PIETILA KUWAIT BLDG | T. Botz-Bornstein

Reima Pietilä's

Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kuwait

History and Development

MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Kuwait. Architects: Reima and Raili Pietila, 1985.

The development of this important building by a Finnish architect in Kuwait is a unique example of intercultural communication (or miscommunication) in architecture. This webpage documents the different steps that have been undertaken over many decades.

In my book, I reevaluate the Pietiläs’ Kuwait project thirty years after its completion and show that the Ministry buildings have undergone significant transformations.

Above: Photo of Ministry complex taken from the minaret of the newly built Grand Mosque in 1986.

The research has been presented in a chapter (70 pages) in my book Transcultural Architecture: The Limits and Opportunities of Critical Regionalism (Ashgate 2015)

See also: Conference paper "Pietila revisited... revisited.... Afterthoughts " (2018).

More about this book

وزارة الشؤون الخارجية الشهيرة (التي بنيت عام 1986) من قبل المهندس المعماري الفنلندي ريما بييتيلا واردة في أهم الكتب الدولية في العمارة الحديثة. ولا تقل أهمية عن الجمعية الوطنية في أوتزون أو أبراج الكويت. منذ عام 2012 لقد زرت المباني والتقطت الصور. لم يسبق للمهندسين أو المتخصصين أن زاروا المباني منذ عام 1986

Pietilä_seminaari_posteri-page-0 - Copy.

Reima Pietilä

Transcultural Architecture

I discuss the urban plan of the Finnish architects, explain the difference between “Transcultural Architecture” and Critical Regionalism, and show how the Sief Palace Area project is related to those differences. In 2011, I revisited Pietilä’s Ministry of Foreign affairs in Kuwait, which no person with an interest in architecture has visited since 1986.

Pietilä Kuwait project consisted of two different tasks that were interrelated: the establishment of an urban plan for Kuwait and the construction of three buildings in the central part of the city. Second, the Sief Palace Buildings are a school case permitting reflection on the possibilities and limits of Critical Regionalism. The project started with the best intentions but ran into problems that can be considered as paradigmatic. Only a thorough analysis of the planning history, the context, the reception of the building as well as the architect’s theoretical ideas can clarify the complications from which this project has suffered.

The chapter also contains a 5000 words long subchapter providing a theoretical foundation of Transculturalism and, in architecture, its relationship with Critical Regionalism.