Architect Jean Nouvel’s desert rose design for the Qatar National Museum aimed to embody Qatar’s rising economic superpower and technological advances achieved through the last decade by petroleum and natural gas. He describes the desert rose structure to have an “eternal dimension,” implying that Qatar’s desert minerals will always stand against the test of time, especially after industrialization. But if we think about the concept of the Anthropocene, which is a proposed geological epoch dating from the onset of significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems that is widely contested, could that conception be true in Nouvel’s description of the desert rose’s symbolic significance? If we are living in a world where humans have had an irreversible impact on the environment, then how can the desert rose be timeless?
To answer this question we must look at where that epoch could’ve theoretically begun. While these proposed commencement dates have been contested, I will be using the Industrial Revolution as the starting point for the inception of the Anthropocene. In that sense, industrialization has caused irreversible damage to the environment. However, author Jason Moore takes issue with the term ‘anthropocene’ because it implies that humanity is a ‘homogeneous acting unit’ when it actually exists in a patterned historical system. Instead, he suggests that the term ‘Capitolocene’ is more appropriate to use in this context since we could trace back humanity’s interference with the environment with that of capitalist motives. If we consider the notion that humanity’s capitalist takeover has altered the Earth’s dynamics forever, then that would mean that Nouvel’s symbolism is inaccurate.
Nouvel presents his symbolism of the desert and the industrial life of Qatar as two contradicting entities He mentions that here: “Symbolically, its architecture evokes the desert, its silent and eternal dimension, but also the spirit of modernity and daring that have come along and shaken up what seemed unshakable. So, it’s the contradictions in that history that I’ve sought to evoke here.” His work contends with Moore’s concept of ‘green arithmetic’, which is the assertion that Moore rejects. It states that the world is divided into two separate categories: Nature and society. Moore argues that separating nature and society into different compartments is “ a peculiar mental artifact of capitalism” which potentially justifies this system, since nature exists outside society then it could be rationalized to degrade and exploit the land for economic reasons. Instead, Nouvel should present humanity as a part of nature since society has shaped the environment given what we know about the Capitolocene.
I think that Nouvel was trying to combine the eras of Qatar as one to invoke reminiscent feelings of the past: the desolated desert of Qatar and the industrialized and economically powerful Qatar. But if we take a closer look at the literature behind the Capitolocene posed by Moore, it would then represent capitalism as overtaking the evocative cultural aspect of Qatar. If the specks of humanity eternally alter the environment, then the desert rose is merely a distant memory of Qatar’s past.
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