DUBAI: Wealthy Gulf Arab investors have only to snap their fingers and someone in Dubai’s burgeoning community of Western-trained architects will design the impossible — or the unthinkable.

The emirate is fast becoming an architect’s playground as more and more outlandish structures take it closer to its dream of being the world’s most visually striking metropolis.

Architects are flocking to the city of 1.3 million where a construction boom fuelled by another surge in Gulf petrodollar wealth is changing the landscape.

Within three years this city, which 30 years ago was little more than a creek on the edge of the desert, will include the world’s tallest tower and lifesize reconstructions of the Eiffel Tower, the Tower of Babel and the main Pyramid of Giza.

“Dubai has hundreds of architect offices now, employing thousands of architects and designers. We are bringing (them) from all over the world, and yet it’s not enough for the work available,” said Falah al-Salman, an Iraqi-Canadian architect in Dubai.

“The developers want us to be imaginative and innovative beyond anything anywhere in the rest of the world. They also want to be different from each other in each project, never mind different from other cities in the world.”

One of the most striking of the new wave of buildings is ‘The Gate’ — the headquarters of Dubai’s financial centre that looks like a giant computer chip, or a traditional fort along the Gulf coast, depending on your view.

But many residents find it difficult to recognise some of the more flighty designs. One high-rise is supposed to look like a giant piano keyboard rising out of the ground.

Nearby, a residential complex intended as a mix of Egyptian, Turkish and Malaysian styles resembles a giant trifle.

Hazel Wong, a Chinese-Canadian architect with more than a decade of experience in Dubai, said it was “paradise” for the profession.

“To me as a designer it’s a designer’s paradise. You get to do iconic buildings and they have the resources here to see it through. This is a revolution in Dubai,” she said.

Wong was lead architect for the Emirates Towers, opened in 2000. The twin towers, in the shape of triangular prisms, are a favourite with architects and the public.

“Abroad you need to go through certain procedures and zoning rights, but here there is the momentum, speed and excitement and clients want everything up yesterday. It’s very satisfying.”

Leading British architects — some of whom have themselves won contracts to design in Dubai — have slammed the building frenzy in high-profile trade journals, rueing a lack of a vernacular tradition to influence the stylistic direction.

A few sprawling hotels and housing compounds have borrowed heavily from local styles, but the space-age look dominates. Expatriates far outnumber locals in what was once a quiet Bedouin Arab society.—Reuters