Architectural Mecca

In today's great age of technology and design one city in the world seems to be consistently "taking the cake" in terms of adventurous and interesting design. Dubai. I envy people who live and get to visit this mecca for architectural wonders. I mean c'mon, this place is like Disneyland with extra Mickey Mouse for anyone who can appreciate creative design.

'0-14 tower' was designed by resier and umemoto and rur architecture pc along with Dubai developer, shahab lutfi. the building was designed for dubai's business bay and features 22 floors covered in a double skin facade that's outermost skin is constructed from 40c, thick perforated concrete. the one meter space between the skins creates a chimney effect, cooling the building. How sweet is this? It looks like lace or Swiss cheese as a building. It even utilizes natural cooling techniques.

I guess my whole point of this particular rant is to ask why we can't do anything this interesting and innovative in the States? Is it because we are so worried about the bottom line we cannot see how positively something other than an air conditioned box can serve as a building? Everywhere you look, giant, square, air conditioned boxes. How lovely....

I guess I'm just jealous that I have to go halfway around the world to see really interesting architecture and design like the DaVinci Rotating towers, the Dancing Towers, or the Dubai Towers.

We have the know-how and engineering capabilities here to construct buildings that would add interest, beauty, tourism, and green design into our lives. Are we just to lazy and worried about the short-term bottom line that we cannot see our future in square, boring, rat cages? Maybe it is because we lost our spirit of competition? Maybe it's just the lack of oil money? But I think we as Americans, and others across the world, should look to these magnificent structures as a challenge to better ourselves, and our ideas of what buildings should be.