{"id":487294,"date":"2026-03-21T08:11:33","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T08:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/487294\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T08:11:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T08:11:33","slug":"all-architectural-styles-and-none-at-the-same-time-how-dubai-became-a-catalog-of-whims-on-a-colossal-scale-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/487294\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018All architectural styles and none at the same time\u2019: How Dubai became a catalog of whims on a colossal scale | International"},"content":{"rendered":"

On February 28th, a fragment of an Iranian drone<\/a> fell on Palm Jumeirah, the artificial island shaped like a giant palm tree in Dubai. And this is so narratively coherent that it seems like something a 1970s science fiction writer would have come up with.<\/p>\n

Because Dubai is essentially a dystopia written 50 years ago. Like J.G. Ballard\u2019s Super-Cannes or High-Rise. I read them in the 1990s and thought, \u201cCool, but it\u2019s impossible that anyone will ever build something like that<\/a>.\u201d However, not only did they build it, but millions of people have gone there on vacation or to work pretending to be on vacation and posting stories and TikToks.<\/p>\n

\"Dubai\"Palm Jumeirah, the artificial island shaped like a giant palm tree located in Dubai.Nikada (Getty Images\/iStockphoto)<\/p>\n

What surprises me is that so many people don\u2019t see it at first glance, because Dubai has never hidden its dystopian nature; in fact, it flaunts it, puts it on display<\/a>, illuminates it with LEDs, adds an indoor ski slope\u2014Ski Dubai, 22,500 square meters of artificial snow at a constant temperature of -1\u00baC (30\u00baF) in a city in the middle of the desert whose drinking water comes from desalinating the Persian Gulf\u2014and charges admission to ski and to see the penguin colony inside. Seriously, there is one. People who, theoretically, should be capable of understanding that a monarchy without freedom of the press, without labor rights, without the right to dissent, with temperatures of 48\u00baC (118\u00baF) that require air conditioning in bus stops, represents such an obtuse civilizational model\u2014besides being immoral, but I won\u2019t go into that here\u2014that it comes with its expiration date printed on its forehead. But the hotel has an aquarium in the lobby, and it\u2019s enormous. The suites have windows that look directly onto this aquarium, where sharks literally swim past the glass of your bedroom\u2014all for around \u20ac8,000 a night. And this hotel exists: it\u2019s called Atlantis The Palm, and it has 1,544 themed rooms based on the myth of Atlantis at the tip of the palm tree, opened in 2008 with a party that cost \u00a315 million and included a private concert by Kylie Minogue.<\/p>\n

\"Dubai\"Ski Dubai, 22,500 square meters of artificial snow in the middle of the desert.Alamy Stock Photo\"Dubai\"The impressive aquarium at the Atlantis The Palm hotel.Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n

Which brings me to the topic of architecture<\/a>, which is theoretically what this section of El PA\u00cdS is about, and where the Dubai issue becomes downright parodic. Because Dubai doesn\u2019t have an architectural style; it has all architectural styles at once and none at the same time. The skyline is a catalog of whims on a colossal scale, towers that look like they were designed by eight-year-olds who were told, \u201cDraw the coolest building you can imagine,\u201d and someone, instead of putting the drawing on the fridge door, actually built it. A hotel shaped like a sail\u2014the Burj Al Arab, by Tom Wright for Atkins, 321 meters high on its own artificial island off Jumeirah Beach, opened in 1999, the building that started all this madness. A skyscraper that twists and turns\u2014the Cayan Tower, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, 307 meters and 75 floors in Dubai Marina, each floor rotated 1.2 degrees relative to the previous one until completing a 90-degree rotation, finished in 2013. A giant picture frame 150 meters high; yes, literally, a picture frame, planted in the middle of the city\u2014the Dubai Frame, in Zabeel Park, inaugurated in 2018, whose own architect, the Mexican Fernando Donis, denounced that his design had been stolen and publicly described it as a \u201cpostmodern pastiche\u201d of his original idea, which, if you think about it, is the perfect metaphor for what Dubai does to everything it touches. And below, nestled in the fronds of the artificial palm, are the villas, another category of delirium\u2014mansions of 2,000 square meters, which are actually the modest ones, because those custom-built at the tips of the fronds reach 4,500, with garages for 15 cars, their own hair salon, private cinema, bowling alley and infinity pool;<\/a> the most expensive one ever sold had 18 bathrooms, which is more different bathrooms than most people will visit in a month or in 12 months\u2014and architectural styles to choose from: Mediterranean, Ottoman, Balinese, contemporary minimalist, or whatever the buyer happened to see on Instagram that week. Tuscan marble, French oak, decorative Arabic latticework that doesn\u2019t ventilate at all because the entire building is climate-controlled at a permanent 21\u00baC (69\u00baF). It\u2019s pastiche elevated to urban planning doctrine, a Las Vegas without the alibi of irony.<\/p>\n

\"Dubai\"The Dubai skyline seen through the Dubai Frame, in Zabeel Park, a 150-meter-high photo frame in the middle of the city.Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n

Jean Baudrillard would have wept with joy, or horror, or probably both. Because Dubai is the ultimate realization of the simulacrum, the place where the copy has so completely replaced the original that the question no longer even makes sense. There is no local architectural tradition being poorly imitated, no reference point being degraded. The reference point has disappeared. What remains is an entire city built from renders, from promotional images that became physical reality without passing through any intermediate filter of history, context, or necessity. Dubai is a habitable render. The map that preceded the territory.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the worst part; the worst part is who built it. Who really did. Because Dubai is a city that tells you, \u201cLook, we have slave labor with a sea view,\u201d and people would reply, \u201cThat\u2019s crazy…so how much is Friday brunch?\u201d A city where 90% of the population is foreign and 90% of the workforce is too, but they\u2019re not the same kind of foreigners. Where there is an island whose palm-like shape is only visible from the air or from Google Earth\u2014that is, whose architectural grace was designed to be consumed as an image rather than as a space\u2014and which was built by Nepalese, Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Filipino, Ethiopian, Ugandan, and\/or Kenyan workers whose passports were confiscated, so that later a British, American, German, or Spanish influencer could film themselves in a swimsuit saying \u201cliving my best life.\u201d The narrative arc is there, in plain sight, without the need for metaphor because reality itself was the metaphor.<\/p>\n

\"Dubai\"Dubai Marina as seen from a boat.IR_Stone (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

And now a fragment of an Iranian drone has pierced the bubble<\/a>, both the real and the metaphorical one. Perhaps the yogurt was already expired and the dystopia is simply fulfilling its own script.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On February 28th, a fragment of an Iranian drone fell on Palm Jumeirah, the artificial island shaped like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,429,96,585,74743,3302,617,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-487294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-dubai","tag-entertainment","tag-iran","tag-kylie-minogue","tag-las-vegas","tag-tiktok","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}