The Greening of Riyadh - Riyadh 2011

I lived in Riyadh for 13 months between 2010 and 2011, during that time I was watching, and now continue to follow the gradual transformation of 160 hectares, one square mile in old money, of desert into a compact city centre with some pretty bold aims in terms of achieving a ‘green’ development in the hottest capital on earth.

A bit about Riyadh, it is a city that is constantly growing but is approximately 1500 square kilometres situated on a plateau some 200m above sea level, the city was founded at Ad Diriyah which is the ruin of a traditional Arabian walled city built on an oasis. From the Riyadh plateau it is unbroken desert in any direction, leading to the Persian Gulf in the East and the Hijaz Sarawat mountains on the Red Sea Coast in the West.

The natural green areas of Riyadh have been inundated by the relentless grid over that past three decades, and very little trace remains. A long term project, the restoration of the Wadi Hanifah, has been gradually returning green areas to the city, but the King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) is by far the most significant in changing attitudes towards sustainability in Riyadh.

The prevalent attitude driving development has been that it is not possible to build in a sustainable way in the Middle East and the only option is more sprawl and more energy consumption. Here a reversal of that strategy is unfolding, an integrated mixed use development comprising 70 blocks, 34 of which are towers within the 1.6 square kilometres, with the tallest at 80 storeys. It will be theoretically possible to live and work in the same place, and even walk to work with the aid of air conditioned bridges between blocks. A monorail, part of the soon to be commenced Riyadh Metro, will circle the development eliminating the need for short car journeys, for Ex pats at least. The project will provide 300 hectares of office floor space and will accommodate 12,000 residents. It is the largest LEED project in the world. The master plan was developed by Shankland Cox in 2006/2007, and the members of the architectural elite of the world are involved in the design of the towers. Each one designed to minimise heat gains to reduce the demand for energy usage through the district cooling. The target is to reduce water consumption by 50% and maximise the reuse of waste water for irrigation.

Having driven past the project on a number of occasions, it is clear that there is a very concerted effort to create a ‘green’ environment, from the dense planting on the highway intersection the feeling is not one of a depressing desolate environment, but one of possibilities in managing the environment. My former office DAR were handling the construction supervision of a number of parcels on the site so it was not difficult to set up a site visit and witness the ‘greening’ process in action.

Arrival at the site is via a one number of identical security gates that all seem to be numbered the same so finding the right gate to report to turned out to be quite a challenge, once through the correct gate, came the next challenge of finding the right site office in a city of Portakabins, all identical, completely obscured by allocated but seemingly random car parking zones where all the dust covered cars are parked so close together that it seems impossible to get out, the tight driveway between the cars, scarcely sufficient to manoeuvre. The volume of people working here is astonishing! GMC yellow School buses, like the one seen in Dirty Harry are parked up in rank.

Once into the artificial cool of the cluster of site cabins, it is time for an introduction to the project and a safety briefing from an Indian site agent which goes along the lines of ‘we have health and safety’. So armed with the knowledge that we have heath and safety, and kitted out with high visibility jackets, hard hats and site boots, note the lack of safety glasses and gloves compared to visiting UK sites, it is an en-masse guided tour of the parts of the project being supervised by DAR.

Everywhere there are armies of workers, with at least 3 assigned to every task, narrowly avoiding being squashed by the constant movement of site vehicles. The skyline from this level is filled with tower cranes, tower cranes and more tower cranes. I don’t think I have seen so many in one place, and beneath them concrete structures twist out of the ground in an array of different combinations that will result in each tower having its unique identity. On the podium that will become the new network of streets and spaces, a sea of steel reinforcing bars so tight that it seems that there is no space to pour the concrete, and sure enough a concrete pump sending a very liquid concrete in between them as if to prove a point. A walk down a ramp into one of the many sub basements provides a welcome break from the heat, and five stories down in the zone that will become the water tanks for the tower above, it is notably cooler than the crazy heat on the surface.

Climbing up one of the staircases to the podium workers are scabbling back stair nosings and further up are recasting them, a labour intensive process, I guess quality control systems are not so strict here. On the surface a two storey deep trench cut from the sandstone will become the service corridor accommodating the district cooling that will make this project work. A wait in what will become an impressive lobby, gangs of workers emerge from the lift, before it is our turn to ascend in the slow moving steel cage to the 15th floor. Not the highest vantage point on the project but high enough feel a temperature drop from the 50+ degrees on the ground, and to give a good impression of the vast array of work being undertaken simultaneously, a state of chaos where everybody seems to know what they are doing.

An army of diggers working in a line scoop out the soft sandstone that was the sea bed 80 million years ago, to form more basements, to what will become museums and community facilities. Alongside, the service corridor trench is being hollowed out to feed more areas of the development.

The panorama reveals numerous blocks tightly packed between the tower cranes, each one will accommodate offices, apartments, hotel rooms where the blocks themselves will cast shadows on the ground and provide natural cooling to its neighbour. Looking beyond the activity to the south, Riyadh with Kingdom and Faisaliah shimmering in the heat haze, with more towers emerging along the King Fahd Road, to the North Tamkeen tower, Al Yasmine one of the site that I was once involved in, that on the map seems remote from the city is steadily being caught up by the constant march of development that is the ongoing Riyadh sprawl.

The green highway intersection that I have driven on so many times appears as a park from here, and the vision of the project becomes so clear, this is not Le Corbusier’s Towers in the park, this is a far more dense version, probably more akin to wall street, except the dark spaces between buildings  are a welcome refuge from the heat, where the heat island effect, where hard surfaces reflect heat back into the atmosphere, is eliminated. Creating an urban environment where for some of the year at least it will be possible to walk outside and enjoy the outdoor experience that is so lacking elsewhere in the city.

Reflections in a Giant Golf Ball...Riyadh 2011

Al Faisaliah Tower is one of the two landmarks on the Riyadh Skyline, referred to some as the pen and by others as something out of Star Wars, whether you love it or hate it the tower does make for a dramatic silhouette against the desert sunset. With its gently curving columns framing office floors, mechanical levels, a spherical  restaurant and finally communications dishes before coming together to form a point at the top, hence the reference to a pen.  Unlike my previous visit to a Foster landmark, the Commerzbank Headquarters in Frankfurt, this one is open to the public if one is prepared to spend a minimum of 100 Riyals in the restaurant or alternatively 35 Riyals to ride in the elevator which at approximately 8 Pounds Sterling is on a par with any of the visitor attractions in London, a view over Riyadh at 40 storeys is well worth a look.

On the ground the way into the base of the tower is less obvious, hidden behind the curving glass west facade along the drop off protected from the overhead sun by a series of deep louvres. A closer look at the planar glass wall reveals a shopping mall that like the rest of the city appears to be distinctly closed. A walk round to the South reveals a similar facade with opening times, it seems that nothing really happens until night time, and when it does it is ‘Families only’. A continuation of the walk around to the east side on Olaya Street reveals yet another curving glass facade beneath the louvres, but this one has doors that appear to be open. a young Indian guy is busy polishing them after brief enquiry and pleasantries it is into the cool air of the Faislaiah mall, lined with designer shops that appear the same in London, Birmingham, Dubai...except that there are no women, even in a lingerie shop the sales assistant is male. All around the shops are targeted at women, jewelry, lingerie, designer dresses, killer heels...which is a bit ironic really as women are not allowed to be seen in public without being completely covered in a black abaya, which considering the heat, the air temperature is 48 degrees Celsius, is the last colour you would want to wear outside.

At the top level of the mall an air conditioned glass corridor becomes a bridge that runs along the full width of the lobby before terminating at Kenzo Tange's Khozama Centre and King Faisal Foundation Headquarters, a masterpiece in Metabolism, raw concrete weathers well in this climate and still looks pristine as it did when opened in 1976. A brief walk around the shaded plaza the white concrete, deep shadows and planting in neatly ordered raised beds gives the sense of a modern university campus and for a while its is easy to forget that you are in Riyadh. The lobby of the Al Khozama Centre is a dramatic space, an inverted ziggurat to the North side, steps in to meet its partner a shear facade of glass, at the top of a six storey atrium where very little direct sunlight is admitted overhead. At the ends a clear glass wall protected from the sun allows light to burst into the space casting dramatic shadows and reflections off the glass.

Back onto the air conditioned glass bridge and into the Faisaliah lobby, and what a lobby! a wall of petals four storeys high, sloping down to meet the plaza, heavily filtered daylight gives a sense of protection from the heat. Outside Ferrari's are parked in full view of the restaurants that occupy the wings on either side of the green plaza that contains the base of the tower giving a tiny fragment of the glamour of Dubai . Beneath the plaza a ballroom the size of football pitch with a network of movable dividing walls that can sub-divide the space into any number of permutations.

Back beneath the bank of petals and into the lift lobby and up to the globe, the golden geodesic orb that is so distinctive on the skyline. The view from the globe reveals the true extent of the sprawl that makes up the city of Riyadh. Horizon to horizon, low rise blocks form an endless continuum of of villas, ranches and private resorts hidden away behind concrete walls, in an ever expanding grid relentlessly marching over the desert, obliterating any geographical features, each new block contributing to the constant drone of air conditioning units that release more heat and Carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Riyadh has no real public transport system at present, so the grid is constantly alive with cars in an ever increasing stampede of people moving in and out of the city.

Closer to the base of the Tower the city fabric becomes a patchwork of vacant lots, construction sites, where portakabins forming site offices sit precariously at the side of a five storey hole in the ground, vertical faces cut out of the bedrock. Two parallel roads running North - South: King Fahd Road to the West and Olaya Street to the East form a strip that is home to Riyadh's towers, to the South, the Ministries with their fortified perimeters and signs politely telling you that photography is forbidden. To the North 2000 metres away is the Kingdom Tower, the counterpoint to Al Fasialiah on the skyline, elegantly reflecting the view of the changing city fabric in between. The two roads running to the north give an impression being torn from the city fabric where the edges have formed a wall of towers on either side. Further to the north visible only as a black mound in the beige continuum is the future of Riyadh, 300 hectares of office space under construction at King Abdullah Financial District, a symbol of the ongoing 'greening' of Riyadh.

All along the Watchtower, Frankfurt 1998

In my previous post 'Boob Tube or the New Birmingham' I made reference to the interface with New Street, High Street and the new Bull Ring feeling like Frankfurt, it is only fair that I also share my impressions of Frankfurt, this is a piece that has existed in notes and memories from a visit to the city over 15 years ago and has never found a reason to be written up...until now.

What I find interesting looking back over old notes are the observations made from an English perspective, and how far behind we are in terms of planning in England. In 1998 the Midland Metro was a new concept and a bit of a joke in the local press. Today a scaled down new scheme for the long awaited expansion has been released by Centro, see: http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2013/09/04/glimpse-at-31m-midland-metro-extension-through-birmingham/

At Bockenhiem Worte, is the university building with its student halls that are to be home for the next few days. This part of the university is ideally situated, adjacent a market square, main shopping street, McDonald's, bus route, tramway, and underground station (U-Bahn). Across the square stands a tower built in the middle ages looking like something out of the brothers Grimm’s fairy tales, a former watch tower at the town’s edge, the city wall is no longer there, the town’s edge has since moved as the city has expended. In the distance stands a communications tower with flying saucer and traffic cone. German students are very sociable, we are welcomed by at least twelve sitting around a large circular table in the large communal kitchen area, sharing cigarettes, everyone smokes here.

Below in the square streams on people emerge from the U-Bahn station, browse around the stalls at the open air market, fresh olives seem to to be the favourite, and walk across the square to hop on one of the numerous and frequent trams and buses that pass by the end of square. Everything seems to be well joined up here, mixed use is not an issue because it was never separated out.

A walk between the market stalls and into the U-Bahn through the most striking entrance, a railway carriage tilted at about thirty five degrees and driven into the ground, enter through the end and move downward along an escalator running through the carriage, into a light and spotlessly clean space to purchase tickets and proceed to the platform to be board a tram??? yes exactly the same as those on the surface running under ground. A friendly female voice announces arrival at each station over the on-board public address system, and very swiftly our destination at Kontsablewache is reached. A walk up the steps to be addressed by a distressed pigeon, cooing at its mate laying dead on the pavement, looking like an aerial courtship display has resulted in a fatal collision with the ironwork that supports the canopy to the station entrance.

The square at  Kontsablewache is surrounded by modern buildings unashamedly sitting alongside historic ones, this is a large square with a stage being dismantled from a event that has just finished. The bustle of passing traffic gives the feeling of a very lively city centre. A short walk off the square and into the Medieval city centre dominated by the intricately carved spire of the Der Kaieserdom  St Bartholomaus. It is lunchtime and Dom Platz is absolutely buzzing, it is April and not exactly warm but the locals are happy to sit outside the restaurants and cafes, 'doing lunch' and sharing cigarettes, it is very much a smoking culture here. The facades above the restaurants look every part the romantic chocolate box image that signifies the Europe of the brothers Grimm. I later learnt that the square had been bombed during the war and had been rebuilt exactly as it was before. The new trams running along the cobbled streets between the Medieval Buildings create a sense of juxtaposition where the new and old coexist in balance with each other.

Sunday afternoon and the Birmingham Pub is showing F1 Grand Prix, Coulthard in the McLaren versus Schumacher a thrilling race which would be more interesting to watch it the management did not keep switching off every time that Schumacher lost the lead. Race over, Schumacher won, luckily, I don't think we would have been allowed to stay if he had not, and time to look around the rest of the main shopping area. The Birmingham Pub is situated in the middle of Ziel, a totally pedestrianised area, a street linking Konstablerwache at the East end and Hauptwache at the West end, I love these German names, one that absolutely leaps off of the fascia is Peek & Cloppenburg for no other reason than conjuring up the image of the opening scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail...clop clop clop! clop clop clop! I don't think they sell the two halves of coconut though.

The most contemporary intervention along the Strasse is the Zeilgallerie, architecturally a high-tech playground designed by Kramm + Strigl, out of the same vein as Archigram, Piano, Rogers, Grimshaw. Externally a folded frame less glass facade defines the front of a narrow central space of the retail environment that is dominated by escalators and glass lifts and expressive steel structure with pin joints and cables. The rubber moving handrail of the escalator usually black, is red. A ride up to the top level, ten in all, and a slow walk down a continual slope lined with shops selling anything from  home accessories to comic books. A ride in the glass lift back up to the topmost level and a walkway threads its way around the atrium to emerge outside to a rooftop observation deck, and the panorama of Frankfurt am Main spreads out below. Glass towers pop up from among the sea of tiled rooftops and tree lined Strasses in a scene dominated by Foster's elegant Commerzbank Tower, which at 56 storeys is the tallest building in Germany, and well worth a closer look.

In New York an observation that was continually repeated was that the skyscraper builders were continually extruding blocks from the grid and merely making ornamental tops to them to mark their presence on the skyline. With the exception of very few it seems as though the designers were unable to make their buildings meet the ground. On walking through Frankfurt’s financial centre the skyline is dominated by skyscrapers, some of them seem  pretty anonymous, however on the ground there is wealth of sculptures in the plazas outside them. The most dramatic being the Commerzbank Tower, here the design of the tower extends to the space that the tower sits in, it is a plaza slotted in behind the historic buildings that make up the street frontage.

The main entrance to the triangular tower is via a long, wide, flight of steps that rises in procession from the street forming a kind of mediating space between the street level and the entrance level, with sculptural almost triangular slots that abut the adjoining buildings. In essence the landscape that the tower sits in has been carved out of the existing fabric to make a space between two buildings and a great deal of care has been taken here. allowing this prominent tower to actually touch the ground really delicately. The setting back of the tower from the street edge makes it a successful intervention into the urban fabric.

On the opposite side of the sunken plaza that opens out onto a large public square, and reads as a secondary entrance to the tower but contains the plaza restaurant and crèche, that further assists in the sitting into the urban grain another sculpture that is actually a signage screen for the building rotates at closing time, slowly extending on both sides to close the plaza and complete the street frontage to Gross Galastrasse, nicely done.

On reflection The Frankfurt of 1998 was way ahead of its twin Birmingham, and in some ways it still is.

Boob Tube or the New Birmingham? 2003

Sitting in the office today waiting for documents to upload to the clients’ FTP site the computer monitior gores into sleep mode and displays images of dramatic landscapes  on  a loop, sunrise over fjords, sunrise over paddy fields, and something resembling a giant sequined boob tube that anyone who has been to Birmingham in the last ten years will recognise. Which reminded me of Hugh Pearman’s review of Future Systems’ Selfridges store in the Sunday Times in the April of 2003, and a line that has stayed with me: ‘Whether you regard the building as an exotic toadstool, a sequined boob tube or an alien spacecraft is immaterial. This is already the new Birmingham’.

Having explored the Bull Ring Centre in an earlier posts  ‘Into the concrete jungle ‘ and ‘I see No ships’ some five years earlier this is an account of my first impression of the new Bull Ring on the opening night in December 2003. Approaching  from the  base of the Rotunda.as as per ten years earlier. Gone is the aroma of KFC, the cash point queue for Lloyd’s Bank and the constant wall of buses.  Lower New Street and High Street are pedestrianised and the area has a feel of Konstablerwache in Frankfurt, which is quite fitting really with Birmingham being twinned with Frankfurt, and the pedestrianised street connecting Konstablerwache and Hauptewache being the location of the Birmingham Pub. No ‘Peek and Cloppenburg’ in this version though.
Heading off towards the Zielgallerie or is it the Bull Ring? with hoards of people rushing in all directions... bronze bull in front of shear glass façade must be the Bull Ring! The bronze bull is a major attraction with lots of people having their photographs taken sitting on top of it. The ‘Square’ anything but square, is populated by solid sculptural granite blocks, set into the artificial ground acting as benches. The bull ring incidentally has nothing to do with Bull fighting, its name is derived from a cast iron ring set in the ground outside a butcher shop where cattle were tethered before being converted into steaks. I guess the matador metaphor is more appealing.

On passing the bull, the street is lined with brand new designer shops and gently slopes down to the internal environment, where the external bustle is replaced with noise...like that of a school swimming gala, with high pitched voices bouncing off the hard surfaces...shopfronts, marble floors glass roof. High street brands proudly exhibited in a series of galleries surrounding a  3 storey void with wide bridges and massively overcrowded escalators: value engineering perhaps? transporting people down into the pit. A walk along the mall passes food outlets with street style seating outside, with glimpses through to the outside where St Martins sits in its new surroundings. Passing the interminable array of new shopfronts the letters LEGO stand out from all the usual high street shops, and a look inside reveals lego models on glass cases, wall to wall lego kits and the back wall, the back wall! Lego bricks and components in cylindrical cubbyholes set into the wall, pick up a bag and select the pieces you need, how cool is that?

At the end of the mall Selfridges forces its organic facade into the scene making all the other facades seem bland by comparison. The high gloss white free form shapes that up until now has only been visible in the books of Future Systems, or the many proposals that appear in the Architectural journals and remain proposals with the exception of the Lords Media Centre; is manifested for real. A walk inside, the aroma of raw fish, not the fish market but Yo! Sushi along with other food bars lined with occupied stools the place is absolutely buzzing! At the heart of the store is another Bull, this time made of jellybeans, probably in the location that I found the statue of Nelson years before, but in this new space city who can tell? A ride up the escalator through the pristine white free form void feels like a journey into the future, or is it a possible future illustrated in movies like Logan’s Run, but for now this feels fresh and exciting and a definite leap forward from the world outside. An orange pod dominates the the middle floor, and inside the most amazing bookshop, comprising the best collection of architecture books I have seen outside the RIBA, along with books on art, interior design, and ‘The Earth from the Air’ Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s most startling array of aerial photographs documenting man’s impact on the planet. At level 3 the retail floor morphs into a lobby that springs a dramatic bridge across the traffic far below to connect with a pretty ordinary car park.  Next to the traffic is the newly restored Moor Street Station, previously a ruin concealed beneath high walls and office blocks, now proudly taking its place in the city again, complete with preserved a steam locomotive sitting alongside the platform. The lobby is lined with hundreds of pictures of people, hundreds making up a montage that instantly says to me what the city is about...its citizens.

Descending through a smaller jellybean shaped void criss-crossed by escalators, with trademark Future Systems lime green trim, in this case the brushes that line the treads.. On leaving the world of of the Future on the intermediate level of the mall shopfronts march along to a shear glass wall, and out into the night, a new street that forms a pedestrianised route back up the hill to Frankfurt, is lined with very busy restaurants, and a look down the hill, there is Nelson! his stature restored statue to its  to its original position. At the edge of what is now called nelson square, a balustrade defines the perimeter of the sunken plaza, which looks as though an archaeological dig has unearthed the church as an 11th century artifact, which like Nelson has been newly restored and looks all the more dramatic against the sequined backdrop of Selfridges a building conceived as department store without windows has a positive relationship with multiple walkways penetrating the facade at different levels. The gently curving volume encompassing St Martins. gives a real sense of the layers that make up the city, the new proudly sitting next to the old in a place that has brought life back into the city.

The outdoor market has been displaced across Edgbaston Street, that runs along the southern edge of the scheme, although the continuum of new public squares and the central street that meander their way up the hill to the Rotunda connect the markets to the city more successfully than the previous version with its network of subways, beneath the traffic . Along Edgbaston Street, a new market hall and multi-storey car park on the South Side, and on the north side a confused jumble of brick, stone and glass facades try unsuccessfully to disguise that back of the retail units that have their frontage inside the mall, the result a four storey facade with absolutely no chance of fitting into the urban grain or addressing its context. In the build up to the opening of the New Bull Ring, there has been a lot of media attention on Selfridges and some ordinary people in the street passing less than complimentary comments on Central News, strange how nobody has been asked to comment on the rest of the scheme, I supposed clad in brick it is camouflaged and nobody has noticed it. At the end of Edgbaston Street, the fragments of the old Bull Ring Centre remain, the Midland Red bus station still sits beneath Smallbrook Queensway, although now a loading bay for the retail units of the new scheme. A spiral stair in a glass block tower makes the ascent to Smallbrook Queensway, and opposite the department store block of the Bull Ring Centre of 1964, newly refurbished and doing what it has been doing for the past 39 years, now branded as TK Maxx, crossing the road at high level, the same concrete bridge now with metal cladding, crashes into the new department store to balance out the Future as exhibited with Selfridges, n this case Debenhams, looking very much a product of the 1980’s. At the top of Smallbrook Queensway, retail units are  suspended off huge steel trusses pinned into the base of the Rotunda, one can only guess it is to maximise retail space whilst avoiding the railway lines running beneath the street.

So for any wondering what the image on the windows screen saver is, ...the silver discs on a curving blue background...there you have it, it is a department store representing the future of Birmingham, inspired by a Paco Rabane sequined dress, or so I am told.

28 Days Later...Riyadh 2010

This was not actually 28 days after I arrived, it is more like 15, but the title is taken from the Danny Boyle movie of the same name because walking around the streets of the city during the Eid holidays was very similar to the way that London was depicted. Completely deserted, it is about 10 in the morning and there is nothing, not a single car moving along the road and it looks like I am the only mad fool walking outside during the heat of the day. Having grown up in the UK, the appearance of the sun without clouds is such a rare event that we don’t feel the need to hide away from it.

The ability to cross what would normally be 6 - 10 lanes of traffic is quite a novelty though. Heading westward roughly in the direction of the two towers, or at least one of them, the route threads its way through back streets lined by villas behind blank walls, with the canopies of trees poking out over the top as though nature and life itself is hemmed in. Walking along what passes for pavements or side walks becomes quite a challenge as trees are planted down the middle, where small shops line the road, the pavement disappears and becomes parking, eyes peep out from the darkness of the shop hoping that you have walked this way to buy an antique toaster.

As the side road joins the main road, Faisaliah appears above the featureless plain of low rise retail units, that stretch as far as the eye can see, some familiar names appear, like British Home Stores (BHS) adorned in English and Arabic on a distinctly closed Arabic themed concrete box across an empty car park. (or is it parking lot?). The roads are lined with date palms interspersed with lollipop trees, not that lollipops grow on them, but they are clipped to look like lollipops, in an ongoing attempt to ‘green’ the city plastic pipes thread through sparse ground cover planting and discarded empty (non-alcoholic) beer bottles. The shiny surface of the deserted road still looks like it has rained during the night, but there has been no rain for months, its is just the residue of rubber polished by the usual deluge of cars. There are no road markings only stainless steel studs.

Crossing to the shaded side of the road, not exactly shaded but slightly less in the full glare of morning sun, maybe a degree cooler, The continuous plane of four storey concrete retail blocks is interrupted occasionally by the lack of retail block, faded timber hoardings with rampant vegetation clinging to the corners of the vacant lot, in others the vacant lot is an area of levelled sand, and absolutely nothing else. The blocks themselves are about the same size, with retail showroom on the ground floor, currently hidden behind roller shutters, the upper levels being probably storage, apartments or offices, behind the myriad of different window shapes and air conditioning units planted onto the facade.

Following the curve of the road, alongside the palms and lollipops, blocks or lack of blocks, the space opens up into a park, rock formations, green slopes, clusters of date palms, interspersed with roads on legs, roads looping around beneath the over pass, and legs without roads!  Columns adorned in silver cladding and a yellow cap topped off with the Saudi Flag.  New glass office blocks loom up around the perimeter of what has become known as Cairo Junction, without a pyramid in sight. The blocks get bigger as the road heads north, still the same format, showroom at ground floor, with offices or apartments above, the street is punctuated with parked cars, jersey blocks trying to prevent it, and yellow skips, each skip with its colony of alley cats awaiting the next delivery of discarded food. In the distance the two towers that define the skyline come in to view along with the sense of how far I have already walked this morning. Continuing the journey Northwards, The Faisaliah Centre, Foster’s first project in Saudi.. is far more than the tower, that I had seen on the skyline, he first view on approaching from down town is the name Harvey Nicholls on the face of a sandstone coloured concrete wall, located behind a row of palm trees and jersey blocks. A desert sand coloured GMC truck with a machine gun in a turret on the back says that the owners don’t really want you hanging around taking photographs, beyond the truck, the base of the tower can be seen at the end of a manicured lawn that ends in a water feature where water cascades down over a stone depiction of the facade of the tower only to disappear behind the jersey blocks to the street edge

Continuing Northwards along the street edge the glass facades of the office blocks reflect the empty roads, line with their date palms, footbridges span the King Fahd Road, or at least they span the six lanes of the main road, to deposit the pedestrian on an island to then cross another two lanes of road. Between the blocks piles of construction materials deposited at the street edge await the process of assembly into some kind of order, steel beams, reinforcement, street furniture all deposited at the side of the road. A  small area of green, a few date palms and a deserted playground behind green steel fencing. Tower cranes crowd around the concrete skeleton, of what will become the twin towers of Riyadh’s World Trade Centre, now standing silent as work is suspended for the holidays. A the north end of the strip, Kingdom Tower, with its shear glass facade giving a clear reflection of the urban devastation at its base, or is it simply that it is under construction? A sand bank with an archetypal American yellow GMC school bus perched on top of it. A twisted bent steel sculpture that was once a car before it hit something solid lays rusting on a rough patch of sand.

Around the corner the hot flint smell of the sand is replaced by the rich smell of vegetation, the air temperature drops as trees shade the baking sidewalks, fountains playfully throw water into the air the familiar names Debenhams and Marks and Spencer become visible through the trees, flanking the base of the Kingdom Tower, that bursts up through the canopy and for a moment the feeling of being in the hottest capital on earth is replaced with that of arriving at an oasis, a feeling that is quickly suppressed by the presence of the ever present jersey blocks and trucks with machine guns guarding the entrance.

Heading South along Olaya Street, the sense that this is the front door to the strip in inescapable as the names from the glossy magazines proudly stand up to the street edge, Bulgari appears behind a planar glass storefront, with marble sidewalk taking their place among the older showrooms with parking lots out front making the walk along the sidewalk somewhat impossible. On the opposite side of the street, across the ten lanes of traffic, if there were any, in places the sidewalk disappears completely to reveal a hole some five storeys deep, framed only by lightweight timber hoarding. All adding to the sense that that this is very much a city in the making.

The Need for Speed

A slight departure from the subject of architecture this week because surfing the BBC website during the week, I learned that this is the week of the 75th anniversary of Mallard’s world record run where 126mph was recorded near Grantham, Lincolnshire on 3rd July 1938 a record that still stands as a world record for steam traction, and a reminder that I was mad on trains as a kid.

Mallard? not a duck but a steam locomotive named after it designed by Sir Nigel Gresley, distinctive by its steamlined body shape. To mark the anniversary Mallard and the five remaining sisters have been reunited, a reunion that involved shipping two from the US and Canada, and suddenly it seems it is cool to be interested in trains again,  if only for a short time. For the numbers already flocking to the National Railway Museum (NRM) in York, most of this summer’s ticketed events are already sold out this probably represents a once in a lifetime opportunity to view these impressive machines in the same place. The theme of the exhibition as shown on the NRM website is understandably about the quest for speed.

Considering where I am writing this, Bahrain, a country yet to posses a railway, interest in trains must seem strange if not a little absurd. What is it that draws the huge numbers of people to a gathering of machines? The love of steam? A romantic view of travel in the 1930’s perhaps? are they really celebrating visions of how life was much simpler in those days, no television, no computers, few cars, few telephones, along with smog, poor air quality and health problems as the whole country ran on coal. Travel was concentrated on summer excursions to the seaside...Blackpool, Skegness, The English Riviera, by train naturally.

For me it is about something else entirely, it is about national identity, and the period in history probably represents Britishness at its height, regarded as world leaders, the names of two of those locomotives in the exhibition a standing testament to the sprit of the age. ‘Union of South Africa’ and ‘Dominion of Canada’ the two living reminders of the Empire, when everything was wonderful (at least from a British point of view), one fifth of the globe was coloured pink, and represented a well behaved world governed by the British, through colonies, protectorates and dominions, with progress considered to be in the name of the common good regardless of consequences. Tea came from Yorkshire, chocolate from Bourneville, the origins of those products idealised on the packaging.

Birmingham was considered the workshop of the world, Liverpool was the city of trade, receiving goods and passengers from all around the world, Manchester supplied the world with textiles, the best Steel came from Sheffield and the railway was the vital lifeline that held it all together. The year 1938 represents Great Britain at its height, a year before the outbreak of WWII, when Britain was last considered ‘Great’ and the future looked bright. Six years later ‘British Made’ no longer had the same meaning, and so started the trend of importing goods made far more cheaply in South East Asia, and with it the decline of industry in Britain.

75 years later are we celebrating advances in engineering of are we lamenting the loss of something quite different?

Misplacement of Paradise? Birmingham 2003

Faced with imminent demolition following the construction of Mecanoo's new library on Centenary Square, and potential replacement with a group of what appear to be anonymous commercial buildings, the Birmingham Central Library as I know it is destined to cease to exist, consigned to pictures in books, which ironically will probably be stored in the new library. For me the library represents many hours spent conducting research, learning about the evolution of Birmingham from small market town to the workshop of the world and then to what has been referred to by many as the concrete jungle. Having studied the building for my final project of the Post Graduate Diploma, a project to design an archive to replace the one currently located in the attic of the library, I cannot help but be impressed by the library.

Built 1971 – 1973, designed by John Madin Design Group, concrete framed, inverted ziggurat form, designed to be flexible and functional, is part of larger unrealised masterplan and forms the centre piece to the curiously named ‘Paradise Circus’, essentially a traffic island which is home to Birmingham School of Music, (The Adrian Boult Hall), Fletcher’s Walk Shopping Centre including ‘X-posure’ Rock Café. Birmingham Central Library, with Paradise Forum below. Later additions include the black glazed boxes of the Copthorne Hotel and Chamberlain house offices, at what was the outer edge of the city centre before the reconfiguration of the ring road and pedestrian bridge to bring Centenary square into the city. A reconfiguration that places the library on the main route from the central shopping and civic areas to the new entertainment and conference areas to the west of the Inner Ring Road at Broad Street and Brindley Place. With the gradual transformation of the city and removal of the 1960’s Bull Ring, the ongoing reconfiguration of New Street Station, Paradise circus represents the last complete remaining fragment of the Manzoni masterplan for a modern city. The site of the Central Library was originally designed to accommodate the Central Bus Station in its basement, forming a transport hub nestling between the civic buildings that define the city centre, the  Gas Hall home of Birmingham’s Museum and Art Gallery and the Council House from the Victorian era, and the Art Deco Baskerville House, the only built element of the ambitious Civic Centre from the 1930’s.

The main pedestrian approach to Paradise Circus is via the amphitheatre of steps that encompasses the Joseph Chamberlain memorial outside the Town Hall built in the era of classical revivalism said to be modeled on a Roman temple of Castor and Pollux, in the Roman Forum resembling the much earlier Parthenon at the Acropolois in Athens. The route is defined by a steady stream of people walking to the city centre from Brindley Place and vice versa. Dominated by Mc Donalds situated in a plastic enclosure based on roman ruins, the Paradise Forum is a later addition to the plaza beneath the inverted Ziggurat that houses the central library.

On the ground? The artificial ground level that defines the public realm beneath the library is defined by a crossing of routes, the route to the left leads past the Conservatiore to a dark stair that doubles back on itself to bring the visitor down into a lost garden and traffic! traffic! traffic! ground level is surrounded by four lanes of traffic moving in a constant stream of conflict, stopping, changing lanes, cutting up other drivers. Choking the trees with a constant barrage of exhaust fumes. What feels like a subterranean street leads through the darkness of the shopping centre and subways to the plaza at the base of the iconic Richard Seifert & Partners' 100m tall Alpha Tower built 1971-1973, the former headquarters of ATV, that later became Central Television before moving out to the far less inspiring 1980s (or is it 1990s?) mock Victorian warehouse at Gas Street. The route rises up gently curving round the edge of alpha plaza to a surface crossing on Broad Street, on crossing Broad Street to the fenced off Centenary Square and Baskerville House and War Memorial and the constant stream of people head towards Paradise Forum and the city centre, crossing the wide bridge that spans four lanes of traffic as the Ring Road joins Paradise Circus.

Walking between the curious book ends of the Copthorne Hotel and the office block that mirrors it, past the grapevine pub on the left and with Italian restaurant on the right below the Library theatre and back into the plastic forum to the pedestrian crossroads. Turning left into the environment of the concrete jungle, a  plaza dominated by the blocky stump of a tower an empty rectangular pond and timber walkways that appear to have been added as an after-thought. A heavy concrete bridge crashes into the Gas Hall whilst a sunken car park forms the gloomy outlook from the rooms of the Copthorne Hotel.

A flight of timber steps descends from beneath the tower to a neglected car park with wire netting fence, and another subway running beneath the traffic. Turning right in the subway a path leads up to what was intended as a bus station, a dark space with concrete canopies to protect pedestrian routes from the weather in a typical modernist way. A blocked up door in the base of the concrete tower reveals that it was intended as a lift to the main deck level with its pond and entrance to the library space. Meanwhile down in the space below the deck, what was intended as bus lanes is filled with parked cars. Discarded pieces of the plastic forum lie in the corner and a fenced off narrow slot leads through to the garden that would have probably been taken up with bus lanes if it was it built as intended.

On entering Birmingham Central Library (and Information Services), the visitor moves it is up some steps past a cheerful? security guard to ride up a long escalator. The escalator ride moves up through a space that is framed by a structural with a glass wall to the left and the glass fronted children’s library to the right, to the top an enlarged landing that forms a temporary exhibition space where our studio from Birmingham School of Architecture exhibited our proposals for the new Archive in 1999. The entry space is a void that must be at least five storeys tall, crsis-crossed by bridges makes the experience of going to the library a dramatic one. The sculpted raw concrete gives something of a feel of being inside an ancient temple, as natural daylight is filtered through narrow bands at high level to avoid damaging the books on the shelves, augmented by fluorescent tubes to control the lighting levels. Reading spaces are double height shared volumes, that work well when studying, giving the feeling of being in a great hall. Orange carpet and black Formica desks firmly place the interior in the 1970’s along with microfiche readers, the later addition of 1980’s beige box computer terminals, that are perched on desks everywhere, to access information, access the library catalogue, locate whatever you need.  Moving between floors is via escalators that climb through the central atrium giving an impressive view over the top of the tacky plastic statues, curved pediments and columns making up the ‘forum’.

Not everyone likes the look of raw concrete, and with Prince Charles’ comment that the library looks ‘more like a building for incinerating books rather than storing them’ would not have helped the public like the modern building. Opinions based on appearances are subjective, but as an architectural piece that is a representative of its era, and as a building built for a specific task of protecting the documentation of our culture, for me it performs very well, and when studied in 1999 it was 25 years old and could easily have performed for another 25.

Beyond La La Land...Riyadh 2010.

After the glittering towers of Dubai arrival in Riyadh is something of an anti-climax, seemingly moving back in time to the late 1980’s. Indeed the skyline something more akin to the Dubai of 1988 of Michael Palin’s account of ‘The Creek’ in  the BBC TV series ‘Around the world in 80 days’.

My Saudi adventure began in 2010, arriving at the end of August during Ramadan. For those first few weeks I was living in a hotel with a great view of the city. The first day was a bit of a revelation, having arrived at 5.30 in the morning I was wide awake by 8.30 anxious to make contact with the people who had recruited me, to find that the office is two doors away, having understood that there is no rush, I take my time to get ready and step outside at about 10.00. Now when I experienced the middle east in January it was a ‘pleasant 28 degrees. I have just stepped out of an air conditioned environment into 48 degrees...wow that is like stepping into a furnace, so a short walk across the forecourt of the adjacent hotel, across the shared forecourt of car rental offices, and into the cool of the lobby that is going to become very familiar to me in the coming months, and no sweat, I mean literally there is no perspiration at all the air is so dry that it has evaporated off

I had heard that women are not permitted to work in Saudi, but it was still a shock to step out of the lift and see three young men sitting behind the reception counter, and to find myself in a totally 100% male office. A quick tour of the office and introduction to my new colleagues many of whom very quickly became my friends, it seems that nobody is expecting me, it has only taken two months of bureaucracy to get here! So it is a find out who is on vacation and use their desk until they return scenario. Having been located in an office and set up on said absent collague’s machine, it is time to find out what we are working on, and ‘learn the project’. Apparently I have two weeks to learn about a joint venture with Foster and Partners, and in the process learn about far more than the project, about whole new cities being built, high speed rail links where there is currently only desert, and a Kingdom that is serious about modernising albeit at a slow controlled pace as opposed to the mad rush of Dubai.

As I mentioned it is Ramadan so consumption of food and water in the office is forbidden, in fact I have not heard the word 'forbidden' used so much as on arrival in the Kingdom, so it is a return to the hotel and order room service routine, on returning to the office for the afternoon stint, the office empties at 4.00 except for the non-Muslims who have to work the full hours, and the consumption of water and coffee is permitted to resume. The next morning the office is still only populated by the sparse few expatriates that I met the day before, and it is only after 10.00 that the food and drinks have to be put away.

The office like the hotel is west facing has a stunning view of the skyline, where the skyscrapers number two, as opposed to the rapidly approaching two hundred of Dubai. Viewed across a constant plane of blocks punctuated by the occasional tree, the two towers define the main strip that runs North-South and are about a mile apart, Foster’s Faisaliah Tower at the South end and paints a delicate silhouette against the orange glow of the setting sun, Ellerbe Becket/Omrania’s Kingdom tower at the North end takes on an ethereal appearance as the light reflecting on the facade causes the tower to blend with the sky, almost disappearing then reappearing as the colours change. In between the two towers mid-rise blocks and blocky stumps with the occasional tower crane hint that the two towers are likely to be joined by a few more in the coming months.

The evening call to prayer from the Mosque opposite forms a tranquil soundtrack to the sunset, as the light reflects off the rooftops before fading to a dusky glow and then the fall of darkness. The hotel begins to fill up as people gather in large numbers to open their fast, actually large numbers of men as women are quickly whisked away into a blacked out room where ‘ladies parties’ occur, this new life in the Desert is going to take a bit of getting used to...

La La land? Dubai 2010

It is our last morning of our whistle stop visit to Dubai, and it is off to sample some more of the city’s delights with a friend who lives in the City, and hearing the stories of how crazy everything was getting before the bubble burst, it was like La-La-land she tells us, I have no idea where La-La-land is...Hollywood, dream state, out of touch with reality perhaps, either way I think the term sums it up beautifully.

It seems that everything to do in Dubai involves going to a mall, in this case the Dubai Mall, I would say slightly more upmarket than the Mall of the Emirates, in fact probably as upmarket as it gets, here the same designer shops are accommodated in a more sophisticated, designed environment, an environment of exquisite minimalism that complements the exhibits in the shops. In the middle of a huge drum-like space stands a model of one of Dubai’s next mega projects, ‘The Dubai Pearl’ a cluster of tacky ornamented towers centred around what resembles a huge glass cube, 70 storeys high with 6 towers combined together by  a 3 storey deck at the top that links all 6. All have planted roofs and are sitting in a lush landscape inside a circular 10 lane highway...

Heading away this vision of the future, it is time to sit outside a coffee shop and enjoy a late breakfast in an environment that is so new that it is still in a state of frantic activity. The centrepiece is the tower that I said resembled Frank Lloyd Wright’s Mile high tower proposal for Chicago when viewed from a distance, in fact it is only half the height, but at 830m, 163 floors is still the world’s tallest building, designed by Chicago Architects SOM, the tower that we all now know as the Burj Khalifa. A walk along the base reveals that work is still very much underway...stainless steel and planar glass viewed across a silver stone plaza with newly transplanted palm trees behind a flimsy barrier of traffic cones and red and white tape fluttering in the breeze.  I had heard that if you book far enough in advance that there are guided tours to the observation deck, think I’ll wait until it is open.

Looking up towards the spire with the sun glinting off the silver facade I cannot help but be awed by the sheer scale of what is being undertaken here.  Panning round the base two towers at Boulevard Plaza that are familiar from the Aedas portfolio are nearing completion. The Khalifa lake with the Dubai Fountain, resembling the Las Vegas Bellagio fountain from the ‘on a day like today’ video from the flight in now stands dormant.  The lake front is lined by arabesque low rise blocks whist the glass towers of downtown Dubai that could have been transplanted from New York, Chicago, Hong Kong... form the backdrop to make this a truly spectacular if not surreal setting.

Stepping back inside the mall to see a fish tank, not just any fish tank, the Dubai Aquarium is the largest acrylic fish tank in the world 20 metres high, 48 metres long, teeming with life, sharks and rays swim among shoals of a whole variety of species and two scuba divers!

The final stop is at Burj al Arab, well, not exactly at the Burj Al Arab, because nobody is allowed onto the island without a booking, so it is a case of standing by the barrier to the causeway having tourist photos taken with the tower in the background, a golf buggy appears from across the causeway to drop off guests at the gatehouse, Tom Wright’s elegant white tower said to based on the sail of a Dhow stands serenely against a what has become a deep blue sky, framed by date palms and a stop sign. Alas the experience of crossing the causeway is one that will have to wait until another day.

Having spent a day and a half in the city, I am impressed by what has been achieved, even though I cannot understand the craziness that has resulted in its current state, the race to be bigger and better than anywhere else has driven our techical abilities to extremes to essentially create something out of nothing.  I mean who had heard of Dubai twenty years ago? other than potentially a transfer point on long haul flights, now like it or not it is a global destination with it’s culture derived from glossy magazines, designer brands and a sense of keeping up with the Jones’s taken to extreme.

Skiing...In the Desert??? Dubai 2010

Friday, our only full day in Dubai on this trip, and the Metro is closed, well until 2.30 anyway...So it is a taxi ride to the Mall of the Emirates, setting out mid-morning onto the empty ten lane highway that was the continual mass of Range Rovers and all manner of other high end cars...Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche...the oil refinery in the distance that was sparsely illuminated last evening is now a series of grey towers in the haze, still an oil refinery from this distance, with the exception of one tower stretching high up above the others like a very fine spire resembling Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Mile high tower' proposed for Chicago in 1956.

Passing the shells of the dormant metro, a huge sloping 'shed' appears on the left side of the highway, from in between the nondescript towers. A loop off the highway and to the underground drop off that forms the front door to the what was briefly the worlds largest mall and a demonstration of the ability of developers to create an alternate reality inside a huge, huge air-conditioned container. On entering the mall it has very much the characteristics of any other mall that has been opened in the past decade, elements of Bluewater in Kent, or Birmingham's Bull Ring are installed here from the same global branding manuals that exist for all these retailers.

Along the mall past all the usual suspects that appear in these malls and a glass wall reveals the unique selling point...snow! complete with Alpine ski lodge, ski lifts, bobsleigh run and a whole rabble of people dressed for winter conditions skiing down the slopes between the pine trees, to complete the illusion of an Alpine ski resort. Outside the glass wall in a comfortable 22 degrees, groups of Arabs shoot video of the people playing on the inside.

Some facts from the Ski Dubai website: the indoor park covers some 3000 square metres, is the equivalent of twenty five stories high and is some 80 metres wide. This is the world's largest indoor ski park and boasts 5 runs including a 400m black run, and apparently is home to a number of penguins although I did not know you found penguins in the Alps. It is January but it is 28 degrees outside, -2 on the inside due to super insulation of the external envelope in walls that are 5 metres thick, the temperature drops to -6 at nights and new snow is generated every night, as the 'old' snow melts it is used to cool the rest of the mall, and eventually to irrigate the gardens. It may seem inappropriate, frivolous or just plain insane to build a ski dome in the desert, but as a technical achievement this has to be nothing short of amazing.

Moving on from the Alps in a giant cool box, the Virgin Megastore in all its glory, sadly now missing from the UK cities, a fine representation of what a music store should be, selling everything from CD's, DVD's, band merchandise, and guitars, basses, drums along with some of the kit you need to play in your own band. Into Milano, or at least a plastic reproduction of some of the galleria that define the medieval quarter of Milano, that accommodates the Italian designer names, a seeming contradiction between the high design of the products in the shops and the artificial design of the container. The Gold Souk, clusters all the jewelry shops together in a reproduction of Mid town Manhattan minus the yellow cabs and Empire State building, except the shops are owned by Arabs.

Having spent a day in an alternate reality, it is time to experience the reality of getting back to the apartment using the public transportation system that is so new to this city, the Metro. The route from the Mall to the Metro station is something of a back route out of the Mall, an air conditioned pedestrian bridge threads its way past blank facades to one of the iconic golden shells that define the project. The sun has set without much of a fanfare, no orange glow, just a gradual darkening of the sky, and the towers become sihouettes against the fading light.

The train arrives into the  shell, with its first car dedicated to ladies only, so alighting into the second car which allows mixed couples and families, it is a smooth and efficient journey back to Al Mankhool. As the towers pass by something does not seem to add up, I know it is the weekend but even so the expected cool glow of office blocks bathed in light that defines a buzzing metropolis are lacking, only the standard red lights that define the pinnacles and refuge floors of the blocks. Then it occurs to that these towers were built in the rush of a booming economy, the bubble has burst and the towers stand empty.

The incomplete stations that I had investigated the night before pass by with smooth regularity until the Metro goes to ground and our destination is reached, in the cool blue glow of the underground station, an escalator ride to the surface brings us out into a smaller golden shell, which is one of four at each corner of a large crossroads, with my sleeping ten-month-old daughter in my arms this is no time to walk back to the apartment especially when not exactly sure where it is. So hailing a Dubai taxi, all climbing in to find probably the only cab driver that does not know his way around, proceeding to tell us it is only his second day in the job, strangely we reach the apartments quickly after a pulled out the leaflet with the address on, having exited the cab, noticed lost wallet, reported it to taxi company colleagues, only to find said taxi cabbie was still lost, so flagged him down on his second pass of the block, wallet retrieved ...goodnight La-La-land!

Range Rover Grand Prix - Dubai 2010

I have been flying in and out of Dubai for a number of years but have never stopped to experience the city. I have watched the 'On a Day Like Today' video (using the Bryan Adams song as the soundtrack) shown on Emirates Flights as they approach the city on numerous occasions. The promotional video shows amazing dancing fountains, pristine glass towers immaculate beaches, clear deep blue seas, cloudless blue skies, dramatic dunescapes and sunsets and the high end 'designer' lifestyle that permits one to enjoy it. Flying in over the Persian Gulf, the fabled Palm Islands become visible along with Tom Wright's distinctive Burj Al Arab Hotel on its own little island, and into Perkins and Will's impressive new 'Emirates' terminal, where there must be people of every nationality on the Planet, this really feels like a global hub.

On exiting the terminal through a vast immigration hall and into a 'pleasant' 28 degrees, not bad for January, with hazy a afternoon sky. The drive in the taxi joins the highway to be cut up by a Range Rover, and the driver remarks that they all drive like this here, in fact there are Range Rovers everywhere most of them sporting all the 'bling', living in Solihull, I had often wondered where they all end up when leaving the plant on the back of car transporters...and here they are. The roads feel new, as though placed there only yesterday, the intersections, flyovers that usually are merely functional, have an elegant sculptural quality and the concrete looks pristine, not because it weathers well in  this environment, but because it is painted in a cream colour that reflects the light.

As the sun dips towards the horizon more sculptures form dramatic silhouettes in the haze, those being the shell roofs of the metro stations that I am already familiar with in a sense as my employer at the time, Aedas have been working on them for the past three years and I have watched with interest as the team have developed the kit of parts that is currently being employed, having only previously seen them in in models and renderings in the London Office.

By the time we reach our apartments, home for the next two days, it is dark so the next view of the city is by night. Setting out from Golden Sands in the Al Mankhool district, vaguely near to the Dubai Creek, with a good friend of mine it is a walk with no map generally in the direction of the towers, that from this distance resemble an oil refinery with coloured lights picking out key elements. Having crossed Sheikh Zayed Road, a highway that must be at least ten lanes wide, more Range Rovers in a kind of Range Rover Grand Prix make the crossing quite an experience, electing not to even attempt the crossing directly, it is quite a walk to the traffic lights alongside the starting grid, even though the lights are on red it is more than a leisurely run across the first five lanes because as soon as amber show, they are off, apparently there is a minimum speed limit of 60kph, which they all seem to observe religiously.

Having successfully negotiated the first stage of the Grand Prix the most direct route seems to be along some residential roads, lined with villas behind walls with lush green planting poking over the top, past a mosque with what must be the largest empty surface car park I have ever seen. The oil refinery starts to fragment as we move closer taking on the form of individual towers, the pavement that we are walking on abruptly ceases to exist and trying to walk without dodging the traffic involves walking through sand pits that are laid out with plastic irrigation pipes, clearly awaiting the arrival of planting for the pipes to feed. A small wedge of pavement appears and a group of Asian workers wait in an air conditioned bus shelter for an air conditioned bus which actually resembles a National Express coach more than a city bus. The next encounter with the Grand Prix is the Trade Centre Roundabout, where the window between red and amber is smaller and the run becomes a sprint across the road.

Heading along the Sheikh Zayed Road, a kind of Las Vegas Strip in reverse, where the buildings but up to the road and the parking lots are at the rear, it is as though Fifth Avenue has been transplanted from Manhattan Island, as many of the blocks resemble the 1920's skyscrapers that define New York, there are new additions of course, some are bland glass towers, others forms strange shapes for no other reason than because they can. The traffic along the strip is light for a Thurdsay Night (this is the same as a Friday night in the 'Western' World), passing a hotel lobby that is sitting in the middle of a construction site, another of the ubiquitous Range Rovers pulls up and out totter two women in sky-high heels trying to elegantly make an entrance into the hotel bar across the sand and broken paving.

The lights in the distance that once looked like a nearby oil refinery seem to be moving ever further away, as the distance opens up after passing three metro stations, which must be at 1000m intervals, it is time to take a break (a fruit juice at Costa, costing a princely sum of Eight Pounds), and head back. The metro has recently opened, but many of the stations seem to be in a state of work in progress, some accessible, others marooned on a sand island behind flimsy traffic barriers. A quick look at one that is open, reveals just how large the whole project is, inside a sloping golden shell and up the escalator to the footbridge that crosses the strip, an enclosed tube that is strangely familiar to me, the last time it was on my computer screen, in a SketchUp model that I was preparing for a concourse on another railway station entirely, the power of collaborative working. The project that I was working on was a demonstration project, so was never likely to be built, but here it is in the place I least expected it, great!

Having experienced a small part of Dubai on the ground at night I am intrigued to find out what it is like by day, which towers those distant lights belong to and is the Metro really open...

The Beaubourg Experiment? Paris 1995

Following on from my previous post on Archigram, this is an account of my first encounter with what could be argued as the legacy of Archigram, some architectural books make reference to being a manifestation of Peter Cook's Plug-in City, having read about the project extensively I would say that it represents far more than that. From the terrace of the Sacre Coeur (Basilica of the Sacred Heart), the Parisian roofscape stretches out for miles into a vast, diverse panorama, the bustle of the densely packed streets seems far removed from here. In amongst the slate rooftops a splash of blue interrupts the scene, it’s not new in fact it has been part of the scene for over twenty years. The splash of blue nestling between the rooftops belongs to the air conditioning and ventilation ducting of Centre Pompidou. The legendary product of the union of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers.

On the approach from the sloping piazza with its huge white, steel air intakes that would not look out of place aboard an ocean liner. There was an artist offering to draw caricatures for 500 Francs or some price that I could not afford at the time, however there were some good sketches of Mick Jagger and David Bowie. The Piazza was otherwise populated by clusters of students much the same as our party, looking, examining, taking photographs. I don’t remember exactly which day of the week it was, but there is one day a week that all the Parisian Museums are closed for cleaning, all of them on the same day!

Unfortunately the day that we picked to go to Beaubourg, was ‘cleaning day’. The fabled escalator tubes that climb diagonally skywards across the East facade were stood dormant; the only people within the tubes were indeed the cleaners. So the arguably, best experience that Paris has to offer for free was unavailable to the public. The ‘building’, ‘Centre Nationale de Arts et de Culture de Georges Pompidou (CNAC)’ that I had understood as the Pompidou  Centre or simply Pompidou, was one that I knew was an‘inside out’ building to allow for the interior to be arranged freely and rearranged at will.

However, a close inspection from ground level. The huge white steel columns, the elaborate system of cross bracing and tension rods, the dramatic, skeletal, highly crafted cantilevers known as gerberettes, seemingly supporting the escalators, raised enough interest for me to be reading books and asking questions for a very long time. At the northern end of the piazza, adjacent the entrance to the escalator tube, the concept of supporting great indeterminate floor spaces becomes apparent with the full depth of the building visible, the sheer size of the trusses that span from front to back, 48 metres to be precise. The whole mechanism that holds these beams in place is illustrated immaculately at full scale. The East facade, on the Rue de Renard presents a completely different picture from the one of the West facade. The elaborate of cluster of ventilation ducts, supply pipes threaded in around the structure. The structural bays almost hidden beneath the services, being defined by the cross bracing, each bay slightly different, air conditioning in one, passenger lifts in another. The issue of addressing urban context with such a large building is well resolved, the components give a varied level of interest and incident to all of the 'facades' which address the cafes that sit opposite.

At the time of my visit the colours of the external ductwork were not so strident, faded and partially hidden beneath a thick layer of grime and pigeon droppings. But somehow the used look permits it to ‘fit in’ to the tight grain of Paris as though it had always been there. The dull April sky made for some moody images as the escalator tubes and the skeletal frame become silhouetted against the cloud filtered sunlight, has been an enduring image that completely changed the course of my studies in architecture.

Paris 1995

The Monty Python of Architecture? 1998

This post is about a major influence in my architectural education: Archigram. I made a brief reference to Archigram in New York in an earlier post ‘The Final Approach -...New York Part 5 ‘...where the work of the six was exhibited in different locations throughout the city...Columbia University, Cooper Union, and the part that I did experience in the metropolis Ron Herron’s work in the Storefront.  The intention was always to follow up with a post about the complete exhibition as viewed earlier in the year in Manchester.

In terms of Architectural education, 1998 was the ‘fifth year’ being the first one back in full time education after the degree and ‘year-out’ in practice, which for me is when architecture was its most fun, study was its most experimental and the mood in the studio was at its most diverse and collaborative. This post is based on a piece that was originally written for the school publication ‘BARC’ the student magazine produced by my colleages in ‘Archaos’ the Birmingham School of Architecture student society. The journey into the world of Archigram was made by myself and Darren Staples who has been a partner in crime over the years, and it is his entry in the visitor book at the exhibition that gave me the title for this post, and it was the discussions about our impressions of the exhibition and Manchester in general that was written on the train on the return journey.

Archigram: six guys, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, Peter Cook, David Greene, Ron Herron, Michael Webb, actually they preceded Monty Python, but anarchic in their approach to architectural discourse in the way that Monty Python are seen as anarchic in their approach to comedy.  I had read about Archigram during the degree and this was the first time that the any of work was exhibited since 1970., and the first time that it was all exhibited together.

On arrival at Manchester Piccadilly on the train from Birmingham,  it is a ‘Groundhog Day’ Situation,  is almost as though we never left…’Millies Cookies’ is still the cookie shop at the end of the concourse. The concourse itself is out of the same design manual as the one at New Street. Most definitely part of the same modernisation plan of the rail network in the 1960’s. outside the station the walk down to Piccadilly has the same feel as walking down Smallbrook Queensway, long sinuous office block following the curve of the road, with the same kind of shops in the base, only with subtle differences, ‘Greggs’ instead of ‘Braggs’, the bakers, the graphics are the same just the spelling is different.

In search of the RIBA bookshop to purchase tickets and find out where the exhibition is located, is a second feeling of deja vu, strangely enough the RIBA bookshop is located on Portland Street, which bears a close resemblance to its London Address, being Portland Place. We did find the bookshop but found it hiding behind some mad façade, scaffolding tubes, toe boards, signage, plastic screens, and it had been deconstructed and reconstructed next door to where we expected to find it.

The visit revealed that the Cornerhouse Gallery was actually almost next to Piccadilly Station. Having retraced our steps the search of Archigram took us down a back street between Victorian warehouses, tall walls of repetitive openings cast iron beams, peeling paintwork, rust, broken window panes, with some areas filled with studio units and small light industrial units; to a triangular brick building on the corner, ‘The Cornerhouse’ with a huge banner hanging down the facade inviting us to ‘Zoom up into a New World’  So zooming up into the Cornerhouse Gallery, well more of a walk up the stairs really, and wow! Let’s just stand here a moment and take it all in

The exhibition titled ‘Archigram: Experimental Architecture 1961 – 71’, completely fills the gallery, there are banners hanging from the roof trusses with the slogans that originally appeared in the Archigram broadsheets, and magazines. The walls are completely lined are with drawings preserved behind a layer of Perspex.

Walking Cities covers an entire wall, drawn in immaculate detail on A0 sheets showing the workings of a  machine that is self sufficient and can plug into anywhere, New York, the Sahara desert, and then move on to its next location.

On the floor: models of Instant Cities made up of a combination of trucks, capsules and hot air balloons. Plug-in Paddington East, Living pod, Cushicle, Monte Carlo Entertainments complex are exhibited in Perspex cases like rare finds in a museum, well maybe they are, and they are certainly treasures. It is pure commitment to illustrate the group’s thinking of the contemporary condition, (circa 1968). Entire exhibitions: ‘This is Tomorrow’ and ‘Living City’ for example are arranged in all their glory, images montages critique of the modern age, and reluctance of people to embrace new ideas, ‘It is all the same’ seemingly relevant today considering the Groundhog Day reference earlier. Some of the presentation techniques looking like cartoons from the Beatles movies,  giving a sense of being there through pop culture even though I was not born at the time. The exhibition captures the mood of optimism in the future from a 1960’s perspective with the ideas still looking and sounding fresh and very much still relevant reinforced by Ron Herron’s Imagination headquarters built in 1990 proudly sitting alongside the unbuilt projects.

A blacked out space at the back corner, with images and slogans being projected onto and through muslin screens hanging from the ceiling bring the ideas to life, far too many ideas to be comprehended in a single visit. Happily there are books that were produced to coincide with the exhibition, and having made my purchase of ‘Concerning Archigram’ there will be time to explore the ideas more fully.On signing the visitors book all I could write was ‘truly amazing!’ and on leaving I don’t think I will ever see so many great ideas in the same place again.

On leaving the Cornerhouse and returning to the contemporary of 1998, I cannot help but feel depressed by the environment, and the view of the city is one framed by the feeling of missed opportunities as real life took a different direction. On exploring the city, the recent addition of trams and the tram lines in the public paved areas give the city centre a European feel, it seems strange how European cities did not remove all their old tram networks and we in England are now striving to discover what was lost during the 1960’s. The feeling is reinforced by the 1980’s architecture...neo-classical or neo-Victorian Gothic decorated facade on the front, and blank brick walls to the sides, facade and pump up the volume. In contrast, the Arndale Centre, bombed by the IRA in 1996 now hidden behind rusting corrugated sheet hoarding.

A road too far and a bridge to nowhere...Having flicked though some of the Architectural magazines at the time, I had seen images of the regeneration of Salford quays and a dramatic footbridge as a centrepiece, which for some reason I had associated with Chris Wilkinson, and also attending a lecture by 1996 Stirling Prize Winner, Stephen Hodder, for Centenary Building at Salford University, there was a sense of something happening. On making the long walk from the city centre the journey comes to the end of a back road, where there is indeed a white skeletal steel bridge spanning the river Irwell, linking Manchester to Salford, a plaque on the bridge reveals that it is the Trinity Bridge by Dr Santiago Calatrava opened in 1995. The bridge itself comprises a deck suspended on cables from a single spire, with cracked paving slabs and graffiti applied to the base of the main steel members. marking the regeneration of the much neglected waterfront  area, as it stands it is at majestically spans the river to land of timber hoardings with a narrow path leading between them apparently to nowhere, evidently the regeneration of Salford has not caught up with the bridge yet.

On making the journey back to Piccadilly, the impression of the city improves from one of stark contrast to the optimism of Archigram, there are many civic buildings like there are Birmingham, only bigger and more of them, giving a sense of pride in city, and the overall  impression of Manchester is one of city coming alive and well worth another visit.

No Photos...Parc de la Villette - 1995

In my view no photos can do justice to this masterpiece in design, Bernard Tschumi's Cinematic promenade that was completed in 1987. The point grid of folies that define the structure of the park cannot be captured in a single frame, except from a hot air balloon perhaps, along with the lines being the elevated walkways that bind the elements together and the surfaces, the individual parks that combine to make up the whole. The only way to appreciate the project is to walk along the lines, climb on the folies and experience it on the ground. As an architecture student as I was in 1995, the tendency was to concentrate on the folies, particularly with the emphasis on them in the architecture books that could be found in the university library.

Over the years I have been telling students and colleagues about what an amazing place I think it is, but up until now I have not attempted to articulate all of those thoughts in a single piece. Now with my attention on the transformation of Olympic Park at Stratford, soon to become the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, I cannot help casting my memory back to my experience of La Villette some 18 years ago. For me the similarities are obvious: both have transformed industrial wasteland areas of city that would not ordinarily be considered as prime areas for redevelopment; and now in post games mode Stratford will start its new life as a park with indeterminate future events that can continue to reinforce the park's identity, which is how La Villette was envisaged at the outset.

Along with about 25 of my fellow Architecture students I took photographs of everything, from folies, reflections, shadows trying to compose images, but on having those films processed it was clear to me that my 36 exposures did not in any way capture the experience. I am ashamed to say that in the subsequent 18 years the opportunity has not presented itself to return so this is a piece based wholly on memory of my journey through the park in as it existed in 1995.

The first view was from the coach travelling along the motorway into Paris on our journey from Perry Barr, la Geode, a giant silver sphere that was not in the Architecture books, dominates the scene along with the expected red folies, serving to whet the appetite for the visit in the coming days. The actual arrival at the Park is at the front of Rice Francis Ritchies' (RFR) La Cite des Sciences (Museum of Science and Industry). Huge blue steel trusses, frame less glass boxes sitting in reflective water pools, fountains, immaculate stainless steel railings, very clean concrete and an old school briefing about what time we need to be back on the coach. A red steel frame leaning at a strange angle to the side of the entry plaza represents the first glimpse of Tschumi's fabled follies.

On crossing the entry bridge into the La Cite des Sciences, into a phenomenal space, some four to five storeys high, more of the huge steel trusses, a tent roof covers the central atrium, click! click! click! frame less glass joints, with stainless steel fixings are everywhere click! click! click! escalators climb through the atrium, glass sides, nothing new, glass sides to the lower section, with black steel truss and all the mechanism visible, have not seen that before, click! click! click!On crossing the entry bridge into the La Cite des Sciences, into a phenomenal space, some four to five storeys high, more of the huge steel trusses, a tent roof covers the central atrium, click! click! click! frameless glass joints, with stainless steel fixings are everywhere click! click! click! escalators climb through the atrium, glass sides, nothing new, glass sides to the lower section, with black steel truss and all the mechanism visible, have not seen that before, click! click! click!

On exiting the atrium towards the park, La Goede, absolutely no photographs can capture this click! click! click! anyway. But aside from the distorted reflection of the La Cite des Sciences behind, it is not only the visual that makes this so impressive, it is the aural!  It is a serene environment, where it is tempting to sit on the wall of the square pool that contains the sphere and get lost in the sound. I was told that the sound is created from a single sound wave being directed at the sphere and bouncing off surrounding surfaces, I don't know it it is true but the atmosphere it creates is impressive, the watery echoes would not sound out of place at a Pink Floyd concert.

Moving on into the park, L'Argonaute, a submarine! I did not know Paris was on the sea! Here we have a submarine compeletely out of place yet is sitting in a dry dock with one of the red folies acting as it's entrance pavilion.

A bit about the folies: each one is based on an enamelled red steel 10,8m cube laid out on a grid at 120m centres, each one different, some forming a more complete cube than others, elements have been removed, others have been added in a process of 'deconstruction' borrowed from film editing techniques; each frame changing slightly from the previous so that the image moves when viewed in succession. I have read multiple interpretations ranging from each folie being a 'deconstruction' of Le Corbusier's Buildings, another being an interpretation of Russian Constructivism to another being a physical manifestation of Tschumi's 'Manhattan Transcripts' a theoretical project ranging from 1976 to 1981 where abstract drawings are used to represent events that have happened. My interpretation from reading them on the ground? all could be true, there is certainly a passing resemblence to Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye in one, others do resemble imagery that originated in the Russian Constructivist movement, and sure the Manhattan Transcripts could inform the whole or even individual folies. Others resemble machines from the industrial revolution or even before, one contains a water wheel. As with all art and scuplture, each is open to individual interpretation and can be read as being purely built for pleasure at the same time as a statement on twentieth century culture, showing traces of past events that have caused us to be where we are today.

What makes these special for me is that each one is big enough to be a building, some contain program such as coffee shops, others are great to climb on, a spiral stair leads to nowhere except give an elevated view of the park, and what a view! this park is enormous! A canal runs through the middle of it, which at this moment has a barge loaded with sand making its way across the panorama. Bridges cross the canal one in a formal manner, making one of the 'lines' an elevated walkway that runs the length of the park, crossing a second that runs the width of the park. The second bridge crosses the river in an entirely playful manner, black steel structure that twists and curves its way across like a roller coaster whilst effortlessly carrying an aluminium deck into one of the folies to make the descent back to the ground. Walking along the promenade that runs alongside the canal the elevated walkway seems to float as very slender leaning columns meet the ground and disappear into the background. Moving on towards that background a football match is in progress on the immaculate green, whilst to the side appears to be a model of the Sydney harbour bridge, but on closer inspection part of a huge bike wheel buried in the ground, and over there is half a saddle, and there is the handlebar with a bell, it is as though a giant kid has chucked their bike down an gone off to play, and whilst they were playing the ground rose.

Outside a folly a bunch of steel chairs a strange angles stick out of the ground as though forming a bizarre cafe. Heading back through the gardens, some sunken, one of which bamboo climbs from a bed of gravel though a network of steel cables stretching from side to side at odd angles to define the 'ground' plane. Another plane appears to be formed of springboards, it seems that everywhere there is something different to play on, each space has a different character, and if you get lost it is easy to use the folies as orientation devices to find the way back, and on doing just that it is clear that there is far too much to take in during a brief single visit. What I did manage to take in has stayed with me, two hours spent in a most amazing place where time simply disappeared.

On leaving the experience of La Villette of 1995 and returning to the present, just a word to the nay-sayers: Parc de la Villette attracts 8-10 million visitors each year depending on which source you read and that is without having a hugely successful Olympic Games to kick start it's existence.

1000 views

The blog has just passed 1000 views since August 2012, 1000 views I guess that does not necessarily mean that people are reading it but for those who are, thanks and hope you are enjoying it. There is much more to follow.

Manama April 2013

March Madness: Manama-London-Riyadh 2013

It has been a crazy few weeks, work has been manic meaning that over 60 hours a week have been spent in the office, I have even been dreaming in SketchUp, there has been no training, no guitar playing and no new writing to contribute to the blog, although with 20% of registered architects in the UK out of work and countless architecture graduates unable to find placements I am not complaining.  What I have managed over the last few weeks is a rushed visit to London meaning that I have not really seen London, another to Riyadh where I have not really seen Riyadh and come to think of it I have not really seen much of Manama, deadlines have been met and life goes on.

What I have seen is signs of progress some rapid, some steady, and some limping along viewed out of the car or train window as I have been on the way to somewhere that I have not been to in a while.  The daily commute to work in the morning comprises threading through traffic and diversions that change on an almost daily basis as the Bahraini Ministry of Works move things around to dig great big holes, resurface roads that are far better than those in the UK and continue with the relentless construction of flyovers, slip roads to connect the emerging Bahrain Bay to the mainland. As a result most of the drivers don’t seem to know which lane to be in so do one of two things, one is to drive along dead slow causing everyone else to fall over them, the second being to change direction at the last moment, usually without indicating...Mirror, signal, manoeuvre does not operate here anyway, if it does it is in reverse, manoeuvre, and if you are lucky mirror and finally signal, in most cases the last two do not happen. Other drivers and diversions aside it is a pleasant drive with the sun glistening off the sea, and driving alongside rows of date palms. At Bahrain Bay a huge billboard announces that the development is ‘Celebrating Bahrain’s Future’  and in the background the Four Seasons and Wyndham Grand are really taking shape.

A rushed handover of work responsibilities for the next few days, a pint of Guinness at the Irish Lounge at Bahrain International Airport, constitutes my first drink of the year, not because it is not available, but with all the training it is not needed. An overnight flight with generous quantities of red wine courtesy of British Airways and arrival into the world of Richard Rogers at six in the morning. Heathrow Terminal 5 with its sculptural steel connections of the type that I first saw at Beaubourg, Paris in 1995, that form the structure that make the roof span a vast clear space effortlessly, through a network of automated lifts and underground shuttle train to the main terminal, quickly an efficiently to the smiling lady on immigration, and equally quickly and efficiently through baggage reclaim to the Heathrow Express’ which at 15 minutes is currently the quickest way to get into London.  Out of the tunnel into the very wet looking English countryside under the grey sky passing by rapidly out of the train window, joining the main line just west of Hayes. At Hayes a relatively new mixed use development sits one the site of a stone terminal if I remember correctly, with apartments looking directly over the railway, that must be a quiet place to live...

Onward towards Old Oak Common, and a huge billboard alongside ABK’s disused Eurostar depot  ‘Say hello to 186mph’ signifying that the neo-Thatcherist government have been forced to commit to HS2, the new high speed rail line that will link Heathrow to the Midlands and the North of England, probably reducing the need for domestic flights, reducing congestion on the motorways, and with the ability to remove countless heavy goods vehicles from the road. At Acton a clear sign of the legacy of Thatcher, the privatisation of the national rail network, freight trains stand proudly displaying the branding of their current owner. DB Schenker, in short, Germany’s national rail operator.

Arriving into London Paddington, much of which is a construction site as ‘Crossrail’ limps ever closer to connecting the East-end with Heathrow.  Out into the cold air beneath Brunel’s great cast iron and glass roof and the morning rush hour, coffee to go, newspapers and watching movies on iPhones. Into the underground having let the first train go, squeeze onto the next one, change at Baker Street and repeat the process. As the train makes its way eastwards, different groups of people board and leave as stops are made, speaking so many languages...Japanese, Polish, German...Does anybody speak English here anymore? The recongisable stations of Foster at Canary Wharf and Alsop at North Greenwich and out into the grey daylight to Canning Town. Onto the DLR, Royal Victoria Dock looks as magnificent as ever, very still water, mirrorlike reflections, the Crystal looking very much part of the landscape and a dormant Emirates Airline?

A quick reunion with my family and out into the London traffic to drop Mummy off at work, well behaved drivers, indication before changing lanes and potholes everywhere! A quick tour of Canary Wharf and cross the bridge next to Alsop’s ‘Chicken’ and a day of much needed quality time with Natasha, my daughter on her last day of being 3. A drive to Kent of see her prospective school, and lunch at TGI Fridays, Westfield Stratford sitting in a car that somehow reminds me of ‘Pulp fiction’.

Zaha Hadid’s Aquatics Centre looks magnificent as the wavelike sculpture begins to emerge from the grandstands as they are being steadily disassembled. The stadium every bit as impressive as it was on the TV last summer and the Orbit? Still not decided on that one yet, looking forward to being able the park when it re-opens.

A Disney princess birthday party, a night at the Legoland Resort Windsor, three happy people, and all too quickly it is back out into the cold heading back to the world of Rogers. On the returning Heathrow Express, the on board TV’s show Kent being paralysed by snow, M23 blocked for 12 hours and the usual finger pointing about authorities not being prepared.

Into the heat of Bahrain and the heat of the project, passport submitted for Saudi Visa, and a few days later back to the Irish Lounge my second pint of Guinness of the year and the brief flight over to Riyadh. Arrival at King Khalid not too dissimilar from my first time, a long static queue of Pakistanis in a glacial surge towards a gate that is not letting people through. For me a relatively short wait in line to be sent back, fill in a landing card (I did not need to do this in January) a longer wait in line as another plane load of people arrived whilst I was filling out the card,  fingerprints scanned, again, mugshot taken again, and out into Arrivals. No sign of our company driver so it is out to do battle with the airport taxis, except they are more like the minicabs driven by Birmingham’s Bengali community, usually a Toyota with dodgy steering, dodgy shock absorbers and a gear box that grinds along.

Here I have a Saudi driver so it is a white knuckle ride, driving over any available bit of road surface irrespective of lane markings and other road users. The bing! bing! bing! of the electronic warning that you are not wearing your seat belt does not seem to worry the driver, and it is very quickly replaced by a different bing! bing! bing! to tell you that you are travelling at over 120kph. Dodging in and out of the traffic along the Eastern Ring Road, neon signs flash by announcing a staggering array of fast food joints. Past Al Rawda, an area which was home to me for over a year and onto the Khurais Road which was my former commute to work.

My commute to work used to involve driving for about half an hour to an hour depending upon the volume of traffic, through what I can only describe as gaps in the traffic, and in most cases those gaps were millimetres from the wing mirror of the car alongside, and in many cases it felt as though my car was being squeezed from both sides as five lanes become one. Here I am back again sitting beside one of the worst offenders, I read in a guide book that Saudis automatically assume that they have right of way and therefore do not stop for anybody, I had not forgotten this from my time living in Riyadh, but being back again brings it all back in very clear focus. Squeezing into impossible gaps to get onto the highway, many sights familiar to me pass unseen as we head through the underpass no more than six inches behind the car in front, a lurch to the right and onto the service road, and a blaze of neon signs announcing a whole row of car rental offices and a sea of beaten-up old Japanese cars much like the one I that am currently travelling. At the intersection next to the Wooden Bakery, the road has gone, so it is a trip around one of Riyadh’s famous detours where the procedure is squeeze into a single lane perform a U-turn and cut across three lanes of traffic to make a right turn, to get back onto the road.

Arrival at the hotel and the customary haggling over taxi fare, he wants to rip me off, I don’t want to pay that much so there is a bit of a Mexican stand off  until I pay something closer to what is only slightly less than daylight robbery, although it is night-time. Into reception, ‘Welcome to Riyadh!’...err...Thanks.

Riyadh in daylight passes by slightly slower and more controlled in the hands of our company driver, but around us the madness continues. Omrania’s offices do not feel like Riyadh at all, it feels more like walking into a London studio, there are many European Expats as well as Arabs which reinforces the illusion. Three days of workshops, long intense days with client team, specialist consultants and our Architects, Engineers, Interior Designers to review our progress on a new expatriate compound.

Security strategies deal with requirements that are more stringent than a military establishment. Water treatment strategies get interesting as the site is so far north of the tide of development that is the expansion of Riyadh that the proposal is to use ground water, taken from a borehole that is 300m deep, it is brackish so will need treatment on site. The landscape design is for a lush ‘oasis’ and will be irrigated using recycled water on site, except that there is not enough landscape to use it all so some of it will have to be transported to a local facility, which I am led to believe currently comprises dumping it in the desert. Over the course of the workshop more planting  is introduced to reduce the amount of waste water being taken away, all of which is counter intuitive as the trend is toward arid landscape planting to reduce water demand.  How do we ‘green the desert’? some further study required I think.

The hotel is one that I know quite well although there is not much time to appreciate it, the days involve getting back from the office, order room service, eat, sleep and do at all again the next day. The hotel is undergoing a major redevelopment, next to the current hotel is a site hoarding, which I know has a three storey deep hole behind it as this is a project that I was involved in for a few months. In reception is a visualisation of the proposed lobby which is a rendering of a SketchUp model that I built two years ago.
On the drive out to the airport, through the ever present traffic, developments over the past two years are all the more apparent, a detour/U-turn combination that I used to have to negotiate is nearing completion, and now comprises a flyover that was not there before in fact at the time there was not indication that a flyover was imminent. High quality paving defines what looks like a public square over an underpass along with trees and ground-cover planting. Heading out on the new road, date palms are everywhere, planting defines verges what are either sand or concrete elsewhere in the city.

On rejoining the East Ring Road, the Hilton Hotel project at Granada is progressing nicely, structure is still growing out of the ground, glass and cladding is going onto the lower levels...Beyond the newly completed GOSI Office park. Continuing past the Princess Noura University for Women, a development so large that it has its own monorail system, but there again women are not allowed to drive in Saudi so how else are they supposed to get around? Onwards to another sign of Saudi Arabia’s development, Zaha Hadid’s Exhibition Centre, under construction with crystalline forms growing out of the ground, and trademark concrete pavilions in the landscape. And so to HOK’s King Khailid International Airport through an ever expanding swath of green as more and more trees are being planted to line the approach road and soften the edge of the desert.

Through departures, and a most definitely not smiley face on the person checking my passport serves as a reminder why I prefer living in Bahrain.