After George Katodrytis, it was the turn of the Dutch architect Kees Christiaanse to talk about Dubai in the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam.
The lecture of Kees Christiaanse was stunning. I didn’t know that there are still critical architects left like this. Projective theory is miles away from his point of view. His lecture showed that ‘the exhausted critical project’ is really exhausted.
Kees Christiaanse started his lecture by saying he had never been to Dubai, although he did a project there, via internet. Based on that experience, he would not do that again soon, he said.
There are four reasons to go to Dubai, Christiaanse summed up; the spectacularity of the developments, the projects of the Avant-Garde architects, to investigate the urbanity, and/or to do a design. Christiaanse won’t go there on vacation.
The city of Dubai might be the model for the future city, Christiaanse continued, and that is worrying, because its features are all the wrong ones:
- Sameness, Fakeness, Gatedness, Maleness
If Coney Island was the prefiguration of Manhattan, than Las Vegas might be the prefiguration of Dubai, Christiaanse proposed. Las Vegas is all about fake culture, and just as OMA build a Guggenheim for it, so is Frank Gehry building a Guggenheim for Dubai.
The growth of Las Vegas was mainly due to the fact that it was located on a border, in a no-mans-land without any laws and taxes. Things that couldn’t anywhere else, could happen there. The absence of taxes and customs – that what defines a democracy, Christiaanse said – is also the basis of the success of Dubai.
sourcces: http://www.eikongraphia.com/?p=1324
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