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Posts Tagged ‘Dubai’

The party never stops at Postopolis. (All photos Matt Chaban)

Unlike Thursday night, when inclement weather forced us inside, the party raged–or, well, demurely spoke, Tweeted, and blogged–on the roof of the Standard on Friday night, which is as it should be at the start of the weekend, even if the party was almost over.

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In village of culture, as in Dubai is a place full of finest stalls called, will be enriched by a building of Dubai Museum of Middle East Art designed by Netherlands from UN Studio. Architects proposed, as is typical for Dubai, fully futuristic, floated, dynamic structure.

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J.G. Zimmerman, Dystopia Series: Suburbia (all images courtesy of the respective artists.)

Friend of AN Jeremiah Joseph visited an exhibition of interest in New York’s gallery district.

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RMJM's Capital Gate tower in Abu Dhabi will lean more than the Tower of Pisa. (Images courtesy RMJM)

When I was out in LA at Postopolis!, one of the most interesting and memorable talks I heard was Christopher Hawthorne’s, on the chilling, almost creepy, effect the recession has had on the United Arab Emirates, in particular Dubai. While he still hasn’t written up his version of his trip–and we wish he would, because the talk was so interesting–the basic gist was that construction had all but stopped in Dubai, and to some degree in Abu Dhabi (to say nothing of New York and LA), because the spigot of liquidity-né-money had dried up with the collapse of the financial system. He termed it Ponzi-scheme urbanism. Well, it seems some things are still moving out in the wild, sandy yonder, as RMJM’s Princeton office (formerly Hillier) just passed along the following impressive photo of its Capital Gate tower passing the half-way mark.

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Even though I was told recently that real engineers design buildings not bridges (the view a side effect of the long standing structures vs. civil schism) — and I have a strong disdain for Dubai’s nouveau riche gaudiness — it would be a fun to work on one of these super-bridges.  Long-span structures make it economical to use curvilinear members, which are a nice challenge to engineer — we get to break out our calculus (otherwise rarely used) and tailor members very specifically to the loads involved.

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Reiser + Umemoto's O-14 tops out in Dubai.

Construction projects are dropping like flies everywhere you look, falling in the water deader than Air France Flight 447. It’s gotten to the point that when a major milestone is met on a significant piece of architecture there is cause not only for rejoicing, but commentary by the architectural press. And lo, our latest great happiness comes (yet again) from the Arabian Desert: In the city of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, work has completed on the structural frame of O-14, an office building somewhat redolent of a block of swiss cheese. Designed by the New York City firm Reiser + Umemoto, the structure makes a significant departure from the otherwise glass-curtain walled edifices of this arid city by the sea. It’s exterior is composed of a perforated concrete bearing wall, which does double duty as a shading device, protecting the building from the blazing middle-eastern sun. For a full low down on O-14’s uncommon framing system, as well as more construction photos, see our 2008 feature on concrete.

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