Since first seeing the AMO Gulf Cities study pre­sented at the 2006 Venice Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale, most of us have been anx­ious to hear more about the region, and get an in-​depth look at the eco­nomic processes at work. And so the wait is over with the release of Al Manakh, released through­out the Nether­lands this past week, and is widely avail­able, includ­ing at the NAi.

While the book was first released for the atten­dants at the May 2007 Inter­na­tional Design Forum (IDF) con­fer­ence in Dubai, it has been noto­ri­ously hard to get ahold of until now. The 495 page book was largely organ­ised by Mouta­ma­rat, a recently-​established pri­vate body that aims to “create busi­ness knowl­edge for the Arab world.”

Al Manakh serves as a barom­e­ter for the changes taking place in the region, and trans­lated, the title means “the climate”. As Kool­haas writes in the open­ing, the book is a form of “critical participation”. But when he writes that “The Gulf is not just recon­fig­ur­ing itself; it’s recon­fig­ur­ing the world”, I find it hard to believe this is entirely spe­cial. Can we not say this about China? How about New York and London?

If you have already heard, both Kool­haas and Bouman will present the book at the NAi on Sep­tem­ber 10th at 20.00. If you haven’t reserved tick­ets yet, you are prob­a­bly out-of-luck, since it has been sold out for some time. I don’t usu­ally see scalpers at the doors either.

As you all might have read, the book is divided into three sec­tions: a) Dubai Guide - edited by Mouta­ma­rat, b) Gulf Survey - edited by AMO, and c) Global Agenda - edited by Archis. You can read the intro­duc­tory excerpts from Ole Bouman and Rem Kool­haas at Archis here.

Sec­tion one, Dubai Guide, does set the stage for the project, deal­ing with issues of pub­lic­ity and pri­vacy; authen­tic­ity and fan­tasy; social equity and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity; growth rates and tourism rates; and looks at the over­ar­ch­ing issues and prob­lems facing the Gulf region, and in par­tic­u­lar Dubai. The issues are some­what global in that many cities around the world in emerg­ing economies face the same set of prob­lems due to fast, hard-to-control growth, and too much for­eign invest­ment. In some ways, this sec­tion comes across as though it was writ­ten for an under-​educated audi­ence, which is a pos­si­bly delib­er­ate tech­nique. Look­ing at the text, Design in Retail by Tim Green­halgh, it reads as a “how-to” for retail entre­pre­neurs and what not to do when design­ing com­mer­cial spaces.

Sec­tion two, Gulf Survey, is clas­sic AMO/OMA from the start. While I have not read through the chap­ter in its entirety, it is full of eco­nomic data, images, projects, key play­ers, social sta­tis­tics, and key his­tory. This chap­ter covers 62% of the entire book, so it will take you some time to enjoy it. Sec­tions of this have already been printed recently in The Gulf, a fold-​out pam­phlet out­lin­ing the major projects in the Gulf region, and already avail­able in book­stores. This con­tent was also exhib­ited at the Venice Archi­tec­ture Bien­nale 2006.

Sec­tion three, Global Agenda, is edited by Archis and aims to dis­cuss broader urban and archi­tec­tural issues. Ole Bouman’s intro­duc­tory edi­to­r­ial raises the urgent ques­tion of “What must be done?”, and he doesn’t shy away from the posi­tion that archi­tects and design­ers are obliged to engage in the shap­ing of the future and the shap­ing of our planet.

As he writes, “The To Do list for archi­tec­ture and design is short. The plan­e­tary action list for archi­tects and design­ers is end­less however.” And as a direct hit at the self-​satisfying archi­tec­ture the world over he writes: “[Design] can draw its legit­i­macy not from making things nice for cer­tain people, but from making things liv­able for everyone.”

Bouman doesn’t refer to aes­thet­ics alone of course, but to the larger prob­lems of infra­struc­ture, hous­ing, gov­er­nance, cli­mate change, social resources and so forth. It makes me think back to the first chap­ter of the book con­cern­ing semi-​private space in Dubai, totally detached from the con­tin­u­ous public urban envi­ron­ment, with the goal of cre­at­ing arti­fi­cial ‘urban experiences’. The point at which we sep­a­rate a fic­tional urban­ity from a non-​fictional urban­ity is exactly where we fail in cre­at­ing a viable future, con­tin­u­ous with the sur­round­ing envi­ron­ments and its his­tory. But of course, the only thing hold­ing back the real from the arti­fi­cial in Dubai is a row of palm trees and a con­crete wall. What’s to stop us from tear­ing these down in the future? Hope­fully the book will stim­u­late such a thought in the minds of the devel­op­ers and design­ers in Dubai.

Here are the facts about the book:

Edi­tors: Ole Bouman, Mitra Khoubrou, Rem Kool­haas
Man­ag­ing editor: Arjen Oost­er­man
Design: Irma Boom, Natasha Chan­dani, Sonja Haller
Format: 24×17, 500 pages
Pub­lisher: Archis Foun­da­tion
Dis­tri­b­u­tion: Europe, Asia and USA by Idea Books, IPS Pres­sev­er­trieb
Price: EUR 29.90 ISBN: 978-90-77966-12-9