Santiago Calatrava—the Spanish-born engineer and architect who first gained international acclaim in 1992 with his Montjuic Communications Tower in Barcelona—has just been named as the winner of an international design competition for a landmark observation tower in Dubai Creek Harbor. The announcement was made by Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, who said, “This architectural wonder will be as great as the Burj Khalifa and the Eiffel Tower.” Calatrava’s winning design is a soaring, needle-pointed skyscraper that provides a modern twist on Islamic architecture. In a statement, the architect said he was humbled by his firm’s selection. “We feel extremely thankful and honored to have been selected for such an important project,” he said. “Dubai is where innovative and revolutionary architecture is making incredible strides. In our proposed design, we have united local traditional architecture with that of the 21st century.” Calatrava’s firm was competing against six others from around the world.

The renowned architect has been rather busy of late, as he recently won the 2015 European Prize for Architecture , was tapped to design three bridges to span the Yangtze River Canal in China, and launched his Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro in December 2015. Whether his Dubai creation will become as iconic as the city’s SOM-designed Burj Khalifa remains to be seen. There have been no announcements as to when the project will begin.

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