The New Byzantium: Shanghai, Dubai and the demise of The International Style

"So I went back to the working-class, in which I had been born and
where I belonged. I care no longer to climb. The imposing edifice
of society above my head holds no delights for me. It is the
foundation of the edifice that interests me. There I am content to
labour, crowbar in hand, shoulder to shoulder with intellectuals,
idealists, and class-conscious working-men, getting a solid pry now
and again and setting the whole edifice rocking. Some day, when we
get a few more hands and crowbars to work, we'll topple it over,
along with all its rotten life and unburied dead, its monstrous
selfishness and sodden materialism. Then we'll cleanse the cellar
and build a new habitation for mankind, in which there will be no
parlour floor, in which all the rooms will be bright and airy, and
where the air that is breathed will be clean, noble, and alive.

Such is my outlook. I look forward to a time when man shall progress
upon something worthier and higher than his stomach, when there will
be a finer incentive to impel men to action than the incentive of to-
day, which is the incentive of the stomach. I retain my belief in
the nobility and excellence of the human. I believe that spiritual
sweetness and unselfishness will conquer the gross gluttony of to-
day. And last of all, my faith is in the working-class. As some
Frenchman has said, "The stairway of time is ever echoing with the
wooden shoe going up, the polished boot descending."

-Jack London, 1905

I open this essay with a passage by the great writer (and when I say great, I mean racist social darwinian) Jack London and implicitly forgive the shortcomings of the age of which he was afflicted. But it must be noted that if any anachronisitcally folksy American writer should be given an ear today, in light of recent global events, it be this man. China, and Shanghai in particular has emerged as a seminally important center for the development and technological border crossings of Architecture on the International scene. So too has Dubai. It must be said at this point as well, that if ever there should be a graveyard of the tenets of the recent past, it be in these once far, and still misunderstood territories. China has no need for International Style, Dubai is itself less of a city, and more a testament to a distinctively Persian enthusiasm for excellence.

The workers on the sights in Quingchong, Shanghai, and Dubai live on site.
Where is the tallest building in the world? Dubai. Where will it be in 10 years? Probably Shangai. What has happened in that now so close to home region that was referred to so long as the Orient? The east? We must give pause and ruminate for a moment about it.