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Kuwait Finance House - Bahrain general manager Abdulhakeem Alkhayyat led a high-level delegation to the UK's Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment as part of an extensive four-day 'New Urbanism' educational programme.
The aim was to explore the possibilities of adopting similar concepts of urbanism and environmental sustainability into the bank's infrastructure projects.
The foundation is an educational charity founded by The Prince of Wales and seeks to improve the quality of people's lives by teaching and practicing timeless and ecological ways of planning, designing and building.
During the past year, the foundation has focused on developing its key areas of education and urban design consultancy. Highlights of the foundation's recent achievements include a new master plan for Lincoln city centre and a study on urbanism for the UK's top house builders.
The delegation included senior representatives from the Bahrain's Ministry of Housing, Ministry of Works, Kuwait Management Company together with senior management, engineers and architects from KFH-Bahrain's Real Estate Department and subsidiaries Durrat Al Bahrain, Diyar Al Muharraq and Bait Al Enmaa.
The delegation visited several developments in London and Oxford to study the foundation's urban planning frameworks in an effort to widen their knowledge of urban developments and trends globally with a view to adopting such practices which in turn should introduce to development practice a real consideration for sustainability and social needs.
The delegation also attended a number of workshops and seminars on urbanism, planning and environmental issues and conducted one to one meetings with a number of the foundation's experts and staff.
Mr Alkhayyat said: "I was impressed by the forward thinking concepts and strategies the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment were trying to promote. The visit was informative and inspirational, and we will implement such concepts in our future projects.
"We consider the foundation to be a particularly inspiring entity as it has incorporated sustainability into urban planning creating a development that will improve the long-term social and ecological health.
"We hope to be able to further analyse their concept and approach and work with them in future in a bid to promote sustainable urban development within Bahrain.
