Happy New Year!

New year's greetings from Melbourne! Stay tuned for posts on interesting edifices and architectural details. Amazing architectural marvels with accompanying (and equally) interesting history just abounds.

The Burj Khalifa

4 January 2010 saw the opening of the world's tallest building, the 200-storey Burj Khalifa (Skidmore, Owings & Merill). The following article by Binoy Kampmark (reprinted from Crikey of the InDaily - Independent Weekly, 8 January 2010) offers an interesting viewpoint on Dubai's living in an age of excess:

Omens of Doom: Dubais Burj Khalifa Tower

It is a colossus, towering over the Dubai skyline. The company behind it claims to have made a successful return of 10 percent. The local paper, the Khaleej Times, did not shy away from hyperbole, seeing the building as an example of human courage and humankind's ability to dream and deliver, giving the world an achievement difficult to surpass.

The Burj Khalifa Tower, renamed in tribute to Dubai's bailout donor, Abu Dhabi's Sheik Khalifa, dwarfs all that have come before it. It is a monstrous compilation of gimmicks in some ways, another addition to the mix of Vegas-styled faux islands, shopping centres and ski runs. Dubai portends to be a place of trickery, entertainment and massive expense accounts. The building itself boasts 200 floors, and rises to 828 meters. It promises to be the home of the first Armani Hotel. Patrons are whisked between floors in elevators at the speed of 18 metres a second. But what does this building suggest about Dubai and the architectural madness that characterizes such efforts?

For one thing, the creation strikes deeply at the apocalyptic language of the recently concluded Copenhagen Climate Change conference. The Sheiks seem less interested in carbon footprints than oil-financed structures of glass and steel. They keep company with architects such as Adrian Smith, the designer of the Burj Khalifa and Cesar Pelli, who gave England the One Canada Square and Malaysia the Petronas Twin Towers.

Dubai suffers, like tyrants, from an overwhelming edifice complex. Its spending complex resembles the efforts of the Pharaohs and their pyramid projects, or those of the medieval Catholic Church: bigger is better, huge monuments to progress, humanity and God. Sometimes, the smaller the state, the more obsessed the efforts in building the Tower of Babel. Megalomania is the classic byproduct of inferiority complexes, often induced by money without sense.

All of these point to a thesis formulated in 1999 by Andrew Lawrence he dubbed the Skyscraper Index. These figures of modernity seem to precede periods of crisis. At low points of the business cycle, these architectural Cyclops seem to rise. The Empire State building was conceived in 1929, the same year of Black Tuesday (October 29) and the onset of the Great Depression. The Sears Tower of the 1970s towered over a society in the grip of stagflation and oil shocks. The monumental Petronas Twin Towers opened in 1997, the year when Asian currencies took a pummeling, humbling Asia's Tiger economies.

In the civilisational sense, this may also be true: the big building, or building project, is a symptom of decay. The American novelist Henry James certainly thought so, though he was thinking of it more in the aesthetic sense. In an economic sense, the great building project tends to forecast ruin. Athens passed quietly into the shade after the building of the Acropolis. Henry VIII of England and Christian IV of Denmark were builders who drained their treasuries, left magnificent buildings, yet failed consistently on the battlefield. The building efforts of the Pharaohs, as Paul Johnson pointed out in 2005, suggest a hubristic tendency that eventually will meet nemesis. The Wall Street Journal (5 January 2010) was confident that such a building mania would not last, sniping at Dubais paltry credentials on economic freedom, rule of law, hard work and sound management relative to such cities as Houston and Hong Kong. Without these, nations and cities alike build nothing but foundations of sand.

Given the precedents set by previous failed civilizations, the omens are not good. Dubai's economy is in a mess. Sheik Khalifa has been generous to the tune of $10 billion. In an age of environmental sensitivities and proliferating green fan clubs, we might well be witnessing a dying breed. When the excitement does die down, the business of preventing Dubai from sliding into oblivion will begin.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lecturers at RMIT University, Melbourne.

Happy new and safe 2010!

Happy Holidays!

Christmas has come and gone and I missed posting a holiday greeting. But since we're only halfway through the holiday break, I'll get one in just the same.

To everyone, Happy Holidays! I hope you all had a Merry Christmas spent with family, loved ones and friends.



I'd like to say thank you to those who took the time to read my posts in the past year - even though I haven't been consistent in posting in the last few months.

Wishing everyone a new year filled with more joy and blessings!

Mea Culpa

I have been neglectful of this blog for over two months that I don't know where to begin. But with so many things that happened in the last 11 weeks or so, I should have plenty of 'blog' material. The pressure!

August saw a trip home - a 10-day visit to the family, among others, to be godmother to my second nephew - Miguel Pedro. As always, it is wonderful to be with the family and see my nieces and nephew - they now number 7! September brought in a change in my resident status DownUnder (Oi! Oi!).



Apart from the overseas trip, I also made a couple of interstate trips (yes, up goes my CO2 emissions!). I have been swamped with work deadlines and morever, preoccupied with career plans. Such pressure!

Interesting two months though with everybody(?) on tenterhooks with the Wall Street meltdown, the US economic recession and its global impact. Following on to my last post, September also saw the release of the Garnaut Climate Change Review Final Report.

But all is well. I hope to put in my two cents' worth on these interesting current events. Stay tuned.

To tread on Earth lightly...

This past week Australia is abuzz with "Think climate, Think change" with the government's release of the green paper, Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme following the release early this month of the draft report of the Garnaut Climate Change Review, a commissioned review to examine the impacts, challenges and opportunities for climate change in Australia.

The public responds to tangible environmental problems (Matthew Warren, 2008). Unlike other environmental problems such as those associated with the use of plastic bags which have been given much focus because of its visibility, climate change has been harder to sell and be accepted by the wider public because anthropogenic emissions, by its nature, are invisible. However, as Warren (2008) indicated, putting a price on greenhouse emissions will certainly get the public's attention.

Albeit missing that crucial bottom line of the cost implication on cutting the country's greenhouse gas emissions through the implementation of the emissions trading scheme, surprisingly, even with the limited and/or lack of understanding of how ETS works, latest national poll indicate a 67% support for carbon pollution reduction.

With certainty, the biggest impact of the ETS on households will be rises in the cost of energy and fuel from 2010. Estimates predicted electricity costs would rise by 16 per cent and gas by 9 per cent. "The Government wants those price rises felt so we are encouraged to phase out use of carbon-producing goods and services." Under the scheme, Australian motorists are given five years notice from hereon of the impending price impact of carbon pollution reduction scheme on petrol and that motorists should prepare for this by shifting to smaller cars and driving less.

With humans as comfort-seeking creatures, almost all of our daily activities would create carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. So, unless we live in caves and never gather around fire for warmth, we have a carbon footprint. Australia has the second highest carbon footprint after the U.S., a reflection of the ubiquitous energy-hungry lifestyles.



By comparison, the U.S. average is 21 tonnes, New Zealand is 13 tonnes, and Japan is 10 tonnes. The average Australian household of 2.5 people has a 14.6-tonne carbon footprint which equates to an average Australian contributing approximately 6 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere per year.

Using C02 emission calculators available online: Carbonify.com and Carbon neutral, I have worked out my impact on the environment. To my disappointment, in the last three years, I averaged 47% more than the national average at 8.16 to 8.82 tonnes of CO2 per year!

Household waste: 1.22 tonnes (13%) = 8 trees
Food emissions: 2.6 tonnes (29%) = 16 trees
Vehicle travel: 0
Air travel: 4.08 tonnes (46%) = 25 trees
Energy use: 0.92 tonnes (12%) = 6 trees

Following the rule of thumb that on average, 6 trees are needed to offset 1 tonne, I would need 40-53 trees to offset my impacts on the environment!

How to tread lightly on Earth? Being aware that offsetting should be seen as a last resort, am I willing to cut down on activities to reduce my emissions contribution?

Client vs Architect

As seen at Part IV.