JHK’s Three-Act Play
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It’s in the ironic nature of futuristic icons that the closer you get to the putative future’s arrival time, the more these icons look like yesterday’s tomorrow. That’s certainly the case with Disney World’s Tomorrowland, which seemed maxi-awesome in 1960, with all its tropes about space travel, robots, and never-ending progress. But the moon-landing is now so far in the past that not many people living remember seeing it happen (assuming it actually did happen, and was not an extravaganza staged by the late-and-great Stanley Kubrick, as rumored lo these many years). Nowadays, Tomorrowland is little more than one big Star Wars commercial — Disney bought the franchise lock-stock-and-barrel from George Lucas in 2012.
Anyway, behold, above, Dubai’s Museum of the Future. Dubai is the Emirates’ Tomorrowland, a city so extravagantly cuckoo that it invokes a kind of giddy reflex nausea. (Or maybe it was just the ferocious Arabian heat.) I was there once, as a speaker at a city planning conference run by the global business consultancy McKinsey for the Emir, Sheikh Mohammed ibn Rashid Al Maktoum, who incidentally also heads the town’s biggest property development company. That conference was nuts, too. At least half the speakers and panelists were computer imagery wizards from Hollywood. After the first morning session, it was obvious that McKinsey knew zip about urban design. The conference was all about projecting movies on buildings, the kind of thing you saw in the movie Bladerunner, and not much else. There was literally no talk about streets or frontages or building codes or any other hardcore particulars of assembling a place to live. It was all just showbiz.
Hence, it’s not surprising that the basic design ethos of Dubai is like Wilshire Boulevard in LA bumped up a couple of orders of magnitude: much bigger, much taller, way hotter, and with every street as broad as an interstate highway. Chalk that up to the stupendous accumulated oil wealth of the region. The place gave me the heebie-jeebies. I spent every spare minute swimming laps in the hotel pool. I passed on the opening cocktail party at the top of the Burj Khalifa, the half-mile high, needle-like skyscraper currently billed as the world’s tallest building. (The damn thing slowly sways in the breeze up there… no thanks.)
As to the Museum itself… the torus-shaped shell was designed by the British firm of Buro Happold. It’s touted as “platinum green,” meaning super-duper environmentally correct. The Arabic inscription on the exterior is supposed to be a poem composed by the Emir himself. The exhibition spaces inside opened with a WEF-inspired show about climate change and related globalist propaganda. The sad truth of the matter is that when Arabia’s oil wealth runs out in not more than a few decades, Dubai will no longer have a future. Rather it will only then embark on its true destiny — as history’s most incongruous ruin. Of course, reenforced concrete and plate glass won’t age as well as Rome’s limestone and marble… but Dubai is like the proverbial fraternity house food-service: not very good, but there’s a lot of it. It will take centuries for time to consume the debris.
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Yes, a donut, pregnant with nothing. Perfect metaphor.
“The sad truth of the matter is that when Arabia’s oil wealth runs out in not more than a few decades, Dubai will no longer have a future.”
This makes the assumption that oil is a “fossil” fuel, but it may well be abiotic and may be self-replenishing.
I wish Metals! My oil wells are definitely not abiotic ones. Maybe there are different kinds? My wells are slowly but surely running down in production.
There are some very, very old wells developed back in the 50s (I’m referring to the area I know best – the Permian Basin) that are still producing, but not like they did back then.
Anyway, I read this abiotic theory years ago and since then it hasn’t seeming to go anywhere.
If / when oil runs out, it will cleanse a lot of evils. Humanity is way too dependent on it. In case you might think I support “alternative” resources – there are no alternatives to oil. Some pretend they can replace it, but it can’t be replaced.
Abiotic oil is a pipe dream, as is Dubai.
How about the controversy tearing apart the U.A.E? It seems the people of Dubai don’t like the Flintstones, but the people of Abu Dhabi, do!
Hey, a new football design, you put your hand through it rather than around it.
Look, I’ve seen better napkin rings on even the humblest of tables. Someone said that the design is supposed to represent mankind’s understanding, with the hole representing what we don’t know. Well, okay, but the structure seems to convey more of an image of a modern, handheld iron with heat contained at the bottom.
Towel rings could express the above idea even better, with the comparatively larger hole representing what we don’t know more accurately. Scaled down, the object could work as a pair of knucks, although brass is still the preference.
The swirls of chaotic calligraphy can make you swoon, and you can’t escape it. Didn’t you see it down there on the right-hand lobe, ‘eff Al Maktoum’?
This museum of the future has the shape of an elongated egg, an egg without any center, without anything life sustaining. The future of no future at all.
“ After the first morning session, it was obvious that McKinsey knew zip about urban design. The conference was all about projecting movies on buildings, the kind of thing you saw in the movie Bladerunner, and not much else.”
“There was literally no talk about streets or frontages or building codes or any other hardcore particulars of assembling a place to live. It was all just showbiz.”
Mr Kunstler absolutely nailed it right here! that he did. He truly nailed it.!! not only is this true with McKinsey & Co, This is also true with far far too many American cities / American Urban Planners!
“My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel” Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum absolute Ruler of Dubai 1958-1990.
Hi Jim,
Reaching back into some film trivia, the building kind of looks like ‘The Derelict’ spaceship from the Alien film franchise. Put it this way, things ended badly for those who dared venture inside that spaceship.
Having been involved in a bit of construction over the years, I too am uncomfortable with the idea of buildings moving around – you can feel it.
Cheers
Chris
Looks like one of those new, bluetooth controlled feminine personal devices.
The iron fist has become smooth and comforting but it is still an iron fist.The shape now is a resting vulva that follows the same realpolitic as the iron fist.Women have made the great leap forward to modernity and Men get to build their temple.
Islam might wish to apply their copyright to the temple of modernity for women.That absurdity in your face is better build quality that a stucco rocket.Architecture prospered from the government building contract with brutalism.
Obvious disasters of the past like tower blocks have been smoothed over by wind-tunnel abstraction.The cabaret girl defeats the alien with S.T.E.M. because Hollywood is a perfume commercial.Maybe the eye was rolling so much it flew right out of the building.