The most grandiose architectural project of modern times has been unveiled by Saudi Arabia. Could The Line – a city of 9 million people living in two mirrored skyscrapers stretching the length from Timaru to Christchurch – teach New Zealand something about the future? Chris Hyde reports.
The goal is to create an urban utopia. But the reality would be nothing more than a giant land-stricken cruise ship, says a New Zealand architecture professor.
Bill Mackay, senior lecturer in architecture and planning at the University of Auckland, says Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s cutting-edge city of The Line would be a place that could never live up to expectations.
Skeptics and supporters alike got a closer look this week at the development’s extraordinary ambition – the centerpiece of the futuristic Neom site near the Gulf of Aqaba.
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Neom has released a series of publicity images to guide The Line’s development in Saudi Arabia.
According to the Saudis, artificial intelligence will be central to how people live in the 500-meter-high, 200-meter-wide structure, a car-free, carbon-neutral bubble that will boast near-total sustainability and a temperate, regulated microclimate.
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But Mackay has doubts. It would be elitist, he says, but dozens of workers are still needed to keep the residents satiated.
And he says the designers seem to have ignored one of nature’s main tenants — that straight lines like railroads, highways, and walls are bad for it.
“It all looks delicious. But utopias are just too complicated for humans. They never work out.”
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The Line is said to be Saudi Arabia’s most ambitious project to date.
The desert climate of Saudi Arabia is characterized by one factor in particular: extreme heat. To counter this, the mirrors on the outside of the skyscrapers reflect it away from the buildings within The Line.
Mackay said the mirrors could have all sorts of consequences, given how huge they’re supposed to be.
“About 15 years ago there was a mirrored glass building in downtown Hastings that did a good job melting down objects in the shop across the road.
“These things have influence whether the architects want to deny it or not.”
Architect and senior lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington Guy Marriage said he would expect temperatures in the desert around The Line, already oppressive, to double in areas where the sun is reflected from the mirrors.
“It’s already so scalding hot there. And you’re going to double the temperature abroad in the area — it’ll probably melt the sand into glass.”
Marriage said that while he thought The Line would never be built, let alone finished, there were clever design elements incorporated into it.
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Saudi Arabia has created a utopia with The Line, but people cannot create utopias, says Bill Mackay.
“In Arab countries, there is a real problem with linear glass and plate glass because their buildings reflect things badly and the light bounces off each of them and off the roads, making it a really unpleasant place to be outside.
“It’s pretty smart to put all the mirror glass on the outside and have people in the shade in there, and then one linear transport system in the middle makes it pretty durable.”
New Zealand had no issues with heat and would therefore never need, let alone afford, a project like The Line, but it was a bit of a wake-up call for us, Marriage said.
“I think New Zealand needs to start taking its architecture much more seriously.
“I think architecture sometimes solves the world’s problems. In the case of The Line, it’s an answer that wasn’t really that big of a deal, but at least it’s an answer.
“We need to get the whole conversation going in public about medium-density housing – what we want and how we want to live – because we know we can’t live in a tiny suburban house on Mt Victoria anymore.
“We need to densify, and very smartly, so that we don’t end up with really awful places to live. We still need to think a lot about our architecture.”
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New Zealand architects say The Line may look nice, but there are both practical and ethical concerns with its design.
Professor Simon Kingham of the School of Earth & Environment at the University of Canterbury said The Line could teach New Zealand a thing or two.
“One of the most important parts of it is that it’s a linear community built around transportation. And interestingly enough, if you look back in history, when we didn’t have the private motor vehicle and especially railroads, our communities looked like they were linear communities.
“So in that respect it could be quite efficient. It’s almost like going back to the past to think about the future.
“We’re already trying to create a society where we don’t rely so much on private cars.
“And it’s clear that it’s easier to place your infrastructure in one line.
“It has some potential — some of the fundamentals are quite interesting.”
Kingham said one example of where New Zealand could benefit from smaller-scale linear development is between Hamilton and Auckland, where regular rail traffic flows.
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The line would extend 170 km from the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia.
But architect and urban design lecturer at Victoria University, Fabricio Chicca, who specializes in the environmental impacts of urban development, is more damning in his assessment.
Chicca said that the production of The Line would have a much greater impact on the environment than the construction of a normal densely populated city, due to the challenge of verticalizing the infrastructure.
Sure, there might be more walking and no cars, but this didn’t make it sustainable, he said.
“That claim of sustainability is, excuse my French, bulls….I haven’t seen anything of the plans so far that suggests it will happen.”
Chicca said Middle Eastern cities were particularly dense, all the way back to Mesopotamia, before the arrival of oil and the automobile spread them.
The solution was to stare them in the face from both the past and present, not the future, he said.
“For example, if you go to Morocco, which is not Middle East but has similar weather, their medinas are amazing and very dense areas where people live and live with very low environmental impact. All the shade they generate allows people to walk.
“But that doesn’t get any publicity for Saudi Arabia, does it? To me, this is just another gasoline dollar fantasy.”