Barrak Al-Babtain 0
0
Other
July 1, 2012

مربعات

أنا بدأت أشعر بالقلق إزاء وجود اتجاه سيء للغاية في تصميم المنازل الكويتية . عملاء يطلبون نظرة و أسلوب "عصري" دون فهم حقيقي لما هم يطلبون. لمعظم الناس الطراز العصري يعني الصندوق البارد، ذو زوايا حادة مع الكثير من النوافذ المستطيلة والأثاث باهظة الثمن. الحداثة…
Read More
Barrak Al-Babtain 0
0
ArchitectureNeighborhoodOther
June 23, 2012

المنزل الكويتي

ما هو البيت الكويتي؟ كيف نعرفه؟ للبدء في الإجابة عن هذا السؤال، علينا أولا أن نعرف من هو الكويتي و ما هو نمط الحياة الكويتية ومن ثم محاولة إظهار هذا في بيئة مبنية. على المنزل إيجاد توازن بين العوامل البيئية للموقع وخيارات نمط الحياة لسكانه…
Read More
Barrak Al-Babtain 0
0
MetroUrban
October 20, 2011

Congestion Pricing

A depressing series of studies (here, here and here) seem to indicate that no matter what we do, we will always have traffic. Building more roads, the metro and having more buses will not, it seems, make that much of a difference. People just find it very…
Read More
Barrak Al-Babtain 4
0
NeighborhoodQortubaUrban
October 14, 2011

Park Fence Removal

They are going to start demolishing all the fences that surround public parks. I've asked for this a couple of times (here and here) and it seems their reason for removing them was mainly to stop people abusing the parks for 'immoral acts'. I can…
Read More
Barrak Al-Babtain 1
0
SAM StreetUrban
September 17, 2011

Gubei Gold Street

When thinking of what Salem alMubarak Street could be this is what I kept imagining, a great urban renewal project in Shanghai that has almost the same scale and density as SAM Street. People usually think of buildings without caring about what happens in the…
Read More
Barrak Al-Babtain 10
0
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…
Read More
Barrak Al-Babtain 2
0
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…
Read More
Barrak Al-Babtain 3
0
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…
Read More
Barrak Al-Babtain 8
0
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…
Read More
Barrak Al-Babtain 4
0
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…
Read More