Township

In the the late 1940s, the Kuwait Oil Company built these idyllic suburbs to house its employees and consultants. This project explores the area today that is suspended in time.

In the the late 1940s, the Kuwait Oil Company built these idyllic suburbs to house its employees and consultants. The company built over 1,000 houses in an these compound neighborhood inspired by the planning sensibilities of British urban planner Ebinizer Howards “Garden City.” The employees, both Kuwaiti and British, were assigned single unit housing with each house in a separate plot of land with its own garden. The town was Kuwait’s first single unit housing compound to ever be built, breaking away from the traditional communal housing found outside. The area had its own horse stables, golf club, gardens, hospital, tennis court, children’s play areas ect. In this ongoing project, I’ll be looking at the area as Colonial relic of the oil boom. I begin to question why this town was left suspended in time and what it represents today. To some, the town represents Kuwait’s prosperity and introduction to the modern world post oil. To others, its a nostalgic symbol of a Colonial past before Kuwait’s independence from the British Empire in 1961. The project I’m undertaking takes a pseudo documentary approach where I will be documenting the almost caricature like town in its present form. The images will show the oddities of the town that looks more like a film set than a real neighborhood.