Dinner in the Blue Sky: But is it Green?

normal_jaffa2.jpg

This venue offers dining that’s head and shoulders above the rest, literally. Dinner in the Sky is a self-contained “restaurant” comprised of  tables, seats and kitchen on a platform that’s lifted skywards by a construction crane. Restaurant lifespan is fleeting, usually commissioned as part of a special promotion or business event. The system has also […]

Read more

Dubai’s Dancing Towards Fitness, Bollywood Style

bollywood-belly.jpg

Get a Bollywood belly by dancing in Dubai Half a century ago, Chubby Checker (ironically) popularized the waist-whittling dance, “The Twist”. Twenty years on, Jennifer Beals’ Flashdance foot-stomping fueled record-breaking sales of leg warmers: required apparatus for burning off surplus 1980’s calories. Micro-shorted Richard Simmons challenged TV audiences to “Sweat to the Oldies”. Suburban strip malls […]

Read more

Bahrain Balances Traditional and Modern Medicine

medicine-alternative-Middle-East2.jpg

Bahrain’s health authority has established four directives to regulate the sale and prescription of traditional, alternative medicines. This step was taken in response to concern about the credibility of some businesses. Now the National Health Regulatory Authority (NHRA) will establish guidelines for the sale, use, and advertising of alternative medicines, including services and practices such […]

Read more

Amman School Grows Tomorrow’s Activists

group-23.jpg

Graduation by Demonstration is a school assignment on steroids. Educators Michael Gohde and Molly Van Cleave dreamed up this novel project over three years ago as a means to exercise all the skills in an 8th grader’s backpack. Middle school lays the foundation for high school. Kids learn to write. Really write. They learn to […]

Read more

The Rock Stadium Rises from the Desert in Sharp Planes

Al-Ain-Stadium-MZ-Architects-1.jpg

If you’ve ever had the experience of driving through a vast, mostly uncluttered landscape that is suddenly interrupted by a large, ill-fitting manmade structure, then this project by MZ Architects will appeal to you. Sustainability experts with offices in Lebanon, Morocco, Abu Dhabi and elsewhere, the designers have pushed the stadium underground and set it […]

Read more

Iraqi Mud Architect Talks Sustainability and Corruption in the Middle East (Exclusive Interview)

DSC_0281.jpg

Award-winning architect Salma Samar Damluji speaks to GreenProphet about her mud architecture work in Yemen and why Dubai’s property development mentality is ruining the Middle East The Middle East may be a fascinating place politically but architecturally, it’s on its last legs. Years of corruption and poor governance mean it’s slowly becoming one of the […]

Read more