Initiatives Workbook
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INITIATIVES WORKBOOK JOHN McASLAN + PARTNERS CONTENTS “OUR INITIATIVES PROGRAM CREATES ARCHITECTURE 4 A Blueprint for Recovery from Conflict WHICH TRANSFORMS PEOPLE’S LIVES. THIS IS ACHIEVED 6 Improving Lives through Direct Action THROUGH COLLECTIVE PARTICIPATION IN A WIDE RANGE Projects OF PROJECTS, TACKLING CHALLENGES THAT REFLECT KEY 10 N17 Design Studio GLOBAL IMPERATIVES.” 16 Burgh Hall 20 Kigali Memorial Centre 24 Oasis Uganda JOHN McASLAN, JOHN McASLAN + PARTNERS 26 Wangari Maathai Institute 28 Yangon Workshop 30 Dominica Reconstruction Centre 32 Malawi Schools 36 Madame Gauthier Villa 38 Iron Market 48 Building Back Better Communities 50 Indian Institute of Advanced Nursing 52 Volubilis 56 Hat Factory 58 Bursaries 70 Timeline 72 End Matter 4 Initiatives 5 A Blueprint for Recovery from Conflict A BLUEPRINT FOR RECOVERY FROM CONFLICT From Berlin to Phnom Penh, from New the individual attempting to recover from Station. He had already understood the sent to Port-au-Prince to report the How do architects develop a memorial Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, York to the Rwandan capital of Kigali, the deeply individual atrocity to which likely impact of the built environment earthquake in which a staggering quarter response that addresses loss of life, yet Cambodia - a school that served as one remembrance has become central to he or she has been subjected. For forty upon their lives. He believed our Centre of a million people are estimated to have also encourage a revival of hope and of 150 execution centres set up by the the process of recovery from major years I have been involved in the care would ensure that society’s ‘disconnected’ died. At the very heart of Port-au-Prince reconciliation? And isn’t it much harder to Khmer Rouge in the mid-1970s. atrocities. Contemplation has always of vulnerable, often homeless, 16- to people would be considered as a the flamboyant Iron Market had been achieve this when substantial loss of life The Kigali remembrance architecture been at the heart of these potent sites 21-year-olds adrift in central London. continuing element in any mass transit reduced to mangled wreckage. Here in major conflicts is relatively recent? forms a dramatically organic setting, of man’s inhumanity to man. The needs Before becoming a journalist I was, for interchange project. again I encountered McAslan at work, Our perception of widespread loss, rather than being an impressive memorial of survivors have been uppermost in the three years, the Director of the New We wanted to stay where we were, painstakingly rebuilding this extraordinary and the way we go about marking it, has object. The arrival sequence is green minds of those who seek to enshrine Horizon Youth Centre. Our work with partly because of the disruption of structure. Frankly, I wondered at the time evolved. We live in an age of rolling news, and leafy. The journey within embraces remembrance in an enduringly physical, these young people was undertaken in attempting therapeutic work in what was how this endeavour could be justified amid a complex tangle of information, memory, learning, remembrance and built statement. The drive is for all time a grubby sanctuary beneath St Anne’s still a daunting building site. So McAslan amid such injury, sickness and food texts, tweets and Prime Ministerial debate. Yes, the mass graves are there, to ensure that in remembering, humanity Church in Soho. Later, we moved to set about educating us to appreciate the shortage. But in truth the usual agencies ‘selfies’. It is extraordinary to think that, but so too is the Stream of Tears and the seeks to inform future generations an even grubbier basement in Covent impact the immediate built environment were tending to these needs and the only 20 years ago, commuters sat silently Lake of Reflection. The centrepiece is the of what happened, and to provoke a Garden, before moving to larger but can have on the effectiveness of our work. decision to rebuild this vital civic hub has on their journeys. Now, on trains, in the Amphitheatre, close to both the Africa determination to commit to the theme of hardly more beautiful Council premises In a micro sense, we were to develop the been vindicated: today, the Iron market street, in cafés, at home, life is lived much Centre for Peace, and the Education ‘never again’. close to the British Library. For the vast physical arena in which lasting individual stands once more as the city’s thriving more verbally and digitally, and with more Centre, designed by Hannah Lawson, As a reporter and as a citizen, I have majority of my years with New Horizon I recovery could occur. Five years on, hub and life once again swirls through obvious emotion. Director of Culture and Education in stood at both ends of this equation in never gave the built environment in which the effect of his input – an architectural and around it. It happens that somehow my life McAslan’s office. The environment has micro and macro circumstances. In we worked a thought. competition, a Lottery grant, and the So what happens when ordinary daily has cast me from time to time amongst been devised so that it stimulates both October 2001, three weeks after the Then, one day, the architect leading delivery of a state-of-the-art building life becomes horrifyingly extraordinary, architects. I have highlighted McAslan memory and that journey of commitment horrific 9/11 attacks in New York, I stood the rebuilding of King’s Cross Station designed by Adam Khan – has been and in the most overwhelming way + Partners because the practice’s toward ‘never again’. within Ground Zero, the surface still hot knocked on our door. John McAslan beyond our dreams. The work has been possible? How do architects, in the activities continue to coincide with both What has been achieved in this beneath my insulated boots; the smoke was brutal in his evaluation of the transformed. The uplift that the individual service of governments who want to my reporting and NGO life. Strangely, I verdant space surely offers those who and steam still rising; tangled wreckage all physical circumstances in which we client experiences upon entering the create places of cultural redemption, have worked in both King’s Cross and in seek more humanised resolutions of about, protruding against the less ruined were working with our young clients. In building is palpable. express the democratic and the humane Rwanda. Two places in which McAslan + conflict a way forward. We must hope that structures beyond. In that moment, I short he described our premises as ‘unfit Good architecture and intelligent in memorial projects? Partners has been active in very different for Baghdad, for Damascus, for Kabul, could not begin to imagine the impact for purpose’. Many of our clients would treatments of public space improve Anyone who has visited Lutyens’ arenas. In the long years during which the there is, tucked away in Central Africa, this horror would have on the course of come in from a night on the streets to be peoples’ lives. Think of Trafalgar Square, a Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the practice worked on the rebirth of King’s a different kind of blueprint for the part history, not least the immediate wars in greeted in an environment that was hardly memorial island trapped in a whirlpool of Somme battlefields, where 72,194 British Cross Station, it has also been developing that architecture can play in humanity’s Afghanistan and Iraq, and the vast scar better than where they had slept. Though traffic until part-pedestrianised. Think of and South African officers and men died, the design of the Kigali Genocide recovery from conflict. The Kigali it would etch upon the American psyche. the staff was skilled and committed, the Turner Contemporary’s burgeoning effect has felt the sombre weight of mass death. Memorial in Rwanda. This stands in Memorial Centre is not an architecturally To this day, the survivors still wrestle with building was dark and uninviting. on Margate, a town that until recently had The memorial, completed in 1932, is marked contrast not only to relatively bombastic statement of loss, but a those engaged in the memorial about The young people themselves had little allure to the general public, and no monumental, a grand statement about the historic memorials like the structure at landscape and place of gathering where where their loved ones should be laid suffered persistent abuse, neglect, sense of having been Britain’s grandest fatal results of an apparently clear-cut war. Thiepval, but also to the geometrical, memory, emotion, and very gradual within the structure that is being built to poverty, and acute mental difficulties. seaside resort in the late 19th century. But how do we memorialise the loss of life tomb-like Memorial to the Murdered Jews redemption can reside. st remember them. For some this remains, McAslan had already become aware I have witnessed another place in sustained in deadly conflicts in the 21 of Europe in Berlin, honouring the six unhappily, a contested memorial. of their presence in some of the nooks which the built environment has played century, when their origins and outcomes million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Jon Snow As a citizen, I have observed the and crannies of the area where he was a huge part in resurrecting a place of are often extremely complex, and tangled In contrast too, to the shelves of skulls Broadcaster impact of the built environment upon working, 500 yards away at King’s Cross devastation. In January 2010 I was in competing international influences? and the ‘waterboard’ furniture at the Tuol 6 Initiatives 7 Improving Lives Through Direct Actions IMPROVING LIVES THROUGH DIRECT ACTION Shade Central, India Tea Dance, Newham, London Every architect searches for innovation, offer local young people apprenticeships of these schemes are often conceptually wing and central tower.