Social acceptability of earth construction technology: towards a socio-environmental sustainable housing in Kuwait

Traditional mud architecture in Kuwait started to decline as soon as the financial prosperity of the country came to light, after the discovery of oil in the early days of the twentieth century. Mud architecture became something from the past and became socially unpopular when it met the new Western rivals. Modern building materials and the international style became trendier. This resulted in a total reshape of the architectural identity across the country. This paper is concerned with the social acceptability of modern earth construction technologies and architecture in Kuwait. It mainly used an online questionnaire to gather people’s opinions and views with regards to this type of architecture in Kuwait. It was found that the majority of respondents in this case are not willing to live in a house built of earth material. Despite that, a significant number of them had selected earth houses from a pool of case studies that included both earth and non-earth built houses, which the questionnaire used in a multiple choice type question. This is of a particular importance as it indicates the potential of reintroducing earth architecture in Kuwait.