Apple Store Solar Wings

The Apple store at The Dubai Mall, designed by Foster + Partners, opens onto a terrace facing the Dubai Fountain and the Burj Khalifa — and that terrace is screened by one of the world's largest kinetic art installations: the Solar Wings. It is a contemporary reinterpretation of the traditional Arabic mashrabiya, the carved lattice screen that has shaded Gulf and Middle Eastern architecture for centuries, filtering light and heat while keeping the view.

Here that idea is rebuilt in engineering. The wings are made entirely of carbon fibre — a dense net of 340 slender rods layered into two great panels — and they move: through the heat of the day they close over the terrace to shade it, and in the cooler evening they open outward, connecting the store's two interior levels to the fountain, the boulevard and the tower beyond. Foster + Partners describes the piece as "an integrated vision of kinetic art and engineering," and says the motion was modelled on a falcon spreading its wings — an apt reference in a country where falconry is deep heritage. As the sun moves, the carbon-fibre net filters daylight into shifting crosshatched shadows that fall deep into the space, so the artwork writes itself, in shadow, across the floor.

On the Dubai Fountain / Waterfront side of The Dubai Mall — the Apple store's terrace faces the lake, screened by the two carbon-fibre wings. Enter through the store or view from the promenade below. For the kinetic effect, come around late afternoon into evening as the wings open.