Notes
[1] The German sociologist Max Weber distinguishes between legal, traditional and charismatic authority. Here, on the basis of my own judgement, I have pointed to traditional and charismatic domination as the pillars of the form of government in the Emirates. See Max Weber: Makt og Byråkrati, Copenhagen, Gyldendal 2000.
[2] See Christian Norberg-Schulz: Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, Academy Editions, 1980.
[3] The concept bourgeois public sphere is defined in the Danish Encyclopedia as follows: “As a sociological term public sphere or bourgeois public sphere is viewed as a social and cultural context within which citizens in a bourgeois, liberal society exchange ideas, evaluations and criticism related to common concerns.” See also Jürgen Habermas: Borgerlig ofentlighed, Informations Forlag, Copenhagen 2009.
[4] See also Boris Brorman Jensen: Dubai – Dynamics of Bingo Urbanism, Arkitekturforlaget B, Copenhagen 2007, p. 92.
[5] An architecture that manifests nothing but its own idiom.
[6] I can particularly recommend Peter Rowe and Stephen J. Ramos: “Planning, Prototyping, and Replication in Dubai”, in Ahmed Kanna (ed.) The Superlative City B Dubai and the Urban Condition in the Early Twenty-First Century. Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2013, pp. 19-33.
[7] “Dubai likes to set records, which is why Guinness World Records is opening an office in the city”. See
gulfbusiness.com.
[8] Here in the sense of generic modernism. The concept was originally introduced by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock in the book The International Style, which followed on the heels of MoMA’s exhibition on modern architecture in 1932.
[9] The best representative of this genre is probably Mike Davis: “Sand, Fear and Money in Dubai” in Davis & Bertrand Monk (eds.) Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism B Evil Paradises, The New Press, NY, 2007 pp. 48B68.
[10] Op. cit. p. 68.
[11] Rem Koolhaas: “Singapore Songlines B Portrait of a Potemkin Metropolis … or Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa”, in Koolhaas & Mau (eds.) S,M,L,XL, The Monacelli Press, NY 1995, p. 1013.
[12] “Le canard inqiétant” from 1959.
[13] See
OMA. The project is incidentally a variation on the same theme as the Ras Al Khaimah Convention Centre.
[14] “With open borders, multiethnic society and freewheeling business rules, the Emirates remains vital to al-Qaeda operations,” said Evan F. Kohlmann, a Washington-based terrorism researcher. Dubai still “plays a key role for al-Qaeda as a through-point and a money transfer location,” Kohlmann said, although he also noted the country could be working to combat such activity with “an aggressive but low-profile intelligence strategy.” Al-Qaeda isn’t the only organiza- tion that has found Dubai useful. The father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan, has acknowledged heading a clan- destine group that, with the help of a Dubai company, supplied Pakistani nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.” Cf. USA Today.
