Thursday, January 24, 2008
Dubai
If you wonder what happens......
Last year
world 's cranes.
All of this was built in the last 5 years, including that island that lookslike a palm tree
The Palm Islands in Dubai. New Dutch dredging technology was used tocreate these massive man made islands. They are the largest artificial islands in the world and can be seen from space. Three of these Palms
will be made with the last one being the largest of them all. Upon completion, the resort will have 2,000 villas, 40 luxury hotels, shopping centers, movie theaters, and many other facilities. It is expected to support a population of approximately 500,000 people. It is advertised as
being visible from the moon.
The World Islands. 300 artificially created islands in the shape of the
world. Each island will have an estimated cost of $25-30 million.
The Burj al-Arab hotel in Dubai . The worlds tallest hotel. Considered the only '7 star' hotel and the most luxurious hotel in the world. It stands on an artificial island in the sea.
Hydropolis, the world's first underwater hotel. Entirely built in Germany and then assembled inDubai, it is scheduled to be completed by 2009 after many delays. 
The Burj Dubai. Construction began in 2005 and is expected to be complete by 2008. At an estimated height of over 800 meters, it will
easily be world's tallest building when finished. It will be almost 40%
taller than the the current tallest building, the Yaipei 101.
This is what downtown Dubai will look like around 2008-2009. More
than 140 stories of the Burj Dubai have already been completed. It is already the worlds tallest man made structure and it is still not scheduled to be completed for at least another year.
The Trump International Hotel & Tower, which will be the centerpiece of
one of the palm islands, The Palm Jumeirah.
Currently, the largest amusement park collection in the world is Walt
Disney World Resort in Orlando, which is also the largest single-site
employer in the United states with 58,000 employees. Dubailand will be twice the size. Dubailand will be built on 3 billion square feet (107 miles^2) at an estimated $20 billion price tag. The site will include a
purported 45 mega projects and 200 hundred other smaller projects.
Dubai Sports City
A huge collection of sports arenas located in Dubailand.Currently, the Walt Disney World Resort is the #1 tourist destination in the world. Once fully completed, Dubailand will easily take overthat title since it is
expected to attract 200,000 visitors daily.
Some of the tallest buildings in the world, such as Ocean Heights and The Princess Tower, which will be the largest residential building in the world at over a 100 stories, will line the Dubai Marina.
The U.A.E. Spaceport would be the first spaceport in the world if construction ever gets under way.
The Dubai Metro system, once completed, will become the largest fully
automated rail system in the world.
The Dubai World Central International Airport will become the largest
airport in size when it is completed. It will also eventually become the busiest airport in the world, based on passenger volume.
There are more construction workers in Dubai than there are actual
citizens.
Oh my, Dubai!
Oil-rich Dubai is experiencing an impressive building boom.
While some UFOs are always fun to have around in any town (the Eiffel Tower is maybe a little UFOish) too many add up to far, far less than the sum of the parts.
Skyscrapers, glass and steel modernism, monster roads, visual chaos, do not a city make.
I know for a fact however that newer work is rapidly changing in character. There is a renewed appreciation of the various traditional architectures of humanity in every continent and period in history for 5000 years and for the classicisms as well.
Besides a "rappel a l'ordre" in matters of architectural good taste from a motley crew of once-fringe groups now poised to become the architecture mainstream, simultaneously science and mathematics, from ten or twelve fields at the same time, have demonstrated the superiority of precisely the kind of vernacular, traditional and classical architecture many individuals prefer. In other words, it is possible to scientifically and mathematically study and quantify the instinctive human esthetic sense and art making capacity.
Dubai is in fact getting a casbah, with crooked narrow streets suited to the local insolation.
I will not comment on the individual freaks in the pics, they invite uncharitable sentiments and are incomprehensible.
