Leading developer Kleindienst Group has started building a 1-km-long climate-controlled Raining Street within its $5-billion masterplanned leisure tourism island destination, The Heart of Europe, located in Dubai.
An engineering marvel, it will offer year-round rainfall that will reduce the temperature to 27 degrees Celsius during the summer season providing cooling.
Surrounded by hotels and resorts in the Europe Island, it will become a major tourist attraction when Phase One of the project opens later this year.
The Raining Street will have a boulevard setting filled with street cafe, casual dining restaurants, retail outlets, fashion and souvenir shops, said the statement from Kleindienst Group.
It will also host as many as 51 year-round European festivals that will enthrall local and international tourists, it added.
A home-grown innovation envisioned by Josef Kleindienst, Chairman of Kleindienst Group and backed by Fraunhofer Institute, Europe’s largest application-oriented research organisation, the Rainy Street will be a game-changer in attracting tourists to the Heart of Europe.
"The Heart of Europe is an innovative and sustainable leisure tourism destination being built on a cluster of seven islands 4 km off the coast of Dubai that will offer the best of European culture, heritage, cuisine and environment," remarked Kleindienst.
"The vision behind the project is to offer the best European experiences to residents and tourists here in the UAE. It is an innovative, iconic and sustainable project. So, when we planned the project way back in 2007-08, we had looked at various possibilities to make it exceptional that is backed by innovative technologies to re-create the European climate in Dubai," he added.
According to him, the Rainy Street is inspired by a 150-year-old architectural concept of Camillo Sitte, an Austrian architect, who proposed to build cities where everything was in walking distance.
"We looked at a number of references for developing ideas and research institutes to support us to transform the vision into reality. After years of research and testing, I am glad to announce that we are now constructing the Rainy Street that we expect to deliver as part of the Phase 1 development later this year," stated Kleindienst.
“We are following Sitte’s idea of cities built with streets and boulevards within walkable distances. But to be able to walk from one place to another you should have the right climate," he explained.
"With the temperature ranging between 40 to 50 degrees Celsius during summer, people are not going to walk outside. Therefore, we need a technology to create an outdoor climate-controlled area. So, we contacted engineers and consultants from the European institute who visited Dubai in 2008 to understand the climate here and conduct their research," he added.
The technology interferes with the temperature, humidity and wind to ensure a cooler clime outdoor. The rainy street is also a sustainable project as it uses solar energy and it produces zero carbon emission.
“But in one of the plazas on the island, we will control the temperature through technical snow produced from water that will be environment-friendly.”
Kleindienst said the rainy street will be strategically located on Main Europe island, next to the Portofino family hotel, Marbella hotel and the Côte d'Azur resort, a cluster of hotels inspired by the lifestyle from Southern Europe.
The street will cross the island allowing visitors and families to stroll along the vibrant high street and its line-up of boutique retail offering, all year long, as if in Europe.
The Heart of Europe is set to become one of the most scenic and experiential luxury destinations in the Middle East and the world. The project, which combines high levels of sustainability with innovation, will add 15 atmospheric and highly differentiated hotels to the Dubai offering, 4,000 holiday homes, the iconic Floating Seahorse Villas and the beachfront boutique hotels at Cote d’Azur and Portofino resorts.
