Another Side of Islam

What??? Those are the most awesome looking towers ever! I’ve always been a closet fan of adventure sci-fi, and those buildings are exactly the sort of thing I imagine in some of the futuristic cities where they have super-materials and gravity nullifiers, so they don’t have to stick to traditional building shapes.

I guess they appeal to my inner I-want-a-flying-car child. :^)

What can I tell about Islamic culture from those buildings? For one, they’ve got the money to build the types of buildings a lot of people here in the US want to build – buildings that are a lot more imaginative than the straight-up, square, pointy towers in most cities here.

“if you’ve got all that money, make sure it shows”, as the saying goes. Heaven on earth, and–what, 60%? of the world’s tallest cranes to make it so.
The most interestng projected Dubai building (going by memory here) is the Italian-designed rotating garden that is many, many stories high. It is fantasy-like.
I always wonder how these structures will hold up and appear in ten or twenty years. Wander too far from what has historically worked, and usually you have a short-lived architectural phenomenom. In a generation, the whole thing will look silly. And someone in Seoul or Quito will be building the Next Great Thing.
Is any of what you see in Dubai grounded in their theology or core values or history? I think what we are seeing is modernism for modernism’s sake.

I’m with Bruce (@4). Dubai’s going to wake up with a hangover in a few decades and ask, “Why, oh why, did I ever build that? And that? And that?!” There’s no guiding principle other than “zanier than what the last guy came up with”. There’s just too much money flowing for anyone to consider utility or taste or anything. It’s an architectural version of Hollywood (clothing) fashion.

That said, I still must admit to occasionally being awfully impressed by it all. Not admiring it, just impressed by it.

For whatever ridiculous reason I immediately though, “they look like horns…from a beast…spoken of in Revelation…” Oh my. The Revelation obsession here in the states is rubbing off on me. Just wait until Jack Van Impe gets a look at those towers. I wonder if their street address will be 666? (Please read this with full sarcasm. I am just kidding.)

Personally, I love the Victorian era of architecture. Buildings like that just don’t set well with me.

I thought Salvador Dali was dead.

For some reason I think of Genesis 3:1!!