Bamiyan Cultural Centre Design Competition

ANTEFACT

There are several historical cities, such as Balkh, Ghazni, and Herat, but after twenty years of war, the preservation of historical monuments is not a priority. The Kabul Museum was looted repeatedly, nothing is left of the covered bazaar of Tashqurghan (Tash Kurghan) in the north, and the Buddha statues of Bamyan (Bamian) have been damaged. Most cities and towns are in ruins, and little reconstruction is occurring.

In the south and the center, the most common form of housing is the multi-story fortified farm with high walls built from a mixture of mud and straw. They are scattered in the fields, sometimes forming loose hamlets. In the north and the west, smaller compounds with vaulted houses of mud brick are prevalent. In the eastern highlands, settlements are grouped; stone and timber are common building materials. In both urban and rural settings, bazaars are not residential areas.

CRITICAL PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN:

•Create an innovative design.

•Create a vital centre for the cultural community of Bamiyan allowing individuals to commune and share ideas.

•Integrate the Bamiyan Valley view into the building design and create a positive visual impact on the Cultural Landscape of Bamiyan Valley.

•Integrate an environmentally conscious design, which in the Bamiyan context should consider locally resourced materials, climate and efficiency.

•Connect to the historical context of the World Heritage property.

The design concept take place from an accurate and detailed analysis of the fundamental elements of the context: mountains, calanchis, caverns,  local stone, environment and the site

The plan is indissolubly linked to the vicissitudes of the local history and to the local culture. The project choices represent the natural transposition of relations between history-culture and surrounding landscape. The concept design consists of three materials, like local stones, light-transmitting concrete and glass; the materials color tone are in assonance with the colors of the context.

From typological point of view, the project was born from the summation of multiple needs:

-the project site link between the lower portion of the city and the upper site;

-the unbreakable link with Visual site formerly home to the statues of Buddha;

-volumetric and geometric transposition of the caves in the mountains, on the wall of the West site fence that is an integral part of the project;

-the need to perceive, at any given point of the project,  presence of the local culture;

-the transposition of numbers sacred geometry of the local culture in the project.

The design concept is represented by a sheet which folds over the top and, via appendices, ends in volumes that make up the main functions of the project into a rigid organization volumetric spatial relationships. The sheet is represented by a wall which, starting from level + 2528.5, fold and becomes volumes cover at level + 2555.0; the wall in the west facade is interrupted and leaves room for monumental staircase that is aligned with the location of the statue of the Buddha on the mountain facing the project.

The backbone of the project is represented by the “sheet-retaining wall” that not only cover and contain higher volumes, contains within it, public open spaces that represent rooms of prayer, meditation and meeting place for the Community (nearly emulate the intricate game of caves in Buddha mountain); These public spaces similar to burrows are noted in the section on the wall and are connected by paths always inside the containment wall.

The monumental staircase is the project perceptive cultural axis that is also a mystical ascent towards the Nirvana and, at the same time, the descent from divine worship to the worship of man.

The importance of Numerology is found in various elements of the project:

-7 (the planets) are the volumes of the project that contains the main functions of the cultural center;

-8 (the ways  to reach Nirvana) are the landings-squares on the monumental stairway;

-108 (the Rosary beads Japamala) are the steps that make up the monumental staircase.

The art related to famous Mandala it rereads in treating external flooring and facade texture of some walls of the project.

The project is linked at + 2528.5 level, through a physical and Visual axis, to old buildings and monumental stairway and is linked at + 2555.0 level to the existing city and main roads.

WALL SYSTEM CONSTRUCTION

Grate lives: it is a very effective type of intervention in the interventions of construction of slopes and embankments with high steepness (even greater than 45 °). It consists of both vertical and horizontal timber wooden, it rests on a stable base consists of a piling in timber.
This system guarantees, at the same time, an effective action of support and a protection from surface erosion.

A series of timber wooden strung horizontally to the slope of the ground up to 10m depth provide resistance to horizontal thrusts; between the first containment wall and the reinforced earth from logs will be inserted mud, local stone and straw, stiffened by a reticular structure of logs into the mud; the filling material between the first retaining wall and the second finishing stone will be a mixture of light straw and mud for the purpuse of not stress the wall.

Building above will rest on foundations made wooden poles to a depth of 10 m. The stones on the wall of the external finish will be anchored to the lattice structure geospatial wood immersed in the ground.
The roof structures of the buildings will slabs of stone anchored to a metal structure.