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Burj Dubai (2010) - Adrian Smith & others

It's the tallest man-made structure ever. And nothing else here.

Its appearance on all media around the world, some months ago, when it was finally finished after six years of works, impressed to every single viewer. Well, not to all, because the people with some artistic or emotional consciousness suddenly felt themselves totally disappointed with the construction of this building. We going to try to find some explanations.

First of all, we have to think the place where this building was built on. Dubai, as you know, is the capital city of the United Arabic States, a ''new'' country from the global economic point of view.

So, we have to consider that, for them, speaking historically, it must to be a symbol of their country, a country with no icons recognized worldwide, as for example, the Barcelona's Sagrada Familia or the Moscow's Basilius Cathedral. Because of this, this state-of-art skyscraper is just a icon building, following the great example of Bilbao's Guggenheim or Sidney's Opera.

The monarchies of the Persian Gulf have enough money because of the petrol, and wishes to spend it to earn prestige around the world as a powerful and rich country. The area's landscape doesn't matter, there was nothing around, something impossible if it was in Rome, for example. It's a new country and it needs to have new buildings, the best ones, the tallest ones. Environmentally, it's a disaster. But they doesn't care because they have enough energetically resources.

It's a challenge for the modern architecture. However, one of the bad aspects of this matter is the conditions of the workers. We know that they're took in their native countries, such as India or Bangladesh, and they're paid badly and living on an inhuman conditions. But, going on this way, we have to consider the absence of human rights in this countries, ruled by autocratic monarchies as in medieval times. Is it again the architecture a tool of undemocratic rulers? Yes. Is it always a public enjoyment? No. We have to think about the actual paradise for architects, China.

We gonna go back to this point later, specially, with the relationship between this country and one of the best architects nowadays, Koolhaas.

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