Dubai is undergoing a very visible, rapid and dramatic transformation. The intensity and quality of the building happening there is staggering, and this is to serve the needs of a relatively small elite segment of the population as well as a burgeoning population of investors. Servicing this population is a growing mass of foreign service workers who make their way to Dubai for the opportunity to earn better wages. As of 2007 nearly 85% of Dubai’s 1.3 million population were foreign workers. This percentage is increasing, and by 2015 it is estimated that Dubai will require over 1.3 million in foreign service workers alone, essentially their total current population. Currently, the armies of construction workers and craftsman who are building the future of Dubai live in temporary worker camps outside the city, but the city is growing at a pace to soon surround those camps. What to do?
The video above is an angle on addressing this challenge. Proposed by a team from Sci-Arc, it presents solutions that are frank, pragmatic, and at some level take into account occupant quality and quality of life for the service workers. It’s definitely an interesting piece, and nothing if not just a bit controversial.
I found this video at Architechnophilia, who found it at elseplace. Both are excellent.
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September 30th, 2008 at 10:28 am
the video is an apology for untenable working and living conditions for the construction workers. the video is not excellent. it is pure pr. it suggests that the ‘humble’ status of the workers is a status inherent in being an immigrant ‘guest’ worker, and that segregation is a good policy so that the humble can rightly remain so, esp. because they have no rights, and the lofty can feel good about trampling on basic rights for the greater good of luxury and fantasy. this is fairly disgusting. remember apartheid? this is exactly like it. this IS it. remember ‘whites only’ policies in the southern part of the US? well, read up on it if you don’t remember it.
September 30th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Thank you for your comment. Let me follow up with some points of clarification:
1. This video was produced by students at Sci-Arc as a response to a problem. It is not perfect, they’re students. It is as I stated “frank, pragmatic… and noting if not just a bit controversial.”
2. I never referred to the video as excellent. I did refer to it as interesting. I referred to two of the blogs where I saw the video as excellent, which they are.
3. I cannot speak for the Sci-Arc team that produced this piece, but I can surmise that their response is limited to addressing the need for worker housing, not to the status of the foreign workers with regards to the Dubai social and political realities, because that is not an issue solvable through architecture.