The last traces of Sir Basil Spence in Kuwait

Today, we look at images of old Kuwait City with a sense of regret. We see the walls, the neighborhoods, the markets, and the houses, and we realize that a large part of our architectural memory exists only in photographs.

The irony is that, after more than half a century, we have not significantly changed our approach to dealing with old buildings: demolition remains the fastest solution, the value of land is still easily calculated, while the value of the memory it carries is difficult to quantify.

The old Justice Palace is an example worth pausing over.

It was designed by Sir Basil Spence, one of the most prominent Scottish architects of the 20th century and the designer of the new Coventry Cathedral. The palace’s design dates to 1976, the final year of Spence’s life. It was part of an era when Kuwait served as a laboratory for modern architecture, attracting global names such as Jørn Utzon, Kenzo Tange, and Reima and Raili Pietilä.

Therefore, preservation here is not mere nostalgia.

In Scotland, tens of thousands of buildings are registered for protection. Owning one does not grant the owner the freedom to demolish it or alter its character as they wish. Historical value there translates into a legal constraint, not just a beautiful recommendation.

The irony is that in 2022, the Heritage Conservation and Urban Development Committee of the Municipality Council recommended retaining the Justice Palace and integrating it into the new project.

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In the same year, the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters deemed it of “high national importance for modern heritage.” Four years later, it was announced that technical studies concluded that the existing foundations could not support the required loads, and the decision was demolition and reconstruction.

I do not question the engineering assessment; that is a matter for specialists. However, this experience highlights the gap between recognizing a building’s value and having stable institutional protection for it.

In urban studies, development is not synonymous with demolition. In Australia, the Melbourne Central complex was built around a 19th-century historic tower rather than removing it. In London, the Battersea Power Station was transformed from a historic industrial facility into the heart of a new mixed-use project, while retaining its architectural identity. This is known as “adaptive reuse”: giving an old building a new function instead of demolishing it.

A city’s capacity for modernization is not measured by how much of its past it destroys, but by its ability to incorporate that past into its future.

No one wants to turn Kuwait into a museum. But between freezing the city in time and erasing its memory, there are dozens of engineering and planning solutions.

Perhaps our problem is not that we do not know the value of history, but that we recognize it too late.

We demolish, years pass, an old photograph appears, we gaze at it for a long time, and say: “Regret…” And how often have we said “regret.”