Through its deep research into the cultures and landscapes of the Gulf, the Kuwait and Bahrain-based practice draws out the regions global networksCivil Architecture was shortlisted in the AR Emerging awards 2024. Read about the full shortlist hereCivil Architecture is a research anddesign practice that makes buildings, and books about them, inthe words of cofounders Hamed Bukhamseen and Ali Ismail Karimi. Formed in 2017 and based in Kuwait and Bahrain, the duo began collaborating two years earlier while students at Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), going on to design the Kuwait Pavilion for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. Careful research threads through their exhibitions, publications and design work, which engage with, in their words, the relative position ofthe Gulf within global contexts.Civil Architectures yearly research trajectories are themed; in 2019, for instance, much of their work dealt with water, and in 2020, they investigated farmland and its architectural implications. In 2023, their theme was seasonality, reflected in their contribution to the Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Their installation for the biennial, Sun Path, Rajab to Shawwal 1444, sat under thelofty canopy of Skidmore, Owings & Merrills 1981Hajj Terminal in the King Abdulaziz International Airport. A cleverinversion ofa traditional sundial, itappropriated gaps in the vaulted roof totrack time, letting sunbeams move like spotlights across islands of timekeeping lines painted on thefloor, as well as obelisks, slabs and monolithic sculptural objects.Sun Path, Rajab to Shawwal 1444 references mosque courtyards that traditionally feature sundials, helping worshippers align their inner sense of time with that of the heavens. The Islamic world operates on a lunar calendar, Karimi and Bukhamseen explain, which is different fromthe Gregorian solar calendar and the preIslamic lunisolar calendar. Their earlier research into agricultural and coastal landscapes initiated this fascination with calendrical time. In this work, they found many different calendars with overlapping logics present in the region, reflected in the installations fragmentary calendars of lunar, solar and tidal timekeeping methods, marking cyclical occurrences as well as specific, oneoff events in the biennials programme.Their study of Q8 petrol stations demonstrates how the flow of oiland capital links the Gulf to European territories and economiesTo walk through the lofty space is to traverse varied embodiments of time. Shadows cast by human figures become sundials of their own. In creating a landscape of lines and markers, Bukhamseen and Karimi challenge visitors to consider the cultural production of time. As a ritualistic space, itrecalls the terminals use as a place ofpilgrimage, the starting point for many ontheir journeys to Mecca.For a researchdriven practice, exhibitions and publications are useful platforms to take positions on widereaching issues, spark interdisciplinary discussion and, in the architects words, prompt an open set ofquestions brought into a discourse with alarger cultural realm. Civil Architectures research situates specific ideas within larger political discussions: for instance, their 2019 exhibition Foreign Architecture / Domestic Policy investigated the presence of Kuwaiti oil infrastructure in Europe through their study of Q8 petrol stations, demonstrating through spatial analysis how the flow ofoil and capital links the Gulf toEuropean territories and economies. Karimis doctorate research elaborates onthis, examining from a Gulf perspective the role of sovereign wealth funds and their impact in shaping Londons architecture.Bukhamseen and Karimis indepth research shapes the ways in which they think about architecture. It is the biggest way we intervene in the built environment, they say. These diverse outlets exhibitions, publications, installations and buildings bleed into one another, each approached with the same process and pedagogy. Forinstance, their research on tidal patterns and calendars developed in the Islamic Arts Biennale is now contributing totheir ongoing project for a mangrove visitor centre in Bahrain. This, along with other design projects in the works, is setting a trajectory for more substantial built endeavours, rooted in the Gulf but implicating the world.