DUBAI E TH OF STREET ART RISE
RTIST STREET ASANCHEZ RUBEN
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The All New
CONTENTS / SEPTEMBER 2014
40 32
Exploring Berwick Street, one of the most exciting streets in London’s Soho
59
French pianist and composer Christophe Chassol reveals his favourite tracks
48 43
Our verdict on Glasgow’s Hotel du Vin
Chatting with Rod White, the man at the helm of Edinburgh Chef Liam indie cinema Smith shares Filmhouse his favourite places to eat in Istanbul
50
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Our comprehensive guide to Kolkata
A new creative space in Dubai celebrating Emirati culture and heritage
contents / september 2014
94
The Urban Farmers
front (19) Calendar The Grid The Question The Street Skypod
21 28 30 32 40
The Room Consume BLD Mapped Local Knowledge
main (67) Dubai Street Art Our Woman In... Buenos Aires Behold The Bionic Man The Urban Farmers
43 47 50 53 59
briefing (107) 68 78 84 94
News Comfort Visas & UAE Smart Gate Route Map The Fleet Last Look
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108 118 120 122 128 130
edItor-In-CHIeF ManaGInG partner & GroUp edItor edItorIal dIreCtor GroUp edItor edItor desIGner sUB edItor edItorIal assIstant edItorIal Intern
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ContrIBUtors Andrew Birbeck, Felix Busso, Gemma Correll, Noah Davis, Naima Green, hg2.com, Melodie Jeng, Jamie Knights, Danna Lorch, Declan McGarvey, Louis Pattison, Robbie Porter, REM, Paddy Smith, Paul Sterry Head oF prodUCtIon S Sunil Kumar senIor prodUCtIon ManaGer C Sudhakar assIstant prodUCtIon ManaGer R Murali Krishnan
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EDITOR’S LETTER
W Gareth Rees, Editor
“I WOULD GRAB A PLASTIC SCOOP AND SPEND A GOOD 10 MINUTES DECIDING WHICH OF THE 30 OR SO VARIETIES OF PICK ‘N’ MIX TO SHOVEL INTO MY PAPER BAG” NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUR IPAD!
facebook.com/ twitter.com/ openskiesmagazine openskiesmag
hen I was younger, five or so, I loved sweets (candy, as many of you probably call them). I still do, but my teeth don’t, so, like so many things – bread, pasta, jam doughnuts – I no longer indulge. Well, not often. Anyway, once a week, if I was lucky, I would find myself at the local Post Office-sweet shop, and my mum would throw me 10p or so to keep me occupied while she posted some letters or did whatever adults did in local Post Offices when they still existed in the UK. For that amount, even back in the 1980s, the options were limited – or they were if you stuck to branded packets of sweets. Always a deep thinker, rather than settling for one flavour or texture, I would grab a plastic scoop and spend a good 10 minutes deciding which of the 30 or so varieties of pick ‘n’ mix to shovel into my paper bag. Ensuring the correct balance of favourites and first-time picks is an art form, and it took dedication to ensure satisfaction. Why am I banging on about the skills required to create the perfect bag of pick ‘n’ mix? Well, because this month’s issue of Open Skies is just that – a pick ‘n’ mix. There is no theme or thread linking the main stories. For our cover story on Dubai’s nascent street art scene, Danna Lorch tracked down the artists and passionate supporters driving the steady expansion of the street art culture in the city. Many people, whether they have set foot in Dubai or not, have a clear vision of the city we call home. Luxury hotels, vast shopping malls, spas, fast cars, lavish lunches and sumptuous brunches, etc – all of these things can be found here. But Dubai also has a lot more to offer, not least a burgeoning art scene, which we have celebrated before. Nevertheless, even I was surprised to discover that street art is not only being practised in Dubai, but is being supported by several high-profile
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ON THE COVER / Our cover feature focuses on Dubai’s street art culture, so it was only right to dedicate this month’s cover to a piece of public art. Art doesn’t create itself, so we have also featured the artist, Ruben Sanchez, one of the international talents currently working in Dubai.
people, including members of the royal family. Where do we go from there? Technology, of course. In his enthralling, and slightly worrying, piece on the potential of bionics to change the way we think about the human body and what it is capable of, ‘Behold The Bionic Man’, our favourite technology junkie, Paddy Smith, explores the possibility that all of us could one day be able to run as fast as Usain Bolt or play the trumpet like Dizzy Gillespie. From street art in the Middle East and the rise of the bionic man, we, naturally, move on to farming in America, where Brooklyn native and regular contributor to Open Skies, Noah Davis, met some of the passionate people behind America’s urban farming revolution. It turns out that farming in American cities is rampant, and Noah, as always, has done a fine job of telling the story of the movement’s emergence, growth and future. Enjoy the issue.
CONTRIBUTORS
SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO HELPED CREATE THIS MAGAZINE
PADDY SMITH
Paddy has been plugged into the electrifying world of technology since an early age, and his analysis of the industry has been sought by everyone from Disney to the BBC. In 2006, Paddy launched gadget monthly Stuff in the Middle East before returning to the UK to transform the brand’s website, Stuff.tv, into a globally renowned technology portal. In this issue, he explores the rise of the bionic man. “Asking a prosthetist if he would cut my legs off is one of the strangest questions I’ve asked in an interview,” he says.
NOAH DAVIS
Noah is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York. He has reported from a coup in Honduras, a riot in Ukraine and Columbus, Ohio, and written for outlets including The New Yorker, New York Magazine and Men’s Journal. In this issue, he met some of the dedicated folks driving America’s urban farming revolution. “Reporting this piece gave me an intimate insight into the difficulties of urban farming and the reality of how important it might be to our future,” he says.
DANNA LORCH
Danna is a Dubaibased writer who blogs about contemporary Middle Eastern art and pop culture at dannawrites. com. Her work has been published in The National, Vogue (India), Style. Com/Arabia and Uncommon Dubai. Danna holds a graduate degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. “When I drove through the desert to Sya and Bow’s villa in Jumeirah Village Triangle, I expected a typical suburban cookie cutter home,” she says. “Instead, I discovered a pantry stacked with cans of spray paint and a 20 metre wall in the backyard covered in fresh writing.”
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DECLAN MCGARVEY
From his base in Buenos Aires, Declan works as a writer and news correspondent, contributing predominantly to UK media, including The Times, The Sunday Times and the BBC. In addition, he is author of the DK Eyewitness travel guidebooks to Buenos Aires and Argentina. For this issue, Declan visited the studio of Argentinian conceptual artist Marta Minujín for our ‘Our Woman In’ feature. “There is a huge wow factor about Marta. She is art royalty and five decades of her work cram her Buenos Aires studio,” he says.
OPEN SKIES / SEPTEMBER 2014
FELIX BUSSO
Félix is a fashion and lifestyle photographer based in Buenos Aires. His work has been published in Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan and Travel + Leisure, among other titles. He also works in other mediums. For this issue, Felix photographed Argentinian conceptual artist Marta Minujín. “I told Marta I was about to launch an artistic travel project and invited her to the opening,” he says. “She raised her hands and, shaking them vigorously, said, ‘Let there be positive vibrations for you and your project! Positive energy! Positive energy!’ I closed my eyes and felt the blessing.”
Ronald Codrai Š TCA Abu Dhabi
Qasr al Hosn: The Story of Abu Dhabi and its People A permanent exhibition accompanied by a public programme of talks and workshops. For more information, please call 02 697 6472 or email qasralhosn@tcaabudhabi.ae Qasr al Hosn Centre, Abu Dhabi 09:00 – 20:00
qasralhosnfestival.ae visitabudhabi.ae
Berwick Street One of the most exciting streets in London’s Soho neighbourhood
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front ISTANBUL: Chef Liam Smith shares his favourite places to eat in Turkey’s largest city DUBAI: A new cultural space celebrating art, architecture, design, knowledge, debate and good coffee
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september
CALENDAR
August 29 to september 1, Colorado, USA
August 28 to September 8, Jalisco, mexico
International Mariachi Festival
teLLUrIDe FILm FestIVAL
The International Mariachi Festival brings close to 500 mariachi groups from around the world to Guadalajara, the capital of Mexico’s state of Jalisco. Formerly made up of only string instruments, the colourful mariachi groups of today also include bass and trumpets. The festival comprises galas, concerts, exhibitions, competitions and a parade. mAriACHi-JAliSCo.Com.mx
Now in its 41st year, the Telluride Film Festival continues to thrive despite the fact the entire screening list is kept a secret until the opening day. Hosted in the Colorado mountain town of Telluride, the festival is a huge draw on the international film festival circuit. With an impressive back catalogue of films such as Slumdog Millionaire, The King’s Speech, Brokeback Mountain and The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, the festival provides an excellent launching platform for premiere films. TellUrideFilmFeSTivAl.org
August 30 to September 1, Seattle, USA
Bumbershoot August 29 to september 7, Kerala, india
ONAm
Touted as Kerala’s largest and most important festival, onam is a tradition that dates back to around 800 Ad. The festival celebrates the region’s harvest and the return of the mythical King mahabali, with the lively and brightly coloured celebrations lasting 10 days. Traditions of the festival include an 11-course feast featuring local dishes eaten off banana leaves, the construction of stunning carpets made entirely from flowers and a ‘snake boat’ race. The most striking aspect of the festival is a large parade complete with caparisoned elephants and participants painted as tigers.
Seattle’s Bumbershoot Festival is one of North America’s largest music and arts festivals. The festival began in 1971 and is hosted at the city’s expansive 74-acre Seattle Centre and brings together music performances, comedy acts, theatre, film, visual arts and literature with an emphasis on presenting artists and performers from Seattle and neighbouring regions. Bumbershoot is an environmentally friendly festival with all electricity used to run the festival 100 per cent hydroelectric and renewable. This year’s headliners include Foster the People, J. Cole and Wu-Tang Clan. bUmberSHooT.org
oNAmFeSTivAl.org
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SEPTEMBER
CALENDAR
September 3 to 7, Pula, Croatia
OUTLOOK FESTIVAL
Held in Fort Punta Christo – a dilapidated, abandoned fort and the beaches that surround it – Outlook Festival boasts DJ sets staged in a moat and within remaining parts of the fort. Organisers describe the festival as a celebration “exploring the musical genealogy that connects Jamaican roots music to its modern day counterparts”. This year’s lineup includes Lauryn Hill, Busta Rhymes and Andy C. OUTLOOKFESTIVAL.COM
September 4 to 7, Isle of Wight, UK
Bestival
Held on the Isle of Wight, the annual Bestival has accomplished a lot since its humble start in 2004; the festival has grown dramatically in size, attracting crowds of over 50,000. Bestival has a different theme each year, which is reflected in the set design, and festivalgoers are encouraged to wear fancy dress. Sir Elton John performed for the festival’s 10th anniversary and this year’s line up features La Roux, Outkast, Major Lazer and Basement Jaxx. 2014.BESTIVAL.NET
September 7, Venice, Italy
REGATA STORICA
Venice’s Grand Canal comes alive for the brightly coloured Regata Storica, which dates back to the 13th century. REGATASTORICAVENEZIA.IT
September 6, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Braemar Highland Gathering A tradition for almost 900 years, the Braemar Highland Gathering is Scotland’s most popular Highland Games and is attended by members of the British royal family, including Queen Elizabeth II. Competitors battle in many different disciplines, including Highland dancing, piping, caber tossing and hammer throwing. BRAEMARGATHERING.ORG
Skypod
Christophe Chassol page 40 22
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September
CALENDAR
September 11, ingall, niger
WOODAbe GereWOL & CUre SALÉe
cure salée, also known as the festival of the nomads, occurs every year in the northern town of ingall. attended by a crowd of 50,000 and held between the tuareg and Woodabe tribes, the festival heralds the end of the rainy season, but also serves as an important platform for courtship and marriage. the Woodabe tradition of gerewol sees young tribesmen sing and dance in attempt to impress a panel of potential brides.
September 13 to 21, London, England
London Design Festival Held across the city in six designated design districts, the 12th London Design Festival will feature more than 300 events, exhibitions and workshops by designers, architects and organisations from around the globe and two Landmark Projects – the first a collaboration between designers Barber and Osgerby held at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the second by Airbnb displayed in Trafalgar Square. LondondEsignfEstivaL.com
September 19 to 21, california, Usa
mONtereY JAZZ FeStIVAL
September 13, Paris, france
Paris Techno Parade Drawing a crowd of 400,000, the Paris Techno Parade is one of the largest street parades in Europe. Launched in 1998 as a celebration of electronic dance music, more than 150 DJs perform from large floats driven through the city. Each year the parade embodies a different theme, and this year’s theme is ‘freedom, diversity and rhythmicity’.
in 1958 founder Jimmy Lyons’ vision for a “sylvan setting with the best jazz people in the whole world playing on the same stage, having a whole weekend of jazz” came to fruition in the form of the monterey Jazz festival. the non-profit festival donates all profits to funding jazz music education through various programmes and camps. over the course of the weekend more than 500 international artists perform across eight stages. montErEyJazzfEstivaL.org
tEchnoParadE.fr
mapped
Kolkata page 53 24
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September
CALENDAR
September 21, Yucatan, Mexico
AUtUmN eQUINOX At CHICHeN ItZA
Each autumn thousands of people gather at the Mayan archaeological site of Chichen Itza to watch triangular shadows cascade down El Castillo, the pyramid-like structure onsite. The shadows form the body of a feathered serpent and give the impression the body is snaking its way down the side of the structure, which then connects with a snakehead sculpture at the base of the pyramid.
September 20 to October 5, Munich, Germany
Oktoberfest
First held in 1810 as part of the wedding festivities of King Ludwig I, the initial Oktoberfest was actually a horse race, but evolved over the years to become a celebration of Bavarian beer and cuisine. The event moved from October to September to capitalise on the warmer weather and longer days in September. Lasting two weeks, the festival is predominantly attended by Germans but also attracts a large international contingent from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, America and East Asia. The festival is housed in many different sized tents in a large showground called Theresienwiese. OkTObErfEST.DE
September 28, Tarragona, Spain,
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Galway International Oyster Festival, which has grown significantly in size over the years, with recent festivals garnering crowds of 22,000. Held over three days, the festival also incorporates a masquerade mardi gras and the World Oyster Opening Championship.
Concurs de Castells is a biennale event, based on a cultural tradition dating as far back as the 18th century. Drawing close to 6,000 spectators, 32 teams from around Spain compete in Tarragona to build the largest and most complicated human tower. With most towers between six and ten levels high, points are awarded based on the difficulty of the structure. Teams dress in matching colours, with youngest and lightest team members climbing to the top of the structure and the heaviest, strongest team members positioned at the bottom. UNESCO declared Concurs de Castells an event of Cultural and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2010.
GalWaYOYSTErfEST.COM
CONCUrSDECaSTEllS.CaT
September 25 to 28, Galway, Ireland
Galway International Oyster Festival
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IMaGE: CONCUrSDECaSTEllS08
CONCUrS De CASteLLS
Set sail on the ultimate ride on the Burj Lake, home to the world’s largest performing fountain. Board a traditional Abra and enjoy a breathtaking show of sights and sounds from the heart of Downtown Dubai. Get up close to the iconic Burj Khalifa as The Dubai Fountain Lake Ride promises an experience of a lifetime.
800 BURJ (2875) | www.burjkhalifa.ae
THE GRID September 10 Lady Gaga’s Atrave: The Artpop Ball World Tour Dubai, UAE
THE THREE BIGGEST EVENTS TAKING PLACE IN THE UAE THIS MONTH...
Meydan Racecourse will host Lady Gaga and her ‘Little Monsters’ for the pop star’s first Dubai performance. Ticket prices start at Dhs495. ticketmaster.ae
September 17 to 20 Dubai Music Week Dubai, UAE
September 24 to 27 Dubai International Dance Festival Dubai, UAE
Comprising concerts, exhibitions and conferences, Dubai Music Week brings together worldrenowned performers, music labels, producers, industry professionals and local talent, providing a platform for the celebration of the Middle East. Last year’s event saw performances from Selena Gomez, Will.i.am and Timbaland, and more big names are expected at this year’s event. dubaimusicweek.com
Taking place at Dubai’s Jebel Ali Beach Hotel and multiple other venues across the city, the Dubai International Dance Festival showcases and celebrates dancers from around the world, as well as offering workshops in salsa, tango, live music, capoeira, hip-hop, bachata, African dance and belly dancing. dubaidancefestival.com
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the question
WHY DO WE HAVE PETS? On the face of it, this is a relatively simple question to answer. The provision of companionship, the excuse to exercise (obviously not for those with a goldfish), and, in the case of caring parents, to teach children the skills needed to care for a living creature, are all obvious reasons for owning a pet. But the fact that we have become so besotted with our animals is an issue that warrants closer inspection. A negative has been that in embracing other species we have added to the list of viruses and diseases suffered by our species. Our close interaction with dogs, poultry, cattle and horses has led to humans catching everything from measles and tuberculosis to the common cold. It would be tough to argue that the benefits haven’t outweighed the negatives though, and the relationship between humans and animals began far back in our history. As we evolved, we used animals as tools, realising the value of various species as we studied
them. In an effort to give yourself best chance of survival you, of course, keep your tools in good condition – in the case of animal tools this equates to feeding and housing them. In his book, The Animal Connection, Pat Shipman argues that humankind’s desire to have pets – what he calls “animal connection” – is a trait born out of other human characteristics such as the use of tools, the use of symbolism and ritual (in which animals were often portrayed or used), and the domestication of other species for food, e.g. chickens for eggs or goats for milk. Not only has this had a profound effect on the animals we have chosen as pets, but the evolution of human nature as well.
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TWITTER Q&A Mission Mexican Festival explains itself in 140 characters or less @OpenSkiesMag: What is the Mission Mexican Festival? @MMexicanFest: Hola @ OpenSkiesMag Mission Mexican Festival is the celebration of Mexican Independence Day. @OpenSkiesMag: When is the Festival and where is it held? @MMexicanFest: It is on Sunday 14th September from 11am to 8 pm at Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia. @OpenSkiesMag: Is there an admission charge for entry to the Festival? @MMexicanFest: It’s a free family event. Everyone is welcome. Lots of Mexican Food from the best Mexican restaurants in Melbourne. @OpenSkiesMag: Can you tell us a bit about the food you will be serving up? @MMexicanFest: We will have many different Mexican restaurants all serving Mexican dishes: tacos, tamales, tostadas, vegetarian options. @OpenSkiesMag: What are some of the Festival highlights? @MMexicanFest: Live stage performers: Mariachi, Folk dance, baila fitness, Salsa Band LA 45, Mexican Rock bands. Kid’s Corner, art exhibition. @OpenSkiesMag: Tell us about the art exhibition. @MMexicanFest: It’s an exhibition by local Mexican artist at the Atrium in Fed Square, featuring paintings, photography, sculptures and art craft. @OpenSkiesMag: Who do you have performing this year? @MMexicanFest: Mariachi Los Romanticos, Sin Frontera Band, Abbie Cardwell & The Chicano Rockers, Salsa Band LA 45, Baila Fitness & many more. @MMexicanFest: We invite everyone to enjoy a Mexican celebration full of flavour, music and lots of fun.
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the street
Berwick Street, London Words by Gareth Rees / Images by REM
If you are in central London and you find yourself trapped amid the chain stores and foot traffic of Oxford Street, take a turn west and escape on to Berwick Street, which, extending deep into the heart of the West End’s infamous Soho neighbourhood, will give you a much more authentic taste of what London is all about. The street’s history can be traced back to the 18th century, and is the location of Soho’s two oldest shops: antique lighting store W Sitch & Co and Borovick Fabrics. The street is historically best-known for the popular Berwick Street Market, where fruit and vegetables have been sold since the 1770s, but also its connection to the fashion and textile trade and the music industry. Berwick Street is now home to tailors, fashion brands, vintage stores, record shops, restaurants and cafés, famous public houses – The Green Man, at 57 Berwick Street, occupies a spot that has been occupied by a pub since the early 18th century – fabric shops and haberdasheries and many other independent businesses. Like many Soho streets, Berwick Street has its own unique character (and characters), shaped by its long and storied history, and its boutiques, cafés and restaurants, supported by the local community, offer more than enough to keep you occupied for a full morning or afternoon of shopping, exploring and imbibing.
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Sister Ray In the 1980s Berwick Street was heralded as ‘the golden mile of vinyl’, and, fortunately, despite a number of the neighbourhood’s most beloved stores closing down, Soho is still a utopia for vinyl junkies. Dedicated crate diggers should also visit Phonica, Sounds Of The Universe and BM Soho, on nearby Poland Street, Broadwick Street and D’Arblay Street respectively, as well as Music And Video Exchange and Reckless Records, on Berwick Street, but Phil Barton’s Sister Ray is the largest independent record store in the neighbourhood. Upstairs you will find anything you could possibly want on CD, while the basement is a shrine to new releases, classic LPs, rare pressings and secondhand recordings on vinyl. 34/35 Berwick Street, Soho, London Tel: +44 (0) 2077343297 sisterray.co.uk
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the street
Bang Bang Clothing Exchange Soho ‘Vintage’ was a word that cropped up in pretty much any conversation about fashion during the early 2000s, and people’s love of clothing with a history shows no signs of abating any time soon. As a result, Berwick Street is home to four vintage stores, including Bang Bang Clothing Exchange Soho. There are three Bang Bang stores in London – the original store
can be found on Goodge Street, while the latest addition to the Bang Bang family is located on Drury Lane – but the Berwick Street store, which opened in 2005, is the only one that stocks both men’s (downstairs) and women’s (upstairs) fashion. Refreshingly uncluttered, and stocking an impressive range of retro and vintage clothing and accessories by highstreet and
Flat White This small café, opened in 2005 with the aim of bringing a taste of the thriving coffee culture found in Australia and New Zealand to the British capital, has since gathered a cadre of loyal regulars, mainly coffee loving Londoners working or living in Soho. Despite its name, Flat White serves the full range of coffees, all expertly prepared by the extremely friendly,
passionate and knowledgeable staff, as well as a concise list of breakfast items, including a delicious dish of scrambled eggs on toast to which you should add a portion of chorizo and a portion of avocado. With no WiFi, Flat White is all about taking time out with a first-rate coffee. 17 Berwick Street, Soho, London Tel: +44 (0) 2077340370 flatwhitecafe.com
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designer brands, Bang Bang both buys and sells. If you’re selling, the store’s buyers will offer 25 to 30 per cent of the sale price in cash, or 45 to 50 per cent in store credit, for any items they are interested in. If you’re buying, well, you know how that works. 9 Berwick Street, Soho, London Tel: +44 (0) 2074942042 bangbangclothingexchange.co.uk
the street
Gosh! Gosh!, owned by Josh Palmano, who several years ago transferred the store to Soho from Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury, where it had been doing business for 25 years, caters to serious graphic novel fans, but anyone who loves print will enjoy browsing its well-stocked shelves. On those shelves – filled by Steven Walsh, who oversees the dayto-day running of the store with a small team of knowledgeable staff – you will find everything from superhero titles to children’s books, Manga and hard to find small press titles. The store hosts a regular workshop and discussion group for comic artists, Process, and past events have included books signings by the likes of Watchmen writer Alan Moore, Ghost World creator Daniel Clowes and Kevin O’Neill, illustrator of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Gosh! is a comic book utopia. 1 Berwick Street, Soho, London Tel: +44 (0) 2076361011 goshlondon.com
Soho Bikes The brainchild of Nick Hawker, Tom Hodder and retired pro-mountain biker Rob Warner, Soho Bikes is the new kid on the block, having opened its doors just this year, but it is just the sort of independent enterprise that belongs on
Berwick Street. More than just a bike shop – although the range of mountain bikes and accessories and the workshop will keep all visiting bike nuts happy – Soho Bikes is designed to attract cyclists looking to socialise as well as shop. The store-café holds regular events, and the superb long black, prepared by the
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fully trained baristas, is proof that Nick, Tom and Rob take coffee almost as seriously as they do mountain biking. 26 Berwick Street, Soho, London Tel: +44 (0) 2074399577 sohobikes.co.uk
the street
Percival Independent men’s clothing brand Percival opened its flagship boutique in 2012. Percival’s only outlet, the Berwick Street store is also the brand’s headquarters; the basement houses its studio, where the clothing displayed on the shop floor upstairs is designed. Percival specialises in rethinking classic staples from what it describes as the “everyman wardrobe” – the current collection features an unlined twill trench coat brought up to date with bright orange inside seams and a large inside pocket designed to fit a tablet – and is dedicated to working with local London producers and British materials where possible. The store hosts regular talks and exhibitions.
Oliver Spencer Self-taught tailor and clothing designer Oliver Spencer quit art school to learn his business selling second-hand clothing at London’s famous Portobello Market, before starting his own men’s label in 2002. Since then, he has expanded into women’s clothing, in 2008, and become one of the best-known names in British men’s fashion, renowned for using traditional
techniques to create unique and thoroughly modern pieces. He has three London stores, including the Oliver Spencer boutique on Berwick Street (the other two stores, one men’s wear, one women’s wear, are on Lambs Conduit Street), which stocks items from Spencer’s men’s range.
3 Berwick Street, Soho, London Tel: +44 (0) 2077344533 percivalclo.com
81 Berwick Street, Soho, London Tel: +44 (0) 2072871310 oliverspencer.co.uk
Polpetto Originally opened in 2010 on the first floor of the French House on Soho’s Dean Street, Polpetto closed in 2012, before reopening on Berwick Street in 2013. The 60-seater restaurant in an integral part of Russell Norman and Richard Beatty’s ever-expanding London restaurant empire, which currently encompasses four incarnations of the pair’s bacari-style restaurant, Polpo; a unique take on the American diner, Spuntino; Mishkin’s deli; and the Ape & Bird pub-restaurant. Enjoy a couple of small plates and a glass of something perched at the aperitivo bar, or book the chef’s table and experience the full range on offer from the open kitchen presided over by celebrated chef Florence Knight, whose regularly-changing menus feature simple but beautiful dishes celebrating quality produce. 1 Berwick Street, Soho, London Tel: +44 (0) 2074398627 polpetto.co.uk
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SKYPOD
CHRISTOPHE CHASSOL GENRE: Modern Classical AGE: 38 CITY: Paris
The French pianist and composer shares his favourite tracks
01.
02. 03. 04.
Magma De Futura
Terry Riley & Don Cherry Descending Moonshine Dervishes
I listen to this piece from Magma’s 1976 LP Udu Wudu before I go on stage. It has the most subtle and complex bass line that I know.
A piece from 1982, played solo with organ and tape delay.
Diplo Express Yourself Diplo’s is not the music I’m usually into, but I love it; it’s wild and naughty and cool.
MS Subbulakshmi Kashi Viswanatha Suprabhatham It’s a south Indian devotional song, using the tampura as a bass line, with powerful melodies sung in unison.
05. 06. 07.
08.
Jon Hopkins Open Eye Signal
John Adams The Chairman Dances
Such a clever, hypnotic track. It’s all about the passage between two chords, but you never know when the change is going to come.
Béla Bartok Concerto For Orchestra Part 4
Hubert Laws What Do You Think Of This World Now?
Bartok takes a beautiful tonal theme, and right at the end destroys it with a twisted melody.
My favorite flautist. The mix of the soft voice, the warm Rhodes piano and the alto flute feels just perfect to me.
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OPEN SKIES / SEPTEMBER 2014
Perfect minimalism. Matching a constant pulse with gradual change, it feels fast and slow at the same time. chassol.fr
the Room
TExT: GArETH rEES IMAGES: HOTEL DU VIN, GLASGOW
VETTrIANO SUITE
HOTEL DU VIN, GLASGOW
Part of the Hotel du Vin chain, which boast 15 luxury properties housed in beautiful buildings across the United Kingdom, Glasgow’s Hotel du Vin & Bistro is located in the city’s fashionable West End. Originally opened in One Devonshire Gardens, the 49-room boutique property now occupies a terrace of five listed Victorian buildings – and it is warm, elegant and welcoming throughout, whether you’re enjoying a dram of welcome scotch in front of the fire in the comfortable reception area, a superb cocktail in the bar, a first-class meal in the Bistro or just relaxing in your suite. Unsurprisingly, Hotel du Vin is popular with celebrities, and the impressive duplex Vettriano Suite is named for Scottish painter Jack Vettriano, who has stayed in the room and whose prints are hung on its walls. Upstairs, where a four-poster bed and a freestanding roll top bath add an extra touch of luxury, the large bay windows look out to the tree-lined front of the property, while downstairs is occupied by a grand, sensual, subterranean bathroom with twin monsoon showers.
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INTERNET: Free Wi-Fi BED SIZE: King (four-poster) COMPLIMENTARY SNACKS: none TOILETRY BRAND: Miller Harris EXTRAS: Nespresso machine TV CHANNELS: 17 VIEW: 3/5 RATE: from US$245
THREE NEW HOTEL OPENINGS
the Room
MONDRIAN LONDON London, United Kingdom
Located on the banks of the River Thames in London, the Mondrian London is set to open on September 30. Housed in the iconic Sea Containers building, the hotel exudes 1920s cruise ship glamour and features a seasonal cocktail bar, Dandelyon, overseen by bartender extraordinaire Ryan Chetiyawardana. morganshotelgroup.com
PIKAIA LODGE
RAFFLES ISTANBUL
Set on Santa Cruz Island, in the heart of the Galapagos Islands, Pikaia Lodge is the first carbon neutral hotel in the region and offers extensive access to the stunning scenery and nature in the area with land- and sea-based explorations led by local guides. The Lodge will open on September 29 and is comprised of 12 rooms and two suites and has a restaurant, bar and lounge and spa.
Opening its doors on September 1, Raffles Istanbul, located in the city’s Zorlu Center, draws inspiration from the storied history of Istanbul and embraces the new direction the bustling city is moving in. The hotel features 132 guest rooms and 49 suites as well as two specialty restaurants, two bars and an openair rooftop cinema.
Galapagos Islands, Ecuador
Istanbul, Turkey
raffles.com/istanbul
pikaialodgegalapagos.com
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Open skies / september 2014
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consume albums
LISTEN The Kooks
Indie rock It seems a long time since The Kooks shot to success with their first album, Inside In/ Inside Out, in 2006. Since then the band have released another two albums and have changed their bassist twice. Listen marks a new chapter for The Kooks, with a definitive change in sound. Produced by the band’s front man Luke Pritchard and hip-hop producer Inflo, the album embraces new genres such as blues, funk and gospel.
V Maroon 5
Pop Maroon 5’s fifth album has a heavy 1980s vibe, and includes a collaboration with Gwen Stefani. The band describe it as more “balanced” than their last popheavy album, Overexposed.
EL PINTOR Interpol
alternative rock After a four-year hiatus, Interpol return with their fifth studio album. The band will be touring the US, Canada and the UK until February 2015.
CHEEK TO CHEEK Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga
Vocal jazz Following their collaboration on Bennett’s Grammy Award-winning Duets II, Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett team up to release an album of jazz duets.
books
THE FORBIDDEN GAME: GOLF AND THE CHINESE DREAM Dan Washburn
Non-fiction Dan Washburn chronicles the lives of three very different men all involved in China’s booming golf scene.
PLEASE, MISTER POSTMAN Alan Johnson
memoir The sequel to former UK Home Secretary Alan Johnson’s Orwell Prize-winning memoir, This Boy, Please starts with Johnson working as a postman struggling to support his young family.
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THE DOG Joseph O’Neill
Novel Irish-American writer Joseph O’Neill’s The Dog follows an unnamed protagonist as he moves from New York to Dubai in the wake of a split from his long-term girlfriend where he is asked to do an unusual job for a very wealthy family.
consume THE CINEMA
Filmhouse Edinburgh, Scotland, UK Questions: Andrew Birbeck / Answers: Head of Filmhouse, Rod White
filmhousecinema.com
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ImAgES: FIlmHoUSE
CELEB FAVOURITE / Head of Edinburgh’s Filmhouse, Rod White (pictured), has welcomed several stars to the cinema, including Sean Connery and Jennifer lawrence
You’re known as ‘the man who knows his movies’. When did the love affair with cinema begin and how long have you been involved with Filmhouse? Am I? That’s nice! From as early as I can remember. It’s been this way since I saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the ABC Dundee many years ago. In one capacity or another, from ushering to programming, I’ve been at Filmhouse for 20 years. What makes a brilliant movie? Can you give us a couple of examples, and what sort of films, if any, do you absolutely loathe? Generally, when what it’s about and how it is made is in perfect harmony. The Third Man and Terrence Malick’s Badlands spring to mind. I hate comedies that aren’t funny and boneheaded action films, like The Expendables. The 68th EIFF (Edinburgh International Film Festival) was held recently. How did that go? I’ve done it enough times to know what to expect, so basically you just prepare yourself for 12 16 hour days, get on with it, then collapse at the end. Filmwise, I adored a documentary about salt making in rural India, called My Name Is Salt. I hosted a Skype Q&A with Eddie Izzard as well, and he was an absolute star. How healthy is the Scottish film industry? Can you tell us about some up-and-coming home-grown talent, and who the ones to watch are? There was a handful of very good Scottish films at the festival this year, including A Practical Guide To A Spectacular Suicide and A Dangerous Game, so I’ll be watching out for what Graham Hughes and Anthony Baxter get up to next. More widely, Scott Graham (Shell) and Paul Wright (For Those In Peril) show great promise. You’ve screened some big premieres and had some impressive names come through the doors. Who are the standout stars you’ve met and what made those encounters so memorable? It’s always a pleasure having Sean Connery visit, and Jennifer Lawrence is taller than me in heels. Maggie Cheung smoked in our office post the smoking ban, and Michael Palin is the nicest man in the world. But my favourite moment of all time was a special screening of The Harder They Come with Jimmy Cliff in attendance. The man was a star, and he treated the audience to a capella rendition of Many Rivers To Cross. There was not a dry eye in the house and your actual standing ovation. What makes Filmhouse so special and why visit? It’s a place that lives, breathes and loves cinema, and offers the perfect, relaxed environment to discuss that thought-provoking film you’ve just seen over a meal or a drink.
Aaron Basha Boutique ͻ 685 Madison Avenue ͻ New York ͻ 212.644.1970 ͻ w w w. a a ro n b a s h a . co m Athens
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Istanbul
IMage: La PeTITe MaISon ISTanbuL
Liam Smith Laing, head chef at La Petite Maison Istanbul, reveals his favourite places to eat in the Turkish capital
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Open skies / september 2014
B
l
d
BREAKFAST
LUNCH
DINNER
Cihangir is one of the great areas of Istanbul. Right slap bang in the middle sits the Kardesler Café, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is the café that never sleeps. So very, very cheap, serving endless cups of tea (cay) and pide and lahmacun from their woodfired oven. It’s always packed and is, for me, the best place to people watch in the whole city. I love to go for a Sunday morning brunch with my family and soak up the atmosphere. Lahmacun, a type of thin, crispy Turkish pizza, is a must, and I always order the sucuklu melemen, a spicy mix of peppers, eggs and local sausage. The cay is practically compulsory.
On a quiet side street off bustling Istiklal Avenue exists the best Turkish food I have come across. The locals know it, too, and if you don’t book, it had better be Lady Luck you are dining with. Yeni Lokanta only opened last year, but has quickly established itself at the forefront of new Istanbul cuisine. The food is unmistakably Turkish, but lighter, fresher and more innovative than anything else I’ve tasted here. Try the smoked yoghurt called manti – and the hummus is the best anywhere. In fact, go in a group and try as much as possible – it’s all good.
Dark and chic, Munferit has a great little terrace where all the clientele want to sit. Perfect for a relaxed dinner, it also hits the spot for new wave Istanbul foodies. Go hungry and prepare to be indecisive. The menu is full of small dishes to share, though I always eat big and try as much as possible. Cauliflower salad always gets me thinking of how I can put something similar on my menu without pinching the idea completely, and the ox cheek just melts in your mouth. Waiting staff make good recommendations and are knowledgeable about the food.
UKardesler Café Ağahamam Cad. No: 1, Cihangir, Istanbul Tel: +90 212 251 3696
Yeni Lokanta Kumbaracı Yokuşu No:66, Beyoğlu, İstanbul Tel: +90 212 292 2550 lokantayeni.com
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Münferit Yeni Çarşı Caddesi No: 19, Galatasary, Istanbul Tel: +90 212 252 5067
IT TAKES 10 MINUTES FROM BATIŞEHİR TO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD Lots of privileges await you in Batışehir, such as transportation to Atatürk Airport in just 10 minutes. You will be able to shop for the most fashionable brands, educational needs are taken care of at the Doğa College, enjoy the healthy life with cutting edge sports centers and swimming pools, relish in the comfortable accommodation available at Four Points by Sheraton or relax in the green fields or cafes… Accommodation has started in phase 1 and all these privileges await you in the rest of the development with the opportunity of 1% VAT and 1% down payment.
You can visit our 7B30 numbered booth at Cityscape Global Dubai.
+90 850 222 53 43 batisehir.com The visual material hereinabove has been prepared for presentation purposes and in case of technical requirements, EgeYapı Group and EPP have the right to make all kinds of changes in the project upon the approval of Emlak Konut GYO A.Ş.
mapped SEDAWATTA
01 15
Kadapara
Kolkata
09
Beliaghata
Dharmatala 03 16 05 06 06
11 07
Tangra Beniapukur
02
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Bhawanipur
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Bakul Bagan
Tiljala
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Bosepukur 13
Hotels
Kankulia
Kolkata
1. Swissotel Kolkata (22.623036 , 88.45023)
Bars
Restaurants
Galleries
5. Roxy at The Park Hotel Kolkata (22.554020 , 88.351937)
9. Gucchi at the Hyatt Regency Kolata (22.570633 , 88.405492)
13. Birla Academy of Art & Culture (22.513679 , 88.355414)
Discover the rich and fascinating history of West Bengal with a trip to its vibrant capital, Kolkata.
14. Centre of International Modern Art 10. Bohemian 6. Shisha Reincarnatedesteemed art museums 2. Chrome Home Hotel to an array of cultural attractions, and intellectual institutions, Kolkata 22.538961, 88.364947 (22.529155 , 88.368827) (22.549065 , 88.353673) (22.541246 , 88.355085)
is considered one of India’s most exciting creative hubs. Venture into its core and you’ll find plenty of
11. Plush 7. Virgose 3. The Oberoi Grand Kolkata bustling bars and elegant restaurants, perfect for when the sun, finally, goes down (22.545066 , 88.3536) (22.541009 , 88.350479) (22.561183 , 88.351557) 4. Taj Bengal (22.529131 , 88.336091)
HOteLs 01. swissotel Kolkata 02. Chrome Hotel 03. the Oberoi Grand Kolkata 04. taj bengal
8. Nirvana at Park Plaza Kolkata Ballygunge (22.52299, 88.36364)
12. Oh! Calcutta (22.538366 , 88.35133)
15. Asutosh Museum of Indian Art 22.575263 , 88.362326 16. Indian Museum Kolkata 22.557991 , 88.350903
restaurants
bars
GaLLerIes
05. roxy at the Park Hotel Kolkata 06. shisha reincarnated 07. Virgose 08. nirvana at Park Plaza Kolkata ballygunge
09. Gucchi at the Hyatt regency Kolata 10. bohemian 11. Plush 12. Oh! Calcutta
13.birla academy Of art & Culture 14. Centre Of International Modern art 15. asutosh Museum Of Indian art 16. Indian Museum Kolkata
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Open skies / september 2014
mapped
HOteLs 01 Swissotel Kolkata One of Kolkata’s newest luxury hotels, Swissotel occupies a prime spot in the heart of Rajarhat. Head to the award-winning rooftop Sky Lounge for something cool and refreshing served up alongside panoramic views of the city. swissotel.com/hotels/kolkata 02 Chrome Hotel With individually designed suites, state-of- the-art spa facilities, a 24/7 bistro restaurant, and a rooftop pool and bar area, Chrome Hotel offers a long list of attractions for jet set travellers. chromehotel.in 03 Oberoi Grand Kolkata Both traditional and wonderfully luxurious, the Oberoi Grand has been going strong for more than 125 years. Visit the exquisite spa for a range of restorative Ayurvedic treatments, before heading off to the tranquil outdoor pool. oberoihotels.com/ oberoi_kolkata
BIG HITTER / Kolkata locals enjoy a game of cricket in Maidan Park, overlooked by the Victoria Memorial , one of the city’s most popular attractions
restaurants 05 Guchhi From tasty tandoori plates to mouth-watering curries, classic Indian delicacies are the true stars of the show at Guchhi. Pick a seat near the open kitchen and enjoy your meal alongside some of the culinary theatrics. kolkata.regency.hyatt.com 06 Bohemian Celebrated chef Joy Banerjee excels at creating masterful modern Indian cuisine. Taking inspiration from all over the world, his creative dishes fuse
04 Taj Bengal The lavish property, designed by architect Bob Fox, is one reason to stay at the Taj Bengal. The opulent interiors, grand marble and stone atrium, and lush green grounds are a few others. tajhotels.com
03
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traditional eastern and modern western flavours to create a unique gastronomic experience. chefjoybanerjee.com 07 Plush Contemporary design and attention to detail make Plush a first-class dinner destination in Kolkata. Serving up a taste of the Mediterranean, chef Davide Cananzi is renowned for producing flavours with finesse that match the sophisticated setting. astorkolkata.com 08 Oh! Calutta This restaurant is as much a hit with the locals as it is with visitors seeking an authentic taste of Bengali cuisine. Fragrant dishes like the butterfish and tomato curry will ignite your taste buds. speciality.co.in
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GaLLErIEs 13 Birla Academy Of Art & Culture Supporting modern and traditional artists from across the globe, a trip to the Birla Academy showcases the cultural and artistic heart of Kolkata. birlaart.com
bars 09 Roxy Bar at The Park Hotel A mix of playful 1960s-style and sophisticated wit has cemented Roxy’s place among the top echelons of nightlife entertainment in Kolkata. The extensive cocktail and wine menu, impressive cigar collection and luxurious setting epitomises decadent glamour. theparkhotels.com 10 Shisha Reincarnated Since re-launching in Kolkata a few years ago, Shisha Reincarnated’s offering is stronger than ever. A heady mix of expansive views, eclectic sounds and creative cocktails make this a great place to let your hair down. shishareincarnated.com 11 Virgose The stylish Hotel Hindustan bar provides a nocturnal haven from Kolkata’s busy streets. Relax in the luxurious lounge area and sip on some premium spirits before sauntering over to the hotel’s inhouse nightclub, Underground. hhihotels.com
12 Nirvana Enjoy a wide selection of drinks under the watchful eye of the giant Buddha statue centrepiece at the Park Plaza’s second floor hotel bar. The stylish design, complete with water feature and colourful wall murals, offers a Zen-like ambiance. parkplaza.com
14 Centre Of International Modern Art An unrivalled place to see cuttingedge modern art in Kolkata, with strong ties to leading artists, this a great place to update your knowledge of the evolving local art scene. cimaartindia.com 15 Asutosh Museum Of Indian Art As one of the oldest and most prestigious artistic landmarks in the city, this museum is the best place to learn about Kolkata’s rich cultural heritage. Set in the university grounds, the vast collection charts the fascinating story of eastern art through the ages. www.caluniv.ac.in/museum 16 Indian Museum Kolkata From the 4,000 year-old mummies to archaeological artefacts dating back to ancient times, a trip to the Indian museum uncovers one of the most expansive historical collections in the city, and an unparalleled insight into the primal past of Kolkata. indianmuseumkolkata.org
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Words:hG2.com imaGes: corbis
HEAVY TRAFFIC / Kolkata is the capital of West bengal and one of the largest cities in india
LOCAL KNOwLEDGE
Creekside
A new cultural space beside Dubai Creek aims to celebrate and preserve Emirati culture with good coffee, a menu inspired by traditional Emirati flavours, and a packed cultural programme of workshops and events
T
here must be 20 different routes to Creekside. You can arrive by water in an abra (a traditional wooden boat), or by following the sound of the haunting call to prayer
Words by Danna Lorch / Images by Farooq Salik
at the nearby Grand Mosque. You can stroll through the Dubai Textile Souk, past the lively vendors calling out “Mariah, Shakirah, Beyoncé”, to entice you to bargain for a pair of pointy-toed slippers, a hookah (water pipe) or a soft pashmina.
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Take a lucky wrong turn and you could end up in Indian Alley, a narrow secret passage dotted with stalls of incense and flower offerings, leading to a crowded Hindu temple. The task of finding Creekside is a big part of the experience.
LOCAL KNOwLEDGE
LOCAL CULTURE / Creekside celebrates UAE culture, and chef Allen’s menu is inspired by traditional Emirati flavours
The building is perched on the edge of the docks and originally served as a lighthouse, then a tailor’s workshop, before standing empty for a number of years and ultimately being transformed into its current incarnation this past summer. Pull open the broad wooden doors and step into a serene, minimalist space – part
cultural venue, part café – that complements the endless bustle outside. Visitors sit at simple tables playing backgammon, sharing a meal, or working away on their laptops as outside fishermen, joggers and tourists go about their daily lives. The air smells of cinnamon in promise of generous plates of food to come.
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The ever-evolving menu is inspired by Emirati flavours but with a contemporary, Mediterranean twist, and was developed by chef Allen, a native of the Philippines who was part of the team that opened the restaurants at Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi. “We are recreating the idea of an old Arabic coffee shop but in
ND ONE I A S G AK ERJ AI
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LOCAL KNOwLEDGE It bothers me when people say thIs cIty doesn’t have a soul a modern way,” says Creekside’s passionate manager, Noor Al Ghafari, who grew up not far from the Creek herself. “We are first and foremost a welcoming community space, but we do offer the food culture of the city,” Creekside is the latest brainchild of Ahmed and Rashid Bin Shabib, twin brothers born and raised in Dubai who care deeply about maintaining elements of the Emirati culture that seem to be diminishing as the metropolis develops. The two are founders of a parent company, Cultural Engineering, which has had a significant effect on Dubai’s cultural offering with various projects including The Archive at Safa Park,
which connect people through activities and creative programming. Beginning in the cooler months of the year, Creekside is set to launch arts workshops, guided photography walks, live acoustic music evenings, indie film screenings and a number of other free or low-cost activities, many of which will take place on the adjoining outdoor terrace positioned right beside the water taxi station out front. Al Ghafari says there are even plans in place to acquire a private abra, which would be used to take visitors on off-the-beaten-track tours. Anyone who enters is given an illustrated map that aims to increase appreciation for the area’s surrounding buildings and long-time locals as more than just touristic attractions or landmarks. Noor says, “It bothers me when people say that this city doesn’t have a soul. I ask them, ‘What kind of Dubai do you know? Come along and let me show you my version.’”
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Together with Arva Ahmed, who operates popular foodie tourism company Frying Pan Adventures, Noor often takes her camera and climbs the steep gangplanks into the area’s iconic blue boats to speak in broken Farsi with the traders and fisherman, most of who come from Iran. These excursions are symbolic of a larger goal to create a relevant visual archive of the region. She clarifies that they want to dispel the idea that learning about culture and history can only take place in a museum. Sipping on an ice-cold glass of lemonade with mint, Noor explains, “This place is meant to bridge the gap between the heritage of Dubai and the contemporary context and serve as a platform for bringing people back to where it all started.” PRIME LOCATION / Creekside is located beside Dubai Creek in Bur Dubai, near Al Fahidi Historical District
LOCAL KNOwLEDGE
VERSATILE SPACE / Creekside is designed to be easily transformed from a café into an event space and discussion forum
Black and white photographs by the British explorer and travel writer Wilfred Thesiger line the walls, carefully curated to depict the Creek in the 1940s and 1950s, when it was the heart of a modest, young city known mainly for pearl-diving and trading. A far cry from today’s high-rise apartment buildings and sprawling villas, in the era of Thesiger’s visits, most people still lived in simple arish homes constructed of palm fronds, soon followed by innovations like adobe mud brick and the barjeel, wind towers that keep homes cool in summer and can still be found in nearby Al Fahidi Historic District. From the beginning and into the present, every home was equipped with a majlis, a predominantly male gathering space with pillows or other
communal seating arranged in a circle to encourage discussion and political decision-making. With its low bench that circles the space, Creekside is a retake on the majlis concept, and when the tables are removed and an event is in full swing, the arrangement encourages interaction and conversation among friends and strangers of all backgrounds.
the arrangement encourages interaction While conceiving the menu, chef Allen took long walks through the nearby souk and was inspired by local spices such as saffron and cardamom, consulting with many local friends about their favourite family recipes, before ultimately composing a selection of offerings that makes Emirati flavours accessible to a wider audience.
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“I worked in UAE hotels for quite some time, and during Ramadan I always saw a big tray of ouzi (a Gulf dish of braised lamb with pine nuts and raisins typically served on a mountain of saffron rice) every evening,” he explains. “I thought about a burrito, which has rice, meat and sauce, and realised that these could be the typical ouzi ingredients but reinvented as a wrap.” Allen hopes that, “even though this is a café, people will be surprised by the menu and the cuisine”. The café, which serves an affordable all-day breakfast (including a dangerously good sandwich of corn beef-hash patties served on an English muffin with local eggs), starters including a refreshing beet carpaccio and numerous mains, is open for three meals daily. But the star of the show is that ouzi burrito, the sort of comforting dish you find yourself craving days after your first taste. creeksidedubai.me
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Total will hire 10,000 people in 2014.
Dubai Street Art Danna Lorch investigates the continuing growth of Dubai’s street art scene
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OUR WOMAN IN: Argentine artist Marta Minujín’s Buenos Aires behOld the bIONIc MAN: Paddy Smith’s vision of a not too distant bionic future the URbAN FARMeRS: Noah Davis meets the men and women behind America’s urban farming revolution
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DUBAI Street Art
DESPITE DEBATE ABOUT ITS DIRECTION AND DEFINITION, DUBAI’S STREET ART SCENE IS GROWING, BOLSTERED BY GOVERNMENT BACKING FOR PUBLIC ART, HIGH-PROFILE SUPPORTERS, RESIDENCIES FROM WORLD-RENOWNED ARTISTS AND A SMALL BUT COMMITTED COMMUNITY OF LOCAL TALENT Words by Danna Lorch
D
ubai has made a name for itself in the art world in the last decade. It has a respected annual art fair, Art Dubai, which, having celebrated its eighth year in March, is widely regarded as one of the highlights of the Middle East’s art calendar. The city is the home of auction house Christie’s Middle East, and its rapidly developing gallery scene, driven by hubs in Dubai International Financial Centre and Alserkal Avenue, a collection of galleries and creative spaces in what is still an industrial area of the city, is vibrant year-round. But, despite its growing reputation as an ‘art city’, Dubai is not where you would expect to find an emerging street art scene. Local patrons, gallery directors and
artists disagree over definitions, as will become evident in a moment, but mention street art to your average man or woman on the street and they will associate the movement with run down urban centres and New York’s graffiti explosion in the 1970s and 1980s, with artists who painted subways, benches and other urban surfaces and were documented in Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant’s 1983 documentary Style Wars, street-inspired gallery shows by commercial artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basqiat, or, more recently, Shepard Fairey, creator of Barack Obama’s 2008 Hope presidential campaign poster, and the enigmatic British stencil artist Banksy. Those who have spent time in the Middle East might also refer to Beirut, a city that is painted top to bottom in bright murals by internationally admired artists such as Yazan. The notion of street art doesn’t fit with the common – and on the whole accurate – perception of Dubai as a sparkling modern metropolis. There’s no Banksy of Dubai – yet. But most residents of the city will recognise the work of Arcadia Blank – if not its creator’s tag – the only anonymous graffiti writer in town, who is known for scrawling satirical or poetic phrases such as “Alone we’re empty. Together we are the universe” distinguishable by a triangle or u-shaped symbol. Arcadia Blank is an underground artist, yet he has commercial representation and signed, numbered photographs of the tags are currently offered online by Dubai-based art consultancy Capsule Arts. Unsurprisingly, he could not be contacted for an interview, but Capsule Arts co-founder and director Rachael Brown says that Arcadia Blank’s work embodies the essence of street art.
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IMAGE: MELAN CHOLY
MELAN CHOLY / Dubai-based Filipino street artist Melan Choly created this artwork at Tiger Translate, a sponsored event in Dubai
FREZ is onE oF thE most REspEctEd gRaFFiti wRitERs in thE middlE East “Over the years he has developed a narrative of a long-term Dubai resident reclaiming abandoned or temporary construction spaces,” she says. “He uses these transient environments as platforms for freedom of speech through which to question the city’s changing landscape.” Arcadia Blank was not the first artist to create public art in Dubai, though. Graffiti writer FREZ, a man known by his fellow artists and supporters of the Dubai street art scene but who shies away from publicity, has called Dubai home for more than 12 years, and has been creating public art in the city since he arrived. He
practised his art alone in Dubai for years, before a NUMERO UNO / The graffiti bare wall on the side of a mall parking lot brought wall in Sya And Bow’s back garden tagged by graffiti him together with a crew of other likeminded writer Frez, the first writer to people who would go on to form a community – a create art in public in Dubai community that has endured and is still growing. “FREZ is one of the most respected graffiti writers in the Middle East,” says his friend and fellow Dubai-based graffiti writer Sya. “Every true writer knows who he is. He is very modest in what he does and what he represents. He has a unique style that no one else dares replicate.” Most major cities have what is called a wall of fame – a public space where street artists come to paint, compete, and connect with other artists. Dubai Festival City, not far from Dubai International Airport, played host to such a place from 2007 to 2011. The wall was first used as a canvas for international artists to work on at an event sponsored by Montana, a popular spray paint brand. Afterwards, officials allowed the wall to stay up, and creatives and skaters would get together there every weekend. Sya bristles when he is referred to as a street artist, saying that he is just a writer who uses an aerosol can to write his name over and over. He is passionate about making a distinction between street artists and graffiti artists, defining the former as artists who might use stencils or freehand but whose work features many colours, shapes and imagery, and the latter as “all about the letters”. The essence of what Sya does is self-promotion, which can be thought of as the street art alternative to snapping a selfie, but it takes far more skill than learning how to use an iPhone and upload an image to Instagram. When he was growing up in a rough London suburb, a favourite teacher praised him on his report card as a “superb young artist” and the acronym SYA was born, instantly becoming the tag he used to write on aban-
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doned warehouse walls beside the train tracks from the age of 16. Having his name read all over the city made him feel valued in a desolate place where respect was everything. It’s not a simple tag, there is high-level artistic practice involved, and Sya spends days working on each sketch, honing his technique in a wrinkled sketchbook before he puts a new piece up on a wall, the production of which can take hours. Right at the height of its popularity in 2012, the wall of fame at Dubai Festival City was taken down and painted over a dull mushroom brown. Sya, who had met his future wife, Steffi Bow – a fellow artist whose work always features a bow in homage to the area of East London she comes from, Bow, and her late grandmother, who loved ribbons – at the wall returned to propose in front of it, but neither the couple or their fellow artists had a place to publicly paint any longer. Resourcefully, the newlyweds relocated to Jumeirah Village Triangle, a large neighbourhood of 2,000 villas and townhouses beside one of the city’s major highways, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Road, where Sya attached wooden panels to the garden’s perimeter fence to create a 20-metre wall. The couple regularly host parties and painting sessions, and say that any serious artist is welcome to visit and make use of the wall, with prior notice, of course. The wall currently features work by Dubai artists, including FREZ, Sya and Bow, but international artists also drop in when they’re in town, and nothing is sacred – the art adorning the wall changes on an almost weekly basis. Sya’s dream is for Dubai to have a public wall where he and his fellow artists can paint, so that people can see the work – to be able to create street art where it belongs, on the streets. This dream is yet to come true, but the government is fully behind public art, and members of the royal family are
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actively supporting the fledgling Dubai street art scene. In a recent declaration, HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, launched Dubai Speaks To You, a project set to link property developers with UAE artists to transform the city into a gigantic, living canvas, beginning with the Metro stations, parks and other public spaces. This move follows more than eight years of successful initiatives by Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, a government department tasked with leading the emirate’s advancement as a significant driver of culture and the arts in the region. Projects have included street art billboards, pubteam work / Graffiti artist Steffi Bow tags the wall in the garden of the Dubai villa she shares with husband, graffiti writer Sya
lic art festivals and a scheme that involved commissioning artists to brighten up traffic signals. A few years after the wall of fame in Dubai Festival City was born, in 2009 Sheikha Wafa Hasher Al Maktoum, a patron of the arts, designer and street artist in her own right, launched a monthly art evening, Sketch, at her Alserkal Avenue gallery, FN Designs, which developed into something else entirely. “Live art was a new thing at that time,” she recalls. “At Sketch any artist could turn up and illustrate a single piece of A4 paper, then either swap or sell [it] for a small amount of money at the end [of the evening]. [But] I got bored with the original format and in 2012 put some panels and spray cans outside in the alleyway and the artists spontaneously completed a mural.” It was from these initial, informal partnerships that FN Designs formed a diverse community of nine artists who collaborated, in 2013, to paint Al Ydar, a 140-metre urban art wall on Jumeirah Beach Road, which was specially commissioned by HH Sheikha Manal bint Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, president of Dubai Women Establishment. The wall is said to symbolise Dubai’s heart and soul in the past and present, but such a prominent public artwork, in an affluent beachside neighbour-
This dream is yeT To come True, buT The governmenT is fully behind public arT hood, was also a sign of the future –evidence that the government was fully behind public art. The street art scene in Dubai operates above ground and under the approval of the authorities, and planned works on buildings or murals painted on wood panels are beginning to pop up on blank walls and at events all over town, thanks largely to the support of art galleries and institutions such as Tashkeel, FN Designs, Capsule Arts and non-profit initiatives such as the Al Quoz Beautification Project, the organisation that sponsored open air gallery event Street Night Art in January. But corporate collaborations, though frowned upon by some artists, are also helping to make street art more visible. Melan Choly is a Filipino street artist from Manila who was one of the founding members of Pilipinas Street Plan, a collective credited with bringing murals and gallery shows to the Philippines’ capital. He was also one of the community of artists, which also included FREZ, Sya, Bow, and a handful of others who met at the wall of fame in Dubai Festival City. For a time after the wall was painted over, Melan Choly struggled to find anywhere to paint. “For a while there I was sharing a place with a couple other guys and I used to have to paint beside my bed or on the cramped balcony,” he recalls. But, luckily, corporate brands began to see the draw of inviting a street artist to create live at product launches or events, and Melan Choly started to receive commissions from the likes of Nissan and L’Oreal, companies that recognised and appreciated his unique ability to create memorable characters out of letters. One of Melan Choly’s regular gigs involves painting live on a snow-covered slope at Ski Dubai. He doesn’t feel that by being paid to incorporate elements of a for-profit identity into his work he is selling out – far from it. In fact, he looks forward to the events for the connections he makes with the street art community and the everyday residents of Dubai. “If I do a painting for a gallery show it can take two months to finish, and when I exhibit normal people won’t feel comfortable coming to see it,” he says. “More people appreciate your art when it’s on the street.”
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public art / Al Ydar, the urban art wall commissioned by HH Sheikha Manal bint Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum (bottom left); a wall painted by renowned street artist and Tashkeel resident eL Seed at Dubai’s Zayed University (left)
A healthy art scene is naturally accompanied by debate and a culture of critique, and Dubai’s street art movement is strengthened by vigorous disagreement, mainly over defining labels. French-Tunisian artist eL Seed is a former business consultant turned world-famous street artist, who is known for his unique “calligrafitti” style – a technique that blends Arabic calligraphy with graffiti – and his work has appeared on walls in cities around the world, including Doha, Paris, Jeddah, Tunis and, most recently, Dubai. Check out his collaboration with fellow Tashkeel resident Ruben Sanchez on the exterior wall of café, library and community space The Archive in Safa Park. eL Seed is in the middle of a year-long residency at independent art institution Tashkeel, and he’s happy to talk semantics as we haul a new experimental laser-cut sculpture up a narrow spiral staircase, dropping pieces along the way, much to his horror.
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According to eL Seed, even though he is a street artist, the sculpture isn’t street art. In fact, his definition of street art is quite specific. “There are a lot of misconceptions about street art,” he says. “If it’s in collaboration with a brand, I’m sorry, but it’s not street art. Painting on a wood board in the street is not street art. If it’s in a gallery it is streetart inspired but it’s not street art.” Tashkeel is directed by HH Sheikha Lateefa bint Maktoum, whose wide-reaching vision is responsible for establishing the organisation in the largely emirati neighbourhood of Nad Al Sheba, as a non-profit studio space, artist incubator and exhibition space. Although Tashkeel concentrates on fine art, the past two residents, Ruben Sanchez and eL Seed, have been street artists, an attempt to reach out to the local youth. “We are trying to bring art into educational curriculums through our programming,” says Tashkeel strategy and partnership development manager Anabelle de Gersigny. “If you’re a child working on a mural, there is an appealing immediacy to the medium of street art. If you’re part of a group, then making a mural teaches you to work in a team while thinking about what role you can add. There is creativity inherent in that learning process.” Self-taught Barcelona artist Ruben Sanchez, who is also based at Tashkeel, says that the residency was an opportunity that he simply couldn’t refuse. “The conditions and opportunities to create are amazing here [in Dubai],” he says. Sanchez believes that street art should be for the community and for this reason says, “I wouldn’t get paid for a wall in the street.” Sanchez is credited with “getting up” Dubai’s
global talent / International stars and Tashkeel residents Ruben Sanchez (left) and eL Seed (above)
first permanent street art mural – a reinterpretation of the Spanish legend The Knights Of The Fish, which presents a local man on a half-bicycle-half-camel ride, reaching high into a tree to pick the perfect apple. It is a call to fight the sedentary way of life that is all too common in the luxurious city. In addition to his solo show, The B-Side, which ran at Tashkeel in 2013, he is also known for the Cubism-inspired mural he painted in an alleyway in the Al Fahidi Historical Neighborhood as part of Sikka, an annual fair that showcases local artists under the direction of Dubai Culture & Arts Authority. Since arriving in Dubai, Sanchez, who is also a well-known skater, has partnered with Tashkeel to facilitate a number of graffiti and skating workshops for local youth. As a teenager he used to get a rush from tagging without permission, but his message now is about teamwork and repurposing found materials (during our interview his studio was filled with camel bones and telephone pole remnants he’d collected on a recent trip to the desert). EL Seed is celebrated for a recent collaboration with luxury brand Louis Vuitton, in which he decorated a scarf with a calligraffiti interpretation of an Arabic poem about tolerance by the late Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali, while Ruben Sanchez partnered with Capsule Arts to paint a mural for Salero Tapas & Bodega, a Spanish restaurant in the Kempinski Hotel. The Tashkeel residents aren’t against artists trying to pay their bills by working with brands – although they do refuse to paint live at private sector events and say that they aren’t performers – but are insistent that these types of commissions should never be thought of as examples of street art. Given the fact that street art and graffiti are by nature impermanent and can be tagged over (the ultimate insult from one artist to another), painted over, knocked down, or washed away by rain at any time, it may be trivial to focus on the issue of panels versus a wall. It is also possible that panels will one day be referred to by art historians as a distinguishing factor in identifying Dubai’s unique take on street art. Humaid Mansour is an emerging Emirati artist who first painted live at Street Night Art, a 2014 festival held in Al Quoz that unexpectedly drew thousands of performance-hungry visitors. The event, which was organised by a non-profit group, The Al Quoz Beautification Project, helped put Mansour on the map artistically, and he has strong feelings about its impact, and about Dubai’s version of street art.
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“I think that one event sparked real dialogue around the topic of street art –something that we were seriously lacking,” he says. “Since then, there have been many more events that promote the idea of performance art, and while it may not be ‘street art’ as it’s known in the rest of the world, I think that’s the beauty of art – adapting to it’s surroundings.” But the latest development in the story of Dubai’s street art culture means that local artists will no longer have to rely on one-off events to draw attention to their work. This summer, Thomas Perreaux Forest and Stephane Vallici opened the Street Art Gallery in Dubai’s Jumeirah neighbourhood, and during Ramadan the pair curated the region’s first ever “calligraffiti” exhibition. A celebration of the unique medium, which blends Arabic and Chinese calligraphy with urban graffiti, the exhibition featured work by local artists eL Seed, Sya, Bow and Melan Choly, alongside pieces by New York writer Cope2 and Arabic calligrapher Wissam Shawkat. The fact that street art is now formally a part of the city’s burgeoning gallery scene further cement the notion that the form is gaining acceptance in the fine art market. Street art is here to stay.
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MARTA MINUJÍN Artist, 71
OUR wOMAN IN…
Buenos Aires
Marta Minujín made her name with her avant-garde works of the 1960s, during which time she lived in New York and befriended John Lennon and Andy Warhol. She returned to her native Buenos Aires in the 1970s, and has since become one of Argentina’s most famous conceptual artists
Image by Felix Busso
I
was always married to art. I decided to be an artist when I was 10 years old. I went to an arts school in Buenos Aires, where I learned everything I could. I wanted to be Van Gogh, the tortured genius. I received all the classical training only to later unlearn everything in an effort to discover myself as an artist. It started in 1964 with Revuélquese y viva! I showed this at the Torcuato Di Tella Institute in Buenos Aires [a leading promoter of avant-garde art in Buenos Aires at the time]. I used elastic to suspend mattresses from the ceiling, before inviting the public to lie down on them. It was the start of a love affair with mattresses. They are a constant in my work. We spend half of our lives on mattresses. We are born on one and one day we will most likely die on one. In the early 1960s, I started performing happenings in Buenos Aires to explore the power of media and celebrity. In La Cabalgata, I invaded a live television transmission using horses and mattresses. I tied buckets of paint to
the horses’ tails and walked them over the mattresses ‘painting’ them. At the same time, a group of athletes popped balloons and bound two rock musicians together using tape. It was possibly the first time anywhere an artist had intervened in live media. It created art people could experience in their own homes on their TV screens. In Simultaneidad en simultaneidad, I filmed and photographed 60 Argentine media personalities as they gathered in a room filled with TV sets, radios and telephones. Days later I invited the same 60 people back to the studio, where I bombarded them on all sides with the recordings of their own images and voices. I was fascinated by the question, ‘Why do people desire fame?’ Fame is an ingredient of my work, and celebrities are my artist’s brush. I like observing celebrity, as Andy Warhol did [Warhol collaborated with Minujín on her 1985 artwork El pago de la deuda argentina con maíz, “el oro latinoamericano”]. I am curious about how the famous use celebrity.
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It’s happenIng / Minujín’s 1965 happening Suceso Plástico (top left) involved releasing 500 chickens from a helicopter FRUIt saLaD / For her 1985 work La Estatua de la Libertad (bottom left) Minujín recreated The Statue Of Liberty using strawberries FaMOUs FRIenDs / During her stint in New York in the 1960s, Minujín befriended pop artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg (top right)
I became good friends with Andy while living in New York in the 1960s. New York was amazing. I arrived in 1965, but Andy, [Roy] Lichtenstein and [Robert] Rauschenberg already knew me as the girl who released chickens from helicopters [Minujín’s happening, Suceso Plástico (Plastic Event), involved releasing 500 chickens from a helicopter]. They were just making their first millions then. I got to know the Chelsea Girls, including Nico. I got to know [John] Lennon, who was beautiful. I guess I was something new. Female artists were still undervalued then. But art doesn’t pander to gender. When I threw 500 chickens from a helicopter nobody cared if I was male or female. The hippy movement was beautiful, a movement for peace, though it ultimately failed. To be crazy then was wonderful, we had to be crazy to use our minds. I lived off scholarships. I had something like 17 in total. I never sold any art. I was very anti the museum and gallery circuits. I threw away or gave away all of my work. Much of my art is ephemeral, and lasts only days. I am interested in demystifying our national symbols and icons. Take La Estatua de la Libertad de frutillas, for example, in which I recreated New York’s Statue Of Liberty. I coated my statue with fresh strawberries and invited the public to pick the strawberries from the artwork, causing the work to disintegrate and disappear.
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marta-minujin.com
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IMAges: gettyIMAges, cORBIs. MARtA MInujín, FeLIx BussO
By doing this, I deconstructed the icon, what I call the myth, and challenged its power to inform our sense of self. This mass participation is vital to my art. I love how people are free to participate. In Buenos Aires I recreated our national monument, the Obelisk, from 30,000 loaves of fruitcake, before inviting the public to dissemble it piece by piece. In the end, there was nothing left. The moment people began to dissemble it, they made art. Perhaps my most famous monumental work was El Partenón de los libros, which I created in 1983 to mark the fall of Argentina’s dictatorship. It was a replica of the Athenian temple, only covered with 20,000 books, whose titles had been banned by the military junta. It stood for six days on the 9 de Julio, Buenos Aires’ main avenue. On the final day, the public dismantled the work by removing each book one by one. In Germany, I recreated the Berlin Wall from Frankfurters. In New York I wanted to do The Statue Of Liberty in hamburgers. The authorities declined, fearing mass food contamination. I travel a lot, but I always return to Buenos Aires, which is my home. It is a convulsive city, but I have my escapes. I love the MALBA and PROA museums of modern art, the Colón opera house and walks along the Puerto Madero waterfront. My studio is another refuge. It’s located in the San Cristóbal district, an old neighbourhood on the city’s south side. It’s where I grew up. In fact, my studio occupies my childhood home. I have a favourite bar too, La Rambla, where I have been a regular for 30 years. Nobody there cares that I am famous. HOME STUDIO / Celebrity can be Minujín‘s current discomforting. As a media studio is located in her childhood home figure, people project their own image of me all qUIET STrOll / the time. It is the power of When she is at home in the myth again. As long as Buenos Aires Minujín likes to walk along the myth of who I am exists, I am that person. It exists as much as I myself exist. the Puerto Madero I have so many ideas. Right now, I am crafting a Leaning Tower Of Pisa from waterfront thousands of bottles. In 2013, I celebrated my 70th birthday by ‘marrying’ art at the MALBA. I always believed I was married to art and wanted to make it official MUSEUM vISIT / Minujín ‘s favourite – to throw a great wedding party, wear a white dress, cut the cake and be whisked modern art galleries around the MALBA by horse-drawn carriage. It was wonderful. But I’ll tell you a in Buenos Aires are secret: I always wanted to dress as a bride. I married my husband 54 years ago. I was MALBA (pictured) 16 years old, but the legal age for marriage was 18. I falsified my age, and I didn’t get and PROA to wear white.
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behold the
Bionic man The fuTure of body upgrades are superhuman bionic prosTheTics ThaT will make us fasTer, sTronger and more agile. paddy smiTh envisages a world in which, wiTh a liTTle help from science, we will all be able To run The 100m as fasT as usain bolT and play The guiTar like Jimi hendrix
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here’s an ancient anecdote about a lady going to a classical music recital. After the performance she spots the violinist in the foyer and approaches him. “I’d give my life to be able to play like you,” she gushes, to which he responds calmly, “Madam, I did.” The story changes – sometimes the lady is a man, sometimes the violinist is a pianist – but the message doesn’t. If you want to be a good musician, you have to put in the work. Even if you are lucky enough to be born with a talent for hearing musical intervals and harmonies, you will still need to train your muscles to move in the correct patterns to produce the desired sounds. Legendary jazz trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie is said to have practised for up to 15
hours a day. But what if there was a short cut? At this particular moment in time, there isn’t. If you want to become a great musician, you have to put in the work. But that could be about to change. Soon we could be living in a world where you upgrade your body parts as often as you buy a new phone. Means permitting, we will have instant access to muscular control, strength and speed without
It’s no secret that robotics are in the ascendancy 86
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the gruelling training regime. This is the rise of the superman. You’re probably thinking this sort of pie-in-the-sky thinking comes about as a result of watching too many Iron Man movies. But while advanced, weaponised, jet-powered flight suits might still be the stuff of dreams, the ability to replace limbs with superior bionics that can be programmed to play Beethoven symphonies is not so firmly planted in the fictional realm. Not any more. It’s no secret that robotics are in the ascendancy. The American military’s experimental tech arm DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has built a robot called Atlas that is expected to drive a car and operate power tools this year. Atlas is not alone. His stable mates include Cheetah, who can run at nearly 30 miles per
hour, and BigDog, who can carry 150kg loads over difficult terrain. Fewer people are aware of the impending application of robotics as a biological enhancement. Last year, Barack Obama introduced the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) initiative. The project aims to invest US$100 million to “better understand how we think, learn and remember”. Under the same scheme, DARPA will get a US$50 million grant to explore “dynamic functions of the brain” and demonstrate “breakthrough applications” based on their findings. The concept isn’t entirely new. Bertolt Meyer, a social psychologist at the University of Zurich, is
today’s bionics could evolve quickly into superior prosthetics, perhaps becoming more desirable than their organic equivalents the recipient of one of the world’s most advanced prosthetic arms, the Touch Bionics i-limb. The media likes to call him The Bionic Man. For the moment, the sobriquet is hyperbolic, at best wishful. While Meyer’s hand can already do things a normal biological hand
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cannot, such as spinning 180 degrees in the wrist, for the most part it pales in comparison with the dexterity of its biological cousin. But we are living in the age of technology and the rapid advance of nanotech, genetics, robotics and raw processing power means that today’s bionics could evolve quickly into superior prosthetics, perhaps becoming more desirable than their organic equivalents. We could indeed play musical instruments or learn to touch type at 300 words per minute by downloading the appropriate patch. “What happens if a bionic hand becomes available that lets you type more rapidly? Or a leg that lets you run faster? Would you choose to replace a healthy limb with a bionic
one? Should that be allowed?” Meyer asked in a column for Wired magazine in 2013. “Currently, artificial limbs are a niche market because they cater to those few with missing limbs. If they started to appeal to the wider population, they could create their own mass market, with the resulting corporate financial interests.” It’s a good point. The current rate of change in bionics is being hobbled by a lack of appeal and the corresponding paucity of investment. Yes, the American government is making the right noises, but bionic man cannot live on US$150 million alone. However, once the market escapes amputees and conflict victims and the return on research investment becomes worthwhile, development could spring forward at an unprecedented pace. There’s a strong echo of computing in this scenario: early processing
was restricted to large corporations and code breaking, but once consumer computing took root the progress curve shot upwards. Now we all wander around with what once would have been considered super-
these ethical complexities while gesturing towards an army of hydraulic legs in the corner. “From an ethical point of view it’s going to be tricky,” he says, although he concedes it is already fairly com-
FROM AN ETHICAL POINT OF VIEW IT’S GOING TO BE TRICKY computers in our pockets. There’s no reason to believe things should be different when it comes to voluntary bionic upgrades, though the ethics of fitting a new leg are somewhat more hazy than investing in a new smartphone. Abdo Haidar is one of the world’s leading prosthetists. In the rehabilitation room at the London Prosthetic Centre, he navigates
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mon practice to have a leg “taken up” in order to be able to walk better; it’s easier to achieve good walking results on a prosthetic mounted from the calf than it is on half a foot. “If you come to a time when the legs are implanted and you’re using bionic technology and you know there are going to be no infections… when the technology is
strong enough to connect metal to human in that way, it will be a different story ethically. When you are actually replacing the human body and fitting prosthetics to make you superhuman, it will be no different from having laser eye surgery. I personally think in 100 years or more there won’t be any more human soldiers. Wars will be fought by superhuman robots. We’re not far off.” And what about civilians? What about those of us who would like to become more dextrous, more agile, faster and stronger? Once again, the snag is in the finances. At the moment, if you get a state-of-the-art leg and foot, you’re looking at a bill in excess of US$200,000. The knee has a sixyear warranty. The foot has just three years of cover. A bionic finger will set you back US$50,000, or a cool half a million dollars for a full set of ten. The elaborate costs of buying into prosthetics are dropping, though. The Handie is a partly
3D-printed bionic hand that can be put together for US$400 and has user-replaceable parts. It’s hard to know how fast a market like that could genuinely challenge the prosthetics establishment, but it’s compelling proof that bionic bodies are being developed without the need for a war chest. The other problem is the functionality, which is currently “ten per cent, maybe… more like five per cent” of what you could achieve with the biological equivalent. “The power is there and the strength is there,” Haidar explains, “but the holding, the feeling, the sensing is not available. It’s very, very slow.” But there is an obvious customer for civilian bionic upgrades: the sportsman. Offered the opportunity to become faster
it will be no different to having laser eye surgery
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and stronger, you can see the appeal of a bionic upgrade for the ethically challenged athlete. Indeed, it’s already possible to see a glimpse of how bionics might legitimately enter sport. In 2012, Oscar Pistorius became the first double-leg amputee to compete in the Olympic Games. Although the prosthetics used by athletes are non-bionic blades, the IAAF, the world governing body for athletics, has taken a strong interest in the development of potentially advantageous body upgrades. They are suitably quick out of the blocks on the issue of bionics in sport. “There has always been an ongoing conversation about the nature and future of all items used by competitors in our sport,” says its spokesman, “which by definition includes prosthetics. “Who knows what developments in technology of prosthetics there will be, bionic or otherwise? The only certainty is that if a technological development is judged to give an athlete an unfair advantage
then the IAAF will respond to ensure a level playing field is retained for all competitors. “Advances in technology also offer potential threats to the fairness of competition whether or not that is the intentional or unintentional goal of the scientist or technician that develops the technology or the athlete who uses it. As to what occurrences in life necessitate a person to use a prosthetic now or in the future, in the present era of cosmetic surgery this poses a wider question for society to address as a whole.” Of course, society as a whole might not be most afraid of
someone winning a race using underhand tactics. Beyond the reaches of sporting prowess lies a more unsightly vision of the future: the supervillain. And where supervillains tread, the only effective law enforcement is the superhero. As usual, fiction has beaten reality to the punch when it comes to bionically enhanced humans. It suits the three-act plot beloved of Hollywood to have a bionic menace turn up and start ruining things, only to have his bionic ass handed to him by a superior adversary in the explosive denouement. Even Captain Hook’s low-tech hand replacement had a
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menacing quality to it, but more futuristic visions of where our bionic journey is leading include Robocop, Iron Man and the Terminator T-800. Fictional estimates of when those technologies would be available include the near future of 1987, present day and 2029 respectively. Not much agreement there then. Back in reality all of those timescales look optimistic, although 2029 isn’t as far-fetched as you might imagine. The ultimate pursuit in the quest to create a superman is to replace everything bar the human brain, essentially creating a life-support system that could allow vastly extended life expectancy, if not immortality. Dmitry Itskov, a Russian entrepreneur, aims to create a holographic avatar to which a human brain could be uploaded by 2045. And that’s not just hyperbolic press bait. He’s said to have invested US$3 million in the project already and has won endorsements from the Dalai Lama and Google’s director of engineering Ray Kurzweil, whose book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology suggests artificial intelligence will overtake human intelligence in – you guessed it – 2045. According to science fiction, the outlook is bleak. From Frankenstein onwards the prevalent assumption is that bionically enhanced humans – or entirely bionic creations – will turn against their creators: us. It’s no surprise, then, that the name given to our
2029 isn’t as far-fetched as you might imagine
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robot paranoia is the Frankenstein complex. Fittingly, the term was coined by sci-fi author Isaac Asimov, who explored the theme of the human fear of mechanical men in many of his stories. The conjecture is that people fear bionic men making them irrelevant, or downright enslaving them, and that en masse our species might put the brakes on their development before things go too far. If history guides us correctly, it would be to the bionic revolution what the Luddites were to the Industrial Revolution. That’s not to say the outcome would be the same, but history counts the progressive as the victors more often than those who favour the status quo. If we assume the march of bionics is unstoppable, we should also remember that technology hasn’t burned us as much as people like the Luddites thought it would. The Luddites felt the loss of skilled workers to machinery would cause the booming textile industry’s economy to crumple, but they were wrong. Economic balance was restored by falling market prices
which were the direct result of cheaper production techniques. Following an imaginary curve for the future of bionics, robotics and artificial intelligence, novelist Ian M Banks envisaged a place where all work is handed off to insentient devices, creating a place of abundance for sentient life to enjoy. This post-human fictional universe is an interesting alternate take for where our quest to become superhuman could end up. It’s certainly less bleak than the usual forecast. However the future pans out, the idea that we may one day upgrade ourselves to the point of transformation is neither new, nor being forgotten. Since biolo-
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gist Julian Huxley coined the term “transhumanism” in 1957, it has grown into an area of study that explores the technological and ethical possibilities connected to the rise of the superman. Critics argue that unchecked our bionic upgrades will lead to a post-human apocalypse – the political scientist Francis Fukuyama has called it one of the world’s most dangerous ideas – while advocates cite it as a human aspiration greater than interplanetary exploration. In all likelihood we will not live to find out who is right. But while the transhumanist academe argues the toss, the super humans are being built, muscle by muscle, nerve by nerve. It starts here, with the improved bionic prosthetics that are being developed right now. A culture of voluntary bionic replacement comes later – a sort of next-gen cosmetic surgery, if you like. And it ends with us creating a bionic man more intelligent than a mere human could be: the last invention we ever need to create.
THEURBANFARMERS
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NOAH DAVIS MEETS THE FOUNDER OF NEW YORK’S EAGLE STREET ROOFTOP FARM, ANNIE NOVAK, THE GODFATHER OF URBAN FARMING IN THE US, WILL ALLEN, AND SEVERAL OTHER AGRICULTURALISTS AT THE FOREFRONT OF AMERICA’S URBAN FARMING REVOLUTION
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to that last question is a simple yes. The rest, like planting itself, is much more complex. Before you can understand urban farming, you must consider some statistics about American farming in general. Consider: over the past century, the size of the average farm in the US has tripled up to 441 acres (one acre is equal to 43,560 square feet). Furthermore, the average age of farmers jumped to 55, up 10 years from two decades ago. In short, massive institutions run by old men dominate the agriculture segment of the US economy. But the new wave of farming, specifically in urban areas, is changing the landscape. Farming is hard work, extremely hard work, but rewarding in a “look what I did with my own two hands” kind of way. For young, enthusiastic people there are spaces around the country in which to start a new agriculture initiative. And while farming is one of the oldest professions, there’s something exceptionally modern about these ventures. “It’s oddly similar to the software startups of the 1990s,” Garry Stephenson, who runs Oregon State University’s small farms programme,
Rooftop faRmeR / Annie Novak co-founded Brooklyn’s Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in 2009
neighbourhood. South Central Farm in Los Angeles helps feed families in an area known for gang violence and rap lyrics. City Farms in Chicago claims to turn “vacant land into productive farmland, transforming crumbling cement and overgrown weeds into jobs, green space, fresh produce and hope". With 77,000 empty lots in the Windy City, that’s a lot of potential hope. Head four hours east on Interstate 94 and you reach Detroit, which has thousands of acres that could be transformed into farms of all shapes and sizes. The time is now. The goal is to find a model, or models, that work effectively. The only limit is imagination. Novak is an unlikely farmer. She grew up sitting on her kitchen floor, surrounded by her mum’s copies of Vogue and W. The 31-year-old grew up with designs of being a writer but that changed in college after she travelled to Kumasi in the central region of Ghana as part of her thesis project on chocolate. She spent time with farmers there, developing an interest in local
These are young people inTeresTed in becoming enTrepreneurs, responding To The economy told the Oregonian. “These are young people interested in becoming entrepreneurs, responding to the economy. But there’s also almost a philosophical part to it, a sense of wanting to change the world.” The benefits are obvious. Even a small garden, something just 10 feet by 10 feet, can produce the yearly vegetable needs for a family of four. Larger farms in urban centres account for even more fresh vegetables and can also change the tenor of a
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foods. Eventually, and perhaps inevitably, that led her to a career as a farmer. In many ways, it’s fitting that the farm she co-founded in 2009 is unusual as well. Eagle Street, which was the first rooftop soil farm in New York, opened after the owner of the building and a green roofing company came together with a plan. Novak and her co-founder Ben Flanner altered the soil composition slightly to add more organic matter and started growing. Eagle Street
ImAgE: NAImA gREEN
eo bounds up the lightly rusting metal stairs to the roof, where he sprints across mounds of dirt. In the concrete jungle of New York City, this 6,000 square foot expanse must feel like heaven to the adorable black and gold mix-mutt The dog simply wants to run around, but this earth holds a secret. Just months ago, it was home to some of the best peppers in Gotham. You see, while this space looks like the perfect place for a dog to play, it’s actually Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, which Leo’s owner, Annie Novak, co-founded in 2009. In the spring, summer and fall, residents of Greenpoint, Brooklyn and the rest of the five boroughs stream to Eagle Street to volunteer their time working the repurposed rooftop, learn about organic agriculture and to purchase produce or to replenish their supply of the signature red jalapeños, salt and vinegar Awesome Sauce. A farm? On a rooftop? In Brooklyn? The rooftop farm at Eagle Street is unusual, but it is not unique. Every year, urban farming on the tops of buildings or in unused lots across America grows in popularity. It is becoming a genuine movement in the United States and beyond as consumers focus on where their food comes from, the quality of the product and how much energy it takes to produce. This new generation of farmers is young, enthusiastic, and dedicated to teaching the youth of America about the importance of agriculture. But there are questions about the future. Does the movement have staying power, or is it just a trend? Will it ever be possible to make a small rooftop farm like Eagle Street economically viable? What happens if and when the economy improves and the land is no longer unwanted? Is Awesome Sauce the best name ever for a hot sauce? The answer
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recently completed its fifth growing season. Flanner left after the first and currently runs Brooklyn Grange, an organisation dedicated to creating a more sustainable New York, which runs two farms in the city. Novak says she and her small team are working out the kinks year by year. They now focus primarily on growing peppers, in part because they have experienced such amazing response from the community but also because they grow so well. It’s a continual learning process. “You want to learn your soil, your labour value and your microclimate,” she says. “At the end of the day, our customer base was going to be loyal to us whether we grew 60 different crops or four different crops. I made the botanical decision to go with a fewer number of varieties for a few growing seasons just to test it out.” The Greenpoint community is embracing Eagle Street. Many people who have gone through the apprenticeship programme are now else-
where in the world of agriculture. There are also opportunities to volunteer or simply show up and purchase produce. While some come week after week, many disappear after a few visits. But that’s OK, too. “The day-to-day visitors – the people who come up a Sunday or two and enjoy the view – are still asking after it,” Novak says. “It’s a nice feeling that it’s always in the back of people’s minds.” Is Eagle Street a success? It’s still too early to tell. Most farmers take at least a decade to determine an ideal crop mix for their space. Even the most successful small spaces constantly battle to achieve profitability. Novak is making this up as she goes along. When she talks about her 6,000-square foot piece of roof, she sounds tired by the work. But not weary of the challenge. If Novak is one of the new school farmers, Will Allen is one of the godfathers of urban farming in the United States. In 1993, the 6-foot-7 son of a South Carolina sharecrop-
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the godfather / Will Allen’s Growing Power initiative, launched in 1993, now runs numerous farms in Milwaukee and Chicago
per launched Growing Power, a programme that taught teens about renovating greenhouses and farming sustainable foods in north Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the intervening years, he expanded and expanded and continued to expand to the point where the 20-year old initiative has dozens of farms and community gardens in and around Milwaukee and at least five in Chicago. “We’ve gotten our food to every neighbourhood in the city,” Allen says proudly. The world recognised his efforts. In 2005, the Ford Foundation gave him a US$100,00 leadership grant and the MacArthur Foundation followed suit with a US$500,000 “genius” award in 2008. The next year, he received another US$400,000 from the Kellogg Foundation to create jobs in urban agriculture. The New
York Times Magazine wrote a profile of the farmer, calling him the “Pied Piper” of city farming. Allen, now in his mid-60s, has two goals. One is to develop and teach the next generation of farmers, “It’s not our grandparents’ type of farming where they are row farming out in the country,” he says. “It’s a different type of farming that requires a real type of training and knowhow, and utilising some of the technologies that we should be using, like renewable energy.” The second is even simpler. “We want to give people the opportunity to know what an organic tomato tastes like. Many of these young people live in communities where they don’t have the opportunities to garden. We are also trying to help the schools and day care centres to have gardens.” Growing Power works in urban centres, but also just outside the city. The Merton Rural Farm at the Camp Whitcomb Mason Boys And Girls Club boasts 40 acres of land, including 25 acres of greenhouses for year-round production. The list of produce includes beets, chard,
spinach, arugula and cilantro in addition to chickens, ducks, heritage turkeys, goats and beehives. Allen says this mix between small urban spaces and larger, more productive creates a workable and sustainable model, both in terms of education and profitability. If you build it, they will grow. Kennon Kay joined the farm at the Queens County Farm Museum five years ago to oversee the live-
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stock, vegetables, and fruit. The space, located on 47 acres in Glen Oaks, Queens, roughly 15 miles east of Manhattan, is the type of place few city residents know exists. You wouldn’t end up there unless you intended to go. Part of Kay’s task was to help ensure that people who came could relish the time they spent there. Like Novak and Allen, she is an educator as well as a farmer. That works on a
number of levels. “I realised quickly that the education and overall beautification of the farm was really important, too,” she says. “It’s about creating a space where people can come, enjoy, and soak in on a lot of levels.” More than 50,000 students visit annually, and the museum is a place for birthday parties and corporate retreats in addition to being a working farm. It’s also different than something like the rooftop farm or one in a more urban setting because of its size. There is potential for tractor cultivation, which changes a farmer’s equation. Plus, the museum, which dates to 1697 and is the longest continually farmed area in the state, helps subsidise the cultivation of crops, although Kay focuses on selling veggies and flowers both on the farm and at green markets around the city. Urban farming, after all, isn’t only about city farming. It’s about building places for agriculture in spots near cities. Kay believes it’s important to remember that fact. “The
National Young Farmers Coalition is spearheading a lot of the initiatives to preserve spaces near cities,” she says. “I think that’s going to be crucial. Innovation surrounding things like vertical farming and rooftop farming
We’re Way ahead of the game compared to the rest of the World are very exciting and very important and has its place, but I also think that preserving precious farmland in the vicinity of urban areas is paramount. I see a lot of potential there.”
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Good education / New York’s Queens County Farm Museum welcomes 50,000 students a year
We’re at a place in the evolution of farming where the White House has a vegetable garden on the lawn. Some folks will grow tired of the trend, but visibility improves every year as more and more people wonder about what they put in their mouths. “I think a lot of people today realise that a our food is our medicine,” Allen says, noting that 70 per cent of the people who want to get involved in farming are under 40. Or, put another way, “It’s not only a bunch of old people and crusty academics who are interested in their food,” the old but robust man says with a laugh. Of course, it needs to be sold in a certain way. “I don’t know if young people want to go out and farm when it’s 28 degrees and it’s snowing and you’re dodging snowflakes and digging,” the Growing Powers
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founder says. “I do, but I don’t know how many young people want to do that. But to be able to farm inside in greenhouses while raising fish and plants [in the same system, called aquaponics] is very attractive to young people.” It is attractive, but it also isn’t. Farming is arduous work with long hours and little pay. It’s a job and a lifestyle. There’s nothing easy about agriculture. That’s its beauty but also the difficulty. It’s taking a plot of land no one else wants and turning it into something magical but also something that’s sustainable. Urban farming is also slowly spreading to other parts of the globe. “We’re way ahead of the game compared to the rest of the world,” Allen says, noting challenges of water in countries like China and many parts of Africa. But people from many nations come to train in Milwaukee. Novak recently answered an email from a group in Vietnam that hopes to start a farm. As humanity moves into cities, urban farming follows. Perhaps the best indication of urban farming’s hold on New York City is Whole Foods. A new outlet of the heath food store opened in Brooklyn, complete with a rooftop farm. For Novak, that type of development is a game changer. “When someone with capital comes in and from the very beginning wants to incorporate those types of spaces into what they are designing, that’s very different than saying ‘Milwau-
We Want to give people the opportunit y to knoW What an organic tomato tastes like kee has all this land, let’s use it for farming,’” she says. “Because at the end of the day when the economy picks up, people will use the land for something else. We’ve seen that in the past. I’m definitely more interested in when it’s built up from scratch as a piece of a new building.” Will urban farming stay relevant? Even the farmers on the forefront don’t know for sure. “I would love to know that everything I’m doing is going to last for the next century,” Novak says. “New York has a really strong precedent for things that were created and last forever as monuments that the whole world admires. Wouldn’t it be nice if one of the projects that we were working
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on in agriculture in the cities have the sticking power of Times Square, the Empire State Building or the Met Opera?” “But it remains to be seen whether any of these things will gain that traction. Part of it is money and part of it is what is the population always interested in. Will urban farming ever be as interesting and sexy as a major New York landmark? I hope so.” Plenty of others do as well. And chances are they are right in at least some capacity. If you stand on the rooftop at Eagle Street and look west, you can see midtown Manhattan rising across the East River. It’s a beautiful, inspiring view.
More connections across the Middle East Emirates is to expand its Middle East schedule with 28 extra flights
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briefing EMIRATES PARTNERS WITH BENFICA: Emirates sponsors Portugal's most successful football club CITY GUIDE: Our guide to Hungary's capital city, Budapest RoUTEMAP: Discover the world as connected by Emirates
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news EXPANSION AcrOSS thE mIddlE EASt
EmIrAtES IS EXPANdINg ItS AlrEAdy EXtENSIvE SchEdulE AcrOSS thE mIddlE EASt wIth 28 EXtrA flIghtS bEgINNINg 1St dEcEmbEr.
In total Emirates will offer 276 weekly flights to destinations across the Middle East out of its hub at Dubai International. Emirates will offer seven daily flights to Doha, while Muscat will go from two to three flights a day, Bahrain from three to four daily
services and Kuwait from five to six flights daily, including a daily A380 service, which launched in July of this year. “This is a significant enhancement of our services in the region, giving our customers more choice and convenience,” said Sheikh Majid Al Mualla, Emirates’ Divisional Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations, Centre. “With seven flights a day going into Doha, nowhere else on the
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Emirates’ network will offer as many daily flights." Apart from Doha, Muscat, Bahrain and Kuwait, the airline’s 276 weekly departures to destinations in the airline’s Gulf, Middle East and Iran region also cover Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen. The airline is also boosting connections into North Africa, with a new second daily service to Morocco launching this month.
briefing
news EMIRATES PARTNERS WITH BENFICA
SPoRT LISBoA E BENFICA (BENFICA), PoRTugAL’S MoST SuCCESSFuL FooTBALL CLuB, HAvE SIgNEd A THREE-yEAR AgREEMENT WITH EMIRATES, MAkINg THE CARRIER THE oFFICIAL AIRLINE PARTNER oF THE CLuB uNTIL 2016.
The deal comes just two years after Emirates began flights to Portugal, and highlights the airline’s on-going commitment to expand its presence in the country. Hubert Frach, Emirates' Divisional Senior Vice President Commercial Operations West, and CEO of Benfica, Domingos Soares de Oliveira, made the announcement at a press
conference held in Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica. Soares de Oliveira said the signing represented “a new milestone” for the club and allowed it to partner “with one of the most innovative brands in the world”. “Together, we share the same passion for what we do and I am confident that this partnership with Emirates will help us further connect with all of our passionate supporters around the globe,” he added. The sponsorship deal gives Emirates brand visibility at the Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica, as well as promotional rights. The carrier will also be able to capitalise
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on advertising opportunities on Benfica’s media platforms, which will include digital activations, as well as receive player access and interactive hospitality rights. Benfica is one of the most successful football clubs in the world, having won several domestic titles and two European Champion Club Cups. Emirates’ football sponsorship portfolio includes: FIFA, Arsenal FC, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Paris Saint Germain, New York Cosmos, Hamburger SV, Olympiacos FC, Arsenal Soccer Schools Dubai and The Emirates Cup. The carrier is also the official airline and partner of the Asian Football Confederation.
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briefing
news A380 DOUBLE DAILY TO MAURITIUS
EMIRATES' A380 SERvIcE TO MAURITIUS wILL gO DOUBLE DAILY fROM 1ST DEcEMBER.
The second A380 replaces the existing Boeing 777 operation and increases Emirates' capacity on the route by 19 per cent, providing additional access to the Indian Ocean destination each day.
"Our daily A380 service into Mauritius has enjoyed exceptional popularity since its launch on 16th December 2013, with more than 150,000 passengers having flown our flagship aircraft to the paradise island during this time," said Orhan Abbas, Emirates Senior Vice-President, Commercial
Get to your gate on time Don't miss your flight Please make sure you get to your boarding gate on time. Boarding starts 45 minutes before your flight and gates close 20 minutes before departure. If you report late we will not be able to accept you for travel.
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Operations, Latin America, Central and Southern Africa. The upgraded A380 service leaves Dubai as EK703 at 10am, arriving at Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport at 4.45pm. It returns as EK704 leaving Mauritius at 11pm, landing at Dubai International Airport at 5.40am the following day.
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NEWS EMIRATES’ LIVE TV EXPANDS ACROSS FLEET IN TIME FOR SPORTING BONANZA C
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EMIRATES CONTINUES TO ROLL OUT ITS ICE TV LIVE PRODUCT ACROSS ITS FLEET.
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By the end of September, Emirates will have more than 25 aircraft equipped with ice TV Live, giving passengers the opportunity to keep up to date with the latest news and events. News channels available include BBC World News, CNN International and Sky News Arabia, among others, but there is also a dedicated sports channel, Sport 24. Sport 24 shows a wide range of live sporting events including US Open tennis, NFL games, English Premier League clashes, German Bundesliga matches, Formula 1 races and Ryder Cup golf. The timing of the rollout means sports fans can sit back and relax while watching the Seattle Seahawks face off against the Green Bay Packers on 5th September, the US Open tennis singles finals on 7th and 8th September, or the Italian Grand Prix on 7th September. Footballing powerhouses Arsenal and Manchester City go head to head in the Premier League on 13th September, while golf fans can watch all the action of the Ryder Cup from 26th to 28th September. The majority of the aircraft being supplied with the service are Boeing 777-300ERs, with 777-200LRs also beginning the rollout. In addition to live TV, these aircraft also feature Wi-Fi and mobile phone connectivity.
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City Guide BUDAPEST
Baths, where you can play chess while enjoying the water. The Gellért Baths is perhaps the most well known, the elegant structure attracting lovers of architecture as well as bathers. Bringing the experience very much into the 21st century is the Four Seasons Gresham Palace, with its modern facilities and high-end treatments.
HUNGARIAN STATE OPERA HOUSE CONSIDERED BY MANY TO BE ONE OF EUROPE’S MOST BEAUTIFUL CITIES, THE HUNGARIAN CAPITAL WAS ONCE TWO SEPARATE CITIES, BUDA AND PEST, WHICH WERE UNIFIED IN 1873. Despite
Budapest’s relatively short history, the city boasts a rich and vibrant history reflected in the many cultural attractions for tourists to enjoy. World Heritage sites blend with a multitude of dining and shopping options, as well as extensive hot water baths, to create a city full of welcome surprises.
THE BATHS Hungary boasts the world’s largest thermal water cave system, resulting in plenty of thermal baths and spas across Budapest. They range in size and style, the largest of which is Széchenyi
This elaborately decorated building is a masterpiece, combining nods to the musical theme of its purpose with Neo-Renaissance and Baroque styling. While its capacity is modest at a little less than 1,300, what it lacks in space it makes up for in its splendour, which is why it’s regarded as one of the most beautiful opera houses in the world. Renowned composer Gustav Mahler was a director in the city for four years from 1887, and in 1984 a major renovation project was completed, 100 years after the opening of the building. The opera season runs from September to June, and guided tours of the venue are available in between performances.
CHAIN BRIDGE The most beautiful of Budapest’s bridges, Chain Bridge is also the first to permanently connect Buda
to Pest. Scottish engineer Adam Clark completed the structure in 1849, and it was widely regarded at the time as a wonder of the world. It still enchants the many visitors to Budapest, and the walk across the Danube, particularly at night, is a special experience. The squares at either end of the bridge are perfect for people watching, and the bridge often plays host to festivals and entertainment. Interestingly, when the bridge was first opened, there was a toll, a levy that the aristocracy had to pay as well as the ordinary citizens. This was the first time that nobility had been taxed in Hungary.
ANDRÁSY AVENUE With some of the city’s best architecture and plenty of museums and other cultural sites, Andrásy Avenue is deserving of its World Heritage Site status. It connects City Park with Budapest’s centre, and not only will you find the aforementioned opera house, there are plenty of side streets with cafes and restaurants to sit and take in the architecture. High-end brands are in abundance, so shopaholics and avid window browsers are also catered to.
Starting 27th October, Emirates flies daily to Budapest.
POPULATION: 1,740,041 LANGUAGE: Hungarian CURRENCY: Forint CLIMATE: Cold winters are quickly forgotten due to the long summers, which boast high temperatures rivalling the warmest Mediterranean destinations. HISTORICAL FACT: In 1990 Hungary held its first free elections since 1945. FAMOUS CITIZEN: Harry Houdini, the world-renowned escape artist and illusionist, was born in Budapest in 1874 before moving to the US. DID YOU KNOW? The Budapest Card allows holders to use public transport for free, provides discounts at attractions and restaurants, and comes with useful mobile apps.
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KEMA Type Tested
A National Company, established under Royal Decree No. 4 of the year 2008, issued by H. H. Sheikh Hamad Bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, a member of the UAE Supreme Council and The Ruler of Fujairah. A state of the art plant, highly experienced manpower, within the Emirate of Fujairah, U.A.E. Approved and supplying to major utilities and projects across the region. CCV line capable of manufacturing EHV cables up to 220kV. World class raw materials used to produce high quality cables. Cables are type tested by KEMA in the Netherlands. Easy access to markets worldwide due to the strategic location of the plant. Duty exemptions across Middle East & North Africa - GAFTA member countries.
Exported to more than 31 countries around the world.
IRELAND
UK
BELGIUM
JAPAN AFGHANISTAN
IRAQ
LIBYA
MALI
GUINEA
KUWAIT
EGYPT
QATAR
BAHRAIN
PAKISTAN
FUJAIRAH
SAUDI ARABIA OMAN
NIGER
MYANMAR
INDIA
YEMEN
ERITREA NIGERIA
ETHIOPIA
GHANA BENIN
SOMALILAND
RWANDA
CONGO
R
ANGOLA NAMIBIA
AUSTRALIA
Power of Quality & Reliability
EHV Cables MV Cables LV Cables Instrumentation Cables
Control Cables
LSF Cables
Wires
Flexibles
Factory: K-140, Al Hayl Industrial Area, P.O. Box 5070, Fujairah, U.A.E. Marketing Head Office: P.O. Box 84977, Dubai, U.A.E. Tel.: +971-4-2577888; Fax: +971-4-2577899 sales@powerpluscable.com www.powerpluscable.com
Conductors
briefing
Comfort
Wellness in the air
To help you arrive at your destination feeling relaxed and refreshed, Emirates has developed this collection of helpful travel tips. Regardless of whether you need to rejuvenate for your holiday or be effective at achieving your goals on a business trip, these simple tips will help you enjoy your journey and time on board with Emirates today.
smart traveller
Drink plentY of Water Rehydrate with water or juices frequently. Drink tea and coffee in moderation.
travel lightlY Carry only the essential items that you will need during your flight.
Before Your JourneY Consult your doctor before travelling if you have any medical concerns about making a long journey, or if you suffer from a respiratory or cardiovascular condition. Plan for the destination – will you need any vaccinations or special medications? Get a good night’s rest before the flight. Eat lightly and sensibly.
Wear glasses Cabin air is drier than normal, therefore swap your contact lenses for glasses.
at the airport Allow yourself plenty of time for check-in. Avoid carrying heavy bags through the airport and onto the flight as this can place the body under considerable stress. Once through to departures try and relax as much as possible.
use skin moisturiser Apply a good quality moisturiser to ensure your skin doesn’t dry out.
keep moving Exercise your lower legs and calf muscles. This encourages blood flow.
During the flight Chewing and swallowing will help equalise your ear pressure during ascent and descent. Babies and young passengers may suffer more acutely with popping ears, therefore consider providing a dummy. Get as comfortable as possible when resting and turn frequently. Avoid sleeping for long periods in the same position.
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make Yourself comfortaBle Loosen clothing, remove jacket and avoid anything pressing against your body.
When You arrive Try some light exercise, or read if you can’t sleep after arrival.
briefing
Visas & UaE smart GatE Guide to us customs & immiGration Whether you’re travelling to, or through, the United States today, this simple guide to completing the US customs form will help to ensure that your journey is as hassle free as possible.
CUSTomS DEClArATIon Form
electronic system for travel authorisation (esta) If you are an international traveller wishing to enter the United States under the Visa Waiver Programme, You must apply for electronic authorisation (ESTA) up to 72 hours prior to your departure.
esta facts:
All passengers arriving into the US need to complete a Customs Declaration Form. If you are travelling as a family this should be completed by one member only. The form must be completed in English, in capital letters, and must be signed where indicated.
Children and infants require an individual ESTA. The online ESTA system will inform you whether your application has been authorised, not authorised or if authorisation is pending. A successful ESTA application is valid for two years, however this may be revoked or will expire along with your passport.
apply online at www.cbp.Gov/esta nationalities eliGible for the visa waiver*: Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Czech republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, latvia, liechtenstein, lithuania, luxemburg, malta, monaco, The netherlands, new Zealand, norway, Portugal, San marino, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom**
* subject to chanGe ** only british citizens qualify under the visa waiver proGramme.
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BE SMART!
NATIONALITIES THAT CAN USE UAE SMART GATES
USE UAE SMART GATE AT DUBAI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT GO THROUGH IMMIGRATION IN SECONDS AND GET YOUR VISIT TO DUBAI OFF TO A FLYING START Citizens of the countries listed on the right and UAE residents can speed through Dubai International Airport by using UAE Smart Gate. If you hold a machine readable passport, UAE Emirates ID card or E-Gate card you can check in and out of the airport within seconds. Just look out for signs that will direct you to the many UAE Smart Gates found on either side of the Immigration Hall at Dubai International Airport.
USING UAE SMART GATE IS EASY
1
Have your UAE Emirates ID card, E-Gate card or machine-readable passport ready to be scanned
Place your passport photo page on the scanner. If you are a UAE resident, you can scan your UAE Emirates ID card. If you have an E-Gate card place it into the E-Gate slot
2 3
OK!
Go through the open gate, stand in the blue footprint guide on the floor, face the camera straight-on and remain still for your iris scan. When finished, the next set of gates will open and you can proceed to baggage claim
UAE
ANDORRA
AUSTRALIA
AUSTRIA
BAHRAIN
BELGIUM
BRUNEI
CANADA
DENMARK
FINLAND
FRANCE
GERMANY
GREECE
ICELAND
IRELAND
ITALY
JAPAN
KUWAIT
LICHTENSTEIN
LUXEMBOURG
MALAYSIA
MONACO
NETHERLANDS
NEW ZEALAND
NORWAY
OMAN
PORTUGAL
QATAR
SAN MARINO
SAUDI ARABIA
SINGAPORE
SOUTH KOREA
SPAIN
SWEDEN
SWITZERLAND
*UK
USA
*UK citizens only (UK overseas citizens still require a visa)
REGISTERING FOR UAE SMART GATE IS EASY
To register, just follow the above process and then spend a few moments having your details validated by an Immigration officer. That’s it! Every time you fly to Dubai in future, you will be out of the airport and on your way just minutes after you landed.
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UAE SMART GATE CAN BE USED BY:
Machine readable passports from the above countries UAE Emirates ID cards E-Gate cards
ROUTE MAP
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NEW ROUTES:
Oslo: from September 2, 2014 Brussels: from September 5, 2014 Budapest: from October 27, 2014
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ROUTE MAP
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ROUTE MAP
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the FLeet
Our fleet contains 230 aircraft made up of 217 passenger aircraft and 13 cargo aircraft
Boeing 777-300eR
Number of Aircraft: 99 Capacity: 354-442 Range: 14,594km Length: 73.9m Wingspan: 64.8m
Boeing 777-300
Number of Aircraft: 12 Capacity: 364 Range: 11,029km Length: 73.9m Wingspan: 60.9m
Boeing 777-200LR
Number of Aircraft: 10 Capacity: 266 Range: 17,446km Length: 63.7m Wingspan: 64.8m
Boeing 777-200
Number of Aircraft: 9 Capacity: 274-346 Range: 9,649km Length: 63.7m Wingspan: 60.9m
Boeing 777F
Number of Aircraft: 11 Range: 9,260km Length: 63.7m Wingspan: 64.8m For more information: emirates.com/ourfleet
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Airbus A380-800
Number of Aircraft: 53 Capacity: 489-517 Range: 15,000km Length: 72.7m Wingspan: 79.8m
Airbus A340-500
Number of Aircraft: 9 Capacity: 258 Range: 16,050km Length: 67.9m Wingspan: 63.4m
Airbus A340-300
Number of Aircraft: 4 Capacity: 267 Range: 13,350km Length: 63.6m Wingspan: 60.3m
Airbus A330-200
Number of Aircraft: 21 Capacity: 237-278 Range: 12,200km Length: 58.8m Wingspan: 60.3m
boeing 747-400erF
Number of Aircraft: 2 Range:9,204km Length: 70.6m Wingspan: 64.4m Aircraft numbers as of September 2014
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last look
Florence VERONICA CORNACCHINI, 30, HAT DESIGNER, SUPER DUPER HATS, FLORENCE, ITALY I am originally from the centre of Italy, a small village near Perugia. I moved to Florence, because I went to school/university here and started to make hats. Florence has a good background in traditional hat-making, so I am lucky to be here. It’s a wonderful city, but not a crazy city. We live in the country, but we can get to the centre in 10 minutes by car. I am here at Fortezza de Basso for Pitti Immagine Uomo 86, the biggest menswear clothing trade show in the world. I’m working, presenting the new collection. I would describe my style as comfortable, and that’s why I put these clothes on this morning – really large cropped trousers, which I found at a market.
IMAGE: MELODIE JENG, THENYCSTREETS.COM
superduperhats.com
Discover Luxury
The largest selection of genuine 19th century French antiques in the region, 19th Century Antiques includes rare furniture, bronzes, paintings, clock sets, and vases of exceptional quality and taste.
JUMEIRAH EMIRATES TOWERS, BOULEVARD | DUBAI, UAE TEL: +971 4 3887000 FAX: +971 4 3887111 | WWW.19CENTURYANTIQUES.COM
yslbeauty.com Edie Campbell
THE NEW FEMININE FRAGRANCE