Does the high expat and transitive population in the Gulf have an impact on implementing sustainable design?
Certainly in the last 20 or 30 years there has been the import of expats to be involved in the building of these cities. With them of course they have brought their own ways of life but they have also just brought the buildings of the west. Unfortunately, the buildings of the western models were developed when sustainability was not such a great concern. Also the Bauhaus modern movement from the 1920s had a particular issue. It wanted to be universal and it wanted to be technical. It had no great concern for culture or context and so these two pivotal considerations were never emphasised. Space was regarded as being universal, transcending culture and place. Now this mindset can no longer be substantiated and supported. We have to design within context and so at this time one of the problems of inheritance of the expat is that we have brought 20th Century unsustainable models which are now causing us problems. It’s not only here, they are causing the main problems throughout the world.
