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...
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...
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