Old Dubai

A bit less glitz than new Dubai. There are many more signs of life around Deira (old Dubai) if you ask me—it's cacophonous, yes, trafficky, yes, but less sealed-off and air-conditioned, generally. Though, looking over these photos, they seem to have that strange, silent quality that architectural photography always has.

I went to an office today whose address was specified on paper as: "Range Rover Building, Deira."

tsk tsk

A little architectural cost-cutting here in Dubai (mon dieu!)...traditional shape decorative soffit over a very normal rectangular window...I've now seen this about four times!

KAYAK!

FRONT

BACK

COCKPIT- lawn chair-based pseudo-rib clips into cockpit rim

COCKPT W/ SEAT- polycarbonate seat back has "tenons" that fit into slots cut in floorboards- no extra fasteners. cockpit rim pieces slide onto channels in the coroplast, like the "zippers". the plastic pipe elbow at the bottom locks everything in place.

Travels from the Seat of a Plane

I am thankful that despite their best efforts, the vastness of the landscape outside Dubai dwarfs the ridiculous, glittering skyscrapers. The quiet, matte desert stretches out and then wrinkles up into mountains. A few skewed roads run through valleys between. Light and shadow create the only changes in tone—the unvegetated sand is a consistent non-color. Then, from time to time, without explanation, a valley holds dusty greens in agricultural squares.

A few hours and a few thousand miles later, the earth is a watery, snowy swirl. The air is clear, the shapes below are sharp. Vastness here, is cold and deep, blues and whites marbled together. There are no signs of people, of paths, or even of life. The world below is elemental and inchoate.

After this, the temperate Pacific Coast is generous and nurturing. Breaking white waves stitch the ocean to the cliffs in Mendocino. Small-scale towns blend in and out of hills and forest. I search for landmarks—Sea Ranch, Jenner. The geography of weekend hikes is suddenly clear as Point Reyes, Tomales Bay, Muir Beach, and Mount Tamalpais form a map below. Colors vivid with life—dark green oaks on grassy yellow hills, that big red bridge, pastel houses that chase up San Francisco streets—welcome me home.

The physical bravura of a sixteen-hour flight in a huge jet only heightens the resonance of the view below. These views that feels so precious and privileged are part of a twice-daily journey for one of many airlines on this route.

The scale and the glory of our earth and the silence of landscape, both precise and abstract, overwhelms.

ps I'm sad to say I didn't take these photos myself, and they're not exactly what I saw out the plane. I wish I'd taken photos, but it was pretty nice just looking out the window too.

Jellyfish on the beach are disgusting puddles of slime. In the water, they're some of the most sublimely graceful and elegant forms I can think of. It's all about the medium: in water, there's no gravity, no need for rigidity; life is all about flexibility, transparency, ethereality.

I read a book about oak recently. Oak has been the favored wood for the European shipbuilding tradition. The author argues that the classic sailing ships developed out of how Europeans constructed wooden buildings: they're based on a solid, rigid frame of ribs, covered with a non-structural plank skin, much as one would build a timber-framed house to resist the force of gravity.

Certain other types of boats, however, are more analagous to the jellyfish. Viking longboats were a monocoque of planks riveted edge to edge, with no internal frame. This allowed them to twist and flex with the motions of water, giving them a remarkable combination of speed, agility and durability.

The inuit kayak is another example of boatbuilding in a fluid medium. The flexible skin and lashed skeleton create a dynamic, moving form. This is "boat" stripped down to its essence.

With the Oru, I'm interested in ways of making boats more like jellyfish- if not functionally, then trying to capture that sense of thinness, transparency, fluidity and luminosity- the things that intuitively draw us to water.

Saturday afternoon

After Dubai, its a relief to be in a place with layers. In London you see liveliness in every inch of its urban form, not to mention in all the people bustling around. Eccentric lanes, new additions added crookedly upon old, lines of desire through city squares.

Top to bottom: I never tire of these urban additions, wherever I find the little space invaders; Oxford Circus sparkles; diagonal tiles make it all better; almost a real-life Rachel Whiteread; I love depth in cities.

London calling

The brief walk to work!