Joanna James
The Palm Jumeirah has become a famed landmark in the United Arab Emirates, stretching 5 kilometres into the Arabian Gulf and shaped like a date palm. This man-made island is known as Dubai's self-styled "eighth wonder of the world". Here's more information!
There's an 11 kilometer breakwater that protects the island, in fact, the crescent shaped breakwater was the first section of The Palm to be built. A geotextile membrane stops the sand from the island from washing away and was topped by a layer of one-ton rocks followed by two more layers of rocks, each weighing up to six tons each! The breakwater protects the inner island from strong sea currents and winds that blow across the Gulf from Iraq. The breakwater consists of a 100m wide opening that was added to each side in order to allow water to circulate.
If you were wondering what The Palm is made up of during your time at Avani Palm View Dubai or any of the other Palm Jumeirah hotels, here's your answer: millions of tons of rock. The rocks were blasted from the nearby Hakat Mountains and 120 million cubic metres of sand were dredged from the bottom of the sea to form the island. If all the rock and sand used to create Palm Jumeirah could form a 2m-wide wall, it would circulate the globe three times!
With modern technology, engineers used satellites to plot the shape of the island as it called for extremely high levels of precision. Guided by hi-tech GPS, the dredgers used sprayed the sand into place with absolute accuracy. The technology used is known as Vibro-compaction, to prepare 560 hectares of reclaimed land to be built on. The finished area of the island is equivalent to 600 football pitches! In fact, the island is known to be four times bigger than London's Hyde Park.
The project began in 2001, and took 6 years to build. Today, the island is home to around 1500 beachfront mansions and almost 6000 apartments on the trunk. There are also plenty of major hotels and restaurants on the island!
Did you know that over 100 different studies were commissioned to study the scope of the Palm Jumeirah project? All major aspects of the projects were put into consideration such as marina design, transportation, technology and civil engineering.
Built using 200,000 cubic metres of reinforced concrete, a 6-lane sea tunnel was built. The tunnel connected the trunks to the crescent, 25 metres below sea level. In order to build the tunnel under dry conditions, two 1.2km long dykes were constructed to form a damn – more than 5.5 million cubic metres of seawater was pumped out, with 2000 fish caught and relocated to prevent them from getting trapped inside the space. Meanwhile, the dykes were later used as temporary toads for construction vehicles.
Long before Donald Trump garnered attention as President of the United States, he planned a 60-storey hotel on the island. Nevertheless, the project was quietly shelved in 2009 following the global financial crisis.
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