Dubai’s Booming Housing Market Shrugs Off the Ghosts of 2009

If you think Alex Zagrebelny’s latest project sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, you wouldn’t be wrong.

The Dubai-based developer is constructing Eywa, a 21-story residential tower designed to look like the Hallelujah Mountains from the Avatar movies. Other elements of the plan borrow from principles of Vastu Shastra, an architectural science with origins in ancient India: Embedded in the building’s foundation is a 14-tonne pyramid fashioned from 1,450 crystals and semiprecious stones. When construction wraps up in 2026, bedrooms will be lined with materials that supposedly protect residents from electromagnetic fields.

Rendering of Eywa, a 21-story residential tower that’s meant to evoke the Hallelujah Mountains from the Avatar movies.

Courtesy R.Evolution

“I use architecture ...