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© Vincent Appel
After five days in the city, the desert was nearly medicinal. As one Saudi Arabian put it, "The desert is like water to us. Before there is water here, there is sand." The only context I have for reconciling what the desert means to this part of the world is the anthropology of the beach in America as the iconic reserve for counter culture or fringe society, think Redondo Beach or Burning Man. But of course, this is only a counter point to draw reference. Beyond sand, nature and the wilderness in our culture is understood historically as the frontier, as the place of refuge, retreat and alternative life. But the desert in the middle east is distinctly different. It is itself in constant motion, more similar to the severity of the ocean than to the impressionable beach or slovenly wilderness. The desert resists life where as the wilderness welcomes it.
With incredible poetry, the sand in the UAE even resists the construction of the cities there. It is some of the only sand in the world with nearly consistent granules, making it much too viscous for packing foundations. In Dubai, during the sand storms, road signage signals to "watch out for sand dunes." In the city, along Shiekh Zayed road during one of these storms, the speed of the winds is compounded by the bernoulli effect of the walls of the massive skyscrapers.
There is an entire field of physics which studies the logics of dune movement and the properties of sand. This is called granular physics. A wonderful derivation of the physical properties of sand was exploited in a recent architectural studio taught by Francois Roche at the GSAPP by one of his students,Harrison Blair. http://ncertainties.wordpress.com/students/harrison-blair/hb_final/
While the desert is exempt from aiding the construction of Dubai, the mountains of Hatta are quarried extensively for construction aggregate, land fill for the artificial islands, and the large jetties along the coast.
© Vincent Appel (Rock quarried from the mountains in Hatta to build the jetties along the coast.)
© Nakheel
© Vincent Appel
Sheikh Zayed road would give Howard Kunstler a heart attack. It is the most foreboding built environment I have ever experienced. Granted, a twelve lane highway should probably not be held to the same pedestrian standards as a two lane main street, but Sheikh Zayed road is navigated by foot quite often. The massive highway is flanked by two partially green bands; the one to the East includes the elevated metro rail. The decision to place the rail line on an elevated viaduct was made to reduce the impact of the project on road traffic and keep the rails inaccessible to pedestrians for safety. Gulf News went so far as to reason that the decision to elevate the rail line was made to improve the experience of the street and adjacent buildings.
© Vincent Appel
© Vincent Appel
There are three types of souks in Dubai. There are the mega-malls, the souks which are part of the hotel and resort complexes, and the souks found in the old city. The There seems to be nothing actually from Dubai, no local craft or trade which can be found in any of these places. There is a fish market North East of Deira, in Sharjah, and a very small handful of vendors selling spices and shisha in Deira. Those are the only examples of “local” commerce.
The two major faux souks are located at the base of the Burj Dubai and near the Burj Arab. They are, as expected, filled with expensive textiles and home furnishings imported from other countries, as well as high end electronics and other luxuries of international tourism. These souks, along with the mega-malls, have completely shifted the economics of the commerce which exists in the old city.
© Vincent Appel In Deira, the majority of the narrow streets are lined with cheap commercial venues selling a variety of novelties which seem to have come from a mail-order wholesale party outlet. The only exceptions are the Gold Souk, which is as contrived as those in the resorts, and the streets after streets of vendors dealing construction equipment and building components. The malls have edged out all other commerce here and the economics of the largest construction site on earth has created a city of small specialized hardware stores. Some of the most unique deal only in plumbing elbows, solar panels, and even cnc mills.
© Vincent Appel
‘How to develop a local architectural language that references Dubai’s past as well as its gleaming future?’ - Time Out Dubai. p27
With the naïveté of an American student, I am partially surprised to only have found a handful of screens and arabesque building details. The most elegant facade I have come across in Dubai, is one which has abstracted an Arabic motif for solar shading.
© Vincent Appel
© Vincent Appel
The reason why Dubai is clad in green and purple mirror glass is not entirely an aesthetic choice. In the 70’s and 80’s when most of the city was built, it was built according to the efficient logics of construction practices and building materials of the time. Of course, the other rational behind mirror glass is its ability to deflect solar gain. 30 years after the green and purples, the new mirror glass of the Burj Dubai is silver.
© Vincent Appel
Jean Nouvel, who has a distingueshed history with Arabic building details (Arab du Monde lnstitute), offers one of the most convincing solutions for an architectural language in this region. The rational for his Louvre proposal in Abu Dhabi, while conceptually postmodern, involves no mirror glass:
“This whole territory is no nostalgic vision of remote worlds or lost paradises; rather it is a trigger, an invitation to question our sense of time.”
While the genius of his scheme is grounds for some heady architectural discourse, at first glance the project is both subtle and clear with its iconography. There is no mistaking the roof as anything but a contemporary Muslim Kufi capping the spaces of an old city fabric, one which is not quite distinctly Roman, Greek or Arabic. Furthermore, the scheme does not sacrifice a discreet sense of atmosphere for its witty iconography; something that much of the towers in Dubai which are just breaking ground will suffer through.
As my flight landed and I filmed what the downward camera from under the belly of the 777 was displaying on the LCD screen in the headrest in front of me, I was offered one last piece of advice from the resident of Dubai sitting next to me, (You may have to turn the volume all the way up to here this,)
© Vincent Appel
Several hours before landing, looking out the window, there are clouds and there are burning oil fields. You cant see the clouds because it is night, but you can see the flames from the oil refineries glowing through them. Flying over Kuwait at night there were no stars in the sky, only red constellations to the horizon down below.
Prior to landing we were held in a holding pattern as dozens of supertankers circled below waiting to be filled with oil. The only other boats at sea were the trailing suction hopper dredgers drawing islands in the ocean, and the U.S. aircraft carriers from the 6th fleet, keeping Iraq on its toes.
© Nakheel
We dropped in over Deira, the old city. In the distance you could see the towers along Sheik Zayed Road and of course the Burj Dubai. As I shot this photo, someone in the cabin commented how the city looked like every other city in the middle east. I’m not sure what that means, but this photo of Deira stood out to me.
© Vincent Appel
It looks as if it could be a scale model, not an architect’s, but for a set designer in Hollywood. I was reminded of how many films from Hollwood find their plots in the middle east. I don’t remember their name, but there is a photographer who shoots whole series from these cities so that all the architecture is presented as if it were a scale model.
© Vincent Appel
© Vincent Appel (Rock quarried from the mountains in Hatta to build the jetties along the coast.)
© Nakheel
