Urban Modernity in the Contemporary Gulf

Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi is a columnist and researcher on social, political, and cultural affairs in the Arab Gulf states. Al-Qassemi is also founder of the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah, UAE. He was an MIT Media Lab Director’s Fellow from 2014 to 2016, a practitioner-in-residence at the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University in spring 2017 and a Yale Greenberg World Fellow in 2018. Al-Qassemi was a visiting instructor at the Council of Middle East Studies at Yale University, the Center of Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, the American University of Paris, the Islamic Civilization and Societies programme at Boston College and the School of Public Affairs at SciencesPo, Paris. In the Fall 2021 Al-Qassemi was appointed as Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar, Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School and Lecturer, School of Arts and Sciences, Brandeis University. Al-Qassemi, along with Todd Reisz, is co-editor of Building Sharjah (Birkhauser, 2021).Roberto Fabbri is an architect, researcher, and associate professor at Zayed University, UAE. From 2016 to 2021 he taught at the University of Monterrey, Mexico, and previously at the University of Bologna, Italy, and the American University of Kuwait. As a consultant of the United Nations Development Programme, Roberto participated in the rehabilitation of Kuwait National Museum and completed the transformation of the American Missionary Hospital of Kuwait into cultural hub. He regularly participates in international conferences, recently at Yale, Cambridge, King’s College London, and INHA-Paris, and has published extensively in academic journals, such as Domus; Faces, journal d’architecture; and International Journal of Islamic Architecture. He has published two books on the architectural works of Max Bill (Mondadori 2011, inFolio 2017) and co-authored the double-volume, Modern Architecture Kuwait 1949–89 (Niggli 2016, 2017).

"…this impressive collection comparing conditions across countries is evidence of the high caliber of scholarship emerging in the region."Reem Alissa, Kuwait University, in Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review Fall 2025"An essential read to understand Arabian Peninsula modernism, this book offers precious clues to decode the landscapes of Abu Dhabi, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait City, Manama, Riyadh, and Sharjah."Pascal Ménoret, author of Joyriding in Riyadh"Urban Modernity in the Contemporary Gulf is a must-read for anyone interested in architectural history today. Formatted as a collection of scholarly essays by architects and historians, each addressing a different element of the modern building era in the Gulf, this book begins to address, in crucial ways, the enduring blind spots that continue to plague our collective knowledge of the region’s history as manifest through the design, planning, and building of its cities and fabric.From a persistent narrative of the sudden emergence of glittering skylines created by benevolent rulers to simplistic notions of a divide between what has been described as the ‘real’ intellectual and cultural heart of the Middle East (embodied by ancient cities such as Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo) and the ‘newcomers’ – the city-states of the Gulf – extant histories have and continue to limit the many alternative narratives needed as foundations to imagine the region’s future(s).Through careful, thoughtful, and well-researched case studies across the many rich and varied urban contexts of the Gulf states – from Dubai to Doha, from Riyadh to Kuwait City – Urban Modernity in the Contemporary Gulf offers a necessary and powerful antidote to enduring gaps in knowledge. I have no doubt that this work will become foundational for scholarship in the years to come and that it will inspire a generation of practitioners of the built environment who seek to simultaneously preserve and protect the best of the past and the most promising for the future."Amale Andraos, Dean and Professor, Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and Co-Founder, WORKac"The architectural boom in the Gulf whizzed by faster than history, theory, and criticism were able to thoroughly examine it. Most studies wondered in amazement at its daring and opulence. Yet, between the state-of-the-art present and an imagined, ancient golden age lay a gaping hole: the modern. This book bridges that distance with a collection of essays by a group of young scholars for whom the modern is the memory of their childhood. From a pan-Arab context to another one of imported Western expertise and local engagement, and on to variations on the notion of heritage, these scholars reconstitute from the fragments of Gulf modernism a historical whole. As such, the book moves beyond nostalgia and offers strategies to restore these cities’ forgotten modernism."Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology"Over a period of more than five decades, urban modernity has been, and continues to be, produced and reproduced in various cities across the Gulf. These cities are continuously witnessing dramatic twists and turns that represent a wide spectrum of intents, attitudes, influences, references, and resistances. This is fully articulated in a series of vibrant discussions and intellectual arguments, characterized by a new, impartial openness, of the contemporary condition of architecture and urbanism in the Gulf region with its variety and plurality of perspectives and interests.This book offers a refreshing outlook on urban modernity in the contemporary Gulf, with multiple voices thoughtfully categorized into three key sections that capture the recent past, present, and future. Through the utilization of various perspectives and substantial theoretical underpinnings, Roberto Fabbri and Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi draw our attention to the uniqueness and the multifaceted nature of the urban condition in the Gulf, where cities continue to convey much of what counts today as culture, knowledge, identity, and politics. This is an important contribution to the discourse on architecture and urbanism in a continuously and rapidly growing region."Ashraf M. Salama, Professor of Architecture, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland

• Kishwar Rizvi PREFACE: Forms of Engagement: Architectural Modernism and Heritage in the Arab Gulf States Roberto Fabbri, Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi INTRODUCTION: Re-engaging the Modern PART I: RETRACING MODERNITIES Mohamed Elshahed UDO KULTERMANN’S HISTORY OF ARAB CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE Todd Reisz GARDENS AND GENERATORS: Demarcating Dubai’s Modernization Roberto Fabbri FRAGMENTARIUM: Episodes of Modernity in the Contemporary Kuwait City Jason Carlow INDUSTRIAL PROMISES: Speculative Thinking for Sharjah’s Industrial Districts PART II: TRAJECTORIES OF GLOBAL PRACTICES Michael Kubo BUILDING IDENTITY: Transnational Exchange and the Authorship of Modern Gulf Heritage Kevin Mitchell CHANGING FACADES IN GULF CITIES: Identity, Icons, and Lamentations of Loss Jumanah Abbas THE CORNICHE: The Representation of Doha’s Waterfront and its Institutional Buildings Faisal Almogren OPERATIONAL PLANNING: An Alternative View of Doxiadis’ Project in Riyadh Edward Nilsson HISTORY, MEMORY, AND NARRATIVES OF THE PAST AND FUTURE: The New Souks in Kuwait PART III: HERITAGE AND THE MODERN Asseel Al-Ragam INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES OF CULTURE: Modern Heritage Practices in Kuwait Suha Hasan A[N] ABSENT SPACE: 1355 Trinidad Rico MODERNISM IN QATAR: Survival through Reuse Marco Sosa, Lina Ahmad URBAN PORTRAITS: Preserving the Memory of Modern Architectural Heritage in the United Arab Emirates Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi CONCLUSIONS: Modernism’s Back and Forth INDEX