British Architects in the Gulf, 1950–1980
In the July 1977 issue of Building magazine, there was a report on an RIBA conference on the Gulf States, and in the same issue readers were treated to an artist’s impression of a £3 million multi-storey tower complex in Doha, Qatar by a consortium consisting of White Young and Partners of Qatar and London, Arabian Design Associates of Doha, assisted by Hughes and Polkinghorne of Norwich.1 Leafing through the architectural magazines, particularly those of the 1970s, it is not unusual to find articles chronicling the activities of numerous British firms working in the Gulf, and it could be claimed that this work kept the architectural profession in this country afloat, especially during the recurring periods of recession in the post-war era. My intention here is to investigate the activities of British and American architects in the Gulf from the 1950s through to the late-1970s, and to ask whether the work done in this region was a feature of an incipient global market in building, or a prolongation of colonialism in what has been historically a contested location. Furthermore, has this regional building history set precedents which are difficult to discard even today?
With the break-up of the Ottoman Empire in the early decades of the 20th century, Britain and France established Mandates which were intended as temporary administrations until such time that it was deemed prudent to allow the indigenous peoples within the old Ottoman Empire to rule themselves. France took control of Lebanon and Syria, while Britain took control of Iraq, Iran and the areas around the coast of Arabia. Britain’s interest was primarily the transport route to India, but after 1912, when the Royal Navy switched from coal to oil in order to fuel its ships, the supply of oil assumed an increasing importance. Mindful of their increasing reliance on oil, in 1914 the British government bought the controlling interest in Iran’s Anglo-Persian Oil Company.2 Both Iran and Iraq resented British interference in their internal affairs, and this was especially true of Iraq, which in 1920 was not really one state, but in fact three distinct regions with little to hold them together. After an armed intervention which cost lives and money, and alienated the population further, Britain continued its control of Iraq at arm’s length – until the Second World War when it placed Iraq under military occupation.3 Iran meanwhile suffered from its strategic position between the British and the Russians. During the Second World War, Iran became a vital supply route for the Soviet Union in its fight against Nazism, and when the Shah showed pro-German leanings, the two powers invaded the country.4 Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States were able to maintain more equable relations with Britain, largely because their populations were small, plus a series of treaties with the ruling sheikhs around the Gulf ensured that Britain could maintain the required stability along the coast, and direct control of the all-important Aden Protectorate.5 Given that oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia only in 1938, the great wealth of that country became apparent only after the end of the Second World War.
Given the complex pre-war history of the Gulf countries, particularly those of Iraq and Iran, it is a wonder that British architects made any headway there at all during the 1950s. It says something for the strength of the local desire to modernise the material fabric of these countries, that western engineers and designers were encouraged. In post-war Britain itself there was the will to modernise, a task in which architects would take an active part, but in the immediate post-war years the draconian cancellation of America’s ‘Lend-Lease’ agreements in 1945, led to a crippling lack of cash for the post-war Attlee government, especially for public sector work.6 The architect Raglan Squire recounted that in the 1950s, when his practice needed a boost, he read a paper which commented on the fact that there were 22,000 fully qualified architects in England, while in the Commonwealth countries the numbers could still be counted on the fingers of one hand.7 Convinced that the opportunities overseas were immense, he opened an office in Baghdad in 1955. City plans and infrastructural schemes were undertaken by British firms, along with architectural work, and as Squire noted, the planning of Baghdad was given to Minoprio and Spencely, Basra to Max Lock, and Squire himself got Mosul – not that any of them had time to do much work on their plans before the revolution in Iraq in 1958.8 During the next administration, the Greek architect Constantinos Doxiadis was given the task of producing an urban design for Baghdad. Like the English architects before, he seemed to make little distinction between the different ethnic and religious areas – and in fact his Ekistics approach was supposed to erase differences through the application of a rationalist mentality.9
It might well have been asked, besides Max Lock, how much experience the British architects had in planning large urban areas. In the March 1957 issue of Architectural Design devoted to the Middle East, Raglan Squire made the point that all the plans of these important centres were by British consultants, which he considered appropriate, since ‘it has been England who has led the world in town planning’.10 But this claim was modified by the warning that: ‘A planning consultant can find himself in the difficult position of trying to explain a plan to an audience who have little or no conception of what town planning, as it is practised in highly-developed countries, really means.’11 This clash of cultures became a leitmotif in the journals as time went on, and as the projects funded by the increasing oil revenues became ever larger and more ambitious.
2.1 Plan of Baghdad by Minoprio and Spencely and F.W. Macfarlane
As mentioned previously, it had been important for Britain to keep the Gulf region on its side while India remained such a vital part of the Empire, but it was the discovery of oil which kept the British there after 1947. The Gulf States assumed inordinate importance to the British economy, with Kuwait in 1967 becoming the single largest foreign holder of sterling.12 Suddenly, rather poor and neglected territories in the Middle East acquired a degree of importance far beyond anything they had experienced before. Areas which had managed with almost no infrastructure up till then were transformed with roads, oil wells, refineries and desalination plants. Buildings for schools and hospitals, previously more or less unknown, were required along with commercial spaces. Not having needed these buildings before, the Gulf States had not developed a profession of designers, and therefore it was understandable that they would have to look outwards for professionals who were more expert in producing buildings of all types.
Many young British architects, fresh from architectural schools or war service, were looking for work in an overcrowded profession when suddenly competitions began to appear for work in the Gulf States. In 1952, an RIBA competition for the Doha State Hospital in Qatar was won by the young husband-and-wife team of John R. Harris and Jill Rowe, fresh graduates of the Architectural Association in London. When they won the competition, they had already worked on the Building Research Laboratories in Kuwait, but they still had to figure out from first principles how to design what was possible as well as what was appropriate.13 Their innovations extended to contract and management, so that, for example, the foundations of the Doha hospital could go ahead and be built while the London office was still producing the working drawings – thus demonstrating to the Qatari population the political point that a new hospital was immanent.14 This was just the beginning of a long association of John R. Harris Architects with the Middle East. In 1958 they produced a plan for Dubai and subsequently designed six hospitals there. They opened an office in Kuwait and also in Tehran for the work they undertook for the National Iranian Oil Company. In 1961 they produced the first development plan for Abu Dhabi, and then they went on to do work in Bahrain, Sharjah and Oman. Harris’s success came as a result of chance, since his office’s decision to enter the Doha competition had been weighed against the possibility of entering the competition for Coventry Cathedral; nonetheless, the Qatar commission also ensured that a struggling young practice survived the adverse post-war economic conditions.15
2.2 Doha State Hospital in Qatar, bird’s-eye view, by John R. Harris and Jill Rowe
2.3 Doha State Hospital, main entrance view
Those architects who ventured into the Gulf found a building environment totally different from anything that most of them had previously encountered, with excess heat and sunlight a factor in early designs, while the procurement of materials and equipment was a perennial concern, even compared to the difficult conditions back in Britain. However, even in the 1950s there was an awareness that the issue of cultural specificity was important, although it was not always clear what this meant. In the 1957 issue of Architectural Design devoted to the Middle East, it was noted: ‘Serious architects seek to develop a regional style: perhaps within the next decade they will have found the way.’16