Hasta La Ideas

We think we’ve made our general attitude about ceaseless year-end lists abundantly clear. But like always around this time of year, we reluctantly slide a little and wind up posting one or two. In this case, it’s architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne‘s great wrap-up, which we found interesting in particular because he spends most of it talking about the recent view from the ground at Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s largest tower. You’ll recall that, after delays aplenty, the gigantic structure finally opened in early January. And then a few days later, closed again. But, whew, then it opened again. After that, outside of a couple of odd stories here and there, and all those clips of people skydiving off of it, the Burj quickly slipped back out of the news. So it’s interesting to hear from Hawthorne about what’s been going on, or rather, what hasn’t happened, notably getting business tenants and residents to actually use the place. Of the condominiums, the critic reports, roughly 92% of them still remain vacant. The troubled, exist-beyond-its-means Burj is clearly a great metaphor for the building industry and the speculation therein as a whole and Hawthorne uses it well. Of course he also files the required end-of-year slideshow with all his best and worst picks (as does the New Yorker‘s Paul Goldberger, who smartly kept the focus to just New York), but this piece about the Burj is certainly the meat and potatoes of seeing 2010 as a snapshot.

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