Monthly Archives

February 2011

Metro
February 21, 2011

Kuwait Metro: New Map

Click image to enlarge (a bit) I was just sent the redesigned plan for Kuwait Metro. I spoke to some people at KOTU and they confirmed that the metro lines are correct, but they have no idea about the tram lines; they seem to think…
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Energy
February 12, 2011

Biomimicry

If there was one thing that I would absolutely love to have in Kuwait, it would be the Sahara Forest Project. It is basically a hybrid desalination/greenhouse/concentrated solar plant. It uses concentrated solar energy which reflects sunlight to create heat that boils steam. The steam…
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Other
February 9, 2011

Bike Lanes

I was surprised to learn that Kuwait doesn't have a single bike lane. It's not really that hard to implement if there's enough density to justify it. The idea is that it be used both for recreation and potentially for commuting. There are a few…
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Urban
February 6, 2011

Silent Jewels in the Desert

I think a cautionary example of what Jassem is describing would be the Freedom Towers debacle. They had a very public competition, in which hundreds of designs were submitted. The winner, Daniel Libeskind, had a really cool looking but ultimately unfeasible design. With the bureaucracy…
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ArchitectureEducationOther
February 6, 2011

Starchitects and Kuwait

Barrak's comment on my last post got me thinking of how to prove my point of the importance of world famous architects building in Kuwait. Barrak argues that Kuwait does not need a new iconic building, since we have Kuwait Towers, which is true. He also…
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Other
February 5, 2011

Kuwait Opera House

Kuwait is planning on investing in culture and the government has announced that it will be building eight new theaters as part of its economic development plan. It is great news indeed. Kuwait lacks good, modern, and sophisticated theaters. The government also announced that it…
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