dezeen had it a week ago, and I thought it gets a bit boring to post OMA stuff all the time. But some­how nobody jumped on it and I think this 2006 (?) project is really worth men­tion­ing.
No doubt, its great they are using the pos­si­bil­i­ties in all those arab coun­tries to real­ize the wet dreams of the 70s. But some­how one would expect some­thing new.

On the other hand, maybe this does mean, that OMA is really get­ting rid of that avantgarde-​trauma to pro­duce some­thing new ALL THE TIME. I actu­ally find it com­fort­ing to see that we might sur­pass this obses­sion and finally move beyond the anyway strange con­tem­po­rary con­cept of avant­garde (sorry for mis­in­ter­peta­tion, Miguel!). More towards a refined archi­tec­ture, even a par­a­digm, a set­tled style that would allow to develop some­thing refined, learn from projects instead of start­ing over and over again. An archi­tec­tural canon! ;-)
Well, maybe just a (strange) dream. prob­a­bly this would be hor­ri­bly boring… But how much great archi­tec­ture is pro­duced anyway? We could have hob­bies, earn some money, go on holiday…
It also reminds me of an arti­cle in the Desig­nOb­server on CCTV, that toms pointed at in an ear­lier post.

‘In the end, all the polit­i­cal dis­course and self-​serving man­i­festos mean little. We are left to judge this build­ing as a piece of archi­tec­ture built in 2007, in a cli­mate of grow­ing aware­ness of sus­tain­abil­ity. Build­ing a project of this scale with so much extra steel to sup­port an aes­thetic expres­sion seems like a missed oppor­tu­nity, if not some­thing com­pletely bor­der­ing on civic neg­li­gence, espe­cially in China, one of the coun­tries which nec­es­sar­ily must embrace sus­tain­abil­ity soon. Imag­ine if Kool­haas had used this oppor­tu­nity to build the light­est, most green build­ing in the world? Imag­ine if he had mar­shalled all of his rhetor­i­cal verve and diplo­matic savvy to argue for the crit­i­cal impor­tance of such archi­tec­ture? Instead of respond­ing to for­tune cook­ies, Rem Kool­haas could have changed the world.’

more pics on
OMAweb
and the press release on:
dezeen 1/2 and dezeen 2/2.