Documentary filmmakers have discovered abusive working conditions for laborers of NEOM’s The Line megacity development in Saudi Arabia. Per new reporting on the website Middle East Eye: "Labourers are forced to work grueling hours far beyond legal limits to construct the flagship project of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s Neom megacity, according to a new ITV documentary."
That film, Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia, is set to air this Sunday for UK audiences. Labor conditions in the Gulf region are considered to have faltered at improving despite several recent regulatory changes in the view of many Western human rights watch groups.
(Another shock claim that 21,000 workers from three countries — India, Bangladesh, and Nepal — have died since the Saudi Vision 2030 plan was enacted in 2016 is reported in the documentary.)
13 Comments
oh, what a surprise.
Should be covered thoroughly in all major architecture/construction/real estate publications. Shame that it isn't.
Another act of expansive hubris. Building because you can, not because it makes sense, or is needed. In a culture that treats people as chattel. A culture that has more money than it knows what to do with.
Consultants who have worked there say you do the gig with two buckets - one in each hand. One steadily fills with abusive crap (from the decision makers), the other with gold. You quit when one bucket gets unbearably heavier than the other.
arun, that is a chilling but apparently accurate analogy. Thank you for sharing it.
This is a surprise?
In other news, the sky is blue
These are our field's ethical leaders:
"According to reporting from Dezeen and The Architects’ Journal last summer, BIG, Zaha Hadid Architects, and OMA are still on the project. And so is UNStudio, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, Gensler, Mark Foster Gage, HOK, Studio Fuksas, Oyler Wu Collaborative, Tom Wiscombe Architecture, and others."
None of these firms should be allowed to speak or teach at any NAAB accredited architecture school.
Absolutely shameful. I hope students give them hell during the questions portion.
Well, its not just these fancy starchitect firms. A lot of the commercial ones if not all like Gensler, HOK, RTKL are all working in Saudi.
unsurprising and disgraceful as architects and large firms remain endorsers of this. a homage to an unthinkable scale of suffering, greed, and wealth.
Happy to see other platforms picking up the story with even more detail: https://www.archpaper.com/2024...
Somehow I missed this in May: https://www.archpaper.com/2024...
It's perfect, really. I wish it was satire, it seems too absurd to be real. The AI renderings, the cutesy graphics, the rhetoric of recovery and inclusion. Probably over 100,000 Palestinians killed in the past year, no end in sight, and this is what our profession does.
Name and shame: BIG, Zaha Hadid Architects, OMA, UNStudio, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, Gensler, Mark Foster Gage, HOK, Studio Fuksas, Oyler Wu Collaborative, Tom Wiscombe Architecture.
They will have no shortage of Zio architects to make shiny renderings and plenty of Arab countries supporting it to cozy up to Israel and the US. It all works out - kill poor brown people to acquire land, and then kill more poor brown people to make this shiny shit. (yeah Im brown so dont try the racism angle anyone)
Here's the video:
https://www.dailymotion.com/vi...
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