Gehry may be the first prominent architect to take steps towards labor reform on Saadiyat Island, the luxury arts and real estate development 500 meters off the shore of Abu Dhabi where the Guggenheim, after years of delays, is expected to soon begin construction. The museum will join Rafael Viñoly’s New York University Abu Dhabi (completed this year), Norman Foster’s Zayed National Museum (opening in 2016), and Jean Nouvel’s Louvre satellite, expected to open next year. Tadao Ando and Zaha Hadid have also designed buildings for future development phases.
Focus on labor issues surrounding Persian Gulf-area projects sharpened this spring after Hadid, at a press conference reported by the Guardian, said that as an architect she has nothing to do with the workers, but that the local government should take responsibility for problems with labor conditions. (On August 21, Hadid filed a lawsuit in New York County Supreme Court against critic Martin Filler and the New York Review of Books for errors in an article about conditions on the site of her Al Wakrah soccer stadium in Qatar, which had yet to begin construction.) “I don’t have the power to make these changes,” Hadid told the Architects' Journal in an interview published last week. “But maybe I am wrong and I could help. But I don’t know how.”
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