Rem Koolhaas: Delirious Dubai?

By SANDY IKEDA | March 25, 2008, THE SUN, New York

“A city cannot be a work of art,” Jane Jacobs once wrote.
Well, the renowned architect Rem Koolhaas has designed an enormous city-district that looks like a gorgeous work of art. To call it a mega-project would be a gross understatement. How about “giga-project”? Above is what it’s supposed to look like.

It’s one-square-mile of man-made island to be built on an artificial harbor in the Emirate of Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, the cost of which, even before buildings, will be probably reach the tens of billions of dollars.

You can read about it on the website of Mr. Koolhaas’s firm, The Office for Metropolitan Architecture, here. The idea is to mimic the density of Manhattan on an immense scale, combining mixed uses (what else?) in the context of his celebrated concept of a “generic city,” which he has defined as “the city liberated from the captivity of the center, from the straightjacket of identity…it is the city without history.”

Read the rest of this article on The Sun’s website here.

 

JJ is co-founder of 5ft Creatives and is currently based in New York.