Category

Urban

Barrak Al-Babtain 0
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Urban
May 21, 2015

242.4 Million KD

Cities are learning the lessons of the 20th century and removing urban freeways. Building more roads is not the answer, as it actually makes traffic worse (more here, here, here, here and here). The website for the project claims that the main objective is to: Segregate…
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Barrak Al-Babtain 3
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ArchitectureOtherUrban
July 1, 2012

A Gaze onto the City

I am sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Kuwait City. I am enjoying my cup of coffee while browsing the net, checking my timeline on twitter, and gazing out to the street. The sight from where I'm sitting shows how far the city went…
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Barrak Al-Babtain 0
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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…
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Barrak Al-Babtain 0
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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…
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Barrak Al-Babtain 4
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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…
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Barrak Al-Babtain 1
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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…
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Barrak Al-Babtain 10
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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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Barrak Al-Babtain 8
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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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Barrak Al-Babtain 4
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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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Barrak Al-Babtain 3
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NeighborhoodUrban
January 28, 2011

Transit Oriented Development

This video encapsulates almost everything i'm trying to achieve on re:kuwait in terms of transit oriented development and more walkable neighborhoods. It shows in a very concise and simple way how we can create the sort of neighborhoods that I describe in posts such as…
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