Dubai has a history of setting records. They constructed the tallest structure first, then the biggest mall in the world. And now, if plans materialise, the emirate would house the largest underwater hotel in the world.
With the assistance of the Swiss business BIG InvestConsult AG, the Polish company Deep Ocean Technology (DOT) created the Water Discus hotel. Two discs—one submerged and one hanging above the water—will make up the hotel. Five legs will link the discs, and a vertical shaft with steps and a lift will be located in the middle.
Up to 10 metres below the surface of the water, there will be a component of the hotel with 21 double rooms next to a diving shop and a bar. Each area has been created to “integrate as closely as possible with the underwater world.”
The hotel is modular, so if there are any environmental or financial issues, the Water Discus may be moved to a different location. To serve as lifeboats in the event of a natural disaster, the surface discs have been made buoyant and removable from the main framework.
The initiative, according to BIG President Bogdan Gutkowski, will have an effect on a number of areas in addition to Dubai’s tourist sector. “Water Discus Hotel project opens many new fields of development for the hotel and tourism sector, housing and city sector in the coastal off-shore areas, as well as new opportunities for ecology support by creation of new underwater ecosystems and activities on underwater world protection,” he said in a statement to World Architecture News.
Additionally, we would want to establish the International Environmental Programme and Centre of the Underwater World Protection here in the United Arab Emirates, using the Water Discus Hotel as a study and protection laboratory for the oceans and seas.
The Maldives Rangali Islands resort has one underwater suite, and there is also Jules Undersea Lodge, the only underwater hotel in the US. Nevertheless, this underwater project is by far the most ambitious to date.
