The beautiful madness of the Dubai building boom

I was looking for a picture of the day today and came across this ... what a beauty. Coruscant here we come.



This is Coruscant (star wars I, II, III). Can we open a Coruscant thread? Can we can we can we

Blah blah, capitalist... blah, blah, oil.... blah, blah, islam...

I love the Doha skyline. But as I have mentioned before, if you want out-of-this-world looking building you can only look to Riyadh's Kingdom Centre...

evercloserunion wrote:

So what, is Dubai going to be absolutely economically devastated in a few years then? Considering all the fuss made about our construction boom, and this is like that x1000...

They're a capitalist country with a housing boom sooo... (and I'm, really not sticking my neck out here) basically...yes. Boom will be followed by bust.

Sane, non-hyperbolic, never-mind-democratic, planning, which apportions social and environmental costs and the benefits of building correctly according to peoples' preferences etc etc, that's all hare-brained nonsense.

Just let the market and the sheik/dictator/party build it and then worry about equilibrium en all that rubbish. I mean, just look at all the purdy pictures of the buildings? What more could one want?

I've never been to Dubai but I have been to Bahrain. Despite the purty buildings most of these places are horrible places to live.

I stayed in a compound which had a lovely swimming pool, tennis courts and squash courts. It was just a pity that we weren't safe straying much beyond where we were.

I think the buildings aren't particularly nice either. I would love to see a skyscraper go up with an arabic feel to it rather than just making the place look like downtown manhattan.

johnfás wrote:

I've never been to Dubai but I have been to Bahrain. Despite the purty buildings most of these places are horrible places to live.

I stayed in a compound which had a lovely swimming pool, tennis courts and squash courts. It was just a pity that we weren't safe straying much beyond where we were.

I think the buildings aren't particularly nice either. I would love to see a skyscraper go up with an arabic feel to it rather than just making the place look like downtown manhattan.

Not safe in Bahrain? How so?

Also there are plenty of buildings with a distinctly arabic feel to them.

May well have changed since I was there. I was there over a summer while I was in school. My friend's dad was an investment banker based there.

Could you post some pictures of these buildings with an arabic feel? I'd be interested to see them because it has not been the experience of what I have seen, bar perhaps the aspire tower which you posted on a previous page.

Here are two. They were also some of the first which were built.

Also the Dubai icon, Burj al Arab.

cookiemonster wrote:

Heh heh heh, is that the building al Qaeda use for target practice?

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

Heh heh heh, is that the building al Qaeda use for target practice?

That's terribly non PC for you, AT.

cookiemonster wrote:

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

Heh heh heh, is that the building al Qaeda use for target practice?

That's terribly non PC for you, AT.

*shrug* I'm in a devil-may-care mood.

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

Heh heh heh, is that the building al Qaeda use for target practice?

That's terribly non PC for you, AT.

*shrug* I'm in a devil-may-care mood.

Oh, how very exciting!

cookiemonster wrote:

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

Heh heh heh, is that the building al Qaeda use for target practice?

That's terribly non PC for you, AT.

*shrug* I'm in a devil-may-care mood.

Oh, how very exciting!

Exactly. I'll take on all comers. Is cuma liom.

I'm thinking of taking a trip to Dubai after chirstmas. Might get in a bit of skiing while I'm there!

cookiemonster wrote:

I'm thinking of taking a trip to Dubai after chirstmas. Might get in a bit of skiing while I'm there!

That'd be brilliant. Take loads of photos and we can make a cool collage here on the Machine Nation. I'd also love to go skiing in Dubai for the sheer lunacy of the experience.

That or Washington DC. Though I may end up doing neither.

cookiemonster wrote:

That or Washington DC. Though I may end up doing neither.

You could go for the inauguration in Washington. The end of the Bush era would be fun to see.

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

That or Washington DC. Though I may end up doing neither.

You could go for the inauguration in Washington. The end of the Bush era would be fun to see.

ooohm excellent idea. But I can only imagine the accomodation costs in DC then!

cookiemonster wrote:

Ard-Taoiseach wrote:

cookiemonster wrote:

That or Washington DC. Though I may end up doing neither.

You could go for the inauguration in Washington. The end of the Bush era would be fun to see.

ooohm excellent idea. But I can only imagine the accomodation costs in DC then!

That's true. Perhaps you could hire an RV from Hertz and park it on Pennsylvania Avenue?

DC is quite a nice city - I would recommend it. The Smithsonian Institute is a fantastic resource. When I was there we did a tour of the White House and saw President Clinton land on the lawn in Marine One. I don't think you can take the tour now if you are not a US citizen (post 9/11 madness).

Did anyone mention this before?
www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/oct/06/architecture.middleeast

A one-kilometre-high building planned for Dubai. Believe it when you see it.

Just like most punters wouldn't bet on Sheikh Mohammed's horses these days, I wouldn't bet on this building reaching a finish.

I was drinking with the project management team for the Atlantis Dubai project at the Irish Darby a few months ago. Oh the stories they told!

Oh how I long for a hot punch to the face of a summer in the gulf.

I *heart* the gulf states.

soubresauts wrote:

Did anyone mention this before?
www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/oct/06/architecture.middleeast

A one-kilometre-high building planned for Dubai. Believe it when you see it.

Just like most punters wouldn't bet on Sheikh Mohammed's horses these days, I wouldn't bet on this building reaching a finish.

Believe it when you see it indeed - it's a good fraction of that Space Elevator on the other thread.

Quote :

The tower, at the centre of the Nakheel port and harbour complex, is to be "over one kilometre" high and have more than 200 floors, beating its nearest rival, the existing Burj Dubai tower, still under construction and due to rise to a mere 818 metres.

Mere - the Petronas towers are 450 metres tall ...

This yoke would be so big it would virtually be a city in itself

Quote :

The complex will provide homes and offices for 100,000 people. If all the reinforcing bars were laid end to end they would stretch from Dubai to New York - one quarter of the way round the world.

The tower will be so tall that it will have five different micro-climates.

The temperature in the atmosphere at the top of the building could be as much as 10 degrees cooler than at the bottom. High-speed lifts will allow people to see the sunset twice - from the bottom and again from the top of the building.