From the Stephen Bayley at the Telegraph:
Paradoxically, Burj Khalifa is not a truly modern building. It is a hangover of a demented spending binge. It is a subprime Great Pyramid. It is queasy nostalgia for a version of the future that looked old-fashioned a generation ago. It is kitsch retro fantasia, a glassy memorial to something not so much forgotten as never known.
The whole article does nothing but berate the architect and naysay the very idea of this building. America has long been the country where dreamers and over achievers could accomplish amazing things despite naysayers like Steven Bayley. Sadly it seems like that atmosphere is being lost here in America, and if it takes some moderate Muslim country halfway around the world to pick up the torch and ensure that the human race still progresses into the future, so be it.
Don’t feel too bad about it though, I’m sure most of the money spent to build it originated from Americans buying oil, and the architect and the firm that built it were both American. It’s just a shame they had to go there to find someone with enough balls to see a project like this come to fruition.
Disclosure: I’m a huge fan of The Fountainhead.
