Autodesk Gallery Powers of Design Exhibit: 10**5 Palm Islands

April 19, 2013

Autodesk Gallery Powers of Design Exhibit: 10**5 Palm Islands

I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I thought I'd cover the exhibit elements, one at a time, over the next few months. I started small and am working my way up.

Palm Jumeirah, as seen from the International Space Station. Image courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center.

10⁵ MAGNITUDE
100,000 m
100 Kilometers

Palm Islands

520 Kilometers

If we measured scale by ambition, the Palm Islands would be considerably larger than 10⁵. An artificial archipelago of three islands in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the Palm Islands will contain over 100 luxury hotels, villas, marinas, water parks, restaurants, shopping malls, sports facilities, and health spas when completed.

Shaped like palm trees, the settlements are constructed of sand dredged from the bottom of the Persian Gulf, adding 520 kilometers of beaches to Dubai. Over 1 billion cubic meters of rock and sand will be used in their construction, with each breakwater rock given its own GPS coordinate and placed individually by crane.

Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.

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