deconcrete

^ Skyscraper Index. Booms and Crises throughout highrise buildings. Art After Democratism, Installation by Jonas Staal at Traffic, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Traditional masonry wall with coral stones. Sharjah, UAE. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Urbanizing the desert, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Reconstruction of Traditional Architecture with palm branches. Bed for sleeping outside in the summer. Indian visitors at Dubai Museum. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Reconstruction of a Wind-Tower (Yawani type) divided diagonally in four sectors for natural ventilation of the sleeping area to catch breeze at night. Dubai Museum. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Reconstruction of a Wind-Tower (Yawani type). Dubai Museum. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Cross-section of  a Wind-Tower. Heritage Architecture Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ How to Inhabit a Wind-Tower. Heritage Architecture Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Reconstruction of ancient wind-towers (Barajeel type) in old city of Dubai. A/C inside? Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Traditional games for boys to ‘test their strength and endurance’ and games for girls ‘which reflect home life’. Dubai Museum. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ The origin of Dubai economy: Pearl divers at the seashore, a job traditionally carried out by African slaves, when the Gulf Peninsula was a key site of the slave trade route between East Africa and West India (6th-15th centuries). Dubai Museum. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Turtle-shell nose clips for pearl divers. Dubai Museum. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Pearl divers in Dubai, a job traditionally carried out by African slaves. Dubai Museum. Children born from enslaved women, concubines of Arab citizens, were ‘born free’. Any trace of their mother’s heritage became obliterated as they took on Arab identities from their fathers. They constituted the Afro-Emirati society. [source> J.D.]. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Pearl diving areas in the Gulf. Sheikh Shaeed Al-Maktoum House Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^  Divers. The Waterfall at The Dubai Mall. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Traditional Palm branches Architecture. Heritage Architecture Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Traditional Architecture of nomadic tribes. Heritage Architecture Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ ‘Musical instrument made from goats hooves and worn around the waist’. Dubai Museum. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Traditional Courtyard house. Heritage Architecture Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ 3D collage of traditional Emirati architectures. Heritage Architecture Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Traditional House Elevation. Heritage Architecture Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Emirati man standing in front of a traditional house. Heritage Architecture Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Traditional Building techniques. Heritage Architecture Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Traditional Building techniques. Heritage Architecture Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Traditional Building techniques. Heritage Architecture Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Traditional Building techniques. Heritage Architecture Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Old scheme for a staircase hidden under another staircase. Sheikh Shaeed Al-Maktoum House Museum, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Indoor Ski Slope, Mall of the Emirates, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Indoor Ski Slope, Mall of the Emirates, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Indoor Ski Slope, Mall of the Emirates, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Indoor Ski Slope, Mall of the Emirates, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Mall of the Emirates, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Dubai Aquarium with the largest acrylic panel in the world (32.88 m wide × 8.3 m high × 750 mm thick and weighing 245,614 kg). The Dubai Mall. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Traditional Water tank, camouflaged A/C and vernacular masonry wall. Dubai Museum. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Power in Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Man rushing to a pop-up Mosque during prayer time in the Labour Camps Area, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013

^ Contemporary barracks at the Labour Camps for migrant workers, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Alphabetically-named barracks at the Labour Camps for migrant workers, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Downtown Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Telecom Palm Trees. Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Dragon-shaped floorplan of the Dragon Mart for Chinese goods, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Dragon Mart, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Dragon Mart, Dubai. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Restored/Reconstructed remnants of the 50-cm-thick Wall of Old Dubai. ‘City walls are one of the prominent architectural features of the urban context of old cities’. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Historic Tree in Old Dubai. Planting Date: 1960.  Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Rulers of the UAE. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ ‘The government is not a power on the people but the power to serve the people, so the success of the government is to what extend the people satisfy with the government’. In the United Arab Emirates, less than 20% of the population are ‘citizens’. Less than 1% of that 20% is allowed to vote. [source> Human Rights Watch, 2009]. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Where Dubai ends. Image by deconcrete2013.

^ Monument built with whale bones in Alaska. Image via bloomberg tv

If we look at two types of traditional dwellings in the North Arctic area, whalebone structures and snow houses, we can read a whole ecology and economy on their floorplans. Material structures and spatial configurations blend together in a necessary adaptation of the soil into human habitation.

The most impressive form of the house according to available raw materials is the one resulting out of the waste coming from whaling activity: the lack of trees in the landscape makes whalebones be used as beams for dome-shaped structures. These used to be later covered with turf, snow or already worn-out sealskins for isolation.  Each Inuit whalebone structure was usually composed out of 15-20 jawbones from bowhead whales. They were seasonal shelters used following different hunting patterns throughout the year. In a recent study, Infranet Lab visualizes time in an arctic environment by tracking the nomadic hunting activity that makes settlements still count on an itinerant use of the landscape. Unfortunately, today more and more poorly isolated prefab houses are clashing with seasonal inhabitation of eskimo territories.

^ Bowhead whalebone structure via myriammahiques

^  Alaskan eskimo house (skins and whalebone) ca. 1906 via University of Washington

^ Engraving of a house made with whalebones, Olaus Magnus 1555. Image via sciencephoto

^ Thule Winter house – Whalebone structure. Image via the canadian encyclopedia 

^  Image via Indigenous Architecture of the Americas.

^  Whalebone structure in Point Hope, Alaska. Image via virtual tourist Point Hope.

Snow houses have traditionally followed a pattern of co-residency through clusters of connected or disconnected igloos. The dwellers of each cluster were determined by alliances between families and household organizations, leadership or kinship. Composite snow houses could therefore mutate with the years. They included indoor public space for festivals, feasts and games, singing, drumming or dancing, for the members of the cluster. Spaces were shared according to respect-obedience relationships between different male members of the alliance/family.

The three cases below correspond to houses from 1922, 1866 and 1915, as published in Space Syntax Analysis of Central Inuit Snow Houses, by Peter C. Dawson. Journal of Archaelogical Anthropology, Dec 2002.

^ Snow House Longitudinal section. Image via the canadian encyclopedia

^ Holcim Awards Gold 2011 for Food Arctic Networks, by InfraNet Lab. Images by  via detail-online.

^ The idea of enclosure of common ground within a household graphically reminds also of the brilliant organization of traditional farms in Cameroon, where the intimate areas configure the boundary of the public realm.  Image via zkfound

Marina d’Or is a strip of urban development at the Spanish Mediterranean coast, wishing to become Las Vegas and failing to emulate Dubai. This Holiday City had initially planned 3 golf courses, a casino, 40,000 apartments and an indoor ski resort. Altogether, it should house 200,000 dwellers with their own security department. Set in a former agricultural landscape and wild Mediterranean forest, it is one of the largest New Towns in Spain resulting from construction excess. And like the others, paralysed in time and awaiting a better future. Very few traces survive from its former chaotic greenness and I wonder whether urbanisation will eventually prevail over nature. Budget for public gardens sinks every season and alien sand is under constant menace of flowing away. Meanwhile, Marina d’Or has attracted attention from Emirates investors who could potentially see some opportunities on it.

All buildings share a “seashore typology”. It consists of maximal optimisation of the seafront: narrow façade and deep slim blocks with terraced roofs. In most plots, there are two parallel blocks linked together by a common front towards the sea. The majority of the apartments do not face the water; but they have a diagonal view instead, so that the most amounts of people may enjoy supreme views. Housing blocks look like cruise ships of concrete. However, their shape does not respond to aesthetic symbolism but to a literal result of speculative real estate-led urbanism. Instead of suburban single-family houses, there are 7-9 storey dense collective blocks. Could this compact mode result in a more respectful way of urbanisation? If the same amount of development was to be done using low dense constructions, a larger coastal strip should be deteriorated.

Astonishingly, the fact that ca. 50-60% of the apartments seem to remain empty makes the narrow strip of artificial beach enough for such a low population. At least, one policy has been respected. All constructions leave a 100m gap between sea and buildings. Beach sand progressively turns into a green lawn, separated only by a blurry fringe where artificial irrigation ends and public property begins. Environmentally disastrous as it might appear, the site is very beloved among pedestrians, even branding it as “ecological site”. Both beach and lawn are open public space for residents and non-residents.

Marina d’Or makes use of evocative naming, in order to meet certain lacks characteristic of such an urban development. If they want to make the whole city look more cultural and intellectual, they simply name their brand-new streets after well-known writers, such as Rafael Alberti or Jorge Guillén. If they want to transmit a higher quality of beach feeling, they simply name their housing compounds after Acapulco or Caribbean Sea. If they want to have a marine water spa without having natural springs, they simply call it “Marine Spa” for using water from the nearby sea.

I regard Marina d’Or as the ultimate seasonal shrinking city, losing more and more temporary visitors. This real estate speculation was an utter ecological disaster, but surprisingly, I experienced one of the most interesting private/public space encounters in such kind of new towns. Are we in front of a new strategy for business-oriented landscape? Could original wilderness end up re-claiming its territory after business phase is over?

[all images> Marina d'Or: Speculative Landscapes by deconcrete2011]

RGB (128, 24, 24) is also known as Falu Red, a traditional pigment out of silicates iron oxides from Falu Copper Mines. A recycling strategy that used to tinge every single timber construction across Sweden with the same tone. Black pine wood turns into black constructions amidst a Japanese forest. Brown mud extracted directly from the ground sculpts high-rise monoliths in Yemen. Pink gypsum coats dwellings from decay. Soil houses the site. Yellow river reeds build straw huts by the same river where they grew; houses are born out of plants. Green prairies extend over Scandinavian roofs covered with high-isolation wild turf. Sun radiation deflects from a white façade back to the street. Indigo blue keeps mosquitoes away. Sleeping underneath flowers. Architecture mirrors heat.

[1> BLUE Jodhpur, India via indiamarks][2> WHITE Casares, Spain][3> BROWN Shibam, Yemen via vitalcrazy][4> RED Åsgatan, Sweden via fotosedan][5> YELLOW Aussenkehr, Namibia via wilkinsonsworld][6> BLACK Tsumago, Japan via airliners][7> PINK Taleghan, Iran by MohammadEmdadi][8> GREEN Norway by Jessica Rose]

“The desert is a huge paradox. Beneath its outward appearance of immensity and silence, are the sounds of various experiments, mysteries, and utopias. The setting of outrageous true histories, entertainment oases founded on consumerism and play, and the secret staging of military power, the desert is far from empty. Instead, it is full of activity: unexpected, uninhibited, and excessive. Not subject to barriers and seemingly free of the formal, ideological or cultural ties of global society, the desert cultivates alternate architectures, urbanisms, and built phenomena.” [source> actar]

American emptiness is the perfect breeding ground for bizarre experiments. As compiled in Desert America – Territory of Paradox (Actar 2006) in different thematic groups, the rough vacant landscape hosts an exceptional amount of urban laboratories. Promised Lands deepens into the US-Mexican border condition and ancient Mormon colonizing strategies; The Elements puts together a series of ways to control sun, wind, water and extract power, including both failures and wise moves; Eden gathers idealistic utopias ranging from firearm-oriented towns to +55-year-old-communities; Hostility describes dozens of obsolete military infrastructures showing a decadent pierced landscape by nuclear tests, or open-air collections of Cold War Rockets and unused airships; Other Worlds brings outer space watching and receiving installations together, adding ersatz natural environments underneath man-made structures; and Expansion describes ways to produce an instant city for modern nomads: the Burning Man camp site and Arizona’s RVs oases.

“The story of the American desert is fundamentally one of technology. What distinguishes it utterly from the other deserts to which it is superficially similar [...] is this chemical reaction between the raw material of a landscape and the modern sciences that have occupied and acted on it, producing a hybrid space that is both the most natural and the most artificial of territories.”

It is astonishing how rural desolation can unleash such a variety of urban interventions. Land Art once extracted the best of these wastelands and Venturi squeezed Las Vegas neon-lights to the maximum, but the human yearn for colonizing a territory never supersedes the eccentric.

[1&2> Desert America - Territory of Paradox. Actar 2006] [3> abandoned Bombay Beach resort by Kim Stringfellow via greenmuseum] [4> Imperial Valley and artificial Salton Sea via earthobservatory] [5> Dead fish at Salton Sea via filmfestivalworld] [6> Sedan Crater nuclear test via radiochemistry]

After finding this fiction image of swimming Manhattan in La Periferia Domestica, I couldn’t but look for the world’s largest swimming-pool. 100 Km West from Santiago de Chile, there is a lagoon resort by the ocean, with an artificial pool more than 1 km long. Almost like one fourth of the length of New York’s Central Park. I hope it will also be built as the next High Line some day…

[image1> swimming Manhattan via LaPeriferiaDomestica] [image2> San Alfonso del Mar, Chile by reuters]

Not only Rotterdam enjoys recycling cargo containers for affordable housing. In Hainan island, China, a factory has also reused them for their workers’ dormitory. But instead of using fancy eclectic finishings, actual dwellers do welcome the factory owner’s initiative of giving them a traditional touch of the Anhui Province style: courtyard, veranda and front walls.

Features teleported from the original Ming Dinasty white wooden villas dating at least 500 years old. Like in the most pure Roman Empire style, these ancient dwellings also had all their chambers looking onto the courtyard and its pond. The richer the family, the more amount of patios. But most surprising were their low-tech systems. Apart from the smart way of natural ventilation through underground channels (open in summer and closed in winter), my favourite are the fire protection devices. They consist of one cubic metre of sand, stored above every door threshold; whenever any flames would start destroying the wood, the sand falls down and avoids the fire spreading from one room to the next one.

Unfortunately, still too much high-tech for low-cost contemporary housing.

[images 1-4> cargo containers adapted as Anhui traditional style housing via chinahush] [images5-6> Anhui Province traditional Red Village by deconcrete2010]

1 million plants & 15 kg of weed. Worth 600,000 euro in the black market. Everything ready in a home that local police agents have discovered today in an apartment in Barcelona. Self-made ventilation, heating, cooling and lighting systems, out of everyday products. A whole artificial environment, allowing a jungle to grow 24/365 inside four walls. This home-made laboratory was used for germination, elaboration, storage and distribution of the crop.

[source&image> marijuana home plantation via elpais]

Instead of a sign, this bike-shop in German Altlandsberg has decided to hang 120 bicycles from its façade. In the most refined Venturi’s Vegas style, I cannot wait to see also their washing-machine store building, their Bakery or even the Town Hall with 15 town councillors exhibited on the front wall!

[image> bike shop in Altlandsberg via spaceinvading]

Cities sometimes need to provide space, which is more intimate than an office and more public than one’s home. Santiago de Chile has its peculiar magic formula in Cafés with legs (literally cafés con piernas). Resulting from an hegemonic masculinity in society, these widely accepted cafés still struggle with male and female roles, reaffirming traditional modes of being “man” and being “woman”.

Basically they consist of a café, where refined coffee is served at a higher price than average, by waitresses with naked legs or light clothes/underwear. Clients (mostly men) sit along its bar on stools during their midday break from office work. From the street, a smoked glass turns the prohibited into invisible, while once inside, mirror glasses make the permitted fully visible.

But eroticism aside, the incredible success of such meeting places relies on the waitresses giving psychological support to their customers, a kind of female advisor on personal lives. The fact that waitresses are more naked than dressed, provides an atmosphere of intimacy to talk about one’s deepest feelings.

In a time where women have achieved enough self-sufficiency in Chile, it seems that there is still a necessity for outdated roles of women’s servility, that is not to be found at home. As Devanir da Concha Silva pointed out [magazine for experimental anthropology 5,2005], these places are anchored to former “natural” spaces for men and women, reflecting how [hetero] sexual human beings enjoy everyday urbanity. But does urbanity really need the illusion of being a “real man” to feel more masculine?

Meanwhile, Cafés with Legs will remain between a modernised past and an obsolete modernity…

thanks paulo!

[images1,2> café with legs Caribe via serious eats] [image3>café with legs interior by marcelo montecino] [image4>café with legs Haiti via davidlansing]

[Image> from Suoi Tien Cultural Theme Park, Saigon, Vietnam]

The Buddha version of Disneyland in Vietnam is one of the 5 Asian theme parks selected by CNN in an article featuring entertainment bizarreness. Together with the erotic Love Land Theme Park in South Korea (Chonqing, China currently planning another one), Bruce Lee Theme Park in HongKong, and Hello Kitty and Namco Video games in Tokyo.

Entertainment industry may have exceedingly evolved with time; however, its landscaping and marketing seem invariable all over the world, all over the decades. I wonder whether tastes have really then changed.

Comparing the representation of Saigon’s paraphernalia with the recent world largest Skatepark in Shanghai, it seems that it could be the same place, if one forgets some Pantone palettes and a couple of Zaha Hadid graphic touches.

[Image> SuoiTien Cultural Theme Park Saigon, Vietnam vs. SMP Skatepark shanghai, China]

Zoos are also timeless. Despite a lot of efforts from ecologists to find a balance between displaying animals to public mass and caging, most reproduced environments still show fantasy worlds with similar features of surreality, in their graphical representations.

[Image> Zooplan of Frankfurt am Main, Germany 1859 from FRonline]

[Image> Zoomap of Himeji, Japan 2003 from alexquinn]

[Image> Row Houses at the rooftop of a 10-story shopping mall in Jakarta, from hellomister]

Hard to distinguish at google-maps satellite view, roofs reinvent themselves towards mixed-use buildings. A symbiosis, which camouflage communities, such as the one in the picture above. Aiming the most efficient land use, real estate developers come up with new follies à la Cedric Price, by overlaying diverse functions one above the other.

“In cities like Istanbul, Jakarta or SaoPaulo, [...] because of the absence of public infrastructure, communities develop their own self-contained cities, the rich in the form of luxurious enclaves, the poor by occupying land and building gececondos, kampongs or favelas.” [Kees Christiaanse for Open City-IABR 2010]

The formal version of the informal rooftop squat communities documented in HongKong by Rufina Wu (described in an earlier post).