Author: jake

It’s hard to imagine a larger and more decadent gathering of the real-estate vanguard, the keepers of the estate of the real, the high assembly of the mighty and elusive investor class, and the masses who feed from their trend-driven largess of which I count myself a member. All were in attendance as the trends were being re-defined here last week at Cityscape Dubai 2008, which I had the opportunity to attend through my new job with Yamasaki International. It was an amazing display of glitz and hype. Everything was greener than the next thing and amazingly, at the same time, taller and bigger and with more glass.







The next few images are from the MASDAR display. This is the carbon-free city on which I am working. The design is master-planned by Foster+Partners, London and Yamasaki International was awarded the Project 1 phase which is the second part to break ground. The first part is MIST on which F+P is the architect. It’s the MASDAR Institute of Science and Technology. Project 1 is largely infrastructural support for MIST and includes housing, and entrance park, and a mosque.








This is MIST






MASDAR Headquarters, designed by Adrian Smith.

Back to the rest of the exhibition:





Notice the clear plastic ball in which a woman was usually playing a harp. Unfortunately for me, she was taking a break when I came around with the camera. The connection to real estate is quite obvious enough.














The LATEST tallest building in the world. 1km high, and it looks like a missile. At some point it just gets absurd. But I guess we have to do it. It’s really important. It was interesting to see all of this happening the very week that the looming world depression was seriously hitting Europe. No one was paying much attention to that in Dubai. There was talk about it and the financial shows used it for material, but this is seemingly the Never-Never land of money here.


The model is just shy of the ceiling. Complete with laser show.






Sorry Burj Dubai bye…












Oh yes. A golf simulator less than 10 feet away from Ferrari race car. Someone knows their market.


ALDAR knows how to make a booth. They had the best Jazz playing inside the soft pink-blue glow room. There were these thin vertical bars that were connected to the ceiling track on hinges and free at the bottom – they would make this nice ambient clingaling as people brushed by them. And the interactive portfolio was pretty amazing too.






This one wins my sustainability award. Look at all the wind turbines in front of the all glass towers on the artificial peninsula. I bet they have PV too!












It was a tough call; there were a lot of contenders, but this ended up taking my “WORST DESIGN OF CITYSCAPE” award.

We mailed our absentee ballots earlier this week.



Mine didn’t arrive here until Tuesday. Beth’s arrived two weeks earlier, but it had an poorly photocopied insert that had some pseudo-official direction that, in direct opposition to the directions on the ballot itself, stated that she could send hers in one week after the election. Very odd.

Here are some more photos from our trip. I’m sorry to say that they are not in very good order. But they are mostly from the last part of the trip and the drive back up the coast where we stopped in at the city of Suhar and checked out the beautiful old fort there. That’s also where the photo of the fish market is from as well as the photo below of the back of the guy’s truck that we parked next to when we went into one of the markets in town.

What can I possibly say to describe the weekend we had? I will post the photos and they will tell you the story for the most part, but I will start with those that tell the most beautiful story of the vacation. On the morning of our full day (Friday) after we had been to the old Muttrah Souk again finding most things closed, and tried to get into the Museum of Natural History only to find that it was closed (it being the holiest of holidays, the Friday of Eid weekend), we were driving a little aimlessly when we came upon a little pull-off park at an overlook area of sorts (the view was not great but it was high up). We were not even going to stop and get out of the car until Beth spotted the most beautiful bird flying from one tree to the next. So we started following it with the intention of getting a photo (which we never did). As we kept following it from tree to tree it led us to the back of the park and some girls said hello to Beth which led to the father and mother coming over to us and offering us some food. They were having a picnic. It is a tradition going back as far as history in Oman that on that particular Friday the family gets dressed in the nicest clothes and eats traditional food consisting of khawa (coffee with cardamom), halwa, and fresh dates. When we were offered the khawa we couldn’t resist joining their picnic because we had been searching for the real thing since arriving and being disappointed time and again with Nescafe which is unfortunately slowly becoming the new traditional Arab coffee. The dates were picked that morning from this family’s backyard and they were amazing. We had only had dried ones until then. The Halwa was like nothing we had ever tasted. With these wonderful flavors lingering on our tongues we engaged in a little bit of conversation. Beth complimented the one daughter on how beautiful her clothes and jewelery were. The girl put her necklace on Beth for what we thought was just a fun temporary exchange but when Beth started taking it off to give it back, the girl took Beth’s hand and wrapped it around the necklace and made sure that Beth understood that it was now hers. It was really a beautiful gesture. We all got up and headed out of the park together as a group since the family was off to the beach next. As we walked on clouds back to the car we decided that we had to give the girl something and as luck would have it, we had one of Tricia’s “You = Love” necklaces in the car. Beth gave it to her and the girl put it on and Beth explained as best she could what it meant.










Later Beth found a feather on the ground that is almost certainly from the same bird that led us into the park. It’s that distinctive bright blue color. The rest of the photos are in a sort of chronological order and they tell the rest of the story of the weekend of Muscat Love…






























(that’s a goat up there looking down on everything from its castle)



























































OK. I’m going to have to continue this later. Stay tuned…

Sorry everyone. There was too much to do upon our arrival home getting ready for the work week.
I’ll write this soon, but there are a lot of photographs and it will require some time to get it all together…

We can eat in public again. It’s a glorious day in Dubai! Beth and I just returned from having lunch out. We gave our doorman a gift of hazelnut dates. It’s like Christmas here. Everyone is “Eid Mubarak”ing everyone else. There were fireworks last night once word reached everyone that the moon was officially sighted by the proper authorities, and nobody is working today.

Very sorry about the lack of posts lately. As you can see from the last one I have a job now. So that is taking a lot of my free time. I’m not used to working; it’s a tough transition. It’s made even more difficult given the fact that the job I’m jumping into is one of the most demanding ever. The Masdar team is attempting to build a city for 45,000 people in three years and also have it redefine every assumption that we’ve had building cities for the last 500 years. So for example, there are not really streets. This makes construction a little difficult because you can’t maneuver mobile cranes through the city. The PRT (personal rapid transit) system is being designed at the same time as the infrastructure is being built to carry it. Needless to say, coordination is very important and a little demanding.

We’ll be leaving tomorrow on a trip to Muscat, so we’ll post lots of pictures and stories on Saturday night when we get back.

This is the project that I’ll be working on with Yamasaki starting today. The company has some other major projects in the area that I may help out on as well, but I’m told that this will be my main focus. Here are some other links to the master plan done by Foster + Partners. The Abu Dhabi Masdar Initiative site is here.



I don’t know much more about this yet. They are just breaking ground now on the gateway building that contains the visitor parking area where the electronic personal conveying system picks you up. Yamasaki is just one of the architects that is working under Fosters + Partners on the actual design development through construction but if this building is executed well, they may get a majority of the buildings in the new city.

Yesterday, Elizabeth and I decided to just start driving north. It was a day full of beaches, camels, fruit stands, and other interesting sites and sounds. I had hoped to make it as far as the mountains but we had to turn back before then because we had to be home by 17. Below are some photos that tell the story of the day.






















This may have to be our new dentist who advertises with the great yellow tooth…

It’s the little things that are the icing on the Dubai treat. There are the really thought-provoking little things (Elizabeth is getting inspired so often that she now has a list of about ten projects that she wants to put together). Then there are also the shallower variety little things and that is what this post is dedicated to.


This is the kind of greatness that you can find on the shelves of the hypermarket. We haven’t tried it yet but we’ll let you know how it ‘goes’ when we do. It’s hard to see in this image, but we love the ® in the before/after graphic and it’s also interesting that they have such a strong warning about not using water that is too hot.


We had fun last night trying some of the more interesting fruits that are available at the hypermarket. The custard apple really does taste like custard, the chickoo is like caramel cotton candy, and you can’t go wrong with a good guava.

Elizabeth is beside herself this morning after seeing a couple of these little guys just outside of her office window at the university.



Clicking on the photo will take you to the source blog “Experiencing The Emirates”

Birding is a huge pastime here since the variety of species is so vast and exotic, especially in the winter months coming up when migratory birds are stopping in on their way south.