the burj

A view from the highest built point in the world, the tip of the spire of the Burj Dubai. The surrounding land, the new "downtown Dubai", acquires a Google Earth like quality. The city is seen from a god-like perspective, detached yet with startling but false sense of clarity. The city can be observed in its entirety but with poor definition. The scene is static, like a photograph frozen in time, any sense of life is projected, imagined. The flatness of the land emphasized, devoid of natural terrain; the surrounding buildings dwarfed and distant, viewed like a Sketchup model plonked onto google earth, seen with an unnatral and unlikely angle. The immensity of the building has pushed it far beyond the threshold of being a tightly interwoven part of the city. To manyit will be the new icon of Dubai, one of pure bigness. Like a rupture in the urban fabric, the burj is a city in its own and on its own, one can only look out from it or look at it.