Before returning to Southeast Asia, my favorite corner of the world, six months ago I was in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. While there one of the places I visited was the Marina Mall, situated out among the marinas of the Persian Gulf in the western side of the city.
Marina Mall is Massive
The mall was built in 2001 has has since been expanded twice. Now it is covers 235,000 square metres and is home to over 400 stores, nearly 50 restaurants, a 100-metre observation tower, bowling alley, 9-screen multiplex cinema, and ice rink. Even if you are not in the mood for shopping the place is great for people-watching — or to look at things that you could only dream of ever affording!
I was most definitely here for that latter of those options. Given how much money I was already spending just being the in country — plus the fact that I am living out of a backpack and cannot spare any extra space for souvenirs or more clothing — it was easier and safer for me to just wander the mall, taking photographs and leaving with a full wallet.
One of my favorite photos from that afternoon was the colossal waterfall inside of the mall. But of course since this is the UAE they didn’t stop at just creating a giant indoor waterfall. No, this one also put on shows and alternate patterns, even having lights on the bottom that turned on or off to match the water droplets falling atop them. One of the most spectacular designs of waterfall artwork was the double-helix. It began with two of the spouts at the top streaming water down but just as quickly as it started each one stopped and activated the one next to it for 1/20th of a second. The two streams spun in opposite directions, racing through all the nozzles up top but only activating each one for a split-second. As the water flow continued to spin around and around and cascade down, a double-helix formed in the waterfall below, looking exactly like a DNA chain.
Although this photo does not do the design justice, if you look closely it is possible to faintly see the double-helix, especially at the top and bottom of the waterfall. But even beyond that there is a lot of geometry visible in the photograph, not just in the rainbow-colored tilework at the bottom of the waterfall but also throughout the background.
Pretty freakin’ rad photo I’ve gotta’ say, that tile work at the bottom is gorgeous.