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.
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