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Abstract
Desert landscapes serve as a site for the dynamic interplay of competing historical and geopolitical narratives. In Kuwait, tribal, colonial, and global conflicts across the hinterland have mobilized state planning efforts, articulating a geospatial division between urban and desert life. Concurrently, visioning tools such as hand-drawn maps and satellite imagery have not only shaped the understanding of this desert, but have been shaped by it. Through an examination of the forces that have driven its transformation, this landscape is shown as both product and producer of cultural, social, and political complexity. The contemporary desert exists as a patchwork, the result of a disparate collection of essential narratives projected onto the territory.
Notes
Editor’s Note: This piece was invited and did not undergo blind peer review
As a collective, Yousef Awaad Hussein, Asaiel Al Saeed, Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, and Aseel AlYaqoub curated the National Pavilion of Kuwait, entitled Space Wars, at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021. They have lectured at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Kuwait University, and Cornell University as part of the Preston H. Thomas Memorial Lecture Series. Their work was most recently included in the book Deserts Are Not Empty (2022), edited by Samia Henni.
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2 Gokhan Bacik, Hybrid Sovereignty in the Arab Middle East: The Cases of Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), p.61.
3 Saba George Shiber, “Saga Of Kuwait Planning: A Critique,” Ekistics 21:122 (1966): 51–58.
4 Frederick F. Anscombe, The Ottoman Gulf: The Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
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9 Aseel AlYaqoub, “Pipe Dreams: The Evolution of Kuwait’s Territorial Carvings and Imagined Cartography,” essay in Architecture of the Territory: Constructing National Narratives in the Arab World, ed. Kaph (Beyrouth: Kaph, 2022), 7.
10 Robert S. G. Fletcher, “Between the Devil of the Desert and the Deep Blue Sea: Re-Orienting Kuwait,” Journal of Historical Geography 50, (2015), 51-65. doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2015.04.020.
11 Talaat El Ghoneimy Mohd, ‘The Legal Status of the Saudi-Kuwaiti Neutral Zone,” The International and Comparative Law Quarterly 15, no. 3 (1966), 690–717.
12 Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, “Nation Building: Planning the City-State in Kuwait,” in Architecture of the Territory: Constructing National Narratives in the Arab World, ed. Kaph (Beyrouth: Kaph, 2022), 65.
13 Stephen Gardiner, Kuwait: The Making of a City (Essex, UK: Longman Group Ltd., 1983).
14 Sonja Dümpelmann, Flights of Imagination: Aviation, Landscape, Design (Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 2014).
15 Yousef Awaad Hussein, “From 36,000 Feet: Kuwait as Motivated, Legitimized, and Facilitated by the Aerial View,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 30, no. 1 (2018): 83, accessed February 13, 2021, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26877473.
16 Yousef Awaad Hussein, Kuwait’s Urban Landscape: The Aerial View of Modernist Planning (Penny White Project Fund, 2017), https://books.google.com/books/about/36_000_Ft.html?id=fGcDuAEACAAJ&redir_esc=y.
17 David Vergun, “Nation Observes Anniversary of Operation Desert Storm,” US Department of Defense, January 15, 2022, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2879147/nation-observes-anniversary-of-operation-desert-storm/.
18 Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, Aseel AlYaqoub, Yousef Awaad Hussein, and Asaiel Al Saeed, “Space Wars: An Investigation into Kuwait’s Hinterland,” in Deserts Are Not Empty (Columbia University, 2022),143–66.
19 Larry Greenemeier, “GPS and the World’s First ‘Space War,’” Scientific American February 8, 2016, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gps-and-the-world-s-first-space-war/.
20 Greenemeier, “GPS and the World’s First ‘Space War.’”
21 Ron Synovitz, “Iraq/Kuwait: Two Countries Divided by Earthworks, Electrified Barbed Wire,” RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty (2003), accessed 6 December 2020, https://www.rferl.org/a/1102392.html.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Yousef Awaad Hussein
Yousef Awaad Hussein is an architect and urban planner. He holds a M.Arch. from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a B.S. in Architecture from McGill University. He is a Penny White Project Fund recipient and was awarded the Center for Geographic Analysis’ Howard T. Fisher Prize for his project titled “Territory, Survey, Cartography.” His work has been presented at the ISOCARP World Planning Congress, and published in Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review and Wallpaper Magazine.
Asaiel Al Saeed
Asaiel Al Saeed is an architect who obtained her professional B.Arch. from Kuwait University. Her research interests focus on the development and regression of traditional agricultural practices in relation to their resource heritage and modern history. Her work was selected for the Kuwait Youth Excellence Award in Architecture, Planning, and Housing by the Ministry of State for Youth Affairs.
Saphiya Abu Al-Maati
Saphiya Abu Al-Maati is an architect and researcher interested in the intersection of policy, conflict, and the built environment. She obtained her M.Arch. from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Peace and Conflict Studies from UC Berkeley. She was awarded the Science Po and KFAS grant for ‘On the Stakes of War and Peace: Diplomacy, Anthropology, Climate, and Conflict’, and her research has been included at the UNESCO World Heritage Conference (Bahrain) and the IASTE (Portugal).
Aseel AlYaqoub
Aseel AlYaqoub is an artist, researcher and writer based in Kuwait. She holds an MFA from Pratt Institute in New York and a BA from Chelsea College of Art in London. Her work is featured in publications such as Architecture of the Territory: Constructing National Narratives in an Arab World (2023) edited by Collective for Architecture, and Iridescent Kuwait: Petro-Modernity and Urban Visual Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century (2022) by Laura Hindelang. Her work can be found in permanent collections, including the Barjeel Art Foundation and the Art Jameel Collection.