Salalah Free Zone HQ Building Takes Shape

Geoff Ward, Partner at our Leeds office, headed to Oman in July to visit the Salalah to see progress on the new HQ Building for Salalah Free Zone Company.

From outside the site, which is 600 ha and is currently having a 8km perimeter wall erected, it looks a bit insignificant (it’s the first building on the site), but get close up and you realise that it is a lot larger than first impressions suggest.

Gross floor area is about 250,000 square feet and comprises underground parking, a circular agora garden and offices rising from one to six storeys at the top of the rotunda. The atrium will be four storeys high and will have a glass roof with solar PVs, 10 metre palm trees and a water fountain.

Construction has reached first floor level and it already looks quite huge; you get a real sense of how the space, light and volume is going to work, even when it is pouring with rain, which it does in Salalah during Khareef (monsoon) season!

Casting of the substantial concrete frame is ongoing and by the end of the year the total form of the building should really be evident and the upper levels will be there.

A short YouTube video can be viewed here