Al-Ahmadi Cinema

Notes

In 1947, the Kuwait Oil Company commissioned the British firm Wilson Mason & Partners to design a masterplan for the Al-Ahmadi new town. It included head offices, staff housing, and various amenities designed in collaboration with the company’s representatives in London and Kuwait City. Al-Ahmadi epitomized the country’s modernization following the Garden Suburb model. Originally built mainly for British and other expatriates, the city was gradually occupied and appropriated by Kuwaiti nationals in the 1960s following independence.
The Al-Ahmadi Cinema, designed by Egyptian architect Sayed Karim, was inaugurated in 1966.
The ground floor is lined with shops and restaurants while the upper floor accommodates the cinema entrance and is accessible through side stairways. A ramp allows movie-goers coming by car to be dropped off at a pilotis level under a long glazed volume housing the foyer. From there, one can reach the 1,263 seat movie theater expressed as a massive red slanted prism hovering over the horizontal volume. (George Arbid)

Sources

"Work begins on Ahmadi's new cinema", The Kuwaiti, no. 790, 7 September, 1963

George Arbid, Heritage of Urban and architectural modernities in the Arab world, Kuwait: Unesco World Heritage Center and Arab Center for Architecture, 2015, pp. 24-25



 

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