Analysing the burst Dubai bubble

Fernando Ulrich takes an Austrian-economists’-eye look at the meltdown in Dubai and sees a classic credit-driven boom.  Where did all the money come from to fund the extravagance?  Look ye to Dubai’s central bank, which pumped up the money supply by around thirty percent a year from 2006 to 2008.  And all that new money has to go somewhere, right—and where it went was to into fuelling the bubble. Into new office space with no tenants and new apartments with no renters, both of which were making paper gains (as long as the punch bowl kept being topped up) sucking in even more credit from overseas. 

In other words, the lion’s share of new credit went into malinvestments—”investments” that looked good only as long as the money supply was being inflated:

    Loans extended to the construction sector grew 41.7% annually from 2006 to 2008. In 2008 alone such loans increased a whopping 80.7% over the previous year. With all this funding, new projects were being launched constantly. Nevertheless, with all this supply, where was all the demand coming from?
    “In this regard, banks also ensured there would be enough demand available through the usual means, credit.
    “In 2006, mortgages to residents climbed 80.1%. During 2007, the increase was 82.1%. Finally, 2008 ended with $18.9 billion worth of additional loans, 122.8% growth over a year.
    “It can hardly be argued that this demand was real. The United Arab Emirates' population stood at 4.76 million by the end of 2008, an approximate increase of 277 thousand in comparison to the year before.
     “Taking into consideration that a disproportionately large part of the population are blue-collar workers (mainly from the Indian subcontinent), of whom the vast majority reside in labor camps, one may conclude that mortgages were concentrated in very few hands, suggesting the demand was indeed due to investment rather than ownership.
    “If there had been no credit expansion, people would not have been able to buy on this massive scale. Without the potential buyers, developers would not have been able to launch so many projects. Likewise, if credit hadn't been readily available for developers, they also wouldn't have been able to fund so many projects. So did credit to consumers lead to more credit to contractors, or was it the other way around?
    “Instead of trying to solve this conundrum, it suffices to conclude that credit expansion exerted a drastic force in promoting unviable projects.

Like someone hooked on hard drugs, credit expansion is the “easy fix” that leads to one shitload of a come down later.  Because whether created by pharmaceuticals or monetary inflation, both artificial “highs” have to be paid for sometime. Mainstream economists have no conception of the full range of dangers created by rampant credit expansion—all they see is the danger of price inflation.  It is Austrian business cycle theory that has had to point out the obvious: that the creation of counterfeit capital creates no new resources, it simply shifts them from truly profitable activities into activities that look profitable, but only as long as the artificial credit expansion continues.

    “[The fact is] production takes time and labor. The creation of additional money out of thin air does not add to the available amount of goods and services in the economy. If more credit is extended to construction companies, it does not mean there will be enough steel, cement, etc. — certainly not at prices that make the developments profitable. As soon as each company starts bidding for the same resource, it will tend to increase in price, rendering some projects unviable.
     “Resources are scarce. Printing more money can never alter this fact.
    “With extremely low nominal interest rates and negative real interest rates (inflation is estimated at over 10% for 2007 and 2008), the rational behavior was to borrow and invest wherever it is possible. A booming real-estate market seemed to be the obvious choice most of the time.
    “Under these conditions, everyone becomes a brilliant businessman. Entrepreneurial errors seem seldom while credit is abundant.
    “Psychology clearly plays a role in stimulating a bubble, but only monetary inflation enables it. It is difficult not to succumb to the temptation of profiting astronomic amounts in a short period of time. Resistance is even more difficult if the means to engage in the bubble are easily available at the nearest bank.
     “In the case of the housing sector, people failed to understand that demand for real estate is only sustainable if the ultimate reason for purchasing a property is to actually reside in it. . .
    “Dubai's false boom, its unreal prosperity, was based on the illusion of cheap money. It was based on the illusion that credit expansion generates wealth — that money is wealth. Following the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle, one could clearly see that the emirate's boom had to come to an end.”

The punch bowl is now empty, the empties are strewn over Dubai’s sands, and many of the party-goers have gone, leaving their cars abandoned at the airport as they fleed their debts. And the last signal downwards was given by Mark Thornton’s Skyscraper Index.

It was all a hell of a lot of fun while it lasted, but it was all an illusion.  Real resources were being consumed, instead of increased. And unfortunately, all the real resources consumed in unprofitable lines in the boom now have to be replaced, and then reallocated into more profitable lines—and the pool of real savings (which was consumed unnoticed) must be built up again.

That’s not the sort of thing that gets the headlines Dubai was attracting, but it’s the sort of sensible sustainable growth that’s needed.  But that takes time.

• Read Rise and Fall in Dubai: An Austrian Perspective for the full story.

Don’t be a Dubai debtor

Dubai has gone from one of the most exciting booms of recent  years to “its worst crisis since the UAE's founding 40 years ago,” with failing entrepreneurs now fleeing the country to escape debtors prison, with one back predicting “the city's 1.4 million population could shrink by almost a fifth.”

And yes, you read that right. Debtors’ prison.  "According to police there are 450 people in Dubai's central jail imprisoned as debtors which highlights how seriously the UAE authorities view bankruptcies,” says Nick White of Dubai-based Trowers & Hamlins.

Lilypads - Vincent Callebaut

             

The Lilypad, by Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut, is described as "a concept for a completely self-sufficient floating city intended to provide shelter for future climate change refugees."

Forget the dripping wet justification, it's still a pretty neat concept.  Each 'lilypad' is "designed to house about 50,000 people in a man-made landscape that includes an artificial lagoon and three 'ridges'" -- producing its own energy through its "titanium dioxide skin" they're intended either to be moored near the coast, or "to float around on the ocean's Gulf Stream."

I can see a few being moored off the coast of Dubai.

More details here.

         

The world's ugliest tall tower, Dubai

                                     

A new "world's tallest building" for the Arab Emirates:

World's next tallest tower in Dubai revealed: DEVELOPERS in Dubai have announced plans to build a tower 1km high - beating the booming city state's own world record.
    With the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai, nearing completion, Dubai World president Sultan Ahmed bin Sulaim said the new tower would be "one of a kind."
    ...Foundation work has already begun on the tower, Nakheel Chief Executive Chris O'Donnell told FoxNews.
    ...The final height of Nakheel's proposed tower is likewise a secret, as is the price tag. The company would only say it will be more than 1km tall, or the height of more than three of New York's Chrysler Buildings stacked end-to-end.

Sure will be.  Ugly, but tall. 

The world's skyscrapers are not where they used to be.  Says Pardeesh Bata:

Asia and Middle East are the new “high-rise” dream locations... William F. Baker, a partner at Skidmore Owings & Merrill Properties and the chief structural engineer of Burj Dubai, has summarized the world-wide phenomenon of this new type of 21st-century supertall proposals:

“If skyscraper construction had stopped in 1990, one would say that the tallest skyscrapers are made of steel, built in the United States, and are office buildings. Today, one would say that the tallest skyscrapers are made of concrete or composite, are erected in Asia or the Middle East, and likely to be residential.” (source)

Look at this distribution of proposed and under-construction super-tall skyscraper projects in the world:

Asian projects definitely dominate the scene.

'The Wave' - A-Cero Architects

Designed by A-Cero Architects of Madrid for a site in, where else, Dubai -- The Wave links its slender 'stems' together in a 'torsional wrap' to give movement to what will be the tallest structure designed by Spanish architects, and what's being called the world's first 'sea-scraper.' 'Floor plans' are below.

Not PC's blog stats for June

Here's some of the main stats for NOT PC's last month:

NZ Political Blog Rank for NOT PC: 5th (March, 4th)
Alexa Ranking, NZ: 558th (last month 569th)
Alexa Ranking, world: 254,965th (last month 275,373th)
Avge. Monday to Friday readership: 979/day (1,019)
Unique visits [from Statcounter] 26,265 (28,672)
Page views [from Statcounter] 42,680 (45,240)

Top posts:

• Fifty-odd questions for National
• Pics from Fieldays
• On Fuel Prices
• How Many Dead Rats Will John Key Make You Swallow
• A Gekko Drive-By
• Meet the Enfeebled
• Opera House For Dubai By Zaha Hadid Architects

Top referring sites: 
   Search engines 2832 referrals;  Kiwiblog 1311; Libertarianz 896; Whale Oil 650; No Minister 422; Cactus Kate 331; Lindsay Mitchell 221;  Mulholland Drive 202; NZ Capitalist 202; The Hive, 166
Top searches landing here:
    not pc 877; studionz 91; peter cresswell 86; john key me too 74; sean fitzpatrick libertarian 70; vultures fibre future 69; heineken mini keg 56; broadacre city 45; nipcc 45; organon architecture 42; boobs on bikes 37; asian sirens 33; alfred browning parker 29; peter rabbit tank killer 29
They're reading NOT PC here: 

Top countries (measured by Statcounter):
   NZ 45%; USA 19%; UK 5.1%; Australia 4.1%;  Germany 1.7%; Italy 1.3%; Holland 1.2%; Canada 1.2%
Top cities (Statcounter):  
   Auckland 14.4%; Wellington 4.9%; Christchurch 2.7%; Melbourne 2.0%; Washington DC 1.7%; London 1.6%; Canberra 1.3%; Mt Laurel, New Jersey 1.3%; Omaha, Nebraska 1.3%; New York 1.3%

Cheers, and thanks to you all for reading and linking to NOT PC this month, 
Peter Cresswell

NOT PC's 'Six of the best' for week to June 14, 2008

Here's the top-six most read, most linked, most loved or most-argued about posts here at NOT PC this last week.  If you missed them, for shame -- but now's your chance to catch up:

1. Fifty-odd questions for National. Fifty questions that go right to heart of the empty bloated thing that is National.
2. Voting Advice from Ayn Rand.
3. The 'Gone By Lunchtime List.'  There's no shortage of ways to slash government spending, no matter what the pundits say.  Here's 400 ways to start ...
4. Shop Killers. First thoughts on the bastards who murdered Navtej Singh.
5. Tear Down this Tax, Dr Cullen!  There is something simple this government can do about rocketing petrol prices -- something very simple ...
6. Opera House for Dubai, by Zaha Hadid.  I was wrong.  This stunning piece of architecture for the desert sands of the Emirate's megalopolis shows that Zaha Hadid really does know what she's doing.

Opera House For Dubai By Zaha Hadid Architects

                 

I've been very critical of architect Zaha Hadid in the past, accusing her of weaving "chaotic spatial confusions" that are as incoherent as they are un-buildable. 

However, there was one thing that deconstructionist architects like Hadid always did well -- their affectations may have lacked purpose, but at their best their buildings were always intensely dynamic, like they were in motion. They might have lacked "the tension of purpose," but never the "freedom of release."

But look at what she's done now!  That picture you see above is her proposed new opera house for the desert dunes of Dubai, and it's, it's ... incredible.

It could be nowhere else, nor by anyone else.  This is architecture that takes your breath away.  To paraphrase how Ayn Rand once described a concerto by (fictional) composer Richard Halley, "It sweeps space clean, and leaves nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort."

Bravo, Ms Hadid.   [More here at Mad Architect.]

Tiwai shrugs?

It's not possible to accurately model or predict the effect of new taxes, new regulations and new impositions by governments.  However much politicians and treasury officials might wish it were otherwise, every new tax, regulation or imposition will fall differently on every producer -- the fact is that no one person knows or can know what the cost is going to be of any new law or tax.

Despite the polished ease of treasury mandarins in predicting that the latest fashionable ban, regulation or tax will cost exactly 3.765 quintupple spondulicks (predictions backed by a forest of hefty paperwork and a library's worth of OECD figures), the result of any ban, regulation or tax is not a smooth function easily modelled by sleek treasury mandarins -- it's not a smooth function easily modelled because the overall cost is really a product of every producer doing his own equations to determine whether or not the extra cost on his production is worth it.

In other words, he's deciding on his own tipping point. He's deciding whether or not it's time to shrug. 

There's just no way a central government planner or treasury mandarin can predict that point even for one producer, let alone a whole country's worth (although the government makes their job easier by actively trying to reduce the number of producers able to stay in business in this country) and there's no way at all they can predict the knock-on effects of all these individual tipping points.

This in essence is what Hayek used to call "the problem of knowledge" that is faced by government planners.  (It's strange that a party of Hayekians seems to have forgotten this basic point.  If you want to know more about it, you can read Hayek's basic point here.) 

If you found all that talk just a trifle too obtuse, an example of this very thing was thrown up in this morning's news all the way from the very bottom of the country.

While the talk around the government's emissions trading scheme has been around what the precise cost will be to New Zealand business in the aggregate, sums that treasury officials and David Parker have been waving around with some abandon, the CEO of Bluff's Tiwai Point aluminium smelter has been doing his own sums on what it will mean to his business in particular: he says that if the scheme passes, the Tiwai Point smelter will be "on the path to closure."

    The smelter’s owners, Rio Tinto Alcan, said the proposed emissions trading scheme was likely to make its operation unviable and the work it does would be moved to a country without such costs.
    Rio Tinto said the move would be a blow to the Southland economy as it directly employed more than 900 staff and contractors, while sustaining 2600 jobs and 20% of the region’s economy.
    The multinational flew in its regional president, Xiaoling Liu, to warn the select committee considering the climate change legislation that it could close down the operation.

This closure will not help "the environment."  Rio Tinto will simply move operations to location without this particular brand of lunacy.  It will simply help pauperise the country, with no gain at all to New Zealand.

And this is not just about jobs in Southland -- it's a sign of which every economist should take note, and which every business should take understand.   Make no mistake, the effect on the New Zealand economy of just this one closure would literally be incalculable.   Every New Zealand fridge is full of aluminium cans -- cans made with aluminium that came from Tiwai; nearly every New Zealand home is replete with aluminium windows -- windows made with aluminium that came from Tiwai; every single manufacturing operation still left in New Zealand is be the beneficiary of aluminium components made vastly cheaper because they come from Tiwai. 

Cups, cans, pens, torches, cooking pots, cars, ladders, lightweight scaffolding ... every house, fridge, garage, workshop and factory in New Zealand has taken advantage of the relative cheapness of local aluminium, and all because of what was once cheap power.  And Tiwai is only the most obvious of locally-based businesses doing their sums in the face of this forthcoming new imposition.

This is how an economy goes.  Not with a bang, but with a series of quiet shrugs.  This is what the first of the 'last straws' looks like. 

But don't worry, say the advocates of emissions trading, those apostles of punishing business.  Don't worry, we've heard this whimpering before, they say, and Tiwai Point is still with us.  This is tantamount to saying that no matter how many hurdles are placed in the way of producers, they'll  always find a way to "do something"—even in the face of the most irrational and impossible demands.  How?  Somehow .  As the head of the American Transport Workers' Union said when announcing yet anther city transit strike a few years ago, "A lot of people are thinking we are taking this to the brink. But it so happens that every time we went to the well before, there was something there." Do you think he, or any of today's politicians, would know a 'last straw' when they saw one?

What happens when the well has run dry and there's nobody left to shrug -- when the Fisher and Paykels and the Rio Tintos have gone offshore for good, and the likes of Dubai Aerospace and Canada Pensions has been told to sling their hooks, and we're left with just high taxes, lush forests and the rusting carcass of a nationalised rail network -- nationalised in the name of this same environmental lunacy. 

Who will be the "rich pricks" then?

UPDATE 1:  The Hive has spotted that The Wall Street Journal is Laughing At Us, and kindly reproduced their  scathing editorial on NZ's cap-and-trade madness.  As The Hive comments,

Just what we don't want at a time when foreign funds are more difficult to access, an Editorial in the Wall Street Journal pointing to enormous country risk! Well it happened to New Zealand today.

UPDATE 2: Wouldn't you know it.  Labour's SubStandard bloggers play the Venezuela card:  "Rio Tinto should fuck off," they say, leaving behind their "state of the art smelter and trained workforce in Bluff" so Labour can nationalise it.

They really are evil, ignorant scum-sucking bastards.  (And some people still say politics is about playing nice.)

Xenophobic simpletons befoul this country

Xenophobia, n. hatred or fear of foreigners. xenophobe, n. xenophobic, adj. [Greek xenos strange, stranger]

Two events in recent days demonstrate for me one reason this country is fast becoming a pathetically provincial authoritarian backwater.

The first is the knee-jerk xenophobia that has forced Dubai Aerospace to withdraw their $2.6 billion offer to purchase a controlling share in Auckland airport -- a story that appeared in the Herald opposite another story quite coincidentally pointing out that in order for New Zealand to grow it needs investment, and one that won't be lost on other investors who may have been considering venturing into this bigoted backwater.

You reactionary phobic fools who opposed those nasty foreigners doing business with us on the offchance we might catch diseases from them like the pursuit of wealth and the enjoyment of hard work will no doubt be happy with that outcome.

The second event that raised my bile is the primeval, almost antediluvian, foreigner-hatred exhibited by most of you in airily dismissing any notion or any argument that a human being might deserve a home here in New Zealand (in fact without even addressing the arguments), and instead insisting simply that he be sent back to the mullahs in Iran to be killed. The only words you have for someone like Ali Panah who wants to make a life and home here are "Fuck Off." Those of you expressing that view on this thread here disgust me.

You xenophobic bigots befoul the world and this country by being in it. You do not speak for me.

Moore goes for the throat

Mike Moore's characterisation of Clark as Muldoonist captures the headlines and the news, but his characterisations of the country's other political players and would-be players is highly amusing in a Tamihere 'straight for the throat' sort of way:

If Helen can replace half of her Cabinet and keep the show together, it will mark her out as one of the greatest political managers ever. It's very hard.

Muldoon's circle of close mates got smaller and weaker as he got older too. Exactly what does the "consort" Judith Tizard and the legion of Ministers outside Cabinet actually do? Perhaps it's good they don't do much. They manage the remarkable feat of being self-important, expensive, trivial and irrelevant at the same time.

John Key just has to keep his head down, and is happy to campaign as "Labour with tax cuts," sort of like playing a vacuous political air guitar.

As for Winston Peters, our Foreign Minister still seems to hate foreigners.He can't speak about hospitals without talking of Third World diseases and Third World people, the Central Bank policies are about, he claims, promoting speculation and money-lenders (code word), Dubai investment in New Zealand is naturally bad, but at least the anti-Asian and Muslim stuff has been shelved for a while.

Rodney Hide seems to have rejected capitalism for narcissism and is destined to be a talk-back celebrity. The Greens and the Maori Party have locked up their small market niche and go unquestioned by the media.

He might only pay NZ partial attention these days, but he's not wrong is he. ("Air guitar" -- I love it.)

UPDATE: Is it only me who finds it amusing that all the local bloggers so noisily celebrating Moore's all-too accurate skewering of Helen and her legion universally ignore his equally accurate skewering of their own vacuous and narcissistic heroes. Why is that, do you think?

"Dynamic architecture" - David Fisher

Architect David Fisher has designed this building in Dubai, is an example he says of what he calls dynamic architecture -- architecture that moves. Very difficult to show with just a picture oor two. Visit his website and watch the short movie to get an introduction to what he means by that: some of the images are stunning.

Cue Card Libertarianism - Socialism

SOCIALISM: Socialism is just Communism without the courage of its convictions.

ORIGINALLY CONCEIVED BY Karl Marx as a transitional stage between Capitalism and Communism, during which the working class would exercise a dictatorship over the dispossessed capitalists and their flunkeys, Socialism (said Marx) would allow certain features of Capitalism to linger-–wage-labour, inequality of earnings, profit-making (by the state) etc.-–before class divisions spontaneously disappeared and the state eventually withered away.

After constant experimentation on every continent and in every decade of the twentieth-century however, we can now say confidently that no Marxist state ever just ‘withers away,’ and nor did Mark himself ever explain the mechanism by which this delightful apparition would all of a sudden appear from the dictatorship so firmly created by his proletariat.

Conceived in its non-Marxist guises as an end-in-itself, with the state assuming a dominant role in the economy--usually by owning everything–-Socialism has come to mean the nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Such an end was once the stated goal of the Labour Parties in both Britain and New Zealand. Such is the sorry history of nationalised industries, however, that the effects of nationalisation are now widely known, and nationalisation itself frequently disavowed--publicly at least. Tony Blair for example fought a courageous battle to remove the commitment to nationalisation from the the constitution of the British Labour Party, but local Labourites have shown recently with full or partial renationalisations of the rail lines, Air New Zealand and Telecom's lines (and barriers being quietly put in the way of the sale of Auckland Airport to a bidder from Dubai) that this destructive stupidity is sadly still not dead.

Blatant nationalisation is still espoused by modern-day socialists even in the face of the evidence of the poverty it creates, as can be observed with the cheerleaders for the modern-day destruction of Venezuela. 

But while nationalisation of the physical means of production was once a defining characteristic of Socialism, it was not always a necessary one. Hitler’s National Socialists, it's worth noting, saw nationalisation as crude and unnecessary. “Why need we trouble to socialise industry?” Hitler asked. “We socialise human beings.” The partial nationalisation of NZ's children by the Bradford/Key anti-smacking bill would seem to be an example of this more subtle form of nationalisation.

SOCIALISM WAS ONCE promoted by its adherents as being an engine of production. The ‘Socialist Calculation Debate’ between Ludwig von Mises and Oskar Lange exposed the fallacy in this view; the final collapse of the Berlin Wall and the misery previously hidden by lies and deception showed that Mises was right: Socialism when introduced produced nothing but misery.

SOCIALISM IS OFTEN characterised as being a system that involves the ‘redistribution of wealth’ in an attempt to make everybody equal – an expression of egalitarianism perhaps best characterised as one of theft based on Envy, in which human liberty is sacrificed on a ‘Procrustean bed’ of equality. Indeed, students of envy have noted its close links with the egalitarianism of Socialism, and agree on one fascinating conclusion: the desire of the envious is not so much to have themselves raised up to the level of those whom they resent, but to bring the achievers down to their own level.

As Ayn Rand said of collectivists everywhere, they begin by trying to raise everyone to the mountaintops, and end by razing the mountains.

Whatever its guise, Socialism is a form of Collectivism, with all the denial of freedom that entails. One would like to believe that, because of its history, it is indeed history – but while collectivism remains the mind-set of most people, Socialism is never far away.

This is part of a continuing series explaining the concepts and terms used by New Zealand's libertarians, originally published in The Free Radical in 1993 and being progressively updated for republication now. The 'Introduction' to the series is here, and the archives for the series so far can be found here, and down there on the right-hand sidebar.

What architecture is all about

Now we're at the halfway point of our architectural debate here at 'Not PC,' here's a brief meditation on what architecture is all about. In five words or less: giving meaning to our lives. To quote the late Claude Megson, "If it doesn't have meaning, then you're just wanking."

For a few more words on the subject, read on...


*** WHEN HILLARY AND TENZING reached the top of Everest for the first time, the story goes that Tenzing fell to his knees and gave thanks to the spirits that had helped their journey; he prayed to each of the four winds, and he carefully placed in the ground a small stake on which prayer ribbons were attached. While he was doing this, Hillary stuck a flag in the ground, unzipped his fly and took a piss.

We each mark our territory in very different ways. But we do each mark our territory.

We make buildings to keep the rain off, and in doing so we raise a crown over our head and mark out from the world our own space below; we mark out for ourselves a place in the world by building a campfire that we keep burning and around which we make comfortable for ourselves, or by raising high our own totem that seems to say “here I am!”; we recognise the important rituals we’ve built into our own lives by making these rituals concrete, literally making them concrete, and by doing so we are saying, “This is important.” We erect buildings to perform some useful function, and in the act of erecting them they unavoidably perform another crucial useful or symbolic function for us: they embody our values. They tell us we exist.

Buildings are a concrete expression of values – the values of the people who designed, erected and occupy them.

Like every art, architecture is a shortcut to our philosophy. In building architecture we erect an armature that will support ourselves and our important values, and offer us as well a place from which to look out on the world around us. Amongst the myriad of ways this can be done , we choose the one that does it for us. It is a shortcut to our philosophy – which is why our choices are often so personal to us. The way it does that is as an extension of ourselves.

“Architecture,” as Aldo van Eyck once said, “is about making a ‘home for man’.” The space we build is space for human life, for us to inhabit, and from which we can emerge to 'do battle.' It is a place that expresses what a home for man looks like, smells like and sprawls like; it is here that we beging to find the meaning in architecture: the meaning resides in how it makes its home for man.

In the act of making and placing our buildings in the world, we make decisions about what’s important in the world. What values need to be 'built in' and made concrete. What should we include from around us? What should we keep out? Early morning sun is good; later afternoon sun isn’t. Gentle breezes are good inside the house; heavy rain is not; views of the lake and the trees and the beautiful hills about us are wonderful – views of the local slaughterhouse are not.

Some of these things are highly contextual. Early morning sun is good in Reykjavik, but not always in Dubai in mid-summer. Later afternoon sun is bad in most parts of the world, but in Murmansk, inside the Arctic Circle, “late afternoon” extends for several months, and is always a welcome guest. Gentle breezes in Hawaii are welcome; in Siberia they’re called a draught. A view of the local slaughterhouse from your lounge window might be highly prized if you’re … okay, I’m stretching on this last one.

The fact remains nonetheless that the choices we make about how we build our shelter, mark our place and decide what functions our building serves for us define something both about us, and about the place we make -- and about the context in which we make it.

WE NEED TO BUILD. Animals adapt themselves to nature, and they’re already adapted to do that. Humans can’t. We adapt nature to ourselves. We must. Unlike animals with their multiple defences against the world, our means of survival is our reasoning brain: on its own this offers no physical defence against predation, and no guarantee of survival: we learn to use our brain to plan, to invent, to create; to understand the nature of the world around us and to make sense of it and to adapt it to ourselves, to make of it a place in which we are protected, and in which we can feel ourselves at home.

We need buildings to shelter us, and not just in the physical sense of shelter. We need a place that is a home: our place, wherein we see ourselves and our own values reflected back, including the value of the home itself.

Good architecture then is not just functional on the bare physical plane. We've been out of the caves long enough to do much better than that. “A house is a machine for living,” declared Le Corbusier on behalf of today's cave dwellers. “But only if the heart is a suction pump,’ responded Frank Lloyd Wright. Architecture is not just shelter; it is not just ‘marking a spot’: its function is also to delight.

Bread and water nourish our stomachs; we need also to nourish our souls. Thirteenth-century Persian poet Muslih-uddin Saadi Shirazi offered this wisdom:

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft
And from thy slender store
Two loaves alone to thee are left
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed the soul.

But only if your heart is not a suction pump.

What good architecture does then is to deal with the totality of a human existence, to provide at one level the support structure to make human life possible, and at another much richer level to express back to us what it means to be human by giving a sense of place to all our occasions, by building in all our important rituals, by connecting us to what is meaningful in our lives: To sunrises and sunsets; to the sharing of food together; to relaxing with friends; to having time and space for contemplation and for conversation, and for rest, and for sex -- and for rest and contemplation (and conversation) after (and during) sex.

That’s about as important as a job gets, right?

Writing about Ferraris, PJ O’Rourke expressed it this way: “Only God can make a tree, but only man can drive by one at 250mph.” THAT is the feeling good architecture should communicate! We take the material that nature provides, and the needs that we have, and those moments where we say to ourselves, “Ah, this is what being alive is all about!” and we give those needs wings and we build in and celebrate those moments, and by doing so we express our lives, and we help bring meaning to them.

What could be more important?

* * * * *

*** You can look forward to more on the architecture debate here at 'Not PC' on Monday, when I'll post the third of my own architectural favourites. In the meantime, if it's thinking about architecture that you want to do, may I humbly offer a piece written a few years back as a book review: 'What Architecture Is.'

It begins by boldly declaring what architecture is not ...

*** And if you're already emboldened to read more about architecture than this humble blogger can provide, here's a suggested reading list on architecture to help you begin your own architecture library. Enjoy the adventure.

Burj Al Arab Hotel - WS Atkins

The posting tonight is of the iconic 'seven-star' Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai by Atkins Design, a building probably already well-known throughout the world. Expains architect Tom Wills-Wright, the hotel was designed deliberately to be iconic, to test which he devised a simple 'litmus test,' as he explains here:

The brief was to create a building that would become an icon for Dubai rather like Sydney has its Opera House and Egypt has the pyramids. The brief was given by Jumierah International who wanted something novel, different, which can be symbol of Dubai.

The litmus test we used to assess if we had fulfilled the brief was to see if we could draw the building in five seconds pictionary style and ask everybody to name it.

He probably succeeded, don't you think? Not great architecture, but certainly exciting, and undoubtedly a modern icon -- and wouldn't you just love to play tennis up there with Andrei and Roger? :-)

LINKS: Atkins Design website
Burj Al Arab hotel website
Burj Al Arab - Galinsky.Com

TAGS: Architecture

'Kill them all, let Allah sort them out' - Zarqawi

NEWS, AFP: Islam permits killing of 'infidel’ civilians: Zarqawi tape [Hat tip Cox and Forkum] DUBAI -- Al Qaeda frontman in Iraq Abu Musab Al Zarqawi has said Islam permits the killing of 'infidel' civilians... In Islam, making the difference is not based on civilians and military, but on the basis of Muslims and infidels."

The Muslim's blood cannot be spilled whatever his work or place, while spilling the blood of the infidel, whatever his work or place, is authorized if he is not trustworthy," said an audiotape broadcast on the Internet early Saturday.

That's just in case you were in any doubt. Now have a look again at the post from the other day...

Categories: Terror, Politics_US

Fordham Spire will stand tall

One of the most exciting international architects practicing today is Santiago Calatrava, who has just unveiled his plans for the Fordham Spire, the tallest skyscraper in the US, to be built on Chicago's lakefront (above). When completed, it will be the second tallest in the world, behind the Burj Tower presently under construction in Dubai. The Herald quotes the head of Fordham Co. Christopher Carley, who clearly has a sense of history: Good on him. Chicago's skyline is like an art collection; it's wonderful that Chicagoans value these art treasures so visible in their city. Naturally the design has attracted knockers, from a Donald Trump apprehensive of the competition -- "a total charade" The Donald calls it -- to people suggesting it will be "a target for terrorists." Carley and Calatrava brush off both claims. Of the latter, Calatrava says:

Chicago was America's birthplace for modern architecture, nurturing the genius of Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe," Carley said in a statement. "We want to carry that tradition into the 21st century and give our city a masterpiece by one of today's indisputable geniuses."

"The target was not skyscrapers," he said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. "The target was the human lives within them. That's what made it so horrible. But what is my weapon to react against this thing? This building is my weapon! It is a way to say we build in our culture a respect for human life and for a pluralistic society. We have to make an effort to continue inventing the book of life."