Design Brief

Our perception of the world is shaped through dystopian films. In those films we always imagine alternative worlds as a way of understanding our own. Dystopian films are designed to evoke questions about reality. Therefore, by analyzing multiple dystopian films such as Blade Runner and Metropolis, I was intrigued by the concept of forecasting a future.

The project, De-familiarization, focuses on a speculative future story of Kuwait’s architecture. Kuwait has a long history of borrowing foreign forms and symbols all the while demolishing their own. It has become a country that has lost all sense of its own architectural identity. This pattern behavior raises the question as to what will become of the country’s architectural identity where any sense of the familiar becomes manipulated?

The project is set within a future, influenced by current events, where Kuwait & China have established strong ties. A future where cultural and formal symbols of the country’s architecture start to become de-familiarised through their merging.

Based in the heart of Souk Mubarakiya, the project re-appropriates a landmark building into its newfound image, challenging the familiarity of the old with the unfamiliarity of the new. The architecture plays on the balance of what we associate to our culture through formal exploration but also how Kuwait’s architecture evolves through formal inheritance.

"What if one day those in the depths rise up against you?"

"Woman and men, let no one miss today! Death to the

What is it to be a human?

"All those memories will be lost like tears in the rain"

This a world where China has a global influence. Their signs and language took over Kuwait City. The city became a collage of unfamiliar forms and symbols. The familiar buildings were threatened to be demolished. The unfamiliarity continued to spread, taking over the most familiar sites in the city "Mubarakiya". A building in the heart of Mubarakiya is transformed by Chinese government to become Chinese embassy. You can trace the origin of building, yet new layers were added to it, making it in a state of De-familiarity.

The exterior skin of the building is currently the most identifiable, thus, the final proposal focuses on making it de-familiar through shifting, removing, and manipulating some of its original elements. On the other hand, the nature of the internal courtyard is unfamiliar, so, this unfamiliarity has been embraced and exaggerated through kitbashing. Then, the inside is pulled out through a series of gates and vistas, creating a visual connection in between.

Kitbashing

A formal mechanism used to transform familiar objects into a state of Defamiliarity. It works through Scaling, Distorting, Rotating and Combining familiar forms to perceive and see them in a new way.