With its 492 vertical feet of garish plated gold, the Dubai Frame is the perfect symbol of the Persian Gulf city. It’s like someone took the Grande Arche at Paris’s La Défense and removed its functionality, its elegant proportions, and its meaning–except in the sense that it frames the city’s artifice with more artifice.
The concept for the Frame was originally drafted in a much simpler and more elegant way by Mexican architect Fernando Donis–who is also responsible for other visual landmarks like China Central Television’s headquarters in Beijing, which he worked on while at OMA. Donis presented the original Frame design back in 2008 in an international competition hosted by the Emirates’ capital and the German ThyssenKrupp Elevator company.
The Dubai Frame promoters believe that 2 million people will pay $14 each to go up its elevators every year (perhaps rightly, since the Burj Khalifa is reportedly its most-visited tourist attraction) so they can walk over the glass floor of its top central segment and admire all the metal, concrete, and glass that makes up this architectural hell built by “modern-day slaves.”
Oh, and one more thing: It lights up!
Dear Fernando, I hope you get all the money in the world–and then ask the judge to order its demolition.