Monday, 30 June 2008

Beyond all imagination: Rosemary Behan

A villa under construction at Falconcity of Wonders in Dubai. The project is a residential, tourist and recreational development modelled after the wonders of the ancient and modern world. Randi Sokoloff / The National

Ever fancied a flat in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Taj Mahal or Big Ben? Or how about an apartment in the Great Pyramid of Khufu, overlooking the Anthony and Cleopatra ride, where you can take a trip down the 2km Nile and jog along the Great Wall of China?

All will soon be possible at Falconcity of Wonders in Dubai, the self-proclaimed “most ambitious tourist destination ever created”. When it opens in 2012 or 2013, the promotional video promises, Falconcity will “bring together all the wonders of the ancient and modern world into one spectacular city of entertainment on a scale never seen before”.

Though only a small part of the 279 million square metre Dubailand development, Falconcity is still massive. Some 3.7 million square metres of land beside Emirates Road, 20 minutes’ drive from Dubai airport, have been mapped out to incorporate entertainment, leisure, commercial and over 5,500 residential units arranged in the shape of a falcon, the UAE’s national emblem. Most of the project’s 1,000 villas will be housed in the falcon’s outstretched wings, with an ultra-exclusive island of homes surrounded by a moat in the centre. In the legs will live whole cities, while the head will contain a shopping centre. It promises to be a “visionary entertainment hub which will bring the world to Dubai... Imagine an Eiffel Tower that is even taller than the original – and only a short walk from the Tower of Pisa.”

The brochure, which comes in the form of a “passport to the world”, gets more unbelievable the further you read. The Dubai Eiffel Tower, which will be at least 20 metres taller than the Parisian original, is described as “the perfect complement to a distinguished lifestyle” and will be surrounded by parks, cafes, gardens and fountains. The Dubai Grand Pyramids, a set of three emulating the Pyramids of Giza, will contain “the biggest pyramid in the world”, 40 storeys and 150 metres high. The Dubai Tower of Pisa “will have the same tilting degree like the original”, and the Dubai Taj Mahal, again bigger than the original, “will be a luxurious five-star hotel which will outshine the rest of the hotels in the region and stand in a class of its own”.

The Dubai Hanging Gardens of Babylon “brings to life a lost ancient wonder. This imaginatively designed complex will house eco-friendly luxury flats, with many open-air restaurants for candlelight dinner, romance and coffee shops, with the garden overlooking the Falconcity Mall.” The Dubai Great Wall, built in the style of the original and higher than a three-storey building, will loop for 1.7km around the theme park, shielding residents of Dh6.5m villas from the screams of riders. The theme park will also house the Dubai Lighthouse, a replica of the Lighthouse of Alexandria, built in the third century BC on the island of Pharos.

“Now at Falconcity of Wonders Dubai, the new Dubai Lighthouse will serve as lighthouse, landmark, and an architectural marvel at the same time.”

Yet, looking at all of this, I must wonder who on earth is responsible? That man is Salem al Moosa, chairman and CEO of Falconcity and the head of Al Moosa Contracting, one of the largest building and civil engineering companies in the Middle East. Moosa has previously outlined his mission “to develop a national icon, befitting the exclusivity of Dubai, through a unique, state-of-the-art real estate project”, to put Dubai on a “fast track towards a prosperous future”. Yet in a development which purports to be “Beyond History”, one can equally substitute prosperous for larger than life.

And there’s a little of that in the man himself. At his office in Bur Dubai, a photographer and I wait beside a scale model of Falconcity. Moosa arrives and greets us warmly.

“Did they have coffee?” he asks his public relations specialist, who nods vigorously.

“Good. Did you charge them?”

The quips go on. Where is he from? “Dubai. Why? Do I look like I’m from China? Queen Victoria. She made a good choice of a husband in Prince Albert. Crystal Palace was a great idea!”

But what about Falconcity? What on earth is it for? “It is to honour mankind,” Moosa says. “It is going to be a one-stop shop for people who want to look at the shapes of the monuments of different civilisations and to educate our youngsters. We are thinking of having museums that will be related to these civilisations, so that children can come and learn about what happened in the past in Europe, what happened in Britain, what happened in Egypt, what happened in India, so they become acquainted with their ancestors and their history.”

Wouldn’t it be easier to just get on a plane and visit other countries? “The world is becoming smaller and smaller. Through communication the land becomes smaller and the distances become less... His Highness Sheikh Mohammed’s vision is to develop this area and his vision is also that everybody starts sharing this vision. He asked the private sector to participate and I came forward to say that I have a project with unique features. But of course no businessman is doing anything just for fun. This project is viable and feasible and we’ve taken all the necessary precautions to develop the concept.”

It certainly has unique features. Although the falcon can be found on banknotes, passports, visas and government uniforms, this is the first opportunity I have seen to actually live in one.

“This is part of our heritage,” Moosa says. “I didn’t want anyone to play around with my project so I put it in a falcon shape. Because if you make the head smaller or the legs smaller it doesn’t work. This is a scaled project with falcon wings, falcon face and falcon tail.”

Moving over to his scale model, he becomes visibly excited, and points to the legs. “Now, the cities are like this. This is one leg. This is the city of India, city of Beirut and the city of Dubai.”

What will be inside the city of India? “It’s the Indian city so you will have the Taj Mahal. Then on the other side you have Rome, Venice, London and Paris in the middle.” Why is Paris at the centre? “Because of the Eiffel Tower, of course! You can’t put the Eiffel Tower next to the head, it’s not going to work. You can’t have it on the wing. So it’s in the proper place. And the city of New York is here with Central Park. This park here is one million square foot.”

I’m exhausted just looking at it. The project is, it seems, a combination of Las Vegas and a Disney theme park on steroids. Hasn’t the world already got enough theme parks?

“The whole thing will be themed but we will have a theme park inside with the Great Wall around it. You can walk, or jog, but you will have to pay.”

And what about Emirati culture? Doesn’t Dubai have anything of its own to offer? “We’ll be having the city of Old Dubai. It’s like a small city in itself.”

Hasn’t the world got enough replicas? “When we talk about replicas we mean replicas in shape, not in the actual physical properties of the monuments. In the past the pyramids were built simply of stone, which exhausted the human beings building it. The miracle today is that we build it so fast, and we use the same shape for human benefit, human enjoyment, human prosperity.”

That’s all very well, but surely the whole point of a historic tourist attraction is that it is seen in its national context? Moosa thinks Falconcity has trumped that one, too.

“The Eiffel Tower in Paris has been done as a monument where spectators go on the top and look at Paris. It has no value. Well, maybe it has tourist value, but this will have real estate value, financial value, tourist value, and then it is the only address in the world where you can say I work in the Eiffel Tower. If anybody asks you, you can say, ‘I work at the Eiffel Tower Dubai’. Everybody knows that you are there, so the pizza man will not make a mistake.”

Now this is getting silly. Who is the architect? “The master architect is Salem al Moosa. I did the layout. I told them, calculate for me how much will be built up here, how much square foot there. But the master planners are WS Atkins, they are British.”

How much is the project going to cost? “I think it will go to eight or 10 billion dirhams, after inflation and all that.”

I wonder what kind of lifestyles people living in Falconcity will have. “They will have dream lifestyles that combine the best of East and West.”

We drive to the building site to have a look. Although half of the 1,000 villas, all those on the falcon’s left wing, have been sold, 338 are under construction. They are designed by an Iraqi architect and come in four styles: New World, Andalusia, Santa Fe and Aegean. All are between 300 and 700 square metres and range from two-bedroom town houses to six-bedroom detached homes. They are broadly similar inside, with patios and optional swimming pools, cavernous hallways and kitchens and ensuite bedrooms upstairs – although there doesn’t seem to be much space between the properties, and the roads are rather narrow.

Who can buy them, I ask. “Anyone who’s got money,” Moosa says.

When it is finished, this will be a self-contained city of 70,000 people, complete with schools, fitness clubs, a pharmacy, hospital and hundreds of shops. Yet as I stand on the balcony in 43 degree heat, overlooking the dusty building site, something changes in me. I gaze at the rows of houses and start to quite like them. It feels like a toy town, an unreal holiday village where you can park your car and stay over at night. From the back of the house I can see the towering Burj Dubai.

“Just imagine,” Moosa says. “At night you can sit at the top of your building and see all these monuments. And have dinner, or a barbecue, or whatever. You won’t need to leave.”

Suddenly, the wing of a falcon isn’t so bad a place to be.

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