eBook - ePub

Showpiece City

Name: Showpiece City
ISBN: 9781503613867

How Architecture Made Dubai

Todd Reisz,

416 pages
English
ePUB (mobile friendly)
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - ePub

Showpiece City

How Architecture Made Dubai

Todd Reisz,

About this book

Staggering skylines and boastful architecture make Dubai famous—this book traces them back to a twentieth-century plan for survival.

In 1959, experts agreed that if Dubai was to become something more than an unruly port, a plan was needed. Specifically, a town plan was prescribed to fortify the city from obscurity and disorder. With the proverbial handshake, Dubai's ruler hired British architect John Harris to design Dubai's strategy for capturing the world's attention—and then its investments.

Showpiece City recounts the story of how Harris and other hired professionals planned Dubai's spectacular transformation through the 1970s. Drawing on exclusive interviews, private archives, dog-eared photographs, and previously overlooked government documents, Todd Reisz reveals the braggadocio and persistence that sold Dubai as a profitable business plan. Architecture made that plan something to behold. Reisz highlights initial architectural achievements—including the city's first hospital, national bank, and skyscraper—designed as showpieces to proclaim Dubai's place on the world stage.

Reisz explores the overlooked history of a skyline that did not simply rise from the sands. In the city's earliest modern architecture, he finds the foundations of an urban survival strategy of debt-wielding brinkmanship and constant pitch making. Dubai became a testing ground for the global city—and prefigured how urbanization now happens everywhere.

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Yes, you can access Showpiece City by Todd Reisz in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Architecture Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.