Synthetic beach with temperature-controlled sand

Plans are underway to build a beach with refrigerated sand at the new Palazza Versace hotel in Dubai. A substructure of pipes will circulate coolant under the sand to keep guests' feet from getting burned. Giant fans are also proposed to generate an "ocean breeze." The eco-impact of the scheme is a concern. The whole thing reminds me of the domed beaches and ski resorts covered in Iara Lee's cyber-era documentary Synthetic Pleasures. From the Times Online:

Soheil Abedian, founder and president of Palazzo Versace, said he believed it is possible to design a refrigerated beach and make it sustainable. “We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on,” he said. “This is the kind of luxury that top people want...”

Versace's plans have shocked environmentalists. Rachel Noble, the campaigns officer at Tourism Concern, which promotes sustainable tourism, said that the carbon generated by such projects would contribute to climate change, whose worst effects would be felt by the poor.

“Dubai is like a bubble world where the things that are worrying the rest of the world, like climate change, are simply ignored so that people can continue their destructive lifestyles,” she said.

"Chill out, you beautiful people, the Versace beach is refrigerated" (Times Online), "Cool Sand Likely To Make Environmentalists Hot" (National Public Radio)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Mojave

#14 what makes you think you will live long enough to see the ruined towers of Dubai? A century is a long time….
blackanvil

What it will look like in a century? If the world economy drops much further, it may be deserted much sooner. It takes money, and lots of it, to run the desalination plants, to generate the power for all the air conditioning, and so on. Rome, iirc, was nearly deserted in a matter of months after the aqueducts were destroyed — how long would Dubai stay inhabited if their water sources vanished? And, if you hang out at all over at Global Guerrillas, you quickly realize how fragile such systems are, and how dissident groups have learned to target them.
Takuan

ah Dubai; who’s worse? The perpetually noveau riche desert nomads that stil think sophistication can be purchased along with the respect of their former colonizers? Their pampered, useless sons? The chavs that clog the beaches? The capable that prostitute themselves to build these ecological travesties? The SUV drivers that created the wealth with their stupid, misplaced values?

is it not written:

Everything Iz Ghey

1 Teh werdz ov teh preechur, teh son ov David, King of teh Jerusalem.2 “St00pid! St00pid!” Sez teh teechurcat. “Srsly st00pid. Everythingz ghey.”3 Wut man getz 4 laburz he toilz @ undur teh sunz?4 Generashun comez n generashun goez, still same lolcats.5 Sun rizez n setz, goez bak n rize agin.6 Teh wind blowz souf n norf, rownd n rownd, alwayz teh sayme.7 Seaz can has streemz, nevur fullz. Streemz go bak where comez frum.8 All tingz has DO NOT WANT, more den werdz sez. Lolrus never sez “enuf bucket, kthnx” or kitteh sez “dats good, enuff cheezburger.”9 Has happen? Gunna be agin. Nuthing new undur teh sunz.10 Kitteh can not sez “OMFGZ sumthing new!” is jus REPOST!.11 New kittahz 4gitz old kittahz, new kittahz 4gitd bai even newer kittahz
Falcon_Seven

“What it will look like in a century?“
See this and you will know what it will look like in fifty years.
IWood

#15 posted by Mojave:

I have this thing called an imagination. It lets me visualize things that I haven’t seen, and it’s a really fab piece of kit. Highly recommended!
Takuan

Salton Sea monkeys?
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=bUj_EQtJBls
Teller

Won’t be too long before the Somalis ’round the bend and start picking off cigarette boats.
karengeier

man i CANNOT WAIT until the bottom falls out of the dubai travel market. it’s such a bourgeois nightmare of tackiness and baroque horror vacui. instead of going to visit a site on earth of some proper significance, let’s go to a place where EVERYTHING looks like your aunt marilyn in the bejewelled sweater! WIN!
Anonymous

It’s about as smart as building new islands while your primary export causes globabl warming. Dubai does that too.

So why do they do this? Because they can’t take all that money with them.
Halloween Jack

Your wish may already be coming true, karengeier.
Chairboy

The real innovation will come from the person who figures out how to generate power from this scheme. The beaches collect a lot of heat, and heat = energy.

Tour the Stirling Cycle heat exchanger out in the water that recirculates the beach coolant and extracts power to run the artificial breeze from the heat differential….
spiregrain

The ski slope at the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai has real (well, manufactured) H2O snow. It’s huge, and the entire space is air conditioned to about -4Â°C. It’s about 40Â°C outside in the summer… AT NIGHT.

And the cafe half-way up the slope has gas-burning patio heaters.

Dispite this and other wonders, Dubai still manages to be a shithole, a glittery shithole, but a shithole.

(P.S. their Great Firewall allows youtube, but bans flickr entirely).
robgotabingbang

But, it IS the kind of luxury that all the “top people” want.
Anonymous

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Express
Green Days in Brunei
Antinous

The problem with the Salton Sea isn’t what it look like, The problem is what it smells like.
buddy66

Soon there’s not going to be enough top people to populate a beach.
Drew from Zhrodague

I wonder how long it will be until Dubai is no longer inhabited, and ends-up like a Mad Max landschaft. Sounds like the premise for a neat science fiction story!
manicbassman

hmmm nice cool beach… but you can’t have sex on it…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7673046.stm
Jason Rizos

As a “top” person, I just want to say that I like feeling the warm sand beneath my beach blanket. And as for burning my feet, I must be especially “top,” as I have these things called “shoes.”
Slowermo

Just reading the headline, I knew it had to be Dubai. When do the moving sidewalks that George Costanza wanted happen?
ChunkyMonkeyBrain

…so uhh – I know it sounds bad and all, but how big is the beach that they’re proposing? If it’s smaller square footage than most urban office towers, why the long face? I know it’s tacky and a waste, but it’s Dubai – a playground for the super-rich who don’t have to care about anything.

A lot of this righteous indignation could be put to better use over projects and issues that actually demand action and attention.
padster123

If you don’t like the heat then DON’T GO OUT AND LIE IN THE SUN IN A HOT COUNTRY!!! Or, get a hat and a sunshade.

Makes one want to slap people for being so stupid.

It’s like drinking water and then complaining because it’s too wet.
Cowicide

Maybe just run some tubes under the sand with normal cool water through them and that will grab some heat and then have those pipes supply hot water in the hotels or whatever. win win?
Chicchan

Amazing, money washing pipes that also cool off sand, now thats an idea!
IWood

#6 posted by Drew from Zhrodague:

My thoughts exactly! I get a certain frisson from photos of abandoned places or well-rendered art depicting post-Apocalyptic cities being reclaimed by Nature…I’m getting an anticipatory twinge just thinking about what the fabulous structures of Dubai will look like in a century when the desert reasserts itself.