The Extraordinary Ordinary - Wave Patterns at Qurum Beach...

A short video taken of the subtly undulating swells at Muscat's Qurum beach... For related posts please click here and here...

A Zoo Worth a Visit...

A tiger in a setting inspired by its origins...

Unfortunately many of the Gulf region's zoos leave much to be desired. With their often excessively cramped and dirty cages and incessantly pacing or spasmodic animals they often seem more like a zoological loony-bin than a place for observing animals in quasi-natural environments. To some degree this also applies to zoos elsewhere in the world. Consequently I was very pleasantly surprised when I visited the zoo, or Bioparc as it's officially named, in Fuengirola, a town near Malaga in the southern tip of Spain. The first thing that struck me was how dignified, if that is a word that can be used when talking about animals in captivity, the various critters and creatures seemed to be. Many had exponentially larger cages compared to zoos elsewhere which allowed visual access to the animals without necessarily interrupting their play or daily routines too much. The zoo is also surprisingly intimate, with its winding routes and selection of nooks & crannies providing access to the various animal habitats. They\re all also flanked by vegetation that seemed to be originating from the locales to each animal's origins... It's core concept is well thought through. It has omitted including large animals such as elephants or giraffes which inevitably would need very large enclosures. The whole zoo can be walked/ strolled through in less than two hours, thus avoiding 'visit-fatigue' from settling in. The park is clean and well maintained. The Bioparc provides a useful template for how this form of enterprises can and should be realized...

Afternoon nap (or hunt)..?!

Hungry-Hippo...

Two become one...

Morning stretch...

Her domain...

Follow the (junior) leader...

Day-dreaming...

Full Moon...

Chillaxing...

The Extraordinary Ordinary - MIA Shadows...

Finally back after a two month summer R&R hiatus...

The included images were taken of various shadows cast by the displays at the MIA (Museum of Islamic Art) in Doha, Qatar (an earlier post on the smArchitecture blog of the museum can be accessed by clicking here). They have a nice, slightly faded, weathered and grainy (mid last century) feel, which I like...

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Henceforth blog-submissions should be more regular, albeit from now on considered from a more Qatar based and related perspective...

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The Extraordinary Ordinary - Oman Sunsets...

If not necessarily off to sunnier shores (as there's plenty of those along the local coastlands) this will, nevertheless, be my 'sunset'/ closing blog-post from Oman... Tonight I'm off to Europe for a stint of R&R, after which my family and I will be heading to Qatar in early August where I'll be taking up my new post at VCU-Qatar...

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The aim is, though (for better or worse) to keep on bloggin' over the summer...

The Extraordinary Ordinary - Nursing Lab (Humanoid) Props...

A heart, skeleton and a head (with a cold)...

The included photos were taken of various displays in some of the nursing classrooms at my university here in Oman... I find these humanoid, quasi-genderless, anatomical props quite fascinating...

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They're a bit Damien Hirsty but...

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Anorexica...

Burt...



A s/he...

Prop insomnia...

Small Bizarres No. 9 - Pocari Sweat...

Whatever kind of living thing a 'Pocari' is it has to be admired - as any creature that perspires enough to have its sweat bottled, and has the audacity and faith in people to actually be willing to drink it - has to be applauded...

The Extraordinary Ordinary - Concrete Bricks...

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Some pictures of a 'sea' (or neighborhood, landscape, forest, mountain range - pick your analogy) of concrete bricks stored on a back-lot of the university campus...

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The Extraordinary Ordinary - Eight Easy Steps for Applying Sun cream...

A sequence of images of Andia applying sun cream to her face. Images taken in Muscat, May 2010...

Moving to Qatar...

This coming August, me and my family will be moving to Doha, Qatar, where I've accepted a position teaching at the new MFA programme at Virginia Commonwealth University - Qatar (VCU-Q). It's all very exciting, both to be a part of this top-notch institution as well as, on a world stage, an up and coming cultural entity such as Qatar...

Small Bizarres No. 8 - Screen Within Screen Within Screen Within...

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Ghadah Al-Kandari and I have been conducting a small exchange of, call them, sequential computer screen shots sent between Oman and Kuwait. It all started with Ghadah sending me a photo of her Mac's screen with the Chirps image (from a posts last week) as a backdrop. This promted me to use her image as a backdrop on my computer, which I photographed and sent to her, which in turn she used as a backdrop on her computer, and on it continued... Eventually, as can be seen in the image above, there's not much left to be seen of the original screen backdrop... We probably could have continued ad infinitum, but, as we both claim to be individuals who occasionally have more constructive things to do beyond such quasi-surrealist parlor games, I thought it wise to conclude it here (for now)...

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The original image sent by Ghadah...

Small Bizarres No. 7 - Child with Heads...

This photo was taken of a mural outside a kindergarten in Kuwait. It depicts, in my mind, a slightly macabre scene of a child playing with two (decapitated?!) heads - that of Santa Claus and the head of an elephant. One could also read the Santa head as actually being the arm of the child (a Santa-arm)...

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Bizarre indeed...

The Extraordinary Ordinary - My Little Friend Chirps...

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Meet my little friend 'Chirps'... He (or she) visits me most mornings and sing me a little tune... He (or she) usually sits on the ledge or inside the hollow U-profile of my right hand side bedroom window, bird-mumbling about the happenings outside... Sometimes we chat a bit, but he (or she) is a busy sparrow with what seems to be a quite demanding daily schedule, so mostly we just talk about general things like the weather or food... He (or she) is good company though, and often tweets, chirps and hums along to my morning tooth-brushing and gurgling - a quasi-melodious duet of beak and lips celebrating the commencement of a new day...

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If anyone would be interested in getting the above image as a (roughly 50 by 50 centimeter) poster, in either colour or black & white, just send me an e-mail at: thomas@small-architecture.com with the subject heading 'Chirps Poster'... I'll send it for free, but you'll need to print it out yourself (it should fit on an A1 sheet). They're both 300 dpi - the colour one (seen above) is roughly 14 Mb, whilst the black & white version is about 9 Mb. Please specify which one (colour or black & white) you wish to have...

SAM Street in Men's Passion Magazine...

An image charting the various typologies of commerical enterprises on a stretch of SAM Street (this image is not included in the Men's Passion piece)...

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The May issue of the Kuwait based Men's Passion magazine has an article on Salmiya's (in Kuwait) SAM Street, summarizing some of the polemic debated on this as well as the smArchitecture blog...

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Please click here to access the piece on the smArchitecture blog.

Dramatic Weather...

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Simon Balsom, the editor, amongst other publications, of Men's Passion magazine (a regional version of GQ or Esquire) sent me this dramatic photo, taken by photographer Lucie Debelkova, of a recent storm in Kuwait.

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Click here for more photos of a Kuwaiti storm (posted last year on the smArchitecture blog)...