[Dalton]

What is wrong with Dubai?

So much bad design with all that money to spend and cheap labor to exploit! They ought to be building the finest designs in the world - buildings so innovative and lavish (as opposed to gaudy) that they would be financially impossible in other countries. Instead, they go for sheer height and flash over substance. Most Dubai skyscrapers are cartoon architecture, a grotesque pastiche of elements from successful American and Asian designs. The city is fast becoming the equivalent of a pimps' Cadillac. The worst examples of their world-class bad architecture are hideous. But even the "good" buildings in Dubai are ever-so-slightly amiss somehow - whether it be massing, setbacks, facade colors and materials, etc. The only building that has a real chance of being something special - something Dubai can truly be proud of for something other than being the "World's Blankest Blank" - is the Burj Dubai (which ironically be the World's Tallest Skyscraper when complete).

So now "Index" is what passes for Minimalism and "distinctive elegance" in Dubai? To me it looks more like early 70s Modernism run amok, like a failed design for an overgrown EPCOT hotel that even Disney would have thought twice about slapping up.

It's bad. It's really bad.