BAMIYAN CULTURAL CENTRE

FR / EN

“Building peace in the minds of men and women” (UNESCO)

The New Bamiyan Cultural Centre rises as a deeply rooted structure, an edifice that revives the history of the place and expresses it’s belonging to the ground. It cherishes the earth on which it sits and creates from it its own architecture. Peaceful, respectful, it embraces its users and dialogues with their innate human na-ture. Timeless, it gains the quality of its spaces through the precise framing it performs on the landscape of its context. 

Earthen architecture is one of the most original and powerful expressions of Afghan ability to create a built environment with readily available resources. It includes a great variety of structures, ranging from mosques, palaces and granaries, to historic city centers, cultural landscapes and archaeological sites. Its cultural im-portance throughout the country is evident and deserves a large-scale reimplementation in the present. The availability and economic quality of the material means it bears great potential. It contributes to poverty alleviation and sustainable development. However, earthen architecture is increasingly disappearing in the last century because of industrialization, modern building technologies, disappearance of traditional practices, etc. Our proposal to use this construction method aims for a revival of the use of earthen architecture tradition, with use of the best local practices and as an example for the development and dissemination of appropriate methods as well as techniques in building construction. Available local experience will further the endeavor to ameliorate know-how in the field and encourage a participative architecture.

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