Is This Dubai?: Sheikh Zayed Road

Monday, February 4, 2008

Sheikh Zayed Road

© 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.

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This is a brief record, five days or about 120 hours, of trying to find layers of Dubai which have been inaccessible to me from the studio where this project began in upsate NY. My only definite predisposed impression of Dubai is that it is the first city and culture to have so holistically reacted to the immanent end of economic dependency on oil. It has staked its future in a shift to a culture and economy of another nature, international tourism, and become a precedent for cities facing the same crisis. In America, “sustainability” is marketed as the solution to the end of oil dependency, and the reaction is the tentative adoption of alternative fuels primarily in the service of the automotive industry. It is as if America plans to remain an autopia. Dubai may not be so different in this regard, from the first minutes one spends in Dubai, it is clearly a city as dependent on cars as LA. Cars choke the infrastructure here.

What is striking about the city is the honesty of its agenda. It is based on sustainability, not in the green sense, but in its efforts to sustain a privileged economic lifestyle. Of all the opportunities offered to architecture here, the fabric of the city and its buildings remain only the trope international tourism. If architecture really is the alternative organization of people, energy and material, if it can create a distinguished sense of place, is it possible to find another way for architecture here?

Is This Dubai?

Monday, February 4, 2008

Sheikh Zayed Road

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