Festina Lente

Today's issue of Gulf News touches on the subject of Dubai and its architecture.

Chinese-born Hazel Wong, who helped design Dubai's Emirates Towers and is regional director of Dubai-based architectural firm RMJM, said the architectural spotlight is shifting to Dubai, where designs such as the Burj Dubai and the Dancing Towers are turning heads.

The UAE is attracting some of the biggest names in world architecture. Iraqi-born Zaha Hadid, the first woman to receive the distinguished Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004, was chosen to design the Dancing Towers development at Business Bay, which was unveiled at New York's prestigious Guggenheim Museum.

I have two problems with this. Emirates Towers is simply brilliant and the Dancing Towers (a rendering above left) will be breathtaking if realised as planned. But these are among the few stand-out examples of truly good architecture amid the forest of towers which makes up 'new Dubai', many of which would be deemed too kitsch or plum ugly even for Las Vegas. Within the last few weeks we've had a developer seriously proposing an 'anthropomorphic' skyscraper which mimics the proud stance of an Emirati in his white dishdasha and signature head-dress. And only now do I realise what Edinburgh lacks; a forty-storey tower in the form of a kilted Highlander looking down on Princes Street. Wouldn't that be a source of national pride, after three hundred years?

My other problem is more serious. When the sun sets today the 1st day of Muharram will be observed, the Islamic New Year. The last week of the old year saw at least two tragic accidents related to construction activity.

Reportedly three died in the fire on the upper floors of the Fortune Tower, which was close to completion.

In another instance concrete freshly poured for the ground floor surface of a new building somehow collapsed and buried workers who were taking their mid-day nap on the basement floors below. Again there were fatalities.

I find it hard not to attribute some blame to the insane rapidity with which Dubai is developing. Racing to finish a building as fast as possible - round-the-clock construction work is no rarity - can so often involve cutting corners, hoping for the best that nothing will go wrong. The motives? Inexperience? Ambition? Hubris? Plain ol' greed?

Things. Can. Always. Go. Wrong.

I hope there are some who choose as their New Year's resolution the wise Latin motto, festina lente, make haste slowly.