1. Those are some intimidating-looking cops.
2. I dig the building with the freaky coiffure.
3. What does China have against sex shops?
4. wtf China: A Chinese man plays with his son near his partially demolished house at the Qianmen hutong in Beijing Sunday, June 8, 2008. Beijing, one of the fabulous cities of antiquity, is experiencing reconstructions to look more modern for the coming summer Olympic games.
What does China have against sex shops?
I first thought they were putting up a sex shop when I saw that pic, until I read the caption.
It's amazing how quickly you can put together a massive worldwide event when you're a repressive autocracy.
Speaking of which, have we discussed Daniel Libeskind's recent statements about working with governments like China's?
4: Link? And if you want to read awesome stories about Libeskind and his wife, you should try this.
It's amazing how quickly you can put together a massive worldwide event when you're a repressive autocracy.
A fair point. I recall stories of the Greece's preparations for the games coming right down to the wire, but they still pulled it off. It's just a mind-boggling amount of work to do in a short period of time.
Daniel Libeskind's recent statements about working with governments like China's
To my knowledge, no. Care to elaborate?
Link. I think there are less ethically fraught reasons for architects like Libeskind or Rem Koolhaas or Zaha Hadid to stay away from China and the UAE. Their growth is so frantic and budgets so enormous that they're realizing Koolhaas's wildest designs but they're realizing everything. It's like the biggest bubble ever, and I think that there's a good chance that when the UAE economy grinds to a halt, the look of those ridiculous cities is going to come to be seen as irrational exuberance.
Here. I'm not sure how I feel about the issue.
NYC 2012 never would have been this cool. Sure, we might have built a new stadium or something, but the sex shops stay, the subway doesn't improve, and the police are not so trim.
I think that there's a good chance that when the UAE economy grinds to a halt, the look of those ridiculous cities is going to come to be seen as irrational exuberance.
It doesn't already? But yeah, that's a good point, especially for architects like those whose aesthetic is always verging on ridiculousness anyway.
If the architect's own vision is progressive, can architecture be a vehicle for positive change?
I'll go with "no, don't be silly."
I guess if you're a truly revolutionary architect, there's nothing you can do more for the world in the name of peace and freedom than accepting millions of corrupt corporate dollars to bukkake an urban landscape.
NYC 2012 never would have been this cool.
I think I've mentioned this documentary before; in any case, it's a very interesting account of the political battle over the stadium proposal.
11: Indeed, the quoted line pretty much encapsulates everything that I find most irritating about a certain type of architect.
the challenges of hosting the Olympics in Gotham will be the subject of the next Batman film.
The part quoted in 11 continues:
If the architect's own vision is progressive, can architecture be a vehicle for positive change?
For the most part, the issue is not a concrete one[...]
*rim shot*
Part of the problem is that Dubai is commissioning stuff like this. That's just hubris. Who the hell is David Fisher, and, um, did he just say, "From now on, buildings will be made in a factory." This can't be good.
The good things that the good architects build are all going to be tarred with the same brush. Plus those cities just aren't going to work.
One of my friends works in Saudi Arabia for an oil company (he's a bad person) that sends him to Dubai for little breaks. He reports that Dubai is incredibly creepy. Sure, you can drink there, and you don't constantly get harassed by cops when you're not praying at the right times, but you can't sleep in your hotel room because someone comes by offering a different nationality of prostitute every hour or so during the night. Whether you accept or not, there's not a lot of sleeping time. Plus, of course, the architecture is totally creepy.
Further to 11: I wonder if Katrina ultimately will be seen as a watershed (this is your fault, Stanley) moment in which modern architecture, as field, realized that it really can't be a force for social change. In that case, most of the heaviest hitters in the field all seemed ready to commit time and resources to making a difference in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast (and yes, also to making a buck along the way). And then they smashed headlong into how little they can accomplish when faced with political structures that are pretty much stuck in the mud (again, you have nobody to blame but yourself, Stanley).
19: I dunno. The idea that architecture can be a force for social change is very deeply embedded in the modernist movement, and I'm not sure one catastrophe will be enough to dislodge it.
19: that just makes the issue out to be trouble getting projects going and whatnot, not whether architecture in itself effects social change.
17: that sounds ... safe.
21b: If you live on the top floors, you can totally park your car in your apartment, thanks to the awesome super-speed car elevator for the $36-million-dollar "villa" owners.
22: I'm having a hard time imagining how any elevator entrance at the apartment level stays stationary while the apartment pivots around the central shaft. (ATM)
From the link in 17, "Its 80 floors rotate independently, ensuring that the tower will never look the same way twice, the architects say."
Did they really take the time to offset one of the floors an irrational speed, or are they being figurative?
21a: A chicken and egg problem, to be sure. But NOLA post-Katrina was a case in which there was a glaring need that could have been met by architects, a venue that was a fetish for many of those same architects, and plenty of commitment from the power players in the field. And yet, next to nothing happened. At least not on a grand scale. And so, as to the question of the impact of particular buildings on the social fabric, it doesn't seem to much matter if you can't build when the need for social change is most acute. Which, in my view, should present a pretty serious challenge to modern architecture's sense of itself. But profound narcissism can quiet a lot of cognitive dissonance, I suppose.
Also, the website brags that they're doing all the interior design for these apartments before they go up, furniture and everything. I get how that would be useful, since moving into a place like that with furniture would suck, but does that mean no future tenant is going to be able to change the furniture without a crane coming and dismantling the entire unit? I have this weird suspicion the architect did not think that far. (According to an interview I read, it sounded like he wasn't thinking much about plumbing until it came up in the plans and it had to be figured out. Even some random commenter at the Telegraph site thought of that a couple comments in.)
24: If they're not lying, it's going to spend a lot of damn time looking like the rightmost picture, rather than any of the lovely twirly-looking ones.
That's what I was thinking. You want them to line up once in a while, like an odometer. Or Y2K.
28: I'm picturing move-in day:
Landlord: Line-up days are the 1st and the 15th of the month. Clock it in at 38.5°N and wait for the thing to straighten out. Then we race!
A fun thread would be to see if people could scavenge up Y2K "best of the millenium" lists, so that we could laugh about how ludicrous it was that they highlighted stars du jour who now we can't place their name. "Petey Pablo beats Chumba-Wumba for the number three entertainer of the millenium? That seems reasonable."
Wouldn't it be tempting to tie one end of the dental floss to your upstairs neighbor's balcony? You could create one of those 60's art-ish spirograph pieces with the nails and the thread.
30: Or cause all kinds of regret, like "Oh man, I used to think Thomas Aquinas was so cool."
You know, sometimes I get the eerie sensation I'm surrounded by nerds.
Since we're all friendly nerds here (minus me), I found this nifty spirograph toy a moment ago when I was making one of my hip, unnerdy witticisms.
And I have perfect attendance and fold hospital corners.
Did you also have the awesome Spirograph drawing toy when you were a kid? Loved that thing. Wore its little gears out.
26: I believe a spinny-building like this was really Calatrava's goal when he designed things like the Chicago Spire. I remember reading an interview with him where he said a tower with independently-rotating floors had been a goal for a long time, but the mechanics of the utilities, the plumbing, the electric lines, etc. were a complete bitch that we were only just developing the technology to make a reality. He'd clearly put a lot of thought into it, and I bet he's kinda pissed if this Fisher guy is half-assing it (unless Fisher's at his firm or something, I wouldn't know).
Did you know that there's a direct correlation between the decline of Spirograph and the rise of gang activity? Think about it.
Clicking "Random" in rapid succession on the Spirograph tool made me feel like I was watching a music video for Jesus Jones' "Right Here Right Now". An odd sensation.
As for Dubai, I can verify that the place seems downright creepy, though I've only spent a short time there heading to and from Oman. It's a city with no soul, and no life whatsoever outside malls, hotel/apartment/entertainment complexes and taxis. Even the one block that's currently lined with 40-50 storey skyscrapers has virtually unusable sidewalks and absolutely no way to cross the 8-lane highway/road separating you from the other side's row of skyscraper offices, hotels, and restaurants.
The city really is only half-built, at best. It's crazy how much is "planned, but not yet completed" or even still needs ground-breaking. There's so much construction and natural sand/humidity clouding the air that you can't see much more than a mile anyway, so any view from higher than the 20th floor is useless, which makes the buildings like Burj Dubai and Burj Al-Arab even more of a farce.
Plus, all built using nigh slave labor.
I am not a fan.
Did you know that there's a direct correlation between the decline of Spirograph and the rise of gang activity?
But the remaining Spirographers can make pretty maps documenting the loci of gang activity. Fun!
Why can't the internet provide me with a t-shirt which says, "Oh frabjous day!"
43: 10% built, according to this video.
Are they doing all of Dubai on the "if we build it they will come" theory?
Are they doing all of Dubai on the "if we build it they will come" theory?
Pretty much. They're basically throwing all their oil money into random development so there'll be something left to attract investment when the oil runs out. Which is kind of clever, but also kind of insane.
It seems like the plan is to include nothing but amenities for the mega-rich, such that they couldn't possibly sustain all those buildings unless 100% of the world's megarich bought apartments there and put up all their non-mega-rich friends up in their "7-star hotels."
1.4. Recent European experience of the Olympics (I know about Barcelona and London) shows that the "preparation" is seen by many as an opportunity to annihilate established working class communities using the full force of the law and replace them with glitzy high rent properties for the rich. I linked a thing about this a few weeks back.
If Britain and Spain can get away with this, imagine what the Chinese can do. I am not a fan of this process, dreams of world peace or no.
43. PoMo, that's interesting. A lot of middle class British Muslims seem to have decided that Dubai is their holiday destination of choice (sort of like Cancun with minarets), and they seem to think it's the dog's bollocks. But I assume these people aren't staying in the 7 star places, so is there a more modest side to it somewhere?
By middle class, I mean taxi drivers, shop keepers, programmers and junior managers, not the people on $200k that the press wants us to think are middle class.
50.1: "an opportunity to annihilate established working class communities using the full force of the law and replace them with glitzy high rent properties for the rich"
The PRC started on that path in 1978. The olympics will not be a watershed in that sense I don't think.
The olympics will not be a watershed in that sense I don't think.
Surely not. They aren't in London either. But they afford developers a wonderful opportunity to 1) accelerate their plans and 2) represent themselves as being on the side of the angels.
I am guiltily excited about the London Olympics, and am definitely going to see some of it. If anyone's thinking of coming over in 2012, let me know if you want a free place to stay!
Whatever your attitudes about the despotic form of government, you've got to admire the forethought of recruiting an entire legion of shao-lin warriors to serve in the security forces.
the plan is to include nothing but amenities for the mega-rich, such that they couldn't possibly sustain all those buildings unless 100% of the world's megarich bought apartments there and put up all their non-mega-rich friends up in their "7-star hotels."
Also these mega-rich must all stay mega rich. It feels almost Biblical, the way these foolish cities are coming together. Dubai and Abu Dhabi both are going to be leveled by inflation.
The idea that architecture can be a force for social change is very deeply embedded in the modernist movement, and I'm not sure one catastrophe will be enough to dislodge it.
I think we have a catastrophe on our hands in global warming that will only embolden the idea that architecture can affect social change. It's just that old school guys like Libeskind and Koolhaas still believe in the unsustainable colonization-of-the-sky, instant-city model—they have the wrong (modernist) sorts of change in mind. That's not change you can believe in!
50, 51: The Jumeirah Beach development has somewhat of a range of accomodations. It's the beach resort area that's pretty much the only mostly-complete section of the Emirate. The Al-Arab (70-storey, 7-star hotel) is down there, but so are a few gigantic sprawling resorts that are basically like high-end Hilton resorts and have become more affordable since the Pound started kicking ass. Rates at one of those places for ordinary rooms w/meals are around £150 to £200, which seems expensive to me, but isn't that pricey compared to days and nights out in London.
'Course, prices are probably nearly twice that in August, so I just don't know what the fuck if taxi drivers are going down there.
It's just that old school guys like Libeskind and Koolhaas still believe in the unsustainable colonization-of-the-sky, instant-city model--they have the wrong (modernist) sorts of change in mind.
So it is. All the incentives--financial, prestige, employment security, immortality--point architecture in the wrong direction. The same could be said, perhaps to a lesser degree, of design.
What the world needs is a need is a new Bauhaus movement, but with a broader set of goals. Just as the Bauhaus architects sought to capture the untapped economic efficiency potential of standardization and industrial production (by fusing them with functional, aesthetically pleasing design), the new Bauhaus would capture the *ecological* efficiency potential of new materials and new technology and make them affordable/desireable.
The "desireable" part is key, because whatever your view of Bauhaus-influenced structures from a contemporary perspective (and I subscribe to more than a little of the Tom Wolfe critique), they represented a radical improvement over prevailing conditions at the time for the intended users (similar to the step up to a Levitown-type house versus an urban tenement).
I guess taxi drivers round here are doing better than they admit to. Damned if I'd put down £1400 (each?) for a week in a place like you describe.
The taxi drivers are perhaps not going to Dubai itself, but to one of the other nearby emirates, like Sharjah, which is home to the beachfront bunkers favored by package holiday makers. A lot of charter flights go directly to Sharjah, but scheduled flights tend to Dubai.
Hmm... They say Dubai. I suppose tourists don't always know what country they're in.
61: Especially when the emirates are 50 miles wide and have no particular borders, just another stretch of sand between them.
... the new Bauhaus would capture the *ecological* efficiency potential of new materials and new technology and make them affordable/desireable.
Desireability is what architecture offers to the oil money of Dubai, no?
But I agree with you. I'm not sure that materials are where the innovation is, although there are some new materials. What we do have is a better ability to model: we can make better predictions for a whole range of environmental phenomena; we can also model the way people are likely to move in urban areas.
We could also reverse some of the ethos of the first Bauhaus. A new Bauhuas could end zoning by use. Industry is cleaner than it was in the 1920s, and improvements will (or should) continue. Zoning by use gives us all kinds of difficulties - i.e. commuter pollution - and working in a 'campus' is numbing and nasty.
We could also break with 'form by use'. Instead: adaptable forms which continue to look good - or at least OK - as modes of inhabitation change. Shiny full-service concierge apartment buildings or iconic 'global headquarters' office buildings won't be warranted. Instead: a range of well thought-through tectonic systems.
I hear of plenty of middle class Irish people off to Dubai for holidays - this page about a travel programme earlier in the year gives you an idea.
http://www.rte.ie/tv/theafternoonshow/1090928.html. They seem to be going to Dubai itself so there must be some 3 and 4 star hotels. Looks like it might cost around €1,000 for a week which would be less than £700. The real attraction I think is in months like April and October when European sun destinations aren't warm enough.
Meanwhile I know two Irish expats recently who have just got away from Dubai for a month or so because the climate is so stifling at this time of year. Tourists would be insane to go there right now.
I don't think form is a problem today or ever has been, at least with respect to affecting social change. A lack of ecological materials or enthusiasm for using them is most definitely not the problem. It is simply too fashionable to build green to not do so, and firms like Herzog and de Meuron have been way ahead of the curve on this—for formal reasons they were building with green materials well before developers started asking for an eco-footprint section in RFPs.
And really, even an eco retrograde firm like Frank Gehry isn't doing any significant damage by not going green. His buildings are each one building that is not an industrial plant whose purpose is not to lift ecological consciousness anyway.
Instead the avenue for social change is in planning and to the extent that architects are involved in macro-scale planning they are creating unsustainable, unlivable monsters. Global warming is a collective-action problem, right, so socially conscious architecture has to operate in collective frames. And architecture is operating this way, just toward really really mistaken ends.
I don't know about this New Bauhaus coinage.
"in collective frames" s/b "in a collective framework"
It's amazing how quickly you can put together a massive worldwide event when you're a repressive autocracy.
Well, that and billions and billions of dollars. And cheap labor. And no regulations.
Look America, our children's tax dollars at work. Just not in America. Or for us. Or our children. hoo effing ray.
China is spending double what anyone has previously spent for an Olympics.
AWB,
but you can't sleep in your hotel room because someone comes by offering a different nationality of prostitute every hour or so during the night.
That guy's pulling your leg. Every room has a mailslot and a sign you may put out that says "Pimps, I'm sleeping. Put your card in the slot and I'll get back to you later. Thank you for your consideration!" in sixteen different languages.
I'm surprised that prostitutes would be balkanized by nationality. I wouldn't think the pimps would bother group them into more than five or so ethnic categories.
I wonder if Katrina ultimately will be seen as a watershed (this is your fault, Stanley) moment in which modern architecture, as field, realized that it really can't be a force for social change.
Architecture has had a lousy record as a force for social change. The problem is that A) architecture has artistic pretensions, and artists, especially modern artists, are almost of necessity egotistical, and B) it needs big capital investment, requiring massive support from the rich and/or powerful. The combination of these makes for a discipline deaf to the actual needs of ordinary people.
architecture has artistic pretensions, and artists, especially modern artists, are almost of necessity egotistical
This is kind of bogus, Pgd.
72: Art *critics* are selfless, Armsmasher.
Seriously, you're right it's a little bogus, like all such sweeping generalizations. But the point is that since the 19th century art has been distinguished from craft by grand ambitions to originality. It takes a strong ego to sacrifice income, etc. to pursue one's own claims to originality.
Not necessarily a bad thing, but also not necessarily a good preparation for figuring out what a community actually wants and needs (as opposed to what you think they should need).
Not many architects think of themselves as artists.
On this question about architects working with autocrats—it's not like anyone ever had a problem working with the Daleys.
Why can't the internet provide me with a t-shirt which says, "Oh frabjous day!"
Seriously, someone design this shirt for me.
I don't necessarily disagree with anything in 66, 'smasher. And I'll happily abandon the "new bauhaus coinage" for a better alternative; I was just thinking of a notable example of socially conscious artists reconceiving their role (1) upstream and downstream of the design of buildings; and (2) as a catalyst for integrating technological changes in ways that benefited the common man materially and aesthetically.
