Broken News: Ludicrous building industry near collapse as Dubai economic crisis worsens

DUBAI—The recent opening of the 2,717 ft, 160 floor Burj Khalifa skyscraper was greeted with joy by many. However, the centerpiece of what Dubai officials are hoping will become the London or New York of the Middle East has been met with trepidation by several groups. Indeed, the number of vacancies in the $1.5 billion skyscraper, combined with the debt incurred to build such monstrous buildings, and the resulting collapse of Dubai’s finances, have signaled the death of one of the world’s formerly booming industries: immensely stupid construction.

In fact, with the Burj Khalifa completed there are no new plans for any new intensely idiotic building concepts or even marginally feeble-minded and functionally useless projects. Recent months have seen a dramatic scaling back or even outright cancellation of some of the dumbest and most ill-conceived architectural projects known to man.

All this has many wondering what lies ahead for the stupid building construction industry that fueled Dubai’s growth at the outset of the 21st century.

“Yeah, times are tough,” a mournful Henri Duplass, CEO of Duplass Merde, one of the largest builders of foolish structures in the world, noted. “I remember when we built that giant 22,500 square meter indoor ski slope and followed it up by building the world’s largest outdoor pool and fake beachfront 100 yards from an ocean beachfront. Those were heady times."

“Before everything went to shit, we were designing a fake Swiss lakeside mountain retreat. We were carting in a trillion tons of granite for our mountain, had drawn up plans to dig out an artificial lake the size of Lake Champlain, and were still tinkering with the massive air conditioning/sprinkler system that would have been required to keep natural Swiss flora and fauna alive in the middle of a 120 degree desert. It was going to cost $7 billion dollars and be of no use to anyone. It would have been so... so beautiful...”

“Now? We’ve been reduced to crafting practical structures that are of use to normal people. I designed some low-income housing the other day and almost vomited in my mouth.”

Indeed, the industry has taken a massive hit. In recent years, Dubai had boasted 25% of all the world’s cranes in operation, but has recently seen that statistic shrink to an alarmingly sensible level for a Middle Eastern country with little in the way of industry, culture, or population.

In addition to the Dubai Swiss Chalet project, the recent economic troubles have cause the cancellation or delay of numerous ridiculous projects including the Dubai City Tower, a 1.5 mile high 400 floor building that was to have a vertical bullet train instead of an elevator, a Hanna Barbara-themed amusement park on a hover platform, an artificial island shaped like a construction team building an artificial island, a five thousand seat stadium dedicated to women’s sports, a Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, a branch of the science department of the University of Alabama, a monument to human folly, a Catholic church, and a series of metaphorical buildings that were to be built on foundations of sand.

According to analysts most of the problems in Dubai result from a drastic overestimation of the desire of people to live there, resulting in numerous home and business vacancies combined with the sheer amount of debt the United Arab Emirates amassed to build these asinine structures. With estimates of $100 billion in debt for the state owned businesses that amassed them and little hope of recouping losses and filling vacancies in this economic climate, the outlook is bleak.

“Some would say that we’re up shit creek without a paddle,” observed Ali Mohammed Sahan, a spokesman for Dubai World, the government owned investment company that funded most of the retarded structures. “But I disagree. We have a paddle, it’s just that it’s over 600 meters tall, made of platinum and diamonds, and affixed to the ground through a complex jumble of steel trusses. It’s going to take an incredible sum and a greater influx of foreign capital for us to detach and use said paddle.”

But despite these setbacks and the massive contraction that the stupid building industry is about to go through, those close to the situation remain optimistic for the future.

“Somewhere in a backyard someplace, there’s some kid in a sandbox building some dumb fucking thing out of whatever he can get his hands on,” observed a prideful Duplass. “And somewhere there’s some rich idiot who wants to deficit spend his country into poverty and utilize the modern equivalent of slave labor to get it built. That’s the kind of thing that gives me hope for the future.”

“We’ll be back before you know it. Building, I don’t know, a bunch of skyscrapers that fit together like Tetris blocks or something,” Duplass smiled. “We’ll be back.