Two Thousand Years of Non-Urban History
Overview
Two Thousand Years of Non-Urban History revisits the founding principles of architectural and landscape discourse in the Arabian Peninsula. The publication explores instances of pre-oil planning, ranging from desert kites to fish traps and water channels, upending the toolset for thinking through architecture’s relationship to its context.
The narrative of the oil economy has overwritten previous traditions of landscape and territory: long spans of highway cut disinterestedly across the desert, vast reclamation works alter the shoreline, and agricultural land is extensively cleared to build new cities. This totalizing mono-myth renders previous spatial narratives as a distant pre-history, more fable than precedent. Two Thousand Years of Non-Urban History acts as a primer to the spatial history of the Arabian Peninsula, compiling narratives related to geology, agriculture, mariculture, and seasonality—providing an alternative genealogy and history from which to reimagine the region. This treatise by Civil Architecture also includes an appendix of the practice’s projects, expanding on the themes of the publication with possible trajectories for architectural intervention.
With a foreword by Rania Ghosn and an afterword by Ahmad Makia.
Edited by Civil Architecture
Civil Architecture is a cultural practice based between Bahrain and Kuwait. It was founded by Hamed Bukhamseen and Ali Ismail Karimi and is preoccupied with the making of buildings and books about them. The work of Civil asks what it means to produce architecture in a decidedly un-civil time, presenting a new civic character for a global condition and offers alternate futures for the Middle East.
About the Authors
Ali Ismail Karimi
Ali Ismail Karimi is an architect whose work explores public space, ecology, and the extractive landscapes of the Middle East. He worked in Belgium with OFFICE KGDVS, and in Chile with Alejandaro Aravena/Elemental, and taught at the University of Bahrain as an adjunct professor. His writings have been published in various media outlets including San Rocco, the Architectural Review, and e-flux. Karimi earned his MArch from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and was recently a visiting critic at Rice University’s School of Architecture.
Hamed Bukhamseen
Hamed Bukhamseen is an architect from Kuwait. He earned a BFA and a BArch from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a master’s of architecture and urban design (MAUD) from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), where he is pursuing his doctoral studies. His research is concerned with the developmental projects undertaken by sovereign wealth funds and their sociopolitical impact within their host nations. He has worked as an architect in Japan, Germany, and the United States, and as a faculty member at the Kuwait University College of Architecture.
Technical Details
- Publication Date:
- Thursday, April 10, 2025
- Language:
- English and Arabic
- Format:
- Softcover
- Dimensions:
- 32.5 x 24.5 cm
- Weight:
- 0.5 kg
- ISBN:
- 978-614-8035-74-6
- Number of Pages:
- 200
- Publisher:
- Kaph Books
- Categories:
- Architecture