Building envelope, architecture and management
Between thedrawing andthe building.
We engineer the layer where an architect's idea meets wind, heat, water and budget — curtain wall, unitized systems, structural and spider glazing, skylights and cladding. Concept detail to the last bracket fixed on site.
The façade is the largest package on most projects, and the least understood.
BEAM sits in the gap where façades go wrong — between what an architect has drawn and what a fabricator can actually deliver on a Tuesday in August in Abu Dhabi.
Founded in 2016 by Fadi Dakwar after eighteen years engineering envelopes for other people, the practice covers curtain wall, unitized systems, structural and spider glazing, skylights, balustrades, cladding, sunshades and louvers — through wind-load calculation, shop drawings and procurement, to installation and handover.
We have done it on a presidential palace, on Etihad Towers, on a theme park, on a heritage pavilion, and on an air-conditioned bus shelter in Ruwais. The discipline does not change with the budget.
Where do you sit on this project?
Three ways to bring us in.
Architects, owners and aluminium contractors all need something different from a façade engineer. Choose the one that describes you.
The engineering, explained
How a façade is actually built.
Most clients have never seen inside a curtain wall. We built a page that shows you — the bay assembling piece by piece, the six loads acting on it, and the glass in section. Worth ten minutes before you tender anything.
Assembly
Slab, bracket, mullion, transom, glass, cladding. Scroll and one bay builds itself in front of you.
Watch it buildThe six loads
Wind, dead load, thermal movement, water, solar gain and racking. All at once, for fifty years.
Isolate each oneGlass, in section
Six layers doing six jobs. Choose them badly and the building cooks, glares or costs double.
Open the sectionScope of works
What we engineer.
Ten envelope disciplines. Every one of them has been through a Gulf summer, an authority submission and a site that was running late.
Selected work
Palaces, towers, and one bus shelter.
Six of the twenty. Client, consultant, contractor and system are on the record for every project — nothing is described as "various".
Welcome Pavilion, Shindagha
Dubai Municipality · X-Architects · Wicona + Vitrocsa
D-Frond Villa
Palm Jumeirah · Vitrocsa
Presidential Palace
Abu Dhabi · EWAN · Reynaers
Warner Bros. Theme Park
Abu Dhabi · Miral · AECOM · Wicona
The practice
Eighteen years engineering façades for other people. Then BEAM.
Fadi Dakwar is an architect — B.Sc. Architectural Engineering, Beirut Arab University — who has spent his whole career on the technical side of the envelope. By his third year at Alumco he was leading the design team on Beirut Tower and the Phoenicia; by his sixth he was running the Habtoor Grand.
In the United Arab Emirates he managed The Address, Al Seef Towers and Citadel Tower, then returned to Alumco as technical manager — a department of twenty-six engineers — taking Etihad Towers, Meena Plaza and the Presidential Palace from concept drawings through to handover.
He founded BEAM in 2016 for the reason most good engineers start their own practice: so that the time and the cost targets are the ones he sets, and meets.
Delivered for and alongside
The names on the drawings.
Developers, consultants and main contractors we have worked with or delivered for, across twenty projects in two countries.
Systems engineered
Ten platforms, counted.
Not a logo wall — the figure beside each system is how many projects on our record were engineered in it.
Enquiries
Send us your elevations.
A section, an elevation and a location is enough. You'll get an honest read on buildability and a budget range back — not a proposal document, and not an invoice for the conversation.
An elevation, a section, and where the building is. PDF or DWG. If all you have is a sketch, send the sketch.
Buildability, the systems that would suit it, the parts that will cost more than you think, and a range. Usually within three working days.
If it's useful, we scope the engagement. If it isn't, you still have the read — and it cost you nothing.
Office 210, Falcon Tower
Ajman, United Arab Emirates
P.O. Box 8600
Sunday – Thursday
9:00 – 18:00 GST