Video from very top of Burj Dubai

Stumbled upon a really great video on YouTube, taken from the very very very very top of the Burj Dubai. Simply Breathtaking...

Vertical Farming with Seawater

gismag.com

"The vertical farm features a soaring spire with pod-like ‘sky-gardens’ branching off to give it an organic feel in keeping with designers aims to create a clean, green, sustainable source of food for a more self-sufficient Dubai. The concept makes use of the Seawater Greenhouse process, which uses seawater to cool and humidify the air that ventilates the greenhouse and sunlight to distill fresh water from seawater to enable the year round cultivation of high value crops that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to grow in hot, arid regions such as Dubai. This is in stark contrast to costly and energy intensive desalination plants that rely on boiling and pumping to produce fresh water."

Only at concept stage right now, so in other words, the details of how the thing would actually work have yet to be thought through. I wonder if it also rotates?

Click the above link to read the whole article and see 7 drawings.

Sustainability. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Meh - get the solar power farms working first.

Dubai design, unveiled

http://www.business24-7.ae/articles/2008/10/pages/10132008_f588e20e232a42ec9ac264366cdf4177.aspx

Atkins have done it again. The (locally) famed designers of the Burj al Arab have revealed a new design for what is set to become the World's third tallest building.

The new tower design for Tameer, as featured in the news today brilliantly captures the essence of architecture in Dubai:


What looks like a giant wind turbine at the top of the tower, set to harness wind energy and create sustainable electricity, is really a restaurant ‘pod’ propped up by three support ‘spokes’.

An empty formal gesture that promises something and fails to deliver, and whose sole purpose is commercial gain. An aesthetic gimmick that looks like ecologically sustainable engineering but actually serves dry Martini and grilled hammour.


In the words of Shaun Killa, Atkins' chief architect: "Buildings need to interact with the people instead of being part of a photograph".


I see. That must be the reason for constructing a 600m tall building. To enable 'interaction' between people whilst they wait twenty minutes in the lift lobbies at peaktimes. The "turbine" then is surely not a feature designed to attract attention to the building and be photographed. It further enables people to 'interact' by spending vast amounts of money in a restaurant at 600m height, whilst at Ground level the building 'interacts' with the streets around it by enabling a joyful merry-go-round of 1,000 + cars trying to access the podium car park.


Well done, Atkins.

Too Much Hatred Against Dubai!

I can't believe how much hatred those people had against Dubai!

Geekologie added a blog showing some pictures of Dubai taken by David Hobcote. I was blown away when I read the comments posted below the blog. That was too much! The blog does not talk about politics nor religion nor anything like that. The post was just showing some nice pictures of Dubai. I have no idea how the pictures hit the nerves of those people. Is it just me? Read for yourself and tell me if I'm exaggerating.

Dubai Arch Bridge meets with approval

Take a look at this graphic. It's New York Magazine's "Approval Matrix". Dubai's arch bridge ranks very high in brilliance and high brow-ness.

Some pics

Thought of adding some of my photography to this blog. I haven't put an update in a long day.
Eid Mubarak to every1, and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.


Burj Dubai District, Dubai

Koh Samui, Thailand.

Comments always appreciated...
http://blog.basilkhleif.com

Dubai's architecture

The Washington Post has a long essay on Dubai's architecture, and the contrast with Abu Dhabi. I won't attempt to summarize. Read the whole thing here.

Rem Koolhaas's Dubai Deathstar

Rem Koolhaas's Dubai Deathstar

by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05.21.07

Design & Architecture

We show a lot of proposals for buildings in Dubai, often draped in photovoltaics and covered in propellers, or twisting and turning, it is a Disneyland of architecture. Sometimes we think they are going a bit overboard, as they evolve from Disney to Lucas with buildings like OMA's Ras al Khaimah Convention and Exhibition Centre. We have used Picasso's bon mot, updated by Le Corbusier before: "Good architects borrow but great architects steal" but never was the homage so obvious. Architectspeak below the fold....

rest of story

Source: Digg.com

[Dubai] The Lighthouse: An Innovative Green Skyscraper

The Lighthouse is another innovative green skyscraper to be constructed in Dubai. For energy generation, it will have three enormous 225 kilowatt wind turbines (29 meters in diameter), and 4000 photovoltaic panels on the south facing façade. To optimize performance and operational periods, the turbines have windward directional wind vanes or limited yaw.

On Digg - Dubai Skyscraper That Creates All Its Own Energy

Hope this hasn't been posted earlier...this article had made it to the top stories on Digg.

The Skyscraper That Creates All Its Own Energy

"This skyscraper, to be built in Dubai, is called the Burj al-Taqa ('Energy Tower'), and it will produce 100% of its own power. The tower will have a huge (197 foot diameter) wind turbine on its roof, and arrays of solar cells that will total 161,459 square feet in size." more

Dubai Architecture - Lecture at JILC

A Lecture about The Traditional Architecture of Dubai will be taking place in our premises in Um Suqeim 1 as part of JILC Fun Day.

Fri 13/04/07
The Traditional Architecture of Dubai

Venue : Jumeira Islamic Learning Centre.

Time : 5.00 p.m.

Speaker: Rashad Mohammed Bukhash

He is the Director of General Maintenance Dept, Dubai Municipality and Chairman Architectural Heritage Society. Bukhash, is considered one of the leading authorities in the field of conservation in the gulf region. He supervised the restoration of all the historical buildings in the emirate of Dubai including the Bastakiya area and the Hatta Heritage Village . He has a Master in Philosophy in Architecture from Manchester University , U.K and a Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse University , Syracuse , N.Y. , U.S.A

Architect Koolhass on Dubai in a presentation

Found this in the Design Notes newsletter:


Few of Koolhaas' own buildings were included in his presentation and he appears to have little interest in talking about himself. Instead, he prefers to pounce on political, economic and global ideas that he then uses to frame his largely conceptual work. Decrying Dubai (shown left) as a bad theme park for architecture, Koolhaas used elegant graphic slides to show how architecture has followed the fortunes of oil and the stock market in a new but "poisonous" silk route of trade across Europe. The yen, the euro and the dollar are held up as symbols of support and corruption, made elegant through his barrage of graphics and language. Less is not more with Koolhaas. He revels in complexity while simultaneously showing examples of new works that he designed with generic intent.