About
Contact
Tactical Landscapes: Abstractions and Power Practices
2023
Desert landscapes serve as a site for the dynamic interplay of competing historical and geopolitical narratives. In Kuwait, tribal, colonial, and global conflicts across the hinterland have mobilized state planning efforts, articulating a geospatial division between urban and desert life. Concurrently, visioning tools such as hand-drawn maps and satellite imagery have not only shaped the understanding of this desert, but have been shaped by it. Through an examination of the forces that have driven its transformation, this landscape is shown as both product and producer of cultural, social, and political complexity. The contemporary desert exists as a patchwork, the result of a disparate collection of essential narratives projected onto the territory.
Authors
Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, Aseel Al-Yaqoub, & Yousef Awaad Hussein
Issue Editors
Ersela Kripa, Frencesco Marullo, & Stephen Mueller
https://www.jaeonline.org/issue-article/tactical-landscapes/
2023
Kaph Books
Architecture of the Territory examines the role that national narratives have in defining the Arab world through the use of architecture and urban planning. The book is a collection of 30 essays from various countries in the Arab world.
This territory, almost twice the size of the United States and home to 423,000,000 inhabitants, lacks sufficient and accessible research. In order to advance knowledge and critical thinking, this publication uncovers some of the mechanisms and narratives that have shaped the territory and its society. The selected essays, written by researchers and professionals, are the beginning of a dialog, touching on themes such as agricultural strategies, imported housing typologies, the issues inherited from colonial borders, and the effect of politics on infrastructure projects and cultural heritage. While critical contributions draw on local histories and context, they also run in parallel and contribute to the discourse on current global issues.
Editors
Collective for Architecture
Contributors
Ahmad AlAqra, Ali Karimi, Asaiel Al Saeed, Aseel Alyacoub, Atef Alshehri, Balsam Madi, Ben Tosland, Carine Assaf, Christine Mady, Dena Qaddumi, Eleftheria Exarchou, Faysal Tabbarah, Francois Nour, Galila Elkadi, Hamed Bukhamseen, Hanadi Samhan, Hareth Ramzi, Hicham Bouzid, Inass Yassin, Ines Tazi, Jumanah Abbas, Mahdi Sabbagh, Mahmud Tantoush, Majd Murad, Mazen Haidar, Mina Akhavan, Noor Toshani, Nour Joudah, Omniya Abdel Barr, Pieter Van denBroeck, Rana Beiruti, Rand Abdul Jabbar, Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, Sawsan Abou Zainedin, Yasmin Huleileh, Yasmine Kherfi.
https://www.kaphbooks.com/books/architecture-territory-constructing-national-narratives-arab-world
Interview: Space Wars - An Investigation Into Kuwait’s Hinterland
2022
Columbia University Press
Colonial and imperial powers have often portrayed arid lands as “empty” spaces ready to be occupied, exploited, extracted, and polluted. Despite the undeniable presence of human and nonhuman lives and forces in desert territories, the “regime of emptiness” has thus inhabited, and is still inhabiting, many imaginaries. Deserts Are Not Empty challenges this colonial tendency, questions its roots and ramifications, and remaps the representations, theories, histories, and stories of arid lands—which comprise approximately one-third of the Earth’s land surface. The volume brings together poems in original languages, conversations with collectives, and essays by scholars and professionals from the fields of architecture, architectural history and theory, curatorial studies, comparative literature, film studies, landscape architecture, and photography. These different approaches and diverse voices draw on a framework of decoloniality to unsettle and unlearn the desert, opening up possibilities to see, think, imagine it otherwise.
Editor
Samia Henni
Contributors
Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, Menna Agha, Asaiel Al Saeed, Aseel AlYaqoub, Yousef Awaad Hussein, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Danika Cooper, Brahim El Guabli, Timothy Hyde, Jill Jarvis, Bongani Kona, Dalal Musaed Alsayer, Observatoire des armements, Francisco E. Robles, Paulo Tavares, Alla Vronskaya, and XqSu.
www.arch.columbia.edu/books/catalog/998-deserts-are-not-empty
Exhibition Catalogue
2021
National Council for culture, arts, and letters
The Space Wars publication includes research, proposals, interviews and narratives from the project’s 20+ multidisciplinary contributors. Divided into four sections, The Gulf War, Cultural Production, Planning and Nature, the book provides an alternative reading that includes the desert as only part of the hinterland’s definition, rather than simply characterizing the landscape as a natural and geographic condition.
Editors
Aseel AlYaqoub, Saphiya Abu Al-Maati, Asaiel Al Saeed, Yousef Awaad
Contributors and Collaborators:
Abdullah AlGhunaim, Atlas of Places, Ayesha Kamal Khan, Aiysha Alsane, Bab.nimnim, Dani Ploeger, David Green, Faysal Tabbarah, Formless Finder, Jawad Altabtabai, LCLA Office, Abdulaziz AlJassim, Mohammed Alkouh, Maees Hadi, Nada Al Qallaf, Post Petroleum Society, Reem Alissa, Dana Alhasan, Samia Henni, Sara Alajmi, Sara Al-Ateeqi, Sijal Collective, Studio Toggle, The Open Workshop