Omens of Doom: Dubai’s Burj Khalifa Tower
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It is a colossus, towering over the Dubai skyline. The company behind it claims to have made a successful return of 10 percent. The local paper, the Khaleej Times, did not shy away from hyperbole, seeing the building as “an example of human courage and man’s ability to dream and deliver”, giving the world “an achievement difficult to surpass”. The Burj Khalifa Tower, renamed in tribute to Dubai’s bailout donor, Abu Dhabi’s Sheik Khalifa, dwarfs all that have come before it. It is a monstrous compilation of gimmicks in some ways, another addition to the mix of Vegas-styled faux islands, shopping centres and ski runs. Dubai portends to be a place of trickery, entertainment and massive expense accounts. The building itself boasts 200 floors, and rises to 828 meters. It promises to be the home of the first Armani Hotel. Patrons are whisked between floors in elevators at the speed of 18 metres a second. But what does this building suggest about Dubai and the architectural madness that characterizes such efforts? For one thing, the creation strikes deeply at the apocalyptic language of the recently concluded Copenhagen Climate Change conference. The Sheiks seem less interested in carbon footprints than oil-financed structures of glass and steel. They keep company with architects such as Adrian Smith, the designer of the Burj Khalifa and Cesar Pelli, who gave England the One Canada Square and Malaysia the Petronas Twin Towers. Dubai suffers, like tyrants, from an overwhelming edifice complex. Its spending complex resembles the efforts of the Pharaohs and their pyramid projects, or those of the medieval Catholic Church: bigger is better, huge monuments to progress, humanity and God. Sometimes, the smaller the state, the more obsessed the efforts in building the Tower of Babel. Megalomania is the classic byproduct of inferiority complexes, often induced by money without sense. All of these point to a thesis formulated in 1999 by Andrew Lawrence he dubbed the Skyscraper Index. These figures of modernity seem to precede periods of crisis. At low points of the business cycle, these architectural Cyclops seem to rise. The Empire State building was conceived in 1929, the same year of Black Tuesday (October 29) and the onset of the Great Depression. The Sears Tower of the 1970s towered over a society in the grip of stagflation and oil shocks. The monumental Petronas Twin Towers opened in 1997, the year when Asian currencies took a pummeling, humbling Asia’s ‘Tiger’ economies. In the civilisational sense, this may also be true: the big building, or building project, is a symptom of decay. The American novelist Henry James certainly thought so, though he was thinking of it more in the aesthetic sense. In an economic sense, the great building project tends to forecast ruin. Athens passed quietly into the shade after the building of the Acropolis. Henry VIII of England and Christian IV of Denmark were builders who drained their treasuries, left magnificent buildings, yet failed consistently on the battlefield. The building efforts of the Pharaohs, as Paul Johnson pointed out in 2005, suggest a hubristic tendency that eventually will meet nemesis. The Wall Street Journal (Jan 5) was confident that such a building mania would not last, sniping at Dubai’s paltry credentials on ‘economic freedom, rule of law, hard work and sound management’ relative to such cities as Houston and Hong Kong. ‘Without these, nations and cities alike build nothing but foundations of sand.’ Given the precedents set by previous failed civilizations, the omens are not good. Dubai’s economy is in a mess. Sheik Khalifa has been generous to the tune of $10 billion. In an age of environmental sensitivities and proliferating green fan clubs, we might well be witnessing a dying breed. When the excitement does die down, the business of preventing Dubai from sliding into oblivion will begin. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lecturers at RMIT University, Melbourne. |
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19 Comments
Lifts that travel 18 miles a second? Won’t that shoot them through the roof, somewhere into the stratosphere almost instantly?
Dubai could have found their new industry - assisted suicides…
Well written, very true from a UAE ex-residents point of view.
RMIT alumni rule! lol
ABarker, you’re absolutely right, 18 miles was incorrect. It’s been updated.
the ratio of the ground-level footprint to the height is also an object lesson in the value of square meterage. It looks like to get something that tall, you need to be prepared to occupy a very much larger surroundings to construct the brace.
(the hancock tower in Chicago is similar in that respect).
Taipei 101 is a far more ‘attractive’ edifice, within the limits that can apply for something this monstrous. I saw it during and after construction and recall it as being in a bit of a clear-fell zone. I don’t much like the petronas towers, but they have at least some sense of themselves (similarly in a bit of an urban wasteland)
Of course, the real power statement is to go low. I doubt if anything being put up will outweigh the ‘I can afford to waste land’ message of the smaller, simpler head office.
Yeah yeah yeah. But wouldn’t WE love to have one that was the tallest ‘in the southern hemisphere’ too?
@Amber Jamieson: still not right - isn’t it 18 metres per second? 64km per hour??!!
1.8 miles is still massively fast…something like 6480mph?! Ha ha ha!
@Ben Fishlock
You’re absolutely right! Binoy just emailed me asking for it to be updated again.
Obviously we need Mick the Sub to come back from summer holidays pronto.
Given the topic area, it’s hard to see how a round of floggings wouldn’t help.
Soph?
The Pyramids may have been the nadir of Egyption civilisation, but Egypt remained a farce for a few thousand years after….
I don’t think the power of the middle east will be quite so lucky
By this reasoning, Melbourne avoided the Grollo Tower of doom.
true Jeebus, but Grollo still gave you still the Eureka Tower hehe
the rationale behind all the craziness of Dubai is to build a sustainable economy once the black gold has been exhausted. I haven’t been there, but will Dubai ever have a sustainable economy? It doesn’t appeal to me due to the heat plus, wouldn’t it be too plastic?!?! Gold Coast x 1,000%.
It would be interesting to examine the mooted return of 10% which is only average for a high rise development (try +15%). I wonder if the 10% excludes the apartments that the developer probably bought for personal use and the other 100 they also probably bought via an SPV $2 hotel operator company???
Dubai of all places should be thinking less ‘tall buildings’ and more ‘Archologies’ - the fully self contained super-structures designed for harsh environments. That would really get them kudos and prestige they are looking for, not to mention security in the face of declining resources (in a desert city).
Oh for goodness sake have a whinge why don’t ya.
I think its a stunningly beautiful structure, and hey, if I could afford it I’d be schmoozing around in there right now, enjoying it like anything.
Dubai is being built by slaves. Did you know that?
That building big things precedes a crash is an utterly illogical and absurd idea. By selecting a few dates and events I can easily prove that all the great medical advances of this century were preceded by floods in Vietnam.
Is this the best our “academics” can come up with ?
“the business of preventing Dubai from sliding into oblivion will begin.”
Begin the slide into oblivion? Dubai doesn’t exist in any serious sense. It’s a figment of a sheik’s imagination. A mountain of debt. What’s missing from Kampmark’s commentary is the fact that the other edifice complexes in history were built in real countries. Egypt, England, Taiwan, Malaysia, USA…after the explosions of greed and ego, the monuments had their uses. The host countries could (eventually) afford it.
Dubai is a barren patch of sand surrounded by more sand…an ecological insanity.
Smithee, the discussion is an economic one. You’re trying to make some argument about relationships between irrelevant events ie floods/medical advances. That’s all very cute but the point Kampmark is making (which you might have missed in your rush to be funny) is that grandiose spending and hubris precedes economic failure. That’s an entirely valid and interesting perspective and worthy of examination.
Worthy of examination ? Maybe you’re right. Here we go:
In the rise and fall of civilisations or course the big projects will be built at the financial peak. Some time thereafter the civilisation comes off that peak and declines.
Wow ! Binoy’s theory is correct after all.
Exactly Smithee, you got it this time. The author examines past events and makes a projection that that construction of the Burj Khalifa suggests forthcoming decline. Recent events indicate that this is indeed the case.