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Tuesday, February 7, 2012
BAB
Located
at the entrance of the city, the site is subject to a fast track highway from the
northern side, facing the Bahrain Financial Harbor; and to the urban fabric of
the old Bahrain city from the southern side.
The
intervention should tie, connect but not flatten: the surface opens up from the
highway to allow the vehicular circulation in and provide parking space; while it
remains flat from the city side and slopes down gently creating a piazza and inviting
the pedestrians in.
The ground
floor surface is the symbol of the return of the public dimension to old city
of Bahrain, in a radical gesture of openness and informality. It is conceived
like a barely covered public space: the
lower ground level is an open platform that slopes gently down to the hub in
the center. The platform can house informal events that are encouraged to
spontaneously happen: food kiosks and mobile merchants, art exhibitions, music.
The
indoor areas consist of the post office, national archives, food courts and cultural
and children’s museums as well as indoor exhibition spaces.
Due to
its strategic location, the hub carries a potential of becoming a
transportation hub in the future.
The
gentle slope becomes stronger as we approach the highway to shelter from the
busy flow and to allow the possibility of more controlled events in the form of
stage.
The
Ferris wheel remains an iconic part of this public hub and becomes a landmark.
It extrudes the public square vertically in the skyline of Bahrain, thus
projecting the old city as a view and reconnecting at least visually to the sea
level. In
this iconic landmark for Bahrain that is estranged to the surrounding, we
challenge the vis-à-vis to the built-environment and create a playground where
the public aspect is raised to regain access to the sea.
7284 GRP
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