Dubai: build it and they will come

It doesn’t really matter where you come from; Dubai is stunning. Of course the current crisis has taken some of the luster of the place, as of many others. Of course the place is heavily indebted, perhaps at almost 50% of its GDP, but there again; Italy’s comparable share is more than double that.

Perhaps Dubai should not be analyzed with the same parameters as anywhere else. There is something dream-like about Dubai’s self-assertion. It has chosen architecture as a statement of its presence, and much of that architecture is great.

One can rightly wonder who will pay for the grandiose

Hirshhorn-like open air sculpture garden. But I prefer to focus on the intention.

Take the Dubai National Bank for example. It was commissioned in the early-nineties, designed by Uruguayan architect Carlos Ott and built by 1997. The structure is supported on two massive granite slabs that seen from the side resemble a mast. The curvature of the roof of the bank’s hall reminds that of the hull of the dhows. The front is covered by glass but on the Creek side the glass curtain curves gracefully like the billowing sail of the dhows that used to ply the Creek. When seen from the opposite side of the Creek the lower half of the curved glass reflects the Creek’s traffic. Most modern buildings count on glass surfaces to add movement by reflecting the moving clouds in the sky, but those are absent in Dubai. At the National Bank of Dubai the glass reflects life in the Creek.

In some sense Carlos Ott set the style that

Tom Wright followed in conceiving in 1993 the mast-cum-sail-like curvature of the Burj Al Arab, Dubai’s iconic building as from 1999. At Burj Al Arab Tom Wright came as close as a modern architect possibly did, to draw in a few sweeps of a pen what became an iconic building, because all can recognize it and associate it with a place on Earth: Dubai. Very much like the pyramids or the Eiffel tower recall Cairo and Paris.

Of course these are not the only stunning buildings built in the last ten years or so, but they signal an intention: to bring a piece of desert to mind. In doing so, the Emiratis have succeeded in branding the desert. To this they added a powerful low-fare airline that has turned Dubai into a hub served by a massively modern airport. Now Dubai is where you may stop on your way somewhere else to appreciate what you can see nowhere else. Once this was accomplished it became possible to consider setting business in Dubai, as many high-tech and service initiatives have, from finance corporations to educational institutions, besides the world-class hotel chains like the Jumeira group, that cater for the well-heeled traveler.

Dubai does not have much oil and cannot host manufacturing initiatives. Location was almost all it had, but few knew about it and even less cared. Dubai began making use of its location by re-distributing goods out of the Creek but it needed to be creative in generating more revenue. Dubai does sits in the middle of highly populated countries within flights lasting an hour or two. But this is also true of many other places in the region, including more favorably endowed ones like Teheran.

Only Emiratis made more of its location by dressing it up with buildings that would attract attention, and then serving it by comfortable transportation, attracting service industries and hosting travelers in modern hotels. It is not by chance that the London Business School offers an EMBA there. Out of Dubai LBS offers and EMBA to 300 students, only 10% reside there, the rest flies in and out once a month. Its Director, Kevin Dunseath, convincingly argues that it could not be done anywhere else in the region.

If you are still asking for who pays for the buildings you are missing the point. The buildings are the magnet with which the rest would not exist. And the Emiratis badly need the rest. Brand Dubai is a magnificent example of modern marketing and so far a successful strategy to turn a desert into a service hub.

Prof. Alfredo Behrens
FIA, International MBA
June, 2009