5. Afterword—On Utopia and Dystopia

This is part five of the series Four Cautionary Tales for Abu Dhabi. Click Here, to read more about the series and access the other parts.

Each of the four stories in parts 1-4 explore a project in Abu Dhabi that is utopian in one main way. The stories start with real places, real plans, and real architecture, but then turn up the—already existing—utopian drive to a maximum. What results is both utterly ridiculous and—paradoxically—a reasonable extrapolation of the radical premises upon which these real projects were based. The ‘natural’ conclusions of unnatural circumstances are, by definition, unnatural.

This is how the four projects are utopian: Saadiyat tries to be the epicenter of art and culture. The Sheikh Zayed Mosque wants to be the ultimate house of god. Masdar pushes sustainable urbanism to the end of what current technology allows. The Emirates Palace flaunts the utmost luxury money can buy. One might here ask: does this mean that any ambitious and daring project is automatically utopian? No, because ‘utopian’ here means something more specific. These four projects are utopian because they don’t just try to excel in comparison to other projects with similar programs, but rather attempt to be the biggest, the most, and the best—to be ultimate. Also, these projects are not gradual developments or organic growths of their contexts; instead, they appear suddenly and fully formed.

4. Emirates Palace Hotel—We’re Exclusively Inclusive

This is part four of the series Four Cautionary Tales for Abu Dhabi. Click Here, to read more about the series and access the other parts.

All ten of them woke up around 5:30 am. They left their shared bedroom and walked down the corridor with the other men from the other rooms.

They were all walking towards the shared bathrooms. In the morning, there is always a line outside the bathrooms. On this day, the line was longer than usual because two stalls were out of order. Once done, they all walked back to their rooms. They changed into their wrinkled uniforms. Some had something to eat, but most did not.

Outside the labor camp building, they joined hundreds of other expat workers in their daily march towards the buses. There were always lines outside the buses too. On a hot day like this one, the wait quickly became tiring and frustrating. Boarding did not start until the company’s supervisors gave their approval.

This morning, the supervisors looked more stressed and disorganized than usual. They ran around and pointed at their clipboards and argued. Finally, they selected 35 workers and sent them to a special bus at the far end of the line of buses. This bus looked different from the buses they usually took. It was larger and cleaner.

3. Masdar City—Ready for the 22nd Century

This is part three of the series Four Cautionary Tales for Abu Dhabi. Click Here, to read more about the series and access the other parts.

It took a couple of years of operation for Masdar City’s elected board of directors to realize that their hopes for a carbon-neutral and zero-waste city were unreachable. That is, unless some drastic steps were taken. The residents of Masdar, despite all the behavior correction workshops they were forced to attend, displayed a shocking amount of irresponsibility. Electricity and water consumption were far above the city’s benchmarks, litter was too often seen on the streets, and some of the new buildings with high-tech facades were even vandalized. No one could explain the residents’ perverse carelessness.

The final line was crossed when the city woke up to find that dozens of walls had been sprayed with graffiti the night before. Each wall was defaced with a different short statement. It was obvious that this was a coordinated effort, later to be condemned as an act of “verbal terrorism.” To generalize, we can say that the graffitied statements were all confessions expressing bottled-up guilt from failing to live up to the city’s sustainability goals. They included: “I keep the AC on year-round,” “I take long showers,” “I sometimes pick flowers from street planters,” “I dropped a plastic wrapper once and didn’t pick it up,” “I throw all my trash in the recycle bin,” and so on.

Most Masdarians thought the comments were funny and identified with their rebellious sentiment. This was the result of their deep anxiety regarding their self-worth, and the constant guilt they felt about their behavior that was “murdering Mother Earth,” as the board liked to preach. That feeling was by then widespread throughout Masdar’s population. The residents had for several years been scolded by the board of directors and official media outlets: described as wasteful, ignorant, and ultimately undeserving to live in Masdar City. In one famous televised interview, an especially grumpy board member said: “The truth is that Masdar City would be better off if a plague came tomorrow and wiped out half its population.” Only after a moment’s reflection did he add, “the bad half of course.”

2. Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque—Palace of God

This is part two of the series Four Cautionary Tales for Abu Dhabi. Click Here, to read more about the series and access the other parts.

From day one, the board of directors managing the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque knew that their main challenge was to mediate between the building’s two functions: a prayer hall and a tourist attraction. This was a tricky problem because so much money and energy had gone into making the building as architecturally attractive as possible to bring in selfie-hungry ‘pilgrims,’ and yet, it was still a mosque and needed to function as one. In fact—and this is the brilliant realization of a board member that started this whole story—without properly functioning as a mosque full of devout Muslim worshipers, the building would seem like a shallow vanity project, therefore becoming much less effective at bringing in tourists in the first place. The balance was delicate, but achieving it was absolutely necessary.

Only after understanding this dilemma could the board’s two controversial decisions be comprehended. Those decisions would of course later lead to the stripping of all board members of their positions due to public outrage reaching dangerous levels. But we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with the first of the two controversial decisions: implementing an entrance fee.

The board’s reasoning was simple. There were too many visitors, whether tourists or worshipers, and the existing facilities could not handle their numbers. Before the entrance fee was implemented, long lines were a common sight outside the mosque’s main gates, and it often took visitors more than an hour to make their way past the security point. Although tourists did not mind the wait, worshipers did. It is common knowledge that the five daily prayers of Islam are supposed to be performed at specific times. Having to wait an hour outside the gates meant that worshipers often missed the collective prayers, making their trip to the mosque meaningless.

1. Saadiyat Cultural District—More Culture Than You Can Handle

This is part one of the series Four Cautionary Tales for Abu Dhabi. Click Here, to read more about the series and access the other parts.

Of course the Saadiyat Cultural District was going to be a success. The sheer star power of its institutions and architects made success inevitable. But it was just how successful Saadiyat island became that took everyone by surprise. As soon as the Louvre and Guggenheim museums opened their doors, millions of tourists flocked to Abu Dhabi to experience these architectural wonders, and the artistic treasures they held. Spectacular images of Saadiyat were on the front page of every international newspaper and magazine. Celebrities made sure to be ‘spotted’ there. Art curators begged and bribed to have their names included in the upcoming exhibitions. Journalists flew to Abu Dhabi on their own expense for the opportunity to publish an article on this cultural phenomenon. The world could not get enough of Saadiyat, and Saadiyat always had more to offer.

The media craze was reignited with the opening of every new project, of which many were in the works. Announcements of newer, bigger, and better buildings were a monthly occurrence. The number of visitors grew exponentially, and ambitious infrastructural projects were quickly built to accommodate them: new roads, bridges, airports, hotels, tram lines, and subways. Starchitects raced to be included. It didn’t matter what they designed; they just wanted to have their names associated with Saadiyat. Koolhaas proposed new road signs. Gang designed bus stops. Calatrava designed streetlamps.

Four Cautionary Tales for Abu Dhabi

This text is composed of five parts. The first four are short stories that each takes an existing architectural project in Abu Dhabi and imagines a fictional history for it. The fifth part—the Afterword—reflects on the four stories in relation to the concepts of utopia and dystopia. Four Cautionary Tales for Abu Dhabi is an experiment in the use of literary writing for architectural criticism.

Links to the five parts

1. Saadiyat Cultural District—More Culture Than You Can Handle

2. Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque—Palace of God

3. Masdar City—Ready for the 22^nd Century

4. Emirates Palace Hotel—We’re Exclusively Inclusive

5. Afterword—On Utopia and Dystopia

Against Stagnation: Kuwait Imagined Otherwise

This text was submitted for the visual essay category of the Fall 2022 issue of the journal LA+ (16, "Speculation"), but was not accepted. The images that were to accompany the text were previously shared on this blog here (1), here (2), and here (3); a few samples are also included below. 

When everything persists despite the obvious need for change, when failures replicate themselves without interruption, and when we cannot even imagine alternatives to our current situation, then we are surely in a state of stagnation. And stagnation is never just neutral perpetual sameness. Instead, stagnation always implies decay. Stagnation is slow death. If we find ourselves in such a state, then the solution is obvious: resuscitation. On TV, resuscitation sometimes takes the form of a handsome prince kissing a sleeping beauty, an act so gentle and loving. But in real life, resuscitation usually requires a more aggressive intervention, one that in a different context could be considered an act of violence, such as the electric shock of a defibrillator frantically shoved into a patient's chest.

Kuwait is experiencing a period of stagnation. The landscapes of Kuwait—its patchy downtown, its repetitive suburbs, its flat desert, its Gulf waters—have not been reimagined for decades. There is no societal expectation that these landscapes will or should change. Even simple and sensible improvements remain outside the realm of possibility. We cannot imagine a more green and pedestrian friendly downtown. We cannot imagine suburbs more diverse in building type and resident background. We cannot imagine a less trampled and littered desert, richer in biodiversity and always beautiful. We cannot imagine our water being less polluted and its depths more bountiful. And this deficient imagination of ours is also lacking in the other direction. Given the current economic, environmental, and humanitarian challenges the country is facing, it is baffling why most of us cannot visualize the rapid and disastrous transformations that our urban, rural, and natural landscapes can undergo in the near future. Regardless of the evidence, there seems to be a widespread expectation that things will essentially stay the same. 

The aim of this visual project is to jolt Kuwaiti society out of its current state of imaginative stagnation. Each image speculates about one possible future for a Kuwaiti landscape. They allow the viewer to 'see' and 'believe' that dramatic change is possible. To achieve this, images had to do two things. First, they had to be instantly recognizable as being in Kuwait, and no other place. Second, they had to be created with enough proficiency to look realistic; even if for just a second, the viewer had to struggle with parsing apart the real from the speculative. Understood as such, each image can be seen as presenting the viewer with a question, such as: what if the desert reclaimed the city? What if rising water invaded Kuwait's suburbs? What if a giant sink hole swallowed several city blocks? And on the brighter side: what if the water was utilized as a source of renewable energy? What if open spaces in suburbs were turned into safe and welcoming camps for the world's refugees?

Ultimately, the desired effect of the images is not just to allow the viewer to imagine new possibilities for Kuwait's future, but to encourage them to participate in deciding which of the possibilities, whether illustrated in the images or still unimagined, will become the new reality.