Be it the first Gulf city to experience oil urbanization in the mid-twentieth century, or the Gulf War in 1990, Kuwait has undergone drastic transformations by architectural, urban, social and economic means. Kuwait had its very own ‘Golden Era’, spanning from 1946 - 1982, but pre-1937 oil discovery, Kuwait was known as nothing more than a trading hub.
With these drastic changes and a script-like narrative past, naturally comes a plethora of publications. At Kuwait Culture Week, the Atlas Bookstore was invited by Brownbook and Al Shaheed Park to exhibit a collection of books carefully selected as references and documentations of Kuwait during it ‘Golden Era’. The exhibited content varied between old and recently published books, in Arabic and English as well as collated essays and theses regarding the architecture and urbanism of Kuwait to reveal the research findings of many.
2016:kuwait
2017:dubai
The Atlas Bookstore participated at Dubai Design Days 2017 with a satellite bookstore and reading space including a selection of its books and magazines on the architecture and urbanism of the Middle East and North Africa. Highlighted was a dedicated section on the UAE, with a collation of publications documenting and appraising its buildings, cities, and landscapes.
Additionally, the Atlas Bookstore and Bahraini-Danish debuted the product of their first design exercise, ‘atlas stools’, at the bookstore’s reading space. The assortment of stools is grouped in 7 pairs crafted in Bahrain. They accommodate the shelving of books when assembled, and their locking system allows for their disassembly when needed.
The Bahraini-Danish team members are Batool Al-Shaikh, Christian Vennerstrøm and Maitham Al Mubarak.
