Al Ruwais Beach Club landscape architecture project is the fifty-five article on architecture projects from practice. The project is located in the Arabian desert country which has the characteristics of a traditional architecture style. The plot is located in a previously developed area established for oil and gas company residents of their housing development nearby. The project is located in one of the UAE cities of the Middle East area. It is a former waterfront beach club mini resort style for company staff. Due to its neglect for a long time because of many incidents happened like swimmers drowning and small people bitten by moving creatures like craps and snakes. The company decided to close the site for the safety of its employees. At the beginning of the year 2013, the company got an interest in developing and rehabilitating this site because of the increased demand from employees to use this site. See Figure 1, the site plan of the existing beach club from Google Maps.
The main developer the oil and gas company invited my company, while I was a design manager, to sign a consultancy contract to conduct design and supervision for the construction of the Al Ruwais Beach Club Landscape Architecture project. An internal competition inside the company was conducted to submit a couple of proposals for the client. The four concept designs were submitted to the client and the concept I developed as design manager won the competition.
A beach club rehabilitation project located at the far end of the Arab gulf region in the UAE. The club was built in the beginning of building a housing complex for the staff of the biggest oil and gas company in the Gulf region. The housing project included many public spaces, a kid’s playground, and a landscape, and the beach club was neglected, not purposely, but because of its far location from the housing complex development that requires a distance drive to reach it.
The beach club neglected a period that resulted in the decline of its infrastructure buildings, landscape, and the surrounding network. The staff of the company withdrew from using it because they considered safety matters related to the open coastline water surface. The main problem that made the beach club unsafe for families was that the seaside was facing continuous changes in water movement, the tidal waves continuously changed the silhouette of the sea, the water level had fast tidal waves, the water depth was deeper in near land to the seaside club entry point, and all these were not only unsafe for families children but also for the elderly who do not know how to swim see figure 2.
A landscape specialist consultancy from Malaysia was assigned to the project to handle the execution of the landscape rehabilitation and design. An assessment with a geotechnical consultancy to survey the seabed and study the tidal wave movements. A dredging was required for the seabed and a coastal protection wall was also required to prevent the tidal waves from entering the beach seaside for protecting swimmers. Many of the trees in the beach club were damaged and infected which required an agricultural intervention and some of them already dried and dead. The loans in all the areas were not useful for use and the removal was required. The soil of the beach club used for planting also was damaged by the sand brought by wind from the seaside and the soil was removed and replaced by others. In assessing the feasibility of rehabilitating the seaside and considering the cost and usage of the club the client requested to build two swimming pools instead of using the seaside water for swimming activities. The seaside was cleaned, and minor dredging was conducted and a path the small harbor created was erected for future use. Two swimming pools one for the elderly and one for the children were designed in the project. A racing ring for small cars for kids was included inside the development as a small mosque. The landscape consultant considered rehabilitating the old and high trees only and replacing the small ones with new trees. See Figure 4 for the overall landscape design layout.
The project passed all phases of architectural design in the firm and the tender phase. Our firm invited several approved specialist contractors for the bid. One of the contractors was selected for the construction and rehabilitation of the beach club. The developer of the oil and gas company kept the project on hold for some time until the higher management decided on the kick-off construction phase. However, the project was canceled, and the company decided to remove all the landscape and conduct a small change to the overall layout by adding a new grass layer, bush, and new trees to the existing plot. The project was supplied with new tent structures, barbeque areas, sitting areas, and benches, as well as a new kid’s playground. See Figure 4, the new beach club site photo.
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