Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
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... View full entry
How might this destruction be stopped? International law remains one of the only paths to seek accountability. And it is not only lawyers who make its systems function. Through their stewardship of the built environment (including long-standing engagement with the right to housing and the politics of climate change), architects, planners, and preservationists can shed light on the techniques, procedures, and consequences of modern urban warfare. They also have the potential to change them. — The Architectural League of New York
Berlin-based Palestinian urbanist and scholar Natasha Aruri, formerly of the TU Berlin, breaks down the concept of ‘domicide’ with MIT's Balakrishnan Rajagopal and SITU founding partner Brad Samuels. The term can be traced to the 2001 title Domicide: The Global Destruction of Home, but has... View full entry
CNN is reporting on the chaotic situation in Dubai as record rainfalls this week have nearly incapacitated the metro, making for some unreal scenes at both its airport and city streets after about 10 inches fell in under 24 hours. Lightning and high winds have also caused damage to several... View full entry
Tensions in the Middle East keep escalating after the U.S. President followed his drone assassination of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani with a tweet that publicly threatens to strike dozens of target sites in Iran, including "important" cultural sites, if the country dared to... View full entry
"People know Mosul's Old City by its riverfront - it has some of the city's most important historic features," Fethi added, referring to the city's old wall, the citadel, palaces and other heritage sites along the Tigris' west bank.
"It [the council] should aim to preserve Mosul's heritage rather than turn [it] into another Dubai ... an absolute anathema to what should be done."
— Al Jazeera
Two years after Iraqi forces regained full control of Mosul from ISIL, local authorities are pushing a proposal to transform historic neighborhoods along the west bank of the Tigris river into a modernized “new city”, with high rises, large supermarkets and restaurant chains. Al Jazeera... View full entry
U.S. engineering firm Aecom will manage the development of Neom Bay, part of a $500 billion mega city on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast [...]
The kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, is spearheading plans to develop Neom, a futuristic city being built from scratch, as part of the government’s plans to cut its reliance on oil and attract foreign investment.
— Bloomberg
Intentions for the planned Neom megacity were first announced by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2017, but Saudi Arabia's suspected involvement in the death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi a year later caused international outrage and prominent international figures on the... View full entry
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has set multiple ambitious agendas for his desert kingdom. Turning it into a major cultural destination may end up being one of the highest-profile. For part of the plan, the Saudi government has turned to Sotheby’s, the biggest U.S. auction house, and Allan Schwartzman, the co-chairman of its fine art division. — Bloomberg
The largest auction house in the US, Sotheby’s, is in talks with Crown Prince HRH Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to build a cultural center in the northwest deserts of Saudi Arabia, according to Bloomberg. The contemporary art program is to be located in the Al-Ula region, which... View full entry
Officials in Qatar revealed the design for Lusail Stadium, the venue at which the opening and final games of the 2022 FIFA World Cup will take place.
The 80,000-capacity venue will be the largest stadium of the tournament, which will kick off on November 21, 2022, and be the first to take place in the Arab world.
— Al Jazeera
Image courtesy of Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy.While most designs of the eight 2022 FIFA World Cup stadiums have been subject of public debate for some time (most notably the controversial Zaha Hadid-planned Al Wakrah Stadium), the final appearance of the biggest and central venue... View full entry
This metallic box is the new $21m home for the AM Qattan Foundation, an arts centre that its founders hope will stand as a “beacon of culture” in the occupied West Bank.
“It has been years of fighting to achieve anything close to the standards we wanted. There are defects, but it is the best we could do while building under (Israeli) occupation,” [says achitect Juan Pedro Donaire, whose firm designed the new building]
— The Guardian
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced plans to build a new city on the Red Sea coast, promising a lifestyle not available in today’s Saudi Arabia as he seeks to remake the kingdom in a time of dwindling resources.
The prince said the city project, to be called “NEOM,” will operate independently from the “existing governmental framework” with investors consulted at every step during development. The project will be backed by more than $500 billion from the Saudi government [...].
— Bloomberg
The project is ambitious with a capital A: besides the mere challenge of building a new mega city in currently undeveloped desert terrain, the Saudi Crown Prince also envisions a new kind of society for NEOM — likely modeled on the 'free zone' concept that made Dubai flourish — whose "new way... View full entry
The Palestinian Museum opens its inaugural exhibition this weekend focusing on the holy city of Jerusalem, a city that both Israel and Palestine claim as their capital. The wide-ranging, overtly political show focuses on the realities of living in Jerusalem as well as the idea that despite being seen as the original global city, it also serves an example of how globalization has failed worldwide. — The Arts Newspaper
The Palestinian Museum, located in Birzeit, Palestine’s West Bank, opened last May. Back then, however, the $24 million structure designed by Heneghan Peng Architects had no exhibits to show due to a sudden resignation of the museum's former director. Its first show, Jerusalem Lives (Tahya Al... View full entry
As the country’s crime rate and prison population have steadily declined for years, dozens of correctional facilities have closed altogether. So when the number of migrants started to rise—more than 50,000 entered the Netherlands last year alone—the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) saw a solution. — National Geographic
Many prisons in the Netherlands have been repurposed to house refugees who are waiting to be granted asylum status, a process that usually takes at least six months. Free to come and go as they please, the refugees are not allowed to work but are encouraged to learn Dutch and build connections... View full entry
In a stunning move, seven Muslim countries—Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Yemen, and the Maldives—have severed ties to Qatar, a small nation of about 2.7 million people on the north-east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. The crisis underscores the deep divisions... View full entry
Completion of the world’s new tallest tower, Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, has been pushed back to 2019, its developer said yesterday.
Formerly known as Kingdom Tower, the structure is to reach more than a kilometre in height, which means it will surpass Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.
Construction began in April 2014, and was to have finished in 2018. [...]
“The project was delayed... but it’ll open (in) 2019,” Prince Alwaleed said during a media visit to the site, reports AFP.
— globalconstructionreview.com
"Saudi Binladin Group has been hit by a fall in work brought by lower Saudi public spending following the collapse in oil revenues," GCR reports. "Last year workers in Mecca burned buses in protest over unpaid wages amid reports of mass lay-offs." View full entry
The architecture giant Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) has announced that they will open a new office in Dubai, a move intended to further their presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The office will be led by Thomas Behr, who will oversee all operations in the... View full entry
