Originally published at: New sliver of a skyscraper is the width of just one apartment - Boing Boing
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So it’s even more stupid and horrible than all the other stupid, horrible buildings in Dubai? Cool.
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But… why?
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Maybe they should call in the Millennium Tower group from San Francisco as consultants?
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Oh, I’m sure one feels quite connected to nature on the 71st floor.
Fuck off, dubai, and take all your stupid soi disant architecture with you - esp those sinking islands you destroyed the environment to make.
So fucking dumb.
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Reminds me of Louis Sachar’s “Wayside School” books, where the builder read the blueprints sideways and built a 30-story building with one classroom on each floor…
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Always still relevant:
“They said I’d be impressed”
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Should be the advertising slogan for Dubai.
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It’s gonna fall down.
Even they know it’s gonna fall down.
Oligarchs gotta launder their money somewhere now that western countries are unfriendly thanks to the war in Ukraine.
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Dubai’s signature architectural achievements, from its ridiculous skyscrapers to its already-sinking artificial islands, would only begin to make sense if constructed by a city with an extremely limited amount of land available to build on, not a city surrounded by huge swaths of empty desert.
Manhattan and Singapore didn’t just start building skyscrapers as dick-waving vanity projects, they started building skyscrapers because they have strictly limited geographical boundaries available to build on. Absent that condition it is rarely practical to build anything above ten stories or so.
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And I thought buying a condo* in an NYC supertall was stupid.
[* Actually living in one of these big safe deposit boxes/money laundries can’t be assumed.]
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That is going to make one hell of a fascinating ruin after the inevitable collapse of the oil economy.*
*Collapse from either the crash of oil as useful or the crash of civilization as viable. Either way, cool ruins.
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I don’t think I have legit acrophobia, but heights still make me uneasy, and with something like this the very idea of it makes me uneasy-- I can be in a tall building, but the width and general mass of the building still makes me feel grounded. With this, not so much.
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This is why Dubai is investing so heavily in being a kind of bizarre desert Disneyland for the 1%ers of the world. They know their oil economy will dry up soon, and are trying to attract rich foreign investors to buy expensive properties and providing all kinds of bizarre amenities (ski slopes… in the desert!) to attract tourism. Other Emirates are doing similar things like Abu Dhabi aggressively recruiting foreign entrepreneurs offering subsidies and little in the way of oversight or regulations.
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So how wide is one apartment? It’s just one unit per floor, but that base could easily be wide enough to be almost stable in a mild wind.
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Well, maybe. According to the news stories I’ve been able to find a developer has announced through a press release that they plan to build such an apartment tower, but that’s certainly no guarantee that the project will actually happen. Plenty of announcements for similar ambitious construction projects in the area never actually got anywhere.
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The 73-story apartment building is 1,246 tall but, with only one apartment per floor, is just 73 feet wide.
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But that 73 feet is an arbitrary measure. Nowhere are apartments required to be that size. And why that gif? Seems a bit hostile.
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Shelly captured the irony deliciously in Ozymandias:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
(Read the poem, it’s very short. A classic cautionary tale for anyone looking to make their mark on history.)
ETA for convenience:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
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