Category Archives: landscape

Global Village

by
…my neighbor, or stranger…

In this 21st Century ‘Global Village’ known as Dubai, known as Abu Dhabi, who is the ‘man on the street’, who is your neighbor? …the same question every day, every person, every place…society of change–the unending reality of human matrix social mobility. That is life in these Gulf Region cities.

Global Village: There are so many contract expatriate employees here from so many different countries–each group builds its own microcosmic sub-group, based on geography, income, work type, family situation. Most are temporarily here but often for extended periods–four and five year minimums for many–result is a rich street culture–look for it, you will find it. Exciting it is. Uncertain it is.

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The 23 Club

Immersed in the contemporary culture of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, against the backdrop of the Empty Quarter, The 23 Club tells the inside story of how an iconic project gets built in the oil rich, Gulf region of the Arabian Peninsula.

Table of Contents

  • Desertification
  • It’s 2AM
  • Spike Lounge
  • The Walk

               JBR Dubai, a Global Village

All these large projects, like Liwa Qsar, are built traditionally in a fog of evolving problems and conflicts wherein final solutions are ultimately discovered, not in advance in the carpeted offices, but in real time, on the sweaty, noisy construction site. Within this understanding of the project process, Chalmers went to visit the Landscape Consultant, Land Iterations and Derivatives–everybody knew them by their short name, LandID. LandID were an American landscape architecture company. Geoffrey Tate, a Brit, was their UAE and Mid East Regional Director.

On the Liwa Qsar Project, LandID were the responsible consultant for all the site finishes, the usual landscape architecture stuff–plants, irrigation, paving, walls, pergolas, water features, plus oversight on wayfinding, signage, lighting, grading, drainage–the usual landscape architecture stuff.

Geoffrey Tate and Chalmers were to meet at Jumeirah Beach Residence, JBR, in New Dubai, on The Walk, at the Cafe di Roma. Chalmers arrived early again. He sat down at the cafe, checked his iPhone for connectivity, and opened an iChat session with Madge. He was intent to bring health back to their bruised emotional connections. She didn’t respond.

Chalmers ordered a Turin hot chocolate. It was a warm chocolate pudding; he liked it, winter or summer. It was 9PM, just getting dark, the temperature was 35°C with just a hint of cooling, light breezes off the Gulf. The evening crowd, the paseo, were just building.

In New Dubai, The Walk was a linear pedestrian promenade, almost thirty meters wide, stretching along four, maybe five city blocks. Along the inside edge, it consisted of narrow frontage fashion shop hang outs, cafes, restaurants, cheek by jowl. That half of the promenade was given over to umbrella’d tables. The remainder of the promenade was a palm tree lined paseo show place. At the curbed outer edge was a one lane, one way, traffic calmed road–talk about show and tell–the hottest cars in Dubai crawled it–every night. And beyond the crawl, the sand beaches of Jumeirah and the Gulf. It was all about see and be seen.

The Walk generated a vibrant, real-life, cultural mix–a front-page social tabloid, if you will, including a good sprinkling of Emiratis, loads of Middle East Arabs (the Egyptians, the Lebanese), some Magrebis (the North Africans), some sub-Saharan Africans, lots of Eastern and Western Europeans, and people from the old British Commonwealth…the South Africans, the Australians, the New Zealanders…some Bollywood sub-continentals, and a few North American expatriates, with their rambunctious pet dogs, barely kept on leashes. The Walk had become a real-time mingling of Western pop culture with regional and local traditions…perhaps exemplifying the promise, the buzz of a ‘peaceful’, multi-cultural future, Dubai-style.

  • Rub Al Khali Coastal
  • Rub Al Khali Inland
  • Liwa Qsar
  • The Nursery
  • Finding Majlis
  • Library Majlis
  • Villa Majlis
  • Long and Short
  • Pilgrimage
  • Wanderweg
  • Appendix 1:  Berner Oberland Back Story
  • Author’s Notes
  • Plant List
  • Colophon

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(to be continued)

© 2015 Edward Flaherty

**Blatant Plug: If you find this writing about humans and landscape intriguing, please share it with your like-minded friends. Thank you.**

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Breakfast with Theuns

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The Rupee was once the currency in this Gulf Region. So it is not surprising that the contemporary human matrix in the UAE is dominated by workers and businessmen from the Sub-continent. Do these guys look unhappy–no, they are doing what men do in almost any country, any culture–under going hardship, trying to make a better life for their families–in this case many, but not all, are away from their homes and families.

Dubai Monorail is just as much an iconic project as Burj Khalifa, as Palm Jumeirah–massive infrastructure, massive amounts of materials and massive numbers of human laborers–white collar and blue collar.

Erik Chalmers and Theuns van der Walt are white collar mercenaries. Theuns already knew of Chalmers’ reputation for getting the five star destination resort external finishes ready–at highest quality and on time. In this short piece, they meet face to face for the first time.

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The 23 Club

Immersed in the contemporary culture of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, against the backdrop of the Empty Quarter, The 23 Club tells the inside story of how an iconic project gets built in the oil rich, Gulf region of the Arabian Peninsula.

Table of Contents

  • Desertification
  • It’s 2AM
  • Spike Lounge

               Breakfast with Theuns 

Before Chalmers finished reading the second text, his cell started its silent ringing. Chalmers didn’t pick up. Instead, he looked around and found Theuns van der Walt, the Sponsor, not far away next to the buffet. They shook hands.

Theuns, in the midst of an aggressive and very firm handshake, said, “Chalmers, pleased to meet you. Glad you made it. Let us begin.”

The owner/developer company, Cultural Tourism Futures, was a well funded, and well connected Abu Dhabi government quango. Their representative, Theuns van der Walt, was a South African. He was thirty five, an impressive rugby union player in his youth, and an avid Springbok supporter now. Theuns was five foot ten, and a thick, fit, robust two hundred pounds. He was a focussed, professional, real estate development manager. He exhibited the tenacious qualities of white Dutch South Africans, who, over the centuries, had helped build a solid and admirable economic power of a country.

Theuns was always impeccably shaved, head and face, with overall, just the right amount of light sun tan. He dressed as if he just came off the catwalk in Milan–conservative and elegantly tasteful–appropriate sun glasses and no jewelry–Ermenegildo Zegna–all the way.

But, like many other white South Africans, he was happy to be working outside his home country and had no desire to return. Why? Because of the new black leadership in the country, which in his opinion, had led to a severe cultural and economic degradation. In Theuns’ case, it was disastrously exemplified two years ago. While Theuns was in Dubai, there was a racially motivated car jacking in Johannesburg, during which, his wife and his very young and only child, a son, were ripped from their car and ruthlessly murdered in cold blood on the public street.

Theuns was a man whose impatience and worldly lust, could only be the result of the shocking killing of his family, from which he had never fully recovered.

From the buffet, they both took coffee and toast, then found a table with a view of the golf course. The weather made inside the only choice. It was not yet 10AM; but outside the temperature was 39°C and rising, and the humidity was 70%–hot and oppressively humid, even in the shade–normal Dubai weather.

Looking at Theuns’ business card, Chalmers asked him, “What is it exactly that Sponsors, or more specifically, Task Force Stream Sponsors, like you, do at CTF?”

Theuns, always impatient, summarized how the latest trends in business management, social justice, and environmental sustainability were all wrapped into a matrix system of job responsibility at CTF. He continued, “While there is no direct chain of command in this matrix system, I have the final project financial, and schedule responsibility in front of the CEO and the Executive Board.”

Chalmers said, “Ok, I like the clarity of one point of authority and communication, that should work well. But the matrix system? It sounds a bit awkward…but I’m sure you won’t let it hinder my work. Now, following our Skype, let’s get to specifics. Please tell me the particulars you expect from me, and the appropriate details.”

Theuns, always with a grudging tone, responded, “What I expect? The best site finishes ever, on time, and on budget! Any questions there?”

“None at all, that’s what I do; but give me some background, please.”

Theuns continued, “On the landscape, we have no one internally with the appropriate field experience; and our Project Management team, our Consultant and our General Contractor just can not seem to make the landscape happen. They are not responsive–not effective–not efficient, we are not getting a 100% result! We do not have time to change horses!!!

“Look, this is CTF’s first major built project. Our financial backers and our marketing, our branding people require it to be special. We expect Condé Nast to rank our Empty Quarter Project, Liwa Qsar, #1 in their world list of the best new resort destinations; and we are more than three months behind schedule, with only six months until the soft opening. We have a major A-lister opening event, with all the leaders from all the Emirates. Since I am the Sponsor, I want to say this clearly, in words that you understand, my ass is on the line, and your ass, too, will be on the line. My position is ‘no fail’!”

On the job, Theuns was a machine, a 24/7 machine. This kept him from thinking about the loss of his family. He drove for success. In that drive, there was no line he wouldn’t cross–no line. Theuns had found that at his high level of project management, as long as he provided what the owner needed, any legal setbacks or otherwise ‘impediments’ would be, with the owner’s deft hand, the shortest of temporary.

Theuns saw Chalmers as a white collar mercenary, like himself. He was right. They were both part of a Middle East stable of multi-cultural development and construction mercenaries, professionals of the hardest type, riding the huge cresting developmental wave in the Gulf Region.

Theuns stayed on the roll. He was pushing, he was hot, impatience on the boil, “The project is for only 200 keys, but we bring power and water from over 100 kilometers to the site. We have to be ethically responsible and environmentally responsible, no matter what the logic. We are building a fixed destination in a place where for centuries the few people ever passing through were…nomads! The challenges are many. We need that place first class in six months. Now I want to know are you on board or not?!”

Theuns hadn’t touched his toast. His coffee was gone. His Blackberry was buzzing every three minutes, and he just could not put it down.

Chalmers said, “Look, you’re paying me fairly. I’ll dig into it this week and meet you for an end of the day update this Thursday. I’ll brief you on what I’ve found, and I’ll outline an action plan to get CTF its finish and award quality, on schedule. But, Theuns, listen to me, please, you’ve got to know that I’ll need you to clear things for me–cut the red tape, give me line level vetoes on all invoices, and no downtown meetings, do you follow?”

“Chalmers, I will do what is needed; but it is you who must not fail.”

Chalmers knew the game, he got Theuns’ message. “That’s clear enough. Just give me the contact details of the responsibles, and Thursday, I’ll show you how it’ll be accomplished.”

Theuns concluded their meeting, “Excellent, let us get this rolling. We will meet at The Library, Thursday then, say, 9PM?”

They agreed.

Theuns texted Chalmers the contact details for the on site CTF Hospitality Director, the General Contractor, the Project Management team, the Landscape Consultant, the Landscape Contractor and all other applicable Sub-Contractors. Theuns then excused himself and left.

Chalmers remained, and began to set up his meetings. Tonight, he would begin with the Landscape Consultant.

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  • The Walk
  • Rub Al Khali Coastal
  • Rub Al Khali Inland
  • Liwa Qsar
  • The Nursery
  • Finding Majlis
  • Library Majlis
  • Villa Majlis
  • Long and Short
  • Pilgrimage
  • Wanderweg
  • Appendix 1:  Berner Oberland Back Story
  • Author’s Notes
  • Plant List
  • Colophon

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(to be continued)

© 2015 Edward Flaherty

**Blatant Plug: If you find this writing about humans and landscape intriguing, please share it with your like-minded friends. Thank you.**

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Kismet

by

Whether visiting as a tourist, on business or a white collar mercenary–hard to tell the difference between them in the public realm–everyone who comes to the Gulf Region inevitably looks for fun; and, everyone is reminded there are rules for expatriates, business people and tourists. The warnings are there.

In this Gulf Region world of international development, design, construction and facility management, the white collar mercenaries, like many of the characters in The 23 Club, build up–in a loosely linked community–a broad network of international contacts. Among them, from time to time, kismet meetings occur.

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The 23 Club

Immersed in the contemporary culture of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, against the backdrop of the Empty Quarter, The 23 Club tells the inside story of how an iconic project gets built in the oil rich, Gulf region of the Arabian Peninsula.

Table of Contents

               Kismet

Chalmers was strangely ruffled. More than his rift with Madge, more than these last couple hours, it was the last twenty four hours that were now too vivid, almost visceral in his head. His thoughts drifted back to the blood in the streets, to Jean-Claude, to Bahrain, to Ashura. His thoughts drifted back as he recalled yesterday, about mid-day.

On this trip to the UAE, he had had to make an overnight stop in Bahrain. He didn’t think much of it, an extra overnight. He had not checked the Hegira calendar. It was the Day of Ali. He had read about this special Shiite day; but, he had never seen it, and had no reason to think about it until he was at the hotel breakfast buffet that morning. He bumped into an old friend, Jean-Claude Thibaut, who, on his way from Papua New Guinea, coincidently had also stopped over in Bahrain.

Chalmers had first met him nearly twenty years ago, while they were both speakers at a national conference sponsored by the American Society of Landscape Architects. They shared an educational background in Brussels, a landscape fondness for the Alps, and a fundamental agreement on the importance of integrating ethnobotanical cultural roots into contemporary landscape design.

When Chalmers explained he was on the way to the UAE to fix a project in the Empty Quarter, Jean-Claude told him about related research he had done there in the past five years. For both, this was a welcome coincidence. Jean-Claude adjusted his schedule; and they agreed to meet up in the next week to visit the Empty Quarter together and compare notes.

Jean-Claude Thibaut, a forty nine year old Belgian, was a confirmed bachelor who found his pleasures in the ‘hair-shirt’ explorations of cultures, of marginal groups just outside the edge of mainstream society, people still in contact with the land, with the old ways–Bedu, Berbers, Calusa fisherfolk descendants, true Gypsies.

He examined human relationships with plants, through landscape, language, music, life. He was a very broad scale ethnobotanist. He did not write for publication, did not have a PhD; but, he did maintain extensive multimedia digital archives, all collected first-hand:  stories, songs, movies, images, along with plant related artifacts, such as amulets, charms, talismans.

Born into a wealthy entrepreneurial Belgian family, he took birth in the Belgian Congo where he spent the early years of his childhood. He was a polyglot graduate of international schools in Brussels and Gstaad. Following formal education at the University of London, he had travelled and visited all major botanical institutions in Africa and South America, gathering ethnobotanical information before his first post with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Ultimately, he became a director there. He had since retired to focus full-time on his personal research activities.

At five foot eleven and 165 pounds, he looked popularly slender and athletically lean. He had a self-effacing presence, and a manner of dress and hygiene uniquely making him as at home meeting and greeting in a five star Monte Carlo resort, as in a majlis tent on the edge of the Empty Quarter. He was not shy about sharing the realities of the groups he studied–‘over the edge’ would be the polite way to describe his unusual first hand experiences of old, almost forgotten ways of human interactions with plants in the landscape.

Between Chalmers and Jean-Claude, despite their substantial grounds of agreement, were interlaced threads of ambiguous tension, mostly friendly, mostly the subtleties of hidden cross-cultural joking. Those subtleties were built from Jean-Claude’s obsessive frequenting of the boundary edges between humans and plants, inspired originally by his attraction to the writings of William Blake, Aldous Huxley, Carlos Castenada.

Jean-Claude was an explorer. Chalmers was a builder. They were friends, even though their clatteringly different approaches to the landscape often belied that friendship. Nevertheless, Jean-Claude was happy to see Chalmers and greeted him saying, “Well, my old friend, here we are together in the Middle East! Do not tell me you are about to become, once again, the ‘Surveyor of Fabric’ on some new mind boggling landscape extravaganza?!”

  • Spike Lounge
  • The Walk
  • Rub Al Khali Coastal
  • Rub Al Khali Inland
  • Liwa Qsar
  • The Nursery
  • Finding Majlis
  • Library Majlis
  • Villa Majlis
  • Long and Short
  • Pilgrimage
  • Wanderweg
  • Appendix 1:  Berner Oberland Back Story
  • Author’s Notes
  • Plant List
  • Colophon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(to be continued)

© 2015 Edward Flaherty

**Blatant Plug: If you find this writing about humans and landscape intriguing, please share it with your like-minded friends. Thank you.**

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Passion…obsession…chiaroscuro

by

Landscape is all of these–all the time–stirring–changing…and so I must write.

And so it is, too, for Erik Chalmers, the protagonist in The 23 Club, himself strangely attracted to the mysterious Empty Quarter…despite the exhilarating life around his home in the Berner Oberland of the Swiss Alps.

Only his obsession with landscape, to build captivating gardens, could drive him to this place, the Empty Quarter, a place historically incapable of supporting life!

This is Erik Chalmers’ landscape journey into the Empty Quarter. This is the Rub al Khali. With its own chiaroscuro, this beast turns obsession inside out.

The 23 Club is a landscape story. It is fiction from fact. It is chiaroscuro. Erik Chalmers’ journey through geography…through history…at best, like the story itself…chiaroscuro…always a blur, always a hope–for clarity, for an inspirational result.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The 23 Club

Immersed in the contemporary culture of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, against the backdrop of the Empty Quarter, The 23 Club tells the inside story of how an iconic project gets built in the oil rich, Gulf region of the Arabian Peninsula.

Table of Contents

  • Desertification
  • It’s 2AM
  • Spike Lounge
  • The Walk
  • Rub Al Khali Coastal
  • Rub Al Khali Inland
  • Liwa Qsar
  • The Nursery
  • Finding Majlis
  • Library Majlis
  • Villa Majlis
  • Long and Short
  • Pilgrimage
  • Wanderweg
  • Appendix 1:  Berner Oberland Back Story
  • Author’s Notes
  • Plant List
  • Colophon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(to be continued)

Empty Quarter: exotica

by

Dhows still ply the Arabian Peninsular waters today, albeit with diesel engines in their holds.

On the edges of the Rub al Khali, dhows have always carried information and goods along what we all have known as the ‘Spice Route’.

For millennia, dhows traversed these barely habitable edges of the Arabian Peninsula and the Empty Quarter creating at the ports, point concentrations for massive flows–massive flows of information and exotic goods–which exotic goods you ask?  Let your dreams be your guide.

Dhows have always bounced port by port along the edges of the Empty Quarter.

Little wonder why Westerners have been attracted inland from these ports…inland in the southern Arabian Peninsula to discover something richer than mirage–to explore what must be mysterious history, paths, journeys, routes–answers in the shifting sands of the Empty Quarter.

The Relinking Chain

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For seven hundred years the local Berner Oberland farmers have organized, and agreed how to manage this mountain landscape, rich in water and soil, but limited in arable land.

The food chain of Berner Oberland sustainable agriculture has worked for nearly a millennium.

Now over the last century, the advent of tourism–itself is a mark of increasing affluence–has thrown a bunch of new challenges at these farmers. They continue to work through them.

But the landscape–look at it–it is cared for–the animals are cared for–it is beautiful and beautifully managed. This image depicts the essence of human stewardship of the landscape.

Where is the Water

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When I look at these Berner Oberland landscapes–filled with fresh water, snow, ice, I am amazed by their inherent wealth and health. I am awed by their physical presence.

For decades I lived around that Empty Quarter arid sand desert of my most recent posts; but I needed refreshment, I needed recharge, so I regularly retreated to these water rich mountains.

These two geographies, one lifeless and the other full of life, put me in contact with the extreme ends of the water continuum of life.

Landscape astounds me.

Landscape journeys enthrall me.

Chase the Water

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In the 1980s, on the Red Sea coast side of the Hejaz mountains in Saudi Arabia, I worked for four years and never saw rain.

The 1980s Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Western Region shepherds, the goatherds had, as Bedouins always had, steered their flocks toward the parts of the landscape that had cloud bursts or rainstorms most recently. In the 1980s they used Toyota trucks as their primary mode of transportation.

It was always about chasing the water. Water was unpredictable and transient. Transient forbs and grasses were located differently every year, every season. Life depended on successful reading the landscape.

But this wasn’t the Empty Quarter.

The Empty Quarter was empty, why? Because no one could read the landscape, no one could read the water. No life. Empty.

Hejaz, Tihama

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Not every desert in the Arabian Peninsula is sand.

The house, the human shelter in this photo sits where the Hejaz mountains fold down onto the flat Tihama coastal plain. The house’s position in the landscape tells the story of: water–there is life; and no water–no life.

In the mid 1980s I lived on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia,  in the Western Region. The area is known historically as the Hejaz after the mountains running north from Jeddah, parallel to the Red Sea coast. This is the region of Mecca and Medina. And the Hejaz mountains divide the Tihama, the coastal plain influenced by the Red Sea from the inland deserts, Nafud, and Nejd.

The first time I heard the phrase in the above image caption, ‘no water–no life’ was in Morocco in the early 1970s. I was sitting with a group of people including a young Moroccan man, from Meknes, whose family originally had been farmers in Taza. He said, “Without water there is no life and no cleanliness.”

Between Nejd and Nafud

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In the Nejd and Nafud deserts, it was these sand dune beauties that called…that seemed to be the emissaries of the Empty Quarter, the Rub Al Khali, the world’s largest contiguous sand desert, located in the southern Arabian Peninsula, to the south east of the Asir Mountains and north of Yemen and Oman.

In the 1980s, while living and working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I travelled the triangle from Jeddah to Riyadh to Medina, touching the edges of the Nejd and Nafud deserts, and then via the Red Sea coast back to Jeddah.  There were always somewhere in the landscape…sand dunes–not always continuous but amongst rocky plains and stony mountains, sand dunes tucked here and there.

Somehow these sand dune emissaries had moved north on their own from the Empty Quarter, and I must say–they began as magnetic attractions for my eyes.

But also their landscape stories, their landscape reputations became magnetic attractions through the ears as heard by St. John Philby, Bertram Thomas, Richard Francis Burton, Wilfred Thesiger, Gertrude Bell and T.E. Lawrence–all authors, all travelers, all mesmerized into their own Arabian Peninsula sand dune desert explorations.