Capital Gains

Orlando Crowcroft
[More Images]

My first exposure to Abu Dhabi came early in my tenure as editor of Middle East Architect.

It was Cityscape, and I foolishly took the bus from Al Ghubaiba bus station rather than hire a car; then a taxi ditched me in the middle of the embassy district; then I walked 20 minutes in the baking sun and arrived at the press office sweating and babbling like a lunatic.

The show was a good one, as I remember. The situation in Dubai was still fresh, and the talk was of a new start in the UAE capital. No more vastly inflated rents, no more pie-in-the-sky projects – a new start.

Story continues below

Advertisement

FEATURED COMMENT Please click here to comment on this article

Fast forward 12 months and my second favourite building in the UAE, Capital Gate, has just gone on the market at around $680 per square metre, the highest commercial rent in Abu Dhabi. The developers say they only want top-end international clients, they say the market is ready for rents higher than downtown Manhattan. Capital Gate, they say, will put Abu Dhabi on the map.

Sound familiar? It should do. The same thing has been said by developers of almost every ‘high-end’ office (or indeed residential) building in the GCC. I heard it in Jeddah, I heard it in Riyadh, I heard it in Bahrain and I’ve even heard it in Dubai. Every developer in this region wants to say that their tower is the exception to the rule: it’s worth the high rents, it’s iconic, it’s different.

My trip to Cityscape Abu Dhabi this year only reinforced my view that developers are still living in a dream world. We have learned from Dubai, but we haven’t learned the most important lesson – the need to get real.

Just look at Abu Dhabi for a second; look at the horrendous traffic, the lack of any parking downtown, the extortionate rents, the second-rate malls, the poor workmanship. There’s your need, right there. It’s not from businesses that can afford to pay $700 per square metre, or residents that can pay AED250,000 a year for a one bedroom flat – it’s from everyone else.

As architects you are hardly going to turn down work in the luxury sector, but I think the point remains an important one.

We’re all stakeholders in this part of the world. We live here, work here, spend hours in traffic on Salam Street, see derelict buildings in Manama and Jeddah, pay too much rent in Abu Dhabi.

We all like flash buildings – and affordable housing was a positive development at this year’s Cityscape – but the stuff in the middle, the stuff that relates to most of us, that needs sorting out as well.

A year ago Cityscape was the first event I attended as editor of MEA, and it is fitting that a year on it was the last. For all my negativity in this column, it’s been a privilege getting to know all of you and I think that from Jeddah to Muscat to Manama to Abu Dhabi, architects are doing some amazing things. I hope that you all keep it up, and those that are paying you keep it real.