The Kuwait Pavilion, titled 'Rethinking Rethinking Kuwait,' at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia, delves into innovative architectural and urban design methods arising from space and time. The project is an ongoing exploration addressing the consequences of modernist urban planning, which erased much of Kuwait's historic built environment.
Curated by Hamad Alkhaleefi, Naser Ashour, Mohammad Kassem, and Rabab Raes Kazem, the pavilion examines the concepts of decolonization and decarbonization through a reevaluation of transportation and accessibility. With a focus on Kuwait City as a prototype, the exhibition investigates various transitional spaces within the city, encompassing a range of scopes and scales. Instead of viewing history as a linear timeline, the philosophy of the exhibition treats time as a spiral, seeking precedents from the past to inform future developments.
“Rethinking Rethinking Kuwait” unfolds urban planning processes by reassessing transportation, walkability, and accessibility. It began as a response to foreign master planning efforts for Kuwait. The project aims to enhance the city's human scale by improving transitional and interstitial urban spaces while prioritizing mass transit over individual vehicular modes of transportation. The approach integrates a macro-scale top-down perspective with a micro-scale bottom-up approach, placing human experience and scale at the center of the new solution. By revisiting the interconnectedness of the city's historic fabric through diverse urban interventions, a unique network of connectivity is created, facilitating multiple modes of transportation that converge on a human scale.
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“When Is Enough, Enough?”: The Singapore Pavilion Explores Connection, Freedom, and Inclusion at the 2023 Venice Architecture BiennaleThe title of the project signifies a process of decolonizing architectural discourse. It emphasizes the need to reevaluate existing strategies and move beyond the colonialist principles and values that traditionally drive architectural projects. The approach critically examines existing conventions and precedents while allowing space for local forces to shape a new process. By treating history as a spiral rather than a linear timeline, the project seeks out meaningful precedents that can inform future development, departing from conventional linear workflows.
La Biennale di Venezia 2023 commenced last month, with various pavilions’ exploring the human scale through the architecture framework. The Czech Pavilion addresses precarious working conditions and the working system that architects are exposed to. The Albanian Pavilion explores how human beings live in synthesized realities, exploring new forms and typologies of civic space. The Singapore Pavilion activates discussion on new methods of measuring and evaluating the intangible, exploring a community's interaction with its surroundings.
