Transcultural Architecture

The Limits and Opportunities of Critical Regionalism

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317007982
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture Criticism

Critical Regionalism is a notion which gained popularity in architectural debate as a synthesis of universal, 'modern' elements and individualistic elements derived from local cultures. This book shifts the focus from Critical Regionalism towards a broader concept of 'Transcultural Architecture' and defines Critical Regionalism as a subgroup of the latter. One of the benefits that this change of perspective brings about is that a large part of the political agenda of Critical Regionalism, which consists of resisting attitudes forged by typically Western experiences, is 'softened' and negotiated according to premises provided by local circumstances. A further benefit is that several responses dependent on factors that initial definitions of Critical Regionalism never took into account can now be considered. At the book's centre is an analysis of Reima and Raili Pietilä's Sief Palace Area project in Kuwait. Further cases of modern architecture in China, Korea, and Saudi Arabia show that the critique, which holds that Critical Regionalism is a typical 'western' exercise, is not sound in all circumstances. The book argues that there are different Critical Regionalisms and not all of them impose Western paradigms on non-Western cultures. Non-Western regionalists can also successfully participate in the Western enlightened discourse, even when they do not directly and consciously act against Western models. Furthermore, the book proposes that a certain 'architectural rationality' can be contained in architecture itself - not imposed by outside parameters like aesthetics, comfort, or even tradition, but flowing out of a social game of which architecture is a part. The key concept is that of the 'form of life', as developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose thoughts are here linked to Critical Regionalism. Kenneth Frampton argues that Critical Regionalism offers something well beyond comfort and accommodation. What he has in mind are ethical prescripts closely linked to a

1

Reima Pietilä’s Kuwait Buildings Revisited: About the Limits of Transcultural Architecture

INTRODUCTION

In 1969, Reima and Raili Pietilä¹ were invited to participate in an architecture competition for the improvement of Kuwait’s Old Town area. In 1969/70 the architects spent four weeks in Kuwait to become acquainted with Kuwait’s urban milieu; in 1970 they drafted a report entitled “City of Kuwait: A Future Concept.” No winner of the competition was announced. Instead the planning board asked each of the four participating offices to develop a particular area of Kuwait’s Old Town. The Pietiläs were assigned the development of the downtown shore area located east of the Sief (or Seif)² Palace. In particular, they were asked to conceive three buildings: an extension of the Sief Palace (which served, at that time, as the administration and reception hall of the ruler), the Council of Ministers, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Correspondence contained in the Pietilä Archive shows that, originally, also a fourth building, the Ministry of Awqaf [land attribution for Islamic purposes] and Islamic Affairs, was planned on the site.³ Work on the project would stretch over a period of 10 years and was accomplished in 1983.

The main purpose of this chapter is to reevaluate the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 30 years after its completion. To my knowledge, the building has not been visited by any international person with an architectural interest since 1986. It is highly protected and cannot be accessed by persons not affiliated with the ministry. It took me three years of anxious administrative work to get (an unofficial) permission to visit the building.⁴

The main part of the chapter will thus describe and analyze the transformations that the Ministry buildings as well as its environment have undergone during the last 30 years. I argue that Pietilä’s approach, which I call “transcultural,” has been misunderstood by the people who were responsible for modifications and improvements of the building. Though the reasons for this misunderstanding are complex, the case of the Ministry demonstrates the limits of Critical Regionalism in general. The building represents an example of Critical Regionalism as its architects attempted to return to cultural sources without reinstating them literally. The Pietiläs both respected and overcame regional elements through the use of metaphors, symbols, poetization and irony. They produce architectural expressions that can be seen as both individual and universal. Their approach can also be called transcultural because transcultural architecture produces new cultural expressions by simultaneously reinstating and overcoming local culture. The meaning of Transcultural Architecture and its relationship with Critical Regionalism will be explored in this chapter. The authorities who were in charge of the transformations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not appreciate this transcultural approach and favoured either culturally “neutral,” modern architecture or more straightforward reinstatements of an architecture that appears to be generally “Islamic.” The differences between those options will also be discussed in detail.

Modifications of the building have been carried out along the above lines during the last 30 years, that is, the building has been made more “neutral” and more “generally Islamic.” It has often been said that architects and architectural theorists tend to look at the dynamics of architectural production, but too often neglect the problem of the consumption and further re-production of architecture by the users (Hernández 2005b: 127). This chapter takes a lengthy look at the interactive dimension of architecture, which will turn out to be particularly interesting in the context of intercultural communication and confrontation. It will become clear that not all mistakes can be attributed to the users. Pietilä’s shortcomings will also be discussed. Did he, in spite of his eager appropriation of the local culture, withdraw himself from the Kuwaiti realities into a system of self-referentiality meant to produce narratives for an imagined community? It will be shown that the case of the Sief Palace buildings is very complex.

It is impossible to talk about the Sief Palace project without also considering the comprehensive urban development plans that the Pietiläs had finalized three years before beginning to work on the buildings. The plans deal with Kuwait City as a whole but also address the Sief Palace area in particular as they insist on the function of the Sief Palace area as the central point of Kuwait City. I will show that the urban environment of the buildings has changed since the 1980s in a way that contradicts the premises set out in Pietilä’s plan, and that this affects the value of the original Sief Palace area and of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in particular.

1. “CITY OF KUWAIT: A FUTURE CONCEPT”

1.1 Kuwait in 1969

The two plans developed by the Pietiläs were summarily called “City of Kuwait: A Future Concept.” It is important to put the architects’ ideas into the right historical context. The development of Kuwait City has been determined by a unique set of circumstances and it is necessary to draw an image of the situation out of which this long-term project, which was initiated in 1969, has developed. In the pre-oil period, the city of Kuwait was composed of traditional buildings dating from the eighteenth century up to the first half of the twentieth century. Their vernacular design impressed visitors especially through its functionality and rational approaches. The Lebanese planner Saba George Shiber believed that old Kuwait was the most unique city in the world (Shiber 1964: 2) because its inhabitants had managed to build an aesthetically pleasing city by overcoming the most unfavorable physical conditions through inventiveness and good organization. However, when looking at the results of the first 15 years of Kuwait’s modern development, Shiber has only harsh words. In his 643 pages long The Kuwait Urbanization (1964), Shiber explains that in the early 1960s Kuwait had become “an encyclopedia of what is wrong in engineering and architecture” (p. 7) excelling in “spread and sprawl, mixture of uses, and wastage of land” (p. 252) as well as in “pseudo-futuristic attitudes” (p. 290). Urban qualities deriving from spatial relationships between buildings such as distance, scale, proportion, and contrast had simply been disregarded. Instead, land was divided arbitrarily and the old town was chopped up into “odd-shaped blocks” producing “a kaleidoscopy of shapes defying any attempts at rational planning or functional architecture … Little thought was given to the resulting orientation of buildings, their cross ventilation or their rational structural order” (p. 163).

One problem was that planning had too often been guided by a “superficial understanding and application of the concepts behind so-called ‘modern’ architecture” (p. 17) as well as by forces of “exploitation, unprecedented speculation in land [and] arbitrary and non-scientific decisions” (p. 20). Building had proceeded quite wildly during these early years and “hardly were plans prepared before demolition and the beginning of the construction. A fortnight later one could see the lines becoming ditches” (p. 120).

The Australian architect Evangelica Simos Ali, who has been specializing in Kuwaiti architectural heritage, confirms that in the 1960s “the destruction of everything that was old was indiscriminate, swift, permanent, and uncontrolled. This was in spite of the very prudent and comprehensive Law of Antiquities that was signed by Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Al Sabah in 1960, but never implemented” (Al-Rashoud 1995: 106). Many problems arose also “from lack of clear zoning policies, regulation bylaws, and shortcomings in the adopted plans” (Abu-Ayyash 1980: 561). In general, buildings would be scattered over large spaces which prevented the formation of a real urban tissue. Kuwaiti society would simply be overlooked and “their problems were lightly disposed of by pencil and T-square” (Shiber: 120). Kuwaiti people became victims of “modern” planning.

According to Shiber, by June 1960 things had become so bad “that certain urban suicide was at least incipient in the old city. The rate at which land was being devoured by streets, buildings, and dubious ‘leftover’ spaces was staggering” (p. 6). Shiber describes the “spiritual-social-psychological anomie” (p. 159) of “soulless and characterless streets” (p. 161) and asks himself why after 15 years of massive investment and foreign consultancy architects “have not bequeathed one noteworthy building to Kuwait worthy of the chance given by Kuwait to them and commensurate with the untold millions of dinars” (p. 36). During the 1970 the government of Kuwait became very concerned about the downtown in which Kuwaitis were no longer living and which was abandoned after working hours. The authorities decided to have some residential complexes built in the city center (cf. Mahgoub 2008b: 168). It is at this moment that the Pietiläs—together with three other foreign architectural offices—were asked to intervene.

Historically speaking, the Pietiläs’ first contact with Kuwait in 1969 was during the days of the so-called first phase of the post-oil period. However, from 1973 onwards, when work on the Sief area buildings actually began, Kuwaiti society would again undergo dramatic changes. This period is generally called the “second phase” of the post-oil period. The latter is linked to the 1973 oil crisis (or “first oil crisis”), which started in October with an oil embargo as members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) had agreed to use their leverage over the price setting mechanism for oil. With this crisis the standard of living in Kuwait sored to impressive heights and the real building boom began. The first tall buildings (max. 12 floors) were constructed. The boom spread over the whole Gulf. It has been stated that during those years, one quarter of all architectural activities in the non-communist world took place on the Arabian Peninsula (Kultermann 1985: 42).

1.2 A History of Master Plans

A first urban master plan for Kuwait was implemented from 1952 to 1960. The predominant aim was to arrange neighborhoods spatially in order to organize the domestic economy. This master plan failed mainly because it had neglected the macro-scale of planning. The other problem was that it had not taken into consideration Kuwait’s dramatic population growth. It was thus decided to establish a centralized planning body (the Planning Board), which included also architects working in the field of modernism. This lead to the draft of a Second Master Plan (the baladiya design or municipality design), which included ideas more directly related to the regional urban development. This plan was used between 1960 and 1967. However, in the end, also this plan’s focus turned out to be too narrow as urban growth would again surpass expectations. In 1968, the so-called “Third Plan” by the British firm Colin Buchanan and Partners evolved as an attempt to design Kuwait on a macro scale suggesting completely new urban centers. It established the metropolis of Kuwait along coastal lines (at least in its updated version), which is the basis of the urban reality of present Kuwait (cf. Abu-Ayyash 1980: 562–3).

One reason why all master plans failed was the rapid population growth. In 1969 Kuwait had a population of 600,000. In 1973 the population had already risen to 800,000 and in 1983 to 1,500,000. From then onward, it would increase roughly 100,000 per year, reaching 2 million in 1988 and then sharply declining after the Iraqi invasion in 1990 (source: index mundi). Today Kuwait has a population of 2.9 million. The other problem was that a master plan existed, but that there were not enough architects able to carry out the plan’s premises. This is why in 1969 four foreign teams were invited to express their thoughts about the city as well as about the existing plan. The purpose of the competition was thus not to overrule Buchanan’s Third Plan, but rather to produce interesting supplementary views and recommendations in the form of visual media (and not through texts) about how they imagined Kuwait’s urban future. In that sense, it was not a competition. Correspondence in the archive shows that information about the ideas of other teams would be exchanged and evaluated (the correspondence passed through the head of the Master Planning Department, Hamid Shuaib).

1.3 The Pietiläs’ Two Plans for Kuwait

All four teams pronounced themselves against the current urban spread and asked for a condensation of the urban fabric. Similar to earlier critics, the Pietiläs found that in Kuwait, “new constructions don’t give any identifiable shape for the city” (Pietilä Archive Helsinki); but they also pointed out that in spite of the destruction, traces of Kuwait’s traditional character remained extant in residential quarters as well as in the Souq (traditional market area). As a consequence, they proposed two alternative schemes for Kuwait. The first one suggested the redevelopment of old Kuwait as a habitation center for 100,000 inhabitants with medium and low density. The inner city would accommodate the central administration and cultural institutions. A new souk was also planned. The second plan, which employs more decentralizing strategies, suggests new supplementary centers for Kuwait in which additional population growth would be accommodated. Those centers were Air Port City, Al Ahmadi, and Doha Lake. The macro scale vision is characterized by the distinction between “east coast” and “west coast”: a “university city” was to be built on the west coast and a “harbor city” on the east coast.

The location of the region called “Doha Lake” received particular attention. Under the name of “Doha Lake” is an extended area reaching from Jal Az-Zor, which is situated north of Jahra at 50 km distance from the city center, down to Doha, which is now part of Kuwait City. In morphological terms, Jal Az-Zor is a line of limestone and sandstone escarpment along the seashore with an altitude of 28 meters above the sea level. Parts of it reach a height of 116 meters. Notes from the archive show that the Pietiläs believed that this area had a general altitude of 100 meters above the sea level and decided that its microclimate would be parti...

Table of contents

• Cover page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Note on the use of East-Asian names
• Introduction: Critical Critical Regionalism or From Regionalism to Transculturalism
• 1 Reima Pietilä’s Kuwait Buildings Revisited: About the Limits of Transcultural Architecture
• 2 Empathy, Abstraction, Style, Non-Style: Reima Pietilä’s Philosophy
• 3 “Magic Internationalism” or the Paradox of Globalization: Louis Kahn’s National Assembly Complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh
• 4 Wang Shu and the Possibilities of Critical Regionalism in China
• 5 When the Monumental Becomes Decorative: Thoughts on Contemporary Chinese Architecture
• 6 Play, Dream, and the Search for the “Real” Form of Dwelling: From Aalto to Ando
• 7 Wittgenstein’s Stonborough House and the Architecture of Tadao Ando
• 8 Cardboard Houses with Wings: The Architecture of Alabama’s Rural Studio
• 9 H-Sang Seung: Design is not Design
• 10 The Secularization of the Architectural Heritage through Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index