Our proposal for the International Ideas Competition for the National Museum of Afghanistan aims to deliver a world class Museum and signal the gradual reversal of the decline of Kabul’s once great building fabric. The main building “container” is a pure, glistening object, reflecting it’s surroundings and hovering above it, detached and holding it’s precious cargo. Elevated to the height of the surround wall it stands as a symbol of unity and progression towards the bright future of Kabul.
From afar the main building “container” reads as a clean monolithic object. It is pure in form, whole and complete. On approach a detailed texturing is revealed providing scale, rhythm and an ordering device for the functions within. This scalloped texture is expressed as a roof surface, which turns at the roof edge and runs down the facade before transitioning into a clean horizontal line at the base of the container. Employing traditional and local techniques a fine layering of mosaic is applied to these surfaces resulting in a dynamic, light shifting surface. The project was a collaboration with Scale Architecture, Stringa and Doug & Wolf.
