Civil Architecture

Sun Path, Rajab to Shawwal 1444

Civil Architecture is an architectural practice preoccupied with the making of buildings and books about them. Civil asks what it means to produce architecture in a decidedly un-civil time and presents new environmental narratives for the oil-exporting Gulf, tackling the issues of ecology and the extraction of natural resources.

The practice was founded in 2017 by Hamed Bukhamseen (b. 1991, Kuwait City, Kuwait) and Ali Ismail Karimi (b. 1989, Manama, Bahrain). Both have master’s degrees from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and between them have worked internationally in the USA, Germany, Japan, Belgium, and Chile. They have lectured and published widely, and have taught at the Kuwait University College of Architecture and at Rice University, Houston, Texas, respectively. Bukhamseen is primarily interested in the merger of art and architecture across the urban realm; Karimi’s work explores social housing, public space, and the urban landscape of the GCC countries. Their work together has been shown at Expo 2020 in Dubai; and at the Oslo Architecture Triennale, Seoul Biennale, the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, and Amman Design Week (2019). In 2016, Ali and Hamed curated the Kuwait Pavilion at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale.