As part of our new summer series, we will be looking back at some of the most colourful and extraordinary proposals pitched in Dubai and the wider region and investigating what happened to them.
Earlier in the week, we looked at plans for an underwater tennis stadium pitched by a Polish architect, Hollywood actor Brad Pitt’s ideas for a series of environmentally-friendly projects across Dubai, a Swedish firm’s designs for a moving statue and on Wednesday we looked at a Chinese team’s ambitions for a globe-shaped, technologically-advanced neighbourhood.
Today, we are looking at the Dubai Heart Water Park Resort.
Water parks are very popular in the United Arab Emirates. Statistics from the Themed Entertainment Association show that last year Dubai had two parks in the top ten of the most popular in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
In second place was Aquaventure at The Atlantis The Palm Hotel, which attracted 1,397,000 in 2018, and in joint eighth was Jumeirah’s Wild Wadi, which had 720,000 visitors last year.
Therefore, it is no surprise that Dubai decided it wanted to capitalise on this trend and put out requests for another a bigger, better water park. The result was Dubai Heart Water Park Resort.
According to the design plans, the resort was to sit on a 46,050 square metre island off the coast of Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach. The main theme demanded by Dubai Municipality was that the symbolic letter written in Arabic, ‘Heart’ was to be used throughout the design.
The final design was submitted by Hong Kong-based architecture firm THEEAE in December 2017.
“The main theme Dubai Heart was given from The Dubai Municipality and we developed as to be meet their given concept to achieve the world’s highest water slide and the greatest man-made waterfall,” a spokesperson told Arabian Business.
The designs also included a cafeteria, restaurant, roof garden bars, marina, children water zone, sky lounge, amphitheatre, jogging walkway, water sports area, family Jacuzzi area, and so on.
Despite the popularity of other parks in the area, THEEAE said the project has so far not advanced any further than the drawing board.
“We don’t have further information to answer. It was the invited competition and we have no further information,” the spokesperson added.
Coming next week: Dubai’s International Chess City
Check out the other projects in the series:
Dubai’s underwater tennis stadium
Brad Pitt’s eco-friendly Dubai projects
Dubai Technosphere (below)