Ecologoy of the Desert

© 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