The View Palm Jumeirah

This guide to The View Palm Jumeirah looks down from the observation deck at an island built entirely on purpose, then traces the problem engineers faced in two thousand and one: Dubai's own desert sand was too smooth to build with. It follows the dredging ships sent eleven kilometres offshore, the rainbowing technique used to fire sand into place, and the centimetre-level GPS precision behind the island's seventeen fronds. Listen for how the shape was chosen to pack the most shoreline into the smallest footprint, frond by frond.