Architecture firm The Cox Group has beaten international competitors to win a major university project planned for the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.
Architecture firm The Cox Group has beaten international competitors to win a major university project planned for the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.
Perth-based director Greg Howlett, who is responsible for Cox’s activities in the region, will be project director for the university development.
The project involves the design of a new campus for the UAE University, which was established in 1976 and currently has 17,000 students.
The new campus will consist of 280,000 square metres of educational facilities, support and student residential accommodation and will be built over a period of six years on an 80-hectare site.
Two Australian firms, Woods Bagot and The Cox Group, were among six firms invited to submit design proposals.
They competed against three major architecture firms from the US and one from Kuwait.
Mr Howlett, whose firm trades as Cox Howlett + Bailey Woodland in Perth, said the university would be one of the largest projects Cox had undertaken, with the work to be spread across three of its offices.
The UAE University project is being managed by Mubadala Development Company, which is wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, one of seven emirates that comprise the UAE federation.
Mr Howlett said Cox had been active in the region for about five years and was currently involved in three projects, including an exhibition and convention centre, a 60-storey building, and a new prison.
Several other Australian firms, including construction company Multiplex and consulting engineers GHD and BG&E, have also been working in the region, attracted by infrastructure projects collectively worth tens of billions of dollars.
In April, Multiplex announced that it had been awarded contracts to build 12 additional residential towers costing $392 million in a new development in Dubai. It is already building nine towers in the same development.
Perth-based BG&E is providing structural engineering services for the same developments and is working on three other high-rise developments, including a 70-storey tower.
GHD’s projects in the region include masterplanning, in conjunction with Woods Bagot, for Dubai Maritime City, a new $US1 billion infrastructure project.
It has also been appointed as project manager for one of the world’s largest urban developments, known as The Palms.