The Myth of the Arabesque

© 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.