AFGHAN,
BAMIYAN

Collaboration with Kythreotis Architects

REPORT PAGE 1 : The proposal inspiration

The inspiration for architecture in an environment such as the Bamiyan region, an important centre of eastern and western cultural exchange, where architectural intervention is so challenging, requires great sensitivity and respect. Αt the same time though, the architecture, should be more innovative and diverse than stereotypical, opening new doors, encouraging exploration, discovery, social communication and sharing of ideas, and respect of past and present cultures, it should strengthen bonds and the generous spirit, serve as a model for the capacity buildings of the future generations and act as a foundation for the promotion of peace throughout the country.

   The Bamiyan Valley is a landscape which has evolved through a unique merge of geological formation and human intervention, a perfect harmonious balance of natural and manmade, a way of life, still visible today in the contemporary society of the local communities, therefore it is to this perfect balance one has to turn for inspiration when responding to the brief of the Bamiyan Cultural Centre.

   The proposal besides its rational and syntactic structured plan, is characterized by clear and simple principles which shape and define the overall built volume and its various components, achieving functional coherence and co-existence between the inside and the outside, the environment and the architecture, the built and the unbuilt, the natural and the manmade, the existing and the new, ultimately resulting in an “Archiscape”,  which is in complete harmony with the immediate site and the surrounding environment both physically and culturally.