Kuwait Times

Published Date: March 21, 2008
By Farah Al-Nakib

Growing up in the 1980s in Kuwait I did all my shopping in what came to be known as "Old Salmiya." Every Eid my Mom took my sisters and me to the boutiques along the high street to buy new dresses and shoes. I bought my first "Trapper Keeper" folder from Fay, and my first music tapes from Swan Lake around the corner next to the New Supermarket. Kids'r'Us was where I got my toys and my first bicycle.

I bought all my art supplies from Mogahawi, my school uniform from The Union Trading Company, and when I was seven Mr. Habig fit me with my first pair of glasses at International Optique. Then, of course, there was the Family Bookshop (which opened in 1968 as Kuwait's first general bookstore), a place where I spent hours of my youth perusing the shelves and learning to love books.

So many of my childhood and teenage memories of Kuwait are based within the shops and along the streets of Kuwait's most famous cosmopolitan thoroughfare. Of course by the late 1990s, Kuwait discovered the shopping mall in full force and the "high street" was soon transformed into an indoor shopping strip.

But this is not an article about where to do your shopping in Kuwait, nor is it a condemnation of Kuwait's newfound love for mega-malls (although I do condemn it). Rather, the focus of this article is on the current condition - or rather the crisis - of Kuwait's history, as embodied in our built environment.

Architecture as history
History in Kuwait is not given much attention or value in any academic sense. Students only learn a limited amount of local history in primary and secondary school, and little academic research on Kuwait's history is conducted by professional historians, largely due to the country's restrictive and unorganized approach to archiving records. Due to such academic deficiencies, young Kuwaitis must depend on a limited range of more unconventional sources in order to obtain any sense of historical awareness.

One such source is the built environment: the complex of structures and spaces that we pass by and engage with on a regular basis, including public and private buildings, roads, squares, and other aspects of the urban landscape that surround us in our everyday lives. In the absence of sufficient classroom learning in history, and with our older generations leaving this earth without their memories being adequately documented, the built environment is arguably the most prevalent and dynamic source through which we can interact with Kuwait's past in the present.

In the early days of urban development after the advent of oil most of what existed of pre-oil Kuwait was razed to the ground to make room for the new modern city that Kuwait paid billions to plan and build. In the process, only very few buildings were salvaged. The general consensus seemed to be: out with the old and in with the new.

Although the Law of Antiquities of 1960 asserts that "immovable antiquities" built before 1920 should be listed in order to evaluate whether the site is "worthy" of preservation, it was not until the 1980s that a comprehensive listing of the few extant pre-oil buildings inside Kuwait City was created. Despite recommendations to conserve them, many of the listed sites were demolished well into the current decade in order to make way for new projects. Of course there were some old buildings that were spared demolition and have since been renovated and transformed into museums and sites of national heritage.

But there are only around 100 sites from pre-oil Kuwait still standing among us today. And what most people regrettably don't seem to realize is that today we are once again repeating the cycle of destruction that began in the 1950s. Whereas then we destroyed all traces of our history from the period before oil, this time we are erasing our past from the period after the discovery of oil, between the 1950s and 1980s.

Out with the old
I began this article by referring to Old Salmiya, an area that has served as a permanent symbol of the cosmopolitanism for which Kuwait was renowned throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The famous thoroughfare was the centre of commercial life during one of the most exciting periods of Kuwait's past and was the focal point of the multicultural and dynamic lifestyle that so many of us grew up with.

Sadly, if you drive through Old Salmiya today you will see the second storey of the "Salmiya Building," covering the southern flank of the street between Family Bookshop and Hardees, gutted in preparation for demolition. A disturbingly large number of posters cover the façade apologizing for the disturbance, stating that the building will be demolished and replaced with a new shopping mall.

Further up the road the building that once housed Fay and Swan Lake has already been torn down. The Al-Salam buildings diagonally across from the Family Bookshop - the strip with International Optique and the famous round green apartment complex behind it - have also been earmarked for demolition. It won't be long before the entire Old Salmiya area is turned into a massive pile of rubble like the Sports Corner building knocked down last month further along Salem Al-Mubarak Street.

This kind of demolition constantly takes place in Kuwait with little public reaction or outcry. Just last week two beautiful old villas located behind Beit Lothan in Salmiya were bulldozed to the ground with no comment. This lack of appreciation for Kuwait's past is so endemic that there seems to be little concern for the fact that we have fewer and fewer pieces of the past to share with future generations. Specific sites within the built environment provide us with a sense of place and context amidst the reality of constant change. They serve as our points of reference to our individual, as well as collective, past.

The removal of these sites from our everyday lives will ultimately mean the erasure of our historical consciousness - our awareness of our history and the relationship we forge with the past in the present. It took 50 years for us to realize that what we did in the 1950s was a mistake, and now we see a new "heritage village" being built in very tawdry Disneyland style inside Kuwait City as a desperate attempt to replicate the old town that was torn down 50 years ago. Perhaps in another 50 years we will b
uild a reconstruction of Old Salmiya.

The past as memory
Regardless of whether or not people today find the designs of these older sites aesthetically pleasing, these buildings symbolize significant moments and trends in Kuwait's past while simultaneously representing distinct moments in Kuwait's architectural history. By demolishing these sites or renovating them beyond recognition (i.e. covering them with generic alucobond tiles à la Hadi Clinic) we are erasing all traces of the excitement and experimentation that took Kuwait by storm in the early years of oil urbanization.

Buildings such as the concrete and tile apartment blocks with large balconies around Salmiya and Kuwait City represent a particular approach to multicultural urban living that was prevalent in Kuwait throughout the decades after the advent of oil. Villas such as those built with asymmetrical angles, geometric shapes, rounded verandas, and lattice-work window coverings signify a style of architecture that is both extremely unique to Kuwait, while simultaneously lining up with architectural styles prevalent around the world during the same period.

There is no need to tear down historic buildings simply because they are "old," especially since there is ample space all over the country upon which to build new ones. Instead, why not figure out ways of reusing some of these older sites while maintaining their architectural/historic integrity?

For example, the lovely Al-Hamad villas at the intersection of Hamad Al-Mubarak and Baghdad Streets in Salmiya could easily be cleaned up and rented out to young Kuwaiti entrepreneurs to open home-grown cafés, restaurants, and shops. Such a venture would generate an income as commercial space while simultaneously supporting small local businesses and preserving unique old structures in the process.

But at the rate things are going these beautiful houses will probably get demolished to make room for yet another apartment complex. As another example, the iconic 1960s apartment blocks that line Fahad Al-Salem Street in Kuwait City that are being systematically demolished could be renovated and refurbished by creative young Kuwaiti architects and then rented out to local artists, designers, and architects as studio space. If only those who control these places could think outside the box and come up with more creative solutions than senseless demolition.

Shopping mall Kuwait
Do we really need another shopping mall? No, we certainly do not. What we do need, desperately, is a sense of continuity with our past in the present. What we need is history. In Kuwait the built environment serves as the most readily available medium through which we can feel a connection with our history.

It is bad enough that we are forced to contend with the disastrous "First Ring Road Project" that is currently in the process of cutting a multilane highway right across the historic city centre, totally destroying the urban fabric of Kuwait City and taking away from the serenity and presence of such historic sites as the Jahra Gate, Behbehani Complex, the American Mission compound, and endless others.

And now we are being forced to witness the destruction of historic Salmiya as well? All I can say is, what a terrible, terrible shame. What a shame that there are people who seek to capitalize from the demolition of our history and who feel no remorse at putting a beautiful old building at the mercy of their bulldozer.

What a shame that they are given permission to do this by those who see no need to protect and preserve the physical and psychological traces of our past. And what a tragedy that most of the public just sit back and say nothing. No, we do not need a new mall that is "one of a kind in the Middle East." What we need is to stop erasing our childhood, our history, our Kuwait.

Al-Nakib is a PhD Candidate in History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.