Al Manakh Gulf Continued Debate
May 19, Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi), Rotterdam
With Hani Asfour, Rem Koolhaas, Ronald Wall

After a year in the making, the mammoth Al Manakh marched into the NAi in Rotterdam on May 19, just after being launched a few nights earlier in Abu Dhabi.

Editor Arjen Oosterman commenced by presenting the publication itself. Unlike the first Al Manakh, which ‘looked like it had been dragged off the internet and onto the page’ (wrote Justin McGuirk from the Guardian), Oosterman mentioned Al Manakh: Gulf Continued had another look and feel, which was delivered by editor Todd Reisz and designer Irma Boom: with less focus on architectural extravaganza and more nuance on voices in the region. These voices were structured into four chapters (Crisis and Crises, Vision, Export and Cohabitation) and connected through a system of cross-references developed by Editor Todd Reisz to bridge the often contradictory and overlapping views.

Rem Koolhaas explained that there is a need to counter the usual media coverage on the region. We need to get ourselves informed on an important and influential part of the world, which we often prefer to mock or ignore. He also questioned the perspective from which we see the region. Underlying all of the articles in the publication, Koolhaas commented, is the notion of economics, which he challenges as being the ultimate default in the world (of architecture). He asked whether there are other underlying values: do we not dream of other things?

Following Koolhaas, Hani Asfour, an architect working between Dubai and Beirut, continued to dream. However, his dream was one of a Gulf region that could transform into a post-oil knowledge economy. Hani Asfour conjectured that the bubbling and exchange of knowledge could already be witnessed in spaces like Shelter and Traffic in Dubai. However, one could also take the example to KAUST in Saudi Arabia, where traditional university departments have been replaced by clusters of academics forming around problems (see John Gravois, Al Manakh: Gulf Continued, p. 412).

Dubai was also singled out by economic geographer and Al Manakh contributor Ronald Wall. With a dazzling and complex network diagram of the world, Wall highlighted the relations of global investments between cities, and championed Dubai as the only GCC city with a diverse portfolio beyond oil.

Due to all of the hyperbole that Dubai attracts, there were several other cities that were seldom mentioned during the evening: Jeddah, Riyadh and Kuwait City among them. In the discussions after the presentations, Hani Asfour stressed the diversity of the region at stake because the cultural, economic, religious and social differences are enormous. Publications like the Al Manakh – according to him – could help in a better understanding of the region’s specificities. But on the night, social and political conversations were overshadowed by talk of economic transition. Perhaps, with the decline of the euro, Westerners have money on their mind. In the Gulf, people go about their business as usual.

“On February 5, 1971, the crew of Apollo 14 touched down on the lunar surface in the Fra Mauro formation near Cone Crater. It was the second attempt to land at this site. Originally, Apollo 13 had been slated to land at Fra Mauro and Apollo 14 was to explore a site near Littrow Crater. The Apollo 13 accident had altered these plans…”

After the thrilling success of Google Earth, Google launched a brand new service: Google Moon. It consists of two components that work more or less the same as Google Maps and Google Earth, and provides the viewer with (luna)graphical information. The site offers diverse material to learn more about the moon’s landscape as well as constructions and activities performed by mankind. One can find and discover information such as tours of lunar landing sites narrated by Apollo astronauts, 3D models of rovers and landers, 360-degree photo panoramas, and rare TV footage of the Apollo missions. These new features are available in Google Earth 5.0.

We are happy to announce that Volume #25 will be dedicated to the challenges of living on the moon. The moon is a liminal condition, an ultimate test to human inventiveness and feedback mechanism on our ‘taken for granted’ assumptions down here. The Volume issue is being developed in close collaboration with Alicia Framis’ Moon Life project and the European Space Agency (ESA) in Noordwijk. Last month, the Moon Academy workshops started, gathering some 50 students from different backgrounds. The end results will be displayed in Shanghai, and also as a special companion to Volume magazine later this year. Click here to browse through the Moon Life handbook, which is part of the Moon Academy.

Wednesday 19 May, 2010, auditorium Netherlands Architecture Institute, Rotterdam. Open: 4:30 pm, start: 5 pm. Entrance fee: € 5, reduction fee € 3 (students, Friends of the NAi). Register here.

Speakers will include Ole Bouman, Hani Asfour, Rem Koolhaas and Reinier de Graaf, and Ronald Wall.

Following the release of Al Manakh Gulf Continued, a special issue of Volume Magazine, the NAi will organize a debate in collaboration with OMA, Archis/Volume and Pink Tank. Al Manakh Gulf Continued offers readers another view of urban development in the Gulf region. This time focusing on how the cities remain re-invent themselves and about their position related to the rest of the world.

This is the first time I will discuss music on this blog. But it’s relevant, and yes, of course we love music. Especially the music that is written, mixed or composed to perfectly capture the atmosphere of a situation in a physical environment — the city. A good example and one of my all time favorites is Studio Pankow’s 2005 album ‘Linienbusse’, a collaborative masterpiece of three musicians (David Moufang, Jamie Hodge and Kai Kroker) that can be considered a true tribute to Berlin. All tracks are named after streets, parks and squares in the German capital and make the late night listener feel like being in a dark night club filled with bleeps, dub scapes and bubbly bass lines produced by steamy machines. Huge recommendation.

From this perspective I’d like to discuss two albums of which one re-gains relevance due to the release of the other. The first album is Brian Eno’s famous ambient piece ‘Music for Airports’, which was recorded in 1978. (Click here to listen to some samples!) The second album is The Black Dog’s contemporary reply ‘Music for Real Airports’ (click the link for samples), which is scheduled for release next month on Soma Records. ‘Music for Real Airports’ proves that atmospherical music can be loaded with a political message. Field recordings accompanied by drones and pure electronics take the listener on a trip through Airport City. When listening to both albums and trying to make a comparison, you can conclude that, whether it’s caused by the ‘Zeitgeist’ or not, the airport of today is perceived a lot different than in the seventies. Click here for a full size review elaborating on how Eno himself considered his 1978 ambient album to be.

“Airports are the modern point of departure and they are places where reunions occur and separations begin as people move back and forth. Airports are also places of duty-free commerce, blaring announcements, boredom and tension. So he took all of this into considerations: a work that would reassure people who might possibly be flying to their fiery death, that would give a spirit of hope and trepidation and calm all mixed together.”

Especially the word ‘hope’ embodies optimism and the need for progression, and this is what is noticeable when listening to Eno’s friendly and peaceful pieces of ambient music. The following video is a short movie by Rodrigo J. Lopez which is meant to be an architectural film about a new international airport. The video’s description emphasizes the role of the airport to host the full range of human emotions: “from a farewell to loved ones, the happiness of seeing a familiar face, or the excitement and anticipation of new experiences in distant lands”. No wonder that one of Eno’s tracks on ‘Music for Airports’ was used in the video. It’s rather beautiful emotions. Not fear, not anger. The video focuses totally on hard structures and elements made of glass and concrete and it almost seems to forget the airport to be not some piece of clean architecture, but rather a place to be used by millions of people.

Something different then. The deep drones and dub techno of The Black Dog’s ‘Music for Real Airports’, which are fantastic but oppressive at the same time, make a totally different statement. Gridface explains that, in contrast to Brian Eno’s album, “this is music about a space rather than for it”. It captures the spectrum of emotions stirred by the airport. “Many of the compositions were created while waiting in airports, which makes for some uneasy listening.” At the album website, the members of The Black Dog state:

“Airports have some of the glossiest surfaces in modern culture, but the fear underneath remains. Hence this record is not a utilitarian accompaniment to airports, in the sense of reinforcing the false utopia and fake idealism of air travel. Unlike Eno’s ‘Music for Airports’, this is not a record to be used by airport authorities to lull their customers.”

Below is a preview video of The Black Dog’s ‘Music for Real Airports’ made by the artists of Sheffield-based interactive agency Human. The Black Dog considers ‘Music for Real Airports’ to be a more accurate update to Eno’s work and musically represents Airport City as a dystopian microcosm a possible future society. Describing airports as promising travel, exploration and excitement, but endlessly breaking that promise with their stale, tedious pressure, the perfect contradiction is made. Enjoy.

The two albums are not just two different approaches to the airport, they represent an erosion of modernist thinking. Over the last decades airports became large multinational businesses — even big cities, but without any inhabitants. In his book ‘In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World’, John Thackara explains how powerful commercial and network operation agendas drive the way both space and time are designed. He argues that the penetration of system-based design into public space desensitizes bodies from their sense of time. Thackara refers to Richard Sennett’s earlier writings on this issue:

“When public space becomes a derivative of movement, it loses any independent experiential meaning of its own. On the most physical level these environments of pure movement prompt people to think of the public domain as meaningless (…) catatonical space.”

It’s interesting that The Black Dog took the effort to provide a contemporary update to Eno’s work. The relation between the two albums is the relation between seventies optimism and millennium negativism, between futurism and technological determinism. The Black Dog’s ‘Music for Real Airports’ shows how the airport itself has changed since Eno released his album in the late seventies. I wonder how Eno’s album would sound like when he would have produced it today.

—This article was published before on The Pop-Up City.

Over the past years the Canadian artist Ross Racine has designed a series of digital fake suburbs. All drawings can hardly be seperated from real suburbs and so are their names, which include Cherry Meadows, Walnot Village and Happy Hollow. The collection called Subdivision is undoubtedly inspired by maps of real suburbs, which have become real pieces of art when seen from the air. The critic on modern planning and urbanism behind these drawings is really sharp. Racine’s creations reveal the everlasting blueprint tradition of common planning practice. The paradox of neo-traditional planning is explicitly uncovered. New neighborhoods have to look organic and from above they do, but in fact they are carefully designed, according to modernistic principles.

Al Manakh: Gulf Continued launches tomorrow at 6 pm at Sorbonne University in Abu Dhabi. Dubai Today spoke with Mitra Khoubrou, Partner at Pink Tank and one of the editors of Al Manakh. Listen to the first part of the interview with Mitra Khoubrou below. Click here to listen to the rest of the interview.

Thursday 13 May, 2010, Paris La Sorbonne University, Abu Dhabi. Start: 6 pm. For further details, please contact info@pinktank.ae.

Starting September 19th, Sukkah City will pop-up at Union Square Park, New York City. Sukkah City consists of twelve radically temporary structures built by competitors form all over the world. Anyone is invited to submit designs. The sukkah is an ephemeral, elemental shelter, erected for one week each fall, in which it is customary to share meals, entertain, sleep, and rejoice.

“New York City will re-imagine the ancient Sukkah phenomenon, develop new methods of material practice and parametric design, and propose radical possibilities for traditional design constraints in a contemporary urban site. Twelve finalists will be selected by a panel of celebrated architects, designers, and critics to be constructed in a visionary village in Union Square Park from September 19-21, 2010. (…) One structure will be chosen by New Yorkers to stand and delight throughout the week-long festival of Sukkot as the Official Sukkah of New York City. The process and results of the competition, along with construction documentation and critical essays, will be published in the forthcoming book ‘Sukkah City: Radically Temporary Architecture for the Next Three Thousand Years’.”

More about the Sukkah and about the competition:

“Ostensibly the sukkah’s religious function is to commemorate the temporary structures that the Israelites dwelled in during their exodus from Egypt, but it is also about universal ideas of transience and permanence as expressed in architecture. The sukkah is a means of ceremonially practicing homelessness, while at the same time remaining deeply rooted. It calls on us to acknowledge the changing of the seasons, to reconnect with an agricultural past, and to take a moment to dwell on — and dwell in — impermanence. (…) Historically, the sukkah’s permanent recurrence is not as a monument, archetype, or typology, but as a set of precise parameters. The basic constraints seem simple: the structure must be temporary, have at least two and a half walls, be big enough to contain a table, and have a roof made of shade-providing organic materials through which one can see the stars. Yet a deep dialogue of historical texts intricately refines and interprets these constraints–arguing, for example, for a 27 x 27 x 38-inch minimum volume; for a maximum height of 30 feet; for walls that cannot sway more than one handbreadth; for a mineral and botanical menagerie of construction materials; and even, in one famous instance, whether it is kosher to adaptively reuse a recently deceased elephant as a wall. (It is.) The paradoxical effect of these constraints is to produce a building that is at once new and old, timely and timeless, mobile and stable, open and enclosed, homey and uncanny, comfortable and critical.”