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Dubai is already home to the biggest shopping mall in the world, but that apparently isn't enough.
The emirate is planning an even bigger mall, one so massive it's already being described as a temperature-controlled city. It's going to be called Mall of the World, and will stretch for 48 million square feet.
The plan may seem curious to Americans watching their neighborhood shopping malls start to fade.
— cbsnews.com
To its critics—and even many of its fans—“culture” and “Dubai” barely belong in the same sentence. The city is perhaps the world’s most extreme example of a business-first, built-from-the-sand boomtown. But Shoufani and her fellow Poeticians have become a prime exhibit in a debate that has broken out with renewed vigor in the Arab world and among urban theorists worldwide... — bostonglobe.com
Dubai won the bid to host the World Expo 2020, being the first Middle Eastern city selected in the Expo's 160-year history. HOK, in partnership with Populous and Arup, led the design team that developed the master plan, themed "Connecting Minds, Creating the Future." Their proposal won against those from Brazil, Russia, and Turkey.
The 1,082-acre (438-hectare) Expo site is equidistant from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, next to the new Al Maktoum International Airport and near the Jebel Ali Port.
— bustler.net
Images: HOK View full entry
Drop by Hollywood’s finest art and architecture bookstore, Hennessey + Ingalls, tonight for a special event launching Shaping the City, a newly revised edition of contemporary urbanism case studies. The event will also feature a conversation with University of Toronto’s Director of... View full entry
Many of these references are to natural phenomena: the wind-blown sand dunes of the desert or the sanctuary of an oasis; others refer to a way of life seemingly passing beyond recall: the dhows used for trade and pearl diving, or the tents of the nomadic Bedouins. — Atlantic Cities
It is like the new expression of Orientalism. Middle East architecture is defined by few limited metaphors by Western architects who are really looking East to fulfill their payroll obligations. View full entry
Dubai ceremony marks inauguration of world's highest twisted tower.
Saudi developer Cayan inaugurated late Monday the opening of the 73-story, one-thousand-and-seventeen-foot (310-meter) tall Cayan Tower in Dubai's prestigious Marina district.
Inspired by the structure of human DNA, each floor of the 272-million-U.S.-dollar (1 billion-Dirham) tower is rotated by one-point-two degrees to achieve the full 90-degree spiral, creating the shape of a helix. Dignitaries from diplomatic corps and Corporate Dubai joined the celebrations which... View full entry
Emerging London-based firm Baharash Architecture has been selected to design phase 2 of the 46-hectar Dubai Sustainable City development. The practice is set to open an office in Dubai following the victory against international anonymous teams from the United States, Lebanon, Jordan, UK, and UAE. — bustler.net
Lootah said the project is a complete glass, transparent structure resembling a huge window frame intended to highlight the attractions of the city so visitors can view the skyscrapers on Shaikh Zayed Road from one side — symbolising modern Dubai — while the other side of the frame will show the old Dubai landmarks of Deira, Umm Hurair and Karama.
“The electrical panoramic elevators will help visitors move through its facilities as if they are moving in the sky inside the glass frame,”
— khaleejtimes.com
As some of you may remember, when the winner of the ThyssenKrupp Elevator Award was announced 3 years ago, there was quite a bit of controversy surrounding the selected winner. The winning entry, "Dubai Frame" by Fernando Donis of the Netherlands, was a 150m tall structure designed as a literal... View full entry
One expert in the UAE has estimated that 70% of the high-rise buildings there have panel facade cladding made of a combustible thermoplastic core held between two sheets of aluminium. — BBC News
Bill Law, a BBC Gulf news analyst, writes about how fears of a "towering inferno" disaster in the Gulf are growing after fires left residential buildings heavily damaged in the United Arab Emirates cities of Sharjah and Dubai. The panels have been prohibited in the UK and USA for some time and... View full entry
Scientists and engineers from the Faculty of Ocean Engineering and Ship Technology at Gdansk University in Poland have teamed up with other Polish scientific and R&D institutions to come up with a landmark underwater hotel.
The Water Discus Underwater Hotel, as it is called, may not be the first but plans for the Dubai venue call for the biggest site of its kind.
— DesignBuild Source
'[R]emember that a place like Dubai really emerged in the last 50 years. It was a sleepy, you know, Bedouin town half a century ago. And what you do is when you bring in the world’s, you know, most sophisticated architects and engineers, you can literally build anything, including a building of 140 or 150 stories. But designing a municipal network of sewage treatment is in some ways more complex. - KATE ASCHER — Boing Boing
Terry Gross recently interviewed Kate Ascher about her skyscraper book, and ended up discussing the common lack of sewage connections in Dubai - including the Burj Khalifa. So they end up using trucks to cart the sewage to the central treatment plant, where they often end up queuing for 24-hours... View full entry
Named after the sheikh, Mohammed bin Rashid city will aim to harness the tourism growth in Dubai -- Dubai's official statement estimated current tourism growth at 13 percent and retail sales growth at 25 percent annually.
The development plans for the new city are largely divided into four themes -- family tourism, retail, art galleries and a “unique area that will provide an integrated environment for entrepreneurship and innovation in the region.”
— travel.cnn.com
It is believed 70 per cent of the buildings in the UAE have some form of facade cladding that has a combustible thermo-plastic core between two sheets of aluminium. — thenational.ae
In the future the wisest zone entrepreneurs will question this central feature and ask: Why enclave? What types of incentivized urbanism will actually benefit from physically segregated infrastructure—from being separate and even distant from the dense and dynamic central spaces of existing cities? Given that the zone is now generating its own urban programs — aspiring to be a city—what economic and technical benefits can result from constructing what is in effect a double or shadow of the city? — Places Journal
On Places, Keller Easterling traces the global rise of The Zone -- "a.k.a., the Free Trade Zone, Foreign Trade Zone, Special Economic Zone, Export Processing Zone, or any of the dozens of variants." From pirate enclaves to Puerto Rico, from Shenzhen to Dubai, she interrogates the spatial logic of... View full entry
Seniors in the architecture major will have to abandon T-squares and straight edges for their latest project: designing water slides for the Wild Wadi Water Park in Dubai.
The students will enter their designs into a global architecture contest sponsored by the Jumeirah hotel chain, which owns the water park.
— yaledailynews.com
