U.A.E. Recession i Architecture

In contempo years, architects descended aloft Dubai, acquisitive to capitalize on its feverish architectonics boom. But while the Persian Gulf city's sprawling skyline is still dotted with cranes, the bazaar actuality has fizzled.

As of aboriginal February, more than half of Dubai real estate projects were stopped or canceled, from the 3,281-foot-tall Nakheel Tower advised by Woods Bagot to the Hydropolis, a 220-suite underwater auberge envisioned by artist Joachim Hauser. Analysts say that Dubai Property values, in total, will abatement up to 60 percent in 2009 afterwards years of almanac growth. Given this desperate about-face of events, architects are getting afflicted to amend their affairs in the region.

"Everyone is demography a absolute wait-and-see approach," says Wayde Tardif, an American artist who in 2007 co-founded POSIT Studio in Dubai. Tardif charcoal optimistic, acquainted that the arrest will adapt the bazaar and acquiesce architects to bolt their breath. He predicts a backlash in 16 to 18 months; he doesn't apprehend a alone city-limits abounding of alone towers. "Dubai has too abundant pride for that," he says.

In the accomplished decade, Dubai, amid in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has boarded on ever-grander projects at alarming acceleration in hopes of acceptable a above apple metropolis. Today, its abridgement relies on tourism, absolute estate, and banking services; oil revenues accord beneath than 10 percent to its GDP.

Initially some anticipation the arid boomtown could brim the all-around banking crisis. By October, however, adopted investors were vanishing, bounded lenders were retrenching, and oil prices were demography a dive. In contempo months, The National, a UAE bi-weekly for expatriates, has been brindled with letters of accumulation layoffs. "There are abounding instances of adviser firms abbreviation agents by added than 50 percent, or closing their Dubai appointment altogether," says Scott Hyndman, a development administrator at a Dubai-based acreage company. Some belief affirmation that hundreds, if not thousands, of cars sit alone at the Dubai airport, apparently larboard there by foreigners beat the country.

While captivation acceptance in Dubai, abounding architectonics firms are alive their focus 70 afar to the southwest, to oil-rich Abu Dhabi. The basic of the UAE, Abu Dhabi has acquired gradually over the decades and generally is admired as a added livable—and added stable— burghal center. "Where Dubai has been a abstract market, I anticipate Abu Dhabi is a abundant added serious, play-by-the-rules market," addendum Steven Miller, FAIA, managing administrator of FXFOWLE's Dubai office. His close is actively advancing plan in Abu Dhabi, area above developments such as Saadiyat Island—a $27 billion multi-use activity with barrio by Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, and Frank Gehry—are reportedly still on schedule.

Guy Source, a UAE-based application recruiter for the architectonics industry, agrees that Abu Dhabi seems beneath afflicted by the banking crisis than Dubai. He adds that added Middle Eastern markets authority affiance as well, acquainted that there are jobs cat-and-mouse to be abounding in Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudia Arabia.