Reddit mentions of Tribal Modern: Branding New Nations in the Arab Gulf

So there's something going on at work that bothers me. Have any of you read Miriam Cooke's Tribal Modern: Branding New Nations In the Gulf? Her basic argument is that in an effort to pursue political legitimacy, the Gulf states have constructed, or designed, a new exclusive identity based on tribalism and the mythification of the past. I'm basically involved in this process. It reminds me a lot of this podcast from the Guardian that I highly recommend everyone listens to: How to sell a country: The booming business of nation branding


So I'm involved in large-scale architecture projects in the Middle East. And what I've noticed is this desperate desire for exclusive branding. The problem is that European architects don't really care. I mean they are paid by a client to design something. They don't have the knowledge of the history and political and social context, nor do they really want or care to know. If the client wants a branded urban identity then that's what we will give them, whether it is authentic or not. So for example, we recently gave a presentation to a government body of a certain GCC state. In the presentation, we discussed lessons learned from our projects in Lebanon and in 2 other Gulf states. At that point, the head honcho got up and left the room abruptly. Later on we asked why, and we were told angrily that they don't want architecture from Lebanon or X Gulf state. They want their own architecture.


So I've literally been in meetings with 10 European guys, discussing what makes X GCC country unique. Not even countries - what is true Abu Dhabi or Dubai identity and how is that unique compared to the others? We sit there and talk about this or that fort or this or that palace, or a specific pattern from a palace, and then from there we spin this narrative of what it means to be authentic Qatari/Emarati/Kuwaiti/Omani/Abu Dhabian/Sharjan/Dubaian, etc architecture. The whole thing feels so totally contrived and inauthentic, but this is what's going on in the GCC on a grand scale. Hire Europeans and tell them to design us cities that are authentically ours. It's like going to the mall and buying 1 Qatari city, 2 Emarati cities, and an Omani village. And at a certain level, the guys doing the designing just don't care. They want to do a good job and get more clients. They want recognition in the international press. But they're not out to create something historically accurate or authentic. they're out to create a narrative for the client and the client will buy whatever our expert opinion is.


It's so starkly different from what Arab architects were doing in the 60s-80s. If you read Hassan Fathy, he goes on and on about 'the Arab city' and 'Arab urban character' which represents Arab morals and traditions. The same is true of Rifa'at Chadirji. In the early 80s an Iraqi architect Maath al-Alousi wrote The Visual Diary of An Arab Architect. Nowadays you could never do this. If you're working in the Emirates or Kuwait - gotta have windtowers. Windtowers are 'authentic'. Even though they existed in Pharaonic Egypt and in Iraq and Iran, no one in those places has branded them yet. Working in Riyadh? Gotta have triangular openings and every manner of merlon and crenellation man. Sure, Egyptian architecture is full of the same triangular openings, with an infinite variety of merlons and crenellations. As is traditional Maghrebi architecture - Ghadames Libya here and here and Ghardaia Algeria here. Btw that lime wash on the window frames and the crenellations - that's actually authentic Asir and Najran. In Qatar, we decided narrow vertical windows was authentic and unique Qatari tradition.

The clients actively seek these 'authentic' features and reject features that are stereotypically Islamic or Arab or Ottoman or Iranian, and we have an endless supply of these stories that we can spin for them. It's like a branding race. Each region is trying hard to create its own unique identity when in reality these regions did not have architectural traditions wholly unique from one another. I'm waiting for Bahrain to tell us they don't want Arabic signage but authentic Dilmun cuneiform and then i'll know we've gone full retard.