Dubai before Dubai
In the 19th century, Dubai was a fishing village with a modest, but already very elaborate architecture. To discover this astonishing past, go to the Shindagha and Al Fahidi districts and to Deira, the oldest districts of the city, which have preserved their traditional urban fabric made of narrow alleys allowing to fight against the constraints of the wind and the heat, because protected by the very high density of the surrounding houses. For their traditional habitat, Dubai's inhabitants have always favored materials and constructions that allow for perfect temperature management and ventilation. Thus, the nomads used portable pyramid-shaped tents in winter with a central pole supporting the structure, itself covered with animal skins; while in summer, especially in the palm groves, they built very airy "arish" type houses entirely woven from palm leaves.
Bedouin tents are also called Bait Al Shaar. They were used as homes in the desert and during the winter, and their name can be literally translated as the "house of hair". They are traditionally woven from the hair of goats. In the Emirates, they have wide black and white stripes and the cloth is supported by stakes, the number of which was a sign of wealth. The white and black color is obtained without dyeing, because it is the color of the animals' coats. Once woven for many months, the pieces are sewn together. Goat hair is naturally waterproof and therefore perfectly suited to winter showers.
In the coastal areas, the walls of the houses were made of fossilized coral cut into blocks, glued with a mixture of clay and manure combined with plaster; while in the heart of the cities, the houses were made with stones made of mud transformed into blocks. From a structural point of view, these houses are governed by two key points: privacy and ventilation. They have few openings to the outside and are organized around a central courtyard on which all the rooms are located. The kitchen and functional equipment are concentrated in one part of the courtyard for safety reasons. For ventilation, in addition to an airy roof made of beams and palm leaves, many houses had a wind tower, an ingenious ventilation system resembling a four-sided chimney, with vertical slits at the top to catch the wind, its interior being separated into different ducts to separate ascending and descending currents and, through a play of pressure, to evacuate hot air and let fresh air in. The wind tower is the ancestor of air conditioning. Imported by the Persians, it can be found in the Al Fahidi district of Dubai. There were nearly 1,500 of them in the middle of the 20th century in the capital of Dubai. It consists of a tower that rises more than five meters above the bedroom or majlis and resembles a large chimney, a wind catcher, usually located opposite the desert winds to prevent the sand from entering the houses. By capturing air higher up, it creates ventilation for the room directly below. In the absence of wind, the air in the tower, heated by the sun, warms up. Due to convection, the air rises, escapes from the tower at the top and creates a draft that ventilates the rooms. The most important space in these houses is the majlis, whose name literally means "place to sit". It is a cultural and social space where guests are received. The rest of the rooms are for family use only, such as the gallery or porch (al-liwan) overlooking the inner courtyard, which in turn brings light and ventilation to all the rooms in the house. In terms of decoration, elegance is the order of the day with colorful floor mats, intricate wooden lattices on the windows and wooden doors carved in patterns borrowed from the Islamic vocabulary. Some of the finest examples of this vernacular architecture include the Heritage House, Sheikh Saeed al Maktoum House. At the heart of these historic neighborhoods is another essential element of Islamic urbanism: the souk, a sort of city within a city, with narrow streets flanked by stores grouped in commercial branches, and often with a high wooden framework to protect from the sun's rays. Among the most beautiful souks not to be missed: the Souk Al Kabeer with its openwork wooden arches, the Souk of Bur-Dubai or the Naif Souk of Deira. But even before becoming a real city, Dubai was already a very coveted area, which explains the presence of many fortifications. The Al-Fahidi Fort was built in 1787 to protect the area from foreign invasions. Its walls are made of a mixture of coral stones, shells and sand, its ceiling is made of palm trunks and its towers all have specific functions (storage, shooting platform...) In the heart of Al Fahidi, it is also possible to see the remains of the wall that protected Dubai in the 19th century. In the first part of the 20th century, Dubai continued to build fortified works, such as the Naif Fort of Deira made of gypsum and coral or the Watchtower of Shindagha with battlements and machicolations.
Architectural effervescence
It was not until the 1940s and 1950s, with the discovery of oil, that the city experienced its first major phase of development. The city's growth was such that it had to hire an architectural firm to plan its development. Its building land was already highly coveted, so the stakes were high, but the buildings of the time were still quite modest, as evidenced by the Municipality Museum, which housed Dubai's first city hall. With the creation of the port areas of Port Rashid and Jebel Ali in the 70s and 80s, the city continued to expand. Unfortunately, this expansion was at the expense of the historic districts, which lost their role as a central core, as the city was now organized in a multipolar fashion. However, the city has a structuring element: the Sheikh Zayed Road, both the main artery of the city and a highway linking the United Arab Emirates. It was inaugurated in 1980, but its current form dates from the 1990s. It is the road that gives the city its legibility. And it is the city's first big towers. Rivaling each other in audacity, these towers participate, everywhere in the city, in a form of staging of the urban space. The days of the World Trade Center, a "simple" concrete tower dating from 1979, seem long gone. From now on, glass and steel will bend to the overflowing imaginations of architects. There are hundreds of towers, forming a skyline that is unique in the world... But some of them have become the city's emblems over time: the Burj Al Arab which rises like a white sail inflated by the wind; the panoramic towers of the Dubai Marina, the largest artificial marina in the world; the various towers of the Jumeirah district, those of the Emirates Towers, two symmetrical towers where the shape of the triangle borrowed from Islamic motifs dominates, clad in glass and silvery metal which throw their elegant silhouette of more than 300 m towards the sky; or the Infinity Tower whose 73 floors turn on themselves while rising, the highest floors being thus shifted of 90 degrees compared to the ground and representing then.. the DNA! And let's not forget the now legendary Burj Khalifa, the centerpiece of Downtown Dubai, which rises to 828 meters. Reaching for the skies, these towers try to reconcile gigantism and human scale by rethinking their base, opening them to shops and creating vast esplanades. But Dubai is not just about towers! The city also offers a contemporary interpretation of traditional Islamic buildings. The Jumeirah Mosque, the largest in the city, with its two minarets and large central limestone dome, is a reinterpretation of the Fatimid mosques where high arches and rich decorative motifs prevailed. As for the Al-Farooq Mosque, nicknamed the "blue mosque", it is a copy of the famous Stamboulian mosque of the same name. It impresses by its 4 minarets of 65 m, its dome of 30 m high and its stained glass windows letting the light penetrate. The Souk Madinat Jumeirah has been entirely designed on the model of traditional markets with its long alleys overhung by a wooden frame with openwork arches. Even the malls, these gigantic shopping centers, are based on the codes of this commercial urbanism, as in the Wafi Mall and the Souk Khan Murjan. Finally, consider booking in advance a visit to the new Museum of the Future. Its visit reflects the innovative side of Dubai. Moreover, lit up at night, its architecture is worth a visit!
Dubai tomorrow
A land of infinite possibilities, Dubai has very quickly become a land of architectural experiments, some of which are almost science fiction! Like the Dubai Media City, whose urban planning was carried out using algorithms and QR codes to determine the most suitable layout for the streets, squares, parks and residential blocks that make up the city. This Smart City also has ecological and sustainable ambitions, notably by seeking to improve mobility solutions, a major challenge in a sprawling Dubai. These issues are at the heart of the 2021-2022 World Expo. The event, which is now being followed up with Expo City, has been structured around three key themes: opportunity, mobility and sustainability. Dubai has thus become a beautiful showcase for the architecture of tomorrow! The greatest names in architecture have come together: the famous Grimshaw Architects agency designed the Sustainability pavilion, which can still be visited today, as a kind of holistic experience that calls on all the senses and is organized around a landscape trail; Norman Foster designed the Mobility pavilion, which can also be visited today, with the objective of excellence in green architecture; Santiago Calatrava designed the United Arab Emirates pavilion, which is also still open to the public. Its shape is that of a falcon taking flight... and there are many other architectural treasures to discover! On the sidelines of the exhibition, the city unveiled other amazing projects such as the vast redevelopment project of the Creek Harbour district which the municipality wishes to transform into the "Riviera of the Middle East" and where it has started a project to build a tower even taller than the Burj Khalifa. The World Expo was also an opportunity for the city to develop its urban transport network, adding new metro stations, a way to try to decongest the city, while tightening its urban fabric. In parallel to the excitement generated by the Expo, Dubai continues to highlight architects and designers through its Dubai Design District, also known as d3, which has enabled it to join UNESCO's large network of creative cities. This hub of innovation and creation bears the imprint of Norman Foster who participated in the planning of the district, created numerous studios and workshops and imagined the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation. To recover from all these architectural emotions, don't hesitate to put your bags down at the ME Dubai, the only hotel in the world entirely designed by Zaha Hadid and whose silhouette of a melting block of ice will not leave you indifferent! Proud of its status as an Eldorado for daring architects, if Dubai has calmed down in the late 2010s and early 2020s, the craziest projects have recently resumed. You'll see cranes everywhere, day and night, working to build the best city in the world to live in, according to the wishes of Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashid, Vice President of the United Arab Emirates and Governor of Dubai.
