Curved fabrics hanging at the Kuwait Pavilion at the Venice Biennale,
The Kuwait Pavilion hung curved fabrics displaying photographs, drawings and maps,
looking at the effects of modern urban planning that erased most of Kuwait’s historic building fabric at this year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture.
The pavilion, titled Rethinking Kuwait, is located in Magazino del Sal No. 5,
Commissioned by Abdulaziz Al Mazidi – National Council for Culture,
Arts and Letters / Kuwait (NCCAL),
The pavilion focuses on new approaches to architectural and urban design that emerge from the intersections of space and time.
The project is presented as an ongoing investigation that attempts to correct the effects of modern urban planning that has erased most of Kuwait’s historic urban fabric.
The pavilion explores ideas of decolonization and decarbonization by rethinking transportation and accessibility.
By looking at Kuwait on a national scale with a focused study of Kuwait City as a typical case.
The exhibition showcases diverse studies exploring the city’s transitional spaces ranging in scope and size.
In our collectivist philosophy, history is treated as a spiral rather than a linear timeline.
Looking for past moments that can benefit future developments.
The curators said: “The fabric of Kuwait City was once a field of organic structures intertwined with different levels of openness.
The courtyard houses have been connected by a network of paths with the public courts disrupting their density, creating platforms for cultural, political and economic exchange.”
“The walled city was once home to many aspects of Kuwaiti civic life,
and was mostly eliminated to make room for modernization.
A new heritage was born, creating a new landscape of modern structures designed by important international and regional architects of that era separate from their original origins.”
Thinking about urban planning processes
“The Kuwait Pavilion is rethinking urban planning processes by rethinking transportation, walking and accessibility.
The experiment began as a response to Kuwait’s various foreign major planning efforts.”
“The focus of the project is to improve the human scale of the city by enhancing transitional
and interstitial urban spaces as well as prioritizing mass transit over individual modes of vehicle travel.”
“The process considers an urban planning approach that explores
a large top-down scale simultaneously with an accurate bottom-up scale that preserves human experience and the critical scope of the new plan.
The interconnectedness of the city’s historic fabric is being revisited through different scales of urban interventions.
This has led to a new network of multimodal communication that culminates at the human level.”
Along with photographs, drawings and maps,
the exhibition was enriched with three-dimensional physical models about hanging fabrics.
