An army of 180 workers, designers and supervisors of Bahrain’s Alyusuf Décor is working on a war footing to complete the entire ceilings and partitions works of the Bahrain City Centre project ahead of the scheduled grand opening in September.

Alyusuf’s BD750,000 ($1.98 million) contract, which is expected to reach close to BD1 million ($2.65 million) by the time it is completed, includes a range of ceilings and partitioning works at the landmark project.
“This is one of the most challenging projects that we have undertaken to date,” says Mohammed Alyusuf, architectural engineer and managing director of Alyusuf Décor, a subsidiary of Alyusuf Group of Companies.
“In the central mall area, a three-dimensional curved ceiling – which resembles a quarter-egg shell – rises from a height of 7 m to reach a maximum of 40 m. Our artisans had a challenging task in working on these curved ceilings at these heights. In addition, the fast-track nature of the project meant that we had little room for errors.”
“The gradual curving ceiling meets a straight slanted double-glazed facade, which bathes the central mall with natural lighting,” Alyusuf continues. “The central mall ceiling, which covers an area of 5,000 sq m, is covered by gypsum false ceiling boards that are fixed by GI steel channels, which impart a modernistic look.”
All the materials that have been used for the project have been approved by the architect and relevant authorities, says Alyusuf. The ceiling plasterboards are from Boral Middle East, a joint venture between France’s Lafarge and Australia’s Boral – two world leaders in building materials. The steel systems are from leading UK manufacturer A-Metal.
Apart from the ceilings for the mall, the company also was involved with those of the walkways, the cinemas and the food-court areas. “It could be said that there are few sections within the Bahrain City Centre where you do not have Alyusuf’s work over your head. This gives an idea of the extent of our involvement with the project,” he says.
The company also installed the partitioning systems for the various components of the project, and supplied and installed Trilite (water retardant and fire-rated magnesium boards) for use in the toilets area.
Alyusuf will also be carrying out work for a number of shops that are coming up at the centre. “For some of the leading stores, we have also executed complete turnkey solutions that include the design and build of the shops interiors,” he points out.
Another major component that the company is involved with is the suq area, which will have a traditional archway and plastered walls that will help recreate the traditional Bahraini suq of yore, says Alyusuf.
“The main contractor for the project has also agreed to our proposal for the ceilings and the partitioning systems for the 22-screen multiplex. This proposal has been highly rated for its acoustic and fire-retardant capabilities by an international audit team,” he adds.
Commenting on some of the challenges faced, Alyusuf says: “The fact that we had a team of experienced designers and supervisors on site helped us to proactively address any of the challenges that were likely to crop up at the design or the execution stage of the project. Also, our designers managed to stay ahead of the execution phase by providing the necessary shop drawings up to three months in advance, which gave us a fair amount of flexibility to finalise the designs, or tweak them and get the changes approved from the client without delaying the execution of work.”
“Apart from the ceilings of the central mall, those for the food-court were also challenging in that they have a snake-shaped design and curves as well,” he adds.
Alyusuf says that it is the company’s vast experience in executing projects of a similar scale and complexity that has landed it this challenging project. It had earlier worked on the ceilings of prestigious malls in the kingdom including the Marina Mall, Dana Mall, Bahrain Mall and the Seef Mall’s West expansion.
“We have recently finished work on the Seef Mall West extension and are now associated with the 15-storey hotel that is coming up within the development,” he says.
Alyusuf has also been called upon by Petroholland to design its offices on the 32nd floor of the Bahrain World Trade Centre (BWTC). “Impressed by our designs, Petroholland has asked us to design a further three offices across the globe,” Alyusuf adds.