Note: This post has been updated to correctly list the petition organizers, the number of signatures, and includes a comment from the team.
Shortly after the UNESCO Office in Afghanistan announced the anticipated results of the Bamiyan Cultural Centre Design Competition on February 18, competition entrants Kia Massoudi along with Nick Roseboro, Fabio Pradarelli, and Alessandro Orsini of New York-based firm Architensions set up an online petition expressing opposition against the Jury's selection of the winners. It currently has 89 signatures.
A total of 1,070 online submissions to the single-stage competition, which invited professional architects worldwide to propose designs for the new Bamiyan Cultural Centre in the Bamiyan Valley of Afghanistan, near the World Heritage property of the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of Bamiyan. The Jury selected "Descriptive Memory: The Eternal Presence of Absence" by Carlos Nahuel Recabarren, Manuel Alberto Martinez Catalan, and Franco Morero from Argentina as the winners, along with four runner-up teams.
The online petition calls the Jury's decision "unfair and unprofessional" and requests a more elaborate explanation of their decision process. According to the petition, the winning scheme disregards several essential criteria of the competition, including a lack of connection to Afghan cultural backgrounds, the environment, substantial explanations of construction methods, materials, sustainability, and cost.
Nick Roseboro explained in an email that Architensions and reportedly many others have been "very vocal" about the competition results. "The problem in the result of the competition relies on the fact that the jury did not take into consideration the prescriptions of the brief which were very strict," wrote Roseboro. "We feel that we have been mislead (sic) by the organizers, the winners scheme is poorly drawn up when the brief asked for drawings at the specific scale. The brief was demanding for energy strategy and notion of buildability but the winner did not address any of it."
Request for comment from the competition organizers has not been returned.
Read the full petition here.
10 Comments
Since juries seem be disregarding the essential criteria of competitions, maybe competitions should only have:
1. Project type
2. Competition goals
3. Site
and that is it.
So...let me get this straight. Mr. Roseboro is upset that an open, unpaid competition has produced a winning result that he didn't completely agree with? This is somehow worthy of a front-page Archinect article?
The petition, despite showing a poor command of the English language and grammar, is a whiny tirade that really has no valid points. Construction details haven't been hammered out? It might not be on budget? Ramp slopes weren't calculated properly? Seriously, Nick? Have you really never seen what a competition looks like?
Stop complaining. That's the nature of open competitions. They're a total crapshoot. And for what it's worth, I've seen many, many open competitions produce results a hell of a lot more horrifying than the winner of this one.
"so far the petition has 55 signatures"
All of which I'm sure are his Facebook friends.
The petition is actually written by me, so any "poor command of English language and grammar" is on me. I'm sorry if that's all you can worry about. But for me and the others the cause was important and not the words within it. I'll be more than happy to withdraw from this competition, and I don't really care about the stupid prize. All we wanted was to stand together against this injustice. What do you call it? "Nature of open Competitions"? So be it. The matter of aesthetics is relational, and we understand that, but the matter of strict technical issues and instructions, is not. And if that is not important, so why bother anyone? As simple as that!
And to jla-x: Does it really matter how many people signed the petition? we were just lucky to find so many participants, since there is no platform anywhere to know who they were. You can suppose they're all my Facebook friends. Or even worse, all me. But that doesn't change anything. And I don't think anyone is that pathetic. At least, we were brave enough to write our names in it, not anonymous like you.
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I am not Kia Massoudi's facebook friend. I am not english nor american and I don't want to be sorry about it because I doubt you are able to speak nor write as many languages as we do Kia or myself...So don't change the focus of the debate and please avoid being insulting.
ONLY THE TRUTH HURTS!
What was this competition about? Building a cultural centre and school for Bamiyan valley.
I agree with all the critics presented by Kia Massoudi. And there plenty of other to be added.
Do you think the enormous water basins is going ever to be filled in such a dry climate?
IT IS GOING TO BE JUST AS SAD CORNER AND NOT A MEDITATIVE ONE.
I fact was this competition about a monastery?
Also, what the point of imitating the empty niches and carved rooms facing the site, and how are they going to built them using " local materials and people"?
Is this place going to "give hope" for Bamiyan people and invite them as part of the project?
Don't tell us stories..
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why cant i post images?
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