Pan-Arab Modernism 1968-2018

Contents

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Prologue

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Pan-Arab Dialogues

133

Pan-Arab Narratives

229

Pan-Arab Speculations

341

A Visual Essay

365

Afterword

A History of Architectural Practice in Kuwait

by Antje Handbeck

by Tarek Shuaib

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Published by Actar Publishers, New York, Barcelona www.actar.com Authors Ricardo Camacho, Dalal Musaed Alsayer, Sara Saragoça Soares Graphic Design by Nowhere Studio, Athens With visual essay by Antje Handbeck With contributions by Suhair Al-Mosully, Roula El-Khoury, Michael Kubo, Iain Jackson, Hyun-Tae Jung, Manar Moursi, Edward Nilsson, Caecilia Pieri, Christoph Sehl, Tarek Shuaib, and the large community of present and past PACE coworkers, clients and associate consultants Copyediting (English) Cathy Coote Copyediting (Arabic) Aamenna Raafat Proofreading (English) Cathy Coote and Farah Al-Nakib Proofreading (Arabic) Aamenna Raafat Translation (English-Arabic) Zein El-Amine Transcription of text by Mada Media LLC (with coordination of Lina Atalha) Printing and binding Barcelona, Spain All rights reserved © edition: Actar Publishers © texts: The Authors © design, drawings, illustrations, and photographs: Pan Arab Consulting Engineers (PACE), unless otherwise indicated © visual essay: Antje Handbeck This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, on all or part of the material, specifically translation rights, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilm or other media, and storage in databases. For use of any kind, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained.

Distribution Actar D, Inc. New York, Barcelona.

New York 440 Park Avenue South, 17th Floor New York, NY 10016, USA T +1 2129662207 salesnewyork@actar-d.com Barcelona Roca i Batlle 2-4 08023 Barcelona, Spain T +34 933 282 183 eurosales@actar-d.com Indexing English ISBN: 978-1948765275 PCN: Library of Congress Control Number: 20 Printed in Barcelona, Spain Publication date January 2021

Acknowledgments

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This book was the result of the access to PACE archives, which was granted to the authors from 2016 to 2018, with the generous support of Tarek Shuaib. The publication was enhanced with the contribution of: Suhair Al-Mosully, Roula El-Khoury, Iain Jackson, Hyun-Tae Jung, Michael Kubo, Edward Nilsson, Caecilia Pieri, and Christoph Sehl. Fundamental contributions for the image and book’s visual identity were provided by Pedro Duarte Bento; the graphic design from the designers (Nowhere Studio); and Antje Hanebeck, who was commissioned for the visual essay. We are grateful to all the people that have endorsed the authors throughout this process.

The authors would like to equally express their sincere gratitude to present and past co-workers at PACE for their cooperation, significant advice and all the inspiring critiques and discussions through the several interviews with current co-workers Pedro Antão, Resham Singh, Thomas Idicula, Lourdes Carretero and former co-workers Michael F. Gebhart (RIP), Ghany Sadoon, Raouf Eskander, Akram Ogaily, Saib Nackasha, David Hansen, Michael Henthorn, Hakam Jarrar; and others that have worked indirectly with PACE, such as former associates at The Architects Collaborative (TAC) Branko M Brankovic and Ra’ad Al-Mumayiz; Ghazi Al-Nafisi, Jessie Mangat, and Abdul Rahman Al-Houty who were client and client representatives. Our thanks also for the intense workshops at PACE with the valuable participation of Tarek Shuaib, Paul Pullan, and Amena Elezaby. We would also like to thank Laila Ismail, Mohammed Ummer, and Simone Hanna for always being able to find solutions for any administrative and archival matter.

We wish to thank the following institutions, organisations, and firms for their help and support (in alphabetical order): Aditya Prakash Foundation, Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Aga Khan Visual Archive at MIT Libraries, American University in Cairo, American University of Beirut, Arab Centre for Architecture, Chadirji Foundation, Centre for Research and Studies on Kuwait, Centro Archivi Fondazione MAXXI, Center for Gulf Studies, Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, Constantinos A. Doxiadis Archives at Benaki Museum, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, Dissing+Weitling, ETH gta archiv, Frances Loeb Library, Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, Gulf Bank, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, McGill University, KEO International Consultants, Kuwait National Cinema Company, Kuwait Municipal Archives, Kuwait National Library, Kuwait Oil Company, National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, PACE, Royal Institute of British Architects, Saudi Aramco World/SAWDIA, SSH International Consultants, Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design, The British Library, the archives of Liverpool School of Architecture, RIBA Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

We want to express our sincerest gratitude to Farah Al-Nakib for the insightful review of the manuscript’s English version for publication and Aamenna Raafat for the Arabic; and to the Actar editorial team for their accurate work, devoted attention, and esteemed support in transforming this research into a book. We are particularly indebted to Ricardo Devesa and his team at Actar. We are grateful for the copyediting of Cathy Coote for English and Aamenna Raafat for Arabic, and the transcript and translation work from Zein El-Amine and the Mada Media LLC team under the coordination and leadership of Lina Attalah.

Archivists at various institutions have been key to the making of this research project. They have contributed in various ways, including searching for missing documents, such as Mohammed Ummer at PACE who provided tireless assistance in the long process of segregation and organisation of the archive, and to Amena Elezaby for responding to the persistent questioning about the inventories of PACE original archives. Aside from Mohammed and Amena at PACE, we owe special gratitude for the mentorship of Ines Zalduendo from Frances Loeb Library, GSD at Harvard University; Sharon C. Smith and Michael Toler from the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT; Ivana Nikšic Olujic from the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts archive, Annika Tengstrand from the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design archive, Mafalda Aguiar from Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian and especially to the support over the years of Kaoukab Chebaro, associate University Librarian for Archives and Special Collections at the American University of Beirut.

We are immensely grateful to Sara Hasan, Abdulaziz Al Kandari, Ehsan Abdulrasoul, Natassa Pappa, and Nouf Al Mayyal, who have generously contributed to the development of this research and book at different phases and in different capacities. We have also benefited from the complicity of a number of esteemed colleagues; in particular Tarek Shuaib, Ivan Rupnik, Deema Al-Ghunaim, Pedro Duarte Bento, Angelo Bucci, Paulo Martins Barata, Sarah Behbehani, Jad Cortas, Hugo Ferreira, and Marisa Batista for the insightful conversations and exchange of documents. We would also express our deepest gratitude to our respective families for their support and encouragement as we researched and wrote this book across multiple cities and time-zones.a Finally, we thank our diverse contributors and interviewees on their enthusiasm and readiness to participate in our research, as well as their generosity in sharing with us their time, opinions, and resources. Nevertheless, our greatest debt is to Charles Toufic Haddad and Michael F. Gebhart (RIP), for their roles as permanent sources of information, knowledge and enthusiasm, as well as for their support in the region and abroad which was most valuable.

This book is dedicated to Charles T. Haddad and Michael F. Gebhart, for there kindness and devotion, and for their endless support.

The former for the long hours of interviews in Kuwait and Old Saybrook, and the latter for the eternal inspiration even when he was ill; his selflessness will always be remembered.

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Prologue

A History of Architectural Practice in Kuwait

In 1960, amidst the larger Pan-Arab movement, Palestinian-born, American-educated Saba George Shiber started his career in Kuwait, first in the Department of Public Works and later in the Development Board. He was later appointed as “the planning expert” to the Kuwaiti Municipality, where he developed several of the Commercial Business Districts (CBDs) and residential districts.1 His arrival, along with many other Arab professionals, was instrumental to the shaping of Kuwait City and its urban development. Kuwait, as a place, allowed for new ideals to materialise; while Kuwait as an incubator, allowed for the creation of a microcosm of Pan Arab Modernism to emerge. With a series of forward-looking Emirs, who were open to change, Kuwait became a site of exploration and experimentation. The story of Kuwait is unique for three reasons. Firstly, its leadership were eager to physically materialise an Arab project, and architecture was the mechanism by which this Arab-ness came to fruition. Secondly, politics took a backseat to modernisation and the desire to become cosmopolitan. Lastly, it embraced Arab professionals that were educated and/or practiced in the larger Arab region. For while the imagined Pan Arab State was never fully realised, its central tenet of Arab identity and solidarity took hold in Kuwait.

In 1951, with the approval of the first masterplan by the British firm, Minoprio, Spenceley and MacFarlane (MSM), Kuwait would soon begin its transformation into a bustling metropolis and an emerging cultural centre. This book examines the transformation of Kuwait through an alternative lens than has previously been explored.2 Specifically, this book uses architectural archives and the architecture itself to put forth two hypotheses. First, that Kuwait facilitated the production of a Pan Arab architectural cultural landscape, through fostering exchanges with architects and firms from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and beyond. In turn, the architecture built through these exchanges, and even those with Western firms, produced an inherent Arab Modernism that was not a simple importation of Western models, but was rather born from local places, exchanges, practices, and knowledge.

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See for example, Shiber, Saba George. “‘Elm Al-Tantheem Wa Al-Tatweer Al-Kuwayt’ - Planning and Development of Kuwat.”

Kuwait Municipality, 1963.

Critical books and dissertations on Kuwait include, but not limited to: Abdo, Muhammad Fawzi. “The Urbanisation of Kuwait Since 1950: Planning, Progress and Issues.” PhD Disseration, University of Durham, 1988. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1366/.; Al-Ansari, Mae. “Irreducible Essence : Tectonics & Cultural Expression in Traditional Forms of Kuwaiti Dwelling.” University of Cincinnati, 2011.; Albaqshi, Muhannad. “The Social Production of Space: Kuwait’s Spatial History.” PhD Dissertation, Illinois Institute of Technology, 2010.; Algharib, Saad. “Spatial Patterns of Urban Expansion in Kuwait City Between 1989 and 2001.” Master of Arts in Geography, Kent State University, 2008.; Alhabib, Esra. “A Study on Diwaniyas and Their Social and Political Impact on the Kuwaiti Society.” Master Thesis, American University, 2009.; Alissa, Reem. “Building for Oil: Corporate Colonialism, Nationalism and Urban Modernity in Ahmadi, 1946-1992.” PhD Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2012.; Al-Jassar, Mohammad K. “Constancy and Change in Contemporary Kuwait City: The Socio-Cultural Dimensions of The Kuwaiti Courtyard and Diwaniyya.” PhD Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2009.

Al-Mosully, Suhair. “Revitalizing Kuwait’s Empty City Center.” Master of City Planning and Master of Science in Architectural Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992.; Al-Nakib, Farah. Kuwait Transformed: A History of Oil and Urban Life.

Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2016.; Alomaim, Anas. “Nation Building in Kuwait 1961–1991.” PhD Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2016.; Elsheshtawy, Yasser, ed. The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Modernity and Urban Development. Planning, History and the Environment Series. London: Routledge, 2011.; Gardiner, Stephen. Kuwait: The Making of a City. First Edition. Essex: Longman Group Limited, 1983.; Ismael, Jacqueline S. Kuwait: Dependency and Class in a Rentier State. 2nd Sub Edition. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993.; Mahgoub, Yasser. “The Making of Kuwait: From 1950 to 1990.” Fortune City. Architecture in Kuwait: A Visual Account (blog), March 21, 1998. http://victorian.fortunecity.com/dali/428/ kuwaitarch/kuwaitarch2.html.; Ragam, Asseel al-. “Towards a Critique of an Architectural Nahdha: A Kuwaiti Example.” PhD Disseration, University of Pennsylvania, 2008.; Sabbar, Abdalla A. “Kuwait Old Town: The Tradition and Change Search for A Proper Approach.” Master Thesis, Architectural Association, 1971.

A History of Architectural Practice in Kuwait

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Kuwait serves as a critical case study in the understanding of design culture and architecture in a non-western context for a multitude of reasons. In 1951, thanks to the British-designed masterplan by MSM, the urban fabric of Old Town Kuwait was razed by bulldozers, and a tabula rasa created which made Kuwait an open field.3 In its desire to become a world-class city but retain its Arab culture, Kuwait’s early history in architecture and design as a whole was provocative, experimental, and imaginative.4 With the deep-rooted Arab solidarity in the attitudes of Kuwaiti leadership, the city became a haven for budding architects, designers and planners in the period after the Arab-Israeli conflict. These circumstances, of a desire for Pan Arab Modernism, a blank slate, and the presence of Arab designers, allowed for an unparalleled opportunity for the Pan Arab project to emerge. Metaphorically, Kuwait was a sponge for ambitious Arab professionals who were ideologically modern. This unique combination makes Kuwait the ideal case study to examine the role of architecture, and architectural practice, in the Middle East.

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Using Kuwait as a case study and Pan Arab Modernism as a lens, this project comes to fill two voids in the literature on Middle Eastern architecture: one is in practice and the other is in history. The current practice of architecture in Kuwait, the Gulf and the larger Middle East, is typically a-contextual and lacking any understanding of the local context. The architectural history, on the other hand, ignores the larger context of the Middle East, and the influence of Pan Arabism is not configured into any analyses. Thus, this project seeks to tackle both. By providing a [re]contextualising of the architectural history of Kuwait and bringing obscure protagonists back into the dialogue, a nuanced reading of Pan Arab Modern architecture emerges.

This publication is a first step towards documenting and analysing the realties on the ground by piecing together the unraveled architectural history of a Pan Arab urbanism that materialised in Kuwait. The book’s intention is to be both a guide for practitioners and a document of analysis. The authors envision the stories of our protagonists as a model for the coming generation to emulate and in doing so, hope to create a sense of the importance of the local. This book seeks to inspire a new generation of local imprinters that will allow Kuwait locally, and the Gulf regionally, to break from the over-reliance on foreigners shaping how their cities look and operate. Thus, it aims to create a “knowledge generation,” to [re]define how a local generation is being influenced on the ground, while developing a symbiosis between the “facts on the ground” and the “ideas in the air.”

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On the 1951 Masterplan of Kuwait, see for example Minoprio & Spencely, and P.W. Macfarlane. “Plan for the Town of Kuwait: Report to His Highness Shaikh Abdullah Assalim Assubah, C.I.E. The Amir of Kuwait.” Kuwait, November 1951.; Macfarlane, P.W. “Town Building in Kuwait: Rebuilding a Middle East Capital.” The Times: Review of Industry 5, no. 57 (October 1951): 91.; Abdo, Muhammad Fawzi. “The Urbanisation of Kuwait Since 1950: Planning, Progress and Issues.” PhD Disseration, University of Durham, 1988. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1366/.; Sabbar, Abdalla A. “Kuwait Old Town: The Tradition and Change Search for A Proper Approach.” Master Thesis, Architectural Association, 1971.

On this, see Banks, R.L. “Notes in a Visit to Kuwait.” Town Planning Review 26, no. 1 (April 1955): 49.

Portrait of Saba Shiber drawn by Diran Ajemian (1903-1991) from March 23rd 1962 published in Saba Shiber, The Kuwait Urbanization, Kuwait, June 1964, pg.643.

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Prologue

Supported by prominent Kuwaiti institutions such as the Pan Arab Consulting Engineers (PACE), this book is based on several years of research, which included on-site visits, photographic surveys and interviews with current and former architects, planners, contractors, historians and city officials.

The analysis was also supported by extensive archival investigation, which provided old city plans, drawings, original photographs, film footages, correspondences, legal documents, contractors’ brochures, architectural and construction press, journals, local magazines, popular press and a range of other documents.

This project also follows the successes of the Modern Architecture Kuwait (MAK) book which catalogued critical and threatened Modern Architecture that greatly shaped the present-day Kuwait.6 MAK’s powerful resonance within the architectural and cultural circles has paved the way for conversation around conservation, culture, and design. Equally, this publication builds on MAK Volume II, which is a collection of essays and interviews, is a book that is both visual and textual. In doing so, this publication situates itself in the growing body of literature that focuses on modern architectural culture that moves beyond the dominant narrative of an Arab architecture that was simply a product of heavy-handed imperial importation onto a passive recipient. Instead, it highlights the role of local actors who themselves were producing an inherently Pan Arab architectural culture thus telling the as yet untold story of Arabs designing an Arab city.

Using existing architectural and urban conditions as evidence of early design trials in defining a Pan Arab Modernism and their subsequent impacts, this publication is an ambitious attempt at understanding the spatial implications of architecture and urbanism on a Pan Arab modernisation process.

The conditions and context that shape these processes, from political and economical to geographical and practitioner-specific, are made explicit and will serve to understand how modernism that is inherently Pan Arab came to be. Through government-sponsored competitions, invitations, and collaborations, Kuwait grew into a patchwork of experimental architecture that had left the current urban fabric disjointed and fragmented. Yet, while the visions are not always realised, their ambition and speculative nature still serves as instrumental to understand how to practice in the region.

Approach and Methodology: PACE, a practice and culture Through the generous support of the Pan Arab Consulting Engineers (PACE) who granted us access to their archives, the research team has centred its research around PACE and their work. PACE was established in 1968 by three Arab partners and took the Pan Arab moniker to make explicit its Arab-ness. The firm’s first project, coded as 68001, was the iconic Hawally Residential & Commercial Complex (Andalus Complex), designed by the

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Fabbri, Roberto, Sara Saragoça, and Ricardo Camacho. Modern Architecture Kuwait: 1949-1989. 1st edition. Vol. 1. 2 vols.

Zurich: Niggli, imprint of bnb media GmbH, 2016.; Camacho, Ricardo, Sara Saragoça, and Roberto Fabbri, eds. Modern Architecture Kuwait. Volume 2: Essays, Arguments & Interviews. First edition. Vol. 2. 2 vols. Salenstein: Niggli, 2018.

First Master Plan of Kuwait, Minoprio, Spencely, and Macfarlane, 1952. Minoprio, Spencely, and Macfarlane, Plan for the Town of Kuwait: Report to His Highness Shaikh Abdullah Assalim Assubah, C.I.E. The Amir of Kuwait. (Kuwait: 1952). Print.

Original plan and sketch by Sir Valentine Chirol in “With pen and brush in eastern lands when I was young” published by Saba Shiber, The Kuwait Urbanization, Kuwait, June 1964, pg. XLVI.

A History of Architectural Practice in Kuwait

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Prologue

68003

68003 Salmiyah Residential Complex (Aziziya), Salmiyah, Kuwait. Architecture office associate: Iraq Consult (IQC), undated photograph.

A History of Architectural Practice in Kuwait

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British-educated Iraqi architect Rifat Chadirji, was entirely constructed using jeri bricks. Chadirji’s use of the jeri brick and arches produced a building that was both modern and inherently Arab. The firm went on to work on over 1000 projects across 35 countries.9 With this vast body of built work, the firm’s building archive serves as an excellent resource to explore Pan Arab Modernism.

To understand the emergence of this Pan Arab Modernism, the book is divided into three approaches: dialogues, narratives, and speculations. ‘Speculations’ is comprised of short essays by leading experts in their fields on topics such as the relationship between non-Kuwaiti Arab architects and Kuwait, and the influence of the transfer of British knowledge, amongst others.

‘Dialogues’ are used in the publication as a lens to further explore nuances that shape and define Pan Arab Modernism. Through the process of interviewing architects, planners, contractors, and engineers that worked in Kuwait from the 1960s, this section has resulted in a large and robust repository. Through these interviews, many gaps in the story of Pan Arab Modernism are filled in, that could not have been addressed using traditional research approaches. In addition to being critical oral histories of an intellectual and cultural movement that had not been preserved, the interviews also shed light on the individuals themselves. This makes these interviews critical in understanding how practitioners worked and adapted to budgets, ideology, and geography.

Lastly, ‘Narratives’ explores architectural phenomena that are central to an understanding of Pan Arab Modernism. These narratives delve deep into a specific facet of Pan Arab Modernism. For example, ‘Individual Dreams’ examines the importance of residential design on modernisation, while ‘Bricks and Arches’ traces the emergence of the jeri block in the architectural vocabulary of modern Arab architecture. Through this approach, a layered and comprehensive understanding of the way in which Pan Arab Modernism emerged, shaping our understanding of the ways the lessons of the past can be used as tools of education, action, and development.

This approach is a superimposition of several methods, ideas and theories.

As architects, there is power in the visual and therefore, this book is heavily reliant on visual representations. Specifically, a series of vector-based representations of buildings and urban schemes of areas of investigation are used throughout the book to explain how Pan Arab Modernism was visually and spatially made manifest. These images are drawn in a way that allows room for reflection on architecture and building history, and its potential in its contemporary state. On the one hand, these images seek to put into conversation buildings, people, and circumstance on the (literal and metaphorical) same page to allow for connections across a wide range of entities. On the other hand, the commissioned essays take the form of short pieces that serve as provocations, intended to open up the discussion on topics that are missing or overlook in the current discourse.

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Including projects in 14 Arab Countries: Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

10 Original drawing by PACE co-worker and architect Nabil Hamadeh, offered for the celebration of Ghany Sadoon’s farewell party in 1982. Drawing generously provided by Ghany Sadoon for this publication. (next page).

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Prologue

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A History of Architectural Practice in Kuwait

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Pan-Arab Dialogues

015

Culture of Practice

031

Charles Toufic Haddad

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Peter Antao

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Resham Singh

047

Michael Gebhart

055

Branko M Brankovic

059

David Hansen

063

Michael Henthorn

067

Raouf Eskander

073

Ghany Sadoon

079

Saib Yousef Nackasha

091

Hakam Jarrar

099

Ra’ad Al-Mumayiz

117

Ghazi Al-Nafisi

125

Tarek Shuaib

People, Ideas, and Office Culture

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Pan-Arab Dialogues

Culture of Practice People, Ideas, and Office Culture

“It is the client who determines the production of bank-mortgaged, pre-logisticated building for a specific purpose on a specific site for a specific sum of money. The architect today is left with little or no original design initiative. He must design the kind of building upon which the client has already decided. The architect, in fact, must usually please not only the client but the client’s wife, business partners, layers, bankers, real-estators and respective ‘committees of experts.’”

Buckminister R. Fuller “Global Report on the State of Architecture: State of Art Today.” Newsweek Global Report, May 27, 1968.

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Culture of Practice: People, Ideas, and Office Culture

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This essay, and three other 1968 Newsweek articles, were republished in Saba George Shiber’s seminal work Recent Arab City Growth to “depict the state of architecture and urbanism [that] reached to this day.”2 The first of these essays by Buckminster Fuller describes a dramatic vision of an architectural production that he sees as “universal sameness.” The practice was described as working with what was available in the “industry’s architectural and engineering building component catalogues,” referring not only to the idea of “pre-conceived building” constraints , but also to the “preordained contractor” that restricted through cost control, building materials, and construction technology.3 In May of the same year, the young Kuwait planner Hamid Shuaib and his colleague at the municipality, the Palestinian born Charles Haddad, established a design venture that would become one of the largest engineering corporations not only in Kuwait but all over the Middle East region, the Pan-Arab Consulting Engineers (PACE). PACE was formally incorporated in October of the same year under the professional license of a third partner, the Kuwaiti engineer, Sabah Al-Rayes. Both Al-Rayes and Haddad confirmed in recent interviews that from its incorporation, the firm’s agenda was profit driven, endorsing Fuller’s predictions that the architect is “now occupied mostly as salesman for his firm.”4 In the Newsweek essay, Fuller also states that the architect is no longer the total designer, but rather is supported by a collaborative group of diverse engineering experts and “armies of young architectural students graduates [who] function only as specialists in catalogue searching” allowing the architect the freedom to “be arbitrary regarding the building’s shape.”5 These disruptions to architectural practice in the late 1960s plagued the field both overseas and inside Kuwait.

The decadence of the modern practice culture which found the architect “jammed in the manipulation of the administrative machine” was, especially after the death of Le Corbusier in 1965, an issue of high concern that was largely debated in major world and regional encounters such as the Team X Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) meetings and the Union Internationale des Architectes (UIA) triennial congresses.6 Both organisations will eventually have a relevant and direct impact on the region towards the confirmation of ““il grande numero” [planning] as the dominant mediator between “Architecture and the Environment.””7 At the Seventh UIA conference, held in July 1965, the Moroccan architect in charge of the reconstruc-

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Pan Arab Consulting Engineers office, Third Floor Office on Fahad Al Salem Street, Salhiya, Kuwait, circa 1973.

Saba George Shiber, Recent Arab Growth (Kuwait: Kuwait Government Printing Press, 1968), 824–26.

R. Buckminister Fuller, “Global Report on the State of Architecture: State of Art Today,” Newsweek Global Report, May 27, 1968.

Ricardo Camacho, Sara Saragoça, and Roberto Fabbri, eds., “Charles Haddad Interview,” in Modern Architecture Kuwait.

Volume 2: Essays, Arguments & Interviews, First edition, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Salenstein: Niggli, 2018), 106–15; Ricardo Camacho, Sara Saragoça, and Roberto Fabbri, eds., “Sabah Al Rayes Interview,” in Modern Architecture Kuwait. Volume 2: Essays, Arguments & Interviews, First edition, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Salenstein: Niggli, 2018), 66–72; Fuller, “Global Report on the State of Architecture: State of Art Today.”

Ibid.

Alison Smithson lecture at “Restatement of convictions” Team X meeting Paris, France, 25-27 February 1967 in Dirk van den Heuvel, “Team 10, 1953-81: In Search of a Utopia of the Present.” Nai, 2005.

The reference to “il grande numero” was the theme for the Team 10 meeting in Milan, Italy, 30 May 1968, at the 14th Milan Triennale while the “Architecture and the Environment” was the theme for the Eighth UIA congress in Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1967. The direct impact of the agendas of these international meetings at a local level can be eventually perceived in Sabah Shiber’s written work, often using the resolutions of UIA meetings to bring regional consensus around the specific issues of housing or the call for concepts for the redesign of Kuwait center launched in 1968 during the meeting in Milan, including a majority of Team 10 members.

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tion of Agadir, Mourad Ben Embarek, and the Egyptian scholar, Abdel Baki Mohamed Ibrahim, criticised the exhibitionism of the western “pioneers,” and reported the “chaos of principles and theories” that left a young and positive generation of Arab architects “not knowing their way through.”8 When PACE was established in 1968, the new “Arab World” was divided between, on the one hand, reconstruction of large areas and cities that were affected by natural catastrophes such as the earthquakes in Agadir, Morocco and south of Lebanon; and on the other hand, the enterprise of the large scale within new territories of physical space and demography, such as the redevelopment of Kuwait or the reconstruction of Yemen.9 In the presence of such challenges, a new generation of young and positive Arab architects, such as Hamid Shuaib and Charles Haddad, strongly engaged with the larger-scale programs, forcing them to become planners rather than architects or urbanists. At PACE, the architect’s role was relegated to the foreign coworkers who were “reduced to serving as aesthetically-oriented, tastefully proper purchasing agents, practicing in finding and organizing the usable space amongst the columns, pipes and elevator stacks that have been predetermined as the core of the buildings the architects are asked to “design.””10 This “state of the architecture” brought by Fuller in 1968 is an accurate description of most of the architectural practice in Kuwait, from that day to the present, and a conviction shared among those who established the firms and those who emigrated from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt to work in these practices.11 Seven years earlier, in a 1961 article for the local press, Shiber was already so conscious of this fact that he demanded change: you talk about aesthetics [with a young architect] […] he has never heard the term; […] you talk about civic design […] and they think this is some specialised [specific] aspect in structural design; [...] you bring in astronomic phenomenon such as parallax […] into a casual discussion about kinetic design in city planning, and your colleagues, specially the most active and prosperous ones, think it is a new dance; […] you ask a young graduate to develop a sketch you have made. He takes it to a draftsman, pretending it is below his dignity to do that but, later on, you discover that he, himself, is incapable of attending to such development, to say nothing of design […] the Arab environment is being shaped by the hands of such men.12 Today, almost 60 years later, no major change has yet to challenge such evidence. This fact confirms Shiber’s predictions that this new “Arab World” was

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Ricardo Camacho, “The Making of An Arab Architect,” in Modern Architecture Kuwait. Volume 2: Essays, Arguments & Interviews, ed. Ricardo Camacho, Sara Saragoça, and Roberto Fabbri, First edition, vol. 2 (Salenstein: Niggli, 2018), 83; The term “pioneers” is borrowed from Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of the Modern Movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius (London, UK: Faber & Faber, 1936); See Mourad Ben Embarek, “Chroniques Africaines,” A+U Revue Africaine d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme, no. 4 (1966); and A.B.M. Ibrahim, “The Training of the Architect: Reports by the Eighth World Congress of the International Union of Architects” (Paris, France: UIA congress, July 5, 1965).

Following WWII and decolonisation, the term “Arab world” means the political region consisting of Arab League constituents, and was widely used to demarcate the Muslim territories of northern Africa and Arabian Peninsula, known today as the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA).

Richard Buckminster Fuller, “Global Report on the State of Architecture: State of Art Today.”

Interviews with PACE co-workers in this volume.

Saba George Shiber, Recent Arab Growth (Kuwait: Kuwait Government Printing Press, 1968): 507.

Ibid.

PACE partners with the Frederick R. Harris design team presenting the project to the General Board of the Shuaiba including Mr. Khalifa Talal Al-Jeri, Kuwait, circa 1970.

Culture of Practice: People, Ideas, and Office Culture

75258

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75258 PACE Exhibition Stand at the Bahrain Engineers Association (this venue was internally coded as 75258 in PACE project list), Manama, Bahrain, 1975.

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“losing men and minds, as well as corrupting” its “urban milieu.”13 Strongly dependent on foreign expertise, the region still disregards the importance of acquired knowledge in the performance of the practice. These limitations are wholly challenged by Shiber and focus on the search for a universalist practice which is engaged less with details and the technical ability, focusing instead on the capacity to “deliver” regardless of the quality. This “generic” approach remained intrinsic to the culture of architecture practice in the region, extending beyond the local young architects that Shiber mentioned. To the countless who immigrated, especially in the late 1960s and early 1970s, from other post-colonial geographies such as India and Pakistan to join firms all over the region and in Kuwait, such as PACE, this approach preserved practices that both dictated and depended on the former colonial rule. The lack of agency and critical thinking among those practicing was eventually a motif for the rapid engagement with a corporate practice, following the U.S. post-war business model. This is a trope that permeated the Middle East region, which is succinctly articulated in this quote: Although AMY’s [Hebrew acronym for Architects, Engineers, Consultants] architects had never worked on a project of this magnitude and typology, architectural knowledge did not seem to be a requirement for the job. As one project engineer explained, design was secondary to other considerations: ‘There are architectural projects and there are entrepreneurial ones in which architects have a small part; they need to be efficient, fast, and easy to work with. In Eskan the architects were minor. I hardly noticed their input’. One of the architects stated that ‘[t]here was nothing interesting about this project. We flew to Iran, they told us what they wanted, and we came home and did it’. Specifications called for the best materials in the world.15 This U.S. corporate approach to architecture also imprinted onto the culture of practice that was being developed in the region. Unfortunately, due to the way many of the expatriate architects and engineers in the region were trained, they, too, shared the lack of agency, holistic vision, and critical thinking of the discipline. The success and longevity of architectural corporations, and their hierarchies, in the region may be related to such detachment and the wholehearted adoption of the corporate model of architectural practice.

During these years, the attraction to the corporate practice of architecture and engineering was dominated by the financial affluence of the market—the very clients to whom Buckminster Fuller refers—more than the interest in knowledge and architectural thinking. The business intensity, the big affluence of projects, and the dependency on role model firms in the West perceived as expertise training, opened the local practices to diverse collaborations with international consultancies; a condition that was often imposed by clients or even by statuary law.16 In 1968, of the first six projects commissioned to PACE, four were collaborations imposed either by the owner, in the case of Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) head-office (68006); 15 Reference to interviews with participants in the design and construction of a high-rise complex in Tehran during the 1970s. In Neta Feniger and Rachel Kallus (2015), ‘Israeli planning in the Shah’s Iran: a forgotten episode’, Planning Perspectives 30:2. p.

241.

16 Reference the statuary law in Kuwait that imposes the obligation of international design and engineering consultancies in the performance of design works for public works above a certain budget.

17 The interviews with Charles Haddad and Sabah Al Rayes, in Essays On Modern Architecture Kuwait, Niggli 2018, vividly debate the selection and commissioning of Iraq Consult for the development of Mubarak Hassawi’s residential projects in Hawally and Salmiya, numbered as projects 68001 and 68003 respectively.

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or by the firm’s partners themselves whose own experiences were that of civil servants.17 Such cultural exchange and amalgamation of different agendas, design methodologies, and knowledge of the particular context produced tremendous dispersions in the debate of ideas that were already mentioned

by Shiber.18 For instance, the array of clients, programs, and demands revealed in the vast body of work produced by PACE over fifty years, confirms such argument and the volatile nature of design strategies and architectural aesthetics.

Among the several PACE alumni (former co-workers) interviewed for this book, the majority unanimously confirm the value of the work developed with foreign consultants, especially with The Architects Collaborative (TAC). The exception can be found with those educated in stronger architectural programs in the region, such as Baghdad and Beirut, who regret such dependency and long-term collaborations as demotivational, and a decisive force that led many young and talented Arab architects to leave PACE.19 Among these architects was Akram Ogaily (PACE, 1972-1975), who left PACE after active involvement in many of the first, and most relevant, projects entirely developed “in-house,” such as the Kuwait Shipping Company headquarters building in Shuwaikh (69031), the petrol stations in Sulaibikhat and Farawaniya (70051), Hamid Shuaib’s villa in Dahia Abdullah Alsalem (70064), the water resources development centre in Shuwaikh (72102), the Abdul Aziz Al Duaij building (72132) in area 5 of the Central Business District (CBD), all in Kuwait; and Dana building (73140) in Abu Dhabi. Many of these projects exposed structural and material performance built around the solid knowledge and local experience of one of the first structural engineers working for PACE, George Stamatis (structural engineer, PACE 1970-1972), a former collaborator of the Egyptian architect Sayyed Karim who designed, among other projects in Kuwait, several large cinemas built in the1950s. Stamatis also left in the first years when he was confronted with the fact that PACE held a secondary role in the international ventures with Iraq Consult (IQC), T-Consult, Frederic R. Harris, and TAC.20 This dispersion of talent was eventually detrimental to the consolidation of PACE as a design centre. This culminated in the departure of one of the partners in 1977, Charles Haddad, who disagreed with Sabah Al-Rayes about the selection of the international consultant for the Joint Baking Centre (76320). During the design competition stage PACE was split in two; the first delivered a proposal with TAC while the latter was assigned to SOM Chicago. The project was awarded to SOM and coincidently TAC had licensed their Kuwait “Middle East office” in same year (1976), which became a direct competitor of PACE.21 The first licence for engineering practice was obtained by PACE from the Kuwait Municipality (Baladia) in May 1977, after the departure of Stamatis, Ogaily, and Haddad, which coincidently reflects the practice’s most successful year with the 66 commissioned projects in 1976 and the completion of the first major development outside Kuwait, Dana building for the Afro Arab Co

18 In this context, collaborative diversity describes the co-workers from different origins and backgrounds and multiple ventures with foreign architectural and engineering corporations.

19 Between 1968-81 PACE developed, in collaboration with The Architects Collaborative from Cambridge, USA, about 23 projects.

Akram Ogaily Skype interview with the authors on 29th of July 2017.

20 In the first year of practice, out of eight projects, five were developed in association with foreign consultants.

21 Interviews with Charles Haddad and Ra’ad Al-Mumayiz for this book.

22 AFARCO was an investment company that was established in 1972 with the Kuwait Foreign Trading Contracting & Investment Company as the main shareholder, whose principal owners were well-known among the PACE partners.

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For Investment & International Trade (AFARCO) in Abu Dhabi (73140).22 Actually, the rapid growth in projects, aside from the rise in the market after the oil embargo, was mainly based on well-grounded and long-lasting personal relationships. In the absence of a diverse consultancy scene in Kuwait, PACE was able to retain loyal clients. In the first ten years of practice, the firm received 41 building projects from three of these private clients. For instance, PACE’s first client alone (68001) was responsible for 15 of these commissions.

For the first 10 years, PACE operated out of their offices in Kuwait City (AlSaleh Building, Fahed Al Salem Street, Salhiya) with four architects, two female and two males. By 1975, the firm had expanded to 100 co-workers with an additional office location on Sour Street. Later, the commissioning of a large housing project in Ardiya (75261) which justified the scale and timeline for the development of a highly profitable architecture practice in-house, together with several projects for Army camps (74207) and the first international ventures in Bahrain, were important to position PACE as a leading architectural and engineering corporation.24 The project opportunities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (76302,77367,77368) and Bahrain continued to grow, especially after 1978 with the closure of many of the large architecture corporations in Iraq and Iran, such as IQC and AMY.25 Many architects and engineers working in design corporations in Baghdad and Tehran, among them many immigrants, including those originally from Pakistan and India, migrated during this period to the Gulf States.26 From A Culture of Dependency to A Local Practice Among the early collaborations with foreign consultants, the relation with TAC provided the experience and pragmatism needed to support PACE’s work as the only contemporary way of building in Kuwait. The new Kuwait Fund (KFAED) head offices (75260), developed in association with TAC, and the long process of Al-Nugra Complex, designed ”in house,” were fundamental experiences to test the ability to consolidate the development of construction aptitude, detailing and material research, and structural competency.27 The relation with TAC, once coordinated by Charles Haddad, deteriorated following the design competition for the Joint Banking Centre.28 A new relationship with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) Chicago was initiated by Sabah Al Rayes while the new KFAED head offices (75260) were still under design. Between 1975-1982, the Kuwaiti firm collaborated with SOM on elev-

75258 23 24 25

26 27 28

PACE architect Raouf Eskander presenting Dana building (73140) at the Bahrain Engineers Association Exhibition, Manama, Bahrain, 1975.

PACE partners Hamed Shuaib, third from the left, and Sabah Al Rayes, fifth from the left, together with PACE engineers presenting project to the General Board of Shuaiba Area Kuwait, Kuwait, circa 1970.

Saib Yousef interview for this book.

Between 1976-83, PACE developed about 40 projects in Bahrain (76288, 77348, 77349, 77353, 77361, 77361, 78378, 78389, 78394, 78395, 78411, 78414, 79420, 78422, 78423, 78426, 80463, 80491, 81493, 81518, 81519, 81527, 81529, 82542, 82543, 82549, 82550, 82554, 82555, 82561, 83585, 83588, 83589, 83590, 83591, 83592, 83593, 83594, 83595, 83596). Moreover, after the accession of Saddam Hussein to power in 1979, followed by the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq-Iran War, many large corporations in both countries ceased their operations.

About 10 Iraqi architects including Baba Qushaba Khairu and Summer Salam Gillani started at PACE in this period as well as Ashok Kumar Gupta, Pradeep K. Guha, Jayashree Guha, Subhash Chandra Kalra and Sunil Love. According to Saib Yousif and Resham Singh interviews in this volume, the majority of the staff who joined between 1977-1979 came from Iraq and Iran.

Saib Youssef and Hakam Jarrar interviews in this volume. Between 1974-1987 PACE deveoped 11 projects for the same building complex, Nugra. The project numbers were as follows: 74216, 74217, 75245, 75246, 75247, 75280, 80467, 80473, 80481, 81510, 85631.

See more about this in Hyun-Tae Jung’ Designing for Affluence: Three Identical Towers in Kuwait City in this volume.

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Although ambitious in its attempt at creating a nationalistic entity, the KNM failed in building a life of its own. Up to 1983, the year the museum opened, the ambiguous program continued to generate reports that questioned the goals of the museum and its role as a state-building apparatus.10 Opened only eight years prior to Saddam’s invasion, the building itself never stood out as a country’s landmark. Moreover, as an idealised architectural product of the 1960s, the building came to fruition at a moment when Kuwait was already beginning a new relationship with architecture and architects.

In the aftermath of the 1982 economic collapse, the Arab National Planning Committee’s “The Architectural Styles Committee” held a meeting in Kuwait in 1984 in which architects and planners called for a return to the Arab Muslim built environment and the rejection of modern architecture and western influences.11 Following the damage caused to the building during the Invasion, PACE was commissioned to renovate the museum (01849) in 2001. Écochard’s project was unable to overcome the profound transformation of the new design and following different design proposals, the museum has been under construction for the last four years. The process of transformation introduced a new energy into the discussion of the national role of the Museum as a depository of artefacts (the building is been prepared for the return of the impressive Al-Sabah collection that was completely looted during the Invasion) but also as a testimony to the archaeological activity within Kuwait’s territory. In this context, the KNM was reclaimed as the main theme of the Kuwait’s pavilion, “Acquiring Modernity,” at the Fourteenth International Architecture Exhibition of la Biennale di Venezia in 2014, through a black and white conceptual reproduction, that sought to rethink the museum’s failure and its relationship with the country by revealing and reflecting the original program to the present.12 In parallel to the KNM project, a process that proved to be long and complex, the implementation of a vast educational infrastructure, on the contrary, was fast and efficient. When the UNESCO 1960 First Regional Conference of Ministers of Education took place in Beirut, Lebanon, at the beginning of the decade that the UN defined as the Decade of Development, Kuwait was already implementing a vast instructional system which had begun in the early 1950s.

A part of this included Kuwait’s education reform, which was a national priority that led to the implementation of a revolutionary school system which was based on bringing learning to the masses in buildings shaped by new forms and materials. In the early 1950s, Kuwait sought the British firm of Tripe and Wakeham to design “the best schools in the world.”13 The guidelines were drawn: structural standardisation, flat shaded roofs, concrete grilles, and solar-orientated windows. By 1954, 41 of those schools were built with 721 teachers and 12,800 students, which by 1969 rose to 212 schools with

10 UNESCO, The State of Kuwait: Kuwait National Museum: Assessment of Technical Assistance and Plan of Action (Paris: UNESCO, 1981): 14.

11 Badi Al Abed. “Contemporary Architecture,” Kuwait Cultural Life (1986): 31. Organized by The National Commission for Education Science & Culture of Arab League States.

12 See Acquiring modernity, ed. Noura Alsager (Kuwait: National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, 2014).

13 Raglan Squire, ed., “Special Issue: Architecture in the Middle East,” Architectural Design XXVIII, no. 3 (March 1957): 93.

14 Elias Antar. “Target for tomorrow,” Aramco World Magazine (November-December 1969): 10.

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120,550 students and 7,317 teachers.14 However, by the mid-1960s UNESCO’s “Kuwait, The Design of Schools, and Related Problems” report and Alfred Roth’s “The School Buildings of Kuwait” called the Tripe and Wakeham projects into question.15 They argued that the buildings used more area than necessary in circulation and open spaces, possessed inefficient sun and acoustic control, were absent of anthropometric standards, and in general, had no architectural quality. Roth’s criticism also extended to the Khaldiya Girls’ Secondary School, designed by Rambald von Steinbüchel-Rheinwal, which opened in 1966 as Kuwait University. These reports led Roth to design the Intermediate School for Girls in the new neighbourhood of Rumaithiya (1967-1970) and a kindergarten in Mansouriya (1971-1972), both of which had the ambition of functioning as prototypes, which never came to fruition.

By 1975, PACE was involved in the planning of the new neighbourhood unit Al-Ardiya (75261) where the gender-segregated intermediate school buildings embodied TAC’s distinctive arched openings.16 In a territory that lacks any urban landmarks due to the razing of the first Master Plan, these schools operated as urban definitions in the new neighbourhood units and promoted a nationalistic identity. This period in the nation’s architectural and intellectual history is critical as it paved the way for both a collective form in which an urbanism was organised and an intellectual basis on which nationalism was forged. This period of active state building, bolstered by a conclusive Pan-Arab identity embedded in the architectural and intellectual practices, is now replaced with a pragmatic approach where fitting the buildings’ program is at the forefront.

15 D.G. Barron. Kuwait The Design of Schools, and Related Problems (Paris: UNESCO, 1967); Alfred Roth. “The School Buildings of Kuwait. An appraisal of the existing educational facilities with regards to the future school building program” (Unpublished Report, 1965), ETH gta Archive, Zurich.

16 At that time PACE was involved with TAC on the building of Kuwait Souqs; For more, see Sara Saragoça Soares, “Souq Brutal: Kuwait’s Modernity and the New Souqs,” in Modern Architecture Kuwait. Volume 2: Essays, Arguments & Interviews, ed. Ricardo Camacho, Sara Saragoça, and Roberto Fabbri, First edition, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Salenstein: Niggli, 2018), 162–75; and Edward Nilsson in this volume.

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69024

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69031

69024 Jahra Village Cinema, Kuwait National Cinema Company (KNCC, present-day Cinescape), Jahra Village, Kuwait. Architecture office associate: Iraq Consult (IQC), undated photograph.

69031 Kuwait Shipping Company Headquarters Building, Shuwaikh, Kuwait, undated photograph.

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75250

75250 Government Print Press Building, Shuwaikh Industrial Area, Kuwait, undated photograph.

73188 A commercial/office building, (initially designed as residences), Hilali Street, Kuwait, undated photograph.

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73188

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Kuwait Abroad KFAED and its Projects

In December 1961, a mere six months after the official proclamation of Kuwait’s independence, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED, also known as The Kuwait Fund) was established through Law 35, with a working capital of 50 million Kuwaiti dinars.1 The Kuwait Fund was established “to assist the Arab States in developing their economies, and to provide financial and technical assistance for the execution of their development programmes” in the form of concessional loans.2 KFAED began its first year of operation with two action plans: the upgrade and expansion of the Sudanese Railway network and three projects for Jordan.3 The following year, KFAED expanded its scope to include projects in Tunisia, Algeria, and the United Arab Republic (UAR, 1958-1971, the short-lived confederation between Egypt and Syria). In UAR, KFAED undertook the second phase of the deepening of the Suez Canal, where the first phase was initiated and funded by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).4 The role of the IRBD and the United Nations (UN) in the region is instrumental, and even more so when seen in relation to KFAED. The Arab oil-rich countries of the Gulf would be among the first to procure advice from the IBRD, and in 1961 the first report on Kuwait was issued, following the UN recommendation to evaluate and promote economic plans for growth and modernisation. The “IBRD Report” recommended that 20% of Kuwait’s State annual income should be invested outside Kuwait, in addition to commitments made by the Government from State Reserve or by the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) […] to insure a level of international investment and aid to the Arab and African Countries.”5 In addition to these recommendations, KFAED also sought UN and IBRD assistance from its second year of operations and co-funded projects with the IBRD. In 1968, then-Director General of KFAED, Abdulatif Al-Hamad (1963-1981), commissioned the American firm The Architects Collaborative (TAC) to undertake the design of KFAED’s headquarters. While the details of why TAC was hired are unclear, former TAC co-workers state that the firm received the bid due to Al-Hamad’s relationship with TAC’s founding member Louis A. McMillen, which was developed during Al-Hamad’s time at Harvard.6 PACE served as TAC’s local office for this project (68006) and thus the PACEKFAED relationship emerged. Designed by McMillen, KFAED’s headquarters played a pivotal role in all three institutions. For TAC, it helped them establish a local office–TAC Middle East–and cemented the firm’s role as the American firm that had the competency and experience in the region.7 As for PACE, it helped establish a long and lasting relationship with KFAED and set it up as the purveyor of Western/local technical expertise. Lastly, KFAED’s modern building helped establish the institution as both Arab and

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED). (1963). 1962-1963 Annual Report. Kuwait, Kuwait: Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED).

Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED). (1972). 1971-1972 Annual Report. Kuwait, Kuwait: Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED).

Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED). (1963). 1962-1963 Annual Report. Kuwait, Kuwait: Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED).

Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED). (1964). 1963-1964 Annual Report. Kuwait, Kuwait: Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED).

Charles Haddad, “Urban Development and Rapid Economic Growth: The Kuwaiti Experience,” Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies of Developing Areas (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Fall 1969).

See Ra’ad Al-Mumayiz interview in this volume.

On the role of TAC in the Middle East, see Ra’ad Al-Mumayiz interview in this volume.

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international.

The design of the first KFAED headquarters was an important response to the ambition of modernising a local building tradition, which had been stated since the early transformation of the old town.8 At the same time that the KFAED project was being developed, the firm of BBPR (and their project for Kuwait City “Urban Form Studies for the Old City”) was advocating for the “interpretation of major [architecture] values in the Arab World” commending the “interchange between individuals and technicians coming from different cultural traditions” as a “solution for these kind of [design] problems”.9 Coincidently, both designers–BBPR for the residential compound proposal in Murgab, and TAC for KFAED also in Murgab (an open area to the southwest and the most exposed to weather)–use a direct interpretation of what was understood as local forms and typologies based on the work of the anthropologist John Gulick, who was the first to develop a hypothesis of the imageability of the “Arab City”, borrowing Kevin A. Lynch’s cognitive and behavioural methodology.10 Both projects combined the use of courtyard, building and urban block schemes, used the local imageries of the colonnade and protruding upper floors as a perimeter climate and social mediator. KFAED was constructed using sand-lime brick and bush hammered concrete, both materials quintessentially TAC and what would become iconic of PACE design.11 Unlike other recently built institutional buildings, especially those designed by Sami Abdul Baki (The Municipality Building, the Courthouse, and the Ministries of Guidance, Information and Finance), the glazing was kept to a minimum with narrow openings in thick walls following the projection of the upper floors as a façade shading strategy.

Tectonically speaking, the KFAED building “was also a relevant achievement in its planning, design, façade treatment and materials, the chilliness of the indirectly lighted inner courtyard.”12 It could be argued that the building was “a direct response to Kuwait’s environment and building tradition. The building responded very well to integration and context, but also to modernity.

Kuwait was thirsty for newness, for something they had not seen before.”13 By 1975, KFAED was in need of a new building and TAC-PACE was contracted once again to undertake this new project (75260). Originally designed as a continuation and extension of the original building, the first design strategy included a large interior courtyard where the first headquarters would be part of a complex.14 However, the final approved design included a tower, a change in scale reflective of the urban transformation and the building’s relationship to the urban fabric in which it was embedded. KFAED’s new

8

9 10 11 12 13 14

The first report of the “Plan for the Town of Kuwait” by Minoprio & Spencely and P.W. Macfarlane from November 1951, highlights as “supremely important that the first large buildings erected after the Master Plan is accepted should be of attractive appearance, because they will set an example to other building which will follow […] The simple design of Kuwait’s better buildings is admirable. Their shape and colour, their flat roofs and colonnades are natural to the locality and are well suited to the dry sunny climate […] We trust the local tradition in building will be retained and be developed,” 29-30.

BBPR, The Future Development of the Old City of Kuwait, Milano, June 1969: 2-5.

BBPR, The Future Development of the Old City of Kuwait, Milano, June 1969,. 16 and 17 drawing boards; John Gulick, “Images of An Arab City”, Ekistics, Vol. 17, No. 101 (April 1964), 270-278; Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960).

See Housing for All in this volume.

Akram Ogaily, Personal Interview, interview by Ricardo Camacho, In person in Dubai, UAE, July 29, 2017.

Akram Ogaily, Personal Interview, interview by Ricardo Camacho, In person in Dubai, UAE, July 29, 2017; See also Saib P. Yousif Nakascha interview in this volume.

See Michael Kubo’s essay “Concrete Ventures” in this volume.

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headquarters reflected the institution’s increased scope and reach as it was on July 17th, 1974, under Law 25, that KFAED should increase its scope and reach to include all developing countries, regardless of geographic location, and which increased its budget to one billion Kuwaiti dinars.15 So the towerin-the-park approach of the new KFAED headquarters was also reflective of the institution’s new position.

With the intention of extending “aid to infrastructure development, other than public housing, specifically power and transportation, to Arab States,” KFAED was part of a system of external funding to Arab States.16 PACE’s co-founder, Charles Haddad, states that there were “three other channels of Kuwaiti aid to Arab Countries […] The General Board for the South and the Arabian Gulf (GBSAG), which under an independent budget, administers economic aid programs in the region […] Loans granted by the Government from State Reserve; payments made from the State Reserve to countries affected by the 1967 June War […] [and the] recently established Arab-African Bank and the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Planning.”17 In 1973, under the leadership of Al-Hamad, both KFAED and GBSAG established their consultancy regulations, under which a local Kuwaiti consultant must be hired for any project. With PACE’s already established role in Kuwait and its unique relationship with KFAED, it was able to secure commissions for 59 projects funded by KFAED and/or GBSAG.18 In these Kuwait-funded projects, PACE was able to transfer the knowledge and expertise it developed from TAC and its own practice in Kuwait to the locales in which they were building. Inherent to KFAED’s mission was that these projects should produce a sense of Arab solidarity, but what was not evident was that there was also a Pan-Arab architectural language that was developed through these projects. These projects acquired the in-house PACE multidisciplinary and multicultural practice, reflected in the coherence and rationale of projects, but also with references to arched windows and central courtyards. PACE designed and constructed schools, university departments, health clinics, police stations and large residential schemes, using its own aesthetic. However, the construction technology and material were determinant in design heterogeneity and the lack of aesthetic affinities among projects. Furthermore, PACE employed locals to construct these projects, not always equipping them with the PACE-approved methods of construction. Moreover, imbued in the types of projects (schools and clinics) was a social transfer of knowledge in which civil servants were trained in entirely

15 Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED). (1975). 1974-1975 Annual Report. Kuwait, Kuwait: Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED).

16 Charles Haddad, “Urban Development and Rapid Economic Growth: The Kuwaiti Experience,” Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies of Developing Areas (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Fall 1969).

17 Charles Haddad, “Urban Development and Rapid Economic Growth: The Kuwaiti Experience,” Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies of Developing Areas (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Fall 1969); The GBSAG was founded in 1966 under Law 63 and during its operations between 1966 and 1990, it funded 60 schools in Northern Yemen, including Sana’a University, 48 schools in Southern Yemen, and 40 schools and clinics and a television station in Bahrain.

GBSAG was administered under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until its functions were transferred to KFAED on October 4 1992 under Law 119.

18 PACE was already commissioned by KFAED for two projects in Yemen for residential buildings in Al Hudaydah and Taiz (68002) and for a clinic at Al-Waht (71073), both for the GBSAG.

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Arab environments.

Kuwait, which initiated its education-based aid programs even before its independence, through the 1958 Society of South and the Arabian Gulf (SSAG) trip to Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, and the Trucial States, had a long history with a patronage in the Gulf. While this was originally based on a system of education, it also extended to architecture in which Kuwait served as a centre of knowledge on planning and architecture. This is not only evident in GBSAG and KFAED funded projects, but also in the founding of the Arab Institute of Planning (API) in 1966, the Arab Towns Organization (ATO) in 1967, and the Kuwait Society of Engineers (KSE) in 1963, all based in Kuwait and with substantial reach and influence in the Arab world.

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75260

75260 The new Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) building, view from the interior, Mirqab, Kuwait, undated photograph.

Kuwait Abroad: KFAED and its Projects

75260

75260 The new Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) building under construction, Mirqab, Kuwait, undated photograph.

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Collaborative Endeavors Western and Local Firms

“[T]he issues of physical development, specifically in countries of the developing World, are not easily identified by those dealing and living with them on a day-to-day basis. Because they are hard to see […] the above argument leads the Author to favour hiring outside foreign consultants to identify and isolate the issues of development.” 1 Charles Haddad, co-founder of PACE in 1968, brings an alternate argument to the narrative of western collaborations in the Middle East region. For Karim Jamal, the presence of western architecture and engineering practices in the region was the result of a profiteering and opportunistic legacy, while for a dominant western intellectual élite, it was the dependency on European and American expertise.2 The absence of a native and modern technical capability in the region was a fact during the first half of the twentieth century with its late decolonisation and the establishment of new nation-states; however, in many of these new states, rampant economic growth and the establishment of engineering training programs rapidly changed the work and intellectual force in the region.

By the 1940s, these transformations were already evident in Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq. In the first, the iconic Hotel Saint-George, designed by the French firm Poirrier, Lotte and Bordes in 1930, was the subject of a large renovation and extension after independence in 1943 by the Lebanese, locally trained architect, Antoine Tabet.3 In Egypt, the role of Sayed Karim and the building production published in his magazine Al-Emara revealed a scene dominated by local architects and engineers.4 Similar context has been acknowledged in Baghdad by several scholars.5 The dominant socio-political and economic approach to the region’s modernisation often overlooks the role of local knowledge in generating expertise and the intense mobilisation of people, especially professionals, after 1948. The emigration of Charles Haddad to Kuwait is an example that reflects and affirms the existence of technical competence in the Middle East made possible by the professional diaspora from newly unstable territories to the new oil-rich Gulf States.6 The political context during the 1950s in Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, and Iran forced many to emigrate to the Gulf.7 Together with other emigration waves from India, Pakistan, and Philippines, this multicultural community of draftsmen, quantity surveyors, architects, planners, and engineers supplied the growth of many local architectural and engineering corporations in the Gulf region.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Charles Haddad, “A National Physical Development Plan For Kuwait 1970-1990: A Process and The Strategy,” Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies of Developing Areas (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Spring 1970): 14.

Karim Jamal, “Destruction of the Middle East?,” The Architects ’ Journal 164, no. 30 (1976).

Antoine Tabet graduated from the Ecole Superieure des Ingenieurs in Beirut, Lebanon, 1926 and was responsible for the renovation and extension of Hotel Saint-George in Beirut between 1946-47 after working for the French firm Poirrier, Lotte and Bordes from 1930-32 as site engineer.

Al-Emara was a magazine founded by Sayed Karim and published between 1939 and 1959.

Caecilia Pieri, Bagdad: La Construction d’une Capitale Moderne, 1914-1960 (Beirut, Lebanon: Presses de L’Ifpo, 2015).

Ricardo Camacho, Sara Saragoça, and Roberto Fabbri, eds., “Charles Haddad Interview,” in Modern Architecture Kuwait.

Volume 2: Essays, Arguments & Interviews, First edition, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Salenstein: Niggli, 2018), 106–15.

See Raouf Eskander and Ra’ad Al-Mumayiz interviews in this volume and Ricardo Camacho, Sara Saragoça, and Roberto Fabbri, eds., “Maath Alousi Interview,” in Modern Architecture Kuwait. Volume 2: Essays, Arguments & Interviews, First edition, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Salenstein: Niggli, 2018), 79–83.

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Echoing the endeavours of the post-war and late- and post-colonial strategies of internationalism in architecture and planning, dozens of new cities were imagined and built in the region, many from scratch. New state capitals, oil towns, and even resettlements (for expatriates and refugees) were on most occasions designed by western corporations that imported models of industrialised communities. Many of these were models devoted to consumption and modern lifestyle which were foreign and strange to the majority of the region until the years of economic prosperity following the oil embargo (197383). The transformation of life modes and behaviour, together with a sudden desire for modernity, were later obscured by an affluent confidence and genuine taste for mature and solid references.

When the Truman administration announced the plan for financial aid to Europe after the Second World War, curtain glazed facades and a variety of cement, plastic, glass, gypsum, and metal products were common and extensively manufactured in North America.8 The Marshall Plan was preceded by the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 which confirmed the end of economic nationalism with the emergence of a global open market with the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IBRD). The region was represented by Egypt and Iraq, which a few months later were fundamental in the establishment of the Arab League via the Alexandria Protocol with Lebanon, Syria and Trans-Jordan. Two years later, the first loans from IBRD to France and Iran were announced and others—Lebanon and Syria— joined the IBRD Agreement. In 1949-50, the IBRD conducted the first survey missions in the region, conceding the first loans.9 Apart from the financial support, the Bank developed a unique expertise in evaluating and monitoring nascent states.The Arab oil-rich countries of the Gulf would be among the first to procure advice from the IBRD and in 1961, after the first joint mission with the World Health Organization (WHO), UNESCO and the UN, the report on Kuwait was issued, following the latter’s recommendation to evaluate and promote economic plans for growth and modernisation.10 Reports from this were fundamental in recommending and requesting local assistance from several western architects, engineers, planners, and corporations which, in many circumstances, ended as direct commissions for work in many of these countries. Clear examples are those of Colin Buchanan and Alfred Roth who were both assigned for reports where they self-recommended and finally were commissioned; the first for Kuwait’s second master plan and the second for several school facilities and other private projects. Jasmindar Mangat, former engineer of the Swedish practice T-Consult, confirmed that before the commission for the Al-Ahli Bank of Kuwait (69 012), the firm, T-Consult, was part of the World Bank list of recommended consultants. According to Mangat, the firm was assigned in 1962, after IBRD’s first mission in Kuwait, for a Bedouin settlement masterplan for the installation of prefabricated

8

See for example Beatriz Colomina, Annmarie Bennan, and Jeannie Kim, eds., Cold War, Hot Houses. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004).

9 In March 1949, the Bank mission to Egypt to study the general economic situation and to study a proposed irrigation project was the first survey mission to the region. On May 27, 1949 they undertook a mission to Iraq, to investigate flood control projects in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. In June 1950, the bank issued the first funding for Iraq for the construction on the Tigris River of a flood control system; and in October the same year, undertook the first Bank mission to Syria.

10 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The Economic Development of Kuwait: Report of a Mission Organized by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development at the Request of the Government of Kuwait (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins Press, 1952).

11 Jasmindar “Jessie” Mangat, Personal Interview, interview by Ricardo Camacho, Online, June 13, 2017.

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housing units in wood.11 Apart from the institutional presence in the region, western corporations have been connected with oil exploitation and transport since the late nineteen century.12 During the early 1950s American contractors, such as Bechtel and Kellogg Brown & Root, were main corporations in the development of the oil infrastructure in the region from coast to coast (the Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline and the Trans-Arabian). These commissions were an important vehicle to build a regional culture of infrastructure but also a form of propagation and distribution of manpower. Young, small, and specialised local contractors, which were attached to the large western corporations, soon expanded from the west to the east and from north to south of the Arabian Peninsula. These were firms established by young graduates from Lebanon, Syria and Egypt after the first loans from IBRD were conceded.13 The already well-established Protestant missions in Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt, with the support of donors from the United States, including large American contractors in the region, were pillars in the education and training of many of those in western Arabia.14 Corporations such as Bechtel and Kellogg Brown & Root were fundamental in financing new engineering schools and providing training and employment.15 This environment generated an array of opportunities, first for advisors, former directors, and faculty members, such as Kamal Shair16 and Raymond Ghosn17 who worked extensively in Kuwait through the Contracting and Trading Co. (CAT); and Fouad Abdul Baki, former vice-president of Kellogg, who became the Inspector General of Kuwait Public Works Department in 1953.18 Three years later, the Kuwaiti department had several AUB alumni, including Abdul Baki’s brothers, Charles Haddad and Sabah Abi Hanna.19 State agencies from all over the region began to recognise universities such as AUB as recruitment centres. With the rise of Arab sovereignty (1956-1968), all these entrepreneurs, public servants, professors, and advisors who were supportive of western expertise and advice became main decision makers in many of these nascent states and governments, especially those in charge of public works programs. Lastly and critically, while socialist idealism grew between refugees, people without a homeland, and a new class of oil workers, schools such as AUB were the environment which consolidated a lasting western referential system and re-

12 See “Infrastructure of Oil and Water” in this volume.

13 Among these major contractors today are the Arab Contractors (1955) from Egypt, Ahmadiah (1954), Consolidated Contractors Company, CCC (1952), and Contracting and Trading Company, CAT (1943) from Lebanon.

Ricardo Camacho, “The Making of An Arab Architect,” in Modern Architecture Kuwait. Volume 2: Essays, Arguments & Interviews, ed. Ricardo Camacho, Sara Saragoça, and Roberto Fabbri, First edition, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Salenstein: Niggli, 2018), 86.

14 See, for example, Ussama Samir Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East, The United States in the World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008); Mehmet Ali Doǧan, Heather J. Sharkey, and Middle East Studies Association of North America, eds., American Missionaries and the Middle East: Foundational Encounters (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2011); Heather J. Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire, Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

15 The School of Engineering and Architecture at AUB is named “The Bechtel Engineering Building” after its donor, Stephen D. Bechtel, the president of Bechtel Corporation from 1933 through 1960.

16 Kamal Shair established the present Dar Al Handasah in 1956 with three other partners (who were all faculty members at the American University of Beirut [AUB]). This was the first large commission in Kuwait.

17 Ghosn in 1957 received the commission to design the Ministry of Oil’s head offices in Ahmadi, Kuwait, through CAT. 18 Sami Abdul Baki, Personal Interview, interview by Ricardo Camacho, In person in Beirut, Lebanon, May 2016.

19 Charles Haddad, Personal Interview, interview by Ricardo Camacho, In person in Old Saybrook, USA, April 17, 2017. For more, see Roula El-Khoury, “The Work of Sami Abdul Baki in Beirut and Kuwait, 1947-1960,” in this volume.

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mained one of the few spaces of continued Anglo-Saxon influence.

During the 1960s, technical criticism of foreign consultancies began to emerge from within the civil service. According to Saba George Shiber, and even Charles Haddad, the lack of a proper framework of local resources and analytical data conditioned their work as planners in the region.20 After decades of presence in the region, the western experts had left very few studies and surveys on these territories. When in April 1961 Constantinos Doxiadis requested from Shiber statistical and analytical information on Kuwait City, the reply was “scattered and almost unanswered.”21 This questioning eventually triggered, or confirmed, many of the reports that unfolded in the following months and years, including the seminal publication of Shiber, Kuwait Urbanization: Documentation, Analysis, Critique: Being an Urbanistic Case-Study of a Developing Country completed in 1964.

The argument that foreign experts had become too embedded and powerful in the process of urban development confirmed the need for a local counterpart, which opened the opportunity for the establishment of local architecture and engineering corporations. These new practices were first established by those at the centre of criticism. In 1968, Charles Haddad, Hamid Shuaib, and Sabah Al-Rayes, all former or current civil servants, established PACE. Under such circumstances, many of these local architects and engineers envisioned the practice as a business, rather than a direct desire to develop knowledge and contribute to the community.

Quickly, these practices developed their own design capabilities providing architecture and engineering services to a wider community. The eclectic demand from a new urban community, first for single houses, and later in the form of building investment, imposed a volatile quality on the methodologies of project. Notions of experimental and radical practices were subverted by the creative use of project precedent and replication, but also by searching for uniqueness and exposure. A design process responsive to precedents and imposed references brought the project intensity to include the scope of interior design.

Thus, interior design became the only interface that could be managed and directed by the local counterpart. Together with engineering tasks, these became the major components of the “local office’s” scope. Such specialisation diminished the architects’ competence at the urban scale, increasing the dependence on foreign consultants such as TAC and SOM, which prompted the development (and convenience) of the long-term relationship.22 In 1973, Abdulatif Al-Hamad, as director of Kuwait Investment Company and Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED), established the consultancy regulations for all projects funded by KFAED and the General Board of the South & Arabian Gulf Society (GBSAG).23 These projects outside Kuwait have

20 Saba George Shiber, Kuwait Urbanization: Documentation, Analysis, Critique: Being an Urbanistic Case-Study of a Developing Country (Kuwait: Kuwait Municipality, 1964); Charles Haddad, “A National Physical Development Plan For Kuwait 1970-1990: A Process and The Strategy,” Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies of Developing Areas (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Spring 1970), 14.

21 Yannis Kitanis, “The Evolutionary Identity: At the Occasion of Um Qasaba Waterfront by Doxiadis Associates,” in Modern Architecture Kuwait. Volume 2: Essays, Arguments & Interviews, ed. Ricardo Camacho, Sara Saragoça, and Roberto Fabbri, First edition, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Salenstein: Niggli, 2018), 234.

22 Akram Ogaily, Personal Interview, interview by Ricardo Camacho, In person in Dubai, UAE, July 29, 2017.

23 See “Kuwait Abroad” in this volume.

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since then required that the design to be completed exclusivity by Kuwaiti firms. Such imposition resulted in 30 project commissions to PACE in Yemen and Bahrain until 1983, and about 20 others in the same time period in collaboration with TAC. As former Kuwaiti Minister of Planning and Finance, Al-Hamad was also the main instigator of this collaboration, starting in 1968 with the first commission for the KFAED head offices in 1968 (68006).24 Both corporations, PACE and TAC, radically transformed the architectural landscape in Kuwait for the decades starting from 1968. The relationship between both firms changed the American corporation ethos that Michael Kubo credits to Henry-Russell Hitchcock prediction “that the major categories of postwar architecture would be distinguished not by style, but by economy of production.”25 In Kuwait, the collaborative work among the two firms was informed by an intense exchange of architects and engineers which produced a body of work with dominant impact throughout the architectural production in Kuwait until the 1990 Invasion.26 The collaboration improved competences on both sides.27 PACE developed most of their standards in line with those of TAC, while the American firm absorbed an interest in the material condition and formal elements of building such as the arch and colonnade from their PACE experience. A substantial part of this experience was brought from the first collaborations with Iraq Consult (IQC), that were centred around a strong avant-garde and performative regional agenda which challenged the local building materials and technology (68001,68003,69023).28 During the decade beginning with the oil embargo in 1973 until 1983, an unprecedented accumulation of funds, time, and manpower culminated in the execution of extensive international collaborations, not only with North American firms but also with contractors from Asia, especially from South Korea.29 These firms pursued not only large-scale, state-led building complexes such as Al-Sawaber Residential Complex, but also innumerable private initiatives, such as hotels, commercial centres, and banking towers (73188,75277,76333, 77369,79432,79435,81504).30 Many of these large-scale buildings were exclusively designed by PACE inhouse, demonstrating that by the end of the 1970s, the “local” corporations developed an architectural maturity and clarity in spatial definition. This pragmatism was fundamental in positioning PACE and its buildings as the only contemporary way of building based upon a stylistic consensus around the

24 Henry-Russell Hitchcock quoted in Michael Kubo, “Speculations: U.S. Architects and Modernisation in Kuwait,” in Modern Architecture Kuwait. Volume 2: Essays, Arguments & Interviews, ed. Ricardo Camacho, Sara Saragoça, and Roberto Fabbri, First edition, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Salenstein: Niggli, 2018), 184. See also “Kuwait Abroad” in this volume.

25 Michael Kubo, “The Concept of the Architectural Corporation,” in OfficeUS Agenda, ed. Eva Franch i Gilabert et al. (Zürich, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2014), 37–45.

26 Raouf Eskander, Michel Gebhart, Branko Brankovic and Ra’ad Al-Mumayiz interviews in this volume.

27 Ricardo Camacho, Sara Saragoça, and Roberto Fabbri, eds., “Sabah Al Rayes Interview,” in Modern Architecture Kuwait.

Volume 2: Essays, Arguments & Interviews, First edition, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Salenstein: Niggli, 2018), 66–72.

28 Rifat Chadirji, Concepts and Influences: Towards a Regionalized International Architecture, 1952-1978 (London ; New York : New York, NY, USA: KPI ; Distributed by Methuen, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986).

29 Roberto Fabbri, Sara Saragoça, and Ricardo Camacho, Modern Architecture Kuwait: 1949-1989, 1st edition, vol. 1, 2 vols.

(Zurich: Niggli, imprint of bnb media GmbH, 2016), 198-353. See Hyun-Tae Jung, “Designing for Affluence: Three Identical Towers in Kuwait City” in this volume.

30 Hanyang Corporation, Cheng Hang International Co., Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co., Korean International Construction Co., Samho Co., Kuwait Korean Co. and Shimizu Construction Co. Ltd. were and are still South Korean contractors working in Kuwait since 1973.

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building, material, size, and type. By 1979, the collaboration with TAC deteriorated and PACE began to produce their own building norms, which contributed to the improvement of municipal regulations for special buildings such as car parks and towers.31 The deep transformations at PACE together with the establishment of the Kuwait Society of Engineers, brought an interesting dynamic to Kuwait’s architecture and engineering scene with the exchange of co-workers between the different local firms.32 This was a strong contribution to the normalisation of procedures among local practices, grounded in American standards, products, and methodologies for construction and design.

Other local firms would emerge under a new architecture agenda imposed by the work of architects as Rifat Chadirji and/or Hassan Fathy. The vernacular translations and the search for a regional building tradition became a dominant interest and a relevant consideration for the commissioning of state buildings.33 The work of architecture corporations such as SOM and TAC, and the dynamic of commercially driven production, became the subject of strong critique.34 The formation of AECOM in 1990 confirmed a different arrangement within United States corporate practice towards the full architecture, engineering, management, and maintenance service provider. A new profit model practice, immediately followed by major firms in the region such as Dar Al-Handasah (former Kamal Shair and partners) which in the same year acquired Perkins+Will (Chicago, USA), currently involved with the design of Kuwait’s Fourth Master Plan. Incidentally, this shift coincided with the fall and consequent closure of TAC, while SOM was able to preserve its original integrity and returned to Kuwait in the late 1990s to work on large-scale urban schemes with PACE, such as the Fahad Al Salem Masterplan (97803) and subsequent Super-Block (98819), under a common client, Salhiya Real Estate Company.

During the next years, mature and well-prepared real estate developers became the main agents for the reintroduction of many other international consultants, such as HOK, Gensler, RTKL and Fentress Architects, all of which have contributed to the dominant landscape of the contemporary city with high-rise buildings of glass and aluminium curtain facades.35 This is an imaginary borrowed from a new city that emerged in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and rapidly expanded throughout the region from Doha to Riyadh.36

31 Ra’ad Al-Mumayiz interview in this volume. In 1979, PACE published a compilation of Standard details and the translation in English of all norms and regulations in Kuwait.

32 A reduced dependency on foreign design corporations and taking in charge the full task of a substantial amount of projects, which in 1978/79 meant a total of 19 commissions.

33 Akram Ogaily, Personal Interview, interview by Ricardo Camacho, In person in Dubai, UAE, July 29, 2017.

34 Michael Kubo, “The Concept of the Architectural Corporation,” in OfficeUS Agenda, ed. Eva Franch i Gilabert et al. (Zürich, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2014), 44–45.

35 Ghazi Al-Nafisi interview in this volume.

36 George Katodrytis and Kevin Mitchell, eds., UAE and the Gulf: Architecture and Urbanism Now, Architectural Design Profile 233 (London: Wiley, 2015).

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68006

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76333

68006 Model of the Headquarters Building for the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED), undated photograph.

76333 Holiday Inn Hotel, Farwaniya, Kuwait. Architecture office associate: Morrison and Partners, undated photograph.