THE Sharjah Mega Mall, which opened last December, has become one of the leading retail and leisure facilities in the UAE.

With its art-nouveau theme and unique architecture, it provides a refreshingly different ambiance, providing shoppers with a relaxing and enjoyable environment.

Within its 800,000 sq ft built-up area, the mall enfolds a choice of around 150 retail outlets featuring a wide array of famous retail brands and services, and a memorable leisure experience.

The creation of this landmark with the very special requirements set by Sharjah-based Citadel Properties posed a challenge to the designing and contracting team, all of whom joined together to ensure that the client's requirements were met.

The Dh250 million ($68.1 million) project occupies a 12,000 sq m plot in the Abu Shagara area of Sharjah. The mall is three storeys high and includes two basement levels which accommodate car-parking and storage facilities, plant room and other service facilities.

Approximately 1,300 car-parking spaces have been provided within the basements and the surrounding surface car-parks.

The ground floor of the mall includes a supermarket, loading docks and retail outlets, while the first and second floors have retail outlets and the mall's management offices. The third floor houses a 85,000 sq ft family entertainment centre, a seven-screen cinema, and a 12-outlet food court which can seat 700 diners.

The Sharjah Mega Mall features retail outlets of popular international, regional, and local brands primarily targeting the middle-income group and family shoppers. Anchor stores include Zara, Paris Gallery, Brantano Shoe City, 2XL, Megamart Supermarket, Antic's Land, and Century Cinemas. Other major stores include Mango, Tower Records, Grand Stores, Elle, Rivoli, Adams, Reset and Promod.

Antic's Land is an 85,000 sq ft distinctively themed family entertainment centre. It comprises three mystical lands with unusual rides and games including a roller coaster, monorail, 4D Cinema and Haunted House.

The 12-restaurant food court includes outlets from Burger King, KFC, Sbarro, and Subway. There are also cafes and coffee shops scenically situated on each level of the mall.

The design was originally carried out in Melbourne, Australia and implemented on site by WS Atkins from Dubai. The latest concepts were assimilated in the design to ensure the mall offered the tenants as well as visitors features they would ideally look for in such a facility.

"All efforts were made to provide a first-class shopping centre built with first-class materials and equipment specified to meet the high standards," says a spokesman for Citadel Properties.

Work on the project was divided into two packages. The first was for the enabling works which included the excavation, shoring and dewatering, and piling and and the second for superstructure works and building fit-out. A number of subcontracts were also awarded for the various main packages such as the mechanical and electrical works and the interior fit-out, for which the main contractor was responsible.

The building sits on a pile foundation and its basement slab may be considered as a raft slab. The external facade is wrapped in insulated precast concrete panels.

The works were tendered twice on the basis of a main contractor for the building works above ground and a specialist contractor for the works for the foundations. State-of-the-art building management and mechanical and electrical systems have been designed and installed at the mall.

Work on the project was launched in June 2000. The foundation work was implemented by Saudi Binladin while a joint venture of Intermass Engineering and Contracting and Milne & Nicholls International undertook the main contract.

"The civil works progressed with the M&E works following on in sequence. Upon completion of the background works for the M&E services, the interior decor contractors for the public areas started their scope of works. The challenge for the team was then to allow the tenants' contractors to start fit-out of the shops while the mall was being completed," says the spokesman.

Design

Commenting on the design concept for the mall, the spokesman says: "The aim was to set up a shopping and leisure complex which would be visually stimulating while offering unimpeded views of the entire mall area. Visitor comfort right from the point of arrival also figured among priorities as did the need to offer tenants flexibility in designing their outlets according to their specific requirements. In addition, the client wanted a high efficiency percentage of leasable space to common areas.

"The design aim at creating a shopping mall which was devoid of columns, providing an unobstructed view of all the shopfronts and tenants in the area. This concept had to be reconciled with the overall site dimensions (60 m by 200 m) and the structural grid best suited for these requirements. The designers thus employed a wide structural grid suitable for wide column-free malls, basement car-parking, and the overall site. The result was a grid of 16.8 m by 8.4 m post-tensioned slabs for the mall floors and an 8.4 m by 8.4 m grid in the basements and anchor tenancies.

"Within the structural grid that was selected for the mall layout, two large voids penetrating the full height of the building were cut to increase visual sight lines and introduce daylight into the building. Each void is treated separately to provide variety and interest within the mall. Each void has a diameter of 22.5 m - with one capped with a glass dome and the other a 65 m-high tensile structure.

"Full-height tenancy spaces have been provided to allow the tenants full use of their space and have part mezzanine should it be required. The 16.8 m grids allows the plan to be divided as required by the tenants. The proportion of the full clear 4.5/4.8 m high ceilings complements the 8.4-m-wide mall spaces. The remaining space between the ceiling and the slab allows full access for the services and leaves the tenancy spaces clear of any mall services.

"An art nouveau theme has been implemented to provide a refreshingly different concept to the mall. Highlights of stainless steel and patterns in the floor in art-nouveau shapes provide a pleasant environment for the public.

"Being a mall with a ground, first, second and third floor, there was a need to draw people through and up into all the mall area. The cinemas and family entertainment are therefore located on the third floor to attract patrons up through the mall. This commercial decision meant the structural design team had to put in extra efforts to ensure that the high moving live loads at the upper levels are transferred down into the ground.

"The specifications also called for easy access to and within the mall and efficient maintenance access and systems. Two panoramic lifts in each atrium, fully fronted with glass, provide access to all floors of the mall. Within each loading bay, two large freight lifts - each 2.2 m square and capable of carrying 1.5 tonnes - are installed to assist tenants within the mall.

"The mall provides ample car-parking both surface and within the basement. The client commissioned a traffic impact study on the area and part-financed the modifications recommended by the consultants for the road infrastructure to suit the challenges of new traffic movement around the mall.

"Within the public spaces, there are no maintenance access panels in the ceilings, thus eliminating the 'hand prints' left as a telltale when the ceiling is being accessed for maintenance. The services that require access are maintained from the sides of the mall that are accessed through an egg-crate ceiling."

The internal floors are a combination of quartz agglomerate tiles, 600 by 600 mm, with an inlay of agglomerate coloured tile. Below the voids, the ground floor comprises an array of coloured and patterned terrazzo. The roof comprises a flat concrete slab, insulated and gravel covered, providing a platform for the mechanical equipment and plant. A pitched single-span sheet metal roof covers the cinema area. The floor tiles were from Italy, lifts and escalators/travelators were from Korea and the tensile structure from Australia.

Challenges

The project presented a number of challenges to the consultant and contracting teams.

"A particular challenge for the design team was the client's demand for a very efficient building of a good nett to gross floor area ratio," the spokesman points out. "This required the design team to work and rework the circulation spaces and design to gain the perfect proportion of visual impact and leasable space. This has been maximized to the fullest in the Sharjah Mega Mall."

He continues: "The building rises out of two basements of car parking. With the water table just over a metre below the surface, the engineering solutions required to cast the basement walls and the base slab were challenging and interesting to the team."

"Other challenges were set by the two voids, one of them required that the large tensile structure be hoisted 65 m above the roof which was already 35 m above ground level while the other void required great precision in installing the single structure dome, with a diameter of 22.5 m, over the area.

"The subcontractors for the escalators had to hoist escalators over the full height of the internal void for the service of each floor - that is without any slab above except the edges on to which they were fixed.

To ensure efficiency, the air handling rooms were hung from the slab above, to allow the space below to be leased. Acoustic treatment of the surrounding walls ensured that the tenants were not disturbed by them.

"Major tenant's requirements were considered from day one and continued to pose a challenge to the design team given the long free spans selected for the structure. A case in point is the moving live loads of the roller-coaster over a slab that spans 16.8 m on the third floor, considering that there are retail outlets below it. Careful consideration was also given at the early design stage on the location of the cinemas on the third level. The cinemas feature high acoustic walls, which are heavy being 400-mm thick. Again, the structural engineer work had to come up with a solution that was effective and efficient.

Citadel Properties now intends to build a 300-deluxe furnished apartment complex directly behind the mall. Groundbreaking for the building is expected to take place by mid-2002 and the project will be completed by mid-2004. This five-star serviced residence will offer convenient access to the Sharjah Mega Mall via a glass-bridged walkway to the mall's second level.