P E A C E P A V I L I O N
Kaira Looro architecture competition . Senegal
This project is the materialistic representation of an idea that looks forward to becoming a platform for the construction of memory, a timeless space that do not respond to a specific model, but to an ancestral vernacular knowledge, a space to keep our memory forever. A hybrid between clay and laterite, that represents the ground that once was the cause of conflict and which now would be the one that build the peace. The pavilion is the result of volumes that rise from the earth to the sky becoming a landmark for the city and the people on behalf of the collective expression of landscape. The design emerges from the conceptual deconstruction of the centrality; there is not a specific point of distinction, since the victims from, the history and the narrative are the main characters of this processThis project is the materialistic representation of an idea that looks forward to becoming a platform for the construction of memory, a timeless space that do not respond to a specific model, but to an ancestral vernacular knowledge, a space to keep our memory forever. A hybrid between clay and laterite, that represents the ground that once was the cause of conflict and which now would be the one that build the peace. The pavilion is the result of volumes that rise from the earth to the sky becoming a landmark for the city and the people on behalf of the collective expression of landscape. The design emerges from the conceptual deconstruction of the centrality; there is not a specific point of distinction, since the victims from, the history and the narrative are the main characters of this process
The meaning of “building memory” is about telling the truth, the truth that we all must know, although those events were not part of our own living history .If we do not know why we are killing each other, we will not know why we should live in peace. For this reason, the design of the project includes spaces for the memory and awareness, rooms where people can tell stories of hope and reconciliation; spaces that represent a promise of justice by writing a new story from now on. It is not about telling all the events involved during that period of war all over again, or exposing the misery and suffering that it has brought to the life of millions of innocents; it is not about victimisation of the people in Africa once more, instead, we seek for a light of hope.
Our pavilion is the voice the victim never had, the possibility to look through the cold numbers that tell us how many lives we have lost, in order to see what it’s really important, our aim to live. Archiving peace is a matter of telling the truth, of forgiving, of understand our differences, to see our reflection in the other, to share, to talk, to tell our own story... that is peace.
Sebastián García, Natalia Andrade
