At the 10th International Architecture Biennale of Venice, AMO, the think tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) will present an overview of urban developments in the Persian Gulf and the combined impact of these developments on the region and beyond.
Kuwait City - Kuwait; Manamah - Bahrain; Doha - Qatar; Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ras al Khaimah - United Arab Emirates. Where twenty years ago their economy was entirely related to oil, the current/future depletion of oil reserves has urged the rapid transformation of each of these places.
Subject to a relentless modernization itself only recently, already the Persian Gulf is becoming a paradigm for development elsewhere. The same development companies that are shaping the Gulf are currently also shaping large territories beyond the Gulf: India, Pakistan, Libya, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, China, and even the USA.
The exhibition curated by Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Todd Reisz and Kayoko Ota is in a room covered with a 'wallpaper' of a satellite image of the Gulf coast, which attempts to show all new developments going on at the same time. The visitor will view the region as it is today, its recent past and its immediate future.
The exhibition notes the shrinking distance between the 'star-architect' and the local practitioner and the region’s remarkable tolerance for outside influences and foreign lifestyles. AMO's work is on display in the Giardini in the Italian pavilion until 19 November 2006.
The exhibition was made possible with the generous support of The Architecture Fund (International Culture Program from the Netherlands Ministries of Foreign Affairs and of Education, Culture and Science), Van Oord NV, Rakeen Development/RAK Promotion Board, Fondazione Prada, Editoriale Domus and M.H. Alshaya.
Source: OMA
