The Path to Recovery: Accessing Ruins of the Gulf War to Reveal the Lost Narratives of Failaka Island

Abstract

The Gulf War is a tragic moment in Kuwait history, which brought about massive physical, cultural and environmental loss. Memorialization facilitates the processing of trauma through storytelling and can assess the values and identity of a collective through commemorative action. However the spaces that attempt to do this in Kuwait are few in number and fail to connect with the public. Immersive and interpretive sites can facilitate visceral commemorative experience that juxtapose the past and present while reimagining the future. Failaka Island is the longest inhabited place in Kuwait until it was abandoned and left damaged by Iraqi troops in 1990-1. By interacting with ruins of war, how can recovery narratives be revealed through be revealed through architecture to aid the memorialization process? The proposal is a network of paths that allow people to navigate the abandoned town, punctuated with points that engage with a different narrative of public life.