Category

Neighborhood

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…
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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 3
0
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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Barrak Al-Babtain 3
0
NeighborhoodUrban
January 9, 2011

Qortuba Opportunity

There's an strange place in Qortuba, Block 1. It's a sort of dead space that came as a result of awkward road planning. The space is mostly asphalt now, and has a small two level shopping block and a mosque. The houses adjacent to it…
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Barrak Al-Babtain 1
0
NeighborhoodUrban
December 30, 2010

Mixed Use Residential

Last year, I wrote a post about building towers in the middle of residential neighborhoods. Maybe that was a little dreamy but the point was to create a more mixed-use residential neighborhood. I look around where I live and it makes no sense to me…
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Barrak Al-Babtain 12
0
Neighborhood
October 6, 2010

Crowdsourced Activism

Wikipedia works because of the energetic voluteerism of a dedicated core of users. We can harness this same crowdsourced dedication in Kuwait to help improve our public spaces. Everyone has a camera-phone now, and most newer models have the ability of adding geotagging information on…
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Barrak Al-Babtain 3
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NeighborhoodUrban
August 1, 2010

Connecting Neighborhoods

A reader sent me an interesting request asking if there was a way to sort of stitch the areas of Kuwait into one connected fabric: "...the new trend in kuwait is to become more healthier, more active, more movement involved, so why not be connected…
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Barrak Al-Babtain 2
0
NeighborhoodUrban
April 29, 2010

Kuwait City Transect

A transect shows a sequence of progression through the increasing density of a city from the rural areas to the urban core. Transportation, landscape and ecology, buildings, setbacks and all the details of life should vary across the transect. "The importance of transect planning is…
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Barrak Al-Babtain 7
0
NeighborhoodQortubaUrban
April 21, 2010

Anonymous Neighbors

I admit that the following exercise is almost comically biased, but I think it serves well to illustrate the point i'm always trying to make. People have become anonymous within their own neighborhoods and mosques have become the only place where a strong sense of…
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Barrak Al-Babtain 8
0
Neighborhood
February 22, 2010

Qortuba Public Park

I shot that video today walking through the park. It's just as filthy as when I last saw it. It's a shame, because the park itself is pretty decent. You can hear the birds and the trees are healthy. What would it take for the…
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