Burlington turn the desert green

The Festival Waterfront Centre is a 280,000m2 retail, dining and leisure centre in Dubai. Amid a plethora of natural stone, the development includes a stunning water feature, called ‘Origami’, that includes 1,100m2 of green Cumbrian slate from UK quarriers Burlington. ‘Origami’ is the creation of Los Angeles-based Fluidity Design Consultants, leading specialists in water feature design. The stone was installed by specialist contractors Carrara Mid-East Industrial Co Llc.
Conceived in response to the design brief of project architects Jerde Partnership of Venice, California, ‘Origami’ not only connects the three levels of the Festival Waterfront Centre visually, but also physically using a series of switchback staircases. There is seating at each staircase landing with views out over Dubai Creek through a vast feature window.
‘Origami’ is made up of 11 diamond formed prisms, each of which features Burlington’s mid-green Broughton Moor stone that has been cut into custom shaped rectangular panels with a line-textured finish. They are laid vertically and staggered across a diagonal pattern. The prisms are clad in glass panels that have been back painted in a green to co-ordinate with the stone and create an overall structure that is 13.5m high, 15m wide and 24m deep.
Commenting on behalf of Fluidity Design Consultants, President Jim Garland said: “The Burlington stone obviously plays a very important part in ‘Origami’ and it was selected only after sourcing many different types of natural stone samples from around the world. We believe that there is nothing quite like it when it comes to its colour and texture, which is further enhanced when water is seen cascading over it.”