New Frontiers in Architecture

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A rampant building boom is transforming the desert lands of the Persian Gulf's fabulously wealthy oil-producing countries: they are becoming large metropolitan areas at an exponentially rapid pace. The rush for luxury and the race for the biggest, best and most dazzling feed a burgeoning real-estate market where promoters and large commercial companies create visionary and futuristic architecture. In addition to new luxury towers of record height there are skyscrapers with spectacular rotating sections, almost dream-like qualities of the new forms, and the shaping of enormous artificial islands that change entire coastlines - all part of a general challenge to master, even change, climate and environment. The planners involved belong to some of the largest international studios, firms that have opened new headquarters in the Gulf - in fact, the entire architectural star system is called upon to give a cultural imprint and to express a new concept of the city and its buildings.