After the discovery of oil, the Kuwaiti state established a series of housing programs, the purpose of which was to redistribute wealth and improve living standards. The State allocated residential neighborhoods for Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis by introducing two main architectural typologies: the apartment and the villa. In parallel to this regulation, and in response to its sociocultural and economic limitations, an unplanned hybrid typology emerged: the multiplex, specific to Kuwait. Not yet officially recognized by the State, it has become the informal expression of specific life needs, omnipresent throughout Kuwait.

Joaquín Pérez-Goicoechea, Principal and Founding Partner of AGi architects, presents the book The Multiplex Typology: Living in Kuwait’s Hybrid Houses, written with Sharifa Alshalfan, architect and main researcher,  and Sarah Alfraih, architect and educator.

The authors of The Multiplex Typology explore everyday life in these hybrid houses. The book is not simply a document of the current state of life in Kuwait. It is also an urgent call for alternative approaches to housing that are sustainably driven, culturally rooted and responsive to future change.

The authors foresee in this book that the urban development paradigm existing today in Kuwait, as well as the single-family villa, will probably not be the models of the future. However, this typology being as firmly anchored as it is in the collective imagination, it will resist until the same value is given to another solution. A new model is necessary that accommodates current desires and needs.