Bad timing

It’s opening day for the Burj Dubai – the Empire State Building of our time.  Like the ‘Empty State Building’ as it was known in the ’30s, the Burj is the tallest building in the world, finished just in time to hit a major economic downturn – indeed, to be the very symbol of excess – and largely empty.  

Writes LA Times architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne: “And so here is the Burj Dubai’s real symbolic importance: It is mostly empty, and is likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. Though most of its 900 apartments have been sold, virtually all were bought three years ago — near the top of the market — and primarily as investments, not as places to live. …  And there’s virtually no demand in Dubai at the moment for office space. The Burj Dubai has 37 floors of office space.”

There’s a Vancouver connection.  Burj Dubai’s developer is Emaar Properties, and the design architect was Adrian Smith, at that time with Chicago’s SOM.  Now he’s a principal in his own firm with Gordon Gill, still doing work with Emaar.  In fact, according to their website, they have a residential project in Vancouver – and a nice looking one it is.

Proposed for a location at Balaclava and 41st, it nicely captures the woody west-coast style of the 1970s, with a  sustainability nod to the 2000s: a 90 percent reduction in energy and an 80 percent in GHG emissions “relative to typical homes in the neighborhood.”

That is, of course, if it goes ahead.  Anyone know?