Gallery
D3 Waterfront Master Plan
Waterfront extension of Dubai's design district
Reza Rasi coordinated the design team for this project as Associate Principal at Woods Bagot. This is work completed before Reza joined tomorrow as Design Director.
D3 Waterfront extends Dubai Design District to the creek. Over 3 million sqm of gross floor area across mixed-use, commercial, residential, retail, and public realm. A plan at this scale is really a set of rules: every decision about plot boundaries or infrastructure capacity constrains what individual developers can do for the next decade. Multiple government authorities -- municipality, roads and transport, utilities, environmental -- each review different parts of the same submission. None of them coordinate with each other by default.
The work covered:
-- Urban design framework: plot boundaries, building envelopes, street hierarchy, public realm. Density and height calibrated to infrastructure capacity and market absorption.
-- Infrastructure modelling: district cooling, power, water, sewerage networks sized for full build-out. Road network and parking ratios tested against traffic studies.
-- Phasing: delivery sequenced so revenue-generating plots come first, with infrastructure investment staged to match demand. Early phases work as standalone developments.
-- Plot-level design guidelines for individual developers: setbacks, facade treatment zones, ground-floor activation, signage controls.
The master plan set the framework that individual plot developers build within. Infrastructure phasing follows the commercial delivery schedule. The guidelines keep the district consistent without dictating architecture.