build the world’s tallest hotel.”
Despite its record scale, Ciel’s creators were still forced to think small. The entire building covers approximately 3,600 square meters, or approximately 40,000 square feet, which is slightly smaller than a professional soccer field. It’s not exactly small, but it’s just a tiny bit in Dubai.
That meant the tower’s architect, Yahya Jan, had to exhibit constraints and resort to some clever tricks.
Once you take a short walk through the building, as CNN did with Yang and Burns, you begin to notice a sense of tension throughout the project. This is a tower built for show, and one must always remember the size of its footprint. Almost everything inside is shaped by the small conspiracy that started this coincidental record.
For example, the entrance, while luxurious, is not at all what you would expect from a record-breaking store in Dubai. You walk in expecting something grand, something big enough to host a convention or decorated with statues and water features. Instead, you get soft lighting, curves, and the feeling of a space designed by someone who understands how little it is.
“This was a very challenging project for us,” says Yang. “This is an irregularly shaped site. With a tower of this size, the site could have been larger. But I always say, we do our best work when it’s the most difficult.”
In other words, the lobby is necessarily compact. The grandeur is deferred upwards, revealed floor by floor until the moment when the building finally gains enough altitude to become dramatic.
The rooms follow this theme. The clean interior features neutral colors and smooth textures. Although modest compared to Dubai’s typical expansive resort suites, the floor-to-ceiling views of the marina, Palm Jumeirah and the Gulf are quite impressive. But with 1,004 rooms on 82 floors, the hotel is entering a market already saturated with beds.
Burns recognizes the numbers. “I think 1,000 rooms is definitely a challenge, and we knew that from the start,” he says. Still, he maintains that hotels are “very bullish on the hospitality market” and that there are many things that make them stand out. “360 degree views, great rooms, amenities, facilities” and more.
At the top, Ciel’s characteristic flourish appears in the form of a cavity (what Jean calls the “eye of the needle”), which is for design as well as function.
A skyscraper like Ciel must come to terms with nature. The higher the building, the stronger the wind. Even on a calm day, when you stand here, you can feel the wind flowing through the gaps. “If we need a high height, how can we shape the building to minimize wind loads? So we created cutouts to allow the wind to pass through the tower.”
There are 12 atria, six to eight stories high, filled with trees and plants. They are aesthetically pleasing and practical, letting in sunlight and providing a cool place for guests to gather.
What Yang calls a “social community space for people to gather” will be used for yoga and fitness sessions, or as a restaurant overspot. “We’re creating small parks vertically,” he says, dividing the tower into “smaller districts.” It also helps with cooling and energy utilization by using computer-controlled glass louvers to “capture sea breezes.”
“The towers of the future are going to look different than the towers of 50 years ago,” Yang says. “They will become porous and bring nature into these towers.”
Perhaps the most Dubai-like thing about Ciel is that they didn’t set out to create a record-breaking film, but that it just happened. They kept adding equipment and the building kept rising because there was nowhere else to put it.
It was Jean who signaled that the design was now in record territory, as it came within range of the previous title holder, the 356m-plus Gevora Hotel, also in Dubai.
“Yahiya came to us and said, ‘Hey guys, we’re about to build the tallest hotel in the world,'” Burns said. “And we said, ‘Wow, okay. Let’s make it happen.'”
Ciel’s dining and pool spaces follow the same logic as the rest of the tower, making the most of what is available. The hotel has eight restaurants on its upper floors, with the UK-based Tattu brand occupying the most impressive position. House of Dragon at number 74, House of Koi surrounding the skypool at number 76, and House of Phoenix located in the skylounge at number 81, do much of the décor with 360-degree views.
There are three pools, but the highlight is the level 76 infinity pool, which is located within the wind-ventilated space of the tower. It’s not big, but if you have a visual trick that makes the water look like it’s disappearing straight into the sky, it doesn’t need to be big.
Ciel is not the most luxurious hotel in Dubai. It doesn’t have a grand lobby or expansive beachfront like the Palm Resorts. But this shows what can happen when a city used to living in large cities shows restraint.
Public spaces are elegant without being excessive. The rooms are comfortable. And the views, especially from the upper floors and the sky pool, lend logic to the decision to build a 377-meter-high hotel on such a relatively small piece of land.
Ciel adds another shape to a skyline that rarely stays the same for long. It is unclear whether he will be able to hold onto the world record title for long. Dubai appears to see even its own top-of-the-line goods as a challenge.
