Architecture, Design and Conservation Danish Portal for Artistic and Scientific Research Aarhus School of Architecture // Design School Kolding // Royal Danish Academy HYPERABIA Jensen, Boris Brorman Published in: ARAB CONTEMPORARY Publication date: 2014 Document Version: Early version, also known as pre-print Link to publication Citation for pulished version (APA): Jensen, B. B. (2014). HYPERABIA: ON URBAN SPACE AND ARCHITECTURE IN THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES. In M. J. Holm, & M. M. Kallehauge (Eds.), ARAB CONTEMPORARY (pp. 224-237). 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Sep. 2021 HYPERABIA ON URBAN SPACE AND ARCHITECTURE IN THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES BY BORIS BRORMAN JENSEN Intensive globalization has been the order of the day in the United Arab Emirates in recent years. Boris Brorman Jensen focuses on architectural developments in two of the Emirates with the question “Is there a locally distinct architecture, or is it subject to the spirit of the global market?” DUBAIS’S STRIKING SKYSCRAPER CORRIDOR along Sheikh Zayed Road in morning mist. The city-state in the United Arab Emirates has seen huge growth since the beginning of the millennium. Less than four decades ago this area was by and large uninhabited desert. 224 The so-called Arab Spring times has gone viral. The reb- new fronts and exploring the that has spread from Tunisia, els’ mobilization and the use potential in the use of the new Egypt and Libya to large parts of social media as autonomous commu nication technologies. of the Arab world may not be command posts have redefined Yet it is still an open question an expression of any ‘spring’ in the space of political action and what the so-called Arab Spring a political sense. But although created a new framework for will mean for architecture in the democratic hopes that were individual activism. The Arab the region. sparked in December 2010 world has seen an alternative Architecture is a bound, seem at the time of writing to public sphere grow up that is relatively conservative art have been superseded by grow- hard to control through state form and although it may be an ing despondency and pessi- censorship, and the tradition- unreliable sign, ‘free’ art often mism, it is still hard to imagine ally separated and hermetically functions as a forewarning of the developments rolled back. isolated private sphere has the changes that architecture The events have shifted some been opened up. will later undergo. As a func- demarcation lines. Occupa- The resulting shift in the tion of political and cultural tions of central squares, mass established dividing-lines norms, Arab architecture has processions and street fighting among social, cultural and been characterized by clear have left us with a picture of an political spaces can be read divisions between private and awoken political public sphere. directly out of the current art public space, but there are With social media such as in the region, where a new good reasons to expect that Facebook, Youtube and Twitter generation of artists seems the changes outlined above the stifled criticism of former preoccupied with scanning the between the public and private 225 spheres will in the longer term also be reflected in the archi- tecture. Developments can go in many directions, and the present developments do not yet paint any clear picture. When one looks at the individual states in the re- gion, very di+erent situations emerge. In Egypt the upheavals on Tahrir Square in Cairo have led to a certain responsive- ness and a turbulent reform process, while the revolt in Bahrain has been brutally crushed with more oppression and the consolidation of the dominant power structure as a result. Nor do the country’s PEARL SQUARE in Manama, the capital of Bahrain, was at the rich neighbours, Abu Dhabi and centre of a budding rebellion Dubai – the leading countries which was quashed with an iron fist. Even the physical urban in the United Arab Emirates space has been eradi cated. The and the subjects of the follow- three satellite pictures were ing – seem to be a+ected by the taken in January, March and May 2010 respec tively. uprisings around them. Both countries deny any suggestion of crisis and have invested massively in the development of a profitable tourist industry. They have long been working to appear relatively liberal, but despite ongoing criticism from human rights groups and external NGOs the ruling circles still operate undisturbed within their own territory, and their power is legitimized exclusive- ly by decrees that are beyond discussion, and by charismatic self-staging.1 Ostensibly, every- THERE IS SOMETHING thing is always under absolute of science fiction or SimCity about Dubai. You can’t see it if control. Domina tion is rooted you don’t happen to know about in a perfect, static bastion that it, but the gigantic structure on the left in the picture and the contrasts starkly with the dra- huge pool form Dubai’s most matic development in urban prominent urban space. 226 BORIS BRORMAN JENSEN and architectural space over to which very many architec- spite everything the two Emir- the past three decades. Instead, tural o.ces all over the world ates have been the region’s constant hyper-growth is seen must adapt. Archi tecture has, biggest construction sites for as an expression of power’s for better or for worse, become many years now, and there is excellent capacity for dynamic an export commodity, and the no reason to wholly dismiss the self-perfection. images and cultural symbols phenomena that are emerging This political/cultural that globalization has sent into on the cultural surface. paradox is underscored by an orbit a+ect even the smallest of The Louisiana’s exhibi- externally origina ting, authen- small towns. It is not uncom- tion New Nordic – architecture ticity-seeking cultural critique mon for architectural ‘copies’ and identity in 2012 revolved which maintains that the many to be built before their origi- around the Nordic architects’ radical development plans nals. The global building in- attempts to develop, reinter- and spectacular construction dustry can go ahead and ‘print’ pret and reform public build- projects taking place in the two any architectural rendering ings, institutions and spaces. Emirates have nothing to do anywhere in the world. With or A guiding principle in the with Arab culture and exist in without the participation of the exhibition was the question of another reality than the Arab architect. architecture’s relationship with one. But at the same time the context and the Nordic The two Emirates have globalization has also proved architects’ exploration of the undeniably undergone rapid capable of pro mo ting a local building traditions, materials globalization over the past cou- cultivation of di+erences. and climate of the local area; ple of decades, and the physical Dubai and Abu Dhabi a particular sensibility that environ ment seems almost to have often been stigmatized the Norwegian architectural have been ‘SimCitified’ by the as antitheses or fake repre sen- historian Christian Norberg- homogenizing power of the tations of ‘the Arab’. The prob- Schulz summed up in the con- world wide machinery of specu- lem with this is that it partly cept ‘Genius Loci’ – the idea of lation. This is expressed by dismantles the illusion that the the presence of a ‘spirit of the an architecture that does not Arab societies would be able to place’ in architecture.2 relate to physical context and set more of their rich culture As an extension of this it site-specificity, but looks the free if paths were opened up is interesting to ask the follow- same everywhere on the planet. for more political and cultural ing questions: How does the The large, more or less state- exchanges. absence of a bourgeois public run con tracting companies that And as a corollary, if Dubai sphere3 come to expression operate in Dubai and Abu Dha- and Abu Dhabi are truly to be in the architecture of the two bi have been successful in ex- considered Arab exceptions Emirates, and what institution- porting their ideas to countries subject to cultural hyper- al role does architecture play both within and outside the inflation or runaway private in the all-encompassing one- region. Global imports/exports enterprise without roots in the dimensional space, private and are probably not what archi- region – then it seems unfruit- political, of these countries? Is tects with an interest in culti- ful entirely to set aside the there a local specificity – or has vating and developing regional critical reflections to which the Genius Loci become ‘Genius distinctiveness primarily have develop ments in the two Emir- Logo’ – architecture entirely in mind. But the unlimited ates give rise. The architecture subordinated to the spirit of exchanges of formal idioms in Dubai and Abu Dhabi o+ers global marketing? 4 are never theless a new market very little evidence of the depth What role does it play that condition for architecture, one of Arab cultural history, but de- most of the construction in 227 the two Emirates is designed commercially operated.