Bedouin women sellers and Kuwait's Souk Wajif

This chapter explores how Bedouin women sellers constructed their identity in a traditional Kuwaiti market, in the process unpacking the ways spatial elements helped to create a temporal form of interior urbanism. The discussion expands understanding around how interior elements, such as the stalls' form, size, materiality, location, circulation, and lighting, relate to the construction as well as the de-construction of identity facets. Looking at a market's evolution as an interior urban threshold, the chapter argues that when the political realm conflicts with the social-cultural domain, women's attempts to construct identity can be suppressed. Lessons are translated into ways by which design education, scholarship, and practice can serve as mediums for diverse meaning-making, as well as examples of participatory design interventions-or thresholds-between conventional interior spaces and urban conditions.