Imagine if you will, a dense metropolis rising from a sand of sea in the Arabian Desert. Surrounded by an impenetrable wall, with low lying buildings perched on narrow streets and nary an automobile in sight, it almost sounds like the stuff of old folklore—perhaps the fabled city of Ubar erected once more–but in fact, this is the future. It’s called Masdar City and it’s the brainchild of Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company with the collaboration of Foster + Partners. As part of the Masdar Initiative, the city will spearhead a new center for exploring sustainable living practices and renewable energy.
Masdar is envisioned as an ecotopia, a green city with zero carbon and zero waste. Its design balances synthetic vernacular architecture with futuristic detail. A screen of thin-film solar panels will form an urban canopy to ward off the heat and provide energy. A dense network of shaded sidewalks and streets is meant to encourage walking, while an elevated light rail and subterranean personal pods will whisk denizens in and out of the city. Masdar’s energy will stem from a large photovoltaic plant, working in tandem with wind turbines and waste-to-energy plants. Water will be kept plentiful by a solar powered desalination plant. The surrounding wall will soften the hot, southerly desert winds and hush the noise from the neighboring international airport.
It sounds like a sleek, modernist marvel, yet it’s easy to see this as another of Abu Dhabi’s exotic desert jewels, an indulgent flexing of the country’s oil fuelled monetary might. It’s a whopping project, whose basis is quite impractical. Creating a sustainable paradise in an unsustainable environment requires huge sums of money. When the oil and the funds run dry, will Masdar continue to be truly self sustaining? Perhaps it will fade away, swallowed by the desert, leaving nothing but a remnant of a utopian mirage. Yet, however improbable the idea of Masdar may be, it does offer a subversive nod to things to come. With this project, Abu Dhabi is signaling the end of oil and we should take note.
