To drive through contemporary Kuwait today, you could hardly guess the context. Sitting stalled in traffic on the ring road, a thoroughly contemporary highway more reminiscent of Palm Springs than Desert Storm, there is little memory of the area’s Bedouin past or its recent history, especially of the early morning of August 12, 1990, when Iraqi forces rolled into town with violent force. Except for the occasional checkpoint at a sensitive government site, there is also little realization of another Iraqi war, just over the border.

Instead, today’s Xanadu-like Kuwait City, a metropolis of approximately 1 million, seems to be thriving, running on a river of oil down to a sunlit sea (with apologies to Coleridge). This prosperous, tiny state, which controls a staggering 10 percent of the world’s oil wealth, is translating black gold to concrete, banking on the real estate of its capital city as economic anchor for the 21st century. Kuwait City’s emerging character serves as a case study for all architects, engineers, planners, and clients, because Kuwait City is rebounding from invasion, with equal, liberated force.