Dubai Graphic Encyclopedia by Brusselssprout

Brusselssprout is a Dubai based, free curatorial magazine on contemporary thinking and emergent art. Their aim is to become an open, independent platform offering content related to the artistic and cultural world and to "contribute a different layer to the ever more monopolized artistic scene".

They've just launched a book called Dubai Graphic Enyclopedia which is a graphic and visual portrait of the city. I saw the first draft of the book a few months ago and was quite excited about this project, so I'm glad to see the book is finally available in bookstores.

It's compact in size and divided into chapters alphabetically, each alphabet representing a unique characteristic of the city. Check it out and if you want to buy a unique gift that represents Dubai, this would be my top recommendation.

About the book:

To consider compiling an encyclopedia (of any kind) in post-Wikipedia times is an exercise in emotional withdrawal. From a position of bewilderment and confusion we choose to act by producing and employing another tool from the land of the naive and outdated, represented by encyclopedic work, devoid of all logic and meaning considering current cultural conditions and speed. What the first edition Dubai graphic and visual encyclopedia presents is a reality that acts as a counterpoint to all the excess of attempts to decipher and understand Dubai. Attempts that are mostly unable to uncover items that shed light on the question ‘What’s it all about’?
Organizing scanning devices for the entire physical reality and processing information in much the same way as the early explorers did in order to reach unknown lands. The encyclopedia will be updated periodically so as to provide an authentic (temporal) guide and a database for Dubai and its times. With the suspicion that perhaps behind all this there’s a new grammar, we also need to develop new dictionaries.

Here's a video that takes you through the book: