Culture in court - design of the Homaizi house in Kuwait

Architectural Review, The, March, 1998

Built by Indian craftsmen, a new mansion on the edge of the Persian Gulf expresses a subtle and rational fusion of Middle-Eastern and Nordic sensibilities.

The traditional courtyard form of the Islamic house was shaped by the harsh realities of landscape and climate, by the idea of paradise as an oasis of greenery and water.

Sheltered and screened from prying eyes in dense city quarters, as courtyard houses traditionally were, by walls, lattices and shutters, their introversion protected familiar customs and courtesies of Islamic life. With local variations in materials and detailing, they appeared wherever Islam conquered and settled. Middle Eastern affluence and Western influence seems to have encouraged eclecticism, and with the arrival of exotic styles the tradition is being interrupted.

Torsten Thorup's design of the Homaizi house in Kuwait for a Danish-Kuwaiti family makes a point of drawing on Islamic architectural tradition, both spiritual and domestic, while at the same time conveying through rational severity, simplified form and repeating elements a recognizable sense of its Danish authorship. The house is near Safat about 20 kilometres south of the capital and on the edge of the Persian Gulf. Set among tall palms with views of the sea, it is imposing - really a complex of parts lined externally on two sides with open arcades. Long arms extend either side of an axis and embrace an inner and outer square. Made shady by newly planted trees, the squares are crossed by cruciform paths in abstract representation of a paradise in which two waters cross.

The arrangement is also reminiscent of a mosque where access to the inner sanctum is symbolically measured; so from the street you must first pass through an intermediate outer courtyard.

The complex consists of the main family quarters, disposed on either side of a double-height living room and balconied hall, and concentrated centrally in a two-storey building, its massing and battlemented silhouette evoking in Western minds filmic associations with desert fortresses. Kitchen, storage, laundry and servants' dining rooms are contained in one long arm, and a large library and guest quarters in the other. Underneath in the basement are games and exercise rooms, more storage and servants' bedrooms. Arcading gives on to a swimming pool and terrace which overlooks the beach and sea.

Thick walls of concrete and yellowish Danish brick - not unlike local clay bricks - provide the necessary thermal mass. If the exterior with its pure forms and rough sand-coloured walls seems to relate to the desert, the cool interior has been delicately conceived. Soft light diffused through tall screened windows, filtered through greenery, washes over walls plastered and limewashed in creamy white, and over the creamy marble floor.