Santiago Calatrava’s futuristic tower design for Dubai will ‘be a notch taller’ than the Burj Khalifa, according to its developer Emaar Properties.

The real estate giant hosted an event in the city on Sunday (10 April) to officially unveil the project, now named as ‘The Tower’, two months after Calatrava was named as the winner of an international design project for the commission.

According to reports in Dubai, the structure will be built at a cost of US$1bn (€878.7m, £705.8m), exceed 828m (2,700ft) in height and form a spire supported by an intricate network of cables.

The Tower will serve as an observation deck with rotating balconies and elevated landscaping inspired by the mythical hanging gardens of Babylon. According to Calatrava, the design is inspired by Islamic architecture fused with modern, sustainable design.

It will be located in Emaar’s Dubai Creek Harbour development, a planned 6sq km mini-metropolis with 22 hotels, a retail precinct, a yacht club, cultural amenities, educational facilities, thousands of new homes and “the tallest twin towers in the world.” Calatrava’s building is visualised as the Creek’s centrepiece, and is scheduled to open by the time Dubai hosts the World Expo in 2020.

Emaar chair Mohamed Alabbar said: “The Tower in Dubai Creek Harbour is our tribute to the positivity, energy and optimism that Dubai and the UAE celebrate, led by a leadership committed to all-around progress,” adding in a promotional video that the project is “a tower and a monument that adds value to the world with absolute elegance, technology, engineering beauty day and night.”

Calatrava said: “The project is inspired by the idea of welcoming people and sending a signal to the whole world. It is our ambition to create infrastructures that facilitate the everyday life of the people, who will use The Tower as the centre of a new city.

“It will be a combination of geometry, mathematics and a deep sense of understanding of architecture in a most classical way. It will use the most advanced technologies, using technology as a vehicle to beauty and art.”

The Tower is the latest high-profile, big budget project won by Calatrava, whose World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York and Museum of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro have both recently opened.