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 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.
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