Emperor Hadrian had an island for sulking: showing his humanity perhaps. Abstractly watching the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this afternoon (a 'sport' reduced to controlled slippage under immense power as far as I can see- glides as smooth as the moves on your iPad) and staring at those stupid buildings, and thinking about the even stupider 'Island of Happiness', with it's monstrous contributions from Gehry, Zaha, Nouvel, Foster and so on which are now threatened by strike over appalling working conditions, really brings reason and substance to a course like 'Critical Thinking'. Yes at 9am tomorrow I shall be critically thinking once more, and the mind reels after an hour or so of Abu Dhabi on you mind.
On the Island of Happiness there shall be a Gehry Guggenheim, but what with an artists strike, and a certain cultural difference, even when it is finished it will be impossible to curate any meaningful show within it's daftly struck walls. It is, well, pure vanity, and nobody cares. F1 is pure vanity too of course; the whole bundle goes so well together. But what of the architects who work on these things, all those teams working so hard on such obviously wretched exercises? What the hell do they think they are doing?
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