Well, as usual with Dubai projects the renders are shit. This thing is designed by Foster and Partners so it should be good, but the only way to see is to wait
Given that Dubai has many buildings with tapered tops and spires, the Index will provide balance to the skyline. I like this building a lot. It reminds me of the 1969 Chase Building in Chicago.
BTW you can really see how huge this thing is in these images. I stole these from civicarts, they seem to be doing the masterplanning and they had a few pics I never saw before. There are also a few towers in there nobody knew about until now such as the 2 towers in the middle. I wonder square feet the index has.
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.
Hmm, you overcritisize everything so I bet you must be an architect
Minimalist...pfft. I too have noticed the detachment from 'grotesque' post-modernism into the untraveled realms of modern design. Give me a break, these new glass towers are different from 70s glass towers in that they're size and features are more refined and less bulky, which ends up giving them an even more cold hearted appearance.
Now with that said...I actually love the Index. It has that heavy brutalist style from the late 70s (and, I find, late 70s early 80s sci-fi) that, to me at least, just looks truly timeless. It's futuristic, refreshing, and just really impressive. I'd rather see it in North America, even scaled down in Japan, but in Dubai it'll just be ignored by most people as 'boring, and not Kewl looking.'
I love this tower. Kinda looks like it's brutalist, yet not as ugly as past examples. I think this building is perfectly executed, let's see how it looks once it's completed.
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