The Pietiläs' and BBPR’s projects for the Deira Corniche in Dubai, 1974

In July 1974, the Dubai Municipality invited a selected group of international architects to the competition for a new master plan for the sea waterfront in the Deira neighborhood. Among them, the Finnish architects Reima and Raili Pietilä, the Italian group BBPR, and former Le Corbusier’s collaborator George Candilis. In those years, following the discovery of oil in 1966, Dubai was undergoing a very fast urban development, quickly transforming the small village of traders and pearl divers in a new capital of the Arab world. The program outlined by the Municipality followed the guidelines settled by Dubai’s second masterplan of 1971, designed by British architect John Harris, which proposed an expansion of the two old city’s cores of Bur Dubai and Deira alongside the Creek. According to the municipality, the primary goals were the enhancement of the quality of urban life, creating visual and mental recreation for the inhabitants and an “environment of functional beauty”. The Pietiläs’ proposal stood out above all the other entries. The project considered the whole urban agglomeration of Dubai and proposed a balanced rational expansion, envisaging for the first time the creation of artificial islands and canals. A futuristic innovative vision was combined with a contextualist approach respectful of the local culture and climate conditions. Despite this, Pietiläs’ proposal was not awarded, and after a first phase in which the municipality seemed to appreciate BBPR’s entry, George Candilis’ project was finally chosen. This paper presents, through unpublished documentation coming from the archives of the Museum of Finnish Architecture in Helsinki and from the BBPR archives in Milan, the visionary project by Reima and Raili Pietilä and the more pragmatic proposals of the other participants, in the complex framework of the urban landscape and the built heritage of Dubai. The Pietiläs proposed an innovative “culturalist” strategy for a controlled development respectful of the human values, in order to allow a more balanced urban growth. This approach should nowadays be remembered as a main requirement for a re-planning of the fragmented urban agglomeration of the contemporary Dubai.