GEORGE KATODRYTIS / STUDIONOVA ARCHITECTS :: article :: Texts on the CITY :: NEWS :: Constructed Leisure-land

Constructed Leisure-land
by George Katodrytis

Flying over Dubai, one is confronted with a new type of 21st century urbanism, which is both diagrammatic and prosthetic in the form of islands. As a tourist, there is no need to travel to distant destinations, to desolated islands. Islands are now close to shore, in a new typology of hydro-suburbia.

The island is the lowest form of spatial organization. Pure accumulation, it has an iconic form and a certain perimeter and location. It can be reached by dramatic arriving (compare here with Venice’s Lido and Florida’s Key West). The surface of the island reveals everything there is, all contents; islands are fundamentally consistent and predictable: they give an assurance of security. But they have potentials; they are exclusive.

This uniqueness suits the machinery that drives mass tourism. There was a time when cities relied on a specific confluence of raw materials, transportation routes, and labor to generate industrial revenue; now cities rely on a different confluence of architectural fantasy, slightly different transportation routes, and on tourists to generate entertainment revenues.

As Briavel Holcomb points out in his essay “Marketing Cities for Tourism” (1999), in the tourist realm “it is the consumer, not the product that moves. Because the product is usually sold before the consumer sees it, the marking of tourism is intrinsically more significant than the conventional case where the product can be seen, tested, and compared to similar products in situ. It means that the representation of place, the images created for marketing, the vivid videos and persuasive prose of advertising texts, can be as selective and creative as the marketer can make them – a reality check comes only after arrival”.

Increasingly, the kind of contemporary architecture and urbanism that simulates mass tourism has to be not only photogenic but also telegenic – buildings that look striking in a sequence of rapid-fire cuts, or that stand out in a static shot as backdrops.

The city of Dubai sprawls out like an exponent of an algorithmically evolving pattern: a fractal architecture with forms of increased perimeter and endless topological variations, as two-dimensional patterns, allowing very little for 3-dimensional variety.

Historically, the origin of modern vacation time can be traced back to the 1930s, when workers in France, for the first time, were given the right to twelve paid vacation days. Today, tourism has become a “total lifestyle experience.”

The modern tourist resort is by definition a constructed one. The tourist’s perception seems to have shifted away from the pictorial 18th century: there is no longer the desire for the panoramic view. The excessively visual contemporary culture has made everything look familiar. Contemporary tourists are looking for familiarity: they want to feel at home in a strange place.

Mass tourism is indeed like mass media. The lure of the new works best when the new is both anticipated and well packaged. In 1925, in his essay “travel and dance”, Siegfried Kracauer already remarked that tourists are prepared for foreign places though the perusal of illustrated magazines. Nowadays, though coffee-table books, television ads, and movies, tourists are well prepped for on-site architectural experiences. A profusion of tour guides, and especially Internet sites, launches the tourist into touring weeks or months before the actual trip begins. What is striking about this body of preparatory information is the degree to which issues of touring comfort and efficiency take precedence over historical information about architecture or place.

From the airport to the air-conditioned bus to the four- or five-star hotel, package tourists spend much of their time within a cocoon. They might as well be at home, or at the mall. The orchestrated itineraries, with their chosen spots for picture taking and shopping, and their frequent driving ellipses over ignorable terrain, are similar to the experience of movies and television.

In Dubai there is little difference between holiday accommodation and housing. Architectural programs are becoming fused and undifferentiated. The morphology of the landscape and seascape is becoming fabricated to the point that it may soon be difficult to differentiate between the natural and the constructed. Dubai’s natural beachfront is 45km long. Artificial islands will add another 1,500km of beachfront, turning the coastline and the city into an inexhaustible holiday resort. This constructed landscape, like a stage set, provides edited scenes of adventure and entertainment.

No matter which part of the world, whenever architecture is built from nothingness –it seems to be fond of a universal language of spectacle and the exoticism of the new. It might be useful to look at another aspect of the exotic at this point, and ask in what ways specific examples of architecture are elusive and foreign to the city itself. This is also a way of asking how the exotic intervenes in the cultural politics of global tourism.

Dubai’s rock transport and dredging is carried out by Van Oord the largest dredging company in the world.

Rock transport, Dubai
In conjunction with the major reclamation works presently being executed by Van Oord in Dubai, the demand of rock for the construction of protecting barrier reefs and breakwaters grew. The over-sea transport of this rock became crucial, especially for The World, Deira Corniche and soon also Palm Deira. Client Nakheel awarded the management of the rock transport to Van Oord.

Although Nakheel is responsible for the supply of rock, Van Oord was contracted to carry out the transportation of the rock from the coast to the project sites. The quarries are located in the north and east of the United Arab Emirates and the rock is transported by road to the ports of Khor Khowarr and Al Hamra; these being approximately 70 kilometres and 50 kilometres from the project sites. There the barges are loaded and shipped to the various projects in Dubai.

Rock transport to The World
Presently, 14 rock barges with a capacity between 8,000 – 10,000 tons and 6 tow tugs are delivering the rock to The World. Approximately 250,000 tons per week are put into place by side stone dumping vessels Pieter and Frans and pontoons such as Manta and Litza, which work with cranes and shovels. The barrier reef requires roughly 32,000,000 tonnes of rock; 20,000,000 tons of core material and 12,000,000 tons of 0.5 to 4 ton armour material. Rock transport to The World project will continue until late 2007.

Project: DredgingThe World
The World is an archipelago of over 300 artificial islands that forms a map of the continents four kilometres off the coast of Dubai. The configuration measures seven by nine kilometres and is protected by a breakwater 25 km in length, the longest ever constructed.

Preparation for the project began in August 2003. When The World is complete, Van Oord has transported 32,000,000 tonnes of rock to build the breakwater and dredged 325,000,000 cubic metres of sand to construct the islands.

In the first stages of the construction, sand was deposited in sandbanks to ten meters below sea level to lay the foundation of the continents on the seabed. Medium-size dredgers then raised the sand banks to – 7 m, and smaller vessels to – 5 m. Large-capacity trailing suction hopper dredgers employ the rainbowing technique to bring the sand above the water level. The layout of the world can now already be seen from the air. Finally, cutter suction dredgers will shape the individual islands, which will rise 3 m above the sea. The World is scheduled for completion by the end of 2007.

Project: Dredging Palm Jumeirah
Van Oord undertook its first major project in Dubai in 2001 when it began construction of the Palm Jumeirah, of which concept, scale, and design were far more ambitious than anything that had previously been undertaken, anywhere in the world. It has already been acclaimed a marvel of marine construction and engineering vision. As one of the few manmade features on earth visible from outer space, it has been dubbed “the Eighth Wonder of the World.”

Palm Jumeirah
The palm-shaped island consists of a two kilometres long trunk with 17 fronds on which luxury housing and private beaches are being developed. It is surrounded by a 11 kilometres circular breakwater. Since the breakwater was needed to protect the sand from the strong currents and shamal winds of the Arabian Gulf, Van Oord first had to work below sea level and bring the sand above the surface in coordination with the third party development of the breakwater. Because the work is situated in relatively shallow waters, Van Oord could rely only on smaller-capacity trailer suction hopper dredgers and other lighter vessels. Some 110,000,000 m3 of sand were needed for the reclamation works.

Since its initial work was finished in October 2003, four months ahead of schedule, Van Oord has been awarded several additional projects to upgrade the Palm. Several fronds and the trunk have been extended and widened. Also, Van Oord was involved in the dredging of the tunnel trench that will connect the Palm with its surrounding crescent.

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