Fabian Schroder

Plastic Habitat

Instead of merely taking up space, we cultivate and inhabit the world that surrounds us. Our settlements, often wedged in hostile environments, pursue fantasies of homely places yet to come. Dubai’s new master planned communities reflect upon these ideas of residential utopias, resisting the inhospitable conditions and provide a secluded “home” for a rather privileged minority. In the barren vastness of the coastline, a sleek seriality of townhouses drowns us in clear-cut angles and geometries; and the desert – once a feared antagonist – is put in place, ironically by tamed structures of a former ‘wild’ nature. Marcel Wrzesinski