
By the time we reach the halfway point in our current century, half of the world’s population will be living in slums. And this is a rather good piece of news.
The slim stalk of the Burj Khalifa vanishes in the bright sunlight. Its surface glistens, the reflected rays forcing people looking up to lower their gaze. The world’s tallest building is best viewed in the evening, when it becomes illuminated with artificial light, surrounded by a show of fountains shooting plumes of water, arranged to a set of romantic tunes. Families crowd along the balustrades, trying to get a picture of the tower, but it won’t fit in the shot, sticking way out past the artificially-imagined metropolitan landscape. Reality is not what the Burj is about – it is improbable; too big to fit our imaginations. Like all of Dubai. The Burj Khalifa is most of all a statement. Its presence announces: borders existed yesterday, the future is all about moving or removing them completely.
The famous skyscraper makes no sense at all. Certainly not in an economic sense. Two-thirds of the way up, the building is too narrow to serve any practical purpose. In order for it to remain vertical, it is necessary for it to be cooled, using huge amounts of water. And money. After the crisis in 2008, the rulers of Dubai had to dip into the wealth of their families from Abu Dhabi. Today it is the neighbouring emirate that owns the colossal building. Financial fireworks, all paid for with loans.
The Burj Khalifa also makes no ecological sense, and more than any other building in the modern world shows that our civilization does not exist in harmony with the natural world, but evidently prefers to compete with it. We wish to beat nature at creating forms that take the breath away. We want to dominate, and yet in order to do so we have to make use of – oh, the irony – natural resources. The Dubai skyscraper is made of sand. In order to erect it, it was necessary to put in place special foundations, narrow ‘wells’ many metres deep, filled with pressurized concrete. Concrete is made of sand, but not the precious, soft variety that we find in desert dunes. Larger grains are needed – less regular in shape – and the sheiks had to import them from places as far afield as Australia. The whole glass surface which covers the 829-metre tall building was made from sand that was brought in and then melted down.
It therefore cost $1.5 billion for our species to build, in the middle of a scorching desert, a totemic monument that represents our passion for expansion and growth. Celebrating the start of the 21st century, we’ve said to ourselves: here we are, nothing will stop us now.
Swelling giants
This power