Representation and ideology in postcolonial urban development: the Arabian Gulf

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Representation and ideology in postcolonialurban development: the Arabian GulfAsseel Al-Ragam aa Department of Architecture , College of Engineering and Petroleum,Kuwait UniversityPublished online: 29 Jul 2011.

To cite this article: Asseel Al-Ragam (2011) Representation and ideology in postcolonial urban development:the Arabian Gulf, The Journal of Architecture, 16:4, 455-469, DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2011.598702

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Representation and ideology inpostcolonial urban development:the Arabian Gulf

Asseel Al-Ragam Department of Architecture, College of Engineering

and Petroleum, Kuwait University

In a period of postcolonial development the dominance of European cultural hegemony was

destabilised. In the Middle East, this shift paralleled an Arab uprising that was determined

to forge a link between a distant past and modern progress. Essays by the architect/planner

Saba George Shiber illustrate how projects of resistance were made possible in the architec-

tural discipline; these projects helped add value to a lost urban heritage and challenged the

dominance of western models. This paper looks at the relationship between representation

and ideology, and the invented cultural materials that are forged around this construction.

It will attempt to highlight the sheer strength of ideological representations in the face of

shifting power structures and the varied and dynamic voices that played a great part in cel-

ebrating different cultural forms in the pursuit of personal, political and social agendas.

Even though the case study is somewhat idiosyncratic, the method of analysis could be

of use in a comparative critique of similar studies of cultural resistance, suppression and

representation, and could possibly assist in establishing more structured analytical

models for the region.

On October 19th, 2010, the Musee d’Orsay held a

special exhibition on the work of Jean-Leon

Gerome, a significant part of which was dedicated

to Gerome’s paintings depicting the Orient. Curators

of the exhibition described the nineteenth-century

painter as ‘drawing on the pictorial and literary

imagination of the time; Gerome invented Oriental

scenes, using meticulously accurate detail and his

open recourse to photographs, taken during his

trip, to disguise his strategy.’1 Gerome’s collaged

paintings served to disseminate a powerful charac-

terisation of the Orient which occupied the minds

of postcolonial scholars. Edward Said, one of many

postcolonial critics, questioned the hegemonic role

of this Eurocentric discourse. Using Gerome’s the

Snake Charmer as the cover to his work Orientalism,

Said argued that representations of the Orient by

the west played a powerful role in maintaining

western political and cultural hegemony.2 As a

result, postcolonial studies worked towards a dis-

course of resistance that would offset the dominant

characterisation of Arab socio-spatial structures.

In the field of architecture and planning, projects

of counter-colonial resistance, as stated by Ashcroft,

‘drew upon the many different indigenous local and

hybrid processes of self-determination to defy,

erode, and sometimes supplant the prodigious

power of imperial cultural knowledge.’3 This paper

is an attempt to bring into focus an example of

such projects. The postcolonial work of the Arab

architect/urban planner Saba George Shiber is the

result of the interaction between what Ashcroft

argued were ‘the imperial culture and the complex

of indigenous cultural practices.’4 Shiber’s essays,

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collected in Recent Arab City Growth and The

Kuwait Urbanization, document a pivotal period of

nation-building, social reconstruction and urban

transformation in the Middle East and Kuwait, in

particular.5 Shiber’s essays attempted to counteract

the destruction of Arab cities through a critique of

modern town practices in the region. The Foucaul-

dian power-knowledge relationship that underlies

much of Shiber’s argument will act as the theoretical

framework for this paper.6

The concept of hegemony, carried forward by

Gramsci, will illustrate how the dissemination of

‘western’ planning and architectural values in the

region was a cause of Shiber’s ‘project of resistance’.7

Examining his work will help further the argument

that postcolonial literature is neither seamless nor

homogenous, and the varying experiences such as

resistance, migration, suppression and represen-

tation cannot be categorically defined nor classified,

but in fact these experiences maintain, as Ashcroft

puts it, ‘a complex fabric of the field’.8 Finally, the

inclusion of the Middle East and, in particular,

Kuwait will help to widen the geographical and his-

torical context of postcolonial studies.

Architects’ difficult task, during a period of nation

building, was not only to redefine their role in a con-

tinuously expanding field, but also to find appropri-

ate representation for modern cultural values. In the

Middle East, the role of architects is even more diffi-

cult when it comes to the question of form due to

their inevitable encounter with the ideological

imperatives of postcolonial development. Ellen

Jawdat noted:

At a time when traditions and more are in uphea-

val, the architect, no matter how diligently he

seeks to mirror his culture and base his designs

on real social patterns, is bound to be aware of

conflicts between the traditions of the past and

the demand of the rapidly changing present.9

The modus operandi most frequently followed is

one of either amelioration of European building

techniques and planning methods brought to the

region through European ‘experts’ and readily

espoused by ruling elites, the latter eager to clothe

these modern values in a European garb, or one of

resistance, through a counter discourse that has to

contend with not only a nascent design discipline,

but also with the same elites who unfortunately

have reinforced Eurocentric prejudices about Arab

and Muslim societies.

Modern architecture in Kuwait. . . is a reflection of a

society in transition, in search, in flux, inevolution; a

society that, at this juncture of change, has been

led astray to believe that any break with the past

is progress, beauty, and significance.10

In both practices, modern values have to make

themselves apparent in the public sphere in order

for architecture, as a discipline and led by a few

visionaries, to begin its period of experimentation.

As Watenpaugh argued,

Being modern has to be observable and reprodu-

cible something that bisected the public and the

private, often requiring the use of venues such

as clubs, newspapers, Western consumer goods,

and schools in which or with which to perform

one’s modernity.11

Expressions of modernity in the Middle East made

their physical appearance in literary texts exchanged

throughout the region but stemming, mostly, in pro-

gressive literature from Lebanon and Egypt: al-

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nahdha’s12 (renascence) centres of origin. By the

mid-1920s, al-nahdha’s enlightened philosophy

was embraced in Kuwaiti literature. Societal and cul-

tural progress as well as the right to complete self-

determination were recurring themes in the literary

works of Khalid bin Suleiman al-Adsani, Hashim

al-Rifa ` i and Saqr bin Salem al-Shabıb.13 Abdul-

Aziz al-Rushaid, one of Kuwait’s earliest historians,

celebrated the advent of an advanced Kuwaiti litera-

ture in his book Tarikh al-Kuwait. Writing in 1926,

al-Rushaid stated:

In Kuwait today an intellectual, scientific, and lit-

erary movement is directed by people who have

witnessed the changing conditions of this

modern period, which can only be described as

a period of development (taqaddum) and pro-

gress rather than a period of stasis and regression

(ta akhur).14

Voluntary associations, as a result, emerged to arbi-

trate Kuwaiti modern debate. In 1923, Khalid bin

Suleiman al-Adsani, a Kuwaiti author, founded the

Literary Club. Modern cultural forms were, in turn,

disseminated through a popular Kuwaiti assembly,

the diwaniya, where political, cultural, and social

ideas and experiences were shared. In the late

1950s, civic buildings were, in addition, spaces

where ideas on architecture and planning were

exchanged. As Shiber documented:

Kuwait wrote a town planning history for itself

and for Arab cities in the torrid months of July

and August. During this period, in the midst of

heat and vacation time, the Municipal Council

of Kuwait held regular and long sessions, avidly

considering and debating town planning and

the future of Kuwait. The Council conference

room was more like a busy city planning design

department or workshop.15

Active examination of modern forms through

radical destruction of traditional values is usually a

sign representing societal paradigm shifts. Various

interpretations of progress and reform illustrate an

active participation in Hegelian dialectics, minus

the teleological notion of Progress. This progress-

history relationship is contentious and revolves

around complex socio-cultural and political struc-

tures antagonistic to one another. Watenpaugh pro-

poses that:

Reduced to its fundamentals, being modern

required either a passive or active assent to the

universal nature, a commitment to an assault on

the forms of the past, and the incorporation of

a specific though in the end mutable and contin-

gent, corpus of ideas and practices.16

Manifestations of this destruction could be traced

on an urban scale. Postcolonial transformation of

traditional fabric faced little resistance, so much so

that development plans for Kuwait City, Baghdad,

Basra and Mosul were subjected to a special

expose in the magazine Architectural Design in

1957. These projects were presented as attempts

towards nation-building that reflected the political

and economic climate of the region. Noting the

economic wealth and political endeavours that

necessitated these large projects, Raglan Squire,

guest editor for Architectural Design, stated in

March, 1957:

The Middle East oil wells represent by far the

biggest known oil reserve of the world to-day.

Oil is wealth, but as yet this great potential

wealth has only just begun to affect the territory

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as a whole. Ancient towns are being completely

pulled down and rebuilt, new towns are springing

up in the desert and Governments have large,

ambitious development programmes.17

Initial resistance to vernacular form could be traced

to two major conditions: one political, the other dis-

cursive. On the one hand, the rapid speed with

which these towns emerged reflected a certain atti-

tude that stemmed directly from a long-standing

political connection, practised by the ruling elite

who commissioned these projects. Kuwait’s rulers

courted imperial powers as a means of maintaining

economic and political sovereignty in relation to the

Ottomans: regarding the European presence as a

deterrent, Mubarak II voluntarily ceded some politi-

cal authority to the British in 1899. The British-

Kuwait agreement is somewhat of an anomaly,

because it broke from British policies that tended

to be unilateral in nature. B. J. Slot noted that

‘Mubarak had held out for a reciprocal undertaking

from the British’ with the latter being reluctant to

intervene in the contentious political events of the

time;18 ‘to most European statesmen, the Gulf

was a backwater that failed to arouse much

interest.’19

The decline of the Ottoman Empire and European

imperial dominance during that period strength-

ened the ruling elite’s bias towards European politi-

cal and economic values, methods and techniques.

In the 1960s, Kuwaiti rulers continued to court

Europe and the west for the construction of their

modern cities. A construction boom ensued; while

the physical traces of an urban past pregnant with

social and cultural traditions were slowly being

erased as a consequence. Bias towards western

models reinforced in the psyche of the governed

masses the hegemony of western urban models as

the appropriate forms suitable for the modern

condition.

On the other hand, resistance to past forms is part

of a discourse that revealed western biases towards

the Orient. The narratives of European travellers

reflected a detached attitude towards vernacular

urban forms that strayed outside dominant Euro-

pean representations. In 1912, Barklay Raunkiaer,

a Danish historian, noted in his travels an unassum-

ing town with little urban or architectural aesthetic

significance: ‘The minarets so noticeable in other

Oriental towns are not so in Kuwait. . . as for the

rest of the town, there is not much to remark

about.’20 Raunkiaer’s statement reveals that the aes-

thetic measure of certain urban forms had to adhere

to dominant cultural representations, whose con-

structions were performed in the imaginations of

western scholars removed from the realities of the

existing site. Kuwait city, in the eyes of Raunkiaer,

had little value because it did not categorically fit

into a pre-established mould. Raunkiaer’s history

continued to be one of the leading narratives

despite its technical inadequacies and its sparse illus-

tration, and notwithstanding Raunkiaer’s own

foreword, which noted that his partial account

was coloured by ‘personal sympathies and antipa-

thies’.21

The distancing of one’s own historical tradition in

these radical periods of societal paradigm shifts

enforced, somewhat later, a certain re-examination

of history. The initial phases of destruction are

usually followed by a nostalgic attitude towards

traditional values. Watenpaugh argued that a

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‘traditional justification for doing the modern thing

is a trope suffusing modernization programs far

from saving tradition, it merely stimulates tradition

within a purely modern space.’22 In 1964, therefore,

due to a rise in pan-Arab nationalism, a shift of

sentiments against western models followed. And

a new body of tradition emerged that took its

cultural material from an historical past. Sheikh

Abdullah al-Salem al-Sabah, the ruler at the time,

launched a project that required the historical

revisiting of Kuwaiti political, economic and cultural

development. The commission was granted to an

Arab historian of Palestinian descent, who was

asked to develop an official state history that

supplanted the narratives of western historians

and travellers.

One of the six volumes, The Modern History of

Kuwait: 1750–1965, utilised unpublished archival

materials and Arabic manuscripts to describe

earlier events in Kuwaiti history.23 Citing the moder-

nity of the eighteenth century in Kuwait gave it a

far-reaching modern tradition that paralleled the

European eighteenth-century enlightenment. His

narrative, in addition, reinforced the existence of a

civil urban society. Kuwait City’s physical and

logistical importance was highlighted as a thriving

trading entrepot for regional trade in the eighteenth

century. In contrast to narratives written by Euro-

pean historians, Abu-Hakima presented flourishing

trade that resulted from an adroitly organised

environment, on a par with cities of European

origin. Detailed illustrations of caravan routes

suggested, even further, the existence of a vibrant

commercial logic and a setting of dynamic social

and cultural exchange:

To the English East India Company, [Kuwait’s]

desert route was of special importance not only

for forwarding mail to and from India, but [also]

for trading purposes. For the former reason,

Kuwait was important to the English Factory at

Basra.24

Abu-Hakima’s compilation of an official history

expanded on a nationalist ideology with connec-

tions between self, identity and territory. This body

of invented nationalist tradition acted as an instiga-

tor for the modern awareness of nation:

The ummah (people) who do not recognize or

record their past are like the ailing patient

whose sense of perception has failed him. He

senses apprehension because he is not able to

measure his progress. Greater consciousness pro-

ceeds from knowledge of one’s history. A nation

without a history is analogous to the ailing

patient.25

Shiber’s architectural philosophy gained strength as

a result of this nationalist ideology. It borrowed from

this body of invented tradition the model of a med-

iaeval Arab city, envisioned as an historical text

imbued with multiple meanings. Observed data

obtained from particularities of this site, would

suggest the basis of a more modern urban design

approach. He argued that the Arab city is a manifes-

tation of the exigencies of cultural, climatic and

social structures that were embedded in each

historical layer. These structures, founded in the

corporeal experiences of the intricate layout of

the bazaars, low-rise housing, high densities,

mosque minarets, contiguity of street and house

organisation, and a familiarity unique to its neigh-

bourhoods, would continue the evolution of this

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dynamic organisation in a modern period. Progress

would be achieved not by espousing western

models, but instead by mining this historical text

for principles and giving these values a modern

representation.

There is a hustle and bustle in the ‘suqs’ and

‘bazaars’, an air of informality and the feeling of

integration between man and his city. There are

the informal cafes and the Oriental smells of

foods mixing with the medley of noise that per-

vades the Arab City.26

His bias had to be concealed during this discursive

process by redefining phenomenological experi-

ences through a neo-platonic logic. Formal rep-

resentations of these transcendental forms would,

arguably, invoke empathy by the users and replace

prejudice towards Arab socio-spatial structures.

That the Arabs should have deviated not only

from genuine and organic precedent but from

the dictates of geography, climate, economics,

and sociology as well, can only be explained by

the fact that the forms and fetishes so easily

embraced today have been forced on them, wit-

tingly or unwittingly, by a group of mediocre

Arab practitioners of architecture, aided and

abetted by a motley group of mediocre prac-

titioners of architecture from many non-Arab

countries.27

It is noteworthy, at this juncture, to highlight an

obvious contradiction. Expressions particular to an

early twentieth-century European architectural

discourse were used to bridge between modernity

and tradition. Most often, Shiber would make use

of the term functional as the quality appropriate to

the new architecture, as denoting utility and

purpose. Functional architecture expressed a build-

ing’s primary purpose which an architect ought to

produce/evoke through formal qualities and

spatial organisation. It suggested appropriate con-

struction methods, respect for climatic conditions,

and provision of open space for social and cultural

events. Function was most often coupled with the

term rational. City planning, Shiber noted, must

provide for buildings of rational form.28 Rational

and functional elements were founded in the

organic structure of the Arab city and could, there-

fore, be reproduced through empirical inquiry into

its individual parts.

Its aesthetic nature would also be made rational.

Shiber suggested that beauty, when examining the

Arab city, is contingent on functional rationality

and is evident through two forms of judgement:

subjective and objective. The former implied a

more individual inclination dependent on fashion,

personal taste and caprice. The latter disclosed a

more permanent temperament, removed from tran-

sient considerations. Objective beauty suggested a

permanence that lies in the essence of materiality,

form, structure and internal order. These qualities

garnered for the Arab city, as Shiber noted, its

‘organic, functional, [and] economic [nature], and,

as a result, imbued [it] with a significant, recognized,

and pleasing aesthetic.’29 The use of these

expressions was not accidental: Shiber was aware

of their historical roots and significance. By using

these terms he attempted to situate his critique of

modern Arab urban transformation within the

accepted twentieth-century European architectural

debate; his intention was to position the Arab city

as a model equal in value to its western counterpart.

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Following his attempts to construct a modern

design vocabulary, Shiber had to contend with

another problem: how to disseminate this logic as

truth through institutional reform and cultural re-

evaluation. ‘The absolute incorrectness of

[Kuwait’s] transitory phase of belief and action is

not difficult to dispel but requires hard work to

combat.’30 His initiation of cultural reform began

in 1960 when, in an international symposium in

Cairo on city planning, he called attention to an

‘epoch-making occurrence to the future develop-

ment of the Arab world.’31 This international

debate, appropriately entitled ‘The New Metropolis

in the Arab World’, addressed and expanded on a

few notable themes that confronted the question

of agency, micro- and macro-planning, and the pres-

ervation of Arab cities’ social and formal structures.

Parallel sessions communicated solutions to con-

temporary ills of city growth, particularly poor

housing, slums, traffic congestion and sub-standard

infrastructure.32 This conference investigated urban

renewal schemes in historical centres that erased the

physical trace of a shared past, demanding that

nations in the region re-examine the de-valuing of

traditional cities. Shiber noted the participants’

general resolve to preserve the character of the

Arab city, based on commonly identifiable urban

artifacts and existing social and cultural activities.

To serve contemporary demands was the primary

intention for preserving these unique qualities that

‘proved to be a fruitful beginning for the

understanding of the new metropolis in the Arab

world.’33

Four years later, on 13th December, 1964, at

the ninth Arab Engineering Conference (AEC),

Shiber called for an urban revolution that encour-

aged, on the one hand, formal solutions that

would carve a separate niche for the Arab archi-

tect and, on the other hand, an avant-garde revo-

lution.34 He demanded a planning uprising

ushered in by technocrats that would resist the

widespread development programmes that

eroded, to a large extent, traces of the traditional

urban fabric.

The body of adequate Arab engineering knowl-

edge and experience to date [is to be analysed]

thoroughly, [in order] to discover the gaps, short-

comings and errors contained therein, and do all

that is in its power and potential not only to

remedy the maladies, but to prepare the paths

for the impending build-up on a large scale, so

that such build-up will be rational, organic, scien-

tific, economic and not alien to the determinants

in the Arab habitat and heritage.35

Radical change ought to advance from architects,

Shiber argued, acting as creators of a new order,

and from a determined conviction that the physical

manifestation of design, fabricated on the basis of

rational logic, was capable of restoring a disciplinary

rebirth and revival. The Union of Arab Engineers, he

argued, must unite:

We must declare a revolution against the mean,

the cheap, the ugly, [and] the repulsive in urban-

ism, housing, and architecture in the Arab

world. The torrents of urban trash inundating

the loci of settlement, which, unfortunately, are

in so many cases seats of great civilizations and

precursors of great ‘styles’—yes, these torrents

must be checked, lest one day soon it will be

too late and we will be drowned under the

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expensive debris of current Arab urban and archi-

tectural design.36

The AEC addressed the need to define the role of

the architect in the planning institutions of the

Arab world. In 1964, AEC’s recommendations

resolved the non-specificity of an Arab engineering

profession that resulted in a ‘lack of [disciplinary

and semantic] distinctions between the various

engineering specializations, [in particular, between]

civil engineering [and] architecture.’37 Resolutions,

in consequence, carved a separate professional

niche for the architect in the Arab world, indepen-

dent from that of the engineer, ennobling architects

and the architectural profession through disciplinary

autonomy. The Conference’s general recommen-

dations codified technical terminology and relayed

educational tools particular to architecture. Unified

resolutions, applicable throughout the Arab world,

ensured a common framework for collaborative

research. To a certain degree these efforts were

not in vain, as Ellen Jawdat noted:

Gradually there is emerging a public appreciation

of the special role of the architect: a realization

that his training equips him to do more than

embellish the bare structure provided by a con-

tractor and that his services include an attempt

to solve the demands of climate, social function,

aesthetic preference, and budget of the client.

In itself, this is something of a revolution, since

one word in Arabic [muhandis]38 serves all the

categories of builder, mason, engineer, and

architect; and until recently they have been

identical in fact as well as in name.39

Whether these cultural institutions were effective in

achieving a position of power is arguable and in fact

secondary to the actual mechanisms that had to be

formed in order for any discourse to take place.

Foucault argued that the ‘intellectual’ has to align

himself with the proper institutions in order for the

political and economic mechanism of truth to be

fully functional: ‘Truth isn’t outside power or

lacking in power. Truth is a thing of this world: it is

produced only by virtue of multiple forms of con-

straints.’40 Shiber’s call for an uprising by an avant-

garde and his commitment to develop a non-exist-

ent architecture profession, therefore, helped to

construct the foundations of a power-knowledge

relationship.

Despite Shiber’s radical call for revolution, trans-

formation did not represent a radical break from

pre-existing societal traditions. Walter Benjamin

observed that it is ‘precisely the modern which

always conjures up prehistory’.41 In fact, history

had to be re-visited through an ideological lens in

order to make possible the notion of a modern

nation. Prehistory would, in addition, distance this

modern nation from a more recent colonial history.

Watenpaugh argued ‘[prehistory] hints at how

moderns often found temporary refuge from the

moral and intellectual uncertainties occasioned by

the rapidity of change in nostalgia’.42 Past cultural

and societal processes were accorded significance,

ideologically, to bridge between tradition and

modern progress; pragmatically, it was an attempt

to restructure and to frame a modern design

idiom. Dynamic architectural innovation is,

according to Shiber’s rational logic, contingent on

the knowledge of a past urban history.

Despite his attempts at objectivity, Shiber was

conditioned by biases that challenged Arabs in a

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postcolonial setting. Shiber, similarly to Edward Said,

was confronted by the notion of displacement, or

was, as Edward Said states, ‘out of place’. Their sta-

tuses as displaced nomads were influential in their

resistance to a western discourse to which they

remained intellectually indebted. Shiber, who was

born on December 12th, 1923, to Arab–Palestinian

parents in Jerusalem, had to continue his education

in the neighbouring countries of Lebanon and

Egypt. His travels transported him further, across

the Atlantic, where he continued his studies at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In

Boston, he completed a master’s degree in architec-

ture in 1946. Unable to return to Palestine, as a

result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Shiber was

granted political asylum under special provisions for

Arab refugees. Thus, Shiber’s and Said’s challenges

were to resist the same cultural forms and institutions

that helped structure and essentially nurture the

formation of their arguments. In 1954, Shiber

was accepted to Cornell University for a doctoral

degree in city planning. Completing it in two years,

Shiber expressed immense gratitude to the chairman

of his defence committee the Dean, Thomas

W. Mackesey, who, according to Shiber, not only

endowed him with a scholarship that covered his

monetary expenses, but also provided ‘constructive

advice, criticism, and encouragement.’43

Shiber is even more indebted to foreign influences

from his years of practice in the United States.

Between 1946 and 1954 he immersed himself in

the American architecture profession. He practised

in varied forms that ranged from architectural

designer and city planner in Harrisburg, Pennsylva-

nia, Kansas City and the state of Missouri.

Yet despite these influences Shiber was able to

develop an architectural language that challenged

western models. His counter discourse proved to a

certain degree a success. Shiber illustrated that the

intellectual’s position is not based on immutable or

universal truths, but rather on the position which

he holds. His alignment with powerful civic insti-

tutions in Kuwait garnered for his debate a certain

authority that forced the masses to accept them as

truths. In 1967, Saud Al-Fozan, undersecretary of

the Ministry of Public Works, stated ‘Dr Shiber’s

volume [‘Recent Arab City Growth’] should be care-

fully studied by all Arab segments concerned with

the diverse aspects of future Arab urbanization.’44

Due to this alignment, architecture of the high mod-

ernist period that spread in Kuwait was renounced

to make way for a more sensitive design approach

based on context.

The Old City of Kuwait has now largely disap-

peared. There are still some traces of its physical

form and architectural character in some of the

residential areas that remain in the market and

mosque areas, but a new road pattern has been

established. Large areas of the Old City have

been cleared and the new main shops are being

developed along wide and busy roads. The char-

acter and coherence that the Old City possessed

is vanishing but development with modern

buildings has not replaced this with anything

that can yet mark the new city of Kuwait as a

great capital city.45

Occasioned by this popular determination to culti-

vate and to restore an historical memory, Kuwait

City witnessed a slowing down of construction to

allow for the assessment of existing conditions.

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Greater communication between various architects

helped to provide coherence in parts of the city.

Vacant urban enclaves were addressed creatively,

which led to a shift in the state’s planning focus,

even if only temporarily, from neighbourhood plan-

ning to contending with ideas of character and

identity.

The comprehensibility and legibility of an organ-

ising structure were most apparent in the restruc-

tured areas (labelled from 1 to 10) that emerged

as residential, commercial and cultural centres

(Fig. 1). Area 3 reclaimed its historical function as

the commercial district: commercial associations

between various merchants found expression in

the formation of cooperatives in the Area. Areas 1,

2 and 3, facing the new Shari’ al-Khaleej (Gulf

Road), were reclaimed and organised by merchants

for their commercial headquarters.

A return to a cultural-specific urban form deeply

rooted in the historical urban vernacular of Kuwait

City was investigated by Shiber. His proposal for

Mirqab—a residential and trade district in Kuwait

City—expanded existing commercial spines by

applying the kaysariya model. The latter was an

urban prototype employed for the construction of

retail arcades in the early 1940s. Shari’ al-Jadid

and Shari’ Fahad al-Salem are some of its earliest

examples (Fig. 2). The bazaari architecture or the

kaysariya model, as it came to be known, originated

from tectonic principles found in traditional suqs.

This architectural form was inspired by a past

network of densely interconnected pedestrian

spines that formed an intricate web of commercial

activity. These retail spines were dominated by

liwans that separated pedestrians from vehicular

movement. The arcaded street is regulated by the

height of the columns that run its length. Residential

or private businesses dominate the upper floors,

whilst ground floors accommodated retail. Trans-

lated into a more modern architectural idiom, the

kaysariya model was Shiber’s attempt at employing

architectural prototypes extracted from a rich his-

torical vernacular.

Increased control over the architectonic qualities

of commissioned design projects was additionally

proposed by Shiber. Regulation was exercised in a

coupled and yet distinct manner. Primarily, a tem-

porary halt to all building activity was initiated in

order to survey the existing situation. Comprehen-

sive survey and observation methods ensured that

planning and zoning would precede building con-

struction, notwithstanding the fact that an interrup-

tion in building schemes would affect projects in

progress: for example, construction of a meat, veg-

etable and fish market suspended while existing

conditions were ascertained. Architectural control

was exercised through mediated discussions

between architects, planners and proprietors.

Importantly, in the summer of 1960, Shiber, in col-

laboration with Kuwait’s Baladiya (municipality),

initiated a process that involved transforming

eleven districts in Kuwait City into a mixed-use cul-

tural centre. In order to bring visual comprehensibil-

ity to this designated area, Shiber, along with a

technical team from the planning department, pre-

pared two analytical models that represented the

physical and proposed states of Kuwait City

(Fig. 3). The model to the right proposed an alterna-

tive urban structure, presented in lieu of ‘contem-

porary concepts and techniques of planning’.46

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Figure 1. This collaged

aerial map shows the

different areas that

were zoned for

development (S. Shiber,

The Kuwait

Urbanization).

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Urban intervention in fragmented areas of Kuwait

City was inspired by Shiber’s rational and functional

design theory that offered off-street parking, ped-

estrian routes, regulated vehicular traffic and

increased densities. A cemetery converted to a

municipal garden contributed structural and positive

aesthetic qualities to the overall organisation of

Kuwait City.

In conclusion, the recent exhibition in the Musee

d’Orsay on the work of Jean-Leon Gerome is a

reminder that European hegemony of Oriental rep-

resentation continues to be examined. In a period

of postcolonial development western cultural dom-

inance shifted and reactions towards these forms

took on many aspects. This shift also led to the

realisation that finding appropriate cultural

expression to represent modern forms was not

necessarily tied to the west. However, this shift

was not instantaneous. Initially, particularly on

the urban scale, a prejudice towards historical

Arab urban forms was reinforced by the ruling

elite either through political ties or through histori-

cal accounts published by European travellers.

Rapid erasure of traditional cities in the region

reflected this attitude. During this period, develop-

ment projects were mostly using western models

to modernise urban forms. However, a shift in

European cultural hegemony was witnessed in a

period of Arab uprising, when it was no longer

appropriate for western models to represent the

modern condition, and, instead, a link to a

distant past forged a new attitude towards pro-

gress.

During this period, the architects established

themselves as arbiters of good form, from which

they were able to carve a niche for this design pro-

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Figure 2. Shari’ al-Jadid

and Shari’ Fahad al-

Salem are some of the

earliest examples of the

bazaari architecture

(Kuwait Oil Company).

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fession separate from that of the engineer. But this

challenge was met with an initial struggle, mainly

in finding an appropriate form and model. The archi-

tect, therefore, had to mediate between the initial

prejudice of the ruling elite, a nascent almost non-

existent architectural discipline, and nationalism’s

body of invented tradition.

Saba Shiber’s urban philosophy contended with

these many challenges by endowing an historical

model with increased value in the collective con-

sciousness. His definition of the Arab city attempted

to retrieve a lost sense of identity. This system of

analysis supplied a nascent architectural discipline

with the necessary tools for design and it would

also act as a critique, in order to slow down the

destruction of traditional cities. Yet there is an

underlying paradox in his methodology. Resisting

European hegemony also meant borrowing from

its theoretical models. His method of extracting prin-

ciples from experiential qualities was indebted to a

twentieth-century European discourse; the latter

employed terms that emphasised utility and

purpose for its formal experiments in the age of

machine production. Machine aesthetic was the

outcome of this debate. In explaining the aesthetic

value of the Arab city, Shiber used a similar

language. Just as an architectural language could

develop from a championing of the machine,

Shiber argued that the Arab city could produce a

similar vocabulary. The difference would be that

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Figure 3. This image is

of two analytical

models prepared by

Shiber, along with a

technical team from the

planning department,

that represented the

physical and proposed

states of Kuwait City (S.

Shiber, The Kuwait

Urbanization).

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the former was contending with advances made by

the industrial revolution and thus from the adulation

of the machine; the latter was deconstructing Euro-

pean cultural hegemony by establishing its own

models to champion.

This study of postcolonial development has

attempted to highlight the sheer strength of ideo-

logical representations in the face of shifting

power structures and to make apparent the many

dynamic voices that played a great part in celebrat-

ing different cultural forms for their political and

social agendas, and the institutional reforms that

were necessary to make these shifts possible. The

method of analysis could possibly aid in a compara-

tive critique of similar studies of cultural resistance,

suppression and representation, and possibly assist

in establishing more structured analytical models

for the region.

Bibliography‘Masadir al-Kuwayt laysat Galıla wa’la Gasira’(‘Records of

Kuwaiti History are not Scarce or Incomprehensible’),

AlWatan (1962).

A. Abu Hakima, The Modern History of Kuwait: 1750–

1965 (London, International Book Centre, 1983).

A-A. AlRushaid, Tarikh al-Kuwait (History of Kuwait)

(Kuwait, Dar Qurtas, 1999).

W. Aschcroft, G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin, eds, The Post-

Colonial Studies Reader (London, Routledge, 1997).

J. Faubion, Michel Foucault: Power Essential Works of

Foucault 1954–198 (New York, The New Press, 1994).

D. Forgacs and G. Nowell-Smith, Antonio Gramsci: Selec-

tions from Cultural Writings (London, Lawrence and

Wishart, 1985).

‘Gerome’s Imaginary Orients’, Musee d’Orsay, http://www.

musee-orsay.fr/en/events/exhibitions/in-the-musee-

dorsay/exhibitions-in-the-musee-dorsay-more/page/

5/article/jean-leon-gerome-25691.html

E. Jawdat, ‘The New Architecture in Iraq’, Architectural

Design (1957), pp. 79–80.

B. Raunkiaer, Through Wahhabiland on Camelback

(London, Routledge, 1969).

E. Said, Orientalism (New York, Vintage Books, 1979).

S. Shiber, Recent Arab City Growth (Kuwait, Kuwait Gov-

ernment Printing Press, 1967).

S. Shiber, The Kuwait Urbanization (Kuwait, Kuwait Gov-

ernment Printing Press, 1964).

S. Shiber, Urban Formation and Reformation: A Descriptive

and Criticial Analysis (PhD dissertation; Ithaca, Cornell

University, 1956).

B. J. Slot, Mubarak Al-Sabah Founder of Modern Kuwait

1896–1915 (London, Arabian Publishing, 2005).

A. Smithson, ‘Proposals for Restructuring Kuwait’, Archi-

tectural Review (1974), pp. 178–182.

R. Squire, ‘In the Middle East’, Architectural Design (1957),

pp. 73–78.

K. D. Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East

(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006).

Notes and references1. ‘Gerome’s Imaginary Orients’, Musee d’Orsay, http://

www.musee-orsay.fr/en/events/exhibitions/in-the-

musee-dorsay/exhibitions-in-the-musee-dorsay-more/

page/5/article/jean-leon-gerome-25691.html

2. E. Said, Orientalism (New York, Vintage Books, 1979).

3. W. Aschcroft, G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin, eds, The Post-

Colonial Studies Reader (London, Routledge, 1997),

p. 1.

4. Ibid.

5. S. Shiber, Recent Arab City Growth (Kuwait, Kuwait

Government Printing Press, 1967) and The Kuwait

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Urbanization (Kuwait, Kuwait Government Printing

Press, 1964).

6. J. Faubion, Michel Foucault: Power Essential Works of

Foucault 1954–1984 (New York, The New Press, 1994).

7. D. Forgacs and G. Nowell-Smith, Antonio Gramsci:

Selections from Cultural Writings (London, Lawrence

and Wishart, 1985).

8. Aschcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin, The Post-Colonial

Studies Reader, op. cit., p. 2.

9. E. Jawdat, ‘The New Architecture in Iraq’, Architectural

Design (1957), p. 79.

10. S. Shiber, The Kuwait Urbanization, op. cit., p. 288.

11. K. D. Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East

(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 16.

12. Al-Nahdha is an ideology of progress and enlighten-

ment: for more on its precepts see G. Antonius, The

Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National

Movement (New York, Capricorn Books, 1939).

13. A-A. AlRushaid, Tarikh al-Kuwait (History of Kuwait),

(Kuwait, Dar Qurtas, 1999), pp. 124–127.

14. Ibid., p. 98.

15. S. Shiber, The Kuwait Urbanization, op. cit., p. 163.

16. K.D. Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East,

op. cit., p. 16.

17. R. Squire, ‘In the Middle East’, Architectural Design

(1957), p. 73.

18. B.J. Slot, Mubarak Al-Sabah Founder of Modern

Kuwait 1896–1915 (London, Arabian Publishing,

2005), p. 114.

19. Ibid., p. 58.

20. B. Raunkiaer, Through Wahhabiland on Camelback

(London, Routledge, 1969), p. 50.

21. Ibid., p. 17.

22. K.D. Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East,

p. 15.

23. A. Abu Hakima, The Modern History of Kuwait: 1750–

1965 (London, International Book Centre, 1983).

24. Ibid., p. 27.

25. ‘Masadir al-Kuwayt laysat Galıla wa’la Gasira’(‘Records

of Kuwaiti History are not Scarce nor Incomprehensi-

ble’), AlWatan (1962).

26. S. Shiber, Recent Arab City Growth, op. cit., pp. 156–7.

27. S. Shiber, The Kuwait Urbanization, op. cit., p. 288.

28. Ibid., p. 163.

29. Ibid., p. 285.

30. Ibid., p. 288.

31. Ibid., p. 543.

32. Ibid., p. 544.

33. Ibid., p. 545.

34. Ibid., p. 582.

35. Ibid., p. 586.

36. Ibid., p. 585.

37. Ibid., p. 582.

38. The word muhandis was and continues to be used to

describe all design-related professions, including

engineers and architects. The non-specificity of the

word, combined with the lack of understanding of

an architect’s role and whither the hegemony of the

engineering profession, were conditions that needed

to be deconstructed.

39. E. Jawdat, ‘The New Architecture in Iraq’, op. cit.,

p. 79.

40. J. Faubion. Michel Foucault, op. cit., p. 131.

41. K.D. Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East,

op. cit., p. 15.

42. Ibid.

43. S. Shiber, Urban Formation and Reformation: A

Descriptive and Criticial Analysis (PhD dissertation;

Ithaca, Cornell University, 1956), p. iv.

44. S. Shiber, Recent Arab City Growth, op. cit., p. xix.

45. A. Smithson, ‘Proposals for Restructuring Kuwait’,

Architectural Review (1974), p. 179.

46. S. Shiber, The Kuwait Urbanization, op. cit.,

p. 163.

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