Belgians are building giga hotel with 100 swimming pools and 700 rooms in Dubai

The Belgian company Besix is ​​fully engaged in the construction of the Royal Atlantis Hotel. That should soon include more than one hundred swimming pools, more than two hundred apartments and another seven hundred rooms. The company is also building the Belgian and French pavilions for the world expo in 2020.
These are very busy times for Besix in Dubai. One and a half kilometers from the Atlantis hotel (also built by Besix), the Belgian construction company is currently building a second Royal Atlantis Hotel in futuristic style. It will be huge with almost a hundred swimming pools, more than two hundred apartments and more than seven hundred rooms. It must be ready by the opening of the world expo October 20, 2020.
And so there are buildings that the Belgian company must get finished by next year, because it is also building two pavilions at the expo: the Belgian and the French. "There is nothing upright yet, at most some foundations, but that was planned", reassures Jonas Vandeven. "The entire construction method has been adjusted to that timing. That will be all right. "

In the Belgian pavilion there will also be some concrete structures printed by Besix in 3D, a seat or a pillar from the 3D studio that the company has in Dubai. It is no coincidence that Besix founded that studio in Dubai. Jonas Vandeven explains: "A few years ago, Dubai expressed the vision to become the 'smartest city' of the world. One of the key points was that 25 percent of the buildings would be 3D-printed by 2025. We have not yet got a whole house out of the Besix print robot, the horizontal parts are still too brittle, but vertical structures, pillars and facades and the like are already possible, and we are looking to roll that out. in Belgium. We are seeing interest growing there. We hope to be able to implement our new building solutions in Belgium, "says Vandeven.
In recent years, Besix has built the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and the Ferrari World amusement park in Abu Dhabi. 140 km away, in Dubai, Besix participated in the construction of the Burj Khalifa (the highest tower in the world, 828 meters, 163 floors), the canal, the metro, Legoland. At the moment, the construction of the Royal Atlantis hotel is in full swing. This project and the Belgian and French pavilions must be finished before the start of the world expo on October 20, 2020. "A very short and intensive period for Besix, but nothing to worry about. That will be all right," says 3D- Director of Besix, Jonas Vandeven.

Tower of one kilometer high

It is therefore a busy construction period for Besix, but also an exciting time. After all, there will soon be an answer to the question whether Besix can build the highest tower in the world, a tower that is said to be one kilometer high. Vandeven: "We are still in the running for that Dubai Creek Harbor project. Officially it is not yet known how big it will be, but in any case it will be the highest in the world. We hope that within a few months it will become clear who is going and then hopefully we can start with that. Our file for that is in. "

Besix was there very early in Dubai and set foot on it in 1965 - that is before the United Arab Emirates came into existence in 1971. In Dubai it has its headquarters, from which it has its 8,000 employees spread throughout the Gulf region , controls. "A third of our turnover is in the Gulf. In the Emirates they see us as a local company. We are part of the" home market "here," explains Jean-Philippe Patesson, technical director of Belhasa Six Construct, the local branch of Besix.