Events

Real Architecture

Reinier de Graaf, OMA, presents City in the Desert
20 November 2008

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Chaired by Shumon Basar, Writer/Curator, AA

For some time now desert developments have been constructed as though they could have been constructed anywhere else. Large sections of the desert are being turned into high maintenance lawn. When it comes to the city, 20th century cures may yet prove 21st century ails: everything we have grown to like - low density, lawns, spaciousness, luscious green, has suddenly become an ecological time bomb.

OMA has created an efficient and compact form of urbanisation, a blueprint for an instant single integrated city built from scratch as a manifesto and model for the development of the Arabian desert that attempts to correct the extravagances of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Reinier de Graaf takes on this very contemporary discussion and explains how.

Venue: Royal College of Physicians, 11 St Andrews Place, Regents’ Park NW1