Branding Dubai: The Legacy of the Burj Al Arab

On a trip to the Middle East a wealthy American businessman makes reservations at a high class restaurant. Later that day, as the waiter takes his order off the Al Muntaha menu of contemporary Mediterranean cuisine, in a thick Arabic accent he asks the businessman how he is enjoying the view. All of a sudden the young American realizes the impressive panorama of desert and Arabian Gulf to the left of his table from 200 meters in the sky. This restaurant is located atop the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai of the United Arab Emirates, which is currently the third tallest hotel in the world standing at 1,053 feet (or 321 meters) high. This building, a major symbol of the city’s success, was only the first of many ambitious projects Dubai has undertaken in the past decade or so to create the image of a higher, faster, and stronger society. Massive amounts of development and infrastructure has been sprouting up all over Dubai without regards to historical preservation or local context, leading to a lack of social fabric connecting the buildings, both old and new; it has fostered a new culture of extreme global architecture and development based on creativity and the idea of image-ability starting with the hotel.

The completion of the Burj Al Arab began a legacy of a new, more artistic style of architecture spreading rapidly throughout the developing world. Such buildings were made to serve as luxurious status symbols rather than to perform practical functions. The Burj Al Arab, or “Tower of the Arabs,” is a self-proclaimed “Seven Star Hotel” built from the wealth the city accumulated from its past success with its oil reserves. With natural oil sources depleting, places like Dubai are turning to tourism and marketing to create a new source of income based on luxury goods and tall, extravagant buildings – places like the Burj Al Arab. The Western world has left a major impact on Dubai, a former British colony, as our greed for oil and now for luxury goods continues to drive their economy.

To get a sense of exactly how lavish the hotel is one only need hear of the ridiculous figures involved in the making of the $650 million building. Over 20,000 square feet of real gold leaf was used on interior decoration, so chances are if something looks like gold inside the hotel, it is. With 60 stories and only 202 suites, the dimensions of each room are also enormous. In addition to the major scale of the building, it was constructed on an artificial island built 919 feet (or 280 meters) off the shore of Jumeirag Beach.

To create a firm foundation for the building 230 40-meter long concrete piles were driven into the sand, holding the building in place through friction being absorbed by the sand and silt around it rather than focused at the base. The tremendous amount of wealth and opulence poured into this building was designed to symbolize Dubai’s urban transformation into a modern and developed world. The mere shape of the Burj, resembling the sail of a dhow (an Arabian vessel), was intended to be “a building that would become an iconic or symbolic statement for Dubai…very similar to Sydney with the Opera House, or Paris with the Eiffel Tower. It needed to be a building that would become synonymous with the name of the country,” according to the architect, Tom Wright. Once this Burj was completed, Dubai was successful in spreading the image of the building as the image of itself, a flourishing new urban city, across the globe.

Especially in developing nations, cities want to be valued and recognized by others in order to support economic growth in areas such as tourism. Dubai has gained global recognition with the erection of the Burj Al Arab and its subsequent developments of similar magnitude; Sheik Rashid, the Prince of Dubai, sees this as a “highly visible statement of the region’s corporate success.” With massive amounts of development, architects and developers have turned an undesirable piece of desert land into a very popular tourist destination. Having a global symbol and global recognition allows cities like Dubai to focus on developing a culture of novel luxury goods. With the success of the Burj Al Arab, the Sheik had ordered more artificial islands and more tall buildings to be developed to increase the prestige of his city. In order to keep up with Dubai, many other nations have learned from their example and cities like Beijing, Seoul, and even New Delhi are seeing massive amounts of development similar to levels seen in Dubai.

In most developing nations, architecture and development are rarely paying attention to the local context and histories of each city in an effort to quickly build a bigger, better city. However, you can only ever have two of those three elements at any one time. You can build something quicker and bigger, but it won’t be better. You can build something bigger and better, but it can’t be done quickly. You can build something better and quicker, but it can’t be large. Many nations are seeking shortcuts to advance ahead of the development curve trying to reach the levels of the Western world, and in doing so they compromise many aspects of traditional, healthy development.

While this new fast-paced, large-scaled architecture is awe-inspiring, many critics have noted the negative changes in ecological patterns surrounding major development in places like Dubai and Beijing. Going back to the Burj Al Arab, artificial islands like the one the hotel rests on and the neighboring man-made Palm Islands have disrupted the natural current of the Arabian Gulf along the coast lines which have begun to change the weather patterns and biodiversity in the area. As basic human nature constantly seeks to improve itself and its accomplishments in this era of technology and development in urban design and architecture, a higher, faster, and stronger approach does not seem to be appropriate at this time. However, there are well over 7 billion people in the world, and over half of them now live in urban areas like Dubai and Beijing and Mumbai increasing the demand for larger, faster, and better development. Creating impressive, unique buildings and places like the Burj al Arab and the islands seem to be only for show at this point in time. The culture of expediency and luxury found in the rapid development of such Megacities and mega buildings are detrimental to the global environment and show major disregard for the society as a whole.

As long as there is the demand for this new style of global architecture dedicated to creating gigantic buildings rather than more locally appropriate buildings (in terms of being more reflective of the local people and their cultures), architecture and urban design/development will continue to shift. This new global architecture remains detached from local histories and contexts and merely plays into what is best for the economy rather than the people. This is especially relevant in Dubai as the new architecture is so modern and rarely ever connects to Arabic history; the government approves buildings which look beautiful and intimidating as they want to impress the world with their ability to make something so grand and so new.

A large reason for this shift toward innovative forms and styles of development can be attributed to the fact that most architects and developers of places like Dubai come from the Western World. For instance, Tom Wright, architect of the Burj Al Arab, is a British man who infused much of his Western ideals and modern style (which was rarely, if ever, seen in the UAE before) into the design of the building. After all, a global British architecture and design firm, Atkins, was the one who backed this project. Many other major projects in Dubai have also been backed by Atkins and other Western firms like Arup as well; Dubai has sought out many Westernized cultures to create their own. However, even if they did decide to incorporate more local traditional architecture styles, there wouldn’t be much context to go off of because there is a lack of many rich styles of local architecture in the first place, due to the restrictions of being located in the middle of the desert.

More recently efforts have been made to at least imitate the looks of local architecture, such as designing the appearance of Arabic windcatchers in certain buildings. Windcatchers were originally towers built to “catch” the air above a building and circulate it as a natural air conditioning system. With the increasing use of newer technologies such as modern air conditioning, the need for such traditional designs has disappeared as well. This modern use of a seemingly traditional architectural style has changed a practical piece of urban form into the façade of genuine culture. Such hybridity is taking the place of tradition in many places, and modern technological advances are taking precedence without trying very hard to connect old and new buildings to one another. This makes development in an area like Dubai dangerous because people are attempting to create extraordinary buildings without any templates or models to test it against ensuring a building will function well in a specific setting.

For instance, the Burj Al Dubai, set to open in September of 2009, is already the tallest structure on earth at 1 kilometer high, and a lot of concern has been raised over whether or not the building will actually be safe in terms of its stability and design. Some people even argue that with the rapid construction timeline of such a building, workers (which are mostly immigrant and poorly paid) have an increased incentive to cut corners and compromise the safety of the design. Also, it doesn’t seem to bother anyone that this building will stick out like a sore thumb amongst all the other buildings in Dubai. Even the Burj Al Arab is only just over half the height of this new building. However the fact that Dubai is home to the tallest structure in the world is more important to their government than issues of connecting infrastructure and creating a sense of community, a sense of connectivity within the city.

This new global form of architecture, detached from local forms and styles, reflects the constant search for something new, creative, and innovative in human nature. With constant development and almost unregulated growth, these aspects of human nature – as represented in cities like Dubai and symbolized by buildings like the Burj Al Arab – are growing to tremendous proportions with our increasing technological abilities. Along with massive amounts of development in the area, gentrification is also becoming an issue as these major hotels and business offices cater to the rich Westerners who come to vacation rather than to the native Arabs in the city. The intended population of Dubai seems to be Western expatriates and vacationers rather than native Arabs when looking at the types of buildings being developed in relation to who they will benefit. The new global architecture does not yet focus on the needs of local populations as much as it focuses on trying to astonish the world.

Many cultures around the world are disappearing under the stress of this new paradigm in development as history and tradition give way to the new, the vibrant, and the innovative. Dubai’s mentality and architecture style has spread throughout the world as an increasing number of cities and nations are building their own tall, unique buildings like the Burj Al Arab detached from the local context of the place. Higher, faster, and stronger seems to be the maxim of Dubai as it had rapidly developed into one of the most prominent cities of the Middle East and of the world beginning with the construction of the Burj Al Arab. Anything seems possible in this world where buildings are built upon fabricated islands shaped like palm trees and where buildings often tower overhead at over one kilometer high. Such development had been unheard of in the past as it has widely been considered to be whimsical and unsafe; however it has now become a regular style of architecture in the developing world. While many still consider such development unsafe, it is clear that Dubai has undoubtedly created a place for itself in the world where no place had existed before as it sparks/rings in a new paradigm in all aspects of development that no longer focuses or ties into a historical sense of place.


References
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