On Blue Waters Island in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a leisure and recreation centre designed by the Iranian architectural firm Shahrooz Zomorrodi & Associates is under construction. Covering some 100,000 m2, the leisure complex includes a children’s play area, trampoline park, mini golf, rooftop bars and a restaurant. Commissioned by 88alpha, a leisure and hospitality asset management and operation company, the aim of the project was to create a “recreational complex that met the needs of all ages with variable interests”. The project is overseen by Meraas Holding, a company that promotes “world-class real estate projects (…) that strengthen Dubai’s position as the global real estate investment destination of choice”. In this case, it is Treehouse.
Of the spaces in the Treehouse complex, we found the interior design and theming of its restaurant, The Hive Food Court, particularly interesting. According to the architects’ statements to World Architecture News, they approached the design of The Hive with the idea “to create a completely handmade piece of art with unusual and innovative qualities, to stimulate different emotions in each visitor”. In the case of The Hive Food Court, visitors will be able to thrill themselves with five different gastronomies, separated in as many spaces: 8taly, Asianica, Burguer8, Coffeelicious, Greenlett and Little Beirut.
From a general point of view, Shahrooz Zomorrodi & Associates designed the restaurant with biomimetic elements, surreal objects and special attention to the lighting system and furniture. With these details and elements, it creates a “a dream world (…) that is not accessible except through the lens of imagination“.
Among the biomimetic elements of the design that give The Hive its particular theming is the cladding of some of its walls with large hexagonal shapes that mimic a honeycomb, with mirrors or crystals inside the cells. Also, there are some 190 sustainably grown pine trunks, imported from New Zealand, distributed vertically throughout the space. Numerous cocoon-shaped lamps hang between these isolated trunks. All to give the whole the appearance of a dreamlike fairy-tale setting, a fable in which forest and fantasy mingle.
Treehouse has been nominated for the WAN Awards 2022, to be announced in November, in the leisure category. You can enjoy a walk through the project and, in particular, the interiors of The Hive Food Court, with this video:
