Wacky Dubai — Summoning the Future
If you study videogames and architecture, a common response when people ask what you research is:
“Oh, really?”
I think that’s about to change.
Designboom has posted a fascinating, well, let’s be honest, completely insane, look at proposed buildings in Dubai
dubai architecture: new buildings in the united arab emirates
Taking ‘The Cloud’ as an example, this “speculative design” for a resort that floats on massive struts 300 meters above the ground sounds like something Archigram might have concoted. But placed against the actual buildings under construction or in development ( The Burj Dubai and Hadid’s Dancing Towers come to mind), something as improbably as The Cloud seems a plausible reality.
What does architecture have to do with videogames? If videogame designers don’t get busy, soon the built environment will provide more exotic, fanciful and playful places than those fictional worlds inside the computer.
Strange, but true.
I think Dubai is a beautiful city, but their outlandish architecture is starting to cheapen the city. The country and spends billions of dollars on such projects and imports south Asians to do all of the construction. These citizens suffer with low wages and poor conditions while everyone else enjoys the fruits of their labor.
I’ve been following the developments in Dubai for a while. It used to be when I talked about it, people thought I was kidding. Now it seems that serious money is on trying to come up with the next biggest, most weird thing to get away with. So, I agree. There does seem to be some limit to who spectacular Dubai can get before the whole thing falls apart.
— David