In March 2014, Ibraaz and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation launched an online media partnership with Art Dubai 2014 for the eighth iteration of the Global Art Forum.

In this transcription from the Forum, panel participants Adina Hempel, Todd Reisz, Anastase Emmanuel and H.E. Salem Al Moosa discuss the 'Short Seventies', a period of great development in the UAE. Beginning with it's founding in December 1971, the discussion traces the intertwined growth of nation building and the physical building of a new city-state until 1979 and why, depsite this hyper-active, foundational production of modern architecture, this period in Emirati history often lacks national affection and is slowly being erased.

Shumon Basar: I want to say a few words just to set the scene. Interestingly we now stay in the same geographical location but we are travelling a few decades forwards into a period which we are going to be looking at a number of times during the Global Art Forum, what we call the 'Short Seventies'.

This is a paraphrase of something that Eric Hobsbawm, whom you saw earlier, talked about in a number of his books. Eric Hobsbawm wrote a famous trilogy about the long nineteenth century which, he claimed, started with the age of revolution in the late nineteenth century and went all the way into 1914. Then he wrote an extraordinary book which came out in 1994, which comprises the interview 'The Age of Extremes'. The subtitle of that book was 'The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991'.

I think it's a very interesting concept that we may use certain words to define units of time, but that those actual units of time may be longer or shorter than the words which denote them. We wanted to put forward the notion that one of the last very significant decades, or in this case, short decades, for the beginning of the twenty-first century is this notion of the short seventies. This starts for us from 1971 and goes to 1979, and we will be looking at this period a number of times.

In Doha we looked at a period that overlapped, from 1972-82. Here we are looking at 1971-9; we are going to look at this period again tomorrow in a more global sense with Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Marina Fokidis, and Tirdad Zolghadr. Just to clarify, the UAE was founded in December 1971 only a few years after oil reserves were discovered here. There's a slight difference between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, we had this period of nation building alongside urban development; architectural building and civic building happening at the same time.

Modern architecture, though seemingly on the wane in the west, found itself active in the UAE and soon became manifest in municipal, domestic and corporate projects. The spirit of a new feature was crystallized in the opening of Dubai's Jebel Ali Port, and World Trade Centre in 1979 – this is one of the hinge points. However, in the accelerated time-landscape of the Gulf, this period often lacks national affection and is slowly being erased. We wanted to ask why this is the case, and explore whether the period 1971-9 was actually more innovative and more interesting than certain types of history now lead us to believe.

I am going to briefly introduce our participants, we have two hosts and two guests. Todd Reisz is an architect, researcher and writer currently focusing on the cities of the Gulf region from historical and contemporary perspectives. He is the editor of Al Manakh 2: Gulf Continued which analyses the recent development of cities in the Gulf, and he teaches courses in urban studies at Yale University School of Architecture.

Our second host is Adina Hempel, an architect and assistant professor at Zayed University's College of Arts and Creative Enterprises in Dubai. She was appointed Head of Research for the National Pavilion of the UAE at the Venice Architecture Biennale at the end of 2014. Adina received her MA from Dresden University of Technology.

We are incredibly grateful to our two guests, two protagonists from the period we will be discussing. First, I'd like to introduce Anastase Emmanuel, an architect and town planner offering independent consultancy for international projects from Athens and London. He has lived and worked for over 20 years in the UAE, having been chief town planner of Dubai Municipality and founding member of Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority's development initiatives, including Saadiyat Island and its Cultural District.

Last but by no means least, it gives us great pleasure to welcome Salem Al Moosa, founder and president of Al Moosa enterprises. Over the next hour we will learn more about his significant contributions to the making of Dubai in the 1970s, something that continues with his immense project Falconcity of Wonders. I'm carrying one of the passports to the Falconcity of Wonders, and I urge you to look this up, but I know we will be learning more about this project later on in the session.

I think that Falconcity of Wonders is an interesting and important project that says much about the relationship between the past, the present and the future today. Lastly, I want to thank Mr Salem; he's been very generous to the Global Art Forum. We're deeply thankful to him and indeed to all of our guests. Now I'm going to hand over to Todd Reisz.

Todd Reisz: Good afternoon. Thanks for the introduction, Shumon. We are quite excited about this short hour on a short decade. We are actually going to start a little bit before 1970 in 1969, to be precise, which is when this image was taken. This is the launching of Al-Khazan from the shore of Dubai, a couple years after the discovery that there was a commercial amount of oil in Dubai, not onshore but beneath the Gulf waters in Dubai's territory. The man in the middle is a man from a company called Chicago Bridge and Iron Company out of Chicago Illinois, USA. The man to his right, the man whose back is to us, is perhaps the most important man in the picture: Sheikh Rashid.

This is a picture taken when these monsters of technology were being launched from the shore of Dubai to store oil as it was being extracted. Suddenly, the oil that was so important for Dubai's development up until then was going to be found away from Dubai. It became an abstraction in the sense that oil would not be the element that would drive Dubai's ambitions and potential, rather the management of oil, its ability to move within and without borders, would be the driving force.

This happened on a beach that became known because of this, it was called Chicago Beach. This is what it looked like as these things were leaving the shore of Dubai to go and collect the oil. This is a picture of the Khazans being taken out of the ships. Prominent people from Dubai were on these ships, apparently as part of the ritual of taking these things offshore so that Dubai could now have land as the focus of development. This is the Chicago Beach hotel or resort that actually kept the name of Chicago; it began construction in the late 1970s but certainly became an element of Dubai in the 1980s.

Just a little bit further on beyond the edge of Dubai at the time, and even further out was the Chicago Beach villas. Tassos swam in the swimming pool which is next to Medina. These villas were eventually demolished, and you're sitting where the Chicago villas once stood.

Here is Medina, Jumeirah. I think this is an important point to make because Dubai is often seen as a crazy place of Tableau Rosa, but it has these levels of history. Not only was this a place where these elements of oil were taken out, it was also the site of a resort that is no longer there; it's been replaced by the Medina, Jumeirah, by Burj Al Arab, by Jumeirah Beach Hotel. We have these elements of the 1970s that are already disappearing, what Ala Younis described as these transformational points.

I think in the 1970s each year was a transformational point; it was a continuous motion where even if there might have been a lot of matter coming in, a lot of things being built, they weren't necessarily being built to stay around for a long time but were perhaps being used to project forwards.

We are going to start in 1970 and 1979 is going to seem like an entirely different world. The National Bank of Dubai opens in 1969; this picture was from 1970. This, as Tassoswas saying, was Dubai Creek, which is to your left; the old dhow culture which Butheina and Frauke Heard-Bey were talking about is located here. This was going to be the new road, and what seemed to be new Dubai on the creek was quickly going to be supplanted by a new Dubai that was happening miles away from perhaps what planners and what people reporting on Dubai were saying.

The Sheikh Rashid Hospital opens in 1970. It's not only an element of Dubai's representation of itself as a modern place where one can literally be healthy, but it was also seen as a place of being able to respond very quickly to needs. This is modernism happening quickly; it took two and a half years to build a state of the art hospital of international standards for Dubai. It was also the architect John Harris who developed these arches that became a kind of symbol, an icon, for Dubai, and which were used by the Department of Health as a symbol for their ambitions.

I'm just giving quick ideas of where we were in 1971. This is Costain, a British engineer who redeveloped the airport. Scott, a great man who was Sheikh Rashid's financier and also the general inspector of ports in Dubai, gave an annual report of the state of Dubai's finances. This is what he wrote about 1972 and 1973: 'One might say that Dubai has returned to its "normal", abnormal growth rate; 40 per cent increase by value in imports between 1972 and 1971.' I think we're already in an era of ambition, of excitement, of trying to find a way of being released from concerns about certain constraints.

This is the cover of the 1971 master plan by John Harris, Dubai's second master plan; this one comes 11 years after the first one. Perhaps in our discussion we can explore some of what it symbolized, but I think one gesture we should all understand is that if the creek was becoming the centre of Dubai then the development and ambition started to run down the coast towards the south, towards what would be Chicago Beach Hotel, and eventually all the way 35 kilometres down towards Jebel Ali. I think it's this kind of ambition, this instability through an obsession, almost, with growth and potential, that we want to open up.

Salem Al Moosa, I wanted to begin with you because it's at this moment, I believe, that you went away to study; you went to the USA and studied in Tampa, Florida.

Salem Al Moosa: That's right.

TR: And you came back in 1974?

SAM: Yes, 1974, and in the middle of the action.

TR: In the middle of it, exactly, in the middle of the abnormal normal, or normal abnormal action. I would be curious what it was like to come back as a student who had graduated, having studied economics, and this being your home. You had been away for a couple of years and –

SAM: I had lived there before I left for the United States.

TR: Exactly. Did you recognize the place? Did you jump in? What was your reaction?

SAM: The historian earlier spoke about the pearl divers and how the people were poor and nobody looked after them. Of course, we were under the protection of the British, of the British Empire, and we had a great deal with India in terms of business and economics. At the same time, there were a number of worldwide wars taking place that were affecting us very badly, and we were occupied by the British for more than 150 years.

As far as I know, education came from Kuwait. The Kuwaiti government started building schools in Dubai (I'm just giving you a brief overview of what happened in the past), and then Sheikh Rashid supported them. We didn't have any income to help the city to flourish and we were in need of aid as when the British left us we had nothing, really. We didn't have water to drink, we didn't have electricity, we didn't have education, we didn't have hospitals – we didn't have anything. Little by little we gained things from Kuwait; the Kuwaitis had oil before us and they started to send educational missions, hospital doctors, they began to build small hospitals, and so on. That was in the early 1960s, and I left Dubai in the late 60s.

I went to the United States to go to school. When I came back, Sheikh Rashid as a planner, as a man responsible for such a crippled nation, or crippled city, had started planning for the future. He borrowed some money from Kuwait and he developed The Creek. (On the topic of The Creek, which you were discussing earlier, The Creek played an important role in facilitating the maritime trade into the city from Africa, the northern Gulf region, Iran, and Iraq, and at the same time was very close to India – that's why Bombay came into the picture, because it's the closest place to us.)

Sheikh Rashid first started planning on education; probably because he felt that the most important issue was to develop the next generation in Dubai, to educate those children, to provide a proper education as well as proper medication and housing. He concentrated on two things: the first was developing people, and the second was developing the infrastructure that serves people. I think that was very good planning. I think he managed the city very well and he put down the foundations – my colleague here knows about this, being in Dubai Municipality Town Planning.

When I came back we had an airport and we had the large Rashid Port. Before the port was built the ships used to stand in the middle of the Gulf, and certain boats would go over and take the cargo to bring it into the city. It was a very hectic job, so they decided to build Rashid Port. Sheikh Rashid then decided to build the Dubai airport; Dubai airport started with no tarmac, it was just simply compacted sabka, which is a very hard limestone surface.

We then received the DC3, and the next generation of McDonnell Douglas Viscount, and after that then they began developing the airport; they laid the tarmac, and the first aircraft company came to Dubai, which was called the British Overseas Corporation (BOAC), with an aircraft called VC10. I don't know who manufactured that, I think a British aerospace company.

We didn't have a sewage system or telephones so Sheikh Rashid gathered all the merchants in Dubai together and suggested the formation of a public company called Dubai Electricity; the outcome was DEWA. He bridged The Creek so that ships could come in to unload their cargo and take cargo with them, and this management flourished trade, and suddenly we started to see aeroplanes coming to Dubai. His idea of opening the skies to anyone who wanted to come to Dubai was warmly welcomed. He emphasized building hotels, schools, and housing, and the momentum started working in favour of Dubai. Dubai had luxury before the formation of the United Arab Emirates.

TR: Could you tell us something more personal; do you remember when you came back, when you flew in? Did you take a drive around to see what had changed since you had been away?

SAM: I was young and wasn't focusing on that; I wanted to do so many things at once. My brain was busy thinking of many different things and not concentrating on any one thing in particular. I immediately realized that there were some banks, there was the buying and selling of land, and I said to myself, 'well, do something.' One day I met a Chinese man who said he was coming to Dubai to work because he had been told that there was some dredging work here and that there was only one company that had a monopoly over the field. The company was called Stain, and had built the airport, Rashid Port, and –

Anastase Emmanuel: And the dry dock.

SAM: Yes. I asked him what he wanted to do and he asked me to tell the Sheikh that he wanted to participate. I took him to Sheikh Rashid, after all, Sheikh Rashid had sent me to the USA for my education, I would always go and sit with him. The director of the municipality Mr Kamal Hamzah was also there with us often. I took this gentleman to Sheikh Rashid and told him that he wanted to participate in the dredging of the Creek.

The Sheikh, who was a good manager, told him go to Sir William Halcrow for an evaluation. He said that William Halcrow should evaluate him, and he sent a gentleman named Neville Allan, who used to be the head of Sir William Halcrow in Dubai, to Singapore to check on the company. He came up with the report within 15 days and said that he was eligible to take the contract and bid for the job.

After this happened I asked the Chinese man what he was going to give me, and he offered me five per cent, which I accepted. I asked what he wanted me to do, and he said 'whenever I call you, you come'. I agreed and we began to build a relationship. We began raising the creek and continued to do so for three years as it's a large dredging from Al-Garhoud bridge down to the reservation where all the bird reservations Sheikh Mohammed had kept.

I went to one bank called BCCI – it's a great bank but the management was not very good. I asked for two million to buy a piece of land and offered them half if I sold it. The man in the bank was very happy as this was an unusual proposition, so he gave me the two million and I bought the land. Two months later I sold it and I got the money. I took the money to him and told him to take his share. He refused, and said he was just testing me.

When I started my business the first thing I saw was that a lot of building work was taking place so I thought that contracting would be the right area to go into, and I started a contracting company. I remember driving my own shovel to level the land and driving my own crane to carry the steel over to the building, and I would stay till midnight. It was enjoyable for me, I was very young.

AE: This was the Pioneering Company.

SAM: Pioneer, that's right. I called it Pioneer because my laundry in America was called Pioneer Laundry! That's the story of my beginning with Dubai. I always sat with this man, Sheikh Rashid, the father of Sheikh Mohammed; I think he was really unique. He didn't go to university, but I would say to him, your Highness, they say that you have white elephants, and I don't know what white elephants are; they say that the trade centre you are building and Port Rashid will bankrupt you, and that Dubai cannot handle such serious projects. He would look at me and say 'don't listen to people, it is only God who gives – we will continue. Believe me, just do whatever you want to do and believe in it and plan it.'

I said 'oh my God.' That's me (referring to picture on slide), long hair – it was 1970, we were listening to Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, and the Tambourine Man by John Denver. I am not saying that this building is mine. John Harris was a consulting firm. John Harris and Sheikh Rashid were both builders. You cannot find many builders in other parts of the Arab world; there are few of them, honestly. Sheikh Rashid, Sheikh Zayed, the rest of the rulers in the Emirates, the Kuwaitis, the Saudis – they are all builders. When you go to other areas in the Arab world, they are demolishers, and this has caused a lot of grief.

There are countries that have been demolished overnight, like what happened to Iraq; overnight it was demolished, in three days and three nights. Now Syria is demolished; Lebanon is under demolition; Palestine and Israel, they are under demolition. Take it from me, Egypt only just managed to preserve itself. Libya is going to be a mess for the next 50 years to come. There's no way to recover. If you are a builder you continue to think positive, otherwise negative feelings will dominate your thoughts and you will become useless. Those leaders who once upon a time were telling us that they know everything turned out to be nothing but paper tigers.

People like Sheikh Rashid – these are the people who built the country out of nothing, who pulled their people out of poverty and sickness and away from a dark future. They did whatever they had to do. I have learnt a lot from Sheikh Rashid.

This building was made through a joint venture with a British company when they came to Dubai. I didn't have the money to give to the British but I said to them that if they could capitalize 20 per cent of the company for me I would bring them orders to increase the turnover. They agreed and came to Dubai; the company was called Hunting Group UK. We created Dubai International Reinforced Plastic; DIRP. Today DIRP is one of the best companies in Dubai and can provide any service you require: buildings façades, interiors, boats, you name it.

I made the mould for the panels that were cladded over the building; John Harris asked us if we could make the moulds and we said that we could, so we made the moulds in fibreglass and they filled it with concrete and allowed it to dry. We used a crane to attach the moulds. I have 30 or 40 per cent involvement in this building, and that was because of Sheikh Rashid.

Adina Hempel: I want to go a step backwards; you mentioned in your presentation you referred to Sheikh Rashid as a planner and as a builder, and I want bring Anastase into the discussion as well. Anastase, you came to the UAE in 1977 –

AE: Yes.

AH: That was a time when certain infrastructures were already laid out; buildings like Dubai Petroleum, which we saw a photograph of, had just opened, and the airport was functioning. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like, from your perspective as a planner coming in from a foreign country to the UAE, to join the municipality under Kamal Hamzah and to have a strong visionary leader like Sheikh Rashid, who had obviously a vision for the city of Dubai. What were your expectations and what was the nature of your work there?

AE: I don't know what my expectations were. I remember that I arrived at 2 o'clock in the morning and my visa was not ready. I had to wait until 6 o'clock and then I was taken to a flooding hotel, moved by the creek. It was called The Flood-tel, and it belonged to the Deputy Director of Dubai Municipality. We crossed the Dubai Municipality through a vast expanse of land that was the Creek Development Phase 2, the Creek Corniche development, where parking and various amenities are nowadays.

The Dubai Municipality building was under construction, and we were in a single-storey or two-storey, rather uninteresting accommodation block at the back of it. I realized at that time that if the hotels were all fully booked and they had to bring in boats for people to sleep on, something was happening here. What I realized soon thereafter was that it was a period of consolidation because the big rush had already taken place. We were at the end of a second generation of development, as Salem said correctly; you had the quality hospital, and then the Rashid Hospital, being built, and another one, the Dubai Hospital, was on the way. Port Rashid had already been built and was being extended; the dry dock was under construction.

We didn't know anything about Jebel Ali, of course, or the other plans which were under wraps, but there had been an array of studies and competitions before I came. One of them was about the development of the Deira Corniche which would run from the mouth of the creek all the way to Hamriya Port – a huge development, come to think of it. There was a study that had been completed about the Centre of Business District development by the Canadians that proved that there was pressure mounting on downtown Dubai and that congestion had to be addressed.

There were other projects like the Union Public Square, which is directly opposite Dubai Municipality across Al Maktoum Road. There was quite a lot of development, and the day I came I realized that there was another international planning competition taking place and the terms of reference had to be issued for a big shopping centre. It was one of the rapid decisions taken by Sheikh Rashid overnight; when Sharjah announced they were going to have a shopping centre by the creek, Sheikh Rashid announced he wanted a shopping centre by the creek, too.

The competition could not invite international consultants to participate at such short notice but it went ahead and the consultants had to work during July and August to submit in September. The only difference was that instead of having a competition for a shopping centre, I expanded the terms of reference to make the competition about the planning of the Al Garhoud area, the whole area surrounding it. This area did not extend very far because there were other commitments, as is always the case; for example, all the car repair shops of Dubai were concentrated in area beside the port and these could not be removed overnight – that's something that Sheikh Rashid would never do, unless he had found an alternative site for them.

Of course, we had other vested interest like the Dubai oil filled supplies, or prime real estate locations on the creek front that, again, had to be persuaded to leave. There was a lot happening, and a lot that was not happening, in the sense that the general public square was never built, the Deira Corniche was never developed. The development of the Al Garhoud area eventually took place, and Deira City Centre was accepted as a location where the shopping centre of 1977 would have been. I was involved with it in the later years, some 20 years later, for the same site.

What was fascinating was that the plans were trying to record and accommodate the changes that were happening. I had some ten or twelve members of staff in the drawing room erasing ink with razor blades to accommodate the new designs. In this process I realized that there was development planned on the Dubai-Sharjah road, past the road leading to Al Qusais) where Al Mulla Plaza was. That development consisted of large towers that would go towards Sharjah because of the Al Mulla Plaza being a man cove for that big development. It was part of the rapprochement in the cases with the ruler of Sharjah.

When it didn't get very far, and border disputes started all over again, the instruction was to erase the development from the town plans – hence the need for the blade again – and shift it to the Dubai-Abu Dhabi road. The stretch of road starting at the Trade Centre roundabout where the Trade Centre was being built, all the way to the next junction, the so-called 'Defence Roundabout' at the time, took all the development that was planned for Sharjah. It consisted of 100 by 100 plots with a parking lot behind it, all for 20-storey buildings. There is a photograph you have of the Trade Centre looking down the road, and the building down there is the first Al Rostamani building.

I was living in the last tower at this time and you can see the traffic was a complete mess. We would cross, make U-turns, there were no road signs or anything like that. I was expecting to be able to consolidate the things that had been happening, because there was a very dramatic spread to many directions. A building permit should be issued within a day; you submit the drawings and it's better to go through all the work of checking and getting it finished the same day. In reality it was impossible; a building permit would take a week.

There was a major problem with that; how could I, a foreigner, start telling the locals how long would it take for them to build their own house or development? In general, planning was looked upon with suspicion. It was seen as a restriction on people's freedom and rights, especially in their own land. That's at one level. At the level of Sheikh Rashid and for the management there, planning was an exercise in investigating the options and the alternatives; what could be done, where, and why, and finally for the ruler to decide what he was going to do himself.

I want to jump to 1985 when the first comprehensive master plan of Dubai was done and the policy statements were submitted to the rulers' office. The ruler looked at them and considered these policy statements on the development of Dubai. So far so good, but at the end of the day the ruler is going to do whatever they decide they want to do. For me this encapsulates the planning process in Dubai, but also the role of Sheikh Rashid, who was the master planner when we first met – the builder, as you called him, and the visionary.

TR: I think this is really important. Both of you mentioned the importance of Sheikh Rashid as the builder, as the actual master planner. Nevertheless, you just said that Sheikh Rashid would do what he wanted to do no matter what the plan said. You also gave us the story of Garhoud, where there were already workshops and where economic development was already going on. He wasn't going to go in and declare a royal decree telling everyone to leave so he could enact his vision, it was a much more complicated affair than that.

SAM: He only does that in areas where people don't live. If, for instance, there was some open land and they wanted to build some developments on it, then he would immediately give the go ahead. However he formed a compensation committee so that if other people's land was affected by, say, a road being built, then he would pay a sum that is evaluated for that part of the land.

He was mainly concerned about his future vision of Dubai. For instance, if you look at this picture, next to that building there is a white tent – that was the first exhibition in Dubai. That's where you have the trade centre exhibition now; that's how we started. All the exhibitors were inside that, believe it or not, for three days or four days.

AE: Was In the second year they also included Portaloos, in the first they did not have any

SAM: Yes, but he was very much responsible man.

TR: I think it's interesting that he was responsible for it. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he was working with the British to develop a municipality (I think the municipality was in the early 1960s). He was actually creating a system, a structure, which he would also then contest.

SAM: When Margret Thatcher came to Dubai she said 'you must be glad to have Sheikh Rashid' – she is known as the Iron Lady and she saw him, the Iron Man. She evaluated him, looked at what he did, and realized that she probably needed two, three or four Sheikh Rashids to take back to the UK to be part of her team, because he's a good builder. Sheikh Rashid works from his office, from his house, from his majlis, and from his hunting ground in Hatta. He asked me to build him a house in Hatta, so we built portacabins. He suggested that we build the portacabins with Ahmad Baqer, because Ahmad Baqer was doing the road to Hatta.

He wanted to build 12 dams in one month, and asked me if it was feasible. I told him that I was the first person to bring ready mix concrete to the Gulf (it was called Unimix). It was a joint venture between me and Tilcon, a UK company. We had 21 transmixers, those big vehicles that mix the concrete while they're going to a site to pour. He asked me if I could supply the concrete and I agreed, so he gave it the green light.

We had ten cars going to Hatta and ten cars coming back from Hatta, and we built the dams in one month. He wanted them to be built that season because in March we have storms. A storm came just a week or two or three days ago. After we finished, I think the sky must have answered Sheik Rashid's wish, his road map, his mission statement. God said 'pour' and the whole thing was filled with water. The boys even they took their boats water skiing in Hatta, it was amazing.

AH: You talked about how the majlis of Sheikh Rashid, which was a very important place; it's interesting how on the one hand you had the municipality, and on the other hand there was the majlis, which was an almost institutional place where decisions and suggestions were made, and where the main people involved in development came together. It might be interesting to hear from both of you about your role in the developing of Dubai; what importance did the majlis of Sheik Rashid play for you in terms of your own involvement in development?

AE: There was normally a majlis at 5 o'clock in the afternoon to deal with Dubai municipality issues. We would all go there to take maps, plans, and drawings, or to discuss issues. Then there was the 9 o'clock majlis that was open to the public. That was what I called the 'democracy of the desert', where everybody would attend and bring their problems. Some would go to ask for money, some would go to ask for land, or for help with an ailing parent, or to ask for a car.

What is fascinating is that all these things were open to everybody, and everybody could more or less listen and comment, and you could be called – or they could be called – to come and sit next to the ruler and convey their wish. In certain cases, you would have an early morning majlis – that was for very urgent, secret issues – or one late at night. One such issue was Jebel Ali town, a plan that was prepared in the 1970s for a new, self-contained township 30-35 miles outside of Dubai for 30,000 people.

SAM: For the union?

AE: That was done by Thorp Chapman Taylor as a joint venture between Australian and British consultants that was monitored for some time, created on the instructions of Sheik Rashid, a representative of Halcrow, a representative of the consultants, and I was there from the municipality monitoring..

We did not know anything about the Jebel Ali report, and we were wondering what the Jebel Ali township was for. We had given Ahmad Baqer the plot for the Jebel Ali hotel, and in the process he had constructed a guest villa there. Discussions about something secret were taking place at different times, not in the main majlis but at the back. It was a very interesting experience; you had Sheikh Maktoum coming, Sheikh Mohammed, Sheikh Hamdan. The Sheikhs were interchanging and visitors arrived and discussing things very openly.

SAM: The idea of the majlis is to hear everybody or to exchange thoughts. If someone wanted to do something, if, let's say, someone wanted to build a hospital, then he would set out the need for the hospital and discuss what area it would be in, for example, and then people would have their input. Somebody might suggest Jumeirah, and another might point to something they already have this and that in Jumeirah. After consulting with the people, the person can then carry on and do the job. That's one of the ideas behind the majlis.

The second idea is that it is for training Sheikh Rashid's children. They are always with him; Sheikh Hamdan has been trained to look after the municipality, Sheikh Maktoum looks after the land department where you have the registration of land and property and so on; Sheikh Mohammed works on the police, and keeping people safe in their homes. You can leave the door to your home open and you will be fine. The basic requirements they are looking to satisfy were: a home to shelter you, peace to keep you happy, and food to fill your stomach. Then you have the world.

That is Sheikh Rashid's philosophy – to keep people happy. That's why Sheikh Mohammed today is asking everybody 'are you happy? If you're not happy, tell me.' They've been learning from their father. Security of the country is very important. Sheik Rashid starts by welcoming everybody from abroad.

This is what happened when they wanted to build the United Arab Emirates: they announced that they were going to build something called the United Arab Emirates, and they told the world to listen, because they were serious and were going to cooperate with their friends.

All over the world people started saying 'go to Dubai, go to Abu Dhabi, go to Sharjah, because it's something different to where you come from.' Here you can develop yourself, you can help, you can benefit people, you can raise your children in a peaceful way, and you can interact with other different people. Today we have over 200 different nationalities and there's no discrimination between them. We all sitting together listening to each other and what we want to do in the future, and discussing how we are going to progress. We are in a country that offers whatever mankind needs, honestly.

We need people for our infrastructure, we have people who serve the infrastructure, and we cannot harm them. We have to take care of the workers on the roads, the workers on the streets, the drivers, the people inside the hotels, the people inside the hospitals. We have to build the best accommodation for our neighbours, we have to treat our neighbours like humans, like us; live and let live.

At the same time we have to be concerned about education, we have to give everybody an education. The United Arab Emirates now has many universities. You don't have to go to Japan to go to for education now; you can have your education here. There are hospitals with doctors from everywhere, you have shopping centres, you have whatever you need. Now we are living out our golden era with everybody who wants to share with us the love of this country. I'd like to show a short film now.

AH: Before we go to the film I just wanted to conclude on what you both said and what I think it shows about the side of development that we don't normally get to talk about very often. The 1970s is about the buildings, the landmarks that stand out, the tone of the development. But I think especially for you (Salem), there was a lot of work done on setting out the infrastructure for this country, development and planning. I think the unique situation you have in the UAE is that you do have a town planning unit, and at the same time you have, almost complimentary to it, a majlis which operates in a similar way. I don't think there's anything similar to that in Europe.

Todd started by mentioning that we are in a place where there are different layers of history, and that's something that I wanted to go back to. I think that it's only possible for you to carry out all the development that happened in the 1970s, along with all the investment, if there was from the beginning an open society that allowed people to come in. It attracted people like Tassos to work on planning, to set up the unit and structure it, and I think that really structured all the developments for the coming years, for the 1980s, and, effectively, even what we see today. We are showing a project that is a type of artistic development.

Thank you both very much.

We are showing a video that sprung from your (Salem) development and from your work after you came back from your education.

(Video): One day a boy went into the desert with nothing but his precious falcon and his precious dreams. And as he released the falcon, the boy whispered, only my dreams soar as high as you do. Falconcity of Wonders, where the wonders of the world, both modern and ancient, are recreated as everyday habitats. Residences, offices, leisure hubs, from the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, to the Taj Arabia, canals of Venice, Big Ben and Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Eiffel Tower, Old Dubai, and Beirut.

More than 41 million square feet of residential, commercial, leisure, educational and entertainment facilities, designed around the theme of wonders, shaped like the UAE's emblem; the falcon, with its wings outspread. Situated along the Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Road, linking the 7 Emirates with easy access to air, road and rail links, complete with occupied villas in different styles, surrounded by landscape greenery, a children's playing area, shopping, medical and social amenities.

The residential areas are situated along the falcon's outstretched wings. These are the western residences south, with 366 villas ready and occupied. The western residences north with 227 villas underway. The western community centre, hyper-market, mosque, nursery and clinic are under construction. The design of the villas follows Asian, new world, Andalucía and Santa Fe styles, featuring 2-5 bedroom spaces. Similar villa residential areas are available for future development on the eastern wing.

Another prime investment opportunity is the signature VIP villa development with private heli-pads located between the wings, looking towards the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. A multi-use, residential and commercial area, it has the opportunity to attract the cream of society. Great civilizations have always developed around cities. In Falconcity of Wonders, the world's greatest cities have found their place. Rome, Venice and London flag the west, while India, Beirut and Old Dubai complete the east. Each one of these city areas will house residential and commercial projects, themed accordingly.

The Taj Arabia is a development which comprises a luxury hotel, restaurants, cafes and entertainment facilities. At the centre of all these cities is our pièce de résistance, Paris, with its landmark Eiffel Tower and Falcon Elysees in the form of residencies, commercial towers and entertainment hubs. The list of great cities would be incomplete without the Big Apple. New York will be recreated adjacent to Paris, with its iconic...