Masdar City, an Abu Dhabi, UAE-based sustainability and innovation hub dedicated to making all cities a solution to climate change, has revealed a new installation called Solar Tree as its latest eco-friendly addition to its Eco Plaza.
Just around the beginning of Covid something remarkable happened. After years of cold shoulders, the Arabian Emirati nations which make up the United Arab Emirates declared peace and friendship with Israel. It was a first from the Arab world to thaw out decades of boycotts and sanctions. While Israel has official peace with Jordan and […]
The Tenth Session of World Urban Forum, the world’s most important conference on cities convened biannually by UN Habitat has just concluded. For the first time, it took place in an Arab country, the United Arab Emirates, and the host, Abu Dhabi, had much to contribute to the conversation. Throughout the week-long event, representatives of […]
Etihad Airways has opened its new Etihad Eco Residence project in Abu Dhabi, the world’s first purpose-built, LEED Platinum-rated cabin crew accommodation project, offering . The project, resulting from a partnership with Masdar, provides 500 fully furnished one and two-bedroom flight crew apartments contained in 11 buildings at Masdar City. “The opening of the landmark Etihad Eco Residence […]
In 2006, former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, released “The Inconvenient Truth”. Gore attempted to bring greater knowledge to citizens of the world of the seismic threat of Global Warming. That same year, a pioneering project which was set to cost circa $22 billion was envisioned for Abu Dhabi. See draft of […]
A new report published by Siemens predicts that the share of renewables in the Middle East energy mix will triple over the next 17 years. That’s the good news. The bad news is that natural gas will remain the dominant power source in the region.
As an intern at Masdar Institute, I’ve witnessed firsthand how real and possible a drastically improved world is. Masdar serves as a real-life experiment of how our sustainable future might look like. Solar energy generated by a 10-megawatt solar photovoltaic plant as well as panels mounted on the institute’s buildings provide nearly all of the […]
Thousands of folding glass panels cover the southern facade of the Al Bahr Towers in Abu Dhabi (above). Reacting to sunlight, they form a protective skin to decrease interior solar gain. It’s a modern riff on the best known element of Arabic architecture, in play since the Middle Ages. Meet the modern mashrabiya.
Masdar is taking decisive steps to build Masdar City’s first private homes. Adding to existing and planned educational, retail and business facilities just outside of Abu Dhabi, the 500 new houses promise to be “super sustainable” and ready within the next two years.
Terrorists and Houthi pirates probably come to mind long before honey when people think of Yemen, but the raw Yemeni honey Balqees had for sale at the recent Masdar Festival in Dubai we visited was far and away the yummiest honey I ever put in my mouth.
Masdar City is starting to shape up with a roster of new buildings. Siemens recently completed their LEED Platinum headquarters, the new IRENA headquarters is in progress, and GE just opened their first Ecomagination Center in the city’s first commercial building – the Incubator Building.
When the Middle East eco-city developers from Masdar approached David Ardill, Partner and Design Director at Sheppard Robson, to design Siemens’ new corporate headquarters at Masdar City, the architect said it was the most challenging brief he had ever encountered. Green Prophet visited the building this week for an exclusive tour.
Can there be more Masdars? Can this experimental eco-city be replicated in other Middle Eastern or North African countries that don’t have Abu Dhabi’s immense oil wealth? Green Prophet put this question to Anthony Mallows, Director of Masdar City, and Chris Chi Lon Wan, City Design Manager, during a recent roundtable discussion.
This is the second year that Masdar has hosted Green Prophet at the World Future Energy Summit (WFES). Last year we visited Shams I, the world’s largest CSP plant, more state-of-the art green buildings at Masdar City, and we saw an Estidama green villa prototype.
There’s something so satisfying about watching the seed of an idea turn into something real – like GE’s Ecomagination Center unveiled at Masdar City outside of Abu Dhabi today.