Dubious in Dubai: Rem the Radical Sheikh

Rem Koolhaas' urban design plan for Dubai
Photo: Office for Metropolitan Architecture

By Martin Filler, Guest Blogger

After I lectured on architecture criticism at New York's City College recently, someone asked if I ever write about projects prior to construction. I replied that I try not to, given unpleasant surprises that can occur between the drafting table (or computer screen) and the ribbon cutting. Furthermore, while real estate developers shamelessly exploit celebrity architects as marketing shills, advance publicity can make a critic an accomplice to this commercial scam. I was proud to be a rare no-show among my peers at a glitzy promotional lunch thrown last year by a pioneer of high style design as luxury "branding" tool.

I understand why daily newspapers feel compelled to comment on schemes that promise (or threaten) to have a major impact on their communities. In most cases, though, I prefer to wait for the real thing, although I honor the venerable tradition of "paper architecture"---visionary fantasies never intended to be built. However, my unease about premature evaluation spiked when I read New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff's Mar. 3 preview of a grandiose urban design plan for Dubai by Rem Koolhaas, the aging Peck's Bad Boy of architectural globalization.

I admit to having written a few pieces about pending projects, but they concerned individual buildings, and I believe the likelihood of critical error increases exponentially with the size of an unexecuted scheme. Dubious though I was about Ouroussoff's February 2007 Times paean to Thomas Krens' latest Bilbao knockoff--four museums for Abu Dhabi by Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, and of course Frank Gehry--this latest Emirates flackery left me breathless.

What struck me most was that in an article of over 1,100 words, not one syllable was squandered on any mention of political conditions in the Middle East present or future, which could instantly render this 1.5-billion-square-foot mirage deader than the Dead Sea. Whatever perverse allure the ever provocative Koolhaas might confer on this grotesque concept, one at least would expect the Newspaper of Record's architecture critic to consult its front page every now and then.