Ahmadi Town o la nascita del modernismo in Ku-wait / Ahmadi Town: the Birth of Modernism in Kuwait

Abstract

In 1947, architect James Mollison Wilson, founder of Wilson Mason & Partners, was commissioned by the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) to design the city plan, headquarters, housing, and staff facilities for the company in Al-Ahmadi Town, located south of Kuwait City. In addition to housing, the five-year plan included various municipal and social service buildings, general offices, a hospital, staff housing, staff clubs, an institute and multipurpose hall, a fire station, shopping centers, schools, a cinema, a mosque, an administrative building, public gardens, a post office, banks, and churches. Ahmadi Town was designed as a ‘Company Town’, a settlement created and managed by a single company to house its employees. Wilson Mason & Partners applied the Garden Suburb model to the planning and archi-tecture of Ahmadi. In fact, the creation of this modern Garden City also constitutes the precursor to the experimentation and design of high-quality, original modern architecture of a high formal and struc-tural level.