Project overview
The Esaad building is a Dubai Police building in Dubai. Wrenze Steel carried out structural design and detailing for the project, with Al Bayt Al Jamil Consultancy as consultant.
The render shows a compact, grey-clad block with a large white arch that sweeps from the ground up over the glazed entrance. The arch is the building’s main architectural feature and gives the entrance its identity.
Our scope
Our scope covered structural design and detailing, taking the steel from engineering concept through to drawings ready for fabrication.
Design set the structural system, the loads, the member sizes and the connection types, with calculations for the consultant’s review.
Detailing turned that design into shop drawings: assembly drawings showing how each piece fits, and part drawings with every plate, hole and weld, so the fabricator can build directly from them.
Having one team do both is useful on a public building. Design intent is not lost between engineer and detailer, and questions about a connection can be answered by the person who designed it.
The structure
Sweeping architectural features like the arch on the Esaad building are often framed in steel. A curved frame can be fabricated from rolled or bent steel sections, or from plate, and then clad to give a smooth finish like the one in the render.
An arch that rises from the ground at one end and meets a building at the other is not a classic symmetrical arch. It behaves partly as a curved beam and partly as a cantilever. The design must follow how load travels through the curve and into the supports, and check the curved members for bending and stability.
Cladding adds weight and catches wind across the whole face of such a feature, and the support brackets for that cladding are part of the steel design.
Detailing curved steel needs particular care. The geometry of each curved member must be set out precisely so that segments join cleanly and the cladding sits on a smooth line.
Read about our structural steel design service and our work in Dubai, or request a quote.
