Another one?
1852m ‘ethic city’ on the anvil; ‘Eighth wonder of the world’ being planned
By Valiya S. Sajjad - Arab Times Staff
Aug. 6, 2006
KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait will house the eighth wonder of the modern world if the dream project, ‘ethic city,’ takes shape towering more than twice over the ambitious Burj Dubai, the tallest in the world so far. Designed after a desert-rose by an Italian architect Amero Marchetti, the tower, due to be named Al Jaber Tower, will appear like a flower hanging from the heavens on a giant thorny stalk. With an astronomical 1852 meters, the “ethic city” will dwarf some of the renowned skyscrapers in the world.
Amero Marchetti’s agent in Kuwait, Abdul Aziz Al Buainain, talking about the project said “this is too grand a project to go through the conventional channels of planning and approval. The first approval has to come from the Prime Minister’s Office, after which a suitable location has to be chosen to boast an international monument of this stature and significance. “The project will take three months to be studied, two years for drawings and specifications to be prepared and about three to four years for construction after approval. The study of the project will begin in the next two to three weeks,” Al Buainain added.
“The project is still in the ideation stage, and needs sponsors and construction firms to take it further from there. The core team will just be involved in the design and the overall supervision of the project.” The project has been codenamed ethic city, based on the philosophy that has driven its designer to come up with such a concept. Amero Marchetti sees the project as the beginning of a second renaissance, this time toward enriching mankind with a sense of respect for nature, of finding ways to live in harmony with it at a scale never before imagined.
The architect’s fascination for the Middle East “where the civilization of humanity began about 10,000 years ago” inspired in him the idea “that should go down as a watershed in history.” Today the Arab world is bursting with high-rises, and engineering marvels are large writ everywhere, “however, the structures fail to hold the magic of the East with their excessive Western influences.” Ur, in Babylon, had the first tower in the world about 4000 years ago, “which then was an amazing feat.” The time is right for Middle East to recapture its glory and the enchanting novelty of past, Marchetti added.
The Italian architect compared today’s situation in the Gulf to that of the 14th century Florence, where renaissance took birth. Lorenzo de Madichi , the richest man of antiquity, who lived in Florence dared to dream of renewing civilization, which spurred the renaissance movement. “Today the Arab world is rich both economically and culturally, and perhaps is at the threshold of leading a new revolution in the world.”
Marchetti’s germ thought is a reaction to the current energy crisis in the world; the ethic city will draw from recyclable sources of energy from the nature for its everyday functioning. Sunlight and wind will be exploited to cut down the use of electricity. When hot air at the base of the building is driven up via a progressively narrowing shaft to the top of the tower, the air that comes out will have enough velocity to propel a motor to generate electricity required to operate the lifts, Marchetti explained as an example of tapping ambient energy for everyday use.
The core philosophy of this vertical city is about “feeling the breath of the universe and understanding the laws of matter to be able to harness their colossal energies in a manner that even our progenies can enjoy them.”
“It is an ethical challenge, whether we want to reverse the trend of mankind irremediably damaging the natural resources of the earth and making it less livable with every passing day, or if we want to simply add to the atrophy and expedite the end?”
Some builders show an obsession for beauty, even at the cost of logical utility, contends Marchetti. In his point of view beauty has to evolve from the entity’s harmonic utility in the continuum of natural laws, like trees. Plants and sea breeze will also be endemic to this dream city. Marchetti has already been challenged by pessimistic doubters about the feasibility of such a grand project. To them he tells the parable of a sailor who sought to reach his destination by traveling in a direction opposite to the conventional route: his name was Christopher Columbus.