Re:Doing Dubai. 11th Biennale in Venice.

Courtesy: the Author and Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia

From the Italian pavilion at the 11th Architecture Biennale in Venice:

J,P:A JONES
PARTNERS
RE:DOING DUBAI
WES JONES

Dubai has become synonymous with excess and opportunity, its belligerent self-promotion a continuing challenge to the conscience-plagued architect and critically-minded urbanist. This project asks how the good intentions of critical architecture can make a way through the inevitable cooptation by the power/capital structures that enable them. To get the spirit of this idea, addressing the problem of critical accommodation from within the heart of the beast, the team reinvented itself as a fictional developer: the Kartun Development Group (KDG) – a „sheep in wolf’s clothing.“ Four characteristic areas of concern or identity in Dubai have prompted projects that demonstrate KDG’s goal of achieving a measure of criticality as a consequence of a superabundance of effects . the waterfront, where the iconic Palms have sprouted; the airports, home to world’s soon-to-be-largest airline and port to the global future; the guest worker’s housing needs; and the general question of real estate value as exemplified in the creation of ground-up, themed cities.

Contributors: Stefan Pfefferle, Jeixia Xu, Mark Daniels, Caroline Dahl, Hossein Lotfi Shemirani, Robert Cha, Charles Ware JR., Simon Battisti, Jonathan Odom and Mary Aramian, Jennifer Dinardo, Necmi Karaman, Ming Cheng Chang, Adam Gebrian) Associated Students
Figures by Mark Simmons, Academy of Art University
With the support of the California Institute of Architecture