Save this story Save Save this story Save Dubai’s desert landscape isn’t exactly hospitable to plant life. Sitting on the Arabian Peninsula, the soil is sandy and poor, the wind and heat extreme, and it only rains about three inches a year. Related Stories Photo Gallery The Building Blocks of Water, Water Everywhere Shannon Stirone Photo Gallery Is That Dagobah? No, Just a Real-Life Magical Forest Michael Hardy Photo Gallery America’s Unusual—and Unseen—Water Treatment Facilities Michael Hardy But that hasn’t stopped Dubai from striving to become a ” green paradise .” Over the past three decades , its gardeners have coaxed fountain grass, date palms, and ghat trees to take root in public parks, golf courses, and other places, even transforming the dead space beneath highway flyovers and cloverleafs into beautiful, patterned carpets irrigated by sewage water. Green space grew from just 4,300 acres in 1999 to roughly 17,000 in 2014, when officials announced a plan to increase it to 30,000 acres by 2025. It’s perhaps the ultimate symbol of Dubai’s bid to conquer and control nature—one evidenced by countless headline-making projects, from the building of the Burj Khalifa, a 163-story exoskeleton-reinforced tower to the Palm Jumeirah , an artificial island that required the dredging of 4.2 billion cubic feet of sand to construct. “Life exists only within things built by man,” says Paolo Pettigiani . “There is nothing natural. Every single thing has been thought, built, and moved by humans, from buildings to palm trees.” Pettigiani captured this over three sweltering days last August. He shot with a Nikon D750 converted to record the full color spectrum so that he could photograph invisible infrared light, which is strongly reflected by chlorophyll in plants (a technique he’s also used in New York , Berlin, and Venice). He isolated it using a filter, screwed in front of his 24-120mm lens, that blocked out wavelengths below 590 nanometers, letting in a small bit of visible orange and red light along with the infrared. In Photoshop, he tweaked color, contrast, and white balance to achieve the result you see. The amount of greenery they reveal is impressive, especially considering Dubai’s less-than-ideal environment, but not as impressive as the colossal concrete, glass, and metal structures towering above it. Dubai is an oasis, sure, but skyscrapers still grow easier than trees. More Great WIRED Stories 5G? 5 Bars? What the icons on your phone actually mean America’s unusual—and unseen— water treatment plants Hacker Lexicon: What is credential stuffing In defense of videogame selfies (yes, really) See all the tools and tricks that make Nascar go 👀 Looking for the latest gadgets? Check out our latest buying guides and best deals all year round 📩 Hungry for even more deep dives on your next favorite topic? Sign up for the Backchannel newsletter
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