Elsewhere: Sails above Bahrain

This is all easily explained: from time immemorial the residents of the archipelago were seafarers and fishermen, pirates and hunters of the famous Bahraini pearl. Their life was closely connected with the sea. Since then the sail has remained a symbol of development and progress in the right direction.

Money, oil and skyscrapers.

"And this", said our driver, "is our new business centre 'Financial Harbour'". Above the greenish ripples of the Gulf, above the fishermen's moored boats, tower two twin skyscrapers the same colour as the water. These towers of green glass, reminiscent of the form of narrow sails, have already become a source of special pride for the residents of Bahrain. On the stuffy and warm evening, yellow after a sand storm, we went to the hotel from the airport. On the following day in Manama the 7th session of the Russian-Arab Business Council started, at which it was planned to discuss the cooperation perspectives between Russia and the Gulf states, including Bahrain.

Now this small country aspires to become a massive international trade and financial centre in the Persian Gulf region. The goal has made Bahrain competition for its powerful neighbours, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where powerful financial centres have already been formed.

In 1932 oil was discovered in Bahrain and over 50 years the kingdom's economy grew mainly because of income from oil extraction and refining. However at the beginning of the 1980s the deposits started to run short and now oils reserves are valued at 27 million tonnes, and the oil refining powers work mostly with oil from Saudi Arabia. Now 56.4% of Bahrain's GDP comes from the services sector, of which 27.6 percent is provided from the financial sector.

On its journey to transforming into the regional financial centre, 30 years ago Bahrain tried to take this title from Lebanon, when in 1975 a long civil war broke out there. Now there are 387 financial institutions, including 150 banks, in the kingdom. According to the overall results for 2006, the aggregate total of banking assets grew 33.5 percent and totalled $187.4 billion. From them $12.2 billion came from the share of 26 Islamic banks, a number which continues to grow. Besides the Islamic banks, there are 13 Islamic insurance companies and 88 Islamic investment funds operating in the small kingdom. All of this provides the basis for Bahrain to claim its role as a leading financial centre, both as a centre for Islamic finance and in the region of the Persian Gulf. Although it is true that Riyadh, Dubai and Qatar also claim this role. In order for the kingdom to strengthen its position, it was decided to build in Manama a business and financial complex called the Bahrain Financial Harbour (BFH).

Green Sails

The construction business which makes up more that 10 percent of the kingdom's GDP, is experiencing a boom. The analysts are confident that the rapid growth in the local property market has yet to reach its peak. As confirms Zakharia Khedzhres, deputy general director of the Bahraini Council for economic development, the number of large scale construction projects will grow. Today in Manama ten skyscrapers with a height of more than 100 metres have been completed or are in the process of construction.

However the construction of the BFH has become a national project. " I am referring to the project in the property market, which will serve Bahrain's financial community." said Esam Janahi, general director of Gulf Financial House - one of the biggest companies in the sphere of islamic investment , five years ago when presenting the members of the Bahraini business committee with the plan of building the BFH. "This project", he continued, "will be able to bring in all forms of financial institutes: Investment banks, Islamic banks, insurance companies, off-shore banks and others." The project's conception was to create an all-sufficient business complex, in which there will be offices, a conference centre, trading floors, and even a 1,200 space opera theatre, hotel, restaurants and apartments. By all accounts, in this complex, which is already being called the Canary Wharf of the Middle East, there will be 18,500 offices, 1,500 single apartments; 7,000 people will permanently live there and more than 8,000 will work there. The number of service personnel is more that 1,500 people. For the residents and visitors they plan to build a closed car park with more than 11,000 spaces.

On the 25th December 2002 they ceremoniously laid the first stone. Now the price of the project, which is planned to be completed in 2010, is valued at $1.5 billion. The authors of the plan are three Bahraini companies: Gulf Finance House, Reemoon Business Development Consultants and architectural firm Ahmed Abubaker Janahi Architects. Gulf Finance House owns 60 pecent of the project and the remaining 40 percent is owned by the Bahraini government.

Building is being carried out on four artificial islands and a piled up peninsular with a total area of 380,000 square metres on the coast of Manama central region. BFH is located 10 minutes from the international airport and four hours from the motor way which links Bahrain with Saudi Arabia.

The projects is being implemented in three stages. The first stage was completed in April 2007. The Bahraini prime minister Sheik Khalifah bin-Sulman al-Khalifah ceremoniously opened the three storey facility.

The two twin skyscrapers with 53 storeys each, known as the Dual Tower, have already become a symbol of Manama. In these towers, of a height of 260 metres, are located offices and commercial companies in the financial market sector. The second facility is Financial Mall, which is designed especially for companies working in the capital market. 74,000 square metres are assigned for a trading floor, brokerage offices as well as expensive shops and cafes. The third facility known as Harbour House - a 12 storey building with a total area of office premises of 12,240 square metres, is connected to the Financial Mall with a suspended glass bride. In May 2006 this building was bought in whole by one of the richest Saudi businessmen Khalid Abdul Rahman al-Rajhi for $30 million.

Sails with propellers

Another project, aimed at strengthening Bahrain's status as one of the leading centres for business in the region, was the construction in Manama of the Bahraini World Trade Centre Developing the architectural project and its implementation on the instructions of the Bahraini company Awal Hotel, was done by the large-scale British engineering company Atkins. This complex of buildings, the construction of which should be completed in 2008, is unique in its engineering.

Two 45 storey skyscraper-twins, also in the form of sails, rising up 240 metres. On 34 floors there will be offices and a viewing area at 42 metres for views of the island and the Gulf.

The uniqueness of this projects is the fact that the architects set themselves the task of providing the towers' energy requirement with alternative sources. After a long search it was decided to take the unusual decision. Three wind turbines, with a diameter of 29 metres, are secured, between the two skyscrapers on horizontal bridges one below the other. According to the project's authors, these turbines should provide 11 - 15 percent of the towers' energy requirements. Consequently the Bahraini World Trade Centre became the first architectural project which envisions the use of wind energy.

People have been trying to use the energy from the wind over the centuries. It is even taken as usual for the Dutch landscape of wind mills or the series of wind turbines established on the British coast to the North sea, or the fields of wind turbines somewhere in the USA in the state of Wyoming. The search for alternative sources of energy is active in our day, especially in development projects with large energy requirements. "I always dreamed of being able to use technology to get an additional supply of energy in our projects," says the director of the company's architectural subdivision Shaun Killa.

According to him, the first ideas of incarnating his dream in the specific project came to mind, when the customer approached him with a request to develop a plan of the land plot, on which at that time a Sheraton hotel, small office building and a trade centre were located.

The customer wanted the designers at Atkins to think of how enlarge the trade centre and on that very land plot build towers with offices and commercial areas, putting together new and existing facilities in one commercial centre.

When the architects started to study the possible solutions, it seemed that it was possible to enlarge the trade centre, by changing it into a shopping mall, which will be situated perpendicularly in relation to the Gulf. Consequently the most natural location of the two skyscrapers is at the sides of this perpendicular.

An so in another decision, determining the uniqueness of this project, played its roll as the so called special factor. "The area is situated on the very coast of the Persian Gulf", explained Killa. "As I enjoy sailing, the first time I arrived there, I noticed that there is constantly a wind blowing. The wind blows from the Gulf deep into the island, and precisely into the perpendicular area on which we intend to build these skyscrapers." "An here it dawned on me: Here is the possibility to build the twin towers with wind turbines!"

The architect said that the most difficult thing about this project is that nobody has ever done anything similar to it before. The engineers at Atkins had to play a role of first explorers. "When we began working, we had nobody to get advice from," he recalls. "And when we began to discuss the conception with the manufacturers of the turbines, at some points they seemed to simply be unable to answer our questions."

And of course as is always the case, the project caused many disputes. The company held an investigation, from which they found out that the majority of projects, which proposed using the wind turbines in the construction of the building, have been deemed unsuccessful. On the basis of this the price of the project increased up to 30 percent because of implementing this idea.

"In the past, the designers made one serious mistake", said Killa. "They planned the building with turbines which were either too big and expensive in production, or with turbines of a non-standard design which significantly increased the expenses on researching this part of the project".

Having studied the mistakes of their predecessors, the architects decided to use standard wind turbines with working characteristics already known. "The secret of our success is that by integrating such turbines into our project, we have had to carry out the minimal modifications", explained Killa. As a result of using wind turbines in the skyscrapers of the Bahraini trade centre, the cost of the project has rose less that 5 percent.

Where the wind blows

The engineers have came against the main difficulty: unlike simple wind turbines, these turbines were strongly fixed to horizontal axels.

"When wind turbines are established in fields, on the sea coast, or in any other open space, they can turn their 'face' to the wind. "But when the turbine is strongly fixed to a horizontal support between two towers, the regime of its work is principally changed", says Killa. "So we decided that we had to plan the towers so that the wind between them was always directed at a right angle to the turbines." "This mean that the pair of skyscrapers had to act as a type of funnel, a air tunnel drawing in wind from the Gulf." "Even if wind blows in at 45 degrees from the central axel of the turbines, the form of the buildings is such that it corrects the direction of the wind and, having reached the blades, it blows from the right angle", explains Killa.

But that is not all. The architects had to get a lot of experience in the aerodynamic tunnels to comprehend the optimum form of the building for the most efficient work of the wind turbines.

This spring the assembly of all three wind turbines between the twin skyscrapers was completed. According to the engineers' calculations the wind turbines will produce 1,100-1,300 megawatt-hours a year. However if you take into account, that up to now there were no wind turbines installed between two specially constructed buildings, and at the height of 160 metres, it is possible to suppose that the energy they will give out will be even higher.