Dubai: All that money can’t buy

One of the most highly reputed architectural historians of our time, Kenneth Frampton, predicted the global mass consumer trend in architecture more than 40 years ago in his famous paper entitled “Towards a Critical Regionalism.”

To resist this culture he proposed enduring urban principles, among them – ethical considerations such as responsibility to future generations, cultural values, connecting people and creating spaces to enhance the human experience. In its stead Frampton proposed an architecture reinterpreted in modern terms rooted in history and tradition which was responsive to context, both physical and cultural and which respected social and environmental factors as well the natural elements of its landscape, sense of place and community.

One of the most extreme examples of the global trend that so concerned Frampton is Dubai – a city in the United Arab Emirates. As in all the oil-rich countries of this region, the Westernization of its design and architecture the result of their direct contact with the West.

Fast-track development transformed Dubai, a tiny fishing village on the Persian Gulf to a global city within just a few decades. “Downtown” Dubai whose cost was tens of billions of dollars, is a compilation of unrelated and independent free-standing building projects entirely lacking continuity, connected only by wide, speedy arterial roads. Its centerpiece, the sky-grabbing “Burj Kalipha”, at two hundred stories no less, the world’s tallest building – the new Tower of Babylon.

The natural and built environment is experienced on the ground plane, never from the air, architecture at the scale of man. When all is spanking new the outcome is sterile, barring human identification.

Only ten to fifteen percent of the city’s population are Emiratis. Modern slavery in the UAE giving employers absolute control of the lives of their employees is well-known. Deaths of construction workers who built “Burj Khalifa” and all the rest and who had lived in abysmal quarters, needless to say, were poorly recorded. Attention to the social values cited by Frampton are clearly not their goal.

More than 7 million tourists a year can find luxury shopping and hotels everywhere. But after you’ve done your shopping and been to their ten star hotels you may realize that there’s little more to do. Outdoor temperatures often reach fifty degrees.

The global trend in architecture is gradually taking hold in Israel as well, although thus far, without its dominant commercial aspect. American, British, Swiss, Spanish, Mexican and even Japanese starchitects have all visited our shores, building key public and private projects here over the last twenty years. The new National Library in Jerusalem designed by Herzog De Meuron, is just one of the latest examples. Pei Cobb Freed – New York is currently involved in eight projects here. Local architectural firms with far greater sensitivity to Israeli culture and place are taken on by them to deal only with our formidable planning and building bureaucracy. This of course prevents the development of Israeli architecture.
Regrettably Kenneth Frampton’s humane and wise proposals seem to us utopian today. If only they were adopted world-wide.

Gerard Heunann – Architect and Town Planner, Jerusalem