The Opus

The Opus, consists of one large podium plus three floors of hotel. The mid-section of the two towers has commercial floors while the last three floors of the towers, joined together by a bridge, contain luxury apartments and 98 serviced residences.

The 93-room hotel is the first ME by Melia hotel in the region. The building also contains Michelin star restaurants and private residences designed by Zaha Hadid, a bespoke wellness centre, coffee shops, retail space and a multi-storey car park.

Omniyat Properties ‘revealed’ the concept design in May 2007 at the British Museum in London. Ground works started in 2008 but in 2009 work was put on hold until early 2010. The building was expected to be completed in the summer of 2017, but the commercial spaces were not handed over until Q3 2018 whilst the hotel may not open until the end of 2019.

In the architect’s own words: "I thought it would be interesting to create something other than a high rise, so we concentrated on creating a degree of density in a cube. But instead of leaving the shape alone, we wanted to erode it and carve it away – a concept we have used for ground-level projects but until now not for high rises."

One of several unique buildings specified as part of masterplan concept for Dubai, The Opus comprises two structures, conceived as a single cube eroded by a free-form void, which appears to ‘hover’ above ground-level. A pixilated reflective façade renders the cube full by day; by night, it ‘dematerializes’ as light floods the void.

The bridge consists of three floors of hotel apartments.

At a height of 71 metres from the ground level, the bridge has a length of nearly 38 metres and a width of nearly 26 metres, with the height varying between 20.95 metres and 24.85 metres.

More than five international engineering teams - Zaha Hadid, BG&E, Brewer Smith Brewer group (BSBG), National Engineering Bureau (NEB), Koltay - and three contractors - Brookfield Multiplex, Alu Nasa, Al Nasr - have worked together to develop the design of the steel elements and that of the complicated double curved facades.

There was an intense co-ordination effort to ensure that the steel structure of the bridge would fit the free flowing glass that wraps around it. All the steel elements were designed using complicated 3D software.

The bridge has two façade systems with one of them being a unitized façade system while the other being a reversed skylight system under the belly of the bridge.

The design of the façade systems proved to be extremely challenging as each piece of double curved glass is unique and had to be designed and constructed individually.

Each piece of glass was installed independently from a massive deck installed under the bridge.

The double curved glass was manufactured in China, while the double curved aluminum frames for the void glass came from Denmark. The secondary steel elements for the skylight system were procured from Holland.

The inner facades of the project forms a seamless fluid glass surface and resembles melted ice.

Pixelated striations in the window glass reduce the inflow of solar heat to the interior.

The ME by Melia hotel is due to open in Februry 2020.