In the near future, given the speed of construction in this city, a 14,000 hectare rectangular "slice of Manhattan" will appear along the Dubai waterfront. The new "Coastal City" will represent 25 blocks of skyscrapers of different heights and shapes, complemented by several "iconic" buildings. The customer of the ambitious project was the largest Middle East construction company Nakheel, which is also planning to build a high-rise building "Al-Burj" in Dubai with a height of more than 1 km.
Koolhaas combined two ideas in a new city / district / island project. The first is his own theory of a “generalized city”, a generic city, a megalopolis with faceless buildings inhabited by “nomads” of the era of globalism. Its inhabitants are not at all tied to their habitat, and the airport has become the semantic center of the city for them.
The second idea is the increasingly popular “Bilbao Effect”: the use by the authorities and big business of unusual projects of famous architects to make their city, country or concern look attractive, that is, for self-promotion. Thus, the OMA project combines two major trends in the development of a modern city. Despite their negative meaning, Koolhaas is not going to reject them: on the contrary, he urges to use their hidden potential, which he did in the "Coastal City".
Among the standard towers on the island will be erected an 82-story variation on the theme of the Tower of Babel and a gigantic 44-story high sphere resembling
RAK Exhibition Center, an earlier Koolhaas project for the UAE. The "Loop" complex will appear nearby - nothing more than two headquarters buildings of Central TV of China, woven together. A wide embankment will be built along the perimeter of the island, and a park will be laid out in the center. The Coastal City will be connected to Dubai by four bridges and a new public transport system under construction.
