Self-Provocations: March 2012

When my partners and I decided to enter the competition to re-envision the Bab al Bahrain Square in Manama, which was held in early 2012, we were intrigued by a number of different issues. First, and most importantly, Bahrain resembled a political situation that was quite unique with its recent protesting movement, police and army crackdown on protestors, and the demolishing of Lulu roundabout (the place where protesting was happening). From this angle, Bahrain was a place where the idea of the political role of public space was indeed needed to be challenged and perhaps rethought. This was one of the two targets required in the competition brief itself, to question and rethink what a contemporary public space could be within the understanding of the current Arab World (i.e. how will it be used and what it will represent). Secondly, we read the competition, with its brief and international jury, as a trial from the monarchy to engage in political propaganda to enhance their image in front of the western world, especially that all eyes were fixed on Manama as the cultural capital of the Arab world of 2012. With such an international jury, we naively imagined that the role of the Minister of Culture on the jury would be a purely political propaganda role, a genuine trial to send out signals of free expression, engagement and debate, with the intention that the results would reflect this shift in attitude towards the political public. Thirdly, the competition was apparently quite well-organized. Noura al Sayeh, who was responsible for the winning entry for Bahrain in the Venice biennale in 2010, was apparently quite energetic, and committed to the idea, and I could imagine, had gone through a lot of opposition in order to make this competition happen the way it did. Finally, I was personally interested because, although I am Egyptian, I was born and raised in Bahrain till I was 17 when I started my architectural education in Egypt. I was quite familiar with the social and political issues of Bahrain, as well as with all the physical issues of BAB square. I had also witnessed the transformation of tahrir square during the Egyptian revolution in early 2011, and the change that happened in our perception of what a public space constitutes, what it means, and how it operates.

It is then quite impossible to understand the problematic of this competition without including all the different factors that affect it. On the macro scale, there is the regional political situation, the Arab Spring, and its effect on the protesting in Bahrain, and the strategy in which it was handled by the GCC army forces. On the micro scale, there was the demolishing of Lulu square, a strong symbolic act that portrayed the political significance of public space in Bahrain, its possibilities and its limits. There was also the ongoing protesting, mostly decentralized and dispersed, and its calls for freedom (of speech, assembly, and participation) as well as social, political and economic reform. And of course, there was the specific site conditions, the old city, the lost connection to the waterfront, the overwhelming parking lot…etc. Dismissing any of these important issues, or degrading the symbolic nature of the competition or the BAB square, especially in such timing, would result in very shallow outcomes, and if endorsed by the state (organizers) could be considered a pure act of dictatorship similar to that of demolishing Lulu square.

Needless to say, the results were a big disappointment for us. Not because we did not win, but rather because the winning entries, each in its own way, disregarded the very basic premises of the competition. Instead of reviving the square as a ‘liberated’ public space, a space for assembly, protesting and challenging, a space that is accessible and well connected to its surroundings, a space that represents freedom of speech, movement, congregation, and activities, the winning entries created bland, fragmented, and heavily controlled spaces.

In an extreme mix of a franchised copy of the swiss landscape and fake disneyfied architecture of the gulf, the first winner replaced the large public space with an artificial lake surrounded by a promenade and dotted by a mixture of activities in fishermen huts. The argument is that the void will connect people. The fountain in the middle of the lake (a gift from Geneva) resembles Lulu square sculpture. And that is as close as it gets to reading into the socio-political situation of Bahrain and the region. The second place winner decided, voluntarily, to wall off the space. An 11m high wall surrounds the space and dissects it into 2 ‘rooms’. A myriad of activities are promoted inside the walls, but none outside. A pure call for dictatorship control, with a flagrant disregard for a politically liberated ‘free access’ public space that is the ambition of the Bahraini people. With the new walls, everything will be controlled, all voices will be contained, no additional army forces will be needed. Finally, the third winner, taking a formal inspiration from tahrir square and mecca mosque (the circular shape), focused on incorporating the car parking on the ground level of the space with the public activities. In a radial organization, program and car parking are intertwined chaotically. While the jury celebrates this ‘embracing of the automobile’ as a strategy that proposes new possibilities for public space, this totally negates major contemporary urbanist thought on promoting pedestrian use of public spaces and cities to create clean and vibrant communities. Furthermore, incorporating cars into the depth of public space eliminates again any possibilities for allowing large congregations of people, and thus fragments the space along car paths into smaller pockets of disconnected activities.

I believe that the wining projects failed to realize, or intentionally overlooked, the potential of BAB square as a symbol of the political struggle in Bahrain, and as a representation of social and political control. If the jury, as it was promoted, was seeking innovative contemporary interpretations of public space within the current moment in the Arab World, I genuinely believe that these projects, and those similar to them, should have been automatically dismissed, in favor of those creating a 'liberated' space physically, symbolically and morally.

If the jury’s decision was not influenced by any political pressures from the state (represented by the minister), and had decided to intentionally celebrate this clear opposition of the ideals of the Arab Spring (a movement by citizens to regain control over their countries physically and symbolically), then we are again facing stubbornness from the west (winners and jury members) in realizing what is really happening in the Arab Spring, what it means to the people of the region, and what they will never accept anymore. This could be understood as a significant decision to stand against the Arab Spring and side with controversial regimes and practices. Promoting and supporting dictatorial practices of control over public space and endangering people’s control on their cities in favor of established controversial political regimes in this critical moment of history in the region is a huge blow to the credibility of western architects, urbanists and thinkers. What western architects and planners are yet to realize, is that Arabs will no longer be controlled... no matter how high you build the walls.

On the contrary, if the state representative in the jury was the one with the final say in setting the trajectory of the winning schemes, then this was, as usual, yet another example of how architectural competitions are politically manipulated to advocate a specific political agenda (this time of the Bahraini regime), and raises a lot of questions on the decision of the jury members to continue in the jury under these circumstances of being dictated what to promote, as well as their credibility as established architects and practitioners. If that was the case, which I regard highly improbable, it is a shame that our profession remains continuously weak and powerless in front of those in power, especially with jury members of such stance.

The competition results for BAB square do not only disappoint us, but also make us wonder why it was held in the first place.