Research Colloquium at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, SFU Surrey presents:

Glen Lowry

February 25, 2009 at 2:30 pm

SFU Surrey Campus, Room 5380 (5th Floor Galleria)

Miraya—creative critical collaboration

Taking its name from the Arabic word for "mirror", "reflection", "mirage", Miraya is an interactive public artwork that creates real-time links between urban mega-developments in Vancouver and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Miraya situates itself at the nexus of an emerging global geography in the form of master-planned residential glass towers lining urban waterfronts creating a new form of luxury lifestyle living. Key to the design and marketing of this experience are the promenades, as is evident in Vancouver’s False Creek North and its near-replica, the Dubai Marina, and it is along these seawall walkways that Miraya's interactive portal sites engage residents and tourists alike.

Vancouver’s high-density downtown condominium developments with long view corridors and easy access to urban waterfront are recognized internationally as examples of successful urban planning. Concord Pacific Place along Vancouver’s False Creek is the epitome a new “Vancouverism,” Canada’s own 21st century answer to the outdated Manhattanism. According to a popular narrative, Emirati developer Mohamed Ali Alabbar visited Vancouver’s Concord Pacific Place in the mid-1990s and was so impressed by what he saw that he set about replicating it in Dubai. Subsequently, Alabbar put in place plans for EMAAR to construct “almost a perfect clone of downtown Vancouver — right down to the handrails on the seawall, the skinny condo towers on townhouse bases, all around a 100-per-cent artificial, full-scale version of False Creek filled with seawater from the Persian Gulf” (Trevor Boddy). This was an international urban collaboration, involving former Vancouver city planners, Concord Pacific staff, and Emirati developers. As a result, the wildly successful Dubai Marina became a prototype of upscale high-density master planning and has made EMAAR one of the largest developers in the world, with new False Creek-inflected projects throughout the Persian Gulf, India, Pakistan, and recently North America.

This SSHRC funded Research Creation project brings together a team or artist and academic researchers who draw on expertise in the various areas of visual arts, media, cultural theory, urban geography and history.

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