Al Jalila Research Centre

The Al Jalila Foundation and Dubai Healthcare City selected IBI Group and GHD as the architects and engineers respectively to design the Al Jalila Research Centre, the premier scientific research facility in the UAE. The site for the project is the previous home of Dubai University Hospital, which stopped mid-construction in 2010. The design of the new mixed-use building innovatively works with the existing substructure and structural grid to produce an arrangement for laboratory, healthcare and office accommodation that is flexible and adaptable to future change.

The new research centre incorporates social/lounge areas on each floor to encourage ad hoc discussion and interaction between researchers away from formal laboratory or write-up areas. Primary laboratory spaces are counterintuitively located at the heart of the building, away from the external façade – an arrangement which allows a direct physical link to the supporting specialist laboratories, visual connection to adjacent write-up areas, and the transmission of abundant natural light to the primary laboratory via fully glazed division walls.

The building form and appearance is intended as iconic but timeless, with a minimal palette of materials and repeated rectangular curtain wall paneling providing a distinctive mega-grid diamond pattern. The building is topped by black-lit glass panels following the crescent profile, contributing to the varied Dubai roofscape.

The building’s distinctive appearance, which bucks the trend from the Mediterranean-themed Dubai Healthcare City zoning, was personally endorsed by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. It provides the Al Jalila Foundation Headquarters with a distinctive identity and accommodation that enjoys commanding views towards the Dubai creek.