Dubai in the sky: optimism or hubris?

City Gazing Dubai is a clever way of looking at the metropolis. It’s a massive 18x11m dynamic light art installation showing the development of Dubai’s street pattern, suspended eight meters above DIFC Gate Avenue. The illuminated plan of Dubai comes as a dynamic light display indicating how Dubai has grown from a few key arterial roads into the complex pattern that we have today.

The result is that you’re seeing the city upside down and/or as it would be viewed from near space. For the designers, Mingus Vogel and Justus Bruns of Amsterdam design studio VOUW, this is exactly the result they wanted. “City Gazing Dubai gives people the chance to experience the ‘overview effect’, the feeling that astronauts have when they see our planet from the vastness of space,” said Vogel. “It’s an awareness that life on Earth is fragile and that we are all connected. When people stand together beneath City Gazing Dubai and look up, they too feel will united by a sense of wonder.”

VOUW has been doing similar installations for some time now, including Kuala Lumpur, Amsterdam and last year Riyadh. The studio works “at the crossroads of art, technology, and social cohesion” and was founded in 2017 on the principle that technology is not solely a means of efficiency and productivity: “VOUW is a pioneer in slowtech, design that slows people down to bring them together in the real world. Like a factory reset for the soul, the work of founders illuminates the human condition and opens the heart to the possibility of organic connection with other people and the planet.”

That’s a big collection of ambitions for what in Dubai at least is basically a supersized LED display, especially as it also comes with “a timely message about the importance of sustainability”.

An installation that shows how Dubai has grown obviously sends a message about human achievement – especially when those humans are road builders. It’s not too great a leap to see the work as highlighting social connections, too. It’s less easy to see it as metaphor for sustainability as the sprawl of the built environment (plus associated artificialities like golf courses and the Palm) spreads visibly across what we know to be the pristine desert.

We came a bit late to City Gazing Dubai – it’s been up since the middle of December – but if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth the trip. It’s rather beautiful to see the plan of the city spreading out over the night sky (shame about then light pollution around it) and it’s good that it provokes so many questions. The exhibit is on display 7.10pm to 3am until 29 January.


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