Tall Buildings of Kuwait

The urban form of Kuwait City is going through major developments. Tall buildings of commercial use are starting to take over. But are we going in the right direction? Let us take a few minutes to examine the issues related to the tall buildings of Kuwait.

Thamerium

Materiality: One similarity that governs tall buildings here is the choice of one material; Glass. No doubt there are obvious advantages that are offered with the use of glass curtain walls; Availability of glass by fabrication, low cost and aesthetic value are a few of them. Moreover, view and ventilation are two main reasons for using glass. Sadly in Kuwait, the weather is dusty therefore the glass looks dirty most of the time. For eight to nine months, the temperature in Kuwait varies from 35-50 degrees. Ventilation by opening the window is not a choice in those towers as all the cool air conditioned air will escape.

Orientation: You might not really appreciate the importance of orientation until you work in an office facing south or west. The building’s orientation is very important anywhere, but especially in hot countries like Kuwait. In the northern hemisphere the sun rises from the East, moves South and sets in the West. Western walls of buildings should be insulated as much as possible. From what I’ve seen, it is as if the architects design the building as a stand-alone element in the middle of nowhere, then they stick it on site. There is no regard whatsoever to the amount of heat transferred through the glass to the interiors.

Identity: At a glance, the tall glass buildings in Kuwait look pretty much the same.  One can argue that most of the tall buildings here don’t have an identity. Except Dar alAwadi and the under construction United Towers, the buildings are a simple extruded footprint. Identity in a building doesn’t necessarily mean to make it look Kuwaiti. It is completely wrong to take buildings designed for the States and force them in desert environment like Kuwait. A simple regard for the heat, dust and other regional aspects will eventually result in much better buildings.

Context: In every design project, the architects ask the question of whether they want the building to stand out or to blend in with it’s surrounding. Although I do believe that every designer has the right to create something that is unique which could be regarded as a landmark, I wonder at times what would happen if every architect decides that their building should stand out. What would happen to the overall urbanism of Kuwait city? would it look like Las Vegas or Dubai.

These simple yet profoundly important elements are critical to the success of any building. Looking around at our burgeoning skyline, it seems obvious that they are being taken for granted. Many buildings use wildly incorrect materials, are blind to orientation, lack in identity and are oblivious to their context. These are not complicated issues, yet their effect on space is enormous. Let’s try to get it right.

Public Squares

There is a historical public square in Kuwait called Al Safat Square, yet a square is not an appropriate description for it. Today, it serves as a traffic interchange where you pass by noticing it only because of the monument erected at its center. The rest of the historical square is a pedestrian underpass to connect the three parts that surround the Al Safat Square. It’s tragic that modern day Kuwait City has no public square nor are there any plans to have one, at least none that I know of.

Public squares are an important component of any town or city. It is an open air space, usually rectangular in shape, that serves for public gatherings for different functions. They are widely used as open air markets due to its pavement. In the old days, major governmental announcements happen there, sometimes even carrying out punishments for criminal acts in public.

mhels_13, flickr

The need for a public square in Kuwait has not escaped us. During the famous 2005 protests, the parliament members alongside their constituents and supporters used the open space in front of the National Assembly building to gather and voice their anger at the government. That space is now locally called ’saahat al erada’, meaning Determination Square. It is understandable that the government of Kuwait, given the recent history of ’saahat al erada’, won’t rush to create new public squares. However, the need to have a public space in the city that acts as a ‘breather’ is critically important.

Imagine a space downtown where you can see people from all over the world, since Kuwait City is becoming a cosmopolitan place with people coming and living here from about 200 nationalities. A space where it serves many different functions, from political protest to religious gatherings. It becomes a gathering space, a focal point, something like the Solidere in Beirut or Trafalgar Square in London. We should look back at how our illiterate grandfathers created the old town with all it’s working components, and see how today in the 21st century we struggle to overcome the shortcomings of modernism in the past 40 years.

Times Square, Kuwait

Recently, I have noticed something interesting with the giant billboards around the city. Television stations are actively and competitively advertising their Ramadan shows. This phenomena is an exciting one. Kuwait is the most active in the region when it comes to the entertainment industry and with a multitude of new shows coming to us these days it’s only logical that TV stations try to attract as many viewers as possible. But what if we take this a step further; think of year-round billboards dedicated to show business. Kuwait is very active in the entertainment business, we produce TV shows heavily prior to the month of Ramadan, and almost half of them air again after the Ramadan. We produce plays throughout the year, and sometimes even movies. This advertising can potentially translate into an urban communication tool.

I am thinking of Times Square in New York City. When you arrive at Times Square you are instantly at different zone and place. It’s as if you’re not in New York City anymore but in a bright and unreal place. The eye candy of Broadway shines and the gigantic flashing lights are so enticing that your eyes unintentionally gaze upon them rather than seeing where your heading. However, Times Square isn’t really a square. I remember being a bit disappointed when i first experienced it. It is in fact a leftover space between buildings that have two triangles opposing each other with some pedestrian spaces left behind. The islands between the streets that make up those triangles happened to be on Broadway where all the theaters are located. The show producers used this space because it was the most convenient to showcase their productions. All other streets are very linear with no chance of someone taking a glimpse while in a car or even walking. It was smart of them to have transformed that leftover and unique space into what is now one of the hottest tourist spots not only in New York city but in the entire world. That experience has changed my perception of the so called ’square’. People have an innate ability to use public space in very imaginative ways. It becomes a stimulus for development and cultural evolution.

Why can’t this can happen here, since we are the pioneers in the entertainment business in the region? We should nominate a space in the city to transform it into a year round show case of works done locally, maybe even some big international productions. A sort of Entertainment District where art house film theaters and drama schools can provide some much needed culture and art.

Kuwait Courtyard House

This is a home I designed as a modern interpretation of a traditional Kuwaiti courtyard house. It is not a stylistic evolution; I am not trying to make the old mud houses look modern and sexy, rather I began by defining what made the old homes work and what would be the best way to design a built environment that reflects the values which defined the traditional architecture.

Front Elevation

Most importantly, the home has to allow for absolute privacy in all interior spaces. There’s no point in having street-facing windows if they’re always going to be shuttered. This means that a functional separation between the public elements of the home and the private areas is critical. It became clear that the best way to achieve this is to simply place a two-level family home on top of a pedestal which would contain all the public and service elements.

All of the rooms would have direct access to a large and private family courtyard. This space would be shielded from the elements by a structural frame which would in time be completely covered by climbing vines which would block direct sunlight and filter the dust out of the air. A waterfall would cool the space through convection heat transfer and evaporative cooling.

View from Bedroom 1

The micro-climate created inside the courtyard would allow for an inviting outdoor space that is comfortable and habitable in all but the most extreme weather conditions. Fallen leaves would be carried by the pool onto another waterfall on the other end of the lap pool (not visible in the image) which would allow for easy collection and disposal. Pests and insects will become somewhat of a concern, but they arrive with birds and butterflies as well.

View from Bedroom 2

The door on the left of the above image leads to the master suite. Access to the courtyard from the rooms can be as large as possible without sacrificing privacy or heat gain. There is corridor access on the other side of the rooms for practical reasons, however I imagine most of the access would be to and from the courtyard side.

View from Bedroom 3

Optimally, children would have constant access to the courtyard, so they play outside and not in their rooms; this allows for the rooms to be smaller and for the children to play with each other and facilitate deeper family bonding. The large sliding glass doors on the left of the above image lead to the main living and kitchen/dining space. The sliding doors, once opened, allow for a seamless connection between the courtyard and the interior living spaces.

View from Bedroom 4

The spiral staircase is a sculptural and structural element which breaks the rigid linearity of the design. The swimming pool is small compared to others (3m x 8m), however it also includes a 16m long lap pool. The large panels can be used as a projection screen for movies and videogames.

Courtyard

This particular design is 400m2 on one street facing east, with 5 bedrooms and a 2 car parking garage. There is no basement. The project is a prototype examining the alternatives to the typical residential offerings in Kuwait. I am currently looking for investors to help me build the house.

Reconstructing Public Parks

I am currently working on a project to re-design a public park as a personal project. If you are unaware, we do have parks in Kuwait. They are, unfortunately, badly designed and poorly maintained. There is in fact a park, or an intention of a park, in every area. Back in the 1980s, a lot of thought and effort was put into making Kuwait greener and more beautiful. Actually, the ministry of public works had issued two plans referred to as Tashjeer and Takhdheer (Tree-planting and green-making respectively). In 1987, they even had plans to create a green belt around Kuwait to protect it from sand storms. My guess is that those projects were interrupted.

I started brainstorming ideas for parks in Kuwait when I was training in London. I just couldn’t bare the fact that I will soon be back to a ‘Regents Park’-less place. The weather has always been an issue in Kuwait and it is considered in every project before designing. If the designers of the parks in Kuwait have at least considered the park as a project, then they would have found ways to make this outdoor space more tolerable and enjoyable to the users.

I looked at some parks and interestingly enough they all have the requirements of a successful park. There are one to three playing areas for the kids in each park, toilets and a guard’s room. Some parks even had stretching and exercise benches, which I thought was great, until I touched one and it was burning from the heat. A good element is that one can see that there was some planning put into the location of the trees, grass and sand areas. What I loved the most in the planning is that all parks had a gazebo (a shaded device where people can sit under). Unfortunately, some of the gazebos were in a location that the sun can penetrate.

So basically, what I can conclude from my initial observations is that the design of the public park in Kuwait lacks consideration of the sun’s direction. This will be the main concern in the re-constructing of the park along with natural ventilation and passive cooling. These should really be the most important elements while designing an open, outdoor space in a hot, arid country, yet they have been completely ignored!

Form Generation I

There are no limits to the number of methods that can be used to generate forms, yet at the start of every project we tend to get stuck on the derivation of the form. Of course, there is always the option of letting the project’s requirements determine it, but where’s the fun in that?

In this post I’m presenting one of the ways of generating a form by manipulating an existing object. This method mimics playing with play-dough (clay) using a 3D software, except that in play-dough the reactions of each force applied to the existing piece of dough is predictable. On the other hand, a force in 3D software applied on an object can react differently to different set of rules and limitations determined by the designer.

In the preceding image, the initial form was a sphere. Due to forces applied using the mouse the shape of the sphere mutates to a more interesting form. As we cannot determine the amount of force applied on a virtual level, I have used the distance from the mouse click and drag to the release as the force amount and added a power option to the script to specify the amount of pressure applied. The shape of the form changes based on how far I move the mouse. The rules that inform these changes are a sort of mathematical formula.

Now that the concept of the form derivation is set, we can play with the initial forms to create different effects. The following are explorations using the cylinder as an initial form.

Basically, this method of form generation depends on three elements;

1. The initial object. If the object that we started with was a cube instead of a sphere, the reaction to the forces applied will be different, hence different mutations.
2. The direction and amount of forces applied. This is the variable.
3. The system or the set of rules that are used to determine the reactions.

Beijing National Stadium by Herzog & de Meuron

Contemporary architects are using parametrically derived forms using these methods to create buildings that simply can’t be generated using traditional methods. A great example is the ‘Bird’s Nest’ in Beijing. The form and arrangement of the structural cage was designed using a mathematical algorithm. The designers could manipulate the form endlessly, while the computer would arrange the individual elements accordingly to best fit the structural framework.

On a smaller scale, parametrics are used to generate the form of a buildings facade. The computer would make sure that all rules set for fenestration and structure are met, while the designer can manipulate the form to generate the best looking outcome. The example below is the Airspace Tokyo project by Faulders Studio.

Airspace Tokyo project by Faulders Studio.

Boring Schools

What is a school? Is it simply a building where children go to learn about the world, or is it more important? It’s a cliche to think that our greatest natural resource is not the oil under our feet, but those kids in our schools. Even so, I think that we should be very careful in the way we design the spaces where they learn and play. Almost all of the schools in Kuwait have not been designed with kids in mind. They’re all drab, dreary, unimaginative and boring. I remember my school had a fence with barbed wire surrounding the playground. What kind of message does that send to the kids?

What’s with this recent obsession with new schools being named ‘X’BS (Bilingual School), seemingly oblivious to the common use of BS in the English language? It’s not as important what kids learn, but rather that they know how to learn. Most of the schools have the same curriculum and pedagogical model, and they all even look the same, except that they’re all painted a different color.

I want my future children to have every opportunity that can be provided to them. The problem is that looking around, the choices are depressingly scarce. What is a kid friendly space? The most important thing is that the physical space around them sort of gives them the permission to be free and curious. An authoritarian space drives discipline and order, but it also discourages freedom of expression. When kids feel like they can’t express themselves openly, they’ll find other ways to do so in secret, destructive ways.

I’m not a defender of the flowery self-esteem movement that has practically created a generation of Americans that feel undeservedly self-entitled and content with their incompetence and ignorance. I don’t want that for Kuwait. What I want is the option to have a school that understands the importance of creativity and imagination in the development of a young child, and would do everything it can to encourage that. The first step is to build a school that is, for lack of a better word, cool. It has to challenge children to be creative, to live up to and exceed the example set by the building.

Second, the curriculum needs to be flexible and geared towards the independent development cycle of each child. Every child is different and some need more guidance and supervision than others. Simply putting thirty kids in a room and demanding that they all learn at the same pace is very illogical. Similarly, tests will always be a part of the school system, but the curriculum should not revolve around what’s on the test. School has to be fun. For example, a teacher discovers that an unmotivated student in an English class is a hip hop fan; The teacher could ask that student to write a rap song as a class project. It’s not in the curriculum, but with some flexibility, that unmotivated student would be extremely interested to do something in class.

Finally, teachers should be allowed to experiment with alternative methods of teaching based on the situation they find themselves in. For example, if there are disruptive students in the class, they shouldn’t be allowed to slow down the rest of the class. They should quickly be reassigned to a special, albeit temporary, class that would include all the disruptive students. Of course, this special class would have a far more disciplined teacher and stricter penalties and a more structured environment. What I mean to say is that the environment has to be malleable enough to adapt to most situations. Every child is different, and we can’t treat them all the same.