Kuwait National Assembly Building

The Kuwait National Assembly Building, designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon in 1972, was completed in 1982 under the direction of his son Jan. The structural design was by Max Walt. The building was seriously damaged in February 1991 when retreating Iraqi troops set it on fire but has since been restored.

In late 1969, as part of a plan to construct new institutions following independence, the Kuwait authorities invited Jørn Utzon to participate in a competition for a National Assembly building to be located on Arabian Coast Street on the city's waterfront. Utzon, who was living in Hawaii at the time, prepared preliminary sketches which he sent to Oktay Nayman in London, who made construction drawings, and to his son Jan in Denmark who produced models.

Familiar with Islamic architecture, Utzon based his competition design on a walled miniature city consisting of departments arranged around courtyards and accessed through a central hall, rather like a souk. In his own words, "We had the idea of constructing the building around a central hall, a bazaar street, in such a way that all departments met in side roads off the bazaar road, just as we know from the bazaars in the Middle East and North Africa..." The hall led through to a ceremonial entrance beside a covered square facing the sea. The complex consisted of a parliamentary chamber, a large conference hall, each with sag roofs, and a free-standing, flat-roofed mosque. Together with the covered square, they formed the corners of an incomplete rectangle. After discussions with the Kuwait authorities, costs had to be lowered to a point at which Utzon realized it would no longer be possible to use a Danish engineer. He fell back on Max Walt from Zurich who agreed to accept a more modest fee, for his services both as structural engineer for the project and draftsman for the construction drawings.

Utzon worked on the project for almost three years before deciding, at a late stage in the planning, that the structural elements should be round rather than rectilinear. He immediately demonstrated his new approach by lining up beer bottles. The new columns were tapered cylinders creating colonnades reminiscent of ancient Greece or Egypt. Cylindrical vaulting was also to be used for the ceiling of the central hall, giving the building the appearance of flowing fabric.

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Wikipedia