An Argentinian design team, headed up by Carlos Nahuel Recabarren, has won a UNESCO design competition to create a Cultural Centre in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.

From more than 1,000 design proposals that were submitted in the single stage competition – which opened in November 2014 – Carlos Nahuel Recabarren, Manuel Alberto Martinez Catalan and Franco Morero’s project, entitled ‘Descriptive Memory: The Eternal Presence of Absence’ was picked as the winner.

Paolo Fontani, director of the UNESCO Office in Afghanistan, said: “This competition was an opportunity to create a new pattern for architecture, design and cultural development in Afghanistan. It is one of our objectives to make sure that the Afghan people recognise themselves in the design concept.”

Funded by UNESCO in Afghanistan – in partnership with the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture with extra financial support from Republic of Korea – the planned Cultural Centre will have gallery/ exhibition areas, research and educational facilities, a theatre and public spaces.

The scheme seeks to ‘create a new vital centre for communicating and sharing ideas’. Carved into the landscape, the 2,200sq m (23,680sq ft) building will have a minimal impact on its surroundings and remain in-keeping with ancient local building traditions. Work is expected to start as soon as possible on site.

The centre will be built in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Bamiyan Valley, the location of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, once hewn into natural sandstone. These two 6th-century statues were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001.

As a result of such destruction, the design of the new Centre has an overarching narrative of national unity and will be used to “promote heritage safeguarding, cross-cultural awareness, and cultural identity thereby contributing to the broader aims of reconciliation, peace-building and economic development in Afghanistan.”



• UPDATE: Nick Roseboro of Brooklyn-based Architensions, who is understood to have entered the competition for the Bamiyan Cultural Centre, has started an online petition against Carlos Nahuel Recabarren and his team's win.

According to Roseboro, his petition is in response to the "unfair and unprofessional decision of Jury to select the winner and runner-ups in this competition..." as many aspects of the competition brief "have been neglected and ignored by the Jury members." The petition had less than 100 signatures at the time of publication.