The fantasy of iconography

CONCEPT DESIGN OF DUBAI TOWERS DUBAI FROM TVS

In an age where cities like Dubai are producing record numbers of so called ‘iconic’ buildings, the status of genuinely iconic architecture is rapidly disappearing. The brand-name, one-liner building has become a ubiquitous presence: the iconic is the new generic.

Architecture is at a point today where ‘iconic’ is as overused in marketing as it is underrepresented in innovative design thinking. Genuinely iconic architecture is still possible today, but it’s urgent. It demands, above all else, an un-self-conscious and highly personal belief in architectural experimentation, imagination, criticality and profundity.

We challenge architecture’s tired contemporary reduction of iconic form to banal metaphors or weak one-liners, by pursuing instead iconic multiplicity: iconic design agendas, iconic forms of representation, iconic presentation formats, etc. etc.

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Dubai Towers Dubai by Sama Dubai offers a good illustration. Some architects might suggest that this is a project that summarizes the Dubai model. It is like the metaphor of the metaphor; the representation of the representation.

Designed by TVS, these towers intend to create a dramatic new landmark for Dubai. Their design represents the movement of candlelight which, according to TVS, is supposed to symbolize hope, harmony, growth and opportunity. This project conjures up images of Barcelona’s La Sagrada Familia towers where similar forms rise out of the ground to celebrate the sky.

As a theoretician, my first impression of Dubai Towers Dubai is a series of empty containers whose form stands as a structural experience but is not itself part of that experience. Unlike classicism, this project follows the organic style, and thus, relies on the integration of form and surroundings and the integration of individual parts to the whole concept.

But, as a professional for more than 25 years, Dubai Towers Dubai—presented here in its most generic form—is devoid of local specificities, differentiations between towers or sectors of towers, and potential negotiations with ground structures. The project is described here as a species in the most diagrammatic form. It seems to have been grown in a generic mobile system and therefore seems to be awaiting a specific context to actualize its potentials.