Dubai plans world’s largest hotel
Dubai is planning to build the world’s largest hotel as part of a $27 billion resort project to spearhead the Gulf emirate’s drive to become a global tourism hub. This will be part of the Bawadi project a 10 km (6.2 miles) long resort strip that resembled Las Vegas without the casinos — with 31 hotels modeled on ancient Egyptian palaces, Hollywood, London’s Houses of Parliament and even the moon. The centrepiece of the resort will be the 6,500-room Asia Asia Hotel which will be the largest in the world. The MGM Grand Las Vegas, now the largest hotel in the world, has 5,044 rooms.
Potemkin City
For now, billboards made of scaffolding and plywood are in place, but the destination hotel that they are advertising will still have a hard time outdoing them. They are on the road to Bab Al Shams, in the middle of the desert.
Potemkin villages were, purportedly, fake settlements on canvases erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigori Potemkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787. This was to impress the monarch and her travel party with the value of her new conquests, thus enhancing his standing in the empress’s eyes.
(Images by Ken Vineberg and Zlatan Filipovic)
World’s tallest window graphic
Emirates Airline has erected the world’s tallest window graphic in downtown Dubai to celebrate the successful launch of the New York–to-Dubai direct service. It features the image of the Statue of Liberty. The graphic, which has been imprinted on a fifty-five-floor building in the center of the bustling city, can be seen from a mile away. The 394-foot image of the Statue of Liberty, minus the pedestal, stands loftier by 240 feet than the 154-foot-tall original in New York Harbor and claims title to the world’s tallest window graphic. Covering approximately 62,162 square feet, the installation took approximately 3,000 man-hours to complete.
Dubai’s signage
Reorganization of the city’s clustered landscape of signs
Project by Hamza (Studio of George Katodrytis)
Billboard Museum Building
Billboard Museum Building
Proposal by George Katodrytis/STUDIONOVA and DXB LAB)
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Very surreal. I am so strongly reminded of those Aldous Huxley et al books about the future and its disconnection. Makes me realize again how so much of this world is about the emperor’s new clothes….
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