Category: 50s to 90s

Picture above is before the roundabout was built. You actually drove through the gate! [Source]

In my previous post I mentioned how the Central Bank of Kuwait was originally designed by Arne Jacobsen. Well I managed to get more information on the Central Bank project in form of a PDF which you could download from [Here]

Update: Found some more pictures of the Central Bank, my favorites are below but you could see them all [Here]

Patrick over at Projekt Cyan posted about the Kuwait Central Bank today. Turns out the Central Bank was originally designed by Danish architect and designer Arne Jacobsen back in the early 70s, the guy who designed the very famous “egg chair“. The Kuwait Central Bank was actually his last project before he passed away. The picture above is how it originally looked when built.

Below is a picture of how it looks like today.

Finally this is how the new Central Bank is going to look like once completed.

You can read more about this on the Projekt Cyan website [Here]

First two photos via Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

The current Kuwait Airport (pictured above) was originally designed by the legendary Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. The British architect and critic Stephen Gardiner wrote in 1985 that this is “the most beautiful airport in the world” because of its “breathtaking simplicity of color and shape.” It is “white sculptured space as cool as an ice-cube, as enormous as a vat intake of pure air, as light as a tent, as canvas hung from cables and sails.”

Below is how the airport looks like today.

via Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

Update: If you want to see more pictures of how the airport used to look click [Here]

Found the above on the K’s PATH Facebook page. Didn’t know Kuwait had such a system before and not sure why they ever stopped it. [Link]

Update: A reader sent me another tag he has dating to 1986. Looks like the quality of the tags dropped a notch.

This is a short clip from a really old show from the late 70s staring George Clooney. Whats interesting here is that in the clip George Clooney’s character gets a Kuwait Times newspaper delivered to him and he talks about his experience living in Kuwait. Just press play above and it should start at the right moment. [YouTube]

Thanks Hish

Update: The episode above is from 1985

Nearly everyone who grew up in Kuwait at one point in time must have had a Sakhr (MSX) or at least had a neighbor or knew someone who had one. I lost practically all my toys during the Iraqi invasion except for my Sakhr which I was able to take with me to Lebanon and then bring back to Kuwait after the liberation where it’s been with me ever since. I decided to take pictures of all my games (there are a few I couldn’t find like Rambo) in the hopes of bringing back good memories to people familiar with the games so here they are below.

Update: I found Rambo plus 3 other games and added to the gallery above.

By accident I found this website full of photos from Kuwait dating back to the 1950s all the way to current times. The photos I’ve posted here are just some of my favorites, but you can check out all of them by clicking [Here]

Notice the photos on the wall?

Love the Dodge

Hippo loose in the zoo after the Iraqi invasion

A first person account of the 1990 Iraqi invasion. Now with English subtitles. [YouTube]

BuzFairy posted a snippet from a newspaper in which they talk about a 7-star hotel being built in place of Al-Salam Palace. I think that sucks, I was actually expecting them to renovate the palace one day… not demolish it! [Link]

Sorry I don’t have any idea how old this shot is or where in Kuwait it is exactly. I just found a link to it on Flickr and a link to the image not even the uploader of the shot. [Link]

Update: I’ve updated the link above. Photo was uploaded by Brett whom I’ve posted about before [Here]

Here are some links related to the 1990 Iraqi invasion:

Kuwait Invasion – The Evidence
A website containing over 1,200 pictures taken right after the 1990 invasion as photographic evidence to all the destruction caused.

Short movie: Hearts of Palm
Hearts of Palm is a short movie set in August 2nd 1990 and deals with Kuwaiti students living in Miami Florida during the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait.

The Class of 1990
A short documentary about reuniting class mates years after the 1990 Iraqi invasion.

Homemade video from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait
Video clips taken by a Kuwaiti family during the Iraqi invasion

Desert Storm Photos
Photos taken by soldiers during Desert Storm.

I previously heard that there were two DeLoreans in Kuwait and yesterday I found one of them. I know it doesn’t look like much in the picture above but if cleaned up the car it would look like the one below.

And with a little bit more work it can look like the one from Back to the Future.

I’ve previously posted about old cinemas in Kuwait but I’ve got some more old photos to share, ones that aren’t on the Cinescape Facebook page. The picture above for example is of the Hawalli open air cinema. I can’t imagine sitting on this hard metal chairs for 2 hours and in this heat, not sure how they used to do it before. Below are all the pictures I got:

If you want to see some more old pictures you can check out the ones that are on the Cinescape website [Here]

Thanks Ali

I found out about the website “Kuwait Invasion – The Evidence” and I’m really surprised I didn’t come across it before. The website contains over 1,200 pictures taken right after the 1990 invasion as photographic evidence to all the destruction caused. The pictures are organized into galleries but each page has only 12 thumbnails at a time so you will need to do a lot of page flipping to see them all. In case you’re looking for something specific you could try the search feature on the website but I’m not sure if all the images are tagged properly.

I flipped through 80% of the photos and managed to find a picture of Safeway and Showbiz but I wasn’t able to find any pictures of Kids R Us for some reason. I also saw a lot of pictures, the kind I hadn’t seen before like the one above of a residential door barricaded to keep the Iraqi’s out. Most of the photos feel very eerie and I only wish there was an easier way to view them all. Here is the link to the website [Link]

Photos by Adel Al-Yousifi