Planning Our Urban Future

This was the title of a workshop that took place 5-6^th of September in Kuwait. Organized by UN-HABITAT to celebrate the World Habitat Day, the workshop focused on urban planning issues that are currently present in Arab countries. I found the workshop both insightful and encouraging for reminding Kuwait for its collective responsibility towards urban planning.

The Keynote speakers were specialists and researchers from Kuwait and abroad. They discussed how we (as urban designers and architects) should react to the fast change in environmental conditions and urban developments. Green buildings, where there is enough attention given to the use of water, wind and sunlight, are good solutions. However, buildings alone cannot create a sustainable, environmentally friendly city. A building plays an important role in a city, but it’s not the only element there. For the city to become sustainable, streets, highways and cars also need to be designed in a way that considers the environmental conditions.

Dr. Serageldin mentioned a proposal called Eco-city. Which is defined as “a human settlement that enables its residents to live a good quality of life while using minimal natural resources”. In this proposal, green buildings will be of great use since their surroundings are well designed. The city has a few other characteristics including its walkability, vegetation, self-reliance and public transport.

I think this is a great proposal but I doubt it can be fully implemented in Kuwait, mostly due to our lifestyle in conjunction with our intense heat. This does not mean we should quit trying to make Kuwait more sustainable. Surely, we can learn a few things from Eco-city and apply them in Kuwait. For example, better public transport would lessen the traffic and pollution. More trees and vegetation can act as a wind and dust barrier and assist in cleansing the air.

This workshop was under the patronage of Dr. Safar, Minister of Public Works in Kuwait. There were also officials from Traffic Ministry of Interior and Higher Planning and Development Council. What I appreciated the most about this workshop was the encouragement that I felt from the officials. They all recognized their roles in planning a better urban future for Kuwait.

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.

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.