The Corniche is an eight-kilometer stretch of beaches, parks, and walkways that wraps around the Western edge of the city. I inadvertently wound up walking about half of it. I'd intended to go to the northern end, where the dhows of my last post are moored. One takes cabs to get around Abu Dhabi, but the cab drivers don't know streets, just landmarks. Which is a problem if you don't know what a good landmark is. This cab driver took me about two miles in the wrong direction before I stopped him to let me out. Normally, a two mile walk wouldn't phase me, but this was in 100+ degree heart. Fortunately, about every half mile there were shaded rest stops like this.
The waterfront was virtually empty, except for a few immigrant laborers doing landscape and construction, a few overheated tourists like me, and the lifeguards - men in long-sleeved shirts and pants and women in full hajib - lifeguarding the empty beaches. Late in the day, as the sun goes down and the temperatures drop to the mere 90s, the beaches and parks are packed.
Masdar City is a planned community about 45 minutes outside of Abu Dhabi. It is intended to be an energy self-sufficient city, powered entirely by solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources, with electric driverless cars and advanced green technology. Only a portion is completed, really just a small corporate campus housing some green tech companies. There are some residential buildings, like this one, but it was unclear to me if anyone is living in them. The architecture is interesting and beautiful, but it was late in the day when I arrived, so I only had time to draw this one.
One of the most striking characteristics of Abu Dhabi is the almost complete lack of a sense of memory or history. This building was originally a bus station, constructed in 1986, making it practically historic. It was constructed by a Soviet-era Bulgarian firm called Technoexportstroy, which built hundreds of structures in the Middle East during the 1980s. In this article, Deborah Bentley, the former Abu Dhabi representative for the Royal Institute of British Architects, rather grandly describes this building:
"The Al Bateen Mall represents a period in history when transportation was celebrated. The parabolic main structure with the sweeping cantilevered canopies, not only resemble a bird in flight but also show the influence to the early structures of the Italian architect and engineer, Peir Luiji Nervi . . . The celebration of space and the combination of the environmental awareness, by providing shaded canopies when boarding the bus, create a beautiful symphony in architecture that is rarely seen for ancillary bus terminals anywhere in the world."
Some time in the 1990s, it was turned into a shopping center. Today it houses a small grocery store, a little restaurant, and a Baskin Robbins.
Another defining characteristic of the region is that the traffic circles have large, monumental statues in them. This one was a few blocks from my hotel. Most of the traffic circle was closed off due to the ubiquitous construction and street work. Apparently, it's a fountain; I saw some photos of it spewing multiple streams of water.
On one of my last nights in Abu Dhabi, I came across this, a blocks-long plaza full of giant sculptures. It's called Ittihad Square. It's a local landmark, and at one time one of the main tourist atttractions, but now it seems like a leftover oddity. The sculptures represent symbols of Emerati culture. The coffee pot in the forefront, called a dallah, is also apparently a fountain, but like one in the traffic circle, it was not functioning. There had also been a cannon, but that was removed a few years ago for some reason, perhaps because it no longer fits in with the image the country wants to project.
In the upper left, you see a reddish dot. It's Mars, I think, which seemed to always be in the sky, every night, even though you couldn't see any stars.
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