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| Visionary: Two idealistic computer-generated images show what the eco-city of Masdar, in Abu Dhabi, could look like |
If there is one city that shouldn’t have to worry about impending ecological disaster it is Abu Dhabi. It holds massive reserves of oil, about 8 per cent of what’s left. It sits in the middle of a harsh, barren desert, sweltering in searing heat. It has no clean water, its sea is polluted and there is no topsoil, just a covering of sand. It is also the biggest per capita consumer of fuel, massively reliant on cars, power-hungry desalination and air-conditioning. You would have to wonder what damage global warming could possibly inflict on Abu Dhabi. It already seems a vision of the future.
Yet it is here that the world’s first serious eco-city is being built. Masdar (which means, I am told, “source” in Arabic) represents Abu Dhabi’s desire to consolidate itself as a fuel and energy capital after the oil runs dry. It is breathtakingly ambitious, engagingly sci-fi and, at first glance, a little absurd.
Just over a mile away is the Yas Marina racing circuit, designed as the Arabian Monaco and embracing a Formula 1 Circuit, a Ferrari museum and a thirsty golf course, all fed by a new 12-lane freeway. It is easy to snipe. In fact, it is almost impossible not to. The most obvious irony is that if you wanted to build an eco-city, you would do it almost anywhere but here. To which the upbeat response of architect Gerard Evenden, from British architects Foster & Partners, is: “If you can make it work here, you can make it work anywhere.”
And it is true that, despite the obvious absurdities, the $22bn Masdar project is significant – and it is real. Plans for eco-cities come and go, but they rarely get built. The abandonment of China’s Dongtan plans have left Masdar as the main contender. The city is being funded by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company and masterplanned and largely designed by Foster & Partners.
The plans for the new city are impressive. This is a city of 6m sq metres, built to house 50,000 residents and to be sustainable in every conceivable way: it will be the first zero-carbon city, generating all its own power from a mix of solar and wind energy (and hoping to export the extra) and recycling all its waste and water. Eschewing the international corporate modernism which has become the signature style of the Emirates, the architects have looked back to the traditional cities of the Middle East, to Shabam and Sana’a, Damascus and Baghdad. The plan is a hybrid of lessons learnt from the past.
The city is walled, a device to define its edges and act against sprawl but, most importantly, to exclude the fierce desert winds; the streets are not the broad avenues of the city but tight, shady alleys; there are no skyscrapers, all buildings are five storeys or less; there is a central open-air souk, an antidote to the ubiquitous mall. The courtyards and shops are shaded by screens based on the traditional mashrabiyas, the delicate filigree meshes that allow breezes in but keep the harsh sun out. There is stone inlay and Islamic patterns, palm trees and pools. Evenden is keen to point out other features gleaned from studying traditional Middle Eastern cities. Roads, for instance, are not long and straight, as that allows a wind to gather heat from the road surface as it blows through the city. Instead, the streets are narrow and broken at intervals, so that air flows but does not sear. Then there are the traditional wind-scoops that bring a breeze into the heart of the dwelling.
And, most incredibly of all in this culture wedded to the car, the roads are all pedestrian. It is, in many ways, everything the rest of Abu Dhabi (and indeed the whole region) is not.
There is an awful lot of flannel about sustainability and about zero-carbon, but this is the real deal. Except, of course, that it has to be built, and construction is just about the most polluting activity there is. If architects truly want to be really green, there is only one answer – don’t build new buildings.
For all the clarity of the vision of its creators, Masdar is a paradox that poses more questions the deeper you delve. Certainly it is a car-free city, but there will be a “personal rapid transport” system. Running under the ground, these vehicles will stop at points around the city and whizz residents about using cutting-edge technology still being developed in the Netherlands. Cocooned in their personal vehicles, sensitive residents will not be subjected to the privations of public transport.
Another paradox is that Masdar is (despite being designed by the global modernist architects of our age) in many ways a city Prince Charles could approve of. It is dense, low-rise and mixed-use, a thoroughly traditional model. It has a mosque at its centre and education at its core; it is as sustainable as it possibly could be and it looks, for inspiration, to architecture of the past.
In other ways, too, Masdar is very unlike the $27m Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi’s putative cultural quarter, another eye-wateringly ambitious scheme that aims to embrace cultural franchises by the great architects of our time, including Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim, Jean Nouvel’s Louvre, Zaha Hadid’s opera house and Foster & Partners’ own Sheikh Zayed Museum.
While Saadiyat, which has garnered far more press attention, is fanciful and hopeful in the extreme (for whom, exactly, are these cultural behemoths intended?), Masdar is based on business as much as on idealism. Investment on this scale will finally allow manufacturers to begin producing pioneering green products in quantities that will make them economically viable. Already, Masdar’s investment arm, in conjunction with Credit Suisse, is backing wind farms off the British coast and the awesome Gemosolar plant near Seville. Masdar is also the interim HQ for the International Renewable Energy Agency and its first occupant, the Masdar Institute, a joint venture with MIT, is the world’s first graduate institution dedicated to alternative energy and sustainability. The institute is now receiving students and is intended as the new city’s hub, a generator of new eco-ideas and green technologies.
There isn’t much to see at Masdar yet, just a vast sandy building site. Foster’s immaculate renderings look not unlike the vision of an upmarket shopping centre anywhere in the Gulf. But Masdar has the potential to grow into a real place by its projected completion date of 2016. It has a purpose that is becoming more critical by the day and Abu Dhabi’s massive backing is, for all my scepticism, a bold and confident investment. Stories of solar panels not working because they’re covered in sand and wind turbines standing static as there’s no wind make good copy – again, it is easy to sneer – but Abu Dhabi’s determination to remain at the centre of the energy market may yet bear dividends for us all.
