Any pedestrian who has braved the backstreets of Dubai knows two things: there are a lot of open spaces vying for attention and the sun is relentless. An independent researcher from Spain and a specialist in indexing and researching solar artwork, Nacho Zamora has recently traveled to Dubai in order to convince the municipality and Green Building Council to fill up these spaces with public art projects that also produce energy. Following the recent announcement that Dubai will consider purchasing energy from rooftop solar panels, which reveals a potential shift in the city’s eco-ethos, Zamora’s timing might just be spot on.

Beautifying dubious Dubai

It may be hard to imagine public art works in dubious Dubai, where shopping malls take on the appearance of grand cities filled with gold, jewel-encrusted shoes, and bespoke bottles of water, but Zamora sees past this facade and indeed hopes to humanize it with small scale works of art that simultaneously contribute clean energy.

Asked why he chose Dubai, of all places, to pursue this humanitarian mission, Zamora told us that the Emirate has perfect climatic conditions for solar power installations and urban spaces are almost empty of public art. Also, compared to the fiscal condition of many nations, Dubai appears to have the financial power to pursue the projects he envisions.

So what kind of art are we talking about?

“Yesterday I was visiting Masdar City and there was a machine that produces fresh air… why not build something like this which also enhances the artistic experience at the “pedestrian eye?” he asks, adding that “This is not science fiction, there are projects like this in other countries.”

The practical side of art

What will it take to convince Dubai – lover of all things grand and grander – that art of this nature is worthwhile? The design team who started the Land Art Generator Initiative convinced Abu Dhabi that energy generating art has both aesthetic and functional benefits, but they are focused on large scale installations that can feed copious quantities of energy back into the national grid.

Zamora, on the other hand, has set his sites on something more intimate. But not lofty. Recognizing the importance of showing Dubai’s movers and shakers that public art not only humanizes a park, a city, or an urban block, the Spanish researcher points out that architecture and art can attract people to those spaces that they might otherwise have sidestepped.

“I always think of the Guggemheim Museum of Bilbao,” Zamora tells us in an interview. “If you ask people, I can ensure you that 80% are visiting the museum because the architecture of the museum itself, not for the artistic exhibition inside.”

Humanizing the Burj

He is also working ahead of time. Even though Dubai is presently unfriendly to pedestrians, Zamora hopes to convince leaders that it is necessary to prepare for the future when there will be less energy available to power vehicles and when air quality will have reached new lows.

The city needs to have “More public transport, more attractive pedestrian paths, and more green zones,” he says.

He hasn’t been in Dubai long so he is just beginning to get a sense of urban topography, but we couldn’t resist asking Zamora where he might consider installing the first solar artwork?

“I would choose the huge public space that is surrounding the Burj Khalifa and Emaar Boulevard,” he said. “These are places which need (in my opinion) some kind of structure that could provide shade to pedestrians (there are a lot of tourists).”

“Definitely I would choose these two places.”

If you would like to see examples of extraordinary solar art projects around the world in order to get a sense of what might be heading Dubai’s way, visit Nacho Zamora’s mini-database of projects at www.solarartworks.com.

images courtesy of Nacho Zamora.

More on Solar Art, Solar Energy, and Dubai:

An Ant in Dubai

PHOTOS: New Skybridge to the Glitzy Dubai Mall

Dubai Might Buy Solar Off Roofs

The post Lone Spanish Researcher Aims to Humanize Dubai With Solar Art appeared first on Green Prophet.

A new pedestrian bridge nearly 1 km long will link the glitzy Dubai Mall to the nearby metro stop – finally!

I swear Robert Ferry and Elizabeth Monoian from the Land Art Generator Initiative are magicians, because everything they touch turns to gold. (If you haven’t already downloaded their free field guide to the 60 renewable energy generating technologies, here’s another chance.)

Maybe it’s because the American couple have spent so much time in Dubai, where there’s loads of gold, diamonds, and other bling to be found. In any case, the following images come straight from their personal blog, Journal Arabia, and capture the essence of excess better than anything I’ve seen so far. Check out renders of the new pedestrian bridge that will connect the Dubai Mall metro stop with the mall itself (somewhat belatedly). It will be nearly 1km long.

The one and only time we visited the Dubai Mall, which is just a little bit too rich for our green blood, it was so hot outside we pined for air conditioning. And you know we aren’t big fans of a/c. As though it’s obvious that metro riders can’t really afford to shop for more than a cup of coffee at the Dubai Mall, no walkway between it and the metro stop was proactively planned.

This is what Ferry says about it over on Journal Arabia:

Presently, you have to walk two large blocks outside and then through the parking lot to get from the station to the mall. One can’t help but notice how much of an afterthought this bridge is. I wonder why it wasn’t subterranean.

You can get anything you want at the Dubai Mall. And if your ankles can handle it, you can buy these extraordinary jewel-encrusted high heels. It always shocks westerners to know that Arab women conceal all kinds of fashionable clothing beneath their dark abayas. But wealthy Emirati ladies are particularly well-dressed – depending on how you define well.

There is no clearer symbol of Dubai’s excess than the world’s tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa, which stands in close proximity to the mall. Nor is there a more appropriate example of the Emirate’s shabby urban planning. See this tower. It has approximately 160 floors and no.on-site.human.waste.system! Instead of flowing through a network of carefully-laid piping to a municipal waste treatment center, every day some poor unfortunate soul has to truck approximately 8 tonnes of human waste from this skyscraper and sit in line for up to 24 hours to have it dumped.

This is but one section of the Dubai Mall –  the world’s largest based on total area. To keep consumers occupied for hours on end, there is an aquarium, an ice-skating rink, and row after row of the most mind-blowingly expensive unnecessary stuff you can image. There are 1,200 retail outlets in sum. Not far from here the construction workers who built this wealthy playground live in shacks, but inside there’s a sprawling Souk full of gold designed to evoke the Emirate’s traditional trading past.

:: Journal Arabia

More on Dubious Dubai and its Towers of Excess:

Oversize Load: Poop From the Burj Khalifa

An Ant in Dubai

Abu Dhabi Will be More Liveable Than Dubai

The post PHOTOS: A New Sky Bridge to the Glitzy Dubai Mall appeared first on Green Prophet.

The final resting place of Ground Zero remains and rubble and once taller than the Statue of Liberty, when complete Freshkills Park will be the largest prettified landfill in the United States. The NYC mayor’s office has given the go ahead to the Dubai-based Land Art Generator Initiative to solicit ideas for beautiful, renewable energy public artwork to adorn this important site on the outskirts of Manhattan.

LAGI 2010, the first biennial design competition premised on the slogan “energy can be beautiful,” enjoyed resounding success. Sponsored by Masdar, covered by all of the world’s major media houses, and held in Abu Dhabi, the competition drew over 400 entries. The winning design – Lunar Cubit – comprises energy-generating pyramids that light up in accordance with various phases of the lunar cycle.

LAGINYC 2012 is an ideas competition to design a site-specific public artwork that will be not only beautiful, but will have the ability to harness energy cleanly from nature and convert it to electricity for the utility grid. Authorization to gear the competition specifically for Freshkills came directly from New York City’s mayoral office.

The new site overlooking the iconic Manhattan skyline will eventually feature hiking trails, mountain biking, community events, and a memorial to the people who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.

Fresh from the LAGI desk:

The expansiveness of the design site at Freshkills Park presents the opportunity to power the equivalent of thousands of homes with the public artwork… and it offers the perfect environment for a showcase example of the immense potential of aesthetically interesting renewable energy installations for sustainable urban planning.

The design brief will be released via landartgenerator.org in early 2012 and the competition guidelines will provide detailed information about the specific site location within the 2,200 acre park.

Although the monetary prize does not guarantee commission for construction, the LAGI team has announced that it will work with local and international stakeholders to realize the most pragmatic and aesthetic designs that emerge.

Killing apathy with creativity:

At one time, the teeming Freshkills landfill was taller than the Statue of Liberty. Local pressure and support from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has since culminated in a commitment to transform that environmental blight into the largest urban park of its kind, three times as large as Central Park.

Many of the world’s most creative minds are attempting to advance ideas and technologies that can produce clean power with a positive environmental impact, but stagnant policies frequently create significant barriers to implementing such progressive projects.

Strong political will, on the other hand, has enormous power to manifest regenerative ideas. NYC’s decision to invite energy-generating art submissions to the historically-important Freshkills Park is likely to inspire similar action around the world.

images courtesy of Robert Ferry, Land Art Generator Initiative

More on the Land Art Generator Initiative:

READ: LAGI’s Guide to Making Renewable Energy Beautiful

When Abu Dhabi Art Meets Sand, Sun, and Sky

Interview with Dubai’s Most Innovative Design Couple

The post Breaking!!! Ground Zero Rubble Site to be Adorned by Arab-Based Design Team appeared first on Green Prophet.

Abu Dhabi is in a fantastic position to design for the people, according to a leading design professional. Brian Hillesdon, the Managing Director of dwp design in the UAE discussed Dubai’s uni-fuctional building evolution today at the Interiors UAE opening show.

Earlier  we shared a somewhat apocalyptic tale about an ant in Dubai (that’s me) inspired by hundreds of soul-less towers. Readers depressed by that story will be pleased that Abu Dhabi has plans to implement mixed-use development that concentrates at least as much on livability as it does on showing off. 

Mr. Hillesdon points out a few buildings that typify the kind of one-dimensional design so iconic in Dubai including the World Trade Center and the Chamber of Commerce.

Until recently, he said, “there were no restaurants, just offices – no design for the occupants.”

These buildings were built with glitz, glamor, and individualism in mind. They were designed to make statements, not to uplift the people who would actually live in them.

Abu Dhabi already has its fair share of wasteful buildings, including the Capital Gate, also known as the leaning tower of Abu Dhabi, and the Eitsalat Tower which looks like a golf ball. But Hillesdon suggests it doesn’t have to be this way.

“Form must follow function,” he said. The building must work first, and then it must look good. He also noted that economics and culture are among the main factors influencing design.

Although Abu Dhabi is conservative, he said, it is also open-minded, and is uniquely positioned to lead a paradigm shift in the Middle East. Hillesdon also praised the Masdar City initiative.

Co-founder of the Land Art Generator Initiative and Studied Impact, Robert Ferry stepped up next to discuss the International Living Future Institute’s living building challenge – one of the most “aspirational” building codes on earth.

He posed the question: is carbon zero enough?

Apparently not. Even net zero buildings have a carbon debt, according to Ferry, who proposes that true sustainability lies in creating a positive impact. In the UAE, where humidity levels are high and sun is ubiquitous, this is “entirely possible.”

Ferry showed a model of an earth-rammed home that produces more energy than it needs via building integrated photovoltaics, therefore paying back the embodied energy present in building materials. This home even produces its own water by using the sun to capture H2O present in the atmosphere.

Sana, a designer who traveled from Saudi Arabia to attend the show, asked Ferry to discuss the costs associated with this less conventional design. Given that the current supply chain does not yet favor sustainable building materials (which could change as the Masdar experiment goes through its various developmental stages), Ferry pointed to what the UAE really needs: “Clients with vision.”

More building, conservation, and general environmental news straight from the UAE:

EXCLUSIVE: Masdar City Open House Photos

An Ant in Dubai

Former Masdar Director Says the UAE Must End Subsidies

The post Abu Dhabi Will Be More Livable Than Dubai appeared first on Green Prophet.

Robert Ferry and Elizabeth Monoian have made the United Arab Emirates their home, for which we are very grateful. Their teachings, their design studio Studied Impact, and their public initiatives such as the internationally-acclaimed Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) have coincided with a thrust to incorporate more renewable energy sources into the region’s portfolio. As we have noted time and again, Abu Dhabi is leading that paradigm shift, with brilliant innovators such as this extraordinarily-talented American couple making a crucial and heartfelt contribution. They talked with Green Prophet about their vision.

Rob and Elizabeth, thanks so much for agreeing to this interview. Can you tell our readers a little bit about yourselves and how you ended up in Abu Dhabi [Dubai]?

Our shared interest has always been in developing social art projects that are community focused and that are examples of sustainable design. It’s literally what brought us together when we first met in Pittsburgh PA, USA, where we first worked on a project that would use renewable energy to power a new media art center with video art exhibits open to the public for free 24 hours a day. We came to the UAE on Elizabeth’s assistant professor appointment in 2008. She’s now at the Dubai campus of Zayed University where she teaches new media in the Art and Design department.

Since arriving here, we have focused our attention on providing examples of design solutions and working on community events that can point the way towards a more sustainable development path. Architecture, public art, new media, and social practice art are the tools that we use to communicate and help spread awareness.

You put a lot of emphasis on the notion that renewable energy can be beautiful. Can you comment on that?

The Land Art Generator Initiative is focused on expanding the popular notion of what renewable energy infrastructure can look like. Every day there is a new story about people disapproving of solar or wind installations in their communities. It’s not that they don’t care about the environment; in many cases the people opposing the installations are self-avowed environmentalists. The problem is often that, to some people, the addition of turbines to a skyline that they can see from their porch or long stretches of dark blue panels in a field that they drive by frequently (where there used to be waiving rows of wheat) are forms of visual pollution.

So LAGI is posing the question of public infrastructure aesthetics in the context of public art. Because solar, wind, and other renewable do not pollute in their daily operational capacity, they are more likely to be located near to population centers than are fossil fuel powered electrical generation facilities. Add to that the fact that it is a good idea in the long term to diversify the source of generation capacity to more numerous micro-generational nodes (decreasing likelihood of blackout events from plant or transmission line failures) and it is apparent that the future will be one in which much of the generation capacity is integrated into the fabric of our city and our residential communities.

If you accept that this is the case, then you have to look to ways in which this energy generation equipment can be made to look less utilitarian and instead actually contribute to the beautification of our built environment. In the 1960’s, when computers were the size of shipping containers, the aesthetics of the computing equipment was not as important as it is today—now you have the iPad. A similar trend will happen with energy generation equipment as it becomes more integrated into our daily lives.

The Guardian recently reported  – with details taken from a series of leaked US embassy cables – that Saudi Arabia has overestimated their oil supply by approximately 40%. How does this news bode for renewable energy projects in the United Arab Emirates?

We hope that it will bring the issue of the depletion of non-renewable resources to the attention of more people and support the cause of renewable energy projects in the UAE. But there is a lot of positive focus already on future energy, for example with Masdar. It is a very tall and steep mountain that we are climbing together and it the status quo will not change overnight. But we can envision the change and inspire people. Positive stories that show the greatness of a future beyond fossil fuels will do more good than the stories of doom and gloom.

In 2007, WWF reported that UAE residents have the highest carbon footprint in the world – higher even than Americans. Has this had any impact on Abu Dhabi’s attitude towards renewable energy?

Yes it has as far as we can tell anecdotally. To those Emiratis who are aware of the statistics, it has become increasingly something that they are very conscious of changing. There are two ways of changing our carbon footprint, both of them equally as important: demand side (energy conservation) and supply side (clean production).

There has been more focus on the demand side conservation initiatives as a result of the WWF report than there has been on the supply side initiatives towards renewable energy generation. But for the UAE, the demand side is a very big issue because there is an excess of consumption—some households consume as much as five times what comparable household consumes on average in the rest of the industrialized world.

Potentially one of the most exciting developments in Abu Dhabi after Masdar City is the Land Art Generator Initiative’s energy-generating public art design competition. Towards the end of January, Masdar awarded first place to the Lunar Cubit. Can you tell us a bit about the competition and its winner?

The Land Art Generator Initiative International Design Competition is a way to bring together interdisciplinary teams of artists, engineers, architects, scientists, planners, and landscape architects to develop sustainable and pragmatic renewable energy generation system designs that integrate with the built and natural environment in ways that invoke social harmony and greater public acceptance. It is a fusion of public art with renewable energy power plants.

The winner of the competition, Lunar Cubit, was chosen by a jury of 14 esteemed professionals from the worlds of art, architecture, design, and energy (as interdisciplinary as the design teams that participated). The Lunar Cubit project is one of the entries that really provided a great balance between pragmatism and artistic concept which was what we were looking to achieve when we created the design brief and guidelines for the competition. The head of the winning team, Robert Flottemesch, is an artist who also works as an engineer at Hudson Valley Clean Energy in New York.

What is the next step? Do you have any sense of how long it will be before these stunning, energy-generating pyramids will feed in to Abu Dhabi’s national grid?

We are really excited about the momentum that has been building around LAGI. It has received almost unanimous acclaim in the press both locally and internationally and it really is just a matter of time until we start to see some land art generators under construction. If we had to guess, we would estimate that within five years we’ll be able to continue this interview in person at the newly opened energy generating public artwork in Abu Dhabi and perhaps in other locations around the world as well.

And when they are up and running, how much energy will they provide?

It depends on the design that is selected for construction and on the area available to build on. Many of the designs in the LAGI portfolio are modular so that they can be scaled up or down. A good estimate is that they will have the capacity to power between 200 and 2000 homes. But what is more important than the energy equivalence in homes is the inspiration that they will provide to the community and their ability to educate the public on issues of sustainable development, ecology, renewable energy, and conservation.

While these works of public art will serve to provide the same economic development and cultural capital that high profile works of public art have always provided cities, they will go much further and stimulate awareness, contributing to the acceleration of the shift from conventional to renewable forms of energy production at all scales.

How will the cost of developing the Lunar Cubit compare to the cost of a new coal or nuclear plant?

The comparison is one that is interesting but also slightly misleading unless you first understand that these public artworks are just that—public artworks. So it is not an apples to apples comparison. Cities around the world are (with good reason) constructing public artworks for millions of dollars that generate zero energy and in some cases require electricity to operate. But these cities make these investments in their cultural institutions because the payback in terms of increased economic development is measurable and obvious (look at Chicago’s Cloud Gate by Anish Kapoor, or New York City’s Waterfalls by Olafur Eliasson, which brought a net $80m to the city from increased tourism).

But now that we have that clarification, the cost estimate for Lunar Cubit as designed is about $18m USD for complete construction. With a capacity of 2 megawatts, that comes to $9m per megawatt capacity or just about twice the cost that is being paid for the 5.6 gigawatt nuclear power plant in the UAE. It should be noted that a strictly utilitarian solar installation would have the potential to rival the cost.

I look at a project like this, and I think: if we have the savvy to design something so handsome and so clever, why aren’t we doing so on a massive scale?  Can you comment on that?

It’s kind of an idea whose time has come. A lot of people have been thinking around this kind of thing over the past decade. It comes from the combination of existing great ideas, 1. kinetic or media art that gets its power from a renewable source (powers itself but not the grid), 2. environmental art and land art movements, 3. sustainable design (idea of embodied energy), 4. ecological architecture, and most importantly, 5. expansion of achievements in renewable energy technology. Now that the world has become aware of the beautiful results of a fusion of these five things, it will not be long until we are doing this on a massive scale.

What does a future full of beautiful energy plants look like, compared with the conventional, sooty variety of power plants we seem to favor today?

It is a world that has the potential to live in complete harmony with nature. A world in which we can meet the needs of everyone on the planet without resorting to the exploitation of the earth’s resources or disruption of the earth’s delicate ecological balance. It is a world in which we can take pride in the use of energy, knowing that it has been generated everywhere sustainably. And it is a world in which our landscape is treated with respect and our build environment responds to amplify its natural beauty, enriching our experience and increasing our quality of life.

Apart from LAGI, what other projects are you working on at the moment?
Through our design firm, Studied Impact Design, we continue to work on positive and zero-impact architecture projects from single family residences to commercial and residential towers. And we continue to engage in community events and activities to promote renewable energy and energy conservation.

Any final words?
Just a thank you for your interest in our work and to let you know how much we appreciate your work. Thank you.

More on Studied Impact and LAGI:

Studied Impact’s Power Plant Fit For Living

READ: Lagi’s Guide To Making Renewable Energy Beautiful

Energy-Generating Pyramids Win Abu Dhabi’s LAGI Prize

The post Interview With Dubai’s Most Innovative Design Couple appeared first on Green Prophet.

Dubai’s skyline is going to look increasingly dull compared to what is planned for Abu Dhabi. In addition to Masdar City and the Lunar Cubit energy-generating pyramids that won the Land Art Generator Initiative’s 2010 design competition, a new award-winning building designed by Barcelona-based architects Nabito could forever change how we view high rise structures. Sweep aside the boring energy-draining buildings of old and welcome instead the “Stairscraper” CNN reports that this “eye-catching” spiral skyscraper won the Total Housing Competition organized jointly by the non-profit organization Storefront for Art and Architecture and Architizer, an online platform for architects.

Established in 2007, Nabito architects have already received several acknowledgments for their innovative, and even fun design. This most recent concept was inspired by a spiral staircase they saw hanging from a building in Istanbul.

“We were in Istanbul for the opening night of a building we recently built and while we were speaking we’ve been astonished by a spiral stair hanging from a building in front of us,” co-founder Roberto Ferlito told CNN. “We started joking about the form, playing and imagining the possibilities of transforming it into a building.”

Now he and Alessandra Faticanti are discussing their options with Abu Dhabi engineers, though most of the details are currently confidential.

Faticanti told the paper that they are very concerned to harness as many “green” features as possible. Planned as a mixed use building that incorporates housing, offices, and public space, every level will include a garden.

To irrigate these green spaces, the architects are hoping they can reach an underground water table in the center of the building.

This will be a tricky proposition in Abu Dhabi, where the water table is already deeply stressed. Nabito will have to strike a balance between water scarcity and the urgent need to create carbon-absorbing green spaces.

:: CNN & Inhabitat

More innovative architecture in Abu Dhabi:

Abu Dhabi Building To Achieve All Five Green Building Pearls

Ehrlich Architect Trumps Hadid and Foster With UAE Parliament Building

Energy-Generating Pyramids Win Abu-Dhabi’s LAGI Prize

The post Nabito Architects To Build Amazing Spiral Skyscraper In Abu Dhabi appeared first on Green Prophet.