PROJECT 373

"WINDING BREEZE"

100 Architects

Winding Breeze is 100 Architect’s creative design response for the design of a large portion of Beach Corniche, a 9,5 km. corniche recently inaugurated in the UAE.

The client was aiming at adding a cluster of high-quality public amenities to enhance the visitor’s experience in the public realm, equipping the beach corniche with eye-catching and functional activities, including sports, leisure areas, play & entertainment, beach facilities as well as F&B & retail units. All in all, a public space activation project that aims to create a trendy outdoor lifestyle hub and gathering point for the local community as well as for visitors, right next to an international Hotel currently under construction at the Beach Corniche.

The conceptual proposal intends a bold architecturalization of that unique feeling of the sea breeze caressing the skin when arriving at a bespoke tourist destination on holidays. A memorable moment turned into architecture. That is Winding Breeze. A place to reconnect with nature, to feel human. A place to slow down and breath, to connect with others. A place to walk, to skywalk, and enjoy the goodness of UAE’s climate, enhancing outdoor lifestyle facilities.

We have focused our efforts in creating a plastic gesture that could become both, an urban and a natural landmark in the entire UAE and beyond. An eye-catching way of activating the city coastline to attract locals, international visitors, nature & sport lovers, etc.

The breeze loops break the existing never-ending rectilinear beach promenade into smaller human-scale sections, encouraging visitors to slow down and enjoy memorable experiences, indulging in leisure spaces, lush nature, and a wide variety of sport facilities allocated in the pocket plazas created by those loops, all accompanied by a shaded retail and F&B area as an architectural buffer to the busy road.

Each of the pocket plazas formed by the revolving path, becomes a platform hosting specific functions and features that encourage dynamics of social interaction through leisure and play.

The abstract expression of the wind is represented by a swirling pedestrian path that elevates in order to create a microclimate underneath, hosting a shaded park and resulting on a beach skywalk that offers great views both, over the beach and the city, as well as facilitating a pedestrian connection to the urban settlement across the road that currently separates it from the coast.

Altogether, the intervention enhances and stimulates visually and functionally the experience of visitors in all senses, turning this section of the Beach into one of the main catalyzers of social life in Sharjah, through a very colorful and stimulating community hub for neighbors and tourists of Sharjah alike.

PROJECT NAME: Winding Breeze 

DESIGN: 100 Architects (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.

DESIGN TEAM: Marcial Jesús, Javier González, Mónica Páez, Lara Broglio, Ponyo Zhao, Keith Gong, Cosima Jiang, Michelle Aldora & Yuntong Liu.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT TEAM: Jenny Fan & Eva Jiang.

CLIENT: Confidential

SIZE: 15,000 m2

STATUS: Concept Design

LOCATION: Sharjah (UAE)

RENDERS: 100 Architects (Shanghai) Co., Ltd.