With an indoor aquarium, ice rink, roller coaster and 1,200 shops, it’s designed to surpass all malls. But it must be completed by a nearly impossible deadline.



Dubai, a tiny desert emirate, is being shaped to become the leisure capital of the oil rich Gulf. Centrepiece of the new Dubai is The Dubai Mall, designed to outstrip all shopping malls. With the largest indoor aquarium, an Olympic sized ice rink, a roller coaster, twelve hundred shops it also has a slogan as brash as its scale: Everything You Desire. It must all be completed in a next to impossible deadline. Riding on its success is a price tag that has run into the millions and still counting… along with the reputation of Dubai .