On the 2006 Venice Structure Biennale OMA-AMO’s exhibition, The Gulf, offered the Arab Gulf states to the world. Depicted as a promised land for modern architects, OMA argued that the Gulf was the “last tabula rasa on which new identities might be inscribed.” The promotion of the Gulf international locations within the exhibition emphasised their place as shopper states within the international structure market, with a number of millennia of civilization (and structure) dismissed in favor of selling new cities, new urbanism, and new architectural repertoires.
Within the 20 years since, the contender for many spectacular set of architectural initiatives within the area has not been the product of latest monetary capitals, however a set of city and architectural commissions throughout the historic metropolis of Muharraq in Bahrain. Works by Christian Kerez, Valerio Olgiati, Workplace KGDVS, Atelier Bow-Wow, FormaFantasma, Leopold Banchini, and Studio Anne Holtrop have recurrently positioned the small island nation within the highlight of architectural media—all a part of a plan to advertise the Pearling Path and the narrative of the historic pearl commerce in Bahrain.
The official UNESCO itemizing for the Muharraq Pearling Path is “Pearling, Testimony of an Island Economic system.” The testimony within the title refers back to the preliminary query of methods to inform the story of the Bahrain pearling commerce by means of an architectural narrative. Bahrain has exported pearls since antiquity, however the commerce peaked between the nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries when pearls that have been beforehand offered regionally discovered entry to European markets by means of the British Empire’s management of the subcontinent. The trade boomed in Bahrain’s former capital of Muharraq the place most of the tawaweesh, or pearl retailers, have been based mostly. In the course of the nineteenth century, Bahrain’s pearling fleets made up the vast majority of pearling vessels within the Gulf and pearls have been Bahrain’s main export till the Thirties: The trade collapsed resulting from each the appearance of Japanese cultured pearls and discovery of oil. This hastened Bahrain’s transition away from its pearl-centered economic system towards a contemporary monetary capitol with oil-centered infrastructure. The development of highways and new cities pulled individuals out of the outdated metropolis, and moved to new suburbs. The cramped alleyways and conventional courtyard properties have been deserted in favor of newly constructed cities like Isa City and Hamad City. Lastly, in 1977, Muharraq’s core was encircled by a brand new ring street, reducing it off from the ocean.
Securing UNESCO Standing for Muharraq Pearling Path
Over time town heart turned a heterogeneous mixture of historic coral buildings and Twentieth-century concrete residences, retailers and business constructions. Interspersed between the older buildings have been new condo buildings, retailers and garages, and vehicles cramping no matter house was left over. It was in response to this modified city cloth of Muharraq that in 2002 Shaikha Mai bint Mohammed Al Khalifa determined to ascertain the Shaikh Ebrahim Middle for Tradition and Analysis in Fareej al Shiukh, a district within the coronary heart of outdated Muharraq. Shaikha Mai turned undersecretary on the Ministry of Info and Tradition later that yr and Minister of Tradition in 2008 (the Ministry of Tradition would department into the Bahrain Authority for Tradition and Antiquities, or BACA, in 2015, the present cultural authority in Bahrain). There was an curiosity in countering the growing abandonment that pervaded Muharraq by bringing in cultural programming and renovating the neighborhood’s dilapidated properties, and the nonprofit cultural heart initiated the primary pilot challenge, renovating 5 properties with native structure agency Gulf Home Engineering. Along with her appointment as Minister of Tradition, Shaikha Mai advocated for a UNESCO itemizing for Muharraq as a manner of defending components of the Muharraq cloth and increasing the restoration efforts past the scope of the nonprofit. Utilizing a technique much like Bahrain’s first UNESCO itemizing from 2005, the Bahrain Fort, a nomination file was ready for Muharraq by Dr. Britta Rudolph 5 years later. By 2012, the World Heritage Committee authorized the Pearling Path, giving Bahrain its second World Heritage Web site.
The Pearling Path was by no means an outlined route by means of town, however a moderately free circuit about 3 kilometers lengthy. The route related websites together with three hayrat (off-shore oyster beds), a portion of Muharraq’s shoreline, important homes, service provider stalls, warehouses, mosques, and a fort. Along with restoration, the Pearling Path plan outlined a bigger, protected buffer zone across the path—defending the core neighborhoods by means of new constructing codes and facade laws. The Administration Plan emphasised “architectural conservation, city upgrading, historic and anthropological analysis and the creation of customer and interpretation services.” The Administration Plan set in place a cultural and concrete technique—specifying nodes throughout the city cloth and a path that related them in addition to which buildings to renovate and which public insurance policies to make use of, however there was not a design language driving the challenge.
In 2010 a design competitors was organized by the Ministry of Tradition to outline the city technique for the Pearling Path, together with signage, wayfinding, lighting, and paving. However the competitors was deemed unsuccessful: The entries have been seen as “intrusive” by the committee. That very same yr marked Bahrain’s first participation within the Venice Structure Biennale, the place it received the Golden Lion. Biennale curator Noura Al Sayeh, an EPFL graduate who had joined the Bahrain Authority for Tradition and Antiquities (BACA) the yr earlier than, was then requested to advocate architects for initiatives in Muharraq and elsewhere in Bahrain. Al Sayeh started by recommending Workplace KGDVS, recipient of the Silver Lion in Venice that yr, to suggest a design for the Dar Jinaa constructing, a performing house within the southern portion of the Path. After that design, the studio additionally issued a proposal for the Path’s city technique.
It was Workplace KGDVS’s collaboration with Bureau Bas Smets that first outlined the Pearling Path as a route, creating sixteen public parks (Pearl Squares) and oyster-shell terrazzo mild poles that weave by means of the dendritic streets of Muharraq. The number of architects for the Pearling Path continued to be spearheaded by Noura Al Sayeh, who would develop into straight concerned with the Path in 2015 because the Head of Architectural Affairs at BACA. The driving curiosity was to fee architects who “had a beneficiant understanding of publicness and whose work might play a versatile function within the metropolis,” Al Sayeh informed AN. When requested in regards to the applicable formal language for integrating into town, Al Sayeh additionally spoke of permitting the newer concrete buildings to ascertain a rhythm alongside the older coral buildings: “The seriality between the buildings, parking constructions, and squares has introduced a type of identification and legibility to Muharraq.”
To fund the Pearling Path initiative, a portion of the prices was lined by the Bahraini authorities, whereas the remaining got here by way of a low-interest mortgage from the Islamic Improvement Financial institution (IDB). The mortgage was granted in 2014, however the IDB had a number of requests that might widen the scope of the Pearling Path imaginative and prescient. In accordance with Al Sayeh, the IDB “had not performed city revitalization plans earlier than, and their monetary mechanisms have been extra suited to addressing the singular.” The IDB mandate to fund growth initiatives meant that along with issuing a mortgage for the conservation plan, the financial institution was within the Muharraq challenge changing into greater than the renovation challenge alone. The temporary was expanded to deal with extra city points, together with the addition of parking constructions to resolve the shortage of parking within the dense metropolis cloth. “The financial institution gave us the legitimacy to behave on an city degree,” Ghassan Chemali, an city heritage marketing consultant for BACA, informed AN in an interview.
Two A long time of Work in Bahrain
There are roughly three phases to the Pearling Path. The primary consists of the preliminary pilot initiatives by the Shaikh Ebrahim Middle part which lasted from 2002 to 2012 and centered on small-scale renovations previous to official recognition. The second part, from 2012 to 2018, noticed the implementation of the Pearling Path as a spatial narrative and the primary of the architect-designed works: Workplace KGDVS, Studio Anne Holtrop, Leopold Banchini, and Atelier Bow-Wow. These initiatives complemented the prevailing Pearling Path cloth with new packages, introducing structure exhibition areas, a library, and a restaurant. By 2018, a stroll from north to south could be populated by path lighting designed by Workplace KGDVS, and punctuated by a couple of shaded public squares and a handful of latest initiatives. Whereas a majority of the Pearling Path historic buildings have been inaccessible right now, the bigger spatial strikes have been changing into legible, and the brand new commissions appeared throughout the metropolis cloth. It was this city expertise that received Aga Khan Award in 2019, celebrating the “Revitalization of Muharraq.” Al Sayeh informed AN that “[The Pearling Path] isn’t the primary UNESCO World Heritage serial nomination, however it invented a approach to deliver collectively an city website that was not intact.”
The third and last interval that simply completed this yr noticed the vast majority of Path properties accomplished, paving and pathlights put in, constructing facades across the website renovated, and bigger initiatives funded by the IDB take form by means of direct commissions: the customer heart by Valerio Olgiati, 4 parking tons by Christian Kerez, and the Siyadi Museum by Studio Anne Holtrop.
With the opening of the Pearling Path in February of this yr beneath the brand new BACA president, Shaikh Khalifa Bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, the totality of the Path imaginative and prescient is now accessible after over 20 years of labor. The opening serves as a second for reflection, permitting guests to each see the Path and consider the efforts it required. The primary two phases of the Pearling Path ran counter to the Dubai technique, eschewing grand architectural gestures in favor of tactical interventions and small programmatic additions. However the third deployed a extra bold scale—interventions that run the chance of “leaping the shark,” or overpowering the historic heart. The 4 parking constructions occupy key websites within the metropolis, but additionally tower over the entry factors to the historic district, prompting questions on whether or not a extra innocuous technique like underground parking—or a extra bold path, like changing parts of town heart into pedestrian-only zones—would have been extra applicable.
Defining the Way forward for Muharraq
Trying ahead, there are initiatives by BACA to program among the newer buildings, infill initiatives to be accomplished, and facade renovations to be performed within the buffer zone. Whereas the architectural and concrete ambitions have been fulfilled, the long-term aim of changing Muharraq to a full of life residential neighborhood and inspiring the preservation of homes by locals shall be tougher. New stakeholders just like the Ministry for Housing and City Planning & Improvement Authority have lately been concerned in new initiatives in Muharraq, which means the way forward for the neighborhood and the way it evolves across the Pearling Path will develop into extra obvious within the years to return. Chemali famous that “there may be now a gorgeous and novel high quality to Muharraq, however there stays the query of methods to get the group concerned: It’s unclear what influence the initiatives may have on the lifetime of town.”
Because the group incorporates the buildings into its day by day life, the top-down narrative of the Pearling Path as a set of up to date constructions with a public disposition shall be reevaluated. Whereas it garnered accolades and media protection, the final decade of labor on the Pearling Path was additionally carried out with a definite lack of native or regional architects. The efforts to challenge Muharraq outward have been an architectural and advertising and marketing success, as European skills delivered thrilling work in a brand new context. But the previous decade and a half of structure commissions might have been used as a platform to develop the native structure group in an identical manner—the final Bahraini agency concerned as designers on the initiatives ended their participation in 2012. As a cultural technique, the specific aim had been to speak the Pearling Path’s narrative coherently by means of structure and concrete intervention, which has been profitable. But the Path was unable to utilize the chance for native capability constructing—integrating the method of constructing the Path into cultivating a restoration and design group to maintain it. If the Path might be praised for avoiding the starchitect craze of the neighboring Gulf states, it can’t be praised for having discovered an alternate.
What makes the Pearling Path most enjoyable isn’t just the number of city methods, or the Who’s Who listing of your favourite architect’s favourite architects. As a substitute, it’s the imaginative and prescient for the Gulf metropolis based mostly on the consolidation of current metropolis cloth and strategic piecemeal growth. Reasonably than selling a tabula rasa situation or the novelty of latest cities and future utopias, as has been so typically the case over the previous century of structure media within the Gulf, the Pearling Path narrative suggests one other Gulf to its viewers. The Arab metropolis right here isn’t an empty terrain the place new identities might be inscribed, however one whose identification has been constructed over time and might be revealed by means of architectural intervention.
Ali Ismail Karimi is an architect and educator based mostly in Bahrain and cofounder of Civil Structure. Civil Structure accomplished commissions from Noura Al Sayeh and BACA. Karimi has labored with OFFICE KGDVS and Gulf Home Engineering.
